Paris -- Hemingway’s Paris Shortcut. A Movable Feast’s Elusive Backdoor

Paris -- Hemingway’s Paris Shortcut. A Movable Feast’s Elusive Backdoor

Abstract:

 

Paris -- Our apartment on Rue Vavin is right in heart of Hemingway’s Paris described in the middle portions of A Movable Feast (which covered the time Hemingway lived at 113 Rue Notre Dame des Champs). Gertrude Stein’s 27 Rue de Fleurus studio is one block over, and I walk by it almost daily to buy mandarins. The Jardin du Luxembourg and my pétanque courts are a mere 40 meters away.

Hemingway’s lean prose is offset by his expansion of time and distance.

In that expansion lies literary detail and significance, but in purely physical terms Hemingway’s walks are far shorter and the hills slighter in grade than they read in A Movable Feast and The Sun Also Rises.

I often take morning coffee at Le Select, and frequent the other “principal cafés,” le Dome, Le Rotund, and Le Coupole. All are still operating near the tortuous intersections of the Boulevard Montparnasse, with the Boulevard Raspail and Rue Vavin. All are an easy two minute walk.

For all the cafés and the tourists they attract, this side of the 6th is far quieter and more livable than the Senate/St. Germain side. Le Select can be crowded at times,  but a bit father up Rue Delambre lies a favorite of Henry Miller, the Café de la Liberté. It’s almost always quiet, and thus a good place have a conversation.

The walk to la Liberté on the Rue Delambre takes me past the spot where Hemingway first met Fitzgerald.  The Dingo Bar is gone, and but the old wooden bar remains inside a  trendy café. 

 (more)

Last updated on 06/08/2022