I hear ya; The Old Man And The Sea was brutally boring to my angsty 15-year-old self. Maybe you read Hills Like White Elephants in high school and (like me) totally didn’t get that it was about abortion. Or you don’t like his terse, “manly” prose. All these are valid reasons to have your hate-on for Papa (am I the only one who’s really weirded out by that nickname?)
Gather around, friends, and have your minds BLOWN. A Moveable Feast is his memoir of the 1920s in Paris with his first wife and kid, when they were poor and idealistic and so in love. The cast of secondary characters is like a who’s who of the 1920s literary scene — F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound– but doesn’t get bogged down in unnecessary description of anyone’s achievements or work. It’s a really engaging, moving mix of anecdotes about batshit crazy authors and quiet, beautifully constructed passages about Paris and the <pretentious alert> transient nature of youth and love.
I now *love* Hemingway, but I never would have if I hadn’t fallen madly in love with this beauty of a book.
“But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.”
“I’ve seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.”