8/25

Often times I don't bother with writing reviews of the books I've finished and counted up here.  But I've been looking forward to commenting on my current read for several weeks now.  Esther first told me about A Moveable Feast at least a year ago.  I'd read two other collections of Hemingway's short stories and while I certainly learned a great deal from his style and his voice, I wasn't incredibly eager to dig in to more.  However, her experience with A Moveable Feast sounded so different from Men Without Women and In Our Time, I thought I'd give it a try. 

The formatting is something between a collection of short stories and a chapter in an autobiography, tracing Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley through the streets of Paris to the flats of Sylvia Plath, TS Eliot, and the Fitzgeralds.  Peeking in to the secret artistic community of writers and artists in the 1920s in Paris captured me in every way, and Hemingway's typically heartbreaking story telling and haunting descriptions left me aching for all that was built and eventually all that would be lost.  Friendship, community, hard work and love amidst the City of Lights - he praised what was faithful and beautiful and honest over what was rich and easy and cleaned up pretty.  And he did it in a way that no one but Hemingway could.  I couldn't be more grateful that Esther slipped this treasure into my hands.  And I don't think I could walk away from any other book as ready to feast on and starve for true art and community.