THE GORGE ALSO RISES

A quiz in the Nov. 22 Book Review asks us to identify the “great novel” that starts with this sentence: “Then there was the bad weather.” The book, of course, is Hemingway’s “A Moveable Feast,” but the answer is wrong on two counts:

“A Moveable Feast” is not a novel. It is Hemingway’s posthumously published memoir recalling his time as a member of the “Lost Generation” in Paris. The book is full of fiction, but not intentionally so.

Nor is “A Moveable Feast” great. Self-serving and self-deluded, opinionated and inaccurate, it is an exercise in petty, vindictive name-dropping; nor is it well- written, at least by Hemingway’s high standards.

Evidence of the book’s mediocrity can be seen in the puzzle at hand: The title (and its explanation in the text) reveal that Hemingway either did not know or chose to ignore the real meaning of the phrase. And the famous first sentence, with its affected phony French/Spanish definite article, is sadly pompous.

“A Moveable Feast” is an embarrassment to those of us who admire and staunchly defend Hemingway’s earlier works for their strength, simplicity and truth. Ernest Hemingway did write more than one “great novel,” but “A Moveable Feast” is not one of them. Had it not been published so shortly after Papa’s final grandstand play, it might have been written off as a minor work by a writer who should have quit while he was ahead.

JOHN DANIEL, SANTA BARBARA