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Title: GARDEN OF EDEN by Ernest Hemingway ISBN: 0-684-80452-2 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 06 September, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.42 (64 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Why was this left unpublished by Hemingway.... ?
Comment: I have read a lot of Hemingway. I have enjoyed it all. But I have to say this particular book left me the least satisfied of all of them.
As I read this I didn't realize that Hemingway actually lived an episode like this during his 1st or 2nd marriage. I discovered this after reading the book in one of his biographical accounts. It seems that he wrote this one to process out his inner feelings about the actual relationship he lived through. I wonder how he felt in retrospect? At times his main character David seems bitter about the whole thing. At other times he is definitely caught up in it. He is written much like a puppet, controlled by his wife and the circumstances he runs into.
Catherine is one of the more complex female characters that Hemingway ever portrayed. She reminds me of a more fleshed out Brett, from The Sun Also Rises. Catherine has a very nihilistic view of life. She seems driven to do everything in her power to destroy herself and all who cross her path. She wants pleasure. She wants to feel good about herself, but just can't seem to find a way to acheive it. Poor Catherine... I couldn't help but feel for her the whole way through the book. She seems lost and unwilling to find her way or be found.
I wonder if Hemingway was simply journaling on this experience, never wanting to share it at all? I guess we'll never know...
After hearing the fact that this is a reflection of his real life experiences, I understand why it left me feeling odd. Reading it is almost voyeuristic or like eavsdropping. If you read it, keep in mind it was left unpublished by the master himself... Enjoy the twists and turns of an insatiable spirit.
Rating: 4
Summary: It's clear why he never published this one in his lifetime!
Comment: Hemingway, at his best, was a master of the short story form and a reasonably good, though not outstanding, novelist. At his death he left a number of unfinished manuscripts, material in various stages of development that he was working on and, in some cases, struggling with. Knowing this, I hesitated to pick this book up for a long time, not wanting to read the master's own discards and figuring he knew what was good enough for publication and what was not and that what he left, at his death, was manifestly not.
Reading ISLANDS IN THE STREAM some years back, I felt confirmed in this belief for that was a clumsy and self-absorbed effort and I think he must have known that. Later, I had a similar experience when I tried TRUE AT FIRST LIGHT, the most recent posthumous addition to his opus. More recently, however, I was bored for lack of fresh reading material and so picked up THE GARDEN OF EDEN to read on a plane trip.
Although this one was unfinished at his death and ends in such a fashion as to drive that sad point home, it is nevertheless outstanding Hemingway. Aside from a few lapses here and there and the usual Hemingway tendency toward an almost juvenile self-absorption, this one positively hums with the power of the old Hemingway prose. As sharp and subtle as his best short fiction and as fresh and dynamic as his best novel, THE SUN ALSO RISES, this book unfolds, in crisply vivid detail, the struggle of a youthful writer to hang onto his sense of self-worth and devotion to his work in the face of his passionate love for a difficult and spoiled woman.
Yet it's plain why Hemingway may have agonized over this one and held it back from publication, for the man it reveals is not the public persona he cultivated for most of his life. The protagonist in this tale, an avatar of the author (as in most of his works), is here a passive and unassertive sort who is unable to deal effectively with the woman he has married. Instead he succumbs to one of her whims after another though he feels they will somehow unman him, allowing her to change him outwardly while losing himself in the satisfaction of his writing, the only thing, besides his wife, we are led to believe he really loves. And yet when his wife brings another woman into their lives to create a menage a trois, the hero does not rebel though he finds himself more and more a plaything of the two women. Is he flattered by their attention and sexual interest, though his wife takes delight in being able to control and manipulate him to her will? And is she jealous of the one thing he has outside of her, his writng, and is that the motive that drives her to turn him into a creature she can wholly control?
Hemingway's best works were rooted in his own life experiences and, indeed, as he plumbed those, his well went regrettably dry in his later years, something he sensed and agonized over at the end. Yet this tale is fresh and alive in ways that many of his other later works were not. The one really regrettable thing about it was that he never finished it so there are still some rough parts, where his control slips and he says what he should be implying (by his own famous dictum) and the end tails off into an insipid and half-baked moment of insight leaving the reader feeling cheated.
Hemingway, had he focused on this one and finished it in his lifetime, would not have let it stand this way. But it's plain why he did not for this was not the man he wanted others to see. Still, this one is finely wrought and true, for the most part, to the old Hemingway "voice" and talent. I'm not sorry I finally broke down and read it.
Rating: 5
Summary: Uncover this
Comment: It is a great book. We're talking about Hemingway here, so the style is wonderful. But the story is the most interesting story. It's very complex but well worth it.
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Title: A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway ISBN: 068482499X Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 29 May, 1996 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway ISBN: 0684800713 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 01 March, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: ISLANDS IN THE STREAM by Ernest Hemingway ISBN: 0684837870 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 10 December, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT by Ernest Hemingway ISBN: 0684818981 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 20 March, 1996 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The DANGEROUS SUMMER by Ernest Hemingway ISBN: 0684837897 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 09 December, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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