Where to Move the Feast?

            Through combining the genres of fiction and nonfiction, A Moveable Feast describes the societal trends in Paris during the roaring twenties with tremendous clarity. As Ernest Hemingway begins to embody a type of literary James Bond through the clarity and wit of the story, A Moveable Feast tends to represent a classic example of form follows content through the themes of the roaring twenties. By analyzing society during the roaring twenties and utilizing himself as the narrator to comment on the perspectives of his younger self, Hemingway is utilizing time and age as a tool to reflect on and reveal his previous beliefs. Hemingway’s most profound example of reflection occurs when he explains his gambling habits in Paris before revealing that he is giving up betting in the discussion that:

When I stopped working on the races I was glad but it left an emptiness. … But for a long time it was enough just to be back in our part of Paris and away from the track and to bet on your own life and work, and on the painters that you knew and not try to make your living gambling and call it by some other name. … there is no need to bet. (Hemingway 52, 4, 5)

Through utilizing the trends of the roaring twenties as perspectives to analyze and themes to convey, Ernest Hemingway creates a new appreciation for the volatile society of the 1920’s that defines the purpose of A Moveable Feast. Furthermore, Hemingway points out multiple, reoccurring narrative problems that are important to solve in today’s Information Age. After discussing the possibility of Hemingway’s generation being lost, Hemingway explains the hardships of his wartime generation and reflects on problems with Miss Stein’s perspective when he wonders:

If [the boy in the garage] had ever been hauled in one of those vehicles when they were converted to ambulances. I remembered how they used to burn out their brakes going down the mountain roads with a full load of wounded… I thought of Miss Stein and Sherwood Anderson and egotism and mental laziness versus discipline and I thought who is calling who a lost generation? … I thought that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be and I stopped at the Lilas to keep the statue company and drank a cold beer. (Hemingway 62)

Interestingly enough, the point that Hemingway makes in A Moveable Feast draws multiple parallels with the writings of Neil Postman in that both convey the need to reconcile the disagreements between the generations in a society. Such parallels make A Moveable Feast a unique book that demonstrates a clear and rich writing that conveys both implicit and explicit messages to the reader, which are invaluable tools that need to be learned by any writer who wishes to write effectively. Although I would consider A Moveable Feast a book of fiction because of the bias that Hemingway brings into the reality of the characters, Hemingway’s style as a clear and educational writer demonstrates the blurred boundary between fiction and nonfiction that A Moveable Feast occupies. But, if anything, Hemingway’s writing style and the interesting distortion of fiction and nonfiction makes A Moveable Feast more entertaining and educational rather than making it more difficult to understand.

Works Cited

Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast. New York: Scribner, 1964. Print.