If Paris is, as Ernest Hemingway claims, a moveable feast, then chef Michele Haines has relocated it to Conshohocken. The French native is the founding chef at the Spring Mill Café where, along with authentic French cuisine, she serves up literary analysis. In preparing to co-lead a book discussion with Haines about Ernest Hemingway's memoir A Moveable Feast this coming Wednesday at her restaurant, she discussed why this American book is so important to the French.
Haines tells me that, after the terrorist attacks in Paris in November of 2015, A Moveable Feast became the bestselling book there. "When I read this, I was very surprised," she says. "But as I thought more about it, I realized what the Parisians were doing. It was for them a comforting thought that reading an American book about memories about the 1920s, written 30 years later — it's like a blanket that babies and children carry around to comfort them. In the book, they were being loved. Though they had been hurt so badly, this was a way to heal by reading an amazing book that describes Paris as something you carry with you forever and ever."
The Paris of today is different from the Paris of Haines' childhood, but she carries her memories of Paris in her heart. She heartily agrees with Hemingway that Paris is a moveable feast: "It moves with you wherever you are."
Haines enjoys reading about Hemingway's love of the city. The book, she says, is about the Paris the author loves, and that she loves as well. "There is a crystallization of what he remembers to be amazing and beautiful and special," she says. "He elevates it to a level that may not even exist anymore. The main thing about reading A Moveable Feast again is that you try to recapture something that is going away … and you don't want it to go away."
Why not turn to a French author in times of trouble? "Maybe you need to have someone from outside reinforce what you feel," Haines says. "I love Hemingway. He writes in a way that is amazing. It sounds so easy and beautiful and fluid when we know that writing is not like that."
She believes that Hemingway truly appreciated her city, and she hopes the book inspires readers not only to enjoy and remember Paris (whether they've been there or not), but also to enjoy their own moveable feast, memorable moments of joy from their own lives. "When we read such a book we should think about what is our moveable feast, important moments that will be never forgotten and will be with us forever and ever and even be passed on to our children. That's the way to read the book and commemorate it."