A Moveable Feast

I started reading this 9 years ago, couldn't finish, and then again a couple of years ago - it was the much earlier edition. Though I enjoyed it as I would any Hemingway book, I was not as drawn to it as I did in the third reading. Back then I had no connection to the places and the locales he often uses as points of reference to characters and the silent developments in his inner world. This would explain why I trudged through it. I did not get to finish the book when typhoon Rai destroyed my home and most of my books.

Fast forward to last winter when I visited Paris and bought the restored edition from the Shakespeare and Company. It was a laidback trip and had no company so I had the freedom to walk around mostly in the 5th arr. I didn't realize until later that this area was Hemingway's turf and I had meandered through most of the streets he wrote about. I did not read the book until after I left Paris.

With this new element my second time reading the book hit different, almost intimate, and I think it's because of the impression the city (along with my personal affections) had on me during and after. I finished the book in two sprints. 60% of it in one afternoon.


It was a good thing i got to reread this as the restored edition - the main text was how Hemingway had prepared it for publishing. The chapters are organized differently and some post-humous revisions rolled back. It also has additional sketches/chapters and “fragments” after the main text, that are alternate versions/drafts of some sections found from his manuscript. A bulk of the chapter on Hadley and Pauline which was previously omitted were very powerful in that the reader has access to the his most vulnerable state in that “winter of murder”. All of this provide a better understanding of the author's perspective and process, and a glimpse into the fragility of the mind of the great writer who by that time was already marked for death.