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| Much to my surprise, I really liked A Moveable Feast. I guess I thought it would be harder to read than it was. Of course, the French names threw me for a loop, but I just, you know, skimmed over them, halfway trying to decode them from my meager education at U of A's French 101 class in '91. I loved reading about Hemingway's friendships/meetings with Ezra Pound, Zelda Fitzgerald, and Scott Fitzgerald the best. I'm even thinking I need to read more Hemingway in general, which is odd, since I always considered myself more of a Fitzgerald Gal than a Hemingway Gal. Hmm. Anyway, I still think Hemingway was a real ass with women, but it makes for good reading I guess. ;) Here are my favorite quotes from the book: "A girl came in the cafe and sat by herself at a table near the window. She was very pretty with a face fresh as a newly minted coin if they minted coins in smooth flesh with rain-freshened skin, and her hair was black as a crow's wing and cut sharply and diagonally across her cheek"(5). About Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas: "They treated us as though we were very good, well mannered and promising children and I felt that they forgave us for being in love and being married---time would fix that--and when my wife invited them to tea, they accepted" (15). "But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong, nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight"(57). Having lunch with the painter Pascin and two models: "Do you want to bang her? She needs it." "You probably banged her enough today."......then later.... "The dark girl was restless and she sat on display turning her profile and letting the light strike on the concave planes of her face and showing me her breasts under the hold of the black sweater." "You've posed all day," Pascin said to her, "Do you have to model that sweater now at the cafe?" "It pleases me," she said. (103) "They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure"(104). On meeting the painter Wyndham Lewis: "I watched Lewis carefully without seeming to look at him, as you do when you are boxing, and I do not think I have ever seen a nastier looking man. Some people show evil as a great race horse shows breeding. They have the dignity of a hard chancre. Lewis did not show evil; he just looked nasty"(109). On Katherine Mansfield: "Mansfield was like near-beer. It was better to drink water" (133). On the Fitzgeralds: "Scott was a man then who looked like a boy with a face between handsome and pretty. He had very fair wavy hair, a high forehead, excited and friendly eyes and a delicate long lipped Irish mouth that, on a girl, would have been the mouth of a beauty. His chin was well built and he had good ears and a handsome, almost beautiful, unmarked nose. The mouth worried you until you knew him and then it worried you more"(147). "Zelda had hawk's eyes and a thin mouth and deepsouth manners and accent. Watching her face you could see her mind leave the table and go to the night's party and return with her eyes blank as a cat's and then pleased, and the pleasure would show along with thin line of her lips and then be gone"(178). I highly recommend those who are into Fitzgerald/Stein/Hemingway stuff to read this. There are more goodies in here I didn't want to give away, but I'll tease you a bit---Zelda complained to Scott that his pee pee wasn't big enough. Ha. Hemingway checked it out and basically told Scott, "She's crazy. Your penis is fine." Write me if you've read this and wanna chat. |