Hemingway, Ernest

A Movable Feast

London, England: Victor Gollancz, 1964. First Edition. Hardcover. Ever the contrarian, “A Moveable Feast” is Your Devoted Managing Curator’s favorite work by the canonical early-Modernist titan, Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961). “A Moveable Fest” is like a great documentary. The only difference is the prior’s having been printed to page and bound between boards, — an effect that fans of vivid, film-like prose are quick to praise, and happily “get behind.” This is because “A Moveable Feast” is a masterclass in evocation. Hemingway endeavors not to isolate “all the details,” but that he will find the right ones, and the ‘right ones’ are all he needs to pack on the trip, or bring on the plane. The “instructional” value of the work cannot be underestimated. One can almost smell the lindens, and feel the gentle breeze as the evening jogs onward, and night blankets Paris. The book is further differentiated from other works by Hemingway in that, despite having been published three short years after his untimely suicide, many of the passages to what Ginsberg would’ve called “journal scratchings” dating back to his own life-&-times in Paris in the 20’s. “A Moveable Feast,” then unsurprisingly brings to the table anecdotes of superior vintage and quality. He relates memories of “Gertrude Stein in her rich studio, advising them [Hemingway and his then-wife] to buy pictures instead of clothes; Ezra Pound, whom Hemingway teaches to box; Wyndham Lewis; James Joyce; Ford Madox Ford; and, perhaps most moving of all, Scott Fitzgerald, who had just published ‘The Great Gatsby’ and was suffering from his wife’s wild jealousy of his writing. “This latter party of the (above-quoted) flap copy rings especially true. Take, for example, this passage (which opens the “Scott Fitzgerald” chapter. “His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.” Hardcover in unrestored, clipped dust-jacket: the First UK Edition, complete with gorgeous front cover design by Hans Tisdall. Book in laudably fine condition with only minute-to-moderate shelf-wear, light bumping to front, back cover & at select locations along fine-edges of same; some age-typical toning & few-&-far-between, fleck-like exhibits of browning-spotting to text block. Original, unrestored First Issue UK dust-jacket in strikingly fine condition with only light-to-mild shelf-wear, a few pesky, though delightfully understated exhibits of bumping at/along fine-edges & corners of same; correspondent age-typical toning, while here comprised, primarily in the form of essentially two faintly-visible brushstroke-like swaths that seem to get lost among the colors which constitute the work’s alluring cover art; to this, we add only ancient coffee-stain (equal parts condition infraction as decided enrichment) at bottommost fine-edge of the dust-jacket, at front cover; a few similar, swath-like & fundamentally contained exhibits of browning present at recto of interior front flap, else pristine. Fine / Fine. [Item #5319]

Price: $400.00