Genius and Generosity, a (Sort of) Book Review
03.26.2011 
Rereading the restored edition of Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast has got me thinking about the nature of genius and of love.
This memoir about the American fiction writer’s years in Paris during the twenties is chock full of many of the things I most love: writing, reading literature, Paris, the café life, artistic community, an intimate, supportive marriage.
When Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley, first came to Paris in their early 20s in the early twenties of the twentieth century, they lived on rue du Cardinal Lemoine, just before it opens out onto Place Contrescarpe. Though the name meant little to me when I first read the book in my twenties, now that Richard and I live on rue Cardinal Lemoine, the mention of the street on page two enchants me.
Speaking personally, what more could I ask of a book?
Well, as it turns out, one thing. Rather a big thing. More on that later.
Let’s begin with what is admirable, even breathtaking, about this book. What a model of devotion to the craft of writing Hemingway offers.
Hemingway had just quit his work as a journalist in order to make his way as a writer of fiction. This I admire. In order to find one’s genius one must listen to one’s genius.
Richard and I prefer Plato’s definition of genius in the myth of Er in The Republic to more recent conceptions of genius. Plato tells the story of Er, who, after dying and coming back to life, reveals what he learned: that each of us is born with a genius, a daimon or twin soul, who remembers what our purpose in life is even when we forget, and who is constantly dropping hints to us: not this, not this—yes, that. One’s genius, or purpose could be anything: artist, doctor, builder, business person, homemaker, mother or farmer. But unless we follow what our genius knows we should do in this life, we can’t find fulfillment. Hemingway had the courage to follow his.
Hemingway had impeccable discipline, impressive for a young man in his twenties. He arose early every morning and mounted the steps to the room he rented high in a nearby hotel (the hotel where Verlaine died). The room was so cold that if he left mandarines[1] there overnight, they’d freeze. From the window he could look down and see the goatherd come up the street blowing his pipes and a woman in his building come out onto the sidewalk to buy milk that the goatherd milked as she waited. (Oh, why can’t goats still wander the streets of Paris?)
Courage he had, and discipline. And another thing: luck. He happened to arrive in Paris at a very good time for Americans. The exchange rate was such that a writer, whose advance for a first book of short stories was $200, could, by living frugally (buying no clothes, no paintings, sometimes skipping meals), afford an apartment for himself and Hadley, a hotel room in which to work, and spend winters skiing in Austria, summers at the bullfights in Spain.
What he learned about writing:
“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.”
“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, 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.”
“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.”
And then there were people. Not Hadley. People. He warns us: “The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”
Of course in Hemingway’s world in the Paris of the twenties, “people” meant Gertrude Stein and her companion, Alice B. Toklas; F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda; Ezra Pound; James Joyce; Ford Madox Ford; Wyndham Lewis; Sylvia Beach.
And here is where my enjoyment of the book cools. Hemingway describes Gertrude Stein’s generosity to Hadley and him. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s warmth to him. But his portraits of them are, ultimately, scathing.
From the night he meets Fitzgerald in one of Hem's favorite Montparnasse hangouts, the Dingo Bar, he is sizing him up. From instantly preferring Scott’s friend, the famous Princeton baseball pitcher, Dunc Chaplin, to him; to a head-to-toe physical appraisal: legs too short; wrong kind of tie; a faintly puffy face, to the most damning thing Hemingway can say about a man, that there is something female about him (“a delicate long-lipped Irish mouth that, on a girl, would have been the mouth of a beauty…the mouth worried you until you knew him and then it worried you more”); to how Fitzgerald praised him too much and asked questions that were too direct; to how his face was like a death’s head after a few glasses of champagne. All this in contrast with Hemingway’s portrayal of himself as manly, composed, able to hold his liquor, admirable in most other ways.
Later when Scott invites Hemingway to join him by train to Lyon to pick up a car that Scott and Zelda had had to abandon there because of bad weather, Scott misses the train. Hemingway is unable to reach Scott in Paris, so he goes to the best hotel in Lyon (though he’s worried about spending too much money), where Scott finds him the next morning.
They pick up the Renault at a garage, where the garage man recommends new piston rings, and Hemingway uses the opportunity to display his superior manly knowledge of cars, and Scott’s lack of good sense.
Hemingway notes that Fitzgerald has been drinking when they meet up in the hotel, so Hem suggests stopping in the bar for a whisky and Perrier. They set out on their road trip. Although he’s well aware of how sick alcohol makes Fitzgerald, and that he’s probably an alcoholic, at Macon, Hemingway buys four bottles of excellent wine, which they drink from the bottle as they drive. Another chance to point out how feminine Scott is. “I am not sure Scott had ever drunk wine from a bottle before and it was exciting to him as though he were slumming or as a girl might be excited by going swimming for the first time without a bathing suit.”
By that afternoon, Scott is worried about his health. In the hotel room that night, Hemingway observes Scott’s hypochondria and again dramatizes the slightly older writer’s foolishness to underscore Hemingway’s good sense.
An invitation to Hemingway and Hadley to lunch at Scott and Zelda’s apartment gives Hem the chance to criticize Zelda’s appearance and the meal. And to wonder at Scott and Zelda’s seeming to think that the two men’s road trip from Lyon had been great fun.
In contrast to Gertrude Stein’s generosity to him, Hemingway describes covertly overhearing a lovers’ spat between Gertrude and Alice. “That was the way it finished for me, stupidly enough…”
Having recently read Hemingway’s third wife, Martha Gellhorn’s Selected Letters, this is richly ironic. She describes getting the journalist’s assignment of a lifetime, being one of the only women allowed to cover the European front lines in World War II. Hemingway, at work on a novel at their finca in Cuba, tugs on her to return home, whining about his loneliness until she makes the fatal decision to come home early. He and his drinking buddies have trashed their home, he calls her every vicious name a man can call a woman, then secretly steals her Colliers Magazine assignment and goes off to the front lines himself.
And he’s willing to toss his friendship with Gertrude Stein out the window over one conversation he overheard her have with Alice? Hemingway had four wives. Gertrude Stein and Alice were together till the end. They are now buried side-by-side in Père Lachaise Cemetery, with Gertrude's name on the front of the headstone, Alice's on the back.
I have no idea why Hemingway so hated the English writer Ford Maddox Ford, who apparently was so generous to him.
Or why he savaged the English writer/painter Wyndham Lewis for wearing the “uniform” of a pre-World War I artist, and watching Hem teach Ezra some boxing tricks in a competitive spirit (pot calling the kettle black?). He describes Lewis as having the eyes of a “frustrated rapist.” It’s certainly a memorable phrase.
However, a more treacherous husband or friend I can’t imagine.
Yet, in the descriptions of Hemingway working, or spending winters in Schruns, Austria skiing with Hadley; in short, whenever he’s describing physical life—action, he is magnificent.
It’s when he describes “friends” that I wince. The final portrait of F. Scott Fitzgerald is in a dialogue with Georges, the chasseur[2], later the bar man, at the Ritz Bar, who doesn’t remember Fitzgerald, though the novelist spent many evenings there.
“Papa, who was this Monsieur Fitzgerald that everyone asks me about?.... But why would I not remember him? Was he a good writer?” And “’I remember you and the Baron von Blixen arriving one night—in what year?’ He smiled.”
“He is dead too.”
“Yes. But one does not forget him. You see what I mean?”
Hemingway contrasts how memorable he himself is, and how unforgettable Baron von Blixen, Isak Dinesen’s first husband, was, with how Fitzgerald has simply disappeared from the chasseur’s memory.
Hemingway assures the man that he will do a portrait of Fitzgerald and then the man will remember him. But Hemingway’s portrait has already served its purpose: to demolish Fitzgerald as a man worthy of remembrance or admiration. I suppose one does with one’s friends exactly what one does to oneself. Hemingway killed himself a year after the book was completed in the spring of 1960.
If genius is the pinnacle of human achievement, then Hemingway served his genius well.
But love? Perhaps love is generosity—towards oneself, other people, and life itself. Our parents give birth to us. They care for us (or most do) from birth to adulthood, and sometimes beyond. We are alive on this beautiful earth, surrounded by mysterious objects, people, adventures, the sweetness of love and the challenge of work. Shouldn’t we return the favor with generosity towards life in all its many forms?
If generosity—love, really—is the pinnacle of human relationship, Hemingway was a sad specimen of humanity.
[1] mandarin oranges
[2] a hotel employee who takes care of outgoing mail, and retrieving theater tickets.
Hemingway, Paris, Stein, memoir in Paris Life
Reader Comments (22)
How delightful! Thank you for your kind words. Marley, Richard and I hope that you and Greg had a double whammy good time on your birthdays.
Much love,
Kaaren (& Richard)
The editor of Esquire, who published Fitzgerald's last stories, said that once, on visiting Fitzgerald who was wearing his bathrobe, Fitzgerald's penis was accidentally disclosed, and it was a penis of perfectly normal and acceptable size. All of this is ridiculous, since neither Hemingway nor Arnold Gingrich saw Fitzgerald's penis erect -- a unimaginable permission, for Fitzgerald.
Poor Hemingway, deranged when he wrote A Movable Feast; what possible immortality could he have been seeking, so lost as he was, wandering just outside the woods of death. Poor Hemingway, what suffering!
And so, you are right about those parts of A Movable Feast and right about other parts. He caused suffering. And the worst parts of A Movable Feast are malice-symptoms tortured up from the maelstrom of his own suffering.
Yes, Martha Gellhorn was quite a lady. And she sure fucked some fine males in her day. And had important adventures and wrote darn well. But Hemingway should have stayed with Hadley and their son. His life would have been fabulous had he done that. I grew up in the town next to Hadley Hemingway. But no one knew that. She lived in Douglaston across Little Neck Bay from Bayside. East Egg. West Egg. Is that why Hemingway resented Fitzgerald? Or was he just a natural ingrate? I dunno.
Good for you, Kaaren.
Bruce
Once again your Paris Play is a perfect delight and a prompt for the investigation of issues I am familiar with.
I found my copy of Moveable Feast which is now on my night table waiting to be cracked. It is an old paperback edition with yellow pages. I will read with your thoughts as a context.
My favorite photo this week is the rooftop shot which is so German Expressionist and I love the richness in the darkness. The one yellow light is a beacon. A window that begs the question, "What goes on in there?"
until then,
love
jon
I think Hemingway himself yearned to go back to that first marriage with Hadley. He almost says so at the end of the book, which is why, I suppose, that Mary Hemingway, his fourth wife, edited those passages out of an earlier edition. It's shocking in the memoir to be shown this idyllic marriage, and then suddenly Pauline is mentioned and he's on to the next marriage. You never have the slightest hint of any cause for separation between Hadley and him. Though he does reveal that Pauline (while seeming to be Hadley's friend) set her sights on marrying him and didn't let up till she did.
The passages about Fitzgerald's confiding in Hemingway his insecurity about his member were so off the wall that I wasn't sure I trusted Hemingway's account. He seemed to hate Zelda so much that it seemed to me possible that he was cooking up stories about her. Even his response to her nervous breakdown is cold indeed: "Scot did not write anything any more that was good until after he knew that she was insane." He doesn't show much subtlety in his understanding of mental illness, though he suffered from it himself.
This is a great sentence: "And the worst parts of A Movable Feast are malice-symptoms tortured up from the maelstrom of his own suffering." Exactly.
Hemingway had too fragile an ego to be married to another gifted artist. He needed a woman whose sole role was to support him. Yes, Martha Gellhorn's writing is terrific. Her letters are wonderful, and her short stories even better. She was also quite loving in her relationship with him, but he was (as John Lennon sang) "just a jealous guy."
I didn't know you grew up in Bayside. But you were born in England, right?
You're going to have to learn to express yourself a little more directly, Bruce. Just a bit too puritanical for my taste, you East Egger, you.
Love,
Kaaren and Richard
Thank you for getting me to think about genius and love and generosity in this way.
And your photos are so right on Richard. They enliven the text in a delightful way.
I'm going to move my feast to New Zealand soon,
love,
Janine
I twice tried to post a response to your LAST message, and it disappeared. We're talking to the techie at our Squarespace site to try to fix this.
As for your message above, yes, I know you know about this issue of balancing being an artist with being a loving man. I think you do an excellent job.
If you're willing to pop for the latest restored edition, it's worth it. Some parts that Mary Hemingway left out, should really be read to appreciate the wistful regret that Hemingway expressed about his treatment of Hadley.
I love that photo, too. The light comes from one of the chambres de bonnes--maids' rooms--in the attic of Paris buildings. That was the kind of room in which Hemingway wrote. Richard took this photo across the courtyard of our building. It does look German Expressionist, doesn't it? I'd like to know what goes on in that room too. What we hope is going on is that the tenant is packing up to move, and that the room will soon be for rent for a reasonable amount as a writing studio.
We're grateful for your constant appreciation, Jon.
Love to you,
Kaaren (& Richard)
You have the balance down perfectly between genius and love. You're living your fullest life as an artist, and you are generous to everyone in your life.
Aren't Richard's photos wonderful? He's a poet with the camera.
When I was five, I imagined growing up to write books that you would illustrate. Now Richard's the visual artist in the house, and it's my dream come true.
What a feast you have in store for you in New Zealand. I wonder if you'll go back to Boulder and sell your house and move right away…?
Give Bayu and Josiah kisses from us, and gather images for your sculptures. You should see Celestine and the Minotaur and the Bumblebee bird in our apartment now. Just gorgeous.
Love, love,
Kaaren & Richard
If you're talking about the father of your children, yes, I can understand why love would trump genius. And the same with one's mate.
But in the larger sense, I think fulfilling one's genius and living a life of generosity are equally important. It's like asking which of the two sexes is more important, male or female. Both! Though the male principle of work, one's genius, and the female principle of love, one's relationship to others and to life, exist in both men and women. I have noticed that people tend not to be very loving if they're unhappy in their work, or haven't yet found their real work.
Maybe Hemingway is an example of someone who experienced big and early success in his work, before he had much time to develop his heart. Maybe that success allowed him to get away with all kinds of behavior that a slower path to success would have prevented. I don't know.
What else is there to do on earth but follow your bliss? Follow your misery?
Diane, you DO respect your calling. I've never met anyone who got her novel from final draft to published as fast as you did. You are MY model.
Love,
Kaaren (& Richard)
Just one more thing to add: goats! :) Such marvelous creatures. And what a wonderful photo of a fine specimen you've posted here! Yes, why *can't* they roam the streets of Paris! Vivent les chevres! {I can't get my French accents working in the comments... excusez-moi!} Wouldn't Marley love a new little goat friend? :) mmmmmm fromage!
love to you both!
dawna
And thanks, Richard, for the info on the Del Rey Club. Best to you both from us. Bill & Ruth
Yes! Projection: Hemingway tried to annihilate Fitzgerald. To have nothing to do with Zelda's "insanity." To cut off Gertrude and Alice because of a love spat. He was battling himself, and he lost every round.
He was NOT aware in retrospect of how the book revealed his own malice; it wasn't published until after his suicide.
His work habits and close observation of the sensual world inspire me too.
Aren't these particular goats magnificent? You just gave me a good idea: we'll take Marley to visit the goats who live near us in the Jardin des Plantes zoo. He'll be thrilled.
By the way, I've taken up your name for Marley, and call him Floofy-pants now. He likes it because it reminds him of you.
Love to you and Michael,
Kaaren and Richard
Thank you so much for forwarding the posts to friends! If you'd like me to add any e-mail addresses to our list of family and friends, just send me the information.
Love, love,
Kaaren (& Richard)
Wonderful to hear from you. I agree with everything you say here. I think a male writer who is egocentric is incapable of portraying women with any depth or subtlety. Hemingway was disconnected from his own female soul (my belief is that we all have contra-sexual souls), so how could he depict women? And Fitzgerald, in Hemingway's depiction of him is open, warm, vulnerable, and adores Zelda, in spite of all their failings and problems. Falsity? I'm not sure it was falsity so much as a mannered control masking shallowness. Or is that the same thing?
The ironic thing is that in spite of Hemingway's malice in this memoir, I think his nonfiction writing is better than his fiction. The clarity and vividness of his writing about Paris itself is beautiful, with no false notes.
The Great Gatsby IS a classic, more lyrical, greater moral complexity, more memorable characters than in Hemingway's stories.
Love to you and Bill,
Kaaren and Richard
Ruth (who wishes she were there)
Cafe Flore was my daughter's main place in Paris in the late 80s and 90s, at which she met both her husbands, the fathers of my grandson. One of them has an ex and daughter living catecorner to Cafe Flore, he got his phd from Sartre and de Beauvoir, and then when they retired/died, from Julia Kristeva. He still hangs out there regularly.
I'm reading and writing a review of Susan Suntree's Sacred Spaces, The Secret History of Southern California. I read with amazement of the bodies (thousands?) found buried in the Ballona Wetlands, under the cliff there. oh, i love this book, (I miss you guys not being here),
--Sharon
I don't know. Let's both look into that. I really shouldn't make any sweeping statements about Hemingway's depiction of women since I haven't read all of his novels. Maybe the portraits of women got better in his later fiction.
Kaaren & Richard (who wish you were here too)
I don't know what Hemingway's attitude towards D.H. Lawrence was, but I'll look into it. And you've made me want to read H. D.'s biographies; I so love her poetry.
Do you mean one of your daughter's ex-husband's exes lives catecorner from Cafe de Flore? I'm confused. Tell me his name, if you'd like, and maybe we'll run into him.
We miss seeing you in L.A., too. When you come to Paris, we're heading straight for Cafe de Flor.
Love,
Kaaren (& Richard)