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I now consider this blog to be my Juvenelia. Have fun perusing the archives, and find me at my new haunt, here.

Saturday, October 13, 2007

A Moveable Feast

I've been doing some personal writing about France, so I picked this classic memoir up for inspirational purposes. I have very mixed feelings about Ernest Hemmingway because he had these pinnacles of sheer brilliance ("A Clean, Well-Lighted PLace" is one of my fave short stories ever) but he was a, umm, well, a misognynist prick.

It was natural then, that reading his memoir reaffirmed both these conclusions. I loved above all his descriptions--his Paris came alive to me, the cafes with their cold white wine and oysters, the fishermen on the Seine, the coldness and coziness of his artist's flat. I enjoyed his ride down to Lyon with the alcoholic F. Scott Fitzgerald and his afternoons with Gerturde Stein and Alice B. Toklas (although he comes across quite petty in his description of Scotty and Steing) and his winter in the Austrian Alps.

His personality is so endlessly self-affirming that it's a bit of a bore: still, ignoring E-Hem's tendency to wax obnoxious, I trasure this book for its clear images of Paris of Yore and its tidbits about the literati of the lost generation.

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