Customer Reviews

The Garden of Eden

5 star:		(49)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I became a writer largely out of love and admiration for Ernest Hemingway. Old Man and the Sea is his best in my opinion, but this one is my favorite. So much of Hemingway's work is loosely autobiographical, so many protagonists modeled after himself. But in his earlier works, when he gets to the deepest parts of these men, he pulls back, or shies away with emotional distance or some other kind of evasion. There is no such evasion in the Garden of Eden. This book is his most vulnerable, tender and humbling portrait of so many of the central struggles of his life.

It is difficult to separate Hemingway the man from Hemingway the writer and for that matter Hemingway the character in his own writing. He encouraged them to be confused in his own way during his life and was a major contributor to the blossoming of our current culture of celebrity obsession. So it's not invalid in my opinion to read his work as part of the greater story of his life and find meaning in it from that perspective.

In this book, Hemingway finally takes on some of the painful issues of his life. There's a great deal of sexual intrigue in The Garden of Eden, specifically about gender and identity. David and Catherine, the two main characters, do some fascinating and disturbing play with their genders and their relationship with each other as a man and a woman. A lot of people have theorized that one of the contributing factors to Hemingway's suicide had to do with his conflicted sexuality which he hid for most of his life. As a child he was raised as a girl until the age of four or five by his mother who had wanted a daughter. Aside from that, there was a history of cross dressing in his family, which also tragically played out in a subsequent generation with Hemingway's son Gregory AKA Gloria.

We see him delve into one of the great traumas of his writing life -- when his wife (was is Pauline or Hadley?) lost an entire suitcase full of his writing including all the carbon copies, in the middle to early part of his career. This incident is replayed in this novel and dealt with on a much deeper level than is mentioned in a Moveable Feast.

We are also able to see in The Garden of Eden a more complex heroine and a more fragile and intertwined relationship than is presented in any of Hemingway's other works. This again is another major issue of Hem's life story -- why was he married 5 times? what were these relationships like and what was it about him and each of the women that contributed to this? Though The Garden doesn't give any answers, it is fascinating to see the questions touched upon and explored in a more honest and vulnerable way than in his other work.

It is true that this novel is disturbing. I wouldn't describe reading it as a feel-good experience. But after a while, feel-good experiences become a little one note and this is something more interesting. There is an exquisite kind of mourning and desolation that runs through this book, and yet at the same time some of his most voluptuous writing about food and sex and his surroundings. The tension is breathtaking, yet at the same time heartwrenching as you can almost feel it all becoming too much for him.

I love this book. It is in my top ten of all time. And I know almost everyone would disagree with me, but I think this book is more than worth reading. It's a precious final window into the soul of one of the greatest writers of our time.

ps. A caveat: Read a couple other Hemingway novels before you read this one, if you haven't.

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.

Simply-told though filled with dark implications, this lean-but-lyrical gem is as strong as vintage Hemingway. In this posthumously-published novel, Papa explores the many manifestations of desire as it excites, inspires, nurtures & drives us mad--often all at once. Set in the 1920's on the Cote d'Azur, it chronicles the honeymoon of David Bourne, a writer, & his lovely, impulsive wife Catherine. As her strange compulsions take her on a slide toward either freedom or insanity, David struggles to follow her and still practice his chosen craft. Soon after another woman enters their relationship, the struggle becomes one for control of David's art through his love for both Catherine & Marita, the newcomer. This is a love-triangle with three complete sides (as they pair & repair), and how each of these characters chooses to resolve their struggle belies the more prurient aspects of the book: this is less erotica than a story of how the dark & bright sides of desire inform lives, how they empower & weaken us, and how love may not be enough--even 'true' love.
As entertaining as any romance, though much more provocative, this book is a masterpiece (despite the controversy surrounding it).

This is one of those books, published posthumously, that encourages readers to go back and read all of an author's previous works in its light. It's essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the psychology of Hemingway's work--and especially for anyone who thinks he already understands it. The games Hemingway's characters play with gender and sexuality in this novel cause us to reconsider the role of gender--and gender AS a role played by characters--in much of his earlier work. It's not surprising that this book was greeted with slight embarrassment upon publication. It reveals a Hemingway whose view of sexuality is much more complex and Modernist than that of many of his more conservative readers.

This is a very strange novel that I found oddly mesmerising. I also have to admit, that because the novel was published posthumously and appears to have been based on Hemmingway's most intimate personal experiences, I felt a little uncomfortable reading it - as if I were a voyeur.

Garden of Eden is about the complex dysfunctional relationship that develops between a young married couple and a second woman, whom they both fall in love with. It is Catherine, the young bride, who manipulates the other two players in this strange romantic triangle. David, presumably Ernest's alter ego in this novel, is portrayed as pathetically passive, unable to stand up to Catherine and her destructive obsessions and jealousies.

The dynamics of this relationship are sophisticated, although much of the dialogue and routines of the threesome seem banal. The Garden of Eden is interesting also; in that it gives the reader some insight into Hemmingway's writing process. David a young writer has published two successful novels and is labouring on a collection of stories about his childhood in Africa. It is David's writing, and the fact that his lover is able to share the experience with him, that Catherine is most jealous of.

Comparisons to The Sun Also Rises are inevitable. Catherine, like Brett in The Sun Also Rises, is the self-destructive heart of Garden of Eden. Both novels feature characters whose lives seem trite and empty, filled with the excess of drink and food. And both novels feature a young writer, struggling to find his literary voice while drawn to a narcissistic beauty.

While the novel isn't sexually explicit by today's standard, some readers will be uncomfortable with the nature of the relationship in this novel and with the `gender bending games' Catherine insists the young couple play.

The novel has its shortcomings and won't be appreciated by all. It may seem tedious and trite to some, a posthumously published, uneven effort that should have stayed off the book shelves, but I found it unexpectedly sophisticated and oddly mesmerizing. Garden of Eden is a far cry from Hemmingway's best work (For Whom the Bell Tolls is my personal favourite), but I found it worth reading (3 ¾ stars).

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.

This posthumous work might be my favorite. After not having read much of him in several years, this title was suggested to me by a friend as a hidden gem. Well, maybe not well hidden, but it was a work released without Hemingway's knowledge after his death and I tended to avoid those. What a terrible mistake! At once his most sensual and disturbing tale, Garden of Eden is a descent into madness and loss that leaves the reader on much shakier ground than much of his other macho corpus. It's a tale that will long haunt me and perhaps even drive me to read some of the other works that I've passed over. Why isn't this a terrific film yet?

"He had shut his eyes... and then her hand holding him and searching lower... and then lay back in the dark and did not think at all and only felt the weight and the strangeness inside and she said, 'Now you can't tell who is who can you?'

'You're Catherine.'

'No I'm Peter. You're my wonderful Catherine. You're my beautiful, lovely Catherine [she said]. You were so good to change and be my girl and let me take you.'"

Get it?

I pulled this book off my shelf after reading it 24 years ago when it was published because it was recently made into an art-house movie and the ads intrigued me.

A movie reviewer wrote that Catherine initiated sex in the female-dominant position. Read the above again and tell me if you don't think it went deeper than that. Today writers would graphically describe exactly where and how she put her hand. Censorship had its benefits. There's lots more about the love triangle with dark Marita that other reviewers have described. And the matching tans and bleached-white boys' haircuts that look spectacular in the movie trailer.

This is really a book about writing, about what it takes to get inside a story and feel and describe every bit of it so the reader feels he or she is there, too. In this case, an un-lovely story about elephant hunting in Africa.

The rich are different from you and I... it's not only that they have more money. They have more time on their hands and little to do with it except kill animals for sport, stay in Cote d'Azur hotels, get waited on by the hotel staff, swim in the nude, make love, eat, drink, try to "work" amid tantalizing distractions. Not everyone will agree that isolating yourself for several hours every morning in a hotel near Cannes to write short stories actually constitutes "work." But that's what this novel is about. And the complications thereof, some of which are too enticing to resist.

Lots of terse and accurate food descriptions in here. I could almost taste the patés, the oeufs sur le plat, the grilled fish and cheeses and bread and butter. And all the drinks. The lubricant of the sexual escapades is alcohol... in almost every scene. Beer with breakfast, lots of wine and champagne, brandies and soda. You can learn from Hemingway how to eat well and how to mix a cocktail (as well as how to kill an elephant or large fish, enjoy a day on the Riviera, plan a trip to Spain, etc. etc.). Throughout re-reading this book I thought about him and other writers -- Capote, Isherwood -- who drank themselves into self-parody and premature death. Published posthumously, this is the author's premonition of genius ruined by alcohol.

And is the book also a precursor to today's product placements? Lots of brand names. Tavel wine, Bugatti automobiles, Vuitton luggage, Perrier. Was Hemingway merely showing off his fine taste or did he get endorsement checks in addition to the royalty checks (and upkeep from heiresses #1 and 2) that kept the whole party going?

Ah, all that being said, this is a book worth reading. Good for a long plane ride, a winter weekend, and especially a day at the beach. There's some strong writing in here, it's kind of fun, and you could be reading novels a lot trashier.

In this posthumous Hemingway novel, David Bourne, a talented young author who has just published his second novel to much acclaim, is on an extended honeymoon with his bride Catherine traveling throughout various hot spots on the Mediterranean. They're American, of course, and to Hemingway the best way to be American is to spend as much time as possible in Europe. As the title implies, the setting of David and Catherine's romantic idyll is nothing short of paradise, a splendor of leisure, food, and drink -- and there is indeed a lot of drinking.

One day Catherine returns to the hotel where she and David are staying with her hair cut short as a boy's; this simple but suggestive act precipitates a flurry of homoerotic innuendoes that pervade the remainder of the novel. At Cannes they meet a beautiful European girl named Marita who is attracted -- sexually -- to both of them, as they are to her. She becomes their traveling companion and, with everybody's consent, makes love to Catherine and then to David, but not, I'm afraid, at the same time. If this menage a trois is supposed to represent the Fall, with Marita playing the role of the Serpent, it seems that Paradise is not yet lost.

As a writer, David (like his creator) lets his life become his work, and he is currently inspired to write a story about elephant hunting with his father in Africa, a reminiscence of a transformative boyhood event. Catherine, an idle and apparently rich girl with no professional aspirations of her own except to char herself to a crisp getting the darkest tan she can, is jealous of his work and the authorial attention he gets; Marita, also rich (Catherine frequently calls her Heiress), is more sympathetic to David's intense artistic nature. He is clearly too narcissistic to be in love with anybody but himself and his own work, and being married to him means having to accept that, which may be too much of a sacrifice for Catherine to make.

Hemingway's trademark is that he makes his characters so complex precisely by having them say so little. The dialogue here is laconic and breezy, as though verbosity would be tedious in a place of such beauty and with people so blithe and lax. The easy, free flow of the narrative, giving the impression of having been written on autopilot, belies the fact that Hemingway spent the last fifteen years of his life working on this novel sporadically, evidently putting a tremendous amount of consideration into the statement he wanted to make. Like most of his statements, it bears his unmistakable stamp of restlessness and of impatience with the normal course of the world.

This is the Hemingway he did not want you to know about. This is the Hemingway He prefered unpublished. In "The Garden of Eden" Hemingway takes all his fantasies, including his sexual ones, and writes them on paper. If you are interested in what made Hemingway tick in his relationships read several biographies and then read this book. You will recognise a lot: same hair styles, multiple partners, love triangles, role switching, even love language. This is Hemingway's truest biography, even though he labeled it as fiction.