A CITY OF INSPIRATION

One of the most obvious indications that the city had a profound effect on the Lost Generation was in Hemingway’s final work A Moveable Feast (1950), published posthumously.  Hemingway nostalgically recounts his adventure and time in Paris, noting his favorite restaurants and bars, and anecdotal tales of his friendships and falling-outs with fellow expatriates, a clear indicator that the city itself inspired many of these experiences which he felt obligated out of tribute to Paris to write down.  Yet the work really conveys how Hemingway was inspired by the free and open culture of Paris, the art of people staring out of cafe windows--something that is still seen today--the alluring history of the city found within its buildings that reveal architecture of the past, and the leisurely lifestyle the Parisians lived.  The city changed his view, and although the roaring 20s in Paris helped him to push away the depression he could never overcome in the aftermath of the war, the city was a place of solace and peace for him--at least for a while--free to learn how to be an author with an authentic voice, something he could have probably never surmounted to during this time in America.  Drawing on Hemingway’s conversations of nostalgia of an indelible time before his suicide, Hemingway famously said to his friend A. E. Hotchner, “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”--which is noted in the forward to his last novel.    

[Library in St. Germain des Pres July 2012]

The freedom of the city and absence of fear for writing subjects unpalatable to the American audience shows up in a work by Fitzgerald as well, The Great Gatsby.  Fitzgerald masked his depression behind the exuberance of the Jazz Age, not only in his own life but also in that of his characters, a literary decision that might not have been made without the encouragement of the progressive and controversial atmosphere of the city.  Fitzgerald breaks free of a historical literary trend of leaving out the bitter truth for the sake of a “good read” and reveals the realities of his generation in the novel “...where the illusion of happiness hides a sad loneliness for the main characters” (“The Lost Generation”).