Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast is “restored”

When Joseph Conrad died in 1924, Ernest Hemingway wrote a piece for the Transatlantic Review laying out his position on the legendary author of Heart of Darkness. To the young Hemingway, Conrad had long served as an “antidote” against all bad writing and as a source of inspiration. In his piece, Hemingway related how he had “saved up” Conrad’s novels. Knowing that once he read them all he could never read them again for the first time, the previous summer Hemingway had managed to save four to bring with him to Canada. By the time the summer was coming to a close he’d already raced through three of his Conrad novels. Finally, after saving it until the autumn, he used up the fourth and final Conrad book while sitting up all night in a hotel in Ontario. “When morning came,” wrote Hemingway, “I had used up all my Conrad like a drunkard. I had hoped it would last me the trip, and felt like a young man who has blown his patrimony. But, I thought, he will write more stories. He has lots of time.” But alas, he was wrong, for Joseph Conrad was dead the following year.

I immediately remembered this story when I read about the new version of A Moveable Feast, due to be published in the US this week, because I have lately found myself in a similar predicament. About two years ago I used up all of my Hemingway and have been fiendishly reading biographies and critical studies of the author in a desperate bid to recreate the feeling of first reading his books. So far, I’ve been too proud to move on to things like collected letters (though recently I cracked and read the posthumous Islands in the Stream) so this news got me turning over a new idea in my head — perhaps, just perhaps, a new version of A Moveable Feast would almost be like reading it again for the first time.

Edited by Sean Hemingway, the 42 year-old grandson of the author, the new version of A Moveable Feast is being called the “restored edition”. Apparently, the most significant change is the shift in the portrayal of Pauline Pfeiffer — Hemingway’s second wife. In the new version Hemingway squarely shares the blame for his marital betrayal of first wife Hadley, rather than turning Pauline into a ruthless seductress who tricked him into leaving a happy marriage — as in the original.

Scholars have been quick to point out that Hemingway never finished A Moveable Feast in his lifetime. When he died, it was left in a nearly publishable state which fourth wife Mary Hemingway edited and arranged to create the version most people are familiar with today. As such, there is no authoritative version. Because Hemingway never finished the book, one version is technically as authoritative as the next.

This being the case, besides supplying additional unpublished sketches, what exactly has the main text been “restored” to? Given the authoritativeness of all genuinely created versions that are possible, it seems like the word “restored” is being used a bit deceptively here. From the sound of it, the only things that have been restored are Hemingway’s sense of shared responsibility and the reputation of his second wife.

I haven’t yet read the new edition, but I instinctively worry that by making these changes to the text some of the consistency of viciousness apparent in the first version may be lost.

Carlos Baker keenly notes in his late 60’s study of Hemingway that the rancour displayed towards Pauline in A Moveable Feast is by no means exclusive to her. Indeed, in his analysis Baker is convinced that many of the sketches — in particular those involving Gertrude Stein, Ford Maddox Ford, Zelda Fitzgerald, dos Passos and the Murphy’s (who Hemingway blames for encouraging him to leave his wife for Pauline) — were written with vengeance in mind.

According to Baker, in writing the book Hemingway “explained that he was using a special technique, like a cushion shot in billiards or a double-wall bounce in jai alai…what one learned about the young Hemingway…was revealed in part by watching him rebounding from the personalities of Miss Stein, Ford, Fitzgerald and the wine-sozzled habitues of the Cafe des Amateurs in the rue Mouffetard.” Most often, what one learned about Hemingway through this technique was that he was a disciplined, humorous, serious young artist. However, in addition to this, it is often obvious that many sketches were written with “the tacit assumption of his own superiority, accomplished through the persistent denigration of others” — it was in these places “that the tone of the book sometimes turned sour.”

Looking at the underlying tone of the original book like this, it almost seems like you lose something essential about the kind of writer he was if you “restore” Hemingway to a more responsible position. It would be nice and pretty if he wrote that way, but often he did not. To transform the ending into something more palatable may be just as authoritative as the bitter conclusion in the original edition. However, as authoritative as it would be, and despite how desirable it is — it might not make for a better book.

In any case, I withhold all judgement until I read the new edition — after all, perhaps reading it will really be like reading Hemingway again for the first time.