A Guide to Hemingway's Paris by John Leland

Author:John Leland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 1989-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Pablo Picasso’s apartment.

[5th; Monge]

91. Place de la Contrescarpe

What book-nourished Americans expect of the Left Bank, the Place de la Contrescarpe is a seedy, tree-shaded square lined with cafés, a boulangerie, boucherie, restaurants, a smattering of bums, and an épicerie.

Little has changed since Hemingway lived around the corner and a drunk Jake Barnes stumbled across the square sixty years ago. The S bus no longer stops here, and Au Nègre Joyeux is closed, but its sign remains. The Café des Amateurs, now La Chope, still has “the long zinc bar” and is still crowded with “old men and women.” Carved in stone over the boucherie and restaurant chinois is the legend, “Maison de la Pomme de Pin MCC,” pretending to a drinking tradition as old as Rabelais.

Here Hemingway witnessed a Bastille Day party. Seated on wine casks, an impromptu band of an accordion, bagpipe, two drums, and a cornet led a crowd of “shop girls, butchers, bakers, laborers, tram conductors and laundresses, and bookmakers” in a four-night revel, he told Star readers [Dateline, p. 183].

The colorful Rue Mouffetard starts here. Mouffetard’s daily market, its stalls crowding onto the alley’s cobblestones, is the same that Henry Miller raved over. The odors of fish, roasting chicken, bread, and stale beer mingle with the cries of fruit vendors; street signs for the tabac, boucheries, cobblers, and bakers crowd the view, and people from every continent crowd the steeply sloping alley.

[5th; Luxembourg]

92. Place Edmond Rostand

Jake Barnes breakfasted on brioche and coffee in a Muirhead-recommended café where the Free Time Hamburger stands today. Florists and law students still trudge by in the morning, and working stiffs still catch the bus for the Right Bank out front, but styrofoam cups and “le hamburger” reign here and across the street at McDonald’s. The only remnant of this part of Hemingway’s Paris is still called the Luxembourg Bar, but has crossed the street and lost its allure and appears in only a few tourist guides.

Hemingway’s favorite S bus is defunct, its route split up. But buses remain a great way to see Paris. What cost Hemingway four cents will cost you four francs today.

[5th; St. Michel]

93. Place St. Michel

The busy crossroads of the Left Bank, today’s Place St. Michel is hardly the place to write a short story. Yet Hemingway says in A Moveable Feast that he frequented a quiet café here, drinking café au lait and rum St. James as he wrote “The Three Day Blow.” And who knows, perhaps the story’s subterranean tension owes as much to the rums and an anonymous French “beauty … whoever you are” who chanced to sit opposite Hemingway as it does to the critics’ preferred notions of a youthful love affair recollected in tranquility.

“Empty and both sad and happy as though I had made love,” Hemingway feasts sensually after writing the story on “a dozen portugaises and a half-carafe of the dry white wine” [AMF, pp. 5–6]. The French are famous for their huitres (oysters)—the large, green, coppery marennes and fat, coppery belons, which Street says are “very expensive, costing in good restaurants from $1.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.