Recently, someone recently recommended that I ‘read the classics’ to get some inspiration for my own writing. So I thought: why not start with Hemingway?
Recently, I read a copy of A Moveable Feast, his memoir about his time in Paris. From the very first page, my jaw dropped because he describes ‘our’ neighborhood.
He mentions Place Contrascarpe, rue Mouffetard, the walk to the Seine from Sainte-Genevieve-du-Mont, rue du Cardinal Lemoine. These are places I, too, walked over and over again as I navigated the 5th arrondisement in the Latin Quarter.
“The Cafe des Amateurs was the cesspool of the rue Mouffetard, that wonderful narrow crowded market street which led into the Place Contrascarpe.”
- Ernest Hemingway
The neighborhood, or quartier, was my home for 14 months. (Maybe it will be again someday?) Below is my street, rue Mouffetard.
In his early days in Paris, Hemingway and his wife Hadley lived on rue du Cardinal Lemoine. They were poor, so he sometimes had to borrow money from another American, Sylvia Beach, who owned the Shakespeare & Company bookshop — just to get by.
Hemingway describes the Paris café scene in his book as a part of his daily writing life. He would bring his notebook, which he kept in his jacket pocket, and spend hours writing while drinking a café crème.
Something I found interesting: he describes how during the 1920s, people would go to different cafés for different purposes: one for writing and reading, one for meeting mistresses, and one that was neutral ground for everyone to meet.
After living in Paris myself, it was nice to read about life there 100 years ago.
These were Hemingway’s ‘formative years’, after he quit working as a journalist to become a writer instead. Like any new writer, he sometimes doubted himself and was bashful when offered a compliment on his work.
But his perseverance — aided by coffee — helped him become one of the Great American Writers.