A Moveable Feast

The book and its shape

Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast is a memoir of his early years as an expatriate journalist and aspiring writer in Paris during the 1920s. Published posthumously in the United States on May 5, 1964, it is a work of autobiographical nonfiction rather than a conventional novel. Its chapters are connected recollections, scenes, and portraits, not episodes arranged around one continuous plot. The book returns to a formative period before Hemingway became famous and considers it through the perspective of a writer looking back on youth.

The narrative moves among Paris streets, cafés, rented rooms, meals, and meetings with other writers. Hemingway recalls working in cafés, living with limited means, and enduring hunger and periods when writing would not come easily. At such moments, he tells himself to begin with one true sentence and trust that the rest may follow. His first wife, Hadley Richardson, shares this precarious life with him; their days include work, travel, and the ordinary intimacies of a young marriage. The memoir also portrays figures in the city’s literary and artistic community. Gertrude Stein appears as an influential mentor who offers advice about writing and life, while Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James Joyce belong to the wider circle recalled in the book. These encounters contribute to a portrait of artistic community, but the focus remains on Hemingway’s experience and judgments rather than on a detached survey of the period.

Composition and themes

The memoir looks chiefly to the years commonly described as 1921–1926. A story about its composition begins in 1956, when Hemingway recovered two trunks from the basement of the Ritz in Paris; the retrieved material helped him return to those memories. He began writing the book in the autumn of 1957 and completed a draft in the spring of 1960. He did not live to see it published. After his death, his widow, Mary Hemingway, and his friend and editor A. E. Hotchner took part in preparing the manuscript for publication. Hotchner proposed the title after recalling Hemingway’s description of Paris as a moveable feast. The published memoir is therefore both an account of the young writer’s life and a shaped work assembled from recollection and surviving material.

Its central subjects include the discipline of making art, the material hardships of a young writer, marriage and companionship, mentorship, friendship, ambition, and the changing meaning of memory. Hunger is more than a recurring practical difficulty: it makes the connection between bodily need and creative work palpable. Cafés and streets are not merely picturesque settings; they become places where observation, routine, and writing meet. The book’s method is spare and attentive to concrete detail, while its retrospective voice allows affection, regret, humor, and later judgment to coexist. Because memoir is a selection and interpretation of experience, the book should not be treated as a neutral record of every person or event it recalls. Its particular value lies in the vivid personal perspective through which it renders a literary life in formation.

Legacy

A Moveable Feast has become one of Hemingway’s best-known works of nonfiction and a lasting account of Paris between the wars. It offers readers an intimate view of the years before his major success and a memorable statement about persistence in the work of writing. Its combination of personal recollection, literary portraiture, and sharply observed urban scenes has helped make it a standard point of entry into Hemingway’s life and artistic outlook. At the same time, it is more than a guide to famous expatriates: its enduring appeal rests on the close attention it gives to the daily conditions in which a young writer learns to work. The book has also strengthened the place of Paris in the popular imagination of Hemingway’s biography, while inviting continuing discussion about how memory and retrospective storytelling shape a life into literature.

About the Author

Ernest Hemingway

Origins and formation

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, near Chicago. He grew up in a family that valued education, and his father’s enthusiasm for outdoor pursuits helped introduce him to fishing, hunting, camping, and life in nature. Such experiences later supplied recurring settings and subjects in his fiction. As a high-school student, Hemingway did well academically and showed a particular aptitude for English. He wrote for school literary publications and edited a student paper. After graduating, he did not attend college. In 1917 he began working as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. Newspaper work trained him to observe closely, select telling details, and write with economy, habits that became important to his literary style.

After the United States entered the First World War, Hemingway joined a volunteer ambulance unit serving in Italy. He was wounded at the front and decorated by the Italian government. The experience left a lasting mark on his understanding of violence, fear, injury, and the difficulty of living after war. Back in the United States, he continued as a journalist and later returned to Europe to report on events. In the 1920s he lived in Paris with his first wife, Hadley Richardson, and encountered members of the expatriate literary community, including Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The young writer’s limited means, daily practice, and relationships in Paris later became central material for his memoir A Moveable Feast.

Career and major works

Hemingway established himself first through short fiction and a distinctive, restrained prose style. His early book Three Stories and Ten Poems appeared in 1923, followed by the collection In Our Time in 1925. His 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises, portraying postwar disillusionment among young people in Europe, became a landmark of his early career. A Farewell to Arms (1929) brought the emotional costs of war into a story of love and loss and further strengthened his international reputation. His later major works include the story collection The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1936), the Spanish Civil War novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), and The Old Man and the Sea (1952), about an old fisherman’s struggle with the sea. The last won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953 and was a major factor in Hemingway’s Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. His Paris memoir, A Moveable Feast, was published posthumously in 1964.

Across fiction and nonfiction, Hemingway wrote about courage, defeat, duty, war, love, and death. His economical language often lets physical action and concrete detail convey emotions that are not explained at length. The apparent toughness of his characters and narrators can coexist with vulnerability, grief, and uncertainty. His journalism, wartime experience, travel, and sustained practice as a writer all contributed to the development of this approach.

Later life and reputation

Hemingway died on July 2, 1961, in Ketchum, Idaho, aged sixty-one. He married four times; his first marriage, to Hadley Richardson, belongs to the period revisited in A Moveable Feast. Published after his death, the memoir gave readers a portrait of his life before fame and showed how he reshaped early experience through retrospective narration. Hemingway is widely regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the twentieth century and a leading figure associated with the Lost Generation. His Pulitzer and Nobel honors reflect the international standing of his work, while his spare prose and attention to action and detail have influenced generations of novelists and journalists. His books remain widely read and studied, and his literary legacy continues to attract both admiration and critical debate.

StoryFlow

Hemingway’s Paris Apprenticeship

This flow traces how Ernest Hemingway turns an impoverished Paris life into a sustained apprenticeship in observation, work, and artistic independence.

From True Sentence to Novel

This flow follows Ernest Hemingway’s developing craft from simple sentences and deliberate stopping to the demanding revision of a novel.

A Life Measured Against Poverty

This flow follows the Hemingway household as limited money shapes its routines, pleasures, ambitions, and vulnerability.

Knowledge Graph

Storylines

Early 1920s, after Hemingway and Hadley settle in Paris

A Poor Paris Home

[Ernest Hemingway](entity:character-recall-character-ernest-hemingway-cb7a9866f33d) and [Hadley Richardson](entity:character-recall-character-hadley-richardson-e30697cc7266) make a home in a small flat on [Rue Cardinal Lemoine](entity:location-recall-location-rue-cardinal-lemoine-b245eee7cb0e), with little money, no hot water, and no indoor toilet. Their poverty is real, but they take pride in eating well, reading, and building a life together rather than measuring themselves by the comfort they lack. Hemingway works at cafés and in a rented room high above the city, trying to earn enough from journalism while he learns to write fiction. The contrast between hardship and their sense of good fortune becomes one of the memoir’s governing tensions.

An early Paris autumn

The First Cold Rains

When autumn gives way to cold rain, Hemingway walks past the crowded [Café des Amateurs](entity:location-recall-location-caf-des-amateurs-b407c0dd1a53) and the sodden streets near [Place de la Contrescarpe](entity:location-recall-location-place-de-la-contresc-7f71f4231cb1). The smell and misery of the café, and the drabness brought on by the weather, make the city feel suddenly bleak. He considers climbing to his cold workroom and spending money on fuel, then decides against it. Instead, he walks across [Paris](entity:location-recall-location-paris-c02b439ce220) toward a warm café near [Place Saint-Michel](entity:location-recall-location-place-saint-michel-5b1f4170d05a), carrying the day’s weather into the story he will write there.

That rainy autumn afternoon

The Girl at the Window

At the café near [Place Saint-Michel](entity:location-recall-location-place-saint-michel-5b1f4170d05a), Hemingway writes a story set in Michigan while a beautiful young woman waits alone by the window. She unsettles him, and he imagines that, simply by noticing her, he has made her part of his private world. He becomes absorbed in the story and does not see when she leaves. After finishing, he eats oysters and drinks white wine, moving from the emptiness of completed work toward happiness and plans for the future.

Later that same rainy day

The Swiss Winter Plan

With winter settling over [Paris](entity:location-recall-location-paris-c02b439ce220), Hemingway decides that he and [Hadley](entity:character-recall-character-hadley-a2a05fba608c) should leave for a mountain chalet near [Les Avants](entity:location-recall-location-les-avants-d2f2b17f2ec0). He imagines snow among the pines, warm evenings, open windows, and time together with their books. Hadley welcomes the idea and wants to go at once. Their decision turns the miserable weather into a reason for a shared adventure, and reflects how carefully they make even modest travel fit their finances.

After the stay near Les Avants

The Return to Paris

Hemingway and [Hadley](entity:character-recall-character-hadley-a2a05fba608c) return to a clear, cold [Paris](entity:location-recall-location-paris-c02b439ce220). The city’s winter light, bare trees, and freshly washed paths now feel beautiful rather than bleak, and the mountain journey has made the distances and hills seem easier. Hemingway resumes work in his room above the roofs. He brings fruit and chestnuts to eat beside the fire, grateful for the warmth and for the renewed rhythm of working each day.

During the first winter after the mountain trip

One True Sentence

When a story will not begin, Hemingway tells himself to stop worrying and write the truest sentence he knows. Once that plain sentence is on the page, he can usually find his way into the work. He also learns to cut away elaborate openings and ornament, and to stop each day while the story still has life in it. The methods become a discipline: make the writing simple and exact, then leave the work alone until the next morning.

During Hemingway’s winter writing routine

Learning from Cézanne

After a good morning’s work, Hemingway walks through [Jardin du Luxembourg](entity:location-recall-location-jardin-du-luxembourg-c7d54b8faf23) and visits [Musée du Luxembourg](entity:location-recall-location-mus-e-du-luxembourg-029cceb08ce1) to study the paintings, especially those of Cézanne. He senses that clear sentences alone will not give his stories the depth he wants. The paintings offer a lesson he cannot yet explain. He keeps it private, taking in how art can create dimensions beyond direct description and carrying that problem back into his work.

After Hemingway returns from the mountains

The First Visits to Stein

Hemingway and [Hadley](entity:character-recall-character-hadley-a2a05fba608c) visit [Gertrude Stein](entity:character-recall-character-gertrude-stein-63ac62da7e47) at [27 rue de Fleurus](entity:location-recall-location-27-rue-de-fleurus-c13568127277). The studio feels like a warm, comfortable museum, filled with major paintings and generous food and drink; Stein and her companion welcome the young couple as promising children. Hemingway is drawn to the art and conversation, even though he senses that the wives are treated as secondary. The visits begin an important friendship and introduce him to the literary and artistic circle around Stein.

During an early visit to the Hemingway flat

The Inaccrochable Story

Stein reads Hemingway’s story “Up in Michigan” and says that it is good, but cannot be hung or sold because it is inaccrochable. Hemingway argues that he has used the words people would actually use, because those words make the story true. Stein insists that he should not write work that publishers and readers cannot accept. Hemingway does not persuade her, but he recognizes that the disagreement belongs to his own artistic decisions, not to a debate he needs to win.

During the same early period of friendship

Stein’s Advice on Pictures

Stein tells Hemingway that a person without great wealth must choose between spending on clothes and buying pictures. She advises him to dress for comfort and durability, then use the savings to purchase work by painters of his own generation. Hemingway protests that even such economies would not put Picasso within his reach. Stein replies that he should seek serious artists he can afford, while teasing him that women’s clothing is the more expensive obstacle.

A later winter afternoon at 27 rue de Fleurus

The Conversation About Sex

Stein tells Hemingway that he knows too little about homosexuality and offers a sweeping distinction between men and women. Hemingway responds with memories of dangerous encounters and with examples of people whose conduct he finds cruel or predatory. The exchange exposes their contrasting judgments and the limits of Stein’s confidence in her own explanations. Hemingway leaves unsettled, then tells [Hadley](entity:character-recall-character-hadley-a2a05fba608c) what he has heard; the couple find comfort in their own understanding of each other.

Early in Hemingway’s Paris years

A Library Without a Deposit

Short of money for books, Hemingway goes to [Shakespeare and Company](entity:location-recall-location-shakespeare-and-comp-5e9476ce749b), [Sylvia Beach](entity:character-recall-character-sylvia-beach-adcdd2042bcc)’s bookshop and lending library. He admits he cannot pay the membership deposit, but Beach gives him a card and lets him borrow books anyway. He leaves with Russian and English books, surprised by her trust and kindness. The library gives him access to a literary education that his finances would otherwise have denied him.

After Hemingway joins the lending library

Books for the Long Winter

Hemingway borrows major works by Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky, and later reads Chekhov and other writers. Books become companions in the mountains as well as in [Paris](entity:location-recall-location-paris-c02b439ce220), opening what he describes as a new world of landscapes, people, and moral complexity. The encounter with Russian literature changes his standards and ambitions. He admires writing that makes human beings and their circumstances vivid, even when the prose itself seems imperfect to him.

During the years Hemingway and Stein remain close

Evenings with Stein

Hemingway often stops at [27 rue de Fleurus](entity:location-recall-location-27-rue-de-fleurus-c13568127277) after work, where Stein talks about painters, people, and her own writing. She shows him the great quantity of manuscript she produces each day and values publication and recognition as well as the act of writing. Hemingway admires her insights into rhythm and repetition but sees her resistance to revision as a weakness. Their friendship is affectionate and intellectually stimulating, yet shaped by Stein’s desire for literary acceptance.

During Hemingway’s early Paris years

Walking the Seine

After work, Hemingway walks along the quais and watches the fishermen, boats, and changing currents of the [Seine](entity:location-recall-location-1c99276eafb3). He learns how the men fish and sometimes buys wine, bread, and sausage to eat in the sun while he watches them. He does not take up fishing himself, preferring to save his money and avoid becoming tied to the sport. The river nevertheless becomes a place of companionship and thought, a living part of the city rather than a backdrop.

A spring morning in the rue Cardinal Lemoine flat

The Spring Goat Herd

Hemingway wakes early to work while [Hadley](entity:character-recall-character-hadley-a2a05fba608c) sleeps and watches a goatherd bring his herd up the street. A neighbor buys fresh milk, and the ordinary scene gives the morning a vivid, almost pastoral life. Hemingway goes out for a racing paper and discovers that horses are running at Enghien. The possibility of a day at the races takes shape as he hurries home to finish his work.

That spring racing day

The Winning Long Shots

Hemingway and [Hadley](entity:character-recall-character-hadley-a2a05fba608c) take a cheap train to Enghien and spend the day studying the horses. A friend from the racing world gives Hemingway two choices, and both win at long odds, bringing the couple an unusual amount of money. They divide the winnings between spending and a separate racing fund. For a moment, the spring seems to offer everything they need, but the success also encourages a gambling habit that will later consume more time than they can spare.

Later in the same spring

Memory as Hunger

After a successful day at the races, Hemingway and [Hadley](entity:character-recall-character-hadley-a2a05fba608c) walk through [Paris](entity:location-recall-location-paris-c02b439ce220) and recall trips with [Chink](entity:character-recall-character-chink-0a3aa225bd4a), including mountain journeys, fishing, and meals shared with their friend. Hadley remembers the conversations and details as part of a life the three of them made together. On a bridge over the river, she tells Hemingway that memory is a kind of hunger. Even after they eat at [Michaud’s](entity:location-recall-location-michaud-s-467180072655), the feeling remains: happiness and abundance cannot erase longing for what has passed.

Over the following racing seasons

The Gambling Habit

Hemingway returns to the races after work and becomes increasingly involved in handicapping. He studies horses, trainers, jockeys, odds, and the changing behavior of the courses, especially at [Hippodrome d’Auteuil](entity:location-recall-location-hippodrome-d-auteuil-e282e2108e4e) and Enghien. What began as an occasional pleasure becomes nearly a full-time occupation, and he recognizes that careful study will not reliably make money. The excitement and knowledge draw him deeper even as they compete with the work he needs to do as a writer.

After several seasons of racing

Giving Up the Track

Hemingway finally stops working the races. He is relieved to be free of the demands of the track, though the decision leaves an emptiness that he understands as the cost of giving up something that had mattered to him. He deposits the separate racing money and meets his friend Mike Ward for lunch. Ward explains that anything requiring a bet in order to be exciting is not worth watching, and recommends bicycle racing as a sport Hemingway can enjoy without gambling.

During a trip from Paris to Lausanne

The Lost Manuscripts

[Hadley](entity:character-recall-character-hadley-a2a05fba608c) packs Hemingway’s manuscripts, including originals, typescripts, and carbons, into a suitcase to surprise him in [Lausanne](entity:location-recall-location-lausanne-20fc9ef0ab34). At the Gare de [Lyon](entity:location-recall-location-lyon-1a930ca08d16), the suitcase is stolen, destroying almost all of the work he has completed to that point. Hadley is devastated and struggles to tell him what happened. Hemingway returns to [Paris](entity:location-recall-location-paris-c02b439ce220) after learning the truth, tries to comfort her, and resolves that he will write again, though the loss marks a severe break in his early career.

After the manuscript theft, at Cortina d’Ampezzo

The First Story After Loss

Hemingway begins writing again at [Cortina d’Ampezzo](entity:location-recall-location-cortina-d-ampezzo-63eb0632285f), producing “Out of Season,” a story about a fishing trip. He leaves out the actual ending, in which an old man hangs himself, testing the idea that what a writer knowingly omits can deepen the story. The work restores his confidence that he can continue after the manuscripts are gone. He decides that longer stories will help him prepare for a novel, but refuses to begin one merely because he needs money or believes it is expected of him.

After Hemingway gives up journalism

Hunger at the Museum

With no steady newspaper income and few story sales, Hemingway sometimes skips lunch and walks through the Luxembourg gardens to avoid food. He finds that hunger sharpens his perception of the paintings at [Musée du Luxembourg](entity:location-recall-location-mus-e-du-luxembourg-029cceb08ce1), especially those by Cézanne. He treats the effect as both useful and dangerous: hunger can train attention, but it can also turn into self-deception. The experience links his physical poverty to the discipline and heightened observation he seeks in writing.

One hungry afternoon after a visit to Shakespeare and Company

A Meal at Lipp’s

At [Shakespeare and Company](entity:location-recall-location-shakespeare-and-comp-5e9476ce749b), [Sylvia Beach](entity:character-recall-character-sylvia-beach-adcdd2042bcc) notices that Hemingway is too thin and asks whether he is eating. He admits that he has missed lunch, then feels ashamed of complaining about the hardship he chose when he gave up journalism. He goes to [Lipp's](entity:location-recall-location-lipp-s-05ba54c36fca) and slowly eats potatoes, sausage, bread, and beer. As he eats, he recalls the stolen manuscripts and the first story he managed to write afterward, turning the meal into a reckoning with poverty, ambition, and persistence.

Later that same afternoon

A New Story in the Café

After eating, Hemingway walks to the [Closerie des Lilas](entity:location-recall-location-closerie-des-lilas-c33a15103e87) and begins a story about a river and a return from war. The story contains no direct mention of the war, and he concentrates instead on making the river and the surrounding country real. He knows that the work must continue the next morning, and that no other concern matters as much at that moment. The scene shows him rebuilding his craft through focused attention rather than through a return to the lost manuscripts.

An autumn evening during Hemingway’s years at the Closerie

Ford at the Lilas

[Ford Madox Ford](entity:character-recall-character-ford-madox-ford-42ccdf497014) comes out of the [Closerie des Lilas](entity:location-recall-location-closerie-des-lilas-c33a15103e87) and joins Hemingway at his table. He invites Hemingway and [Hadley](entity:character-recall-character-hadley-a2a05fba608c) to a dance hall Hemingway already knows from his earlier life on [Rue Cardinal Lemoine](entity:location-recall-location-rue-cardinal-lemoine-b245eee7cb0e). Ford boasts that he has cut Hilaire Belloc, but Hemingway has barely noticed the encounter. Their conversation turns to the rules of gentlemen and social insults, revealing Ford’s self-importance and Hemingway’s amused skepticism.

During Hemingway’s early writing years at the Closerie

A Café Interruption

A young man enters the café while Hemingway is trying to write and complains that his own writing has failed him. Hemingway first tries to ignore him, then turns on him with deliberate cruelty, telling him to stop talking and to find another occupation. The visitor accepts Hemingway’s suggestion that he become a critic, and the two drink together while he begins to judge Hemingway’s work as too stark and lean. Hemingway sees the exchange as a comic birth of a new critical voice, though the young man never becomes the celebrated critic Hemingway briefly imagines.

A spring evening when Hemingway is focused on work

Pascin at the Dome

After a productive day, Hemingway meets [Jules Pascin](entity:character-recall-character-jules-pascin-f36093ba942c) at [Le Dôme](entity:location-recall-location-le-d-me-b53994a00c6c) with two young models. Pascin is drunk but lucid, teasing the women and encouraging Hemingway to join their evening, while Hemingway insists that he must return to [Hadley](entity:character-recall-character-hadley-a2a05fba608c). The scene reveals Pascin’s mixture of charm, sexual bravado, and artistic wit. Hemingway later remembers him from this lively night after learning that Pascin has died by suicide, preserving the painter in memory as he was before that end.

During Hemingway’s friendship with Ezra Pound

Boxing in Pound’s Studio

[Ezra Pound](entity:character-recall-character-ezra-pound-16ae211e9898) asks Hemingway to teach him to box, and the two spar in Pound’s studio. Hemingway tries to help him move and punch correctly while avoiding humiliating him in front of [Wyndham Lewis](entity:character-recall-character-wyndham-lewis-9a383102f502), who watches with apparent hope that Pound will be hurt. Hemingway finds Lewis repellent and remembers his eyes as especially sinister. Later, [Gertrude Stein](entity:character-recall-character-gertrude-stein-63ac62da7e47) calls him the Measuring Worm, a phrase Hemingway considers kinder than his own first judgment.

Before T. S. Eliot receives the Dial award

The Bel Esprit Campaign

[Ezra Pound](entity:character-recall-character-ezra-pound-16ae211e9898) and Natalie Barney create [Bel Esprit](entity:organization-recall-organization-bel-esprit-1ea0d739ce12) to raise money so [T. S. Eliot](entity:character-recall-character-t-s-eliot-eaf798fa4041) can leave his bank job and write poetry. Hemingway supports the plan and energetically solicits contributions, treating its small Greek temple emblem as a test of whether people possess the proper spirit. The project loses urgency after Eliot receives the Dial award and gains other support. Hemingway later admits that he spent money he had earmarked for the fund on betting at Enghien, a lapse that leaves him morally uneasy even though his wagers prospered.

After Hemingway returns from Canada

The Lost Generation Remark

At a garage, Stein’s young mechanic is reprimanded for not being serious about repairing her car. The garage owner calls him part of a lost generation, and Stein repeats the judgment to Hemingway, extending it to all the young people who served in the war. Hemingway challenges her by asking whether the mechanic was drunk and by recalling the realities of wartime service. Walking home, he thinks about the dead and wounded, then decides that every generation is lost in some way while still feeling affection for Stein as a friend.

After years of friendship with Stein

Stein’s Friendship Unravels

Hemingway continues to help Stein with her long manuscript, including arranging its serialization and reading proofs. On a spring visit to say goodbye before her trip south, he hears Stein pleading with her companion in a private moment and leaves rather than intrude. That encounter becomes, for Hemingway, the strange end of their friendship. He still performs small favors and later makes peace outwardly with Stein, but he says he can no longer restore the friendship in his heart or mind.

During Hemingway’s time in Pound’s studio circle

The Death Marked Poet

Hemingway meets [Ernest Walsh](entity:character-recall-character-ernest-walsh-461c1107e39f) in [Ezra Pound](entity:character-recall-character-ezra-pound-16ae211e9898)’s studio, where Walsh arrives with two wealthy young women and speaks intensely with Pound. Walsh later gains financial backing for a literary magazine and tells Hemingway that he will receive its large prize. At lunch, Hemingway rejects the promised award as ethically improper, even as Walsh flatters him and appeals to their shared name. Hemingway remains courteous and later helps Walsh’s magazine through the printers, but he does not accept the prize Walsh had offered.

During an autumn in Hemingway’s Paris years

Shipman at the Lilas

[Evan Shipman](entity:character-recall-character-evan-shipman-1590df1188f6) waits for Hemingway at the [Closerie des Lilas](entity:location-recall-location-closerie-des-lilas-c33a15103e87) and talks with him about Dostoyevsky, whose novels they find powerful but difficult to reread. Their conversation moves from literature to the café’s new management, which plans to replace the familiar waiters and their mustaches with an American-style bar. The next week, Hemingway sees the waiters in their new uniforms and learns that Shipman is helping one of them adjust to the change. Their friendship is grounded in work, books, horses, and a shared affection for the café’s ordinary people.

Shortly before Pound leaves Paris for Rapallo

The Opium Jar

[Ezra Pound](entity:character-recall-character-ezra-pound-16ae211e9898) asks Hemingway to keep a jar of opium and give it to [Ralph Cheever Dunning](entity:character-recall-character-ralph-cheever-dunni-41368a842bdd) only if Dunning truly needs it. Dunning, an opium-dependent poet who has neglected food, has previously been close to death before Pound helps arrange medical care. When Dunning climbs onto a roof and refuses to come down, Hemingway carries the jar to him. Dunning throws it back at Hemingway and pelts him with milk bottles, so Hemingway retrieves the cracked jar and leaves without delivering it.

During Hemingway’s Paris years, before the Lyon trip

The First Meeting with Fitzgerald

[F. Scott Fitzgerald](entity:character-recall-character-f-scott-fitzgerald-9ae4aa1cf5e5) enters the [Dingo Bar](entity:location-recall-location-dingo-bar-94cae66f7368) with the pitcher Dunc Chaplin and praises Hemingway’s writing at length. Hemingway is embarrassed by the praise and studies Fitzgerald’s appearance while Fitzgerald drinks champagne and questions him about whether he and [Hadley](entity:character-recall-character-hadley-a2a05fba608c) slept together before marriage. As Fitzgerald presses the intimate question, his face seems to tighten into a death mask. Chaplin assures Hemingway that Fitzgerald is all right, and Hemingway later discovers that Fitzgerald remembers the night differently, insisting that he merely left because of people he disliked.

A few days after Hemingway meets Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby

Hemingway meets Fitzgerald again at the [Closerie des Lilas](entity:location-recall-location-closerie-des-lilas-c33a15103e87), where Fitzgerald is sober, charming, and eager to discuss writing. He describes how he alters stories to make them sell, while Hemingway argues that such compromises risk damaging a writer’s talent. Fitzgerald lends Hemingway his last available copy of The Great Gatsby. Reading it changes Hemingway’s view of Fitzgerald: whatever his weaknesses, Fitzgerald has written a genuinely fine novel, and Hemingway commits himself to helping him if he can.

The next morning after Fitzgerald proposes the Lyon trip

The Missed Train

Hemingway arrives at the Gare de [Lyon](entity:location-recall-location-lyon-1a930ca08d16) expecting to travel with Fitzgerald, who is bringing the tickets, but Fitzgerald does not appear before the train leaves. Hemingway boards alone, buys a ticket, and sends word that he will wait for him in Lyon. The delay begins a trip shaped by confusion and expense. Hemingway is angry at first, then decides to use the journey as a lesson in accepting an invitation and relying on another person.

The first evening Hemingway waits in Lyon

The Fire Eater

Unable to find Fitzgerald, Hemingway goes to a café and meets a fire eater who also bends coins with his jaws. The performer says there is little money in his trade and offers to tell Hemingway extraordinary stories in exchange for a fair share of any earnings. They eat inexpensive food together, and the fire eater proposes a journey to North Africa in search of sensational material. Hemingway declines to make plans but remembers the man’s directness and the unexpected companionship of the evening.

The following morning

Fitzgerald Arrives in Lyon

Fitzgerald finally appears at Hemingway’s hotel, apologizing for the mix-up and explaining that he has searched the town for him. They eat a long hotel breakfast and arrange an elaborate picnic lunch, losing time before they even reach the car. At the garage, Hemingway discovers that Fitzgerald’s Renault has no top and has been poorly maintained. The mechanic pleads with him to persuade Fitzgerald to take better care of the vehicle, foreshadowing the impractical decisions that will define their drive.

That day, driving north from Lyon

The Rainy Road

Rain repeatedly forces Hemingway and Fitzgerald to stop beneath trees or at roadside cafés. They share a fine meal and wine, but Fitzgerald begins to fear that he has caught a dangerous European illness and argues with Hemingway about the nature of pneumonia. Fitzgerald’s anxieties grow as the day goes on, and Hemingway invents medical authority to reassure him. Their journey becomes less a practical drive than an exhausting exercise in managing Fitzgerald’s fears and the effects of alcohol.

That night in a provincial hotel

The Thermometer Test

Fitzgerald undresses and goes to bed convinced that he is dying of congestion of the lungs. He demands a thermometer and an express train to [Paris](entity:location-recall-location-paris-c02b439ce220), while Hemingway checks his pulse, observes that he has no fever, and tries to keep the situation calm. When a bath thermometer is finally found, Hemingway takes Fitzgerald’s temperature under his arm and reports a normal reading. Fitzgerald accepts the result and says his great recuperative power has saved him, allowing Hemingway to recognize how completely anxiety and alcohol have distorted the evening.

Later that night in the same hotel

Fitzgerald’s Confession

After drinking more, Fitzgerald tells Hemingway about his life with Zelda, including a painful story about her falling in love with a French naval aviator at [Saint-Raphaël](entity:location-recall-location-ca7e6ffe2939). Hemingway listens closely and senses the sadness of the story, though he cannot reconcile it with the couple’s shared bed and married life. Fitzgerald eventually passes out during dinner. Hemingway gets him to bed and spends the night thinking that alcohol affects Fitzgerald with unusual force, turning a companion who can be warm and articulate into someone overwhelmed and helpless.

The next day

The Drive Back to Paris

On the drive back, Fitzgerald is cheerful and talks at length about the plots of Michael Arlen’s books. Hemingway restricts the wine and tries to get them home safely, concluding that he has learned not to travel with someone he does not love. Back in [Paris](entity:location-recall-location-paris-c02b439ce220), Hemingway reunites with [Hadley](entity:character-recall-character-hadley-a2a05fba608c) and tells her about the trip. Hadley calls Fitzgerald and others rich featherheads with no money, and the couple look ahead to their planned journey to [Spain](entity:location-recall-location-0fe76f866976).

Soon after the Lyon journey

The Lunch with Zelda

Fitzgerald invites Hemingway and [Hadley](entity:character-recall-character-hadley-a2a05fba608c) to lunch at the apartment he shares with Zelda and their daughter. Zelda has a hangover after a night of partying, and she is jealous of the closeness Fitzgerald and Hemingway formed during their trip. Hemingway sees how Zelda’s drinking and restlessness unsettle Fitzgerald. He also notices how Fitzgerald’s resolve to work can be broken by repeated parties and marital conflict, a pattern that increasingly threatens his writing.

The late spring and summer after the Lyon trip

A Pattern of Disruption

Fitzgerald repeatedly tries to work, but Zelda’s boredom and the social life around them pull him back into drinking and late nights. He is jealous of her attention to other people, while she resents the time and energy he gives to writing. Hemingway tries to encourage Fitzgerald to write his best work without shaping it to commercial formulas. Fitzgerald manages one strong story, “The Rich Boy,” but the cycle of work, parties, and failure continues.

Summer 1925

Spain and the First Draft

Hemingway and [Hadley](entity:character-recall-character-hadley-a2a05fba608c) travel to [Spain](entity:location-recall-location-0fe76f866976), visiting [Pamplona](entity:location-recall-location-pamplona-af6d7e105eb5) and later [Madrid](entity:location-recall-location-madrid-8acd4123f416) and [Valencia](entity:location-recall-location-valencia-85e24ae4c4f6). During the summer, Hemingway begins the first draft of a novel and completes it after returning to [Paris](entity:location-recall-location-paris-c02b439ce220) in September. The work is a major step toward the book that will establish his reputation. Fitzgerald is not allowed to see the manuscript while Hemingway is still revising it, because Hemingway wants to preserve his own concentration and judgment.

Winter 1925–1926

The Winter in Schruns

Hemingway, [Hadley](entity:character-recall-character-hadley-a2a05fba608c), and their young son [Bumby](entity:character-recall-character-bumby-bf65b96b39c9) spend the winter in [Schruns](entity:location-recall-location-schruns-f0a2c6b253f0), where the family finds warmth, food, books, and a welcoming community at the [Hotel Taube](entity:location-recall-location-ff83a8e4c3df). Hemingway and Hadley ski with [Walther Lent](entity:character-recall-character-walther-lent-1d7deabac3b9), climbing into high country rather than relying on lifts. The mountain life gives the family a season of shared physical effort and pleasure. It also provides Hemingway with the quiet and stamina required for the difficult rewriting that will turn his first draft into a novel.

Winter 1925–1926 in Schruns

Rewriting the Novel

Hemingway rewrites the first draft of The Sun Also Rises, which he had composed in a six-week burst. The revision is among the most difficult work he has done, and he gradually reshapes the manuscript into a finished novel. He takes the work to [New York](entity:location-recall-location-75b9ea4bd176) and shows it to Max Perkins, then returns to [Schruns](entity:location-recall-location-schruns-f0a2c6b253f0) to complete the rewriting. Fitzgerald sees the manuscript only after the finished version has been sent to [Charles Scribner's Sons](entity:organization-recall-organization-charles-scribner-4a3634e75ef6).

A Christmas season during the Schruns years

The Lech Avalanche

After heavy snowfall settles over warm ground, [Walther Lent](entity:character-recall-character-walther-lent-1d7deabac3b9) warns German visitors not to ski in dangerous avalanche conditions at [Lech](entity:location-recall-location-4309d52688e6). They arrive anyway, dismiss his caution, and insist on going out; Lent finally leads them onto the safest slope he can find. The hillside gives way as the skiers cross it. Thirteen people are dug out and nine are dead, and Hemingway and his companions become serious students of avalanches, learning how to avoid them and what to do if caught.

During the winters in Schruns

The High Mountain Life

Hemingway and his companions climb from the valley to [Alpine Club](entity:organization-recall-organization-alpine-club-1ca5e4ea28c1) huts, carrying supplies and learning the changing snow. They ski through forests, follow animal tracks, and eventually make a long glacier run that Hemingway considers more exhilarating than flying. The season’s pleasure depends on training and effort: there is no lift to carry them upward, and the dangerous terrain demands judgment. Hemingway remembers this life as both a physical education and an innocent happiness soon to be disrupted.

During the last winter Hemingway spends in the mountains

The Rich Arrive

New wealthy acquaintances enter the circle around Hemingway and [Hadley](entity:character-recall-character-hadley-a2a05fba608c), brought by a friend who acts as a guide to the rich. They make each day feel like a festival and praise Hemingway’s work, encouraging him to read aloud from a manuscript he should have kept private. Hemingway later sees how easily their charm overran a young couple who did not know how to protect their work or happiness. The episode becomes his harshest account of wealth as a force that consumes what it first appears to celebrate.

Before Hemingway leaves Schruns for New York

The New Woman in the House

An unmarried young woman becomes close to [Hadley](entity:character-recall-character-hadley-a2a05fba608c) and moves into the couple’s life. Hemingway understands only gradually that the arrangement may lead her to pursue him, and that his own feelings are becoming divided. The situation initially seems stimulating and innocent, but it changes the household from a family of three into a more unstable arrangement. Hemingway compares the resulting lies and divided loyalties to living day by day in a war.

After Hemingway’s business trip to New York

The Delayed Return

Hemingway goes to [New York](entity:location-recall-location-75b9ea4bd176) to rearrange his publishing arrangements, intending to return quickly to [Hadley](entity:character-recall-character-hadley-a2a05fba608c) and [Bumby](entity:character-recall-character-bumby-bf65b96b39c9) in the mountains. Because the woman he has fallen in love with is in [Paris](entity:location-recall-location-paris-c02b439ce220), he delays taking the first, second, and third available trains back. When he finally returns to the station in [Schruns](entity:location-recall-location-schruns-f0a2c6b253f0), Hadley greets him with affection and their son stands beside her. Hemingway is overcome by the knowledge that he has betrayed the person he loves and wishes he had never loved anyone else.

After Hemingway returns to Hadley in Schruns

The Last Happy Mountain Days

For a time, Hemingway and [Hadley](entity:character-recall-character-hadley-a2a05fba608c) recover a private happiness in the mountains. He works well, they make trips together, and he imagines that their marriage has become invulnerable again. That confidence lasts only until they leave the mountains and return to [Paris](entity:location-recall-location-paris-c02b439ce220) in late spring. The other relationship resumes, ending the first part of their life in the city as Hemingway had known it.

Late spring after the final Schruns winter

The Affair Resumes

Back in [Paris](entity:location-recall-location-paris-c02b439ce220), the relationship Hemingway had tried to put aside begins again. [The rich](entity:concept-recall-concept-41a71fcf4848) acquaintances and their circle, which had already unsettled the couple’s life, are no longer a passing disturbance but part of a lasting change. Hemingway describes this as the end of the first Paris: the city remains, but the life he and [Hadley](entity:character-recall-character-hadley-a2a05fba608c) had built there cannot return to its earlier shape. The memoir does not stage a final confrontation, but makes the changed marriage and lost innocence unmistakable.

Years after the early Paris friendship

Fitzgerald’s First Breakdown

After Zelda experiences what is then called her first nervous breakdown, Fitzgerald asks Hemingway to lunch and reveals that Zelda has told him his body makes it impossible for him to satisfy a woman. He has carried the accusation as a wound and asks Hemingway to tell him the truth. Hemingway reassures him that there is nothing wrong, suggests that Zelda said it to undermine him, and takes him to the [Louvre](entity:location-recall-location-ab893fc37fa8) to look at statues. Fitzgerald remains doubtful, showing how deeply Zelda’s words have damaged his confidence.

Years after World War II

The Ritz Memory

At the [Ritz Hotel](entity:location-recall-location-ea9116a354ab), the bar chief Georges asks Hemingway who Fitzgerald was, since visitors keep asking about him. Georges remembers other figures from the past but cannot recall Fitzgerald, despite Hemingway’s belief that Fitzgerald spent time there. Hemingway promises to write about Fitzgerald as he remembers him, hoping the account may restore the man to Georges’s memory. The exchange makes remembrance itself part of the story: the dead remain present differently to each person who knew them.

The memoir’s closing reflection

Paris Without an Ending

Hemingway concludes that there is never a single ending to [Paris](entity:location-recall-location-paris-c02b439ce220), because every person who has lived there carries a different city in memory. The place changes, as do the people who return to it, but its meaning remains available to those who have loved and worked there. He remembers the early years as a time of poverty and happiness, when the city returned something for whatever its inhabitants brought to it. The closing image turns the memoir’s personal history into the idea that [Paris is a moveable feast](entity:expression-recall-expression-paris-is-a-moveabl-43db787bb0e3).