51 pages • 1 hour read
Ernest HemingwayA Moveable Feast
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1964A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Fact vs Fiction
A Moveable Feast is a memoir of Hemingway’s time in Paris, but to categorize the memoir as purely nonfiction would be incorrect. Hemingway uses the Preface as an opportunity to vocalize his understanding of the relation between fact and fiction. In so doing, he asserts a new kind of memoir, one that understands the limitations of subjective perception and memory and that acknowledges its place within competing accounts. He opens the novel with a preliminary note to the reader; “For reasons sufficient to the writer, many places, people, observations and impressions have been left out of this book. Some were secrets and some were known by everyone and everyone has written about them and will doubtless write more” (3). Already, Hemingway is alerting the reader that this is a different kind of memoir, one that acknowledges its restrictions. He continues by listing a series of events that are omitted, such as the Stade Anastasie, “the great twenty-round fights at the Cirque d’Hiver,” or their voyages to the Black Forest. Hemingway comments that the memoir would be “fine if all these were in this book but we will have to do without them for now” (3). In this paragraph, Hemingway acknowledges deliberate omission for the first time, a writing technique that he alludes to within the memoir itself, thus creating a link between fact/fiction. He concludes the Preface by writing, “If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact” (3). Fiction, as the exposure of one’s own personal relation to an event, reveals a deeper meaning from which fact gains its validity.
The interconnection between fact and fiction is one which Hemingway exploits throughout the novel. These instances include Hemingway’s perception of other characters, such as Wyndham Lewis and Ernest Walsh. In these cases, he acts on his initial perception of the characters and allows that perception to motivate his choices and beliefs. These scenes provide a deeper insight, not necessarily into the other character but into Hemingway himself. Therefore, this memoir is not solely the factual recounting of his time in Paris but also a recounting of his personal experience; the book is an intimate reflection of his unique character and personality. Hemingway concludes the novel by writing, “There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other” (99), once more emphasizing the interconnection between multiple experiences and the importance of relationships and their web of subjective interactions.
Coming of Age
The book begins with Hemingway trying to find himself as a writer and culminates in the completion of his first full-length novel, The Sun Also Rises. As the memoir commences, Hemingway reflects on his desire to become a novelist. He comments on the time he had completed a novel but the manuscript was stolen; “I knew that it was probably a good thing that it was lost, but I knew too that I must write a novel. I would put it off through until I could not help doing it. I was damned if I would write one because it was what I should do if we were to eat regularly. When I had to write it, then it would be the only thing to do and there would be no choice. Let the pressure build” (34-35). An element of fate is added to the coming of age trope, as Hemingway cannot avoid writing a novel forever. Eventually, the urge will overtake him, and he will write a novel just as he had written short stories before. The stolen manuscript appears to represent the potential for Hemingway to write a novel, as he has proof that he is capable of it but no physical novel to prove his capability. Without having produced an actual, published novel, Hemingway often feels inferior to his counterparts such as Fitzgerald. Despite disagreeing with Fitzgerald on how a story should be told, Hemingway holds his tongue. He writes, “Since he wrote the real story first, he said, the destruction and changing of it that he did at the end did him no harm. I could not believe this and I wanted to argue him out of it but I needed a novel to back up my faith and to show him and convince him, and I had not yet written any such novel” (71). The story of Fitzgerald represents the fall of a promising novelist, as his work, The Great Gatsby, does not sell. A cautionary tale, Fitzgerald’s story arche reflects both the struggles of a novelist and Hemingway’s own anxiety that he will be unable to write a full-length novel.
Once Hemingway leaves to spend the summer in Spain with his wife Hadley, he returns having started the first draft of his novel, which he completes in Schruns, describing, “I did the most difficult job of rewriting I have ever done there in the winter of 1925 and 1926, when I had to take the first draft of The Sun Also Rises which I had written in one sprint of six weeks and make it into a novel” (94). When Hemingway returns to Paris, his coming-of-age arche is complete: “That was the end of the first part of Paris. Paris was never to be the same again although it was always Paris and you changed as it changed” (99). Categorizing this time in Paris as the “end of the first part” concludes both the memoir and Hemingway’s coming-of-age journey. Having completed his first novel, he is no longer the same novelist he was once was.
What It Means To Be A Writer
Since Hemingway’s coming-of-age memoir centers around the completion of his first novel, A Moveable Feast grapples extensively with what it means to be a writer. Throughout the memoir Hemingway references many writing tactics and strategies, including writer’s block, to which his answer is “Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know” (7). Hemingway does not like elaborate sentences full of big words of lavish imagery; his writing style is known for its short and concise sentences. This style is attributed to his time as a journalist and as a war correspondent, where it was necessary to be succinct and objective. This gave rise to his Iceberg Theory, which is the idea that a writer can (and should) knowingly omit an element of the plot, and this element will still motivate characters and influence the story: “this was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood” (34). This theory is also linked to the interconnection between fact and fiction, where something that is not explicitly stated can shed light on what is known.
Hemingway also believed that stories were meant to be told in their own unique ways and that to mold a story to a more sellable formula, as Fitzgerald does, destroys the story. Hemingway remarks, “Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try to make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do. But it was very difficult, and I did not know how I would ever write anything as long as a novel. It often took me a full morning to write a paragraph” (71). Hemingway strives for authenticity in his work, something which Fitzgerald could produce effortlessly until he gave up authenticity so that his work would sell. Another example is Miss Stein’s advice that an author must never write anything that is inaccrochable, meaning art that cannot be displayed or sold. Hemingway counters: “‘But what if it is not dirty but it is only that you are trying to use words that people would actually use? That are the only words that can make the story come true and that you must use them? You have to use them’” (9). This debate mirrors Hemingway’s disagreement with Fitzgerald over the more authentic way to tell a story that is true to how that story should be told. Hemingway’s writing is a stubbornly personal endeavor where he seeks to tell a specific story as opposed to creating a work of art for others to consume.
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