The Feast Stands Still

As a whole, A Moveable Feast discusses Hemingway’s current life as a writer in the 1920s of Paris. Out of everything he is, in this book Hemingway presents himself as someone sort of on the outside of things. He goes along his days wandering the streets of Paris coming upon many different interactions with many different types of people, sitting in cafes very clearly in detail describing the food he eats and the aromas of the restaurants he walks by; so much that one can identify with the tastes and the smells while reading of it. With every interaction he has, Hemingway always seems to kind of be a sort of therapist figure. It seems as if he positions himself as a listener while the people he meets discuss with him their life stories, experiences and most of all, problems. But maybe this is the point of the whole book? Maybe Hemingway acts as that therapist figure in order to derive stories out of it, maybe this is the answer of his writing.

Out of everyone that Hemingway met throughout this novel, there was one character that seemed to stick out within his favorites, Ezra Pound. Pound seemed to have a certain inspiration for Hemingway. Something about him, Hemingway seemed to admire and always speak extremely highly of. Pound is the only character whom you hear Hemingway state that he “misses” and that he seeks advice from, other than Gertrude Stein, although he seems to fancy Pound’s opinion more. Multiple times Hemingway states how Ezra was one of the kindest and most generous people that he ever knew, how he always wanted to help others “whether he believed in them or not”. I think that Hemingway somewhat aspired to be like Pound and that might be one of the things that this book is wrapped around.

In A Moveable Feast, Hemingway rarely talks about his life. When he does, it’s usually simple joys out of simple activities between him and his wife like, “and we would swim and be healthy and brown and have one aperitif before lunch and one before dinner”. This is one trait that I admire of Hemingway; he seems to find the simple things of life as the most joyous. I find this extremely relevant in my experience of living in Paris. When I was living in New York, it was as if I took everything I had for granted. But then again it seems as if every New Yorker takes everything for granted. An example could be the dread of partaking in simple act of the five to seven minute walk (depending how fast or slow I was feeling that day) down 5^th Avenue because there was a class switch from Twelfth Street to Sixteenth Street. I would dread this walk whenever I was forced to take it—this was remotely out of pure laziness. Oddly enough, the past week here in sunny and warm Paris I have been thinking of that walk everyday. I have been thinking of the people I would pass by exchanging nods and smiles, sometimes fist touches, that 1:35 pm every Tuesday and Thursday to my 1:50 pm class, just so I had enough time to receive my large iced coffee with skim milk from the one and only hole in the wall, Mapi. And then when class was over, I would light up a Turkish royal cigarette with my friend Ellis and we’d take our time puffing our smokes, enjoying the sun, making our way back to the courtyard on Twelfth Street to be greeted with the gleaming souls of positivity from our people. This small act of walking down a street for five to seven minutes is something that I would give anything to partake in right now. Just from this, I am positive that once I get back to New York, I am going to be saying the exact same things about Paris. Maybe I will think about how I have a yearn to go to Monoprix, pick up a Pain au Chocolat and stroll down Rue Saint-Roch and then onto Rue de Rivoli to make my way to the Jardin des Tuileries, find a nice spot in the sun, light up a camel blue along with a bottle of Rose all while having Radiohead playing in my ears. You certainly cannot find in New York. It is uncontrollable to think about the past, but being so far away from my past, I have learned to notice and love every single detail of the present; because soon it will be gone and I will wish I had taken advantage of the things I could have when I had it.