An Introduction

Ernest Hemingway is accredited as one of the most renowned American authors, and often, he is associated with his stark, journalistic prose detailing stories inspired by his own adventures as an ambulance medic during WWI, time spent big-game hunting, and his fascination with bull-fighting. Although, alongside these hyper-masculine activities, Hemingway had a penchant for Paris: a deep appreciation for the culture of cafés, romantic streets, a society of artists, and, notably, good wine and great food.

Amidst his writings, the singular work that encapsulates this most fully is his memoir, A Moveable Feast, in which Hemingway describes his years in Paris with his first wife, Hadley, and their movement between the circles of the likes of Gertrude Stein, Ford Maddox Ford, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and numerous other “troubled” artists, writing, dreaming, and living somewhat recklessly. During this time, Hemingway also travels and journeys to other locations and, and he continues to diary his experiences of the food and drink he explores.

Through this blog, I aim to more fully understand Hemingway’s obsession with cuisine, and how the inclusion of these rich details influences his work.Throughout the different stages of his life and writing, he approached food in a different way, and foodstuff served varying purposes in his lifestyle and works. By exploring different references to food in his various novels and short stories, I aim to see how Hemingway perceives food, and how food shaped his experience.

Food, assuredly, is one of the many ways in which Hemingway desired to simply live, and to chase every adventure that the world had to offer. Food, also, is used as escape, and as a way to remove himself from his own head and the sadness evident in his own life and tones of his work. Adventure, and food, were essential to Hemingway, and the Paris years were a time in which he pursued both with a vigor. In his own words, in a letter to a friend, “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

In contrast to the Paris years, Hemingway spent time in the great outdoors hunting and camping, captured in many of his works, such as The Nick Adams Stories. As a whole, this work contrasts greatly with the setting within A Moveable Feast, and when compared, each approaches food and living in a different way. Overall, through this blog, I aim to analyze various moments in which Hemingway uses food to, whether knowingly or not, reveal himself to his readers, and the shifting moments of his varied identity. Food, certainly, differs from one text to another, but I hope to collectively see how Hemingway's approach to food in these texts within the cultural context presents him as an explorer and as one learning about himself through his writing alongside the reader.

Photo from here.