By Boyd Lemon / Guest contributor
Ever since I read “The Old Man and the Sea” for high school English, I have been an ardent fan of Ernest Hemingway, but I was disappointed when I read “The Moveable Feast” at the age of 19. It seemed to me that it was just about a bunch of sick Americans eating and drinking their way through Paris. I’m sure it comes as no revelation to my readers that when I re-read it while living in Paris at age 70, it seemed like a different book. To be sure the book portrays plenty of eating and drinking in Paris, but it is full of wisdom about writing and life that escaped a 19 year old, but reverberated with a 70 year old.
Hemingway wrote “The Moveable Feast” more than thirty years after the events he wrote about, a year before he took his own life at the age of 61. Having found Paris to be a most romantic (in every sense of the word) city, I like to romanticize that Hemingway planned to kill himself, but just had to write about his remarkable seven years in Paris during his 20’s before he died. The title of his book projects his experience that Paris was a feast of life experience, and though he left Paris, he took it with him to savor for the rest of his life. I feel the same way, and I share with you, my readers, insightful quotations about writing and life from “The Moveable Feast.”
Completion.
“After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love…”
Discernment
“He liked the works of his friends, which is beautiful as loyalty but can be disastrous as judgment. We never argued about these things because I kept my mouth shut about things I did not like.”
Starting and stopping
“I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day.”
Walking
“I would walk along the quays when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out. It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people doing something that they understood.”
Beginning
“But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.’ So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that you knew or had seen or had heard someone say.”
Incubation
“It was in that room too that I learned not to think about anything that I was writing from the time I stopped writing until I started again the next day. That way my subconscious would be working on it and at the same time I would be listening to other people and noticing everything, I hoped; learning, I hoped; and I would read so that I would not think about my work and make myself impotent to do it.”
Reading
“To have come on all this new world of writing with time to read in a city like Paris where there was a way of living well and working, no matter how poor you were, was like having a great treasure given to you. You could take your treasure with you when you traveled too…”
Differences of Opinion
“I did not agree at all but it was a point of view and I did not believe in arguing with my elders. I would much rather hear them talk…”
Money
“But then we did not think ever of ourselves as poor. We did not accept it. We thought we were superior people and other people that we looked down on and rightly mistrusted were rich.”
Diversion
“When I was writing, it was necessary for me to read after I had written, to keep my mind from going on with the story I was working on. […] It was necessary to get exercise, to be tired in my body, and it was very good to make love with whom you loved. That was better than anything. But afterwards, when you were empty, it was necessary to read in order not to think or worry about your work until you could do it again.”
Omission
“Nothing is ever lost no matter how it seems at the time and what is left out will always show and make the strength of what is left in.”
Writing for the market
“I was damned if I would write one [novel] because it was what I should do if we were to eat regularly. When I had to write it, then it would be the only thing to do and there would be no choice. Let the pressure build. In the meantime I would write a long story about whatever I knew best.”
Drinking
“My training was never to drink after dinner nor before I wrote nor while I was writing.
Generosity
“Some say that in writing you can never possess anything until you have given it away or, if you are in a hurry, you may have to throw it away.”
Not working
“…I felt the death loneliness that comes at the end of every day that is wasted in your life.”
Working
“Work could cure almost anything, I believed then, and I believe it now.”
I am grateful to Adena Atkins, who collected these quotations and published them on her wonderful blog, http://www.AnArtFullLife.net
— Boyd Lemon is a retired lawyer, who re-invented himself as a writer, living in Ventura. He recently returned from a year in France and Italy. His memoir, “Digging Deep: A Writer Uncovers His Marriages,” has just been published. It is about his journey to understand his role in the destruction of his three marriages. He believes it will help others to deal with their own relationship issues. Excerpts are on his website, http://www.BoydLemon-Writer.com