A Rising Feast

A Moveable Feast describes Hemingway’s time in Paris after World War I ends; during this time, he meets several authors. In fact, Hemingway describes the conversation he had with Gertrude Stein that shaped some of his ideas for the novel, The Sun Also Rises: “’You are [all a lost generation],’ she insisted. ‘You have no respect for anything. You drink yourselves to death…” (Hemingway 61). For most of the memoir, he describes his meetings with various authors who are also in Paris, especially Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He focuses a large portion of the book describing his time with Fitzgerald. He describes a trip he went on with Fitzgerald to Lyon; the trip did not go well. Hemingway shows where he got so many of his ideas for The Sun Also Rises in which the group of friends go on a trip but that also does not turn out well. The chapters of the book appear to go in order of the time the events occurred. The purpose of the chronological order is to make the memoir seem like a novel that Hemingway has written.  

            The style he uses is also similar to his novels because he uses his short, witty sentences and dialogue, making his life seem like a story he has written himself. Also, despite the memoir being written from his own memories, Hemingway tends to describe the people he meets with great detail. Anyone looking back on his or her memories would not be able to remember so many details, indicating that some story telling is at work and not pure recollection from memory. Therefore, the form does follow the content. The content includes the people and places he sees, which is necessary to the memoir, but also The Sun Also Rises. The great form of the novel could not have been written without Hemingway’s experiences or content from A Moveable Feast.

            I believe this work is a part of the AP Language syllabus not for the content of the memoir, but its form. Hemingway is famous for his vivid descriptions, and even though he is describing people and places from his memory, he still is able to paint a clear picture in the reader’s mind. Perhaps we read the autobiography written in the style of fiction because of the work’s versatility. Despite it being an autobiography of Ernest Hemingway, it depicts the scenes he looks at with such clarity that reader feels liker he is in Paris as well. All of us AP Language students should strive to write with such clarity.

Work Cited

 Hemingway, Ernest.  A Moveable Feast. New York: Scribner, 2009. Print.