Review: A Moveable Feast

Review By David Marcus Karp

I finally finished A Moveable Feast today, and I’m ready to move to Paris once I’m out of college.

            Whether that’s a feasible and wise decision on my part is questionable, but I will say that Ernest Hemingway’s memoir does nothing more than makes you fall in love with Paris. With the walks along the River Seine, the many cafes, the bookstores, the food, the society (though some things may have changed since the 1920’s, of course), the European mindset, and whatnot, how could you NOT want to go to Paris?

            But the memoir tells about 1920’s Paris so vividly and perfectly, it’s almost surreal. The book really reads like a novel, with its flowing narration, its simplicity prose, it’s moving but clear imagery, and it’s “character” development. The way that each chapter tells a different story/experience in Paris yet they all connect to the theme of a writer in 1920’s Paris is a really cleaver way to write a memoir. I felt like I was looking through a photo album of his time there, each part having something unique but just as interesting a story to tell!

            The book does a great, great job with description of the scene Hemingway came to love. The balance of action and description is built like a Hemingway novel, which I believe is why it’s so readable. The linear structure is that of a short story collection of expanded but beautifully told instances but keeps the reader engaged in the tales of Paris’s literary writing scene, Paris’s “golden age” and some of the most interesting interactions between Hemingway and the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, Ezra Pound, and, of course, the great Gertrude Stein (which Hemingway had some of the best conversations with, in my opinion)!

            The memoir didn’t take me too long to read, partially because I could not put it down and partially because it’s not the longest book in the world (coming from a pretty slow reader), but it’s just the right length (unless you get the restored 2009 edition, which has a few new edits, additions, and other new stuff, along with a forward by Hemingway’s second son himself, Patrick Hemingway. I happened to read the original version).

            When you read the book, it feels like you are walking side by side with Hemingway on his adventures through Paris. The narrative brings the classic feel of Hemingway to a real life account, which is also entertaining and thought provoking. Of course, Hemingway was a café guy in his free time, which I can very much relate too, so this is one for café lovers, as well as book lovers and Hemingway fans. In fact, this was the first thing I ever read from him, and I’m glad it was, since these were taken from journals written before even finished and published his first novel, The Sun Also Rises. I got to see what Hemingway was like off of the page just as his writing career is starting, which brings a lot to context, and brings for a great introduction to his writing style and his personality both on and off the page.

            So all and all, this memoir is a must for anyone who reads. It has now made me fall in love with Hemingway and is ranked as one of top favorites. The book will make you want to go to Paris and hope the same thing happens to you that did to Owen Wilson in Woody Allen’s Midnight In Paris.

            Look out for Justin’s next review on Ellen Hopkins’s Impulse!

Review of: Fahrenheit 451

You are reading-that’s a good start-but you are reading a review on the book Fahrenheit 451 which features a world eerily similar to our own with one major difference-books are banned. Nearly all reading is banned and books are good for one thing only, burning-burning with the houses they were hidden in.

            Ray Bradbury’s book Fahrenheit 451, written more than 50 years ago, is still relevant and defiant against censorship even today. The book follows a fireman whose job is to burn rather than put fires out. With striking similarities to George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World where books have a profound position in the societies of each: Orwell-individual thought and books are banned, Huxley-there is seemingly no need for reading with so much pleasure and perfection, and in Bradbury’s-books are not needed as they cause thoughts and open a person to the actual real world around them; a world suffering and moving through motions without love and freedom and individualistic expression-which can be said about all three. It is perhaps a world we all fear.

            Ray Bradbury has a heart for freedom of written word, for fantastical and beautifully constructed images that must not-for they cannot-be changed; otherwise one is delving into the mind of the author and changing the very thought they had formed, a thought that is and was undeniably there. A book can be edited, something Ray is wholeheartedly against (and I wholeheartedly agree with him), but it would then lose it’s essence, it’s reason for being a book. Books are stories, thoughts, voices speaking through history and time to the audience here and not yet to come. They reach through to touch hearts and minds to bend and reshape so as we can shape our own. Changing one word the author wrote and was therefore printed, is changing our very existence. Which is exactly what the firemen were meant to do, to edit inside this fearfully split and isolated world.

            The fireman the reader follows in this fascinating novel is Guy Montag. Fireman of ten years, Guy never questioned his life or his reason for burning these books on midnight runs until he meets a young thoughtful girl, enchantingly free and loving-by far not carefree but possesses a great amount of pensiveness-because of her Guy finally felt accepted by someone in a society that follows motions-without logical emotional reasoning-but with logical apathy in order to silence dissent and disagreement. Guy later runs into an old university professor who helps him dream and take action toward a future where people can think for themselves and feel an ounce of worth once again. But Guy has a terrible secret, that if found out, would ruin his plans and his world.

            This book, honestly, is a good read. One that I look back and wished I read early in my life but at least I’ve had the privilege to read it at all without a word changed or cut out. It is short and took me only three or so days to read. I highly recommend it to those that have also taken a liking to the other books previously mentioned in this review (1984 and Brave New World). And if you have read this book but not any of the other two, then I highly recommend those! Thanks for reading! My next review will be in two weeks and over Ellen Hopkins New York Times bestseller: Impulse. Look for Dave's review next Monday on A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway!