If you write a memoir, don’t die before you publish it!

That’s one lesson to conclude from the ways in which the Hemingway family and scholars have debated in print over the posthumous memoir A Moveable Feast. Below you can listen to son Patrick Hemingway and grandson Sean Hemingway describe the newly “restored” edition of a much-beloved memoir–

Not everyone agrees with this interpretation.  The L.A. Times review does a great job of offering multiple perspectives on the disputed text.

Amazon shows actual segments of text in Hemingway’s own hand in the new book description(which you can get to by clicking on the book cover pictures): .

But if you prefer the 1964 edition edited by Hemingway’s fourth wife Mary, here it is!

The review I wrote of the first version of the book (seen here at left) can be found here. I am not sure I will read the new version.

What about you? What do you think of the rivalry between Hemingway and Fitzgerald as described either in the memoir itself or in the L.A. Times review above?

Shirley Showalter

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