A Moveable Feast

by Ernest Hemingway

A Moveable Feast: Style 1 key example

Chapter 1: A Good Café on the Place St.-Michel
Explanation and Analysis:

The style of the memoir is informal and anecdotal, especially because Hemingway never finished editing it. Nonetheless, his careful craft and attention to detail are evident as he tries to recapture a visceral sense of his life during this period. Hemingway is known for his restraint with language and for his use of stream of consciousness writing, two stylistic approaches that are in a bit of tension with one another. How is it possible to let thoughts flow freely while still holding back? Both approaches are on display in the following passage from Chapter 1, in which Hemingway describes writing "Up in Michigan" in a café:

The story was writing itself and I was having a hard time keeping up with it. I ordered another rum St. James and I watched the girl whenever I looked up, or when I sharpened the pencil with a pencil sharpener with the shavings curling into the saucer under my drink.