What We’re Reading: A Moveable Feast
A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition by Ernest Hemingway (Scribner, 2009)
Ernest Hemingway never gave a title to the memoir he wrote about his life in Paris in the 1920s. He hadn’t finished the book before he died, and it was published posthumously with the help of his wife Mary. However, the title was chosen from something Hemingway had once said: “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”
Paris stayed with Hemingway long after he left it. Though he very well may have thought about or planned to write a memoir about his years in Paris in the 1920s, he didn’t start what he temporarily called “The Paris Sketches” until 1957, after having lived in Key West, Cuba, Spain, and throughout Europe during WWII. In A Moveable Feast he writes about Michigan while he’s living in Paris, and he finally writes about life in Paris once he’s been immersed in many other places. I had a similar experience when it came to reading the memoir.
When I was studying abroad in Paris, I bought this copy of A Moveable Feast without knowing it was the restored edition, or understanding what that meant, (read the introduction—it’s worth it). I said to myself, “I am going to buy A Moveable Feast at Shakespeare & Company in Paris.” And that’s exactly what I did, but I didn’t even open its pages until two years after I’d last been in Paris, just a few weeks ago. I was glad that I waited, because though I made a point to visit many of the places Hemingway has written about, it was rewarding to visit Paris through his own eyes.
Mary Hemingway and an editor at Scribner gathered the manuscript as it was in 1960, heavily edited it, and published the book in 1964. However, Hemingway continued to work on the manuscript until the spring of 1961, and for the first time in 2009 it was published as Hemingway had last left it, including some unfinished and never-before-published chapters.
Though I never read the non-restored edition, I highly recommend picking up a copy and exploring Hemingway’s memories as he last left them. As a writer, he often struggled with finalizing his work, and images of his manuscript show how many meticulous changes he has made in just a brief paragraph.
Hemingway wrote a forward to the chapter about F. Scott Fitzgerald, and here are some examples of its earlier versions:
The forward in the first edition includes the lines crossed out by Hemingway. The restored edition is published with Hemingway’s own changes made:
His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think. He was flying again and I was lucky to meet him just after a good time in his writing if not a good one in his life.
Of course there is not much wrong with the original version of the forward, but writing is revising, isn’t it? And Hemingway revised his writing beyond what we’ve seen in previous publications of the text. When the first edition was published posthumously, the second person point of view was removed from a handful of pages, and his reflections on his first marriage and divorce were cut by his fourth wife Mary. The heart of the story, the tales of the Lost Generation, and the sentiment of being a struggling writer in Paris were never lost in publication, but I found that some of my favorite moments while reading were those that were unique to the restored edition.
When written in the second person, I felt that Hemingway’s thoughts were speaking directly to the reader, inviting them to join him in Paris. It was a delightfully nerdy as watching Midnight in Paris for the first time, or going to Brasserie Lipp and ordering the exact same meal that Hemingway ate and wrote about in A Moveable Feast (cevelas, sausage smothered in mustard, and a cold beer). The second person point of view brought me back there. The book begins:
Then there was the bad weather. It would come in one day when the fall was over. You would have to shut the windows in the night against the rain and the cold wind would strip the leaves from the trees in the Place Contrescarpe.
Who, me? You need me to shut the windows? I know I’m an absurd romantic when it comes to Paris, and maybe I’m just a sucker for effective run-on sentences, but I’m starting to feel the cold wind he describes.
Whether you’ve been to Paris or not, I urge you to experience it with Hemingway in hand.
What do you think of posthumous publications, such as this? And the juxtaposition of an author’s original notes, and restored editions? There’s a conversation that happens there, as we’ve seen here. What does that mean to you?
