A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Published 1964 · 240 pages · 46,193 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · Memoir, Nonfiction, Literary Nonfiction

How hard is A Moveable Feast to read?

A Moveable Feast scores 62 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 52 out of 100
Hemingway employs a generally accessible English vocabulary, but frequently integrates untranslated French terms like 'poivrottes,' 'inaccrochable,' and 'eau-de-vie.' While many are contextualized, their consistent presence adds a layer of minor difficulty for a monolingual reader, placing it above the accessible elegance of 'The Great Gatsby' (45).
Sentence structure: 40 out of 100
The prose is characterized by Hemingway's signature paratactic style, utilizing direct, declarative sentences often linked by simple conjunctions. Although sentence length can vary, the structures remain straightforward and lack the deep subordination or nested clauses found in more complex works like 'The Great Gatsby' (52) or 'Pedro Paramo' (55).
Abstraction: 45 out of 100
The narrative remains firmly grounded in concrete experiences, vivid sensory details, and direct observations of Parisian life and personal interactions. While the text includes reflections on writing, poverty, and human nature, these philosophical undertones are consistently embedded within specific anecdotes and dialogue, rather than explored through abstract theoretical discourse, positioning it above 'Atomic Habits' (38) but below 'Remains of the Day' (50).
Information density: 42 out of 100
Hemingway's 'iceberg theory' means much is implied, requiring reader engagement to infer deeper emotional and psychological states from sparse details. However, the explicit information flow is linear and clear, avoiding multiple complex plotlines, dense allusions, or encyclopedic references that demand constant re-reading for basic comprehension, making it more manageable than 'The Great Gatsby' (48).
Narrative indirection: 72 out of 100
Hemingway's 'iceberg theory' is a defining characteristic, requiring readers to infer significant emotional and relational meaning from sparse dialogue and observational prose. The narrator often omits explicit commentary, forcing the reader to deduce underlying tensions and judgments, as exemplified by the ambiguous 'don't, pussy' incident with Gertrude Stein. This style demands active reader construction of meaning, placing it well above direct narratives like *1984* (35) and comparable to *Lolita* (72) in its reliance on subtext.
Symbolic density: 65 out of 100
'A Moveable Feast' incorporates several potent symbols and motifs that extend beyond literal events, such as Paris itself as a 'moveable feast' of youth and creativity. Recurring elements like hunger, the changing seasons, and specific animal metaphors (e.g., 'pilot fish,' 'hawks') carry significant thematic weight. While not an allegory, these symbols are integral to the memoir's deeper meanings, positioning it above purely literal accounts and comparable to *Heart of Darkness* (65) in its use of evocative imagery.
Ironic distance: 70 out of 100
The narrator consistently employs a subtle, retrospective irony, presenting the words and actions of figures like Ford Madox Ford and Scott Fitzgerald with a seemingly straightforward tone that belies a deeper, often critical, assessment. This dry, knowing humor and understated critique, evident in exchanges like the 'lost generation' discussion with Gertrude Stein, requires readers to perceive the gap between surface presentation and the author's implied judgment. This places it in a similar vein to *The Great Gatsby* (70) in its nuanced critique.
Resolution withholding: 75 out of 100
The memoir's episodic structure and the narrator's explicit reflections on memory and the nature of endings contribute to a deliberate resistance to definitive closure. Many personal relationships and thematic arcs conclude with lingering ambiguity rather than neat resolutions, as highlighted by the 'Strange Enough Ending' to the Stein friendship and the final chapter's assertion that 'there is never any ending to Paris.' This open-endedness creates sustained interpretive engagement, aligning it with *The Crying of Lot 49* (75) in its embrace of uncertainty.
Structural complexity: 68 out of 100
The narrative, while broadly chronological, is fragmented into distinct vignettes and frequently interweaves past events with the older narrator's reflective commentary and re-interpretations. This retrospective framing creates a dual timeline and an episodic feel, occasionally shifting focus and adding a meta-narrative layer through discussions of writing craft. This structural choice, though not as radical as some experimental novels, adds significant complexity beyond a linear account, similar to *Midnight's Children* (68) in its non-linear reflections.

How A Moveable Feast is regarded

A Moveable Feast holds a literary regard score of 74 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Prizes

Where A Moveable Feast sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (80 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, A Moveable Feast scores 70 out of 100. A second mythos, comedy, pulls at it with a weight of 0.3. About the map of stories.

Mode: Low Mimetic
We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.
Symbol: Descriptive
all you have to do is write one true sentence. write the truest sentence that you know.
Mythos: Tragic Pathos (Irony iv) (irony iv)
that was the end of the first part of paris. paris was never to be the same again although it was always paris and you changed as it changed.
Genre: Confession + Anatomy
If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.

Where the story of A Moveable Feast takes place

  • Paris, 1921-1926 (1921 to 1926), the main setting
  • Left Bank Paris, 1921-1926 (1921 to 1926)
  • Schruns, Vorarlberg, Austria, winters of 1925-26 (1925 to 1926)
  • Road trip Lyon to Paris with Fitzgerald (1925 to 1926)

6 things that are true of A Moveable Feast, with the passage for each

  1. Stein's 'lost generation' remark comes from a garage owner's scolding of a young mechanic.

    the patron had said to him, 'you are all a generation perdue.'

  2. Hemingway says the only story he had left from the stolen suitcase survived because it was in the mail.

    the only reason i had the one story was that lincoln steffens had sent it out to some editor who sent it back. it was in the mail while everything else was stolen.

  3. Dunning throws milk bottles at Hemingway when he brings the opium jar.

    he threw another milk botde. i retreated and he hit me with yet another milk bottle in the back.

  4. Fitzgerald's face turns into a death's head in the Dingo bar.

    his face became a true death's head, or death mask, in front of my eyes.

  5. Zelda tells Hemingway al Jolson is greater than Jesus.

    'ernest, don't you think al jolson is greater than jesus?'

  6. The Lech avalanche killed nine of the thirteen dug out.

    thirteen were dug out and nine of them were dead.

Scenes in A Moveable Feast that Frye would name

26 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Confession, A Good Café on the Place St.-Michel
all you have to do is write one true sentence. write the truest sentence that you know. The introspective account of how the writer made himself.
Confession, Hunger Was Good Discipline
this was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted A statement of the writer's own aesthetic theory.
Alazon, Ford Madox Ford and the Devil's Disciple
it was ford madox ford, as he called himself then, and he was breathing heavily through a heavy, stained moustache Ford is the pompous, self-deceiving impostor who 'cuts' the wrong man.
Hamartia, There is Never Any End to Paris
the girl i was in love with was in paris then, and i did not take the first train, or the second or the third. The narrator's own fatal misstep ends the first happy Paris.
Analogy of innocence, A False Spring
the goatherd came up the street blowing his pipes and a woman who lived on the floor above us came out onto the sidewalk with a big pot. A pastoral goat-herd in the city street is an innocent-world image.
Eiron, Ford Madox Ford and the Devil's Disciple
'it's very complicated,' i said. 'am i a gentleman?' The narrator plays the deprecating questioner who unravels Ford's pretensions.

Books that share these scenes with A Moveable Feast

About the author

Ernest Hemingway