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Rajski Ogród
A sensational bestseller when it appeared in 1986, The Garden of Eden is the last uncompleted novel of Ernest Hemingway, which he worked on intermittently from 1946 until his death in 1961. Set on the Côte d'Azur in the 1920s, it is the story of a young American writer, David Bourne, his glamorous wife, Catherine, and the dangerous, erotic game they play when they fall in love with the same woman. "A lean, sensuous narrative...taut, chic, and strangely contemporary," The Garden of Eden represents vintage Hemingway, the master "doing what nobody did better" (R. Z. Sheppard, Time).
190 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1986
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About the author
Ernest Hemingway
2,180 books32.2k followersErnest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Best known for an economical, understated style that significantly influenced later 20th-century writers, he is often romanticized for his adventurous lifestyle, and outspoken and blunt public image. Most of Hemingway's works were published between the mid-1920s and mid-1950s, including seven novels, six short-story collections and two non-fiction works. His writings have become classics of American literature; he was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature, while three of his novels, four short-story collections and three nonfiction works were published posthumously.
Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school, he spent six months as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star before enlisting in the Red Cross. He served as an ambulance driver on the Italian Front in World War I and was seriously wounded in 1918. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms. He married Hadley Richardson in 1921, the first of four wives. They moved to Paris where he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s' "Lost Generation" expatriate community. His debut novel The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926.
He divorced Richardson in 1927 and married Pauline Pfeiffer. They divorced after he returned from the Spanish Civil War, where he had worked as a journalist and which formed the basis for his 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940. He and Gellhorn separated after he met Mary Welsh Hemingway in London during World War II. Hemingway was present with Allied troops as a journalist at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris. He maintained permanent residences in Key West, Florida, in the 1930s and in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s. On a 1954 trip to Africa, he was seriously injured in two plane accidents on successive days, leaving him in pain and ill health for much of the rest of his life. In 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho, where, on July 2, 1961 (a couple weeks before his 62nd birthday), he killed himself using one of his shotguns.
Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school, he spent six months as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star before enlisting in the Red Cross. He served as an ambulance driver on the Italian Front in World War I and was seriously wounded in 1918. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms. He married Hadley Richardson in 1921, the first of four wives. They moved to Paris where he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s' "Lost Generation" expatriate community. His debut novel The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926.
He divorced Richardson in 1927 and married Pauline Pfeiffer. They divorced after he returned from the Spanish Civil War, where he had worked as a journalist and which formed the basis for his 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940. He and Gellhorn separated after he met Mary Welsh Hemingway in London during World War II. Hemingway was present with Allied troops as a journalist at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris. He maintained permanent residences in Key West, Florida, in the 1930s and in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s. On a 1954 trip to Africa, he was seriously injured in two plane accidents on successive days, leaving him in pain and ill health for much of the rest of his life. In 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho, where, on July 2, 1961 (a couple weeks before his 62nd birthday), he killed himself using one of his shotguns.
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March 5, 2020
This is one of Hemingway’s novels published posthumously. As usual, there is disagreement on the appropriateness of the editing and cutting. Hemingway worked on this novel from 1946 until his death by suicide in 1961. Biographers say that up to two-thirds of the material was cut including an extended subplot. Does this mean that Ernest may rise yet again and give us another novel in the future? Perhaps Hemingway thought that the strong sexual content was still too avant garde for the times?
The story is of a few months of a newlywed American couple. It’s set, with lots of local color, in beach resorts of the French Riviera and in Spain’s Basque country and Madrid. The young man is an author with two somewhat successful novels published. He’s working on a third based on the story of his current life and new wife. He takes a break from that novel by also writing Hemingway-esque short stories about his experiences as a boy going big-game hunting with his alcoholic father. One such story is built into the narrative of the Garden of Eden novel. His wife, 21 years old, supports her husband and their lifestyle with monthly checks from family wealth.
They genuinely love each other and live a dream life for a few weeks. Little by little the woman reveals that she wants to play the male role in sex. In Hemingway’s words, “the girl wants to be a boy.” We don’t get any John Updike-like details but the man is willing to experiment. Then she gets her hair cut as short as a boy’s and dyes it silver-white. She insists he do the same and she wants them to get tans as dark as possible. She invites a beautiful bi-sexual young woman to join them and they both have sex with her separately, although the husband resists a formal three-some.
Completely independent of the young woman’s sexual orientation and adventures, we start to realize that she’s mentally ill. And with Hemingway’s writing skills we get a bit of a thrill out of the fact that we seem to start to realize this before the husband does. She’s domineering and always wants what she wants but that changes from hour to hour. Just two examples: she eggs him on to have sex with the other woman and then turns against him for having a “whore.” Or she tells him how much she loves his writings and then turns around and tells him it’s garbage. He acts like he got hit by a truck.
I thought the writing was very good; very Hemingway of course. Short and simple sentences, although not always short – sometimes he strings them along with ‘ands’ but commas are rare and semi-colons essentially non-existent. Here’s a long but simple sentence stitched together with five ‘ands’: “The room they lived in looked like the painting of Van Gogh’s room at Arles except there was a double bed and two big windows and you could look out across the water and the marsh and sea meadows to the white town and bright beach of Palavas.”
We read so much about liquor that drinking is almost like a character in the story. Wow do they suck them down! Absinthe with Perrier, pastis (anisette), local reds and whites, such as Tavel; Haig whiskey and others, martinis, Armagnac (like cognac), champagne, Tom Collins – there’s more. (For those who follow my other reviews, it’s as if Inspector Montalbano gave up Sicilian food and became an alcoholic!)
On absinthe: “This drink tastes exactly like remorse. It has the true taste of it and yet it takes it away.”
And this:
“When I drink I want to say things I should never say, the girl said.
Then don’t say them.
Then what’s the use of drinking?”
Some passages I liked, including one about the art of writing:
“The story started with no difficulty as a story does when it is ready to be written…The story had not come to him in the past few days. His memory had been inaccurate in that. It was the necessity to write it that had come to him.”
“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”
“His father, who ran his life more disastrously than any man that he had ever known, gave marvelous advice. He distilled it out of the bitter mash of his previous mistakes with the freshening addition of the new mistakes he was about to make…”
A good story and good writing; typical Hemingway despite the posthumous editing (to me, unnoticeable).
Photos of places in the story. Top photo, Grau du Roi, from telegraph.co.uk
Nimes, France from theculturetrip.com
The beach at Palavas from greatruns.com
A beach in Basque country from wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons
The story is of a few months of a newlywed American couple. It’s set, with lots of local color, in beach resorts of the French Riviera and in Spain’s Basque country and Madrid. The young man is an author with two somewhat successful novels published. He’s working on a third based on the story of his current life and new wife. He takes a break from that novel by also writing Hemingway-esque short stories about his experiences as a boy going big-game hunting with his alcoholic father. One such story is built into the narrative of the Garden of Eden novel. His wife, 21 years old, supports her husband and their lifestyle with monthly checks from family wealth.
They genuinely love each other and live a dream life for a few weeks. Little by little the woman reveals that she wants to play the male role in sex. In Hemingway’s words, “the girl wants to be a boy.” We don’t get any John Updike-like details but the man is willing to experiment. Then she gets her hair cut as short as a boy’s and dyes it silver-white. She insists he do the same and she wants them to get tans as dark as possible. She invites a beautiful bi-sexual young woman to join them and they both have sex with her separately, although the husband resists a formal three-some.
Completely independent of the young woman’s sexual orientation and adventures, we start to realize that she’s mentally ill. And with Hemingway’s writing skills we get a bit of a thrill out of the fact that we seem to start to realize this before the husband does. She’s domineering and always wants what she wants but that changes from hour to hour. Just two examples: she eggs him on to have sex with the other woman and then turns against him for having a “whore.” Or she tells him how much she loves his writings and then turns around and tells him it’s garbage. He acts like he got hit by a truck.
I thought the writing was very good; very Hemingway of course. Short and simple sentences, although not always short – sometimes he strings them along with ‘ands’ but commas are rare and semi-colons essentially non-existent. Here’s a long but simple sentence stitched together with five ‘ands’: “The room they lived in looked like the painting of Van Gogh’s room at Arles except there was a double bed and two big windows and you could look out across the water and the marsh and sea meadows to the white town and bright beach of Palavas.”
We read so much about liquor that drinking is almost like a character in the story. Wow do they suck them down! Absinthe with Perrier, pastis (anisette), local reds and whites, such as Tavel; Haig whiskey and others, martinis, Armagnac (like cognac), champagne, Tom Collins – there’s more. (For those who follow my other reviews, it’s as if Inspector Montalbano gave up Sicilian food and became an alcoholic!)
On absinthe: “This drink tastes exactly like remorse. It has the true taste of it and yet it takes it away.”
And this:
“When I drink I want to say things I should never say, the girl said.
Then don’t say them.
Then what’s the use of drinking?”
Some passages I liked, including one about the art of writing:
“The story started with no difficulty as a story does when it is ready to be written…The story had not come to him in the past few days. His memory had been inaccurate in that. It was the necessity to write it that had come to him.”
“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”
“His father, who ran his life more disastrously than any man that he had ever known, gave marvelous advice. He distilled it out of the bitter mash of his previous mistakes with the freshening addition of the new mistakes he was about to make…”
A good story and good writing; typical Hemingway despite the posthumous editing (to me, unnoticeable).
Photos of places in the story. Top photo, Grau du Roi, from telegraph.co.uk
Nimes, France from theculturetrip.com
The beach at Palavas from greatruns.com
A beach in Basque country from wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons
December 6, 2024
there's something about an author's last uncompleted novel.
there was a lot of good old-fashioned cleverness to this book, of the kind that reminds you of 9th grade english class discussions at 7:35 am that were like pulling teeth. the adam and eve motif, the slow transition from nameless characters to named and back. but then there's also weird stuff.
it's a little strange to read this story, which is about gender dysphoria and polyamory and sexuality, in 2024, when all of that is stuff we know about now. reading hemingway writing about it is almost like when your grandpa describes a character he likes in a tv show using extremely outdated language and you're like, "aw, pop pop! it's nice that you're trying but also please never say that again."
except for hundreds of pages.
bottom line: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
(3.5 / thanks to the publisher for the copy)
there was a lot of good old-fashioned cleverness to this book, of the kind that reminds you of 9th grade english class discussions at 7:35 am that were like pulling teeth. the adam and eve motif, the slow transition from nameless characters to named and back. but then there's also weird stuff.
it's a little strange to read this story, which is about gender dysphoria and polyamory and sexuality, in 2024, when all of that is stuff we know about now. reading hemingway writing about it is almost like when your grandpa describes a character he likes in a tv show using extremely outdated language and you're like, "aw, pop pop! it's nice that you're trying but also please never say that again."
except for hundreds of pages.
bottom line: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
(3.5 / thanks to the publisher for the copy)
September 27, 2021
The Garden of Eden puts a newlywed couple's relationship under the microscope. David and Catherine are honeymooning in the Mediterranean. David is a writer. Catherine is crazy. David needs security, time to write, and support in his pursuits. Catherine needs occupation. She has too much time on her hands to allow her off-kilter mind to wander where it will, and it wanders down strange, dark, and spiteful paths.
The Eden aspect comes in when Catherine can't leave well-enough alone. (David even nicknames her "Devil" least the metaphor should go over your head.) Everything was fine, yet she had to tamper with the creation of man and woman, who holds what role, and then reversing it.
Hemingway knows how to draw up a batshit crazy lady. Hemingway has been criticized for his use of repetitious dialogue, but here it works well to create an aura of madness. Catherine repeats her insane pleas, her cloying begging, her bizarre demands, and it drives you nuts. So, well done! Hemingway has also been criticized for, well, just being boring. He writes about people doing virtually nothing. As they say, write what you know, and after a while Hemingway did nothing but write, lounge about, eat and drink. So that's what he writes about and honestly, I don't need to know what kind of drink you had, because buddy, you drink inconsequentially ALL the time.
The posthumously released The Garden of Eden reads like a repeat. He worked on it about 20 years later, but it feels so very much like The Sun Also Rises that one wonders why Hemingway would write the same novel over again and try to pass it off as something new. Where it diverges is in the sheer nakedness with which Hemingway approaches the transgender subject. Sure, he created manly women in the past, but this is flat out ambiguous and explicit sexuality. Interesting that he should delve into the topic considering he all but abandoned his son Gregory after he came out to him as a transgender person. The idea apparently seemed abhorrent to Ernest, so why would he write an entire novel about it? Perhaps he was evolving in the end?
This book was not a good read for me. There are some good points: the character study of a young author and that of a nutter going off the deep end. But this could've been summed up in half the time. This is not a long book, but it's too long for the very little that happens. Boredom set in for this reader at about the midway point.
The Eden aspect comes in when Catherine can't leave well-enough alone. (David even nicknames her "Devil" least the metaphor should go over your head.) Everything was fine, yet she had to tamper with the creation of man and woman, who holds what role, and then reversing it.
Hemingway knows how to draw up a batshit crazy lady. Hemingway has been criticized for his use of repetitious dialogue, but here it works well to create an aura of madness. Catherine repeats her insane pleas, her cloying begging, her bizarre demands, and it drives you nuts. So, well done! Hemingway has also been criticized for, well, just being boring. He writes about people doing virtually nothing. As they say, write what you know, and after a while Hemingway did nothing but write, lounge about, eat and drink. So that's what he writes about and honestly, I don't need to know what kind of drink you had, because buddy, you drink inconsequentially ALL the time.
The posthumously released The Garden of Eden reads like a repeat. He worked on it about 20 years later, but it feels so very much like The Sun Also Rises that one wonders why Hemingway would write the same novel over again and try to pass it off as something new. Where it diverges is in the sheer nakedness with which Hemingway approaches the transgender subject. Sure, he created manly women in the past, but this is flat out ambiguous and explicit sexuality. Interesting that he should delve into the topic considering he all but abandoned his son Gregory after he came out to him as a transgender person. The idea apparently seemed abhorrent to Ernest, so why would he write an entire novel about it? Perhaps he was evolving in the end?
This book was not a good read for me. There are some good points: the character study of a young author and that of a nutter going off the deep end. But this could've been summed up in half the time. This is not a long book, but it's too long for the very little that happens. Boredom set in for this reader at about the midway point.
October 25, 2023
The Garden of Eden. The preface is scary: the book was incomplete, the publisher retouched the manuscript, and it is probably his most criticized work.
Beauty runs through this work, with intense passages, but I was a little embarrassed by all these descriptions of cocktails and meals.
Beauty runs through this work, with intense passages, but I was a little embarrassed by all these descriptions of cocktails and meals.
August 22, 2025
Her hair was cropped as short as a boy’s. It was cut with no compromises. It was brushed back, heavy as always, but the sides were cut short and the ears that grew close to her head were clear and the tawny line of her hair was cropped close to her head and smooth and sweeping back. She turned her head and lifted her breasts and said, “Kiss me please.”
“You see, she said. “That’s the surprise. I’m a girl. But now I’m a boy too and I can do anything and anything and anything.
The Garden of Eden ~~ Ernest Hemingway
This January, I decided to take a deep dive into one of my favorite writers, Ernest Hemingway . It was my goal to explore his later and unpublished works as well as rereading his short stories.
My first Hemingway read of January 2023 was The Garden of Eden.
Since Hemingway’s death in 1961, his estate and his publishers, Charles Scribner’s Sons, have been catching up to him, issuing the work which, for one reason or another, he did not publish during his lifetime. He held back A Moveable Feast out of concern for the feelings of the people in it who might still be alive. But for the novel Islands in the Stream he seems to have had editorial misgivings. Even more deeply in this category is The Garden of Eden, which he began in 1946 and worked on intermittently in the last 15 years of his life and left unfinished. It is a highly readable story, if not possibly the book he envisioned. As published it is composed of 30 short chapters running to about 70,000 words. A publisher’s note advises that some cuts have been made in the manuscript, but according to Carlos Baker, at one point a revised manuscript of the work ran to 48 chapters and 200,000 words, so the publisher’s note is disingenuous. In an interview with The New York Times, a Scribners editor admitted to taking out a subplot in rough draft that he felt had not been integrated into the main body of the text, but this cut reduced the book’s length by two-thirds.
No American writer since Mark Twain has so captivated and entranced his readers to the extent that Hemingway did ~~ his success had a quality of simplicity and naturalness that was breathtaking.
I consider Hemingway not only one of the finest novelists of the twentieth century, but one of the two greatest American writers of all time, the other, of course, being Mark Twain. To my mind, his novels The Sun Also Rises, and For Whom the Bell Tolls rank at the very top of the American literary tradition. Hemingway’s nonfiction pieces are great reads, and are without parallel in his exceptional combining of memoir and literature. And then there are the many excellent stories and vignettes ~~ The Nick Adams Stories being among the finest of these pieces. Lastly, there is the brilliant The Old Man and the Sea.
Upon reading, it is not surprise that it took Hemingway 15 years to write The Garden of Eden; nor is it surprising that the book was not published until 25 years after he died. This story is like no other Hemingway work. It is dark and dangerously bold. Hemingway described this book’s theme as the happiness of the Garden that a man must lose. It is about the loss of innocence and a shedding of naivety ~~ the realization that the world is much more complicated and uncontrollable than one imagined. At the center of the book are four relationships ~~ one between David and Catherine, newlywed Americans honeymooning in Europe; one between Catherine and Marita, a young woman she discovers and begins a romantic relationship with; one between David and Marita, whose own relationship is encouraged by Catherine; and the final one, a ménage-a-tois between the three ~~ simultaneously necessary and destructive.
Catherine and David are two of the most compelling characters from Jazz Age literature. They are, by far, the most rounded and interesting of Hemingway’s couples, particularly Catherine. Hemingway is often criticized for his treatment of women in literature. Catherine is tragically beautiful ~~ she is written with a deeply-felt honesty that one can imagine was truly painful for Hemingway to put in print. The evolution of her character and devolution of her sanity were impossible to look away from, even when the character turned petty or when the subject matter became bizarre. Hemingway’s development of Catherine and her development throughout made it clear that she was not strange just to be strange and, similarly, that the husband David was not just passive or submissive, but truly loving and sadly lost. The minor characters, such as David’s father who is present only through David’s stories, and the hotel keeper, are well-written and important to the plot, as contrast characters and biographical anchors.
I AM a huge fan of Hemingway’s prose ~~ simple, plain, mild ~~ made up of short sentences, sparse dialogue, and little creative expression. What is different about The Garden of Eden, is that Hemingway keeps his signature style, but adds two things ~~ one, a character ~~ David ~~ who is a writer and who explains why he writes the way he does; and two, adds a certain level of emotion to the same sparse style: drama, disappointment, fear, passion, eroticism. Hemingway typically leaves the emotional side of his stories to be inferred. The Garden of Eden is similar in that respect, but not exactly the same ~~ it breaks the mold and adds an interesting dynamic to the writing style of one who is already considered to be a master craftsman ~~ further supporting the fact that Hemingway was groundbreaking in his prose.
Had it not been for the novel’s style and prose, which is clearly Hemingway, it would have been difficult to believe that Papa had written this book. There is a great deal of sentimentalism and raw emotion, which is typically sparse in Hemingway’s novels. Also, Hemingway tackles serious exploration of gender roles and taboo” sexuality ~~ including reversed masculinity/femininity and bisexuality. The primary relationship in the book is a ménage-a-trois. The major conflict is Catherine’s mental degradation and psychosis ~~ a psychological instability which becomes more intrusive and violent as the story progresses. All of this, coupled with Hemingway talking about his own writing process through his own story’s writer, David ~~ who finds himself evaluating his own process ~~ manages to create a work which is highly dangerous and incredibly ahead of its time.
Despite its shortcomings ~~ Marita was grossly underdeveloped ~~ The Garden of Eden is a rich story worthy of being read on so many levels. Highly recommended.
“You see, she said. “That’s the surprise. I’m a girl. But now I’m a boy too and I can do anything and anything and anything.
The Garden of Eden ~~ Ernest Hemingway
This January, I decided to take a deep dive into one of my favorite writers, Ernest Hemingway . It was my goal to explore his later and unpublished works as well as rereading his short stories.
My first Hemingway read of January 2023 was The Garden of Eden.
Since Hemingway’s death in 1961, his estate and his publishers, Charles Scribner’s Sons, have been catching up to him, issuing the work which, for one reason or another, he did not publish during his lifetime. He held back A Moveable Feast out of concern for the feelings of the people in it who might still be alive. But for the novel Islands in the Stream he seems to have had editorial misgivings. Even more deeply in this category is The Garden of Eden, which he began in 1946 and worked on intermittently in the last 15 years of his life and left unfinished. It is a highly readable story, if not possibly the book he envisioned. As published it is composed of 30 short chapters running to about 70,000 words. A publisher’s note advises that some cuts have been made in the manuscript, but according to Carlos Baker, at one point a revised manuscript of the work ran to 48 chapters and 200,000 words, so the publisher’s note is disingenuous. In an interview with The New York Times, a Scribners editor admitted to taking out a subplot in rough draft that he felt had not been integrated into the main body of the text, but this cut reduced the book’s length by two-thirds.
No American writer since Mark Twain has so captivated and entranced his readers to the extent that Hemingway did ~~ his success had a quality of simplicity and naturalness that was breathtaking.
I consider Hemingway not only one of the finest novelists of the twentieth century, but one of the two greatest American writers of all time, the other, of course, being Mark Twain. To my mind, his novels The Sun Also Rises, and For Whom the Bell Tolls rank at the very top of the American literary tradition. Hemingway’s nonfiction pieces are great reads, and are without parallel in his exceptional combining of memoir and literature. And then there are the many excellent stories and vignettes ~~ The Nick Adams Stories being among the finest of these pieces. Lastly, there is the brilliant The Old Man and the Sea.
Upon reading, it is not surprise that it took Hemingway 15 years to write The Garden of Eden; nor is it surprising that the book was not published until 25 years after he died. This story is like no other Hemingway work. It is dark and dangerously bold. Hemingway described this book’s theme as the happiness of the Garden that a man must lose. It is about the loss of innocence and a shedding of naivety ~~ the realization that the world is much more complicated and uncontrollable than one imagined. At the center of the book are four relationships ~~ one between David and Catherine, newlywed Americans honeymooning in Europe; one between Catherine and Marita, a young woman she discovers and begins a romantic relationship with; one between David and Marita, whose own relationship is encouraged by Catherine; and the final one, a ménage-a-tois between the three ~~ simultaneously necessary and destructive.
Catherine and David are two of the most compelling characters from Jazz Age literature. They are, by far, the most rounded and interesting of Hemingway’s couples, particularly Catherine. Hemingway is often criticized for his treatment of women in literature. Catherine is tragically beautiful ~~ she is written with a deeply-felt honesty that one can imagine was truly painful for Hemingway to put in print. The evolution of her character and devolution of her sanity were impossible to look away from, even when the character turned petty or when the subject matter became bizarre. Hemingway’s development of Catherine and her development throughout made it clear that she was not strange just to be strange and, similarly, that the husband David was not just passive or submissive, but truly loving and sadly lost. The minor characters, such as David’s father who is present only through David’s stories, and the hotel keeper, are well-written and important to the plot, as contrast characters and biographical anchors.
I AM a huge fan of Hemingway’s prose ~~ simple, plain, mild ~~ made up of short sentences, sparse dialogue, and little creative expression. What is different about The Garden of Eden, is that Hemingway keeps his signature style, but adds two things ~~ one, a character ~~ David ~~ who is a writer and who explains why he writes the way he does; and two, adds a certain level of emotion to the same sparse style: drama, disappointment, fear, passion, eroticism. Hemingway typically leaves the emotional side of his stories to be inferred. The Garden of Eden is similar in that respect, but not exactly the same ~~ it breaks the mold and adds an interesting dynamic to the writing style of one who is already considered to be a master craftsman ~~ further supporting the fact that Hemingway was groundbreaking in his prose.
Had it not been for the novel’s style and prose, which is clearly Hemingway, it would have been difficult to believe that Papa had written this book. There is a great deal of sentimentalism and raw emotion, which is typically sparse in Hemingway’s novels. Also, Hemingway tackles serious exploration of gender roles and taboo” sexuality ~~ including reversed masculinity/femininity and bisexuality. The primary relationship in the book is a ménage-a-trois. The major conflict is Catherine’s mental degradation and psychosis ~~ a psychological instability which becomes more intrusive and violent as the story progresses. All of this, coupled with Hemingway talking about his own writing process through his own story’s writer, David ~~ who finds himself evaluating his own process ~~ manages to create a work which is highly dangerous and incredibly ahead of its time.
Despite its shortcomings ~~ Marita was grossly underdeveloped ~~ The Garden of Eden is a rich story worthy of being read on so many levels. Highly recommended.
July 23, 2007
this is one of hemingway's most fascinating character studies, and like all his heroines in all of his books, i sort of fell in love with her. how i feel about this book is complicated and not for the faint of heart -- i love it, yes. but i almost feel a little invaded ... i had this idea in my head of this summer on the mediterranean when i was like, 14, and then to read this book ... well, it was wonderful and shocking in its truthfulness.
i still sometimes want to escape to live in this painful, white-washed and golden tan story. i think about this book on average ...a few times a year. how many books do that to you? i like the previous reviewer's (didn't catch your name, sorry!) idea of reading it once a summer.
hemingway is much more delicate than he gets credit for, and sometimes i think he understands women better than most "sensitive" men ...
i still sometimes want to escape to live in this painful, white-washed and golden tan story. i think about this book on average ...a few times a year. how many books do that to you? i like the previous reviewer's (didn't catch your name, sorry!) idea of reading it once a summer.
hemingway is much more delicate than he gets credit for, and sometimes i think he understands women better than most "sensitive" men ...
August 12, 2017
I can understand why many readers, especially Hemingway fans, would find this book (as well as Islands in the Stream, for that matter) to be a pointless slog through the author's psyche. The story is kind of weird, there isn't any action to speak of, the girlfriend swap is Hemingway at his most mysoginistic, and the book is unfinished, but Hemingway's beautiful portrayals of the people and places are what make Garden of Eden my most favorite book. I know this is the cheeziest line of all time (but here goes): this book transports me, and when I read it, I feel like I am a participant in a world that Hemingway has created. Hemingway has me completely convinced that happiness is a beach and plenty of alcohol.
September 15, 2016
I like to see you in the morning all new and strange.
If lines like that one were sprinkled throughout this novel, this could have been poetry. Sometimes after reading books heavy in subject or content, I turn to books with a seemingly facile flow. Hemingway always manages to gift the kind of terseness one expects from his stylistic ease. Even then, I'm often perplexed after reading because although some pages leave me in awe, I still find some chunks wanting. Yet I've been convinced enough to read four of his books; this is where I'd normally insert the texting acronym, SMH.
I'm usually unconvinced by Hemingway's female characters. In fact, I think it's safe to say he viewed women from behind discolored, dusty, sunglasses. The women of his novels are usually shallow, robotic, and still waiting to be fully developed into living creatures with the sort of nuanced authenticity you find in humans, regardless of that human's taste, tact, or lack thereof. But if I was reading solely for characters, there are a lot of books I wouldn't read, although I do find it hard to continue reading a book when it's clear that the author's character-ignorance or lack of research makes it clear that he or she is on some agenda that stems from preconceived notions of a certain group of people. Hemingway doesn't write agendas. On another note, there is always some inclusion of alcoholism in his works. One could get a bit weary of the continuous drinking until one notices the subtleties: each time a problem arises, a situation that could be cured with communication, an uncomfortable feeling, a word-scar that runs deep, the solution becomes alcohol. In this case, Absinthe and Perrier. Sometimes wine. With breakfast, lunch and dinner.
So then, what of this story? David Bourne, a writer, travels with his new wife, Catherine, on their honeymoon. They settle in a house on the gorgeous French Riviera, where David writes in the mornings while Catherine tries to figure out herself - like, does she want to become "a boy?" She heads to town while he writes and each time she returns, her hair is cropped shorter. As she undergoes metamorphosis, their sexual interactions get more peculiar, but Hemingway, the genius of literary subtlety, is graceful with this, excluding certain words yet still giving just the right hints so one imagines what Catherine is doing to David.
And what she does to David is not only physical. It is mental and emotional. It is literal and figurative. It is symbolic. It is coldhearted and selfish. It is also a cry for help, as Catherine feels disoriented with the world she lives in and her place in it. Sometimes she even seems to be a veiled apparition of David's writing muse. Or maybe this is sensed only because the dialogue doesn't give enough of a nuanced view of Catherine. Enters Marita. Their "paramour." She is introduced to the story in a peculiar way, and towards the end, Marita seems to morph into a different form of Catherine, perhaps the Catherine that David the writer desires, since he only knows himself as a writer and doesn't seem to have a grasp on David, the individual.
He had not known just how greatly he had been divided and separated because once he started to work he wrote from an inner core which could not be split nor even marked nor scratched. He knew about this and it was his strength since all the rest of him could be riven.
If you've read The Sun Also Rises, you may have already met David because David is Jake Barnes. They're just too similar - different settings and timeframes, yes, but the same perplexed, melancholic, nonchalant guy. Yet compared to Sun Also Rises, I may have liked this book better, this amusingly eccentric literary eroticism mingled with the parallel story of a man recalling an elusive father. But Hemingway's books are so unique, I suppose they create different interpretations. What I liked about this one is how he stayed with these characters longer, since usually, his introductions of characters have my head spinning in the way an introvert feels when thrown into a crowded room of screaming drunks. On the surface, this is dialogue that flows in circles, pacing that surrenders to setting, but hidden in those reflective moments that David has, those moments when story emerges, the atmospheric tension morphs from a writer and his threesome tangling, to a man coming to terms with why he allows himself to be victimized by his choices.
March 25, 2020
Hemingway pens his old man fantasy of a successful writer burdened by his relationship with his crazy albeit rich and beautiful wife and a stunning young heiress who falls in love with the couple. The writer lives off of these two rich women, fucking them both, while treating them as distractions to his writing. Everybody is gorgeous and one dimensional and for some reason everybody tries to cope with their problems by drinking and skinny dipping in the ocean. Somewhere in between is a narrative that suggests the writer has daddy issues which might be true for dear old Ernest. Fascinating stuff, would make a good James Franco film starring James Franco.
July 25, 2020
Maybe we’ll just be us. Only changed. That’s maybe the best thing. And we will keep on won’t we?
*
There is nothing you can do except try to write it the way that it was. So you must write each day better than you possibly can and use the sorrow that you have now to make you know how the early sorrow came. And you must always remember the things you believed because if you know them they will be there in the writing and you won’t betray them. The writing is the only progress you make.
*
There is nothing you can do except try to write it the way that it was. So you must write each day better than you possibly can and use the sorrow that you have now to make you know how the early sorrow came. And you must always remember the things you believed because if you know them they will be there in the writing and you won’t betray them. The writing is the only progress you make.
February 21, 2009
I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was bothering me through the first hundred or so pages of this book. Suddenly I realized – Garden of Eden is terrible. Just awful! Let me explain.
I adore the Hemingway canon top to bottom, even those weirdo bullfighting stories in Death in the Afternoon, and long ago came to terms with his manifold flaws as a person. But flaws outweigh brilliance here: the thing feels like it was written through a mist of fear and anger (towards women, fathers, homosexuality, any sexuality that is complicated at all), cobwebs that never got the chance to be swept away. Do you have a grandparent who is so kind and sweet and would never hurt a fly but once in a while lays down an offhand remark that is so casually, crushingly racist that you are left breathless, feeling amidst your revulsion a small kernel of affection for someone who has managed to remain an unrepentant old sinner? That is exactly how it feels to read this book. And just like I can’t stop loving my racist little grandmother, the very fact that Garden of Eden is terrible makes me sort of dig it. One of our greatest prose-poets devoted three hundred pages and untold energies to a book about a haircut, and that is hilarious. It is so grand and unstinting with its awfulness, I almost want to give it five stars for being so good at being bad; it gets two only because I can’t quite claim not to have liked it. But, of course, do not read Garden of Eden.
I adore the Hemingway canon top to bottom, even those weirdo bullfighting stories in Death in the Afternoon, and long ago came to terms with his manifold flaws as a person. But flaws outweigh brilliance here: the thing feels like it was written through a mist of fear and anger (towards women, fathers, homosexuality, any sexuality that is complicated at all), cobwebs that never got the chance to be swept away. Do you have a grandparent who is so kind and sweet and would never hurt a fly but once in a while lays down an offhand remark that is so casually, crushingly racist that you are left breathless, feeling amidst your revulsion a small kernel of affection for someone who has managed to remain an unrepentant old sinner? That is exactly how it feels to read this book. And just like I can’t stop loving my racist little grandmother, the very fact that Garden of Eden is terrible makes me sort of dig it. One of our greatest prose-poets devoted three hundred pages and untold energies to a book about a haircut, and that is hilarious. It is so grand and unstinting with its awfulness, I almost want to give it five stars for being so good at being bad; it gets two only because I can’t quite claim not to have liked it. But, of course, do not read Garden of Eden.
November 22, 2016
Published after Hemingway's death, The Garden of Eden stands as his last novel, and it shows his growth and struggle as a writer well. It includes topics that indicate Hemingway's willingness to write about eschewing society's norms: homosexual relationships, polygamy, androgyny, and more. Hemingway's portrayal of this subject matter shows both his development and his downfall. While he plays around with gender and sexuality in The Garden of Eden, his writing still has an unshakable undercurrent of misogyny and homophobia. It appears that Hemingway used his writing as a way to experiment with the queer parts of his own identity, and it saddens me that he passed away before he could continue this exploration of himself.
Overall, an intriguing read that has more nuance than Hemingway's other novels, especially in regard to the interpersonal relationships of his characters. I despise how Hemingway makes Catherine crazy in the face of her desires - it shows his sexism - but I appreciate that he at least tried to grapple with his complex feelings toward empowered women, gay relationships, etc. A fitting, though not fabulous, last work.
Overall, an intriguing read that has more nuance than Hemingway's other novels, especially in regard to the interpersonal relationships of his characters. I despise how Hemingway makes Catherine crazy in the face of her desires - it shows his sexism - but I appreciate that he at least tried to grapple with his complex feelings toward empowered women, gay relationships, etc. A fitting, though not fabulous, last work.
March 9, 2020
"سعادة الجنة التي على الانسان ان يخسرها" هكذا تحدث ارنست همنغواي عن كتابه والذي للأسف لم يقم بإنهائه وقد نشر بعد وفاته.
كاتب اخبره ناشره ان كتابه الثاني لاقى نجاحا كبيرا وعليه تجهيز كتاب جديد بالسرعة الممكنه ولكنه كان متزوجا جديدا من فتاة شقراء تهيم به حبا. ولكنها تريد ان تكون محور اهتمامه وتريده ان تكون هي كتابه وتحاول ان تبعده عن الكتابة والاهتمام بها.
فعلا طريقة العيش الذي وضعته به جنة عدن ولكنه يريد ان يكتب الى جانب هذه الحياة الرائعة وهي تحاول ان تبعده لانها تحبه وتريد ان تبقى محور اهتمامه ولا تريد اَي شيء يشغله عنها.
القصة قديمة طبعا وكتبها على مدار ٢٥ عاما ولكنها عندما تقرأها تشعر انها معاصرة جدا لهذا الزمن.
كاتب اخبره ناشره ان كتابه الثاني لاقى نجاحا كبيرا وعليه تجهيز كتاب جديد بالسرعة الممكنه ولكنه كان متزوجا جديدا من فتاة شقراء تهيم به حبا. ولكنها تريد ان تكون محور اهتمامه وتريده ان تكون هي كتابه وتحاول ان تبعده عن الكتابة والاهتمام بها.
فعلا طريقة العيش الذي وضعته به جنة عدن ولكنه يريد ان يكتب الى جانب هذه الحياة الرائعة وهي تحاول ان تبعده لانها تحبه وتريد ان تبقى محور اهتمامه ولا تريد اَي شيء يشغله عنها.
القصة قديمة طبعا وكتبها على مدار ٢٥ عاما ولكنها عندما تقرأها تشعر انها معاصرة جدا لهذا الزمن.
April 1, 2024
They call Hemingway a classic, but he looks like the king of boredom and small talk. This one, in particular, is a hotchpotch with cheap trade ingredients from Nicholas Sparks and Sandra Brown.
So, there is a lot of drinking, eating, sleeping, sex, almost no action at all, the dialogues are poorer than those of Sophie Kinsella. Not to forget the characters: David is sour and grumpy and the two girls could be easily among the finalists of Miss Stupidity.
Strange enough, there are two semi-interesting quotes, one about intelligent people, the other about absinth, and both of them are authored by the stupidest character, Catherine..
So, there is a lot of drinking, eating, sleeping, sex, almost no action at all, the dialogues are poorer than those of Sophie Kinsella. Not to forget the characters: David is sour and grumpy and the two girls could be easily among the finalists of Miss Stupidity.
Strange enough, there are two semi-interesting quotes, one about intelligent people, the other about absinth, and both of them are authored by the stupidest character, Catherine..
January 1, 2018
Could I be becoming a Hemingway fan?! This story is incredible. The writing is descriptive without emotion, it pulls one in. The story is bizarre and keeps one guessing.
This is a strange story of want, desire and need. No matter what Want is satisfied, it doesn't quench the thirst or need. Catherine, in particular, needs/wants/desires more; when one desire is fulfilled, it is no longer wanted but something else is. There is no contentment.
There's also a power struggle of the sexes. Catherine is trying to become like David. There's a gender fluidity in their bed. When she's the man, David is disturbed. Physically, she tries to look/become a man as well; cutting her hair to match David's, wearing men's trousers, etc.
David is so very passive. He does everything Catherine asked, regardless of whether he wished it as well or even wanted it. If he's stood up at some point to Catherine's wishes, would the story have changed? That's an age-old question, in terms of Adam and Eve, which this story parallels.
David and Catherine are newlyweds (in Paradise). They bring another woman into the marriage whom Catherine experiences first, taking a metaphorical bite of an apple. Then, at the insistence of Catherine, David also experiences the new woman, thereby taking his metaphorical bite of the apple. Afterwards, they are no longer in Paradise, their marriage starts to crumble.
There may be parallels to Hemingway's life as well. Before leaving one marriage, he met & got involved with his next wife. His current wife always met and knew he was involved with his next wife. Only in the story of David & Catharine, it's Catharine who brings the new woman in; not David. In real life it would most likely have been Hemingway; not his current wife.
That's just scratching the surface of this little book. There's delightful descriptions of story writing, hurts from the past and indecision. There's a weird storyline of tanning in the sun to become darker and darker without stop. Every word comes together into a weird, confusing, bizarre story that turns into a wonderful, compelling story.
I became aware of this book through reading The First Love Story: Adam, Eve, and Us. I'm glad it was brought to my attention. I very much enjoyed this.
This is a strange story of want, desire and need. No matter what Want is satisfied, it doesn't quench the thirst or need. Catherine, in particular, needs/wants/desires more; when one desire is fulfilled, it is no longer wanted but something else is. There is no contentment.
There's also a power struggle of the sexes. Catherine is trying to become like David. There's a gender fluidity in their bed. When she's the man, David is disturbed. Physically, she tries to look/become a man as well; cutting her hair to match David's, wearing men's trousers, etc.
David is so very passive. He does everything Catherine asked, regardless of whether he wished it as well or even wanted it. If he's stood up at some point to Catherine's wishes, would the story have changed? That's an age-old question, in terms of Adam and Eve, which this story parallels.
David and Catherine are newlyweds (in Paradise). They bring another woman into the marriage whom Catherine experiences first, taking a metaphorical bite of an apple. Then, at the insistence of Catherine, David also experiences the new woman, thereby taking his metaphorical bite of the apple. Afterwards, they are no longer in Paradise, their marriage starts to crumble.
There may be parallels to Hemingway's life as well. Before leaving one marriage, he met & got involved with his next wife. His current wife always met and knew he was involved with his next wife. Only in the story of David & Catharine, it's Catharine who brings the new woman in; not David. In real life it would most likely have been Hemingway; not his current wife.
That's just scratching the surface of this little book. There's delightful descriptions of story writing, hurts from the past and indecision. There's a weird storyline of tanning in the sun to become darker and darker without stop. Every word comes together into a weird, confusing, bizarre story that turns into a wonderful, compelling story.
I became aware of this book through reading The First Love Story: Adam, Eve, and Us. I'm glad it was brought to my attention. I very much enjoyed this.
March 29, 2019
I find Hemingway offputtingly macho at the best of times, so I was surprised to learn he’s the favorite author of a go-getting feminist type from my neighborhood book club; she put this forward as our April selection. I hadn’t even heard of it before that point, probably because it was Hemingway’s second posthumous publication, not brought out until 1986 (25 years after his suicide). My main problems with it are that 1) it reads like an early draft of an early novel – unpolished and with no proper ending, and 2) it reads like a male having-it-all fantasy, in which two women simultaneously lavish him with sexual attention and switching from one to the other presents no serious consequences.
It’s thought that Hemingway began writing the book in 1946, but he was casting his mind back to the late 1920s, specifically to the time when he was preparing to leave his first wife, Hadley Richardson, for his second, Pauline Pfeiffer (relationships that overlapped). In 1927 he and Pauline honeymooned in France’s Le Grau-du-Roi, which is where The Garden of Eden opens.
Hemingway’s stand-in is writer David Bourne, who’s had success with a novel about flying in the war and is now dividing his time between Africa-set short stories that reflect on his childhood and his relationship with his father, and an autobiographical narrative drawing on his life with his new wife, Catherine. They’re on an extended honeymoon in France and Spain, and the title invites you to think of this as an idyllic time-outside-of-time spent swimming, feasting, making love and taking long drives.
Catherine doesn’t want to do what others expect. She loves feeling that she and David have created a whole world unto themselves; they’re free to go anywhere and do anything. Obsessed with equality, she gets a close-cut gamine haircut that matches David’s exactly (take a look at Pauline’s haircut in 1927, on the Hemingway Wikipedia page!). But already on page 39 the newlyweds are arguing; already on page 71 they’re worrying that there’s no baby on the way; already on page 89 their heads are turned by a young woman they meet in a café. This Marita becomes the third in an increasingly uncomfortable ménage à trois.
To the extent that this is a dramatization of the Genesis story and its accompanying Jewish myths, it is a reasonably successful plot. David calls Catherine “Devil,” but really she’s the Lilith figure, with David (Adam) later moving on to Marita (Eve). Alternatively, Marita could be thought of as the snake, a temptress destroying the couple’s perfect union. Catherine is much the most interesting character, mercurial and driven by odd compulsions: to sleep with a woman, to burn David’s stories and clippings (I wondered if that could that have been Hemingway remembering how Hadley lost his manuscripts on a train – an incident I learned about from The Paris Wife). There are a couple of casual jokes in the text about sending her to Switzerland to an asylum, but perhaps her mental health truly is fragile.
It was certainly edgy for Hemingway to be thinking about gender fluidity and bisexuality; the content is explicit but muffled under euphemisms and abstractions, kind of like you get in D.H. Lawrence. (So I think there’s anal sex on p. 56 when Catherine asks to “be a boy,” but I couldn’t be sure.) But the way these two women slavishly attend to David’s needs so that he can go on with his heroic writing work didn’t sit well with me. This is not as liberated a situation as it may appear to be.
What I most enjoyed about the novel were the descriptions of food and drink and the scenes in which David is sitting down to work (“You’d better write another story. Write the hardest one there is to write that you know.”) and reliving the elephant hunt. As usual, though, there’s the annoyances of the Hemingway style: underpunctuated; too many adjectives (sometimes as many as four in a row); simplistic language, including about good and evil; flat and unrealistic dialogue. Apparently Hemingway worked on the manuscript off and on for 15 years until it ballooned to 800 pages, yet he never finished it. Editors cut it down to a manageable size, but couldn’t give it a sense of closure. In the last pages David starts rewriting the burned stories; Marita has replaced Catherine. As if nothing ever happened. Utterly frustrating.
Some favorite lines:
Catherine: “I look forward to every day.”
David: “Everyone’s full of charm. Charm and sturgeon eggs.”
David to Catherine: “Why can’t you want something that makes sense?”
Catherine: “I do. But I want us to be the same and you almost are and it wouldn’t be any trouble to do it.”
Catherine, towards the end: “I wish it hadn’t ended in complete disillusion too”
It’s thought that Hemingway began writing the book in 1946, but he was casting his mind back to the late 1920s, specifically to the time when he was preparing to leave his first wife, Hadley Richardson, for his second, Pauline Pfeiffer (relationships that overlapped). In 1927 he and Pauline honeymooned in France’s Le Grau-du-Roi, which is where The Garden of Eden opens.
Hemingway’s stand-in is writer David Bourne, who’s had success with a novel about flying in the war and is now dividing his time between Africa-set short stories that reflect on his childhood and his relationship with his father, and an autobiographical narrative drawing on his life with his new wife, Catherine. They’re on an extended honeymoon in France and Spain, and the title invites you to think of this as an idyllic time-outside-of-time spent swimming, feasting, making love and taking long drives.
Catherine doesn’t want to do what others expect. She loves feeling that she and David have created a whole world unto themselves; they’re free to go anywhere and do anything. Obsessed with equality, she gets a close-cut gamine haircut that matches David’s exactly (take a look at Pauline’s haircut in 1927, on the Hemingway Wikipedia page!). But already on page 39 the newlyweds are arguing; already on page 71 they’re worrying that there’s no baby on the way; already on page 89 their heads are turned by a young woman they meet in a café. This Marita becomes the third in an increasingly uncomfortable ménage à trois.
To the extent that this is a dramatization of the Genesis story and its accompanying Jewish myths, it is a reasonably successful plot. David calls Catherine “Devil,” but really she’s the Lilith figure, with David (Adam) later moving on to Marita (Eve). Alternatively, Marita could be thought of as the snake, a temptress destroying the couple’s perfect union. Catherine is much the most interesting character, mercurial and driven by odd compulsions: to sleep with a woman, to burn David’s stories and clippings (I wondered if that could that have been Hemingway remembering how Hadley lost his manuscripts on a train – an incident I learned about from The Paris Wife). There are a couple of casual jokes in the text about sending her to Switzerland to an asylum, but perhaps her mental health truly is fragile.
It was certainly edgy for Hemingway to be thinking about gender fluidity and bisexuality; the content is explicit but muffled under euphemisms and abstractions, kind of like you get in D.H. Lawrence. (So I think there’s anal sex on p. 56 when Catherine asks to “be a boy,” but I couldn’t be sure.) But the way these two women slavishly attend to David’s needs so that he can go on with his heroic writing work didn’t sit well with me. This is not as liberated a situation as it may appear to be.
What I most enjoyed about the novel were the descriptions of food and drink and the scenes in which David is sitting down to work (“You’d better write another story. Write the hardest one there is to write that you know.”) and reliving the elephant hunt. As usual, though, there’s the annoyances of the Hemingway style: underpunctuated; too many adjectives (sometimes as many as four in a row); simplistic language, including about good and evil; flat and unrealistic dialogue. Apparently Hemingway worked on the manuscript off and on for 15 years until it ballooned to 800 pages, yet he never finished it. Editors cut it down to a manageable size, but couldn’t give it a sense of closure. In the last pages David starts rewriting the burned stories; Marita has replaced Catherine. As if nothing ever happened. Utterly frustrating.
Some favorite lines:
Catherine: “I look forward to every day.”
David: “Everyone’s full of charm. Charm and sturgeon eggs.”
David to Catherine: “Why can’t you want something that makes sense?”
Catherine: “I do. But I want us to be the same and you almost are and it wouldn’t be any trouble to do it.”
Catherine, towards the end: “I wish it hadn’t ended in complete disillusion too”
June 28, 2021
Fascinating & rare view of Hemingway & morality of 1920s Spain & France. Here he expresses deep regret for giving important info that leads to the destruction of an elephant, weights love & sexuality & gender play, reveals much of his writing life...
January 29, 2009
I read this book for a college course and was dreading it. I thought - here we go - another book with manly hunter Hemingway about war and bullfighting and all things manly. Ugh! Oh but it was not to be. This book turned me around on Hemingway and made me see the genius that he is. Sadly the book is published posthumously and it is questionable how much Hemingway is in this book - but when I read this I did not know there was a lot of controversy surrounding this and just enjoyed it for what it was.
The story is of five months in the lives of David Bourne, an American writer, and his wife, Catherine. It starts out on their honeymoon in the French Riviera where they both meet - and both fall in love - with a young woman named Marita. The story is basically about how they balance the triangle - and how the triangle falls apart.
On a side note, there is a sex scene in the beginning of this book where Catherine uses a bottle on David. When I went to class after reading that section our professor brought it up and wanted to talk about that scene. Uncomfortable as it was I got her point. It was very shocking and very interesting that in the beginning of the novel and the beginning of their married life - that during a sex act the female would be so dominate over the male - especially in the period this was set and in a Hemmingway novel. I think it's kind of easy to skim over this part of the book (it's brief and it's not written so graphically that it makes you drop the book) but our Prof wouldn't let us skim that uncomfortable passage - she forced us to see how much it means to both the story as a whole and the significance of Hemingway including it in his book.
The story is of five months in the lives of David Bourne, an American writer, and his wife, Catherine. It starts out on their honeymoon in the French Riviera where they both meet - and both fall in love - with a young woman named Marita. The story is basically about how they balance the triangle - and how the triangle falls apart.
On a side note, there is a sex scene in the beginning of this book where Catherine uses a bottle on David. When I went to class after reading that section our professor brought it up and wanted to talk about that scene. Uncomfortable as it was I got her point. It was very shocking and very interesting that in the beginning of the novel and the beginning of their married life - that during a sex act the female would be so dominate over the male - especially in the period this was set and in a Hemmingway novel. I think it's kind of easy to skim over this part of the book (it's brief and it's not written so graphically that it makes you drop the book) but our Prof wouldn't let us skim that uncomfortable passage - she forced us to see how much it means to both the story as a whole and the significance of Hemingway including it in his book.
July 6, 2018
Is it fair to love a book because I know so much about the author? This is a story about a writer, David Bourne, who is the typical Hemingway hero: sensitive but self-sacrificing, creative, satisfied by simple pleasures, and stoic. David is honeymooning in the French Riviera at a secluded hotel outside of Cannes and spends his mornings writing.
If this were all the book had to offer, the story would still be good, but knowing about Hemingway’s life makes this book extraordinary. By having read about Hemingway’s life and his personality I had a perspective that permeated the story. I saw the critical parts of David Bourne as Hemingway, which served to humanize the story. There are also several elements of the plot that reflect back to events in Hemingway’s life.
Maybe I’ve been played or conned into a feeling a certain way about this novel against my better judgement. It’s well documented that Hemingway was a master of publicity and many of his exploits are indeed captured by his biographers. Hemingway strove to remove the vacuum that usually seems to exists between a writer and his stories. But still, writing is art and the quality and beauty of art is absolutely dependent on its subject. Therefore, if Hemingway chose to use his life to humanize his art, then that is fair game. His stories represent a kind of self-portraiture.
Thus, I loved this story as an episode in the life of David Bourne as well as a mirror of Hemingway’s own life. I loved the parts of the plot that are still edgy today and still challenge social norms. And I loved the parts of the plot that chronicle Hemingway’s writing process. I loved the setting in the French Riviera, and I loved the depiction of the hotel where simple hospitality, simple food, and simple drink created a kind of luxury and escape that money could never buy.
Lastly, as an introduction to Hemingway, The Garden of Eden offers an approachable story. As readers, I think we can all relate to the art of writing as well as to the simple release of obligation that a good vacation can bring. Both of these themes exist in this book. Additionally, the ending is somewhat unique for a Hemingway novel. Yes, there will be some readers that will understandably find his style annoying, but others may find that Hemingway’s ability to gently nudge their imagination into alignment with his own intentions to be a different, more enjoyable form of writing altogether.
If this were all the book had to offer, the story would still be good, but knowing about Hemingway’s life makes this book extraordinary. By having read about Hemingway’s life and his personality I had a perspective that permeated the story. I saw the critical parts of David Bourne as Hemingway, which served to humanize the story. There are also several elements of the plot that reflect back to events in Hemingway’s life.
Maybe I’ve been played or conned into a feeling a certain way about this novel against my better judgement. It’s well documented that Hemingway was a master of publicity and many of his exploits are indeed captured by his biographers. Hemingway strove to remove the vacuum that usually seems to exists between a writer and his stories. But still, writing is art and the quality and beauty of art is absolutely dependent on its subject. Therefore, if Hemingway chose to use his life to humanize his art, then that is fair game. His stories represent a kind of self-portraiture.
Thus, I loved this story as an episode in the life of David Bourne as well as a mirror of Hemingway’s own life. I loved the parts of the plot that are still edgy today and still challenge social norms. And I loved the parts of the plot that chronicle Hemingway’s writing process. I loved the setting in the French Riviera, and I loved the depiction of the hotel where simple hospitality, simple food, and simple drink created a kind of luxury and escape that money could never buy.
Lastly, as an introduction to Hemingway, The Garden of Eden offers an approachable story. As readers, I think we can all relate to the art of writing as well as to the simple release of obligation that a good vacation can bring. Both of these themes exist in this book. Additionally, the ending is somewhat unique for a Hemingway novel. Yes, there will be some readers that will understandably find his style annoying, but others may find that Hemingway’s ability to gently nudge their imagination into alignment with his own intentions to be a different, more enjoyable form of writing altogether.
March 8, 2020
At the time of his death in 1961, Hemingway had a large number of unpublished manuscripts in various stages of draft. Among them were three longer works that had engaged him off and on from the late 1940s: a manuscript about his years in Paris in the 1920s and that his widow, Mary, would publish in 1964 with the title of A Moveable Feast; several manuscripts that he referred to as his “Sea Book” or “Sea Novel” and that Mary would publish in 1970 under the title of Islands in the Stream; and the manuscript that Charles Scribner would publish in 1986 with the title of The Garden of Eden.
The Garden of Eden, Scribner wrote in his introduction to the work, was essentially the manuscript as Hemingway had left it:
The accuracy of that disclaimer is not at all certain. There is debate about how much editing actually took place under the guidance of Scribner beginning with E.L. Doctorow in his May 18, 1986 review of the novel. Citing Carlos Baker, Doctorow maintained that Scribner’s hand was significantly heavier than Scribner had indicated:
The amount of editing is a significant issue for it is at the heart of any critical evaluation of the work and of its place in the Hemingway canon. Clearly Hemingway saw the novel as a major piece of writing with 48 chapters and 200,000 words. Since Hemingway was not involved with the editing there is no certainty that the published piece reflects fully the author’s intent and creative conception. Typically editors work in conjunction with their authors but in the case of The Garden of Eden Hemingway was long dead before the Scribner publishing house edited the surviving text. How much of The Garden of Eden is Hemingway and how much is it a creation of Scribner’s editors?
In terms of style the novel does bear the Hemingway stamp. In seems to hark back to his earlier writings before Death in the Afternoon and Green Hills of Africa where he began to introduce new elements of style—experiments with more complex sentences with subordinate clauses. A Garden of Eden is dominated by the simple declarative, unadorned sentences, the type of sentences that carries sophistication and depth and that calls to mind A Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms as well as the majority of his short stories. Here for example a scene in Chapter Nine:
In four sentences, Hemingway evokes all of the senses describing a simple walk between rooms in a house. The novel also continues the Hemingway genius with a dialogue that consistently captures the naturalness and nuances of conversation. But while the style is recognizable as Hemingway, the story itself seems to have made some departures from much of his previous work. Most apparent, the novel is sexually provocative.
A newly married couple, David and Catherine Bourne, have traveled from Paris to southern France to spend their summer. He is a young, promising writer with two well-received novels in circulation. She is young and wealthy. She is also awakening to her sexual ambivalence, which she begins to introduce first into their lovemaking and then into their physical appearances. The plot develops additional complexity when a third character, a female, joins them out of bed and in bed.
Sexual ambivalence was not an entirely new Hemingway motif. There were hints of it in several of his novels, including the earlier A Farewell to Arms, his popular For Whom the Bell Tolls and the later Across the River and into the Trees. And one of his short stories—“Sea Change”—where the woman is clearly bi-sexual has dialogue that could almost have been taken directly from The Garden of Eden. The difference from his other works is that in The Garden of Eden the theme controlled the action. Sexual ambivalence and bi-sexuality were more than hints.
Beyond the novel’s theme, the characters seem departures from classic Hemingway. David Bourne, his male character, is ambiguous and hesitant; Catherine Bourne, the female, is strong and decisive. While some recent critics have re-evaluated the nature of Hemingway’s misogyny and his treatment of women, there is really no woman in his other novels who is as consistently directed and complex as Catherine, not even Pilar in For Whom the Bell Tolls. Catherine dominates the novel and its other characters whose strings she pulls with regularity. Here is David in the arms of Catherine reflecting on his submission:
Only when he was writing did David feel whole. But in his life away from his writing he was “riven”.” Catherine had left David riven, divided, separated. Would any of Hemingway’s other male creations with the possible exception of Jake Barnes—for example, Frederick Henry, Henry Morgan, Richard Cantwell, Thomas Hudson—talk about being “riven” by a woman?
In many ways, A Garden of Eden suggests a Hemingway moving in new artistic and creative directions. Certainly it is hard to generalize from a work so markedly truncated by others, but there are suggestions in the published work that Hemingway’s creative artistry was evolving along new lines, carrying his readers into new emotional, compassionate and reflective territories.
The Garden of Eden, Scribner wrote in his introduction to the work, was essentially the manuscript as Hemingway had left it:
In preparing the book for publication we have made some cuts in the manuscript and some routine copy editing corrections. Beyond a very small number of minor interpolations for clarity and consistency, nothing has been added. In every significant respect the work is all the author’s.
The accuracy of that disclaimer is not at all certain. There is debate about how much editing actually took place under the guidance of Scribner beginning with E.L. Doctorow in his May 18, 1986 review of the novel. Citing Carlos Baker, Doctorow maintained that Scribner’s hand was significantly heavier than Scribner had indicated:
As published it is composed of 30 short chapters running to about 70,000 words. A publisher's note advises that ''some cuts'' have been made in the manuscript, but according to Mr. Baker's biography, at one point a revised manuscript of the work ran to 48 chapters and 200,000 words, so the publisher's note is disingenuous. In an interview with The New York Times last December, a Scribners editor admitted to taking out a subplot in rough draft that he felt had not been integrated into the ''main body'' of the text, but this cut reduced the book's length by two-thirds.
The amount of editing is a significant issue for it is at the heart of any critical evaluation of the work and of its place in the Hemingway canon. Clearly Hemingway saw the novel as a major piece of writing with 48 chapters and 200,000 words. Since Hemingway was not involved with the editing there is no certainty that the published piece reflects fully the author’s intent and creative conception. Typically editors work in conjunction with their authors but in the case of The Garden of Eden Hemingway was long dead before the Scribner publishing house edited the surviving text. How much of The Garden of Eden is Hemingway and how much is it a creation of Scribner’s editors?
In terms of style the novel does bear the Hemingway stamp. In seems to hark back to his earlier writings before Death in the Afternoon and Green Hills of Africa where he began to introduce new elements of style—experiments with more complex sentences with subordinate clauses. A Garden of Eden is dominated by the simple declarative, unadorned sentences, the type of sentences that carries sophistication and depth and that calls to mind A Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms as well as the majority of his short stories. Here for example a scene in Chapter Nine:
David Bourne woke when it was light and put on shorts and a shirt and went outside. The breeze had died. The sea was calm and the day smelled of the dew and the pines. He walked bare footed across the flagstones of the terrace to the room at the far end of the long house and went in and sat down at the table where he worked. The windows had been open overnight and the room was cool and full of early morning promise.
In four sentences, Hemingway evokes all of the senses describing a simple walk between rooms in a house. The novel also continues the Hemingway genius with a dialogue that consistently captures the naturalness and nuances of conversation. But while the style is recognizable as Hemingway, the story itself seems to have made some departures from much of his previous work. Most apparent, the novel is sexually provocative.
A newly married couple, David and Catherine Bourne, have traveled from Paris to southern France to spend their summer. He is a young, promising writer with two well-received novels in circulation. She is young and wealthy. She is also awakening to her sexual ambivalence, which she begins to introduce first into their lovemaking and then into their physical appearances. The plot develops additional complexity when a third character, a female, joins them out of bed and in bed.
Sexual ambivalence was not an entirely new Hemingway motif. There were hints of it in several of his novels, including the earlier A Farewell to Arms, his popular For Whom the Bell Tolls and the later Across the River and into the Trees. And one of his short stories—“Sea Change”—where the woman is clearly bi-sexual has dialogue that could almost have been taken directly from The Garden of Eden. The difference from his other works is that in The Garden of Eden the theme controlled the action. Sexual ambivalence and bi-sexuality were more than hints.
Beyond the novel’s theme, the characters seem departures from classic Hemingway. David Bourne, his male character, is ambiguous and hesitant; Catherine Bourne, the female, is strong and decisive. While some recent critics have re-evaluated the nature of Hemingway’s misogyny and his treatment of women, there is really no woman in his other novels who is as consistently directed and complex as Catherine, not even Pilar in For Whom the Bell Tolls. Catherine dominates the novel and its other characters whose strings she pulls with regularity. Here is David in the arms of Catherine reflecting on his submission:
They held each other and he could feel himself start to be whole again. He had not known just how greatly he had been divided and separated because once he started to work he wrote from an inner core which could not be split nor even marked nor scratched. He knew about this and it was his strength since all the rest of him could be riven.
Only when he was writing did David feel whole. But in his life away from his writing he was “riven”.” Catherine had left David riven, divided, separated. Would any of Hemingway’s other male creations with the possible exception of Jake Barnes—for example, Frederick Henry, Henry Morgan, Richard Cantwell, Thomas Hudson—talk about being “riven” by a woman?
In many ways, A Garden of Eden suggests a Hemingway moving in new artistic and creative directions. Certainly it is hard to generalize from a work so markedly truncated by others, but there are suggestions in the published work that Hemingway’s creative artistry was evolving along new lines, carrying his readers into new emotional, compassionate and reflective territories.
Read
March 11, 2018Per chi ancora non ha letto Ernest Hemigway [poveretto ;)] credo sia consigliabile non cominciare da questo libro.
Direi che è meglio prima familiarizzare con altre sue opere per poi potere apprezzare anche Il giardino dell’Eden.
Intanto questo è l’ultimo romanzo scritto da Hemigway prima del suo suicidio, scritto, riscritto, ampliato, corretto, sfoltito e poi pubblicato postumo per voler della sua ultima moglie Mary, rimaneggiato da Lei e dall’editore, quindi in un certo senso impuro.
Pur tuttavia esso rispecchia il suo stile: autobiografico, tutto dialoghi apparentemente vuoti ma indice di profondi malesseri che altro non erano che i malesseri dello stesso Hemingway.
E’ la storia del rapporto morboso tra due giovani sposi che già, appena nato, si va sgretolando: lui romanziere ossessionato dalla scrittura, sempre in cerca di nuovi stimoli creativi, lei ricca bellissima eccentrica che piano piano scivola in una pazzia inarrestabile sempre alla ricerca di se stessa e di nuove esperienze, anche sensuali, da cui il marito si fa inizialmente coinvolgere in maniera passiva, portando però entrambi ad una relazione insana, che sfocia in un triangolo amoroso ed erotico con una giovane americana conosciuta nei vuoti girovagare dei due tra le vie delle cittadine della riviera francese.
Ci sono i luoghi cari allo scrittore americano: l’amore per l’Europa, per la Spagna, per la Costa Azzurra con le sue spiagge dorate e assolate il suo buon vino e la sua cucina, per i caffè vissuti come templi di ispirazione e di convivialità, per quelle giornate perse nel dolce far nulla dei benestanti, per l’Africa, terra profondamente conosciuta da Hemingway e da lui vissuta nelle frequenti esperienze di caccia. In questo romanzo c’è molto di questo scrittore a me molto caro, ma c’è forse qualcosa che non gli appartiene del tutto, come l’intervento di una mano estranea che tra le righe non fa che trasparire e forse stonare.
Direi che è meglio prima familiarizzare con altre sue opere per poi potere apprezzare anche Il giardino dell’Eden.
Intanto questo è l’ultimo romanzo scritto da Hemigway prima del suo suicidio, scritto, riscritto, ampliato, corretto, sfoltito e poi pubblicato postumo per voler della sua ultima moglie Mary, rimaneggiato da Lei e dall’editore, quindi in un certo senso impuro.
Pur tuttavia esso rispecchia il suo stile: autobiografico, tutto dialoghi apparentemente vuoti ma indice di profondi malesseri che altro non erano che i malesseri dello stesso Hemingway.
E’ la storia del rapporto morboso tra due giovani sposi che già, appena nato, si va sgretolando: lui romanziere ossessionato dalla scrittura, sempre in cerca di nuovi stimoli creativi, lei ricca bellissima eccentrica che piano piano scivola in una pazzia inarrestabile sempre alla ricerca di se stessa e di nuove esperienze, anche sensuali, da cui il marito si fa inizialmente coinvolgere in maniera passiva, portando però entrambi ad una relazione insana, che sfocia in un triangolo amoroso ed erotico con una giovane americana conosciuta nei vuoti girovagare dei due tra le vie delle cittadine della riviera francese.
Ci sono i luoghi cari allo scrittore americano: l’amore per l’Europa, per la Spagna, per la Costa Azzurra con le sue spiagge dorate e assolate il suo buon vino e la sua cucina, per i caffè vissuti come templi di ispirazione e di convivialità, per quelle giornate perse nel dolce far nulla dei benestanti, per l’Africa, terra profondamente conosciuta da Hemingway e da lui vissuta nelle frequenti esperienze di caccia. In questo romanzo c’è molto di questo scrittore a me molto caro, ma c’è forse qualcosa che non gli appartiene del tutto, come l’intervento di una mano estranea che tra le righe non fa che trasparire e forse stonare.
November 9, 2007
I love this book. I know a lot of people tend to bash it because it was released posthumously, in edited form, but I think it's brilliant as-is. The beginning of the book in particular, I like. Hemingway's simple description of eating eggs for breakfast makes me feel as if I'm at the table as well. It really paints a picture for me. To me, it seems that Hemingway probably never released this book more because of the subject matter than because of any writing flaws. In short, a tale of innocence lost, and the complexities a relationship goes through. Check it out.
December 9, 2007
I'm guessing that I came at Hemingway in a completely different way from most readers in that this posthumously published book was one of the first things that I ever read by him. And it was sort of an "a-ha" moment; so *this* is what they mean by the clean and lean Hemingway style... I fell into this book effortlessly, read it quickly, and was very affected (and impressed)by it. I know it's considered one of his inferior works, but who cares. I loved it.
June 25, 2025
My first Hemingway! Apparently this was published after his death, and there is some controversy about the way it was edited (although no one is denying that he did write it, unlike a certain book with "Watchman" in the title which I could mention). I was surprised how lush and sensual the writing was; I was expecting something much more spare and stripped-down from what I had always heard of Hemingway.
The book is also WILDLY queer and transgressive for something Hemingway first started working on in 1946; we have a pansexual, polyamorous, genderqueer main character. That's not even me reading between the lines. It is literally Right There. In The Text. (Said character is also mentally ill, alcoholic, incredibly toxic, and honestly kinda fun to hate on whilst reading, but it's not BECAUSE they're queer, just because they're a hot mess. If that makes sense.)
Adding this to my growing pile of books about weird-ass characters knocking about Europe and/or Asia in the interwar period and having mental health problems. For some reason, that aesthetic speaks to me, Jeeves.
The book is also WILDLY queer and transgressive for something Hemingway first started working on in 1946; we have a pansexual, polyamorous, genderqueer main character. That's not even me reading between the lines. It is literally Right There. In The Text. (Said character is also mentally ill, alcoholic, incredibly toxic, and honestly kinda fun to hate on whilst reading, but it's not BECAUSE they're queer, just because they're a hot mess. If that makes sense.)
Adding this to my growing pile of books about weird-ass characters knocking about Europe and/or Asia in the interwar period and having mental health problems. For some reason, that aesthetic speaks to me, Jeeves.
January 12, 2022
Una din cele mai ciudate carti pe care le am citit vreodata. Mi a dat o dispozitie foarte proasta. Insa nu am putut sa nu apreciez stilul impecabil si subiectul: nebunia umana, degradarea relatiilor, perversitatea si pervertirea, conditia scriitorului.
January 6, 2016
It is difficult not to relate the words of the writer-protagonist of The Garden of Eden to the novel itself:
Yet all that one can do without access to the manuscript is talk about the novel as it stands, in its, one might say, butchered form. Unsurprisingly, it falls short of Hemingway's own standards; it is not nearly as polished as A Farewell to Arms or For Whom the Bell Tolls, for example. But it is, at least occasionally, Hemingway; now and then you feel his presence and voice. The story-within-a-story and the concomitant commentary on the process of writing - Hemingway's process of writing - are great. In the end, I don't know any writer who can hurt you like Hemingway can, who can make you feel just that little bit broken, broken right there with him. The happy note that marks the end of the novel rings falls, rings editorially false.
Had Hemingway managed to finish The Garden of Eden, it undoubtedly would have been a better book. Perhaps it also would have been a very different book.
¹Some scholars claim the manuscript was actually a whopping 2000 pages. See: http://www.kentstateuniversitypress.c...
This was the first writing he had finished since they were married. Finishing is what you have to do, he thought. If you don't finish, nothing is worth a damn. (108)Hemingway worked on The Garden of Eden for fifteen years, starting in 1946, but never finished it. After Hemingway shot himself with his favorite shotgun, his widow Mary carried the manuscript of The Garden of Eden in a shopping bag to the publishers at Scribner. Of its 800 pages,¹ 200,000 words, and 48 chapters, they finally published the novel in 247 pages, 30 chapters, and 70,000 words. How this could happen, how it could be allowed, I haven't a clue. Either publish the man's work as he left it, or don't. Don't take the damn liberty of editing the man's work for him. And not just slightly editing it, either, by making it consistent, for instance, as the cheeky preface by Charles Scribner, Jr. suggests: they ultimately cut more than two-thirds of the novel including a long subplot. Unbelievable. I've been angry and indignant about it ever since I found out, and it makes judging the novel – at least the novel as Hemingway wrote it and intended it – nearly impossible.
Yet all that one can do without access to the manuscript is talk about the novel as it stands, in its, one might say, butchered form. Unsurprisingly, it falls short of Hemingway's own standards; it is not nearly as polished as A Farewell to Arms or For Whom the Bell Tolls, for example. But it is, at least occasionally, Hemingway; now and then you feel his presence and voice. The story-within-a-story and the concomitant commentary on the process of writing - Hemingway's process of writing - are great. In the end, I don't know any writer who can hurt you like Hemingway can, who can make you feel just that little bit broken, broken right there with him. The happy note that marks the end of the novel rings falls, rings editorially false.
Had Hemingway managed to finish The Garden of Eden, it undoubtedly would have been a better book. Perhaps it also would have been a very different book.
¹Some scholars claim the manuscript was actually a whopping 2000 pages. See: http://www.kentstateuniversitypress.c...
June 20, 2011
In this novel Hemingway plays the simple triangle of two bi-sexual women and a straight man for all it's worth. In the last published novel of Hemingway's the lean, muscular dialogue still rings clear and honest and true. The narrative is clean, compelling and minimalistic with details in the narrative that breed not only credibility but also trust in the verity of the narrator. I wondered if F. Scott Fitzgerald's many trials with Zelda, as Hemingway was a trusted confidant of Scott, had left more of a lasting impression on Hem than he would publicly admit. The sub-plot of the elephant hunt is vintage Hemingway, as seen through David Bourne as a young man, and I sympathized with his hatred of the hunt for ivory. The women are from a different era, admittedly, but sometimes they struck me as way too compliant and at other times their dialogue sounded mannish and inapt. But, overall, the portrait work of these three hedonistic characters in this Eden of Spain and the South of France seemed well drawn, as I cared what happened to each of them throughout the story line. Hemingway's last work ends on a note of powerful optimism -- luminous and hopeful that in the end paradise, once lost, can be re-gained on earth. For a Nobel novelist, who had seen so much of grim war and tempestuous love and humans tested by a harsh universe, he lived all of it immensely deeply: such optimism by such a realist is, at least, reassuring and, at best, an inspiration. Hemingway wrote better short works but he ended his career as a novelist with a grace note, which seems to say that the "garden" is still there through grace, if one only possesses the will to reclaim it.
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February 3, 2009I could read this over and over and never get tired of it. It has been at the top of my favorite books list for a very long time. It's simple andIt's sparse and yet it speaks volumes about love and sex and men and women and our humanity and our imperfection. It's posthumous and even though it's different from everything else he wrote, it's still Papa.
June 19, 2014
I have become increasingly disappointed in reading the posthumous novels of Hemingway: Islands in the Stream, Under Kilimanjaro and now this one. It’s as if the publishers were trying to squeeze every ounce of value from the scraps left behind by this tortured genius who exited the literary scene too early. I am sure Hemingway the perfectionist would have objected to these works being published in the state they were in had he been alive.
The Garden of Eden tells the story of a threesome, a newly married couple and a female tourist they pick up in France. David is an emerging author, Catherine is his wife and patron; she is also sexually challenged as she is battling between being a woman and wanting to be a man. Catherine is jealous of David’s success as a writer, in his discipline, and in his masculinity, none of which she possesses. She wants him to chronicle their travels through France and Spain on this trip while he is being drawn towards writing a story about his father and himself hunting a wild elephant in Africa many years ago. There are bedroom scenes where Catherine wants to be the man, and David obliges, but what they do is subjugated to Hemingways’s iceberg theory, where what is said is only the tip of what is happening below – go figure it out. And use plenty of imagination!
Enter Marita, a submissive and co-operative companion. Catherine takes Marita as a lover initially, on the premise that “this is one thing I have to do, or live the rest of my life not knowing.” She feels guilt after the act and turns the girl over to David, and when the two of them hit it off, Catherine turns furiously jealous. David initially dislikes having Marita thrown at him but is physically drawn to her and realizes that she has more of his interests at heart; he realizes that Catherine is using them both to realize herself and release her demons.
The published part of this manuscript was part of a much larger work, and it shows, for there are many loose ends left to the reader to figure out. The characters themselves are a bunch of fragile, self-indulgent twenty-somethings only concerned with swimming, drinking, eating, taking excursions around the Riviera and into Spain, and sleeping with each other. David writes in the mornings, and seems to be the only one interested in doing some work to keep his growing career on track.
The novel is obviously autobiographical, for it covers the period when Hemingway transitioned from his first wife to his second in France, but reading accounts of that affair, the threesome seemed to have been sponsored by Hemingway, not his wife. I wonder if this novel was a way for the famous author to put a new spin on things for the record books and exonerate himself. There are strong parallels between the reality and the fiction, with descriptions of the author’s workroom across the garden, the two way locks in the doors that allowed the lovers access to each other, and the number of books of the author published at the time.
Given Hemingway’s style, the sex is implied although the kissing is liberally doled out. You get good primers on martini making, local swimming conditions and the food of the area. The dialogue is rife with trivialities that mask the occasional bursts of anger lurking under the iceberg. The subtext is loaded with seething emotions. And yet, I found that there was not enough to sustain the novel, and the high points were few and far between.
When Catherine burns his African story in a fit of anger, David laments the loss of his work, “When it’s right you cannot remember. Every time you read it, it comes as a big surprise,” as if to say that he will never be able to reproduce that story with the same emotional intensity a second time. There is a parallel between that statement and Hemingway’s life; for after such triumphs as For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea and his notable short stories, I wonder whether in his later years, saddled with pain and addled by booze, Hemingway realized that he really would never reach the heights of Kilimanjaro again and these soon-to-be posthumous tomes were mere islands in the stream of what was once a great literary continent gifted to him.
The Garden of Eden tells the story of a threesome, a newly married couple and a female tourist they pick up in France. David is an emerging author, Catherine is his wife and patron; she is also sexually challenged as she is battling between being a woman and wanting to be a man. Catherine is jealous of David’s success as a writer, in his discipline, and in his masculinity, none of which she possesses. She wants him to chronicle their travels through France and Spain on this trip while he is being drawn towards writing a story about his father and himself hunting a wild elephant in Africa many years ago. There are bedroom scenes where Catherine wants to be the man, and David obliges, but what they do is subjugated to Hemingways’s iceberg theory, where what is said is only the tip of what is happening below – go figure it out. And use plenty of imagination!
Enter Marita, a submissive and co-operative companion. Catherine takes Marita as a lover initially, on the premise that “this is one thing I have to do, or live the rest of my life not knowing.” She feels guilt after the act and turns the girl over to David, and when the two of them hit it off, Catherine turns furiously jealous. David initially dislikes having Marita thrown at him but is physically drawn to her and realizes that she has more of his interests at heart; he realizes that Catherine is using them both to realize herself and release her demons.
The published part of this manuscript was part of a much larger work, and it shows, for there are many loose ends left to the reader to figure out. The characters themselves are a bunch of fragile, self-indulgent twenty-somethings only concerned with swimming, drinking, eating, taking excursions around the Riviera and into Spain, and sleeping with each other. David writes in the mornings, and seems to be the only one interested in doing some work to keep his growing career on track.
The novel is obviously autobiographical, for it covers the period when Hemingway transitioned from his first wife to his second in France, but reading accounts of that affair, the threesome seemed to have been sponsored by Hemingway, not his wife. I wonder if this novel was a way for the famous author to put a new spin on things for the record books and exonerate himself. There are strong parallels between the reality and the fiction, with descriptions of the author’s workroom across the garden, the two way locks in the doors that allowed the lovers access to each other, and the number of books of the author published at the time.
Given Hemingway’s style, the sex is implied although the kissing is liberally doled out. You get good primers on martini making, local swimming conditions and the food of the area. The dialogue is rife with trivialities that mask the occasional bursts of anger lurking under the iceberg. The subtext is loaded with seething emotions. And yet, I found that there was not enough to sustain the novel, and the high points were few and far between.
When Catherine burns his African story in a fit of anger, David laments the loss of his work, “When it’s right you cannot remember. Every time you read it, it comes as a big surprise,” as if to say that he will never be able to reproduce that story with the same emotional intensity a second time. There is a parallel between that statement and Hemingway’s life; for after such triumphs as For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea and his notable short stories, I wonder whether in his later years, saddled with pain and addled by booze, Hemingway realized that he really would never reach the heights of Kilimanjaro again and these soon-to-be posthumous tomes were mere islands in the stream of what was once a great literary continent gifted to him.
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