A Moveable Feast

At age 15, I was captivated by Ernest Hemingway and his depiction of Paris in the 1920s. This book today reignites the enchantment of those years. Hemingway's profound influence shaped my aspirations as a writer. Through his eyes, I can vividly see Paris's cafés, salons, and vibrant social scenes, which ultimately became the backdrop of my dreams.

This book, rich with lovemaking, drinking, writing, betting at the track, and the bohemian lifestyle of so many young artists in Paris, reawakens my desire to immerse myself in that world. Hemingway's narrative voice and his novels continue to speak to me in… show more.

It’s beautifully written and wise in its observations. It captures Paris in the 1920s, as seen through the eyes of one of the great writers of the 20th Century. You can read this book again and again and always learn and feel something new. In my view it’s Hemingway’s best book.    

A Moveable Feast is life-changing, with its introspective and evocative exploration of Hemingway’s early years as a struggling writer in the 1920s. It heavily inspired me to make my own move and pursue my authorship journey in Paris!

Through vivid and poetic prose, Hemingway captures the bohemian atmosphere of the era. The book delves into themes of creativity, love, loss, and pursuing one's artistic vision. Hemingway's raw and honest reflections on his own experiences and struggles offer profound insights into the nature of art, resilience, and the pursuit of a meaningful life. 

This book inspired me to uncover my passions,… show more.

When I’m teaching or mentoring in the craft of writing, one of the things I most often recommend is to “read Hemmingway.” For this book, it’s not just the lively descriptions of some very famous authors and the 1920s Paris literary scene, it’s how these descriptions are told – Hemmingway’s language is deceptively simple. It is “bare bones” writing, and yet it conveys so much. And, I think it’s important for writers to see how Hemmingway uses language and what he accomplishes with it.

This is the ultimate book about 1920s Paris. It was written as a memoir about Hemingway’s years in Paris, when he was learning to be a writer after the war. It is the most nostalgic of his books, the most rose-tinted. I have read it over and over – the tone alone is enough. I read it for all the literary gossip – F Scott Fitzgerald is there, and Gertrude Stein, and more as you never knew them. I read it again for the way he writes about how to write, the crack of the fire in the dawn as… show more.

Although not inspired by Ernest Hemingway, I have always frequented the same neighborhoods: the Latin Quarter around place Contrescarpe, where EH lived with his first wife, Hadley, on rue Cardinal Lemoine, and on the other side of the Luxembourg Garden along boulevard Montparnasse, where he lived beside a lumber mill just behind the still-wonderful restaurant La Cloiserie des Lilas, situated across from the Port-Royal RER station. Paris in 1920s, when Hemingway lived there, was an exhilarating place inhabited by other influential expats: James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein. This memoir, written late in life, recounts the author’s adventures in Kerouac-like… show more.

A Moveable Feast is a wonderful book for the way that it goes into such minute detail about living life in Paris France as an expatriate writer and in many ways as a rebel. The drunken nights, what they drank, how many drinks they had, it is all detailed in this book. His memories of this time in his life are vivid, warm, witty, and full of affection for those other writers of note who were also expatriates and authors, escaping prohibition in America for the free-wheeling fun of Paris and booze. The book depicts his early life as a… show more.

Two titles by the same author were in competition for this recommendation—two of what I consider to be among Hemingway’s best books—the memoir, A Moveable Feast and the novel, The Sun Also Rises. It was in my mind a flip of the coin, but I went with the former, partly because the latter, although largely populated by Parisian ex-pats, was set in Pamplona, Spain, while A Moveable Feast focuses specifically on the author’s years in Paris.

Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Hemingway’s most enduring works. Since his personal papers were released in 1979, scholars… show more.

I like being here with you but to be honest I'd rather be living in 1920s Paris, drinking with the Lost Generation. This book is the ultimate tableau vivant of a city, an age, and a gallery of characters. It shows the optimism of city dwellers, the possibilities of living in an urban landscape, and the trials and tribulations of urban, creative life. It is a portrait of a city and all that happens in it.

I was in Paris a week after the 2015 terrorist attacks and I visited the seas of flowers and memorials to mourn and cry.… show more.

Much, though not all, of the book becomes the very feeling Hemingway describes, but the chapter, "Hunger Was Good Discipline," especially takes flight in its evocation of craft and creation, closing with a reference to Hemingway’s greatest short story, “Big Two-Hearted River” (Part I and Part II). It is as if we are reading the actual experience of writing the story…no, not reading, experiencing!