HARVEST

ME
Note: While writing a diary, we should keep in mind to keep the information to the exact point
and the time, date and data should look accurate. All information, situations should be given
with a brief description
 A Moveable Feast
The story begins on a cold, rainy winter day in Paris, where Ernest Hemingway is
writing in a café. He decides to leave Paris for a more picturesque winter destination with
snow. Upon returning to Paris, Hemingway consults with his fellow writer and mentor
Gertrude Stein on his short story Up In Michigan. Stein proves a tough critic, critiquing not
only his work as inaccrochable but declaring that his entire generation is lost. Hemingway
rejects her condemning labels as restrictive of happiness. Hemingway then writes of a woman
named Sylvia Beach, who runs the rental bookstore, Shakespeare and Company. A good-
natured woman, Sylvia allows Hemingway to take as many books as he pleases without
having to immediately pay. Hemingway describes the shop and Sylvia as, “delightful and
charming and welcoming” with “shelves and shelves of the wealth of the library” (16). The
wealth of Sylvia’s library is contrasted with the run-down book stalls along the Seine. He
discusses the value of a book and how its worth is determined; a woman running a book stall
on the Seine equates value to aesthetics over content.
In the next section, Hemingway longs for spring, leading him and his wife, Hadley, to
engage in “A False Spring”—the title of Chapter 6. Hemingway’s addiction to horse racing
becomes a symbol for the promise of spring, possibilities, and the desire for change and
excitement. In this section, themes of hunger come to the forefront. First, Hemingway is
existentially hungry; he feels a lack of meaning despite his decadent lifestyle. The hunger
follows him everywhere, and he and his wife mistake it for real, physical hunger. He remarks
on the fact that “memory is a hunger,” as he remembers an old friend, Chink (26). The topic
of hunger transitions to fasting and discipline; Hemingway believes that when one is hungry,
their other senses are heightened, allowing them to better understand art and literature.
Hunger is equated to a deliberate lack that a writer imposes on a story by omitting certain
details. The omitted part strengthens the story insofar as it makes people “feel something
more than they understood” (34). After complaining to Sylvia about finances, Hemingway
fears he is becoming a martyr and ultimately decides to eat.
Ezra Pound is a charitable man and a great writer in the eyes of both Hemingway and
the Paris community. He creates the charitable program Bel Esprit to help T.S. Eliot leave his
job at a London bank to pursue poetry full time. The program is wildly successful, as Eliot is
awarded the Dial award for The Waste Land. Eliot’s success juxtaposes Hemingway’s own
literary and moral dilemmas; he bets his earnings from the Bel Esprit program at the horse
races.
Hemingway recalls the end of his friendship with Gertrude Stein after overhearing a
very private and hostile argument between her and her partner. After that moment, Stein
was never the same and Hemingway was unable to restore the friendship, becoming cynical
to notions of real friendship in general: “I could never make friends again truly, neither in my
heart nor in my head. When you cannot make friends anymore in your head is the worst. But
it was more complicated than that” (55).
Another character is introduced who shares the same first name as Hemingway,
Ernest Walsh. Walsh rises to fame suddenly and is given the role of co-editor at Dial.
Hemingway is suspicious of him, and when Walsh promises him an award, Hemingway makes
a play on their names, calling out Ernest for not being “Ernest” at all. Hemingway also
mentions characters such as Evan Shipman, a kind man who speaks with Hemingway about
Dostoevsky, and Ralph Cheever Dunning, an opium-addicted poet who refuses to eat.
In the last major section of the novel, Hemingway describes his relationship with
fellow famous writer and Parisian expat F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. When the two
men first meet each other during a night of drinking, Fitzgerald suddenly becomes very pale
and sick and leaves the gathering. A few days later, Fitzgerald denies feeling ill and invites
Hemingway on a trip to Lyon to retrieve a car that he and he wife had left there. Hemingway
agrees, but Fitzgerald proves to be difficult company. He arrives late, forcing Hemingway to
pay for his own ticket and food. Fitzgerald finally arrives and the two decide to head for Paris.
The car does not have a roof, and their journey is waylaid by rain. Fitzgerald fears that he has
congestion of the lungs, and they stop at a hotel for the night. Hemingway attempts to calm
Fitzgerald, as his symptoms appear to be psychological in nature.
Eventually, Fitzgerald relaxes and reveals to Hemingway that Zelda once loved another
man. Hemingway recalls, “Later he told me other versions of it as though trying them for use
in a novel, but none was as sad as this first one and I always believed the first one, although
any one of them might have been true. They were better told each time; but they never hurt
you the same way the first one did” (81). Hemingway equates Zelda to a hawk, with sharp
eyes an ongoing jealousy of her husband’s work. Their tempestuous relationship and her
fondness for alcohol are a constant challenge and distraction for Fitzgerald and his attempts
to write. Fitzgerald’s story ends when the owner of a bar he frequented does not remember
him, depicting his waning fame and relevance as time has passed. Hemingway comments on
the importance of writing freely and not changing stories to fit a more profitable formula.
A Moveable Feast ends with the time Hemingway, his wife, and his son, Bumby, spent
in Austria. Finding the winter in Paris unbearable with a child to care for, the three head to
Austria. They pick up skiing and become good friends with the locals and tourists in the town.
Hemingway eventually leaves Austria for New York to work with publishers for his first
novel, The Sun Also Rises. The completion of his first novel marks the end of his early days as
a writer, and consequently, his early days in Paris. He returns to Paris, but both he and the
city have changed.
5 November, 2020.
10:30pm

Dear Love,

Today, I have a lot to share with you about the tragic incidents that happened with me today. In the
morning , I woke up to find myself all alone at home as mummy had been to my aunt's house and I had
decided to stay back at home. As it is Friday, I decided to complete all chores of house and mine and
then, binge watching the web series. First, I went to bathe and clean the clothes too. No sooner did I
complete washing the clothes, I recognized that the colour of one of the dresses had faded and other
dresses got affected. Alas, what a blunder I did. Putting them in the washing machine, I went to freshen
up and have my breakfast. Again a disaster was waiting for me. As I was about to pour milk into my
glass, it got spilt all over the floor and I had to clean it up . This had already made my Friday mood off
still Ii decided to complete all chores before I do my Friday binge. I had to wash the dishes but I ended
up spilling water all over the floor, so I had to clean it up. Then , I had some bread butter and did the
cleaning work which ended up nicely. Oh, this was the only work which I did without any mistake.
After such blunders, I finally sat watching my favourite web series but soon recognized that I forgot to
bring all the clothes which had been put for drying. Although I tried to reach upstairs quickly , it had
already started raining and all clothes were wet. What a tiring day it was, all my mood of Friday binge
had shattered and atlast I decided to get some sleep. So, it's too late now and after such blunders I feel
really tired. Good night diary.
 A Remembrance Day

On Remembrance day, we join the large turnout of witnesses to our ceremonies at the Cenotaph in Centennial Park on our
island. It is always a moving ceremony-often in miserable driving rain. The parade includes veterans, legion members, the police
force, fire department, search and rescue, cadets and Brownies all marching in step. There are bagpipes that always bring tears
and of course the Last Post.

The prayer. The singing. We all sing God Save the King for the first time. Over the years my wife and I have stood with our sons
who are now 15 and 17. When they were very young solemnly holding their hands, my face would stream with tears thinking of
the sacrifice of young men and women in previous generations, certain in the conviction that our boys would not know war.
Now, I am not so sure they won’t be called fourth to make the ultimate sacrifice, and I think that they are also not so certain.

I think of my grandfather Harold “Deke”Alexander Dunlop, who like other teenagers in Kingston, Ontario and across our
country, stepped up to fight in Europe at the start of the first world war. There is a profound contrast between the photo of a
boy taken the day he shipped out, and one of the man who returned after recovering from wounds well after the war ended
(see the photo below).

When I was a young boy my grandfather would engage me with the pigeon French he had learned in the theatre of war.
Grandpa would sing some of the ribald versions of songs like ‘Hinky Dinky Parlez-vous’, clandestinely smoking a cigarette behind
the swinging door out of sight of my grandmother Francis. By some accounts, Deke was “a rip” who enjoyed his refreshments
and his nickname the ‘deacon’ was imbued with not so subtle irony.

I remember my grandfather showing me the so-called war box (see photo below) that he kept under his bed. We would spread
the contents out and he would share it with me. Subsequent boyhood visits would have me asking to see it again. In later years,
the box passed to my mother’s second husband John, and upon John’s death, to me. I have shared it with my boys.

As an adult the contents resonated in a profound way. Letters home to his mother, cheerfully described how they had the
enemy on the run and he appreciated the socks and biscuits. My mother had shared that grandpa was at Ypres in Belgium, and
in my early 40s, I made a personal pilgrimage to the town.

The Second Battle of Ypres was Canada’s first major battle set in Flanders in the Ypres Salient – a section of the front line
surrounding the town. From April 22 to 25, 1915, the 1st Canadian Division fought with great determination against
overwhelming odds, including the first lethal chlorine gas attack of the war, and paid a massive cost with approximately 6,000
casualties, many of whom are buried nearby. I spend hours in the salient museum which a few decades later at the 100th
anniversary of the war, was refurbished and renamed the “In Flanders Fields Museum.”

I attended the daily playing of the Last Post. At 8 o’clock, the police halt the traffic passing under the Menin Gate Memorial to
the Missing to allow the buglers to play their moving tribute. In my half-sized travel journal, I ruminated on the pure misery
soldiers on both sides endured. I thought of the boy-manchild, my grandfather, as I looked at the dioramas reconstructing the
trenches to help we the living, understand in a small way.