The Sun's Also Risible.

A new edition of A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway has just been published. A classic memoir of life in Paris during the 1920’s, it’s the last book he ever wrote and was published posthumously in 1964. The original was edited by his fourth wife, Mary, the current one by Sean Hemingway, grandson of his second wife, Pauline. I can’t speak for the relative merits of the new version because I haven’t read it yet. I have, though, read the original many times with great enjoyment. It is a great and lasting tribute to Paris and the best depiction of la vie boheme since La Boheme. It also confirms two things I’ve always believed about Ernest Hemingway: he is one of our best, but unacknowledged, food writers and one of the worst people it could ever be your misfortune to know. The only people treated with tenderness in this book are his first wife, Hadley, and his son, Jack, called Bumby. Everyone else is savaged. The more they admired and helped Hemingway, the worse they are treated.

By great coincidence, a revised edition of his novel, The Sun Also Rises, has also surfaced. I can’t vouch for its authenticity, however, because I obtained it through unorthodox channels. I bought it on the street from a man who was also selling incense, old Playboys and what he swore was a brand new Apple IPhone. All I had to do was plug it in. I reproduce the famous closing scene from The Sun Also Rises below. You be the judge.

Jake drank his gin and vermouth the way the mountain troops do in Friuli. Lifting the soup tureen to his lips, he drained it in one gulp. It went down warm. Warmer than grappa. Warmer than Brett when she wanted a favor. Not like she was now. Beautiful and cruel. He slammed down the heavy porcelain pot and looked across the table at her.

“To hell with you,” he said.

“You need some food. Harry will make us bistecca all fiorentina.”

Jake would rather look at the Arno. Rivers were good. They never changed course or said dumb things that ruined your evening. He wished he could see the river. He wished he could see.

“Damn wall. It shouldn’t be there. Nothing is where it should be.”

He ordered another martini friulani and saluted the waiter. A proper salute with a strait arm rising to the temple then dropping naturally, not snapping like some piss-elegant capitaine who thinks he’s a marechal.

“Let’s start with ribbolita and then have some pappardelle sulla lepra, okay.”

“I want carabinieri.”

“Those are policemen, Jake. You can’t eat policemen.”

“I knew this woman in Kansas City. . .”

“Go ahead. I deserve it.”

He pushed the table over. The breaking plates sounded like gunshots on a clear fall day when the partridges give themselves up like French soldiers.

“Oh, Jake,” she said, “we could have had such a damn good meal together.”

“Isn’t it pretty to think so.”

Brett dropped her head like a bull whose neck was full of banderillas. It reminded him of that summer in Pamplona when Pedro got gored in the feria. His feria bled for weeks, but that was okay. This wasn’t. Not after what she did. Forgiving her now would be like trying to eat a fish after it was mounted.

“When I said, ‘At least, your pants fit better,’ I was only trying to be nice.”

The End.