After Friday 13: What Paris is Reading: Ernest Hemingway: Paris est une fête | A Moveable Feast (2009; original edition 1964)

At the moment of writing, Ernest Hemingway's Paris est une fête (A Moveable Feast in the original English) stands (after just three days in the top one hundred) at number two on the best-selling list of books in France: the reason for the sudden popularity is not the usual one, that it's on a school or college syllabus, but because a seventy-seven-year-old woman – Danielle – mentioned the importance of it on BFMTV when she was briefly questioned on the attacks on the Bataclan and other places. The clip went viral: such is the nature of social networks that the book is now selling five hundred copies a day.

A Moveable Feast was originally published in 1964, although the original text – which must surely be the one Danielle read – was restored by Hemingway's grandson Seán in 2009 (and translated into French in 2011): this edition is considerably bigger than the first edition, which was published posthumously and wasn't even finished when Hemingway died. In fact it didn't have a title: the expression 'a moveable feast' doesn't appear in the book, but was a phrase that Hemingway had used to describe Paris to A. E. Hotchner. It was Hemingway's widow Mary who chose that title.

The book was written decades after Hemingway's stay in Paris between 1921 and 1926, and is really a series of mainly literary reminiscences, of the author remembering his relationship in Paris with such writers as Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Ford Madox Ford, etc. The English title refers to the way the joys of Paris can be carried around in the memory, although this nuance is inevitably lost in the French translation.

I'm not too sure how many of Hemingway's sudden band of supporters will actually read this book, but that's not exactly the point: Paris est une fête, I suspect, is being bought on the strength of its title as well as Danielle's favorable words about it: the book is being adopted as a healing symbol, and that can't be at all bad.

My post earlier this year on Hemingway's house in Key West, Florida:

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Ernest Hemingway in Key West

Writers Associated with Key West, Florida: #3 Ernest Hemingway

'THE ERNEST HEMINGWAY

HOUSE & MUSEUM

 

Where Hemingway lived and wrote from 1931–1939

 

This site is dedicated as a Literary Landmark by the Association

of Library Trustees, Advocates, Friends and Foundations on the

occasion of the first One Island One Book event, when the

citizens of KeyWest celebrated the novel To Have and Not Have.'

Asa Forsythe Tift (1812–89), one of the richest men in the USA, built this house between 1849 and 1851. His wife and three children died in an epidemic of yellow fever in the mid-1850s, he didn't re-marry and died in the house.

 

The house fell into disrepair until  – according to some sources – Gus, the uncle of Hemingway's second wife Pauline (née Pffeiffer) – bought it for them for $8000 in 1931. The Hemingway House website tells a different story: Hemingway bought it with back taxes.

The living room. Furniture in the house is the original.

The  living room was initially divided by a wall which Pauline had removed.

The master bedroom, complete with cat.

One of Hemingway's wooden trophies from Africa.

The original kitchen.

And the original bathroom.

Part of the veranda between the two floors.

The swimming pool cost Pauline $20,000, which was of course much more than the cost of the house itself. It was not only the first in Key West, but the first within a hundred miles. Although funded by his wife, legend has it that Hemingway said she'd taken everything but his last cent, and threw a penny in the pool.

And this is said to be the original penny.

The extension where Hemingway did his writing.

Hemingway's writing table, with typewriter and once-living trophy from an African safari.

Hemingway obviously took great pride in killing animals.

Another side of his writing room, with pictures of him at different ages.

One of the many cats that have the run of the house, which are all descendants of the famous six-toed cats. The bar next door to the Hemingway house is even called The Six-Toed Cat. This one is called Eleanor Roosevelt.

And some cats presumably enjoyed paddling in the cement.

 

There's even a cat cemetery, with dates of the animals often named after writers, actors, and so on, such as Marilyn Monroe, Edgar Allan Poe, Simone de Beauvoir, Jimmy Stewart, etc. Visitors can spend as long as they like on their visit here, and we took part in one of the guided tours, which was interesting but unsurprisingly probably almost as much time was spent talking about the cats as Hemingway himself. It's as though Hemingway has taken a back seat here: most people, after all, see the cats as the huge attraction here. I didn't expect a university lecture of course, but just a few words about the man's importance to literature wouldn't have gone amiss, such as his Spartan style, his paring away of excess fat, his admiration for such writers as Zane Grey, etc.

Opposite is Key West lighthouse. Legend also says that this is how Hemingway found his way home after a night's excess of alcohol. You come to expect such remarks about Hemingway, who went out of his way to create a larger-than-life myth of himself. But as a person who has spent most of his life respecting animals to the extent that I would never dream of eating any of them, I shall probably always find it very difficult indeed to like Ernest Hemingway the man.

Writers Associated with Key West, Florida: #2 Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) was an insurance executive in Hartford, Connecticut as well as a poet. He first visited Key West in 1922 and liked it so much that he returned to it virtually every winter until 1940, but he never took his wife Elsie or his daughter Holly (born 1924). He stayed at the Casa Marina, and was noted in Key West for his drunken behavior: he once quarrelled with Robert Frost, and broke his hand hitting Hemingway on the jaw, although Hemingway thumped him back into the gutter. Two of his poems were 'The Idea of Order at Key West' and 'Farewell to Florida'.

Naomi Wood: Mrs Hemingway (2014)

'Mrs. Hemingway'. With a full stop. Naomi Wood is English with an MA from the UEA Creative Writing school, with a PhD to boot, and this fictional work is based on true events and archival research. The full stop is there, I think, not just because Americans still use it but also because it fits in with the use of the time, like the 1920s swimming costumes worn by Hemingway, Hadley and Pauline on the cover above.

Obviously Ernest Hemingway's work is not the central interest, in fact it's of little interest at all, merely serving as a backcloth to the five characters: Hemingway himself and the generic 'Mrs. Hemingway', who is actually four people – Hadley, née Richardson (1921–27); Pauline (here 'Fife'), née Pfeiffer (1927–40); Martha, née Gellhorn (1940–45); and Mary, née Welsh (1945–61), 1961 being the year of Hemingway's suicide.

An omniscient narrator relates the stories of the four Mrs. Hemingways, each wife being presented in order of her existence in Hemingway's life, although there is frequently a great deal of playing with different periods of time: the end may be related at the beginning of a section before backtracking, for example.

A little of Hadley's tale is told in Paris, although almost all of it takes place in Antibes, France, and it is very much a story of a threesome: not sexually (at least together, that is) but of Hadley and Fife sharing Hemingway until the very tolerant Hadley declares a one hundred day moratorium on the Fife/Hemingway relationship but concedes defeat long before and 'gives' her husband away to his lover.

Hemingway and Hadley went through some tough financial times, although life is made much easier now that one of Fife's relatives gifts them the house in Key West, Florida, where much of this section is set. But then Fife discovers that her husband's frequent trips away are due to his wanting to be with his new girlfriend Martha, a reporter who delights in writing about war.

But marriage to Martha is destined to be relatively short: sick of living in the peace of Havana, Cuba during the war, Martha makes a potentially hazardous journey to report on the war in Europe. And not too long after that Mary comes along.

Mary and Hemingway settled in Ketchum, Idaho, and Hemingway was already beginning to see himself as an old man. Certainly he had health problems, as the ever-loving Fife discovered on her visit to the couple: not just the pills in the cabinet, but the knowledge that he had had EST (ECT) therapy at a sanatorium. Hemingway had quite a family heritage to try and cope with –  mainly the suicides of his father and a brother and sister. His alcoholism obviously made matters worse, and in the end he blew his skull away.

I'm left with the impression that it can't have been easy at all being any 'Mrs. Hemingway', and even though the man may have been to some extent fighting a genetic legacy of mental illness, he comes across as egotistical, frequently callous (both to women and animals), and a braggart.

A fascinating character he may have been all the same, and an important writer too, but I find it very difficult to like him as a man. Naomi Wood has done a pretty good job here.

Jacques Poulin: Le Vieux Chagrin (1989)

Le Vieux Chagrin (VC) being a novel by Jacques Poulin, there are a number of prominent similarities between Volkswagen Blues (VB) and Tournée d'automne (TA), the other books of his I've read: a forty-year-old writer who drives a Volkswagen (Jack in VB and – as a minor character – Jack in TA); Ernest Hemingway (VB and to a lesser extent TA); cats (VB and TA), the past (VB and TA); search (VB), etc.

The principal cat in Le Vieux Chagrin is the narrator's pet Chagrin, the Mr. Blue of the eponymous translation title, who frequently appears in the book (sometimes with other cats), but has no part in the central story.

The narrator is staying in his childhood home by the Saint-Laurent river and becomes interested, to the point of obsession, in a woman on the coast who has arrived in a sailing boat and seems to be partly dwelling in a nearby cave, where she is reading One Thousand and One Nights and has insccribed the name 'Marie K' on the flyleaf, leading the narrator (occasionally called Jim) to call her Marika.

Leaving messages for the woman to call on him brings the character Bungalow into the story, although she has no information about her: Bungalow has left her husband to set up a kind of refuge for women in nearby Québec city. Through Bungalow the teenaged la Petite, a victim of (unstated) abuse by her step-father, comes into the story, and she often stays at Jim's house, loving the cats and other animals that frequent the area.

The writer's main influence is Hemingway, although he's suffering from writer's block with his love story: he incorporates (by factual distortion) people he's known in his life into the story, although he feels that he hasn't loved anyone, including the wife he's divorced from.

Jim comes to realise, or at least to imagine, that he's in love with Marika and decides to visit the cave again. But the sailing boat has gone, her possessions (including the book) have gone, and he knows he will never see her again. In fact, he seriously wonders if she ever existed, and wonders if she wasn't simply a projection of his female self.

This relates to the narrator (a former teacher) speaking to la Petite about Hemingway's story title 'Big Two-Hearted River', and he asks her what 'two-hearted' can mean. As an example, she tells her a story from A. E. Hotchner's Papa Hemingway: A Personal Memoir (1955), in which Hemingway told of a white owl he shot, but which only had a wounded wing: he nursed the animal, fed it, brought it back to health and tamed and befriended it. From this story, la Petite comes to see the masculine and the feminine sides of Hemingway.

The narrator towards the end states that he has never mentioned to anyone his 'naive ambition', his 'enormous and ridiculous' secret of creating through literature a new world without war or other violence, no competition or hostility to others, everything working towards the service of love. Well, I can understand why he keeps his vision a secret, but at least his actions show his intentions, and his last action of adopting la Petite (whose search for her parents has been somewhat negative) is evidence of it: it's not official, he just writes it, signs it and puts it in an envelope. La Petite seals it and stores it away, watched both by the emotionally moved man – and the cats.

Les Deux Magots, St Germain des Près, 6th arrondissement, Paris, France: Literary Île-de-France #35

'"Histoire de Paris

Les Deux Magots

Ouvert en 1813, "Les Deux Magots" a connu très tôt les faveurs du monde littéraire : à l'origine magasin de nouveautés, l'un des premiers à Paris, il est cité par Balzac et Anatole France. Un café lui succède en 1881, bientôt fréquenté par Verlaine, Mallarmé et Wilde. En 1914, l'établissement prend l'aspect qu'on lui connaît aujourd'hui, et devient l'un des rendez-vous de l'élite intellectuelle. Les surréalistes en font leur quartier général : Jean Giraudoux, Paul Morand et Jacques Chardonne s'y croisent, ainsi que Joyce et Hemingway. En 1933, quelques habitués, dont Bataille, Leiris et Philippon, fondent le Prix des Deux Magots, pour la première fois décerné à Raymond Queneau. Les intellectuels d'avant guerre, les plus grands noms des Lettres, des Arts et du Spectacle fréquentent ses célèbres terraces : Camus, Genet, Giacometti sont présents, Jean-Paul Sartre et Simone de Beauvoir s'y installent chaque jour pour écrire.'

'"History of Paris

Les Deux Magots

Opening in 1813, "Les Deux Magots" experienced the favors of the literary world from very early on : originally a novelty shop — one of the first in Paris — it is mentioned by Balzac and Anatole France. A café followed it in 1881, soon to be patronized by Verlaine, Mallarmé and Wilde. In 1914 it took on the appearance that we know today, and became one of the meeting places of the intellectual élite. The surrealists made it their general quarters: Jean Giraudoux, Paul Morand and Jacques Chardonne crossed paths here, as well as Joyce and Hemingway. In 1933 some regulars, such as Bataille, Leiris and Philippon, established the Prix des Deux Magots, which in the first year went to Raymond Queneau. The pre-war intellectuals, the greatest names in letters, arts and spectacle : Camus, Genet, Giacometti were here, and Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir sat down here every day to write.'

Gertrude Stein in the 6th arrondissement, Paris, France: Literary Île-de-France #30

The plaque below, at 27 rue Fleurus near the Jardin du Luxembourg, announces that Gertrude Stein lived here from 1903 to 1938, that she had lived with her brother Leo Stein and (her lover) Alice B. Toklas, and that she received many artists and writers there.

'GERTRUDE STEIN

1874—1946

ÉCRIVAIN AMÉRICAN

Vécut ici avec son frère LÉO STEIN

puis avec ALICE B. TOKLAS

elle y reçut de nombreux

artistes et écrivains

de 1903 à 1938'

Léo in fact left in 1914 to Italy, and the famous avant-garde art collection of the brother's and sister's was split in two. The reception of artists and writers alludes to the salons held at rue Fleurus, which were in the beginning attended by such artists as Matisse and Picasso, and later by such writers as Ernest Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, and Thornton Wilder.

In Hemingway's early days in Paris when he was without money, Stein once gave him some and he fed and drank beer with great relish at the Brasserie Lipp on the boulevard Saint Germain.