A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition [Paperback]

Ernest Hemingway (Author), Sean Hemingway (Introduction), Patrick Hemingway (Foreword)

Book Description

Release date: July 20, 2010

Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway’s most enduring works. Since Hemingway’s personal papers were released in 1979, scholars have examined the changes made to the text before publication. Now, this special restored edition presents the original manuscript as the author prepared it to be published.

Featuring a personal Foreword by Patrick Hemingway, Ernest’s sole surviving son, and an Introduction by grandson of the author, Seán Hemingway, editor of this edition, the book also includes a number of unfinished, never-before-published Paris sketches revealing experiences that Hemingway had with his son, Jack, and his first wife Hadley. Also included are irreverent portraits of literary luminaries, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ford Maddox Ford, and insightful recollections of Hemingway’s own early experiments with his craft.

Widely celebrated and debated by critics and readers everywhere, the restored edition of A Moveable Feast brilliantly evokes the exuberant mood of Paris after ?World War I and the unbridled creativity and unquenchable enthusiasm that Hemingway himself epitomized.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

PLEASE NOTE: THE EBOOK EDITION DOES NOT CONTAIN PHOTOS INCLUDED IN THE PRINT EDITION.

In Hemingway's Own Hand
Take a look at two consecutive handwritten manuscript pages from Chapter 2, “Miss Stein Instructs.” (Ernest Hemingway Collection, Manuscripts, A Moveable Feast, Item 131, pp. 3-4, at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston, MA.)
Read Page 3 (PDF)	Read Page 4 (PDF)

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

This restored version of Hemingway's posthumously published memoir has been revised to reflect the author's original intentions. The result is less a fluid narrative than an academic exercise, with the bulk of the story—Hemingway's travels, escapades, encounters with other writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald—followed by material read by his son and grandson, and some additional sketches and fragments excluded from the final draft. John Bedford Lloyd is faced with the burden of providing a passable version of Hemingway's voice and largely succeeds, but it's much more satisfying to listen to Hemingway's son Patrick, and his grandson Seán, who, in addition to sharing their own reminiscences, offer a hint of what Papa himself might have sounded like. A Scribner hardcover. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; Reprint edition (July 20, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 143918271X
• ISBN-13: 978-1439182710
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (320 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,756 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #20 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Authors

More About the Author

Ernest Hemingway ranks as the most famous of twentieth-century American writers; like Mark Twain, Hemingway is one of those rare authors most people know about, whether they have read him or not. The difference is that Twain, with his white suit, ubiquitous cigar, and easy wit, survives in the public imagination as a basically, lovable figure, while the deeply imprinted image of Hemingway as rugged and macho has been much less universally admired, for all his fame. Hemingway has been regarded less as a writer dedicated to his craft than as a man of action who happened to be afflicted with genius. When he won the Nobel Prize in 1954, Time magazine reported the news under Heroes rather than Books and went on to describe the author as "a globe-trotting expert on bullfights, booze, women, wars, big game hunting, deep sea fishing, and courage." Hemingway did in fact address all those subjects in his books, and he acquired his expertise through well-reported acts of participation as well as of observation; by going to all the wars of his time, hunting and fishing for great beasts, marrying four times, occasionally getting into fistfights, drinking too much, and becoming, in the end, a worldwide celebrity recognizable for his signature beard and challenging physical pursuits.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

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#4 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics

#25 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Literary

#35 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary

#38 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction

#95 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs

#4 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics

#25 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Literary

#35 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary

#38 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction

#95 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

290 of 294 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Timeless Recollection Of A Lost Time And Place ! August 3, 2000

By Barron Laycock HALL OF FAME

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Whenever friends ask me why, at my age, I still love Hemingway, I smile and think about this book. They say "Hemingway' and conjure up familiar visions of the older, bloated and blighted boozer bragging about his macho accomplishments in the world of war and sports, while I consider the young Hemingway in Paris. I am thinking of a much younger, intellectually virile man, someone far more alert, aware and alive; Hemingway as a `moveable feast' strolling deliberately through the streets of a rain-swept Paris on a quiet Monday morning, heading to a café for some café au lait to begin his long day's labor.

In this single, slim tome Hemingway beautifully and unforgettably evokes a world of beauty and innocence now so utterly lost and irretrievable both to himself, through his fame, alcohol, and dissipation, but also to us, for Paris as she was in the 1920s was a place made to order for the lyrical descriptive songs he sings about her in this remembrance; endlessly interesting, instantly unforgettable, and also accessible to the original "starving young artist types" so well depicted here. As anyone visiting Paris today knows, that magical time and place has utterly vanished. Tragically, Paris is just another city these days.

Yet this is a book that unforgettably captures the essence of what the word 'romance' means, and does so in the spare and laconic style that Hemingway developed while sitting in the bistros and watching as the world in all its colors and hues flowed by him. The stories he tells are filled with the kinds of people one usually meets only in novels, yet because of who they were and who they later became in the world of arts and letters, it is hard to doubt the veracity or honesty he uses to such advantage here. This is a portrait of an artist in full possession of his creative powers, full of the vinegary spirit and insight that made him a legend in his own time, and consequently ruined him as an artist and as a human being. There are few books I would endorse for everyone as a lifelong friend. This, however, is a book I can recommend for anyone who wants the reading enjoyment and intellectual experience Hemingway offers in such wonderful abundance in these pages.

Take my advice, though. Buy it first in paper, read it until it begins to fray and fall apart (and you will), and then go out and buy yourself a new hardcover edition to adorn your shelf, so on that proverbial rainy afternoon when the house is quiet, the kids are gone, and you just want to escape from the ordinary ennui and humdrum of life, pull "A Moveable Feast" down and hold it close enough to read. A cup of steaming tea by your side, return all by yourself to a marvelous world of blue city skyscapes, freshly washed cobblestone and unforgettable romance; return once more to Paris in the twenties, when life was simple, basic, and good.

241 of 249 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The Heirs of Hemingway Still at War July 19, 2009

By Stephen Leary

Format:Hardcover

This book is Ernest Hemingway's reminisce about his life in Paris in the 1920s and the literary figures he knew, such as Gertrude Stein, Ford Maddox Ford, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was left unfinished at the time of Hemingway's death in 1961 and originally published in 1964, edited by his fourth and last wife, Mary. This new "restored" version presents the same book as re-edited by Hemingway's grandson Sean.

The original book is a highly-regarded literary work of art, leaving open the question of why the world needs a new version. The one and only advantage is the inclusion of new, previously unpublished chapters included after the main text, called "Additional Paris Sketches." Anything new written by Hemingway is always welcome.

The problem is Sean Hemingway's editing and the motivation behind it. In his Introduction, he would have us believe Mary somehow wrecked Hemingway's vision of the book and he has now reshuffled the chapters to reflect what his grandfather would have really wanted. Forty-five years after the original publication, Sean writes with what seems to me unusually strong venom at Mary and what he sees as her agenda in making her edits: "The extensive edits Mary Hemingway made to this text seem to have served her own personal relationship with the writer as his fourth and final wife, rather than the interests of the book, or of the author, who comes across in the posthumous first edition as something of an unknowing victim, which he clearly was not." Sean needed to provide some sort of rationale for the new edition, and this is what he would have us believe: the original book reflected Mary's wishes, not Ernest's.

But since the manuscript was left unfinished when Hemingway died, no one knows what he really would have wanted. There is no "definitive" edition and never can one be. Even worse, Sean can well be accused of the same sin as he asserts for Mary: his edits are designed specifically to paint his grandmother Pauline Pfeiffer, Hemingway's second wife and his own grandmother, in a far more favorable light. Readers and scholars can compare the two editions and judge for themselves: is Sean protecting his grandfather's true wishes--whatever they were--or is he doing a favor for his own grandmother at the expense of Hemingway's conception? Sean dug around in the archives and found some things that look good for his grandmother, included them, and rejiggered the original contents in her favor as well.

The good news surely must be that the various heirs of Hemingway can't destroy his work, no matter what their motivations. The text is still the work of one of the 20th century's greatest and most influential writers. Most readers won't need the new edition, as the original, as literature, hasn't really been improved upon. Scholars and Hemingway fans will want to see the new sketches. Probably 45 years into the future, a "scholar's" edition will be published, sans any input from the various heirs of Hemingway, in an attempt to "set the record straight."

140 of 143 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars That Was Then August 26, 2009

By William Apt

Format:Hardcover

The relative merits of the two versions aside, the restored edition lacks the charm of the original. One can say what one wishes about the editing of the original, but whoever edited it did a beautiful job: an incomplete and at times awkward and rambling manuscript was fashioned into a finished work of art. The spirit of Hemingway's intent is just better conveyed by the original. For example, Sean Hemingway takes issue with the change to the introductory note to the chapter entitled "Scott Fitzgerald" as it appears in the original. Mr. Hemingway claims that, as edited, it takes an unwarranted swipe at Fitzgerald. But that is exactly what the restored edition does: in not one new portion is Fitzgerald portrayed as anything but a flawed personality - a talented drunk, a bumbler, with silly ideas and habits, dominated by Zelda. Another aspect of the new edition I find unsettling is that the restored portions more often than not reveal a nastier Hemingway. And insofar it attempting to portray an even more sympathetic Hadley, I disagree. The original quite poetically tells us all we need to know. The restored version merely states the obvious - tediously and at length. I first read the original edition when I was in college and loved it. I still do. I suppose the restored version has its scholarly value, but I would not recommend it to an impressionable young person as a lovely introduction to the world of the Lost Generation.