RollnSmoke Reviews: A MOVEABLE FEAST by Ernest Hemingway

A MOVEABLE FEAST by Ernest Hemingway (1964)

Ernest Hemingway’s only memoir, published posthumously several years after his suicide, covers the years 1921-1926 when he was young and married to his first wife, Hadley, living poor but happy with their young son, Bumby, in Paris. Hemingway was a struggling, oft- tippling, ever-hungry writer back then who juggled deep indulgence in life with inspired discipline at work. Here is a literary pastiche of keenly written scenes and snippets of dialogue with iconic luminaries like Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and Scott Fitzgerald. What rises in retrospect as most poignant and wise is Hemingway’s lasting love for Hadley. “I wished I had died,” he writes in the end, “before I ever loved anyone but her.”