A Moveable Feast

I still can't decide whether or not I actually like Hemingway. I found some parts of this book jarring; his condemnation of homosexuals and his generally petty, unflattering portraits of his fellow writers especially. But it's a very evocative portrait of Paris in the 20s, and it has some good lines. I liked best the bits when he wrote about writing.

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.”

Essentially, though, it reads as a partial and somewhat dishonest narrative; it's clear that he withholds important parts of the story from the reader (apparently much of the manuscript was redacted, and the veracity of some of it has been called into question; for instance, he describes the experience of being poor in Paris, but the truth is apparently that he had access to plenty of money while he was living there). I got tired of the weirdly pretentious way he painted himself as superior to all of his peers.