A Moveable Feast

Valuable reading for writers. I have to admit, I'm not a Hemingway fan (and by no means a Hemingway scholar), but I found his portraits of life in Paris interesting, and wistful. He only refers to his own approach to work in passing, but I would have appreciated a more in-depth explanation of his writing philosophy.

Also, the F. Scott stuff is bizarre.

One of my favorite parts was a passage that described being on a writing-roll by him narrating from inside the scene, and you don't realize what he's doing until his writing gets interrupted. At first it wasn't clear, but when I realized what he was doing I got excited. I reread the passage, then read it aloud to N, and only then did I get enough of it to continue with the chapter.

Most of his name-dropping was lost on me, save for the Fitzgeralds and Gertrude Stein (whose name I recognize only because she was a friend of Hemingway's); because I didn't know them, his anecdotes and descriptions would fall a little flat. When he wrote about normal people, however, like his favorite waiter, they came to life. And naturally his descriptions of Paris itself were fantastic, written with true love and affection.