A Moveable Feast

By Earnest Hemingway. Interestingly enough Michelle read this a couple weeks ago and seeing her read it and hearing her say this and that about it convinced me that I ought to. It's a late in life memoir written to recount the stories from Hemingway's younger days in Paris. These were the times between the wars when he considered himself at first a journalist who wanted to write, then after he had quit journalism, a student of writing.

His values are clearly presented both in terms of why we write and in his life in general. He seems like the sort of man you'd like to call friend and the stories he recounts are about life and enjoying it and the book is not anything like a writer's manual. Writing is what he did, but it was not for him to pour his thoughts on this out for others to consider. He held his process very close to him, not allowing others to read his work until he had completely finished and then fully revised it. He says nothing of style beyond "write one sentence that you know is true. Then write another." Which is good advice so long as it doesn't become crippling.

He also talks of criticism. He considers it a dread sin to write to please and thinks you can't do that and write what you think is true. He warns (and I've believed this for a long time) that to cheapen your skill by writing anything but the truth is destructive to others and oneself ; if one does it they may lose their ability to write truly. This jives with my sense that the arts at their best should have a prophetic purpose as opposed to being mere entertainment - or people pleasing; the point of good writing or work, in Hemingway's sense is that people see life as it is so they can become wiser and more in tune with truth. Of course most people read merely to pass the the time in a way that feels comfortable or pleasurable and it's worse for watching movies because it takes so much less work and time to watch a movie than it does to read a book. Nonetheless the point of making a movie/book ought to be to enrich and enlighten not merely to entertain.

And perhaps that is the truth of the feast that we ought to carry around within us. It's a meat dinner with good wine served just so and it leaves one full and content when bedtime comes. Whether we are artists or not, may we each eat and drink deeply of our passions and may the joy and energy that spills out of us paint helpful truths on the world around us.