This one is a keeper!

I first read Hemingway in high school (eons ago) and don't remember much. He's a writer you're supposed to read, because his prose can be spare and beautiful. But our group liked this book, and it wasn't just because of the prose. One reader felt it was funny...laugh-out loud at times funny. And there was agreement that this recollection was one faded by time. After all, it was written some 40 years after Hemingway spent time in Paris with his first wife. he chronicles the day to day activities a writer engages in, as well as time spent with Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald and other contemporaries. One reader noted that he always seems to feel a bit sorry for them...maybe he feels he is the better writer, and just hasn't had his big break yet? Maybe it's European culture, or his grounding in journalism. The reader is smart enough, in Hemingway's opinion. to suss things out without overt prodding. Many things are never said outright, just alluded to. Paris is romantic, being a starving artist is romantic. Life was more simple then, and it was easy to live in a city like Paris while selling articles to the newspapers and magazines. But is it a failure? No great novel is written; the marriage becomes shakier and shakier and yet it never implodes. This is a wonderful primer on how to write, but not a good guide to life.