If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.
-Ernest Hemingway’s inscription to his 1964 book, A Moveable Feast.
When I visited Paris in May 2010, I decided to reread A Moveable Feast (and when I returned the next year, I read The Paris Wife, a fictional account from the viewpoint of Hemingway’s first wife Hadley). Reading A Moveable Feast gives extra resonance to tracking down literary landmarks around the city (you can’t open a guide book without striking upon a mention of Hemingway or other American writers or French writers and philosophers who have gathered in cafes and written and died in this artistic city).
In this somewhat nostalgic collection of reminiscences about his time in Paris with his first wife, Hadley, in the 1920s, Hemingway provides us with inside looks at American expatriate writers Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and others. There’s a funny story of a road trip with the lightweight drinker and hypochondriac Fitzgerald, and cutting insights into how Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda jealously kept Scott from his writing and turned him into an alcoholic before she lost her mind. Ezra Pound comes out looking like a kind and generous friend of writers, as doesSylvia Beach, the founder of the English-language bookstore Shakespeare and Company, who loaned Hemingway books when he had no money to buy or rent them.
Perhaps there are thousands (millions?) of websites and blogs detailing famous writers’ lives in Paris, so I don’t want to belabor this one, but I will share a few photos collected while on my literary treasure hunt.
A particularly good website, David Burke, Writers in Paris: Literary Lives in the City of Light, offers details that relate to a Hemingway story we’ll read this semester:
When young Ernest Hemingway lived in the Place de la Contrescarpe area in the early 1920s, it was solidly lower class. In The Snows of Kilimanjaro, the writer Harry, dying of a wound in Africa, thinks back to his life in this neighborhood:
. . . And in that poverty, and in that quarter across the street from a Boucherie Chevaline and a wine-cooperative he had written the start of all he was to do. There never was another part of Paris that he loved like that, the sprawling trees, the old white plastered houses painted brown below, the long green of the autobus in that round square, the sudden drop down the hill of the rue Cardinal Lemoine to the River, and the other way the narrow crowded world of the rue Mouffetard.
Hemingway was twenty-two, his wife Hadley twenty-six, when they moved to No. 74 rue du Cardinal-Lemoine, three weeks after arriving, on January 9, 1922. By then he was already cultivating his diamond-in-the-rough persona, and it suited him to be living among real people, rather than the eggheads in the Latin Quarter or the expatriate phonies in Montparnasse.
Our syllabus includes more American expatriate writers in Paris than just Hemingway and his group. The Beats (Kerouac and Ginsberg, for example) and a number of African-American writers found Paris a welcoming place to write.
African-Americans in Paris are discussed in a 2001 New York Times article entitled “Literary Tour Traces Richard Wright’s Left Bank: A Black American in Paris”
In addition to telling visitors where to go to find the ghost of Wright in Paris today, the article discusses why black writers found Paris a better place than the U.S. to write:
“…In the United States he could never escape the label “Negro writer.” Invited to Paris that year [1945] by the French government, Wright met authors and intellectuals who treated him as a writer first, and black second. He stayed seven months and then decided to move his family permanently to Paris, following a path trodden by other well-known black Americans such as Josephine Baker, Sidney Bechet, James Baldwin and Langston Hughes.”
My goal for the coming year: read more books by American writers reflecting on their time in Paris.
(originally posted 5-27-10; updated 6-9-11)
ALISON JAENICKE says
Glad to hear you read and enjoyed A Moveable Feast, Alice! I haven’t read or heard of Lunch in Paris…
ALICE E. CLARK says
I had given up on Hemingway as too macho and Fitzgerald as too focused on glamour and status. Having read our assigned short stories, though, I came to finally appreciate their writing and understanding of human behavior. That then led to my reading of A Moveable Feast, which is one of the best books I have read about everyday encounters with artists like James Joyce, Gertrude Stein,etc. I enjoyed reading about Hemingway’s walk to the museums to get inspired by art, but carefully choosing streets without cafes because of the wonderful smells and food he couldn’t afford to buy. I really enjoyed that mid-winter trip to Paris thanks to you, Alison, and this course.
The Paris Wife and Lunch in Paris were two recent book club choices. Okay, but not even close to A Moveable Feast.
ALISON JAENICKE says
I hope you get to go to Paris for your 10-year anniversary, Stephanie! Glad to hear you’ve read all of these books and that you’re an F. Scott F. fan. WHEN is that Gatsby movie coming out!?! It seems like I’ve seen previews for it for the past year! I’ve been anticipating it for a long time…I’ll believe it when I see it.
STEPHANIE MARIE BRADFORD says
Americans in Paris is one of my favorite subjects. My previous college roommate and I would often make plans to travel Paris together and soak up the City of Light. As two Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald fans we thought it best to be under the guidance of a Rick Steeves tour book by day and read A Moveable Feast by night. Sadly, I have not been to Paris to date, but husband and I are planning our 10 year anniversary next year. I read the Paris Wife last summer, watched the movie Midnight In Paris and have most recently picked up David McCullough, The Greater Journey. The Greater Journey devoted to the American professionals who traveled to Paris between 1830 and 1900. I am looking forward to this read. I am also looking forward to the movie , The Great Gatsby, due out this year starring Leo Di Caprio. It’s one of my favorite books!
ALISON JAENICKE says
Glad to know you’ve been to Paris so recently, George, and that you have enjoyed the Hemingway and Fitzgerald readings. Thanks for your thoughtful comment on Paris’ fertile ground for writers, especially minority expatriates.
GEORGE A MACMILLAN says
Your post brought me back to our honeymoon trip to Paris in December 2011! It was amazing to walk those winding, narrow streets and imagine the inspiration they brought to the many writers who called Paris home for part of their careers. I am in agreement with your description of the treatment of minorities in Paris – the openness of the culture is so much more conducive to allowing any artist to bloom, and in mid-twentieth century white America it had to be an oasis to those African Americans lucky enough to spend some time there. I’ve always cherished the works of Fitzgerald and Hemingway, and this week’s readings along with your post brought back great memories of a simply stunning city.
ALISON JAENICKE says
thanks for your comment, Steven. I’m jealous that you will visit Paris in December–enjoy!
Here’s a great list of Hemingway hangouts in Paris:http://www.travellerspoint.com/guide/Hemingway%27s_Paris/
STEVEN PAUL ROBERTS says
I too visited Paris about six years ago but had no idea of the influence it had on so many American authors. I plan to go again this December as a graduation gift. Other than the cafe you mentioned what other cool places can I hang out that Hemingway and other greats frequented!?
STEVEN PAUL ROBERTS says
I too visited Paris about six years ago but had no idea of the influence it had on so many American authors. I plan to go again this December as a graduation gift. Other than the cafe you mentioned what other cool places can I hang out that Hemingway and other greats frequented!?
ALISON JAENICKE says
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and dreams, Huyen. I’ve never been to Vietnam, so I envy you that. I like the way you say, “hearing the busy street buzz at the crack of dawn.” Now I’m missing Paris!
ALISON JAENICKE says
Glad to hear you’ve got “A Moveable Feast” on your reading list, Nevin–I hope you’ll make time for it this summer.
NEVIN RAY HEISER says
I spent a couple of weeks in Paris as a teenager. I wish had known more about Hemingway, Stein and Fitzgerald at the time. I have read “A Moveable Feast.” I love it and it descriptions of life. It was brought back to me in the viewing I had recently of Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris.” So, I picked up a copy of it at the bookstore. After the semester is over, and I can devote more time to personal reading I am going to do an in depth study of it. I plan to use the inner-net to see the places that are mentioned. I loved that Hemingway talked about Fitzgerald in “Snows of Kilimajaro”.
HUYEN KIM CHAU says
Well I am green with envy. The most I have ever travel was to Vietnam but even then I had to get so much paper work done just to leave the US. I was living here on a green card since I was 6 months old so when I turn 18 the first thing I did was submit paperwork to become an American citizen! NOW I have a passport and the first thing I did was went to Canada!
Anyways, I love reading because in a way I get to travel and live through the characters. However, I cannot wait to travel to Paris where Hemingway and Fitzgerald had roam the streets. I want to experience something that you can’t by reading, like hearing the busy street buzz at the crack of dawn. Or walking down the streets to buy baguette. Or sadly attempting to speak French.
All of this just make me want to buy a ticket to Paris right now!
ALISON JAENICKE says
Thanks for sharing your experience, Michelle! I’ve been to Paris several times (including right after college graduation), but coming here now from life in a little town like State College leaves me awed at how much is going on at any given moment in Paris. We can walk out of our apartment and buy a baguette in a boulangerie, listen to a group play music on the bridge(accordian,guitar,and more), look at lovely gardens, ancient buildings, stop into a bookstore, watch boats on the river…I could go on and on. So much life! I’m sure I’d get sick of it if I lived here all the time, but now I’m soaking up as much as I can.
MICHELLE ASHLEY SPAYD says
After my graduation from high school in 2005 I was so blessed that my grandmother took me on a trip to Paris. It was probably the most amazing experience I have ever had. I can understand why so many great writings have come out of visits to this city. Walking in front of the Opera National de Paris, riding Les Cars Rouges, or walking through the gardens of Versailles could give almost anyone the motivation and insight needed to write something great! I have a poster of Ernest Hemingway’s quote from A Moveable Feast in my “office” at my house, and it is a constant reminder of how I felt traveling through one of the most wonderful cities in the world: Inspired.