Hemingways

In those days there was no money to buy books. I borrowed books from the rental library of Shakespeare and Company, which was the library and bookstore of Sylvia Beach at 12 rue de l'Odeon. On a cold windwept street, this was a warm, cheerful place with a big stove in winter, tables and shelves of books, new books in the window, and photographs on the wall of famous writers both dead and living.
Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, p.35

Whether it was chaos, repetition, or a pre-destined natural order I am thankful that the world brought me to a moment when a mint-condition copy of Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast fell on my hands. I am thankful for having bought it in a glorious bargain from a second-hand bookstore, and how it brought me back to an even more glorious time.

Around the time he was writing The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald cruised in a Rolls Royce with his Zelda and hung out in Paris cafes getting black-out-drunk with “expatriate luminaries” like Hemingway. Gertrude Stein invites people over for tea at her 27 rue de Fleurus apartment. James Joyce, Ezra Pound can be spotted at Shakespeare and Co., the bookstore of Sylvia Beach.

Hemingway wrote his work in the nearby Closerie des Lilas, ordering café au lait or café crème or beer or wine. He wrote this posthumously published book in Cuba, and he still had Paris in him. I will not be foolish to even attempt to say anything scholarly about this book, so I account for how I take it with me when I can barely remember. I thought autobiographical books like these give you the right to judge the author’s character and reinforces your own. He revealed his complexities, compassion, weaknesses, brilliance and gentlemanliness without self-praise, pretension or the malady of blogs and biographies nowadays – sissiness and whining.

There's a recent Woody Allen called "Midnight in Paris" that took several references from this book. Salvador Dali was also in appearance. We never became expatriate luminaries (maybe except for H.) but a few High/Grade School friends urged me to see that Woody Allen film. I am glad we stay in touch in one way or another. And thanks to the advanced methods of piracy, I've seen the movie a few months before, probably even before it was released in other countries I told my friends: "All-star cast:Hemingway, TS Eliot, Fitzgerald et al. Most of who you read in high school to find out how to get girls. Paris in the 20s is our Manila in the late 90s. A moveable feast."