A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

It was wonderful to walk down the long flights of stairs knowing that I'd had good luck working. I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day. But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know." So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there.

If I know anything about Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, I know that it contains a scene where Hemingway reassures F. Scott Fitzgerald in the bathroom of a bar that the size of his penis is perfectly ordinary. A Moveable Feast wasn't published until the 1960's, a few years after the death of Hemingway, and perhaps it's best that it much after the death of Fitzgerald, as well, who, as Hemingway depicts him here, was an anxious hypochondriac, tortured by his wife, who probably had enough anxiety to deal with in his life. The penis story is just one of many--there's a long tale about Fitzgerald's hypochondria absolutely derailing a boys' trip to the city of Lyon--and one of the charms of A Moveable Feast is the peek inside the lives of some of the great artists who were trawling around Paris at the time. Fitzgerald gets out better, perhaps, than Gertrude Stein, who's depicted as something of a stubborn battleaxe who hides petty resentments behind a thin veil of principle. That's too harsh: as with Fitzgerald, Hemingway's depiction of Stein is ultimately a loving one, because his depiction of Paris, and those years of his life, is a loving one as well.

But the most interesting depiction of any artist is, I think, the book's depiction of Hemingway himself. Hemingway's writing about a time before he's published any novel at all, and his work is all in short stories, and so the larger-than-life bullfighter and hunter who would be known as "Papa" isn't really present here. The Hemingway of A Moveable Feast is a rather vulnerable creature, battling the uncertainty of writer's block, cultivating a style of simplicity not out of masculine bravado but the need to put down on paper "one true sentence." This Hemingway marvels at his friend Fitzgerald not because his book is so good (when they first meet, he hasn't yet read Gatsby) but because he had the ability to write a novel at all. I thought A Moveable Feast was an interesting counterbalance to the popular image of Hemingway as an icon of machismo. Certainly the vulnerability and the incertitude of Hemingway here involves a lot of self-fashioning, but isn't "self-fashioning" the complaint that people level against Hemingway in the other direction? All of which is to say again that I think those who resent Hemingway for his masculinity haven't read him, or haven't read him closely enough.

It's impossible, I feel, not to respond to what Hemingway can do with a sentence. His sentences seem simple enough, but then, if they're so simple, why are they so moving? I was moved in that way often during A Moveable Feast, though I don't quite agree with those who thinks it's among his greatest works. It has the kind of muddy incoherence of something that feels unfinished, as if it were something he might have knocked into a more recognizable shape, if he'd published it during his own life time. Still, it's remarkable in the way it manages to turn real people--the Steins, the Fitzgeralds, the Pounds, and Papa himself--into Hemingway characters, so vibrant and real even though they are so lightly sketched, touched with a kind of authorial grace.

This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

He was in an eddy again, a deep, lethargic gulf, without desire to work or write, love or dissipate. For the first time in his life he rather longed for death to roll over his generation, obliterating their petty fevers and struggles and exultations. His youth seemed never so vanished as now in the contrast between the utter loneliness of this visit and that riotous, joyful party of four years before. Things that had been the merest commonplaces of his life then, deep sleep, the sense of beauty around him, all desire, had flown away and the gaps they left were filled only with the great listlessness of his disillusion.

This Side of Paradise was Fitzgerald's first novel, published at the age of (dammit) 23. It has the unsurprising kitchen-sink quality common to a first-time novelist who wants to try everything, and flits from narrative to poetry to drama with wild abandon. Among other things, it comprises a short play, several bad lyrical poems, an elegiacal one in the Celtic style, and several letters. In one of them, Amory Blaine's friend Tom tells him, "As for the well-known Amory, he would write immortal literature if he were sure enough about anything to risk telling any one else about it."

Also unsurprisingly, Amory, the young proto-writer and disaffected Princeton man, is a stand-in for the young Fitzgerald, as Stephan Dedalus was for James Joyce five years prior. Fitzgerald shares Amory's anxiety about have nothing certain to say, and so the novel becomes about him--"I know myself," Amory cries in the last line of the book, "but that is all!"--and the ecumenical style becomes a way of compensating. Like Portrait of the Artist, Paradise reads as a sort of legend of its own creation, but the key to Joyce's achievement was an otherworldly confidence in the quality of the book, not an otherworldly confidence in the quality of the author.

Paradise is at its best in the straightforward narrative mode, which begins as a satirical portrait of Amory as a precocious and quite insufferable child. My favorite line is this, describing Monsignor Darcy, a priest and friend of Amory's mother:

He was intensely ritualistic, startlingly dramatic, loved the idea of God enough to be celibate, and rather liked his neighbor.

Darcy proves to be a wise man and a stalwart friend to Amory, but the brilliant understatement of "[he] rather liked his neighbor" never fades, as does his confidence that he and Amory are of a special class. (This is a view that the author clearly shares, and perhaps he is borne out by history.)

The satire drops out as Amory grows, and becomes more lyrical as he becomes more lyrical, but the poetry he writes is largely forgettable. The prose is more successful:

Often they swam and as Amory floated lazily in the water he shut his mind to all thoughts except those of hazy soap-bubble lands where the sun splattered through wind-drunk trees. How could any one possibly think or worry, or do anything except splash and dive and loll there on the edge of time while the flower months failed. Let the days move over--sadness and memory and pain recurred outside, and here, once more, before he went on to meet them he wanted to drift and be young.

And:

Only far inside his soul a little fire leaped and cried that something was pulling down, trying to get him inside a door and slam it behind him. After that door was slammed there would be only footfalls and white buildings in the moonlight, and perhaps he would be one of the footfalls.

But then there's a strange interlude where the Devil appears, some more bad poems, and a centerpiece where Amory's brief, tempestuous relationship with a girl named Rosalind is written as a stage play. The meaning of this is gut-wrenchingly obvious (she's histrionic, like an actress) and Rosalind and the playlet itself battle each other to determine which can be less interesting. The momentum of the book never recovers, and for some reason, even when Amory meets more interesting people (one girl rides her horse off a cliff to prove she doesn't believe in God!) he still yearns for Rosalind. Worst of all, where the climax should be, Fitzgerald provides a lengthy discussion about socialism with a complete stranger, and then the novel sort of limps off to die in a New Jersey ditch.

One of the strangest things about Paradise is that World War I is almost completely absent. Fitzgerald calls attention to how little Amory thinks of the war beginning as a high school student by limiting his notice of it to a half-page chapter. Then, when Amory goes off to fight in it, Fitzgerald provides--an act break. The Amory that returns is not markedly different. I'm pretty sure that Fitzgerald did not fight in WWI, but he felt it necessary that his alter ego did. And yet, he felt it not worthy--or too daunting?--to include. I wonder why.

07 Tender Is The Night-F. Scott Fitzgerald

I never liked Gatsby, but I like recommendations. Tender is the spectacular study of one man, Mr. Dick Diver. Told in the third person, the three sections are dominated by three characters thoughts: Rosemary, Dick, and Nicole. Tender is a somewhat autobiographical look into Fitzgerald’s own life of love and mental illness. They are expats living it up on the French Riviera during the depression. I’m remembering why I didn’t like Fitzgerald in high school and college; while reading Tender I did begin to appreciate and even love his style.

We first meet Rosemary, the young American actress that has just hit the big time in a Hollywood production. She stumbled to the French Riviera with her mother and while on the beach, happens upon a lovely young couple-Dick and Nicole Diver. She falls in love with Dick, and we learn of all the upstanding and admirable qualities that Dick possesses. The three of them get along famously, and nothing scandalous occurs.

Dick is a young American psychologist writing a book about mental treatments. In Book two, his life is explained. He married Nicole, who was a mental patient, but not his patient. She is the youngest daughter of Chicago “old money.” The love they share is a fantastic thing. They have two children. Dick grows weary of the mental episodes Nicole displays and runs away to work and write and lecture. There is nothing funny about the sadness of the love between these two. It’s meant to fall apart.

I’m willing to give Gatsby another chance, I was young, and it’s easier now to appreciate style, and not use one’s personal life as a reason to not enjoy good writing.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The past--the wild charge at the head of his men up San Juan Hill; the first years of his marriage when he worked late into the summer dusk down in the busy city for young Hildegarde whom he loved; the days before that when he sat smoking far into the night in the gloomy old Button house on Monroe Street with his grandfather-all these had faded like unsubstantial dreams from his mind as though they had never been. He did not remember.

Surely I'm not the only one who, upon seeing the trailer for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, didn't realize it was based on a short story at all, let alone one by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Like most Americans, The Great Gatsby is the only thing I've actually read by him. A shame, really, since he's a fantastic writer, certainly one of the most economical prose stylists of all time, and Benjamin Button is a great example.

I haven't seen the movie, but I can only imagine that half of it is made up whole cloth. The novel--novella, really--is under 100 pages and has nary a wasted word. It hardly could, since it covers Benjamin's entire life from cradle to grave, although not necessarily in that order. During this time, he falls in love, carouses about town, goes to war twice, attends college, and manages to alienate his entire family, although SPOILER he wins some of them back over.

Rather than being the serious drama I expected, Benjamin Button is surprisingly light-hearted until its final third where it takes an inevitably darker turn. The story seems to turn the old adage "If only I'd known then what I know now" on its head. Benjamin Button is given a priceless gift--youth with wisdom--but, of course, he doesn't use it wisely.

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

On F. Scott Fitzgerald:

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.

A Moveable Feast is a minor work by Hemingway, a travelogue/memoir of his years in Paris as a young writer. Apparently Hemingway hung around the cream of the literary crop, even before he changed from a writer of manly fiction to the towering literary figure he eventually became, because A Moveable Feast is full of amusing anecdotes about various writers Hemingway knew and associated with. Among the highlights:

- Gertrude Stein was insecure to the point of rudeness, and was virtually unwilling to compliment any work but her own, which she held in very high regards.

- Ford Maddox Ford stunk and was annoying.

- James Joyce was friendly but reclusive. Also, apparently, Irish.

The first half of the book, from which most of these stories come, is enjoyable but light, a list of the things Hem's doing and the people he's spent time with. The second half takes a darker turn, and spends most of its time delving into Hemingway's relationship with F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby. Like virtually all the writers in A Moveable Feast, Fitzgerald was insecure, even, at one point, asking Hemingway to check his prostate to ensure that all was well. Hemingway obliged, which finally gives credence to my theory that real men administer prostate exams. For all interested parties: the prostate was fine, and I think Fitzgerald was just showing off.

Once the humorous stories end, though, Fitzgerald's tale takes a sad turn, as pressure to follow up Gatsby and even greater pressure at home keeping Zelda, his psychologically-disturbed and insanely-jealous wife, happy, drove him further and further into drinking, leading to his premature death at the age of 44. Throughout Fitzgerald's decline, Hemingway's descriptions are matter-of-fact and all the more heartbreaking for that.

Interestingly, A Moveable Feast was published posthumously, and Fitzgerald's surviving family recently collaborated with the publishers to release a new edition of Feast with some Fitzgerald's less flattering biographical bits excised. I say they're making a mistake. Nothing humanizes a man like his weaknesses, and A Moveable Feast is a tribute to Paris, to writing, to love, and to friendship.

This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I enjoyed the Great Gatsby as much as the next gal, and I find Fitzgerald's personal life, especially his marraige to Zelda, particularly fascinating. This Side of Paradise, however, was thorougly disappointing from start to finish. First of all, the book is rather disjointed as it was written over a long period of time. The first half of the book, "The Romantic Egotist" was written in a hurry on its own before Fitzgerald went to war. He seemed to think he would not survive WWI and wanted to leave his mark before he went. The book was rejected and Fitzgerald lived, never actually leaving his training base in Alabama as the war ended before he was shipped over seas. The rest of the book was written after his return. It's a jumble of prose, letters, and then play format... but I didn't want to read stage directions, I wanted to continue reading a normal novel.

The main character, Amory Blaine, is a narcisistic little prep school punk that is forever posing and rubbing his sophistication in the faces of his peers, none of which particularly seem to care for him. This may be in part because of his histrionic mother dragging him around the country in his early years before her nervous breakdown, which lead Blaine to have to live with family for several years before being sent of to St. Regis prep school. From there, he goes on to college, continues his snobbery, goes to war, continues his snobbery, becomes engaged to a debutante, continues his snobbery, is rejected and becomes miserable when he realizes he is ultimately alone... you get the picture.

What I did enjoy about the novel was that it was autobiographical fiction, and I was able to find quite a few parallels to the author's life. Fitzgerald wrote,“I don't want to talk about myself because I'll admit I did that somewhat in this book. In fact, to write it took three months; to conceive it -- three minutes; to collect the data in it -- all my life." Here are a few of the parallels:
-Both went to Princeton and struggled academically. Both flunked out their Junior year and had to repeat it.
-Both spent part of their early childhood years in Minnesota, Blaine in Minneapolois and Fitzgerald in St. Paul.
-Both wrote for Princeton's Triangle Club, a musical theater group.
-Both were failed football stars and didn't last long on Princeton's team.
-Both were under the tutelage of Catholic priests and struggled with "uncrystallized" faith.
-Both worked in advertising though their passion was writing so that they could make enough income to win over significant others who were use to rather extravagent lifestyles.
-and so on and so forth.

I don't recommend this book. If a young man can see the devil after the first 100 pages of being obnoxious to the reader and still not change his ways after having his wits scared out of him, I don't want to have to read about him being obnoxious anymore.