A Moveable Feast
by Ernest Hemingway · first published 1964
53% recommend47% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Hemingway's memoir of his early 1920s years in Paris, with a plain, spare style; readers enjoy its vivid portraits of writers and the city and find it a good entry point to his work and to that era.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
A Moveable Feast is a 1964 memoir belles-lettres by American author Ernest Hemingway about his years as a struggling expat journalist and writer in Paris during the 1920s. It was published posthumously.[1] The book details Hemingway's first marriage to Hadley Richardson and his associations with other cultural figures of the Lost Generation in Interwar France. The memoir consists of various personal accounts by Hemingway and involves many notable figures of the time, such as Sylvia Beach, Hilaire Belloc, Bror von Blixen-Finecke, Aleister Crowley, John Dos Passos, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgera
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…plotted, art movements invented, and history made in places like Cafe Central in Vienna. I recommend reading literature from the 1880s-1930s to get a sense of how important they were for the time period. A Moveable Feast by Hemingway is a good start. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_culture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffeehouse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Café_Central
on “How coffee became a modern necessity” ↗…Things They Carried (Tim O' Brien) This Side of Paradise (F. Scott Fitzgerald) Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury) Essentially a children's sci-fi novel, but it doesn't read that way. A Moveable Feast (Ernest Hemingway) My personal favorite (along with his short stories, which I highly recommend), but if it's your first time reading Hemingway, might be better to go with The Sun Also Rises. Revolutionary…
on “Ask HN: I have no commitments for the next 6 months – what books should I read?” ↗For those that enjoy this story, I'd strongly recommend A Moveable Feast, Hemingway's autobiographical tale of his time in Paris. It feels more "real" coming from him directly, even though he claims that much of it is fiction. He specifically speaks mournfully about loving…
on “Hemingway in Love” ↗While I can't vouch for anything beyond Just Kids (which is spectacular), here are some other ferociously good reads on the lives of artists: * Ernest Hemingway - A moveable feast * David Lipsky - Of course you end up becoming yourself * David Sylvester - Interviews with Francis Bacon
on “Maria Loh recommends the best books on Lives of Artists” ↗A Moveable Feast is another good one from Hemingway with themes that strike me as oddly similar the millennial generation. Just hoping I can’t say the same thing about Steinbeck’s books in the next few years.
on “Data and graphs showing millenials' bad economic odds” ↗…short novel about basically nothing, boring as it can be I'm not sure why schools tend to fixate on that particular work. Hemingway may not be to your taste anyway but I much prefer A Farewell to Arms, A Moveable Feast, many of his short stories, etc.
on “Gene Wolfe Turned Science Fiction into High Art (2019)” ↗The books that (I think) made the biggest impact on my writing are Zinsser's On Writing Well, everything Hemingway (e.g. The Sun Also Rises, A Moveable Feast), Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Wind, Sand and Stars, and Beryl Markham's West with the Night. The common theme being simplicity and informal, but correct, speech.
on “What to read to become a better writer” ↗I got really into Hemingway’s work, reading all the best ones, but my favourite being ‘A moveable feast’ his diary essentially released at the end of his life set when he was mid-twenties in 1920s Paris. Me being the same age, I was inspired enough to go there and retrace some of his steps.
on “Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?” ↗…episode. You think the FBI is watching you and everyone tells you they aren't. In that situation I think I'd believe the people around me and think that I was crazy. Even though it was unfinished, Moveable Feast is one of my favorite books of all time. Definitely worth reading if you haven't yet.
on “Hemingway, Hounded by the Feds” ↗…Murakami) * Apex (Ramez Naam) * One Second After (William R. Forstchen) * Anna Karanina (Leo Tolstoy) * Neuromancer (William Gibson) * A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway) * Crux (Ramez Naam) * A Moveable Feast (Ernest Hemingway) * Hardboiled Wonderland and The End of the World (Haruki Murakami)
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2017?” ↗…done his job properly -- this is his so-called "Iceberg Theory" of writing [0]: In 1923, Hemingway conceived of the idea of a new theory of writing after finishing his short story "Out of Season". In A Moveable Feast, his posthumously published memoirs about his years as a young writer in Paris, he explains: "I omitted the real end [of "Out of Season"] which was that the old man hanged himself. This was omitted on…
on “Write like you talk” ↗…it's cold outside, ... - Danny Bowien - The Mission Chinese Food Cookbook. Lots of stories between the recipes. - David Byrne - How Music Works - Meg Jay - The Defining Decade - Ernest Hemingway - A Moveable Feast - Magdalena Droste - Bauhaus 1919-1933 - Arimasa Osawa - Shinjuku Shark - Zadie Smith - Changing My Mind - Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart - Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray - Marie Kondo…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?” ↗…protagonist of Tender, and various characters from his short stories, is a working-out of the central tragedy of Fitzgerald's own life, his failure to find a soul-mate. This is hinted at in Hemingway's Moveable Feast, and laid out fairly plainly in some of his letters. Gatsby in particular fails because he fixes his desire on an unworthy object, who does not return his love. With mirror symmetry, Gatsby himself…
on “Why Do We Keep Reading the Great Gatsby?” ↗In December 1922, a trunk filled with Hemingway's manuscripts disappeared en route from Paris to Lausanne, Switzerland. This is a story about the historic details Hemingway left out in "A Moveable Feast."
on “The Hemingway Story You Didn't Know You Knew” ↗There’s a passage in A Moveable Feast where Hemingway recounts an attempt to solicit funds to get T. S. Eliot out of the bank so he could focus on his poetry. I don’t think that succeeded, but Eliot eventually moved to an editorial position…
on “Poets' Odd Jobs” ↗