Papa

I never was much of a Hemingway fan. Forced to read For Whom The Bell Tolls in high school, I found his writing style too staccato for my tastes. But he is, undoubtedly, one of the greatest writers that America has ever produced.

Today I started A Moveable Feast and, as the early 20th century is my favorite time period, I am enjoying it very much.

It does make one wonder how at certain times and in certain places whole swarms of artistic masters appear and intermingle. Paris of the 1920s was such a time an place and A Movable Feast is a memoir of that magical era. Famous people from all the arts flocked to the cafes and salons of Paris. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Josephine Baker, Picasso, Matisse, Marcel Proust, Max Ernst and T.S. Elliot to name just a few, exchanged ideas, drinks,and occasionally punches, while creating the art and influencing the ideas of a generation.

Sadly, many, many of these great artists ended badly. Hemingway himself blew his brains out at 61. Why does genius so often go hand in hand with madness?

Now that I have started this book I will have to learn more of this era, this city and these people. Fascinating, wild, romantic, emphatic people living for the moment and epitomizing the best and worst of the years between the world wars. Absolutely breath taking adventure! Gotta love it!