Reading the Moveable Feast (5/8)

"The tank wagons were painted brown and saffron color and in the moonlight when they worked the rue Cardinal Lemoine their wheeled, horse-drawn cylinders looked like Braque paintings." 

Hemingway's writing and writing process is something I found myself focusing on. Throughout A Moveable Feast, he sprinkles metaphors, similes, and descriptions into its passages of assertive, economic prose; the impact these have as a result not only situates the reader firmly in Hemingway's world/setting, but also presents this reconstructed setting as a singular reality. Braque, evoked above, was an artist whose style evolved before as well as after WWI; his paintings feature angles at odds and subjective perspectives. A Moveable Feast uses visuals that reflect its modernist identity. Braque's art is invited into the memoir and either discovered in post-war France or indicative of the Lost Generation's (an "easy, dirty label" to Hemingway) unique space.

Also, comparing Hemingway's perception of relationships in his memoir with those in The Sun Also Rises helped me understand where inspiration ended and fiction began. As an author, his insight into dynamics between people informed his characters. Jake, Brett, and Robert Cohn are very real, because they represent different trauma responses that Hemingway was acquainted with in his social circles and personal life.