“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.”

“We would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright.”

I love Ernest Hemingway as a writer, at his best, especially in many of the stories, but in the main novels, too, there is often breathtakingly good writing. Then there are the books, some of them much later, where there would seem to be parodies of himself. And he is ripe for parody, given the style:

“You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason.”

Either you find that paragraph laughable or loveable, and at this point I could honestly go either way, but in general I love his simple declarative and lyrical sentences.

A Moveable Feast is an interesting book to read after The Sun Also Rises, which is a book that begins in Paris and moves to the drunken disastrous fiesta at Pamplona, with people Behaving Badly all the time. That book has some of those lyrical passages, usually about fishing and bullfighting. Feast is written years after the last great work, The Old Man and the Sea, at a point when he thinks he is basically washed up (cracked up, he would say), depressed, paranoid; it is his last attempt to cement his reputation, to solidify the myth he has made of himself through all his works, the myth of the sensitive macho man, the best writer, the best drinker, the best fisherman, the best man. In Sun it is Jake Barnes as Hemingway, the only guy who is NOT behaving badly, the guy who rises above the "bitched" fray and goes fishing, away from people, back to nature. No one is faithful or can hold his liquor like the impotent Jake, poor guy. And so noble, a bullfighting aficionado.

Feast is two books, really. It’s in the main a kind of reprise, a revisiting of those early magical days, anecdotes of drinking, gambling, skiing, eating, visiting famous friends, loving Hadley, and writing, always writing. The first Feast book is an “earnest” apology to Hadley, his last love letter to her, as he faces madness and death, wherein you may learn to love Hem—her Tatie—just a little again, maybe. In the process he manages to capture some of that early lyrical glory of Paris and their young love life there. Hemingway dedicates Sun to Hadley and their son nicknamed Bumby and gives her all the proceeds from it because he felt guilty all his life for dumping them, and I see that act as the first bookend of his collected acts of contrition, the last being the essays focused on their time together in Paris.

“We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.”

True, Hadley is more an image of The Beloved than an actual full–bodied character in the book; she and Bumby don’t do anything really but be Wife and Child, but they are (at least, I’ll say) romanticized here, washed with regret and sorrow at every turn. Though he sometimes frames it in the passive sense, as when he says, "people came in that would change things," and he calls them, to the end, "the rich" (Pauline Pfeiffer was a rich heiress whom he left Hadley for), he does make it clear he is sorry, though it is now decades later. Again and again he says, we were perfect, and we didn’t know we would soon never be perfect again.

“When I saw my wife again standing by the tracks as the train came in by the piled logs at the station, I wished I had died before I had ever loved anyone but her.” [He had just come from Pauline's bed, so this might change any inclination you might have to feel sorry for him here. This is the problem in the book seen as apology, that he apologizes and then blames others, at points.}

But is it Hemingway speaking, or the myth he created of himself? Hem is cagey on the "truth" of his writing in Feast:

“This book is fiction, but there is always a chance that such a work of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.”

So the first "book" or aspect of Feast is Hadley love. But then there is the other half of the book where you realize sweet Hadley was lucky to get out when she did. In this second Feast, Hem reminisces about other famous people he knew at the time, and most of these people he just trashes as he often did.

Of Gertrude Stein, who mentored him in his writing and career: she is “lazy,” “jealous” (of others’ success, as if he weren’t!); “disloyal” (as if he weren’t, even in the process of trashing her!); he bashes her for bashing gay men writers; he yells at her for her 1920 reference to his generation as a “lost” generation: “who is calling who a lost generation?” Feels petty and ungrateful to the woman who spent countless hours supporting him and mentoring to him on his writing, even if some of what he says may be true.

Of Ford Madox Ford (who championed Hem’s early work): “I had always avoided looking at Ford when I could and I always held my breath.”

Of Wyndham Lewis: “. . . the eyes of an unsuccessful rapist.” (!)

And on and on, though he does not here critique Joyce, nor Pound, nor his lifelong friend F. Scott Fitzgerald, though he is consistently vicious about Zelda and what her “insanity” does to destroy Scott’s career. The Fitzgerald essays are really poignant, the best of the "other writer" essays.

To be fair, some of it is funny, though not as funny as he thinks it is, because he often comes off as petty and mean. But the writing advice is plentiful and useful:

“All you have to do is write one sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.”

“I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.”

“This was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood.”

And we get good advice on the necessity for discipline and regularity, and reading when not writing. He says great and true things about Chekhov and Dostoevsky.

Finally, I am deeply conflicted about this sad book that in the main preserves one’s sense of his arrogance and nastiness, and also his lyrical brilliance. It was published after he committed suicide. Some of the writing is 5 star, for sure, and he is always interesting, if sometimes infuriating.

“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.”

To say that Hemingway writes clear, declarative sentences would be far too simplistic and inaccurate. I actually find his sentences twisty and harder to read oftentimes than more flowery and "correct" prose written in a more classical parallel fashion. I do miss the breather commas, for instance, in places where the conjunctions separate what are actually different clauses, which sometimes causes me to have to read the sentences twice. Honestly, I've never been a great fan of the way Hemingway writes sentences. He broke rules but the fact that so few continue to write like him perhaps "proves" the lack of enduring fondness for his style of writing, at least as it pertains to actual practicing authors.

This is the main reason that I've not delved very deeply into the Hemingway oeuvre. This is not to say at all that I don't dig what he has to say, or appreciate the word-pictures he places in my mind. Now that I've read this "non-fiction" work and two of his novels, I have to say that, for me, his style works better for non-fiction. In A Moveable Feast the Hemingway poetic and journalistic voices merge beautifully, and on the whole I found this to be the most interesting and informative work I've read by him so far, and by far. It is definitely the most fun I've had with him; I dashed this off, rapt, at one sitting in just one afternoon. I think I can go out on a limb even more and say it's the best thing I've ever read about Bohemian Paris, at least the Paris of the 1920s.

One thing I really like about it is that his observations of the people, places and habits of the city are balanced with a real sense of his own work life, family life and personal struggles with poverty. The sense of him as a working writer is vivid; he tells us what he is striving for in his writing, how he is trying to accomplish that and what his work habits are toward achieving it, without becoming too insufferably preachy as many self-proclaimed artistes do in extolling their own nobility as channelers of the muse.

The book was written in retrospect, and in spite of Hemingway's oft-quoted wisdom about putting truth on paper or "bleeding onto the page" this book has to be classed as at least part fictional, and also vague in how it skates over certain "truths" to which it alludes (particularly his affairs). There are at least a couple of instances where he claims to have forgotten dates and names and other details but then proceeds to perfectly reconstruct conversations that happened more than 30 years in the past.

But, that is all fine. He was there, and I was not, and I trust him.

I enjoyed reading about Hemingway's encounters with Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Beach and Ford Madox Ford and lament that such a generous literary artistic colony no longer really exists in the world. And, as it happens, neither does the Paris he writes about. Hemingway, with perhaps the benefit of hindsight, already claimed to have sensed that that very world was dying right before his eyes. Certainly the kind of affordable Paris, where even the poorest artists could live high on the hog for just $5 a day is lost in the mists.

The three chapters dealing with F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald--particularly a disastrous trip Hemingway made to and from Paris and Lyon with Scott at the time the latter's The Great Gatsby was in the works--are utterly essential reading. The trip the two take to look at classical museum sculptures--to help the emasculated Scott stop fretting about his wife's disparagement of his allegedly small penis--is a sad and funny escapade.

Funny, too, is Hemingway's asking of the question eternal to all serious writers--one dealing with the purity of one's self-expression versus the temptation to pander to the marketplace: "If these bastards like it what is wrong with it?"

The book is evocative and immersive and I can easily see myself reading it again someday.

" دیدمت، ای زیبارو، و دیگر از آن منی _ حال چشم به راه هر که خواهی گو باش و چه باک که دیگر هرگز نبینمت.تو از آن منی و سرتاسر پاریس از آن من است �� من از آن این دفتر و قلمم..."

Read immediately after The Paris Wife, this is like a book end on the 1920s in Paris, a photo of a writer's life in writing, as a husband and father, as a member of the ex-patriot community in Europe. There are glimpses of his writing process, his friendships (or maybe more properly relationships) with other writers, artists and luminaries large and small, his apparent love for his son and wife.

All is masked as fiction but reads as real life. There are quotes upon quotes to mention.


"I thought of Miss Stein and Sherwood Anderson and egotism
and mental laziness versus discipline and I thought who is
calling who a lost generation?" (p. 62)


And this about moving to writing a novel:


"I knew I must write a novel. But it seemed an impossible
thing to do when I had been trying with great difficulty to
write paragraphs that would be the distillation of what made
a novel. It was necessary to write longer stories now as you
would train for a longer race." (p. 71


When he describes the lodge at Schruns, where he and Hadley spent several winters, even his writing style seems to change. He seems more generous and flowing.


"When we lived in Schruns I remember the long trip up the
valley to the inn where we slept before setting out on the
climb to the Madlener-Haus. It was a very beautiful old inn
and the wood of the walls of the room where you ate and
drank were silky with the years of polishing. So were the
tables and chairs...You slept close together in the big bed
under the feather quilt with the window open and the stars
close and very bright." (p. 120)

Of course that idyll eventually came to an end.

There are so many moments in this book that are fascinating for so many different reasons--some are like watching a train wreck, some are like watching flowers bloom.

Highly recommended whether you read Hemingway or not.

Move the cursor on your computer directly to this book if you are from Paris, or are moving to Paris, or used to live in Paris, or are planning a visit to Paris, or have visited Paris – or if you simply love Paris, as I do. Ernest Hemingway loved Paris, and his love for Paris is palpable in his posthumous memoir A Moveable Feast.

Hemingway and his first wife Hadley Richardson were young and poor when living on rue du Cardinal Lemoine in Paris’s 5th arrondissement. A Moveable Feast captures well the challenges and the hopes of those days. Hemingway wanted to write, and worked hard at his craft, and yet in those days there was no way for him to know that one day he would be the Ernest Hemingway – a genuine celebrity writer. Back then, he was just some young American named Ernest, living with his wife in a flat with no running water, and working as a stringer sending articles to newspapers in Kansas City and Toronto.

Modern readers may particularly enjoy Hemingway’s reflections on the fellow writers that he befriended while in Paris. The feeling is rather like what one might get from watching the Woody Allen film Midnight in Paris (2011) – being dropped into Paris and suddenly, unexpectedly, becoming part of that circle of amazingly talented people.

I enjoyed, for example, Hemingway’s reflections on his many visits with Gertrude Stein. In a chapter titled “Une Géneration Perdue” (for Stein’s famous declaration to Hemingway that “You are a lost generation”), Hemingway remarks that “It was easy to get into the habit of stopping in at 27 rue de Fleurus late in the afternoon for the warmth and the great pictures and the conversation. Often Miss Stein would have no guests and she was always very friendly and for a long time she was affectionate” (p. 57). Hemingway’s recollections of Stein are themselves affectionate, though at some points gently critical, as when he recalls that “In the three or four years that we were good friends I cannot remember Gertrude Stein ever speaking well of any writer who had not written favorably about her work or done something to advance her career” (p. 59) – though he admits that she made an exception for F. Scott Fitzgerald.

We all know that Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald – so different and yet so similar, as leading lights of early-20th-century American modernism – were friends and contemporaries in Paris. I particularly liked the moment in A Moveable Feast when Hemingway recalled the moment Fitzgerald showed him a brand-new copy of The Great Gatsby. “It had a garish dust jacket and I remember being embarrassed by the violence, bad taste and slippery look of it. It looked the book jacket for a book of bad science fiction. Scott told me not to be put off by it, that it had to do with a billboard along a highway in Long Island that was important in the story” (p. 151).

Hemingway read The Great Gatsby, its cover notwithstanding, and “When I had finished the book I knew that no matter what Scott did, not how preposterously he behaved, I must know it was like a sickness and be of any help I could to him and try to be a good friend….If he could write a book as fine as The Great Gatsby I was sure that he could write an even better one.” Hemingway did not get along well with Scott Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda – the lack of regard seems to have been mutual – and Hemingway recalls that “I did not know Zelda yet, and so I did not know the terrible odds that were against him. But we were to find them out soon enough” (p. 151). Hemingway certainly had his issues with women – particularly with strong and independent-minded women – and some readers may feel that old Ernest is being decidedly unfair toward Zelda, whose life outcome was every bit as tragic as Scott’s. You can read for yourself and decide what you think.

I am writing this review from Paris; and earlier today, I visited my favourite site in all of Paris, the Shakespeare & Company bookstore on the Left Bank. The original Shakespeare & Co. bookstore was owned by Sylvia Beach, who generously lent books to Hemingway and other young, poor, and aspiring writers in the Paris of that time. Hemingway benefitted from Sylvia Beach’s generosity, and appreciated it. “From the day I had found Sylvia Beach’s library I had read all of Turgenev, what had been published in English of Gogol, the Constance Garnett translations of Tolstoi and the English translations of Chekov” (p. 101).

Along with an account of Sylvia Beach’s generosity, and of how her library helped expand young Hemingway’s literary horizons, we also get some of Hemingway’s opinions about the literature he was reading. “In Toronto, before we had ever come to Paris, I had been told Katherine Mansfield was a good short-story writer, even a great short-story writer, but trying to read her after Chekov was like hearing the carefully artificial tales of a young old maid compared to those of an articulate and knowing physician who was a good and simple writer. Mansfield was like near-beer. It was better to drink water” (p. 101). Some New Zealand readers may not appreciate Hemingway’s strictures regarding Mansfield’s work, but it is always interesting to hear what the man thinks.

Some of the most moving passages from A Moveable Feast relate to Hemingway’s personal life from that time. While in Paris, Hemingway met Vogue journalist Pauline Pfeiffer, and the two began an affair. Some of the most poignant and painful passages from the boom relate to the way Ernest and Hadley and Pauline became a sort of social threesome, with Pauline regularly accompanying the Hemingways to all sorts of social engagements. One gets the sense that Hadley knew exactly what was going on between Ernest and Pauline, and was not quite ready to talk about it just yet.

Hadley married Ernest when he was just some poor journalist from suburban Chicago with big dreams and an enviable work ethic. Pauline met Ernest when he was Ernest Hemingway, famous author of The Sun Also Rises. Hemingway often dwells on that distinction throughout A Moveable Feast – and the docents at the Hemingway Home museum in Key West, Florida, will cheerfully tell you about the epic arguments that occurred there between Ernest and Pauline. (Look for the penny embedded by the pool, and the restaurant urinal transformed into an elegant outdoor decoration. There are compelling stories of marital conflict behind both those features of the home that Ernest and Pauline Hemingway shared.)

A Moveable Feast could almost be retitled Ernest Hemingway Unplugged.. The noted author reveals more about himself than one usually sees in his works. And it is certainly a marvellous book to read here in Paris, a great city that this great author loved so very much.

Este ha sido mi primer contacto con Hemingway sobre el papel y debo confesar que si he tardado tanto en leer algo suyo es porque me daba mucho respeto. Es un autor del que a lo largo de mi vida he oído absolutamente de todo y siempre he sentido por su obra curiosidad y pereza a partes iguales, pero tras el primer asalto he quedado maravillada y dispuesta a continuar conociéndole.

En este libro se recoge un pequeño fragmento de las memorias de su primera etapa en París en los años 20, junto a su primera esposa y su hijo pequeño, y un desfile de escritores y poetas como Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce o Francis Scott Fitzgerald (brillante el capítulo dedicado a él). Desde la pluma de Hemingway conoceremos anécdotas de todo tipo sobre él mismo y sus rutinas para escribir y también sobre estos autores que conoció, así como diversos pintores, o la forma de vida del París de aquellos tiempos.

Tengo que decir que esperaba algo diferente de este libro, algo en plan bohemio, lleno de desenfreno sin control, vidas desordenadas en una psicodelia sin fin y fiestas locas, pero he descubierto una historia cotidiana y cercana, en la que por supuesto hay reuniones, alcohol y humo de diversas naturalezas, pero no lo he encontrado de la forma en que esperaba. Creía que iba a ser más "Midnight in Paris", aunque la asociación es inevitable. La historia está contada desde el punto de vista de Hemingway y en primera persona, por lo que entiendo que es una realidad vista por él o como él la quiso contar, y que tal vez no todo fuera de esa manera, que puede que él adornara ciertas cosas o suavizase alguna de esas fiestas. En el prólogo se señala con cierto humor canalla que "esta es una obra de ficción", y la verdad es que me ha sorprendido encontrar una versión de Hemingway de "me levanto, voy a trabajar, me bebo un vinito y vuelvo a casa con mi mujer y mi hijo". Lo hacía más díscolo, sinceramente, por eso digo que da la sensación de haber modificado un poco los acontecimientos.

Pero la cuestión es que sea como sea el libro me atrapó desde el principio y, aunque son una serie de memorias dispersas con cierta continuidad cronológica, y lo escribió en sus últimos meses de vida (de hecho se publicó póstumamente porque lo dejó sin acabar y su viuda tuvo que recomponerlo), me ha parecido un relato muy lúcido, lleno de nostalgia, humor y tristeza al mismo tiempo. La escritura me ha resultado muy ágil y en todo momento pasaba las páginas casi sin darme cuenta. Tiene pasajes realmente divertidos y otros más pesimistas, pero me ha encantado la forma de contarlo todo, porque, al menos en este libro, Hemingway derrocha un humor negro y ácido que me ha encantado. Es una maravilla poder ver el pasado por una ventanita como es este libro.

Un saludo,
Carol Rodríguez

دنبال ِ قطع جیبی‌اش بودیم. فکر می‌کردیم این از آن کتاب‌هایی‌ست که بایست همراه ِ آدم باشد.
پاریس جشن ِ بیکران به نظر کتاب ساده‌ای می‌آید، یک آدمی نشسته خاطراتش را، افکار و احساساتش را نوشته است. همین. اما وقتی شروع می‌کنی به خواندش، وقتی یکی یکی ورق میزنی صفحاتش را، چیزی بیشتر، چیزی بزرگتر از خاطرات یا افکار و احساسات دربرمی‌گیرد تو را.
انگار پاریس تو را بغل کرده باشد. خانه‌ات را می‌بینی، کافه‌ها، خیابان‌های غرق نور را می‌بینی، آدم‌های زنده‌اش را می‌بینی، بدبختی‌هایش را حتی. بوی گند ِبغضی محله‌هایش را حتی. و فکر می‌کنی این جا درست‌ترین جا برای گفتن این حرف است که:

"و تا ابد عاشق ِهیچ کس غیر از خودمان نمی‌شویم"

Страшно много ми хареса. Стилът е меко казано вълшебен, а съдържанието вълнуващо до последната страница. Определено една от силните книги на Хемингуей.

What I can say about Hemingway’s words here is that he makes them so damn persuasive that I start looking at the Stein and Fitzgerald books on my shelf all wary, worried they’ll pass their acidity on to me. It was toward the last 30 or so pages where I put down the book for a half second (it does move that fast, what a feast) and thought, wait just a damn minute. Why am I taking every single thing he is saying about these authors and Paris and betting and drinking and social milieus wholesale, as gospel? It took me almost the entire book to have that moment. He is that good.

I had read some of the passages from this before, especially those where Hemingway discusses what he thinks of books, authors, writing, etc. It is immense fun reading the writing of someone so opinionated – isn’t that always the case? People shy away from taking a position on something 90% of the time. I do it too. Everything comes packed with qualifiers and caveats and footnotes. Not here. Something is the way it is because Hemingway said so. Honestly commendable, because he says it with his chest out, confident and vulnerable – vulnerable because he leaves himself open for everyone to disagree with him. Plenty do. But it’s still an amazing time.

Just so I’m not talking out of my ass, check out what he says about Fitzgerald:

“I knew him for two years before he could spell my name; but then it was a long name to spell and perhaps it became harder to spell all of the time, and I give him great credit for spelling it correctly finally. He learned to spell more important things and he tried to think straight about many more.”

That’s hilarious. Here is his little anecdote about Stein:

“She did not want to talk about Anderson’s works any more than she would talk about Joyce. If you brought up Joyce twice, you would not be invited back. It was like mentioning one general favorably to another general. You learned not to do it the first time you made the mistake. You could always mention a general, though, that the general you were talking to had beaten. The general you were talking to would praise the beaten general greatly and go happily into detail on how he had beaten him.”

I wish Hemingway had written something like this for Toronto too, but hey. At least there is some sort of association there.

In my opinion, "A Moveable Feast" is Hemingway's best book. I don't know how, but he raised my spirits, even though his own were depressed. Time and Place and Human Spirit are essential to the memory of experience. So, I recommend this book to all young people in their mid-twenties or older. In fact, it's essential reading like "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" is for people in their mid-thirties and beyond.

لن تخرج كثيرًا عن إطار ما قد قرأته من أعمال هيمنغواي. تتوه في التفاصيل العادية والمحادثات الجانبية. لكنك تخرج من الكتاب بشعور رائع بالمجمل.

يركز الكتاب على حياة هيمنغواي في باريس، خاصة السنوات الأولى منها. يتحدث الكاتب عن الأماكن قليلاً وعن الأشخاص كثيراً، بخيرهم وشرهم. أحيانا يكتفي بالتلميح إلى بعض الأمور ويترك للقارئ فك شفرتها.

استمتعت بالفصل الذي تحدث عن الآنسة ستاين، عن نظرتها الناقدة وشخصيتها المتسلطة. وكذلك الحديث عن عزرا باوند، وفي المقدمة سكوت فيتزجيرالد مؤلف رواية جاتسبي العظيم مروراً بطباعه الغريبة إلى علاقته مع زوجته التي تغار منه.

إلى جانب ما سبق، أفضى هيمنغواي للقارئ ببعض الجوانب من حياته مع زوجته الأولى هيدلي، عن تفانيهما في إسعاد بعضهما ثم عن تعقد العلاقة بعد دخول طرف ثالث، حتى الانفصال. كالعادة لم يقال كل شيء بوضوح. لكنها كانت فضفضة مؤثرة بمستوى معين.

نقلت سيرة الكاتب شيئًا من سحر باريس في تلك الآونة، مع شغف تلك الدائرة ممن يسمونهم بالجيل الضائع بالأدب والفنون والرياضة كسباق الخيول والتزلج والملاكمة.

ظل فلم (باريس في منتصف الليل) يرفرف على مخيلتي طوال قرائي للكتاب. هو فلم يستحق المشاهدة وهذا كتاب يستحق القراءة.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS


Corey Stoll è Hemingway.

La festa mobile per eccellenza è la pasqua: perché ogni anno trova una posizione diversa nel calendario, quando a marzo, quando ad aprile. E da lì slittano, prima o dopo, varie altre festività.
La festa mobile di Hemingway sono i ricordi dei suoi anni giovanili a Parigi, le scoperte, gli incontri, gli amori, la scrittura. Anni frizzanti, che Ernest si porta dietro tutta la vita come il più leggero e lieto e felice dei fardelli.
La mia festa mobile è questo libro, autentica scoperta. E la meraviglia di come l’io narrante, sicuramente lo stesso Ernest, si rivolge a se stesso, in un alternarsi di prima e seconda persona. Puro godimento. Hem parla ‘di’ se stesso e poi con cambio repentino parla ‘a’ se stesso, con la dolce e tenera “malinconia che potremmo riservare a un fratello perduto":
”Non preoccuparti. Hai sempre scritto prima e scriverai adesso. Non devi fare altro che scrivere una sola frase vera. Scrivi la frase più vera che conosci.” Così alla fine scrivevo una frase vera e poi da lì andavo avanti. E allora era facile perché c’era sempre una frase vera che conoscevi o che avevi visto o che avevi sentito dire da qualcuno.


Kathy Bates è Gertrude Stein.

Pubblicato postumo (tre anni dopo il suicidio, nel 1964), incompleto, con tanti materiali esclusi, e poi inclusi, forse sì e forse no, manca l’inizio, manca la fine, questo titolo, no quest’altro, ce n’è un intero elenco. Ma a me sembra a posto così, forse non perfetto, ma molto, molto notevole. E, soprattutto, una lettura che è autentica delizia.
Tra l’altro ho appreso che dopo gli attentati di Parigi del 2015 questo libro, pubblicato cinquant’anni prima, ha avuto un autentico boom di vendite: la capitale culturale dell’Occidente – almeno nel periodo in cui Hem ci abitava – ha rialzato la testa ritrovando il suo tono – l’esprit.
Alla fine degli anni Cinquanta (1956), quando iniziò a scrivere questo suo “portrait of the artist as a young man”, era un quasi sessantenne depresso e in qualche modo confuso: era perfino stato sottoposto a elettroshock, intervento che aveva peggiorato la situazione, per esempio indebolendo la sua memoria, rendendo difficile attingere ai suoi ricordi. Infatti scrive all’inizio di questa piccola gemma:
Questo libro contiene materiale dalle “remises” della mia memoria e del mio cuore. Anche se la prima è stata manomessa e il secondo non esiste.


Tom Hiddleston/Francis Scott Fitzgerald e Alison Pill/Zelda.

Tutto comincia per caso il giorno che l’Hotel Ritz di Parigi gli comunica di avere in cantina, conservati su sua richiesta di decenni prima, due suoi bauli: dai quali spuntarono ricordi e quaderni di appunti.
Hem, come lo chiamava affettuosamente qualche amico, racconta di tutti quelli che ha incontrato e conosciuto in quegli anni parigini. In pratica, tutti. Se non altro, tutti i migliori. Hem li racconta e ne parla con dolce e tenera malizia: fa sorridere parecchio come vengano tutti fuori pieni di limiti e difetti, e come, pur sforzandosi di non porsi al di sopra, il buon vecchio Hem finisce sempre con l’essere al di sopra.
Il capitolo più lungo è dedicato a Scott, che nessuno chiamava Francis, o Frank, caso mai Fitzgerald. Ma non solo, Scott ritorna in altri due sketch.
Sono ricordi, ma Hem li definisce fantasia. Ha ragione: i ricordi sono fantasia. Il che non impedisce loro di essere più veri del vero.
Le cose rimaste fuori, i ricordi non inseriti sono molti più di quelli che compaiono in queste pagine: la regola dell’iceberg, dell’omissione. Distillare non amplificare:
C’è un altro libro sulle parti che mancano e ci sono sempre le storie che sono andate perdute.
Brevi pagine che trasmettono un senso di invulnerabilità: il mondo era loro, la vita spalancata davanti. Eppure avevano una Grande Guerra alle spalle, e un’altra altrettanto mostruosa che cominciava ad annunciarsi.



E poi, certo, il film di Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris, uno dei suoi migliori da quando ha tirato i remi in barca e frugato anche nell’ultimo cassetto più riposto. Rivisto durante la lettura: appare evidente che Allen lo abbia letto e riletto, e tenuto ben presente scrivendo la sceneggiatura. Mi è piaciuto forse perfino più della prima volta, ho colto più rimandi e rilanci, e riferimenti, e battute.

Era un racconto molto semplice intitolato “Fuori stagione” e ne avevo omesso la vera conclusione cioè che il vecchio si impiccava. Era stata omessa in base alla mia nuova teoria che potevi omettere qualsiasi cosa se sapevi di ometterla e che la parte omessa avrebbe rafforzato la storia e fatto sentire alla gente qualcosa di più di quanto ci capivano.