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The wife and I just returned from Paris, a legendary inspiration and gathering place for writers and artists of all forms. We walked the ancient cobbled stones of Montmarte and Montparnesse, climbed the bell tower of Notre Dame and the echoing halls of the Louvre under the works of artists from Mesopotamia to Picasso, stared in awe up the skirt of the Eiffel Tower in la glace of the season's first snow, and sipped arpertifs and downed glasses of Cote de Rhone and crocks of le soupe de l'oignon in the many cafe's where F Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway frequented in the 1920's. The latter was correct when he wrote, "wherever you go for the rest of your life, [Paris] stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.
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In a Parisian literary vein, some of you might check out Hemingway's A Moveable Feast---recently issued in an edition, edited by one of Hemingway's grandsons, I believe---that restores the text and order of episodes to something closer to what Hemingway intended. (Hemingway never finished it, nor did he come up with the title.) Well worth the effort, especially for fans of the original...
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As you can tell from the OP, I just read A Moveable Feast--on the plane, actually. >smile<. Hemingway was one of the most influential American writers of the past century. His sparsity (even disregard for) description, sucinctness in writing dialog, and his insistence that great writing begins and ends with relating a "truth" became a standard for "great literature".
Personally, I find much of Hemingway insufficient. I find a sparsity of plot in much of his writing, a simple relaying of events perhaps from his journalist beginnings. The starkness and simplicity of his prose lacks depth in which I can indulge my imagination.
And Miss Howe, my high school English teacher, would stare at me in horror for even suggesting this. May she rest in peace.
Respectfully, History
[This message has been edited by History (edited December 02, 2010).]
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Well, with Hemingway, you should start with, oh, The Sun Also Rises or For Whom the Bell Tolls---maybe The Old Man and the Sea, too, though most students get assigned this in school. If that's the case, read it again.
Then move up to, oh, his collected short stories and A Movevable Feast. Avoid the other posthumous stuff for now, or things like The Torrents of Spring. But by this point, if you're hooked good, you'll move on to his other stuff.
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Paris had small bookstores on nearly every street, most of them filled with very old books (no Necronomicons or Livre d'Eibon nor Culte de Goules, however). Bookstalls and booksellers lined the Rue de Seine as we walked along the river, many with old paperbacks by Asimov, Clarke, Kuttner, Bradbury, and Vance... All en francais, however. And my knowledge of French is, unfortunately, insufficient to make any book purchase more than a mere curiosity. My loving wife, who at times, kvetches about my profligate library, many shelves stacked three deep, admitted a sinful delight at my conundrum, to paraphrase Samuel Coleridge from his The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: "Books, books, everywhere, nor any book to read."
Respectfully, Dr. Bob
[This message has been edited by History (edited December 05, 2010).]
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