Paris : A Moveable Feast
By Dr. Syed Amir
Bethesda , MD
Paris , the legendary city of light, has been memorialized in numerous books and poems. Phrases such as, "we will always have Paris", drawn from a dialog between Ingrid Bergman and her lover Humphrey Bogart in the classic film, Casablanca, considered one of the best movies ever made, have promoted its image as a city of romance and mystery.
After the First World War, Paris became a favorite haunt of artists, intellectuals, writers, and poets who were drawn there from around the world, and who frequently adopted a bohemian lifestyle and congregated in its celebrated bookstores, cafes and restaurants.
The famed American author, Ernest Hemingway, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954, spent some five years in Paris in the twenties, one of the American expatriates, and worked as a journalist and a fiction writer. The five years, from 1925-1929, are considered the most productive phase of his life as a writer, when he produced some five books. His notable works of fiction include his first full novel, the Sun Also Rises (1926), with a backdrop of Paris and Spain, which is based in his experiences of life in Paris; A Farewell to Arms (1929), a work of fiction, was heavily influenced by the author's experience in the First World War, and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), also a work of fiction, draws upon his observations in the bloody Spanish Civil War, which he covered as a newspaper reporter. He was profoundly saddened by the takeover of Spain by the fascists. The latter book quickly became a best-seller and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, one of the most prestigious American literary awards.
One of Hemingway's last significant literary creations entitled The Old Man and the Sea (1952) relates the story of an old Cuban fisherman who struggled with a swordfish and ultimately lost it to sharks. The short novel helped him win the Nobel Prize and was specifically cited in his award presentation. Several of the books have since been made into movies.
According to many of his admirers, Hemingway's most endearing work, A Moveable Feast, his masterpiece completed in 1960, is a collection of anecdotes and memoirs of his early years in Paris, when he was a young, fledgling writer often strapped for money. The book was first published posthumously in 1964, edited by his fourth wife, Mary Welch, after Hemingway's tragic death by suicide in 1961 at the age of 61. It has acquired an interesting and intriguing track record. Apparently, in 1956 two boxes containing notebooks, and some unfinished manuscripts were retrieved by Hemingway from a hotel basement in Paris, where they had been storied since 1928, all but forgotten. Included in the retrieved material were the original notes and written sketches of people and places he had encountered while he lived there, which were to emerge some years later as A Moveable Feast.
Hemingway, who suffered from bouts of depression, had worked diligently on the book during his stay in Cuba, finishing it in 1960. However, it still lacked an introduction and a last chapter when the author died. It was edited, finalized and the title chosen by Mary Welch from among random comments Hemingway had made and were quoted by a friend, "If you are lucky to have lived in Paris as a young man, the experience stays with you wherever you go, for Paris is a moveable feast.”
The book has generated unusual controversy ever since it was published. The second version of the book - the restored edition - which came out recently has fueled the debate even further. Sean Hemingway, the author's grandson, has made some significant additions, alterations in the text of the book and changed the sequence of the chapters. Sean Hemingway contends in the Introduction that the original version was not what his grandfather would have intended it to be. He argues that his step grandmother, Mary Welch, had heavily edited it, removing passages that presented his second wife, Sean's grandmother, in a favorable light and portrayed Hemingway as an affable character.
This assertion, however, is rebutted by A.E Hotchner, a biographer and close friend of Hemingway's, who in a New York Times' Op Ed (July 2009) claimed that the author had already completed the book as he wanted it to be before his death, and it was unethical to edit and create a new version based on personal whims of a family member.
Since the original manuscript of A Moving Feast has been deposited with the Kennedy Library in Boston and is accessible to researchers, the controversy is likely to stay alive for some time among the academic and literary community.
During a relatively brief writing career, Ernest Hemingway had established a reputation as one of the foremost American fiction writers of 21 st century. His writing style is considered innovative, since he uses simple, declarative sentences, with the least number of words that will convey the meaning, in place of colorful, florid language, commonly employed by the 19 th century Victorian writers. A Moving Feast, unfortunately, reveals a less desirable trait of the author's personality as he savages in its short chapters some of his close friends and benefactors, among them American authors, Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzgerald, with caustic, mean and unkind comments. Many of the injudicious comments in A Moving Feast have been attributed to the immaturity and youthful exuberance of the author at a time when he was still attempting to establish himself as a writer in Paris.
As frequently happens, Hemingway's fame and popularity have motivated many businesses to use his name to make money and boost businesses. Some bars and restaurant chains from Prague to Paris offer special drinks and dishes named after him, claiming that he sometime visited and dined there. Such promotion is not limited to businesses. The Government of Cuba is attempting to attract tourists by publicizing the novelist's ties to that country. Hemingway, who bought a seaside house in Havana, spent nearly two decades there, off and on, completing several of his landmark publications, For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Moveable Feast, and The Old Man and the Sea. His old house in Havana is currently being renovated and will be made into a museum where Hemingway's unpublished manuscripts and letters will be housed and displayed. Availability of a wealth of fresh, unprocessed literary material will be a moveable feast for Hemingway's many fans and admirers.
