ToW #21 - IRB by Ernest Hemingway: "A Moveable Feast"

        A Moveable Feast is by far the most uniquely composed book that I have read to date. Each chapter is a few succinct pages long and loosely connects to the next with only a hint of chronology. Every sentence is honest, unromantic, and never speculative. A few mantras are repeated throughout by example and statement, "poverty teaches discipline" and "one must only think of work while working". Ultimately, this journal-like account of Hemingway's life in Paris reads as it was written: in Hemingway's voice and completely grounded in reality. Thus far, Hemingway has described to me his working habits, his relationship with Gertrude Stein (his mentor), his addiction to betting on horse races, and his life between jobs, impoverished almost by choice as he attempts to write a novel.

        Through all of this, he tells stories and proves wisdoms as if he is the father of his readers; one who hopes that others will learn from his life and not make the same mistakes as him. No other purpose seems evident in Hemingway's writing; his memoir is most certainly not a scientific and objective study -- it is more of a life's story told for the sake of telling, perhaps for writing practice or for lack of subjects to create stories about. But the style with which Hemingway writes is not one that needs much practice or getting used to; he only employs one rhetorical strategy: "Write the truest sentence that you know." This simple statement seems to describe Hemingway's entire writing process. He simply writes down sentences that he has heard or thought in passing with the knowledge that sentences from reality will sound the most convincing to the reader. Essentially, as a retelling of his life, A Moveable Feast is the purest form of Hemingway's style; it is purely a collection of moments that came from reality, sentences that are nothing if not true, honest, and unobscured by manipulative rhetoric. This is what makes Hemingway's style so strange and new to me; his writing is not about reality, it is reality. He has no purposes other than to retell his experiences in all of their factuality. He makes no arguments and analyzes no data. He simply describes life.