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'A Moveable Feast' by Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway is used as a barometer for a manly or literary class. He is everywhere, his name employed as an easy endorsement. In Spain, Cuba, France and the United States you will stumble on ‘the café where Hemingway wrote’, ‘the bar where Hemingway drunk’, ‘the drink Hemingway invented’.

I have fallen sucker to that same trick, no matter how honest, and tried to steal a little of what it meant to be the great man. This might help explain, on a recent trip to Paris, my decision to stay a few doors down from Shakespeare & Co or to eat at certain bistros. My reading for the trip would, of course, be more of the same.

A Moveable Feast is a collection of memories of his time in Paris in the twenties. It is almost a linear narrative, almost autobiography, almost a collection of short stories, but it defies easy categorising. It is true to his laconic polish and an interesting glance at ‘the lost generation’, as well as containing a nice story that rejects that title.

Our protagonist is Hemingway, and readers of his novels or stories will clearly recognise him as the same man at the centre of all Hemingway’s writing. This book clarifies something that I always suspected; he only ever wrote thinly veiled versions of himself. There are moments that seem like parody, the absence of a barrier of fiction between the reader and Hemingway exposing him as too serious, where his fixations on being true and good make you question whether he is laughing at your expense.

At its best, each chapter of the book works as a freestanding short story that deal with familiar themes against the backdrop of Paris. I can think of no better writer or short stories, no better time period to place them in and no better city to have as a backdrop. They deal with gambling, writing in cafes, skiing in the Alps, boxing and making love; the usual stuff.

The narrative that the book provides when held together and the characters that populate it are interesting to anyone with an eye for the Modernist period. We are given Hemingway’s opinions of Ford Maddox Ford, Fitzgerald’s flaws and anxieties, Pound’s attempts to learn how to box, Stein’s jealousy. They are described in such a confident and personal manner and name-dropped throughout. I feel very un-literary stating that some of my favourite parts involved celebrity memoir or gossip column revelations. What avid fan of the Great Gatsby would not want to know that Hemingway comforted Fitzgerald’s fears about the size of his penis by a walk amongst the Greek statues of the Louvre.

For anyone with an interest in the period or artists of the period, the book is essential reading, but Hemingway’s writing makes sure that the general reader will take something away.

Jordan Philips

Seize the Day by Saul Bellow

“The real universe. That’s the present moment. The past is no good to us. The future is full of anxiety. Only the present is real – the here-and-now. Seize the day.” Its nearly two in the morning and I am still reading. It has been a long time since I have been here: reading a whole book in one sitting, fighting against tiredness, forcing myself through the remaining 30 pages or so. This line, evoking the title of Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day, justifies my sacrifice of tomorrow for this book.

I should start with a confession. Until very recently I had never heard of Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow. I should also say that I prefer short to long books. I am not exactly sure how to define a novella, but I think that I prefer them to novels. I can justify it with some posturing, but it is just modern day laziness. When I came across the off blue/green spine of a Penguin Classic under 120 pages, I was compelled to buy it.

There is no better way to read a book, but until now my only one-dayers are the Order of the Phoenix, the Old Man and the Sea and the Great Gatsby. Seize the Day waltzed onto the list. Tension and pressure rise throughout, as Tommy Wilhelm laments his current situation and revisits the past mistakes that have brought him here, and carries you to the climax.

He shares a hotel with his father, an uncaring and selfish success, whilst he attempts to win a divorce from his wife. When you throw in recent unemployment, failed dreams of being an actor and a hatred for the New York rat race, the reasons for his current dilemma, which sees him grabbing for different pills and suffering with insomnia, become apparent. As an exploration of a universal father/son relationship and a man’s quest to find happiness, success or meaning, it is an interesting read. However, it is the introduction of Dr. Tamkin that justifies its inclusion on the read-in-a-day list.

An enigmatic spiritual psychologist, he takes a liking to Wilhelm and attempts to steer his life away from the rocks. We are left in doubt to the virtue or truth of his character, and a somewhat unsatisfactory, albeit moving and symbolic, ending only furthers this. Regardless, there can be no doubt that Tamkin is the mouthpiece of some of the novellas most profound and revealing themes. The corruption of man by money and the focus on living in the present are revisited, and Wilhelm’s acceptance of these ideas is tantamount to Bellow endorsing them. As with all the best of art, it has a strong message that you need to take away and mull over, before accepting the importance of seizing the day.

Jordan Philips

The French have always done things in their own way. They’re headstrong and have a desire to be the best of the best of the best. They eat frogs’ legs and hold the Mona Lisa at the heart of their capital city. They have a 324m tower known as Eiffel and, most importantly, had the power to make McDonald’s change the colour of their logo on the Champs-Élysées.

The altered McDonald's sign at Champs-Élysées

Every book we pick up is different. Every writer has his or her own style, but here’s a few writers that the French may be proud to call their own – writers that haven’t been afraid to buck a trend or fight their own corner…

Mary Woolstonecraft and Mary Shelly – This mother/daughter combo made their marks on the world in similar fashion. Mary Woolstonecraft accomplished many writing feats before her premature death just after the birth of her daughter. Woolstonecraft was a pioneer for women’s right; she was a keen believer in women having equal opportunities as men across education and much more. She wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women, which went on to be a seminal building block in gaining women a fair place in society. Her daughter, Mary Shelly, bucked a trend big time by releasing Frankenstein, which took the literary world by the back of its neck and shook it until it realised that women can write just as well as men.

George Orwell – If there was something to say about society, the chances are this guy said it. Orwell wrote almost the world we live in Nineteen Eighty-Four, probably his most famous work. He also penned Animal Farm and Down and Out in Paris and London, which gave lovely insights and opinions on society, capitalism, politics and a whole lot more – whilst of course remaining a splendid read and rather funny, even today.

Irvine Welsh – You might wonder how we’ve jumped from Orwell to Welsh, quite dramatic really. However, Welsh wrote Trainspotting, the book that changed the way we view literature. This book said it’s ok to write about drug addicts and violence in a way that’s entertaining and enjoyable to readers everywhere. Welsh decided to make the characters likeable, to create emotions within us that we probably wouldn’t feel for a drug addict that decided to walk into our life and start to change our world.

Phillip Roth – American writer Roth as been around since the late 50′s and can be seen to have a postmodern approach to his work. Using this, he writes about anything he wishes, with wit and irreverent humour. He has released titles such as The Breast, the story of a man who wakes up and is a breast on a woman’s chest. Roth also covers his integration into American society from his Jewish background, making his fiction hugely autobiographical at times.

Quentin Tarentino – Tarentino has brought us gems like Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown and Kill Bill. It might seem a bit strange ending with Tarnetino, but his work has changed the way we view world cinema and has most likely influenced writers everywhere.

Keith Hodges

Have you ever been seduced by a downright villain? I know I have. From Satan to Sauron, Dracula to Draco Malfoy, literary miscreants have been stealing the limelight and beguiling the reader for centuries. Most of us are, however, honest, law-abiding citizens so why is it that we are repeatedly drawn to fiction’s bad boys? What is it about monstrosity that is so appealing? And will we ever resist the lure of the dark side?

The word monster is often associated today with villainy, innate evil and horrific wrong-doings but originally, the word can be derived from the Latin ‘monstrum’ meaning something marvellous. For me, this could be a clue behind our fascination with the dark side: villains are marvellous. Always partial to a touch of the dramatic, many literary villains are also showmen; committing horrible crimes, yes, but often in such an ingenious way you cannot help but admire them. As journalist and literary villain-aficionado Kim Newman outlined recently in an article for flavorwire.com: “To be a great villain, it’s not enough just to be thoroughly evil – you have to be entertaining with it. A certain panache helps, especially for villains who fall into the category of arch-nemesis and have to prove themselves almost the equal of a flamboyantly brilliant hero.” Consider a character like Arthur Conan Doyle’s Moriarty, the self-styled ‘Napoleon of crime’ and arch-enemy of Sherlock Holmes: only such a ruthless villain could match Holmes and also be, according to Doyle, behind every evil deed that goes undetected in London.

Ever since the Renaissance, fictional rogues have been using underhand, Machiavellian tactics to outwit and outshine their heroic counterparts. One only needs to explore a genre like Revenge Tragedy to find heinous crimes enacted in extraordinary ways, often culminating in a grisly, yet dramatic tableau of slain bodies in the final scenes. Gruesome, yes, but it certainly leaves an impression upon any audience or reader – although we may forget over time the hero’s various virtues, bad guys are always more memorable.

My favourite literary villain has to be Shakespeare’s Richard III. Crafty, manipulative, murderous and cruel, he’s the kind of character one ought to despise, but I know I’m not the only audience member who has ever felt a strange fascination with this monstrous man. Unlike good Clarence or the heroic Richmond, Richard connects with the audience – he speaks in asides, making you complicit in his evil plans and eager to see how they will unfold. Furthermore, it’s Richard that gets all the good lines – many of us can remember the famous “Now is the winter of our discontent” speech, but when it comes to the other characters, our minds go blank. To a certain extent an underdog: facing many obstacles in his pursuit of Kingship at the beginning of the play, the audience almost cannot resist rooting for him. Richard is compelling, dazzling and complex – I want to figure him out and understand what makes him tick. Trying to piece together the puzzle behind a literary villain’s malevolence is a challenge for many readers and the reason why scoundrels like Mrs Danvers in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca or Tom Ripley in Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels remain so irresistible.

Laurence Olivier as Richard III

So what was Shakespeare thinking when he made Richard so appealing, or indeed any author who creates an unforgettable villain that we love to hate? Often it happens that the bad guys have to be seductive in order that the reader, as well as one or more of the good guys, is lured into their web of darkness. If villainous characters were simply clear-cut evil wrong-doers, it would be difficult for a reader to understand why other characters in the book may be deceived by them. They can certainly charm the reader too. Without them, think how anaemic some books would be. Oliver Twist without Bill Sikes, for example? Forced to make a choice, I’m probably not alone in preferring the book without young Oliver himself.

Briony Wickes