#7: The Garden of Eden by Ernest Hemingway

Tags

100 books, book review, books, Hemingway, literature

Ernest Hemingway is the man. Some books are most enjoyable for their plots, some for their characters, and some for the author’s craft. A good Hemingway book is enjoyable for all three. His writing style changed the landscape of modern fiction and has inspired countless imitators. His characters capture the essence of what it is to be human in a way that is timeless. His landscapes make you ache for distant shores. Again, Hemingway is the man.

That said, I was skeptical of The Garden of Eden. It is one of several Hemingway works published and (more importantly) edited after the author’s tragic suicide in 1961. I am always suspicious of books that the author was unable to approve or disapprove. Questionable editing in an effort to generate revenue is not exactly a far-fetched idea. This skepticism was heightened by the controversy surrounding The Garden of Eden. Hemingway’s manuscript was supposedly more than 800 pages long. The published book is just under 250. I am sure that Hemingway would have pruned his manuscript considerably prior to publishing, but two-thirds of the book seems like somewhat less than conservative editing. Despite these misgivings, I was excited to dive into another book by my favorite author.

The Garden of Eden follows American writer David Bourne and his new wife Catherine on their honeymoon in the French Riviera and in Spain. Catherine is wealthy and happy to finance their adventures while David takes a break from his writing. Both seem happy until Catherine begins to display a desire to experience life (and especially sex) as a man. She cuts her hair short and refers to David as her girl when they are in bed together. David allows this to go on because it seems to make Catherine happy. They decide to extend their vacation and settle in at a hotel in the south ofFrance. David begins writing again, developing a narrative of his relationship with Catherine. They encounter a beautiful young woman, Marita, with whom they both fall in love. Initially Catherine agrees to share David with Marita, and Marita with David. Meanwhile, David puts aside his narrative and works on a few short stories he had been planning to write since boyhood. The stories deal with his father and have been difficult for him to face. As his work on the stories progresses his relationship with Catherine deteriorates. Catherine becomes jealous of Marita and of the stories that have distracted David from the narrative of their relationship. This jealousy leads her to burn his newly-finished stories. This effectively ends their relationship, and the Catherine leaves David and Marita. David fears he will never recapture the stories as perfectly as he had already written. After a few days relaxing with Marita, he tries again and discovers that not only can he remember how he had written them, he can improve upon them. The novel closes with David certain that his craft and his memory will never desert him.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Garden of Eden. The writing is classic Hemingway and the story shows Hemingway exploring new ideas of gender identity and relationships between men and women. There is a level of introspection evident in this novel that makes the reader wonder how much was inspired by Hemingway’s own relationships. The image of a writer at peace, confident that his gift will never leave him is an ironic conclusion given that Hemingway took his own life in part because he feared the loss of his talent and his memory. As enjoyable as this version of The Garden of Eden is, I can’t help hoping that the original 800-page behemoth might be published someday.

The Current Count:

7 Read, 93 To Go

#74: The Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway

Tags

100 books, book review, books, classics, Hemingway, literature, short stories

Ernest Hemingway is the Tupac Shakur of English literature, with a significant body of work coming out after his death.  The Nick Adams Stories is one of those posthumous works.  It gathers all of Hemingway’s short stories that feature his famous character Nick Adams.  Eight of the stories were never published by Hemingway, and the others appeared in many different formats throughout Hemingway’s career.  This volume collects them all and rearranges them in an order that follows the life of Nick Adams chronologically.

Many of these stories are classic examples of Hemingway at the top of his game.  My personal favorites are “Big Two-Hearted River” and “Fathers and Sons”.  The previously unpublished stories are enjoyable as they shed light on the development of one of Hemingway’s signature characters, but are clearly below Hemingway’s exacting standards for publication.  The book is good, but is not my favorite Hemingway volume.  Stick to the works that Hem wanted published and you will be much better off.

The Current Count:

74 Read, 26 To Go

#68: Across the River and Into the Trees by Ernest Hemingway

Tags

100 books, book review, books, Hemingway, literature

After banging my head against the wall with Nietzsche over the past few weeks, I decided to tackle a novel from one of my favorites, Ernest Hemingway, for number sixty-eight.  Across the River and Into the Trees is an unusual Hemingway book, in that it was largely panned by critics and is often overlooked in discussions of Hemingway’s body of work.  I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one.  Given the negative reception it received, I didn’t think it would be anywhere near the level of For Whom the Bell Tolls or The Old Man and the Sea.  I was wrong.

Across the River and Into the Trees is centered on 50-year-old US Army Colonel Richard Cantwell, living on post in Trieste following World War II.  Cantwell is a lifelong soldier, having once been a general before being busted to Colonel following the loss of his battalion.  The book opens on Cantwell setting up in a duck blind outside of Venice, preparing to hunt.  He begins to reminisce about the past few days spent in Venice, and it is in this flashback that the reader meets Renata.  Renata is a beautiful Venetian girl from a noble family who has fallen in love with Cantwell despite their age gap (he is 50, she is 18).  Cantwell is suffering from terminal heart disease, and the two know their love is doomed.  Cantwell senses that this weekend together may be their last.  The narrative of their brief time together is elegiac in tone and is utterly heartbreaking.  The two bid farewell, each sensing that it will be the last time.  The novel returns to Cantwell in the present finishing his hunt with little success and returning to Trieste.  Along the way, he suffers a series of heart attacks and dies.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  Despite the bad press it received upon its release, I think it is among Hemingway’s best.  It has a confessional tone that evokes the middle-aged Hemingway grappling with the thought of his own mortality and the potential diminution of his literary talents.  Across the River highlights two of Hemingway’s classic themes– the unfairness of life and the inevitability of death.  Cantwell finds love and apparent happiness only after he becomes aware of his own impending demise.  Hemingway’s answer to that great cruelty?  Hold you head up and die like a man.

The Current Count:

68 Read, 32 To Go

#52: A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

Tags

100 books, book review, books, Hemingway, literature

I was struck by the urge to read some Hemingway a few days ago and settled on A Farewell to Arms.  While I have read The Sun Also Rises and For Whom the Bell Tolls a handful of times each, I had only read A Farewell to Arms once.  I had forgotten what an amazing book this is.

A Farewell to Arms tells the story of Frederic Henry, an American volunteer with an Italian ambulance unit in World War I.  Henry meets Catherine Barkley, a British nurse, and the two begin a relationship.  Henry is severely wounded by a trench mortar and is sent to Milan for medical treatment.  Catherine manages to get transferred to the hospital where Henry is being treated.  Although Henry intended for the romance to serve only as a diversion, the two quickly fall in love.  Catherine gets pregnant and Henry promises to stay with her forever.  Following his recovery, he is again dispatched to the front lines.  The Italian army suffers a major defeat and Henry deserts in the confusion of retreat after narrowly escaping execution by several Italian soldiers who thought he might be a German spy due to his accent.  After returning to Milan, Henry and Catherine make their way into neutral Switzerland.  They lead a happy life there until Catherine goes into labor.  The child is stillborn and Catherine dies from a series of hemorrhages.  Henry is left alone to walk back to the hotel in the rain.

Many of Hemingway’s books have less than happy endings, but this one is particularly heartbreaking.  Henry has had his faith in everything shattered by the brutality and senselessness of the war.  His only source of comfort and peace is his love for Catherine.  The personal tragedy that he suffers somehow manages to dwarf the massive tragedy of the World War.  This was the book that cemented Hemingway’s status as a truly great writer, and the reasons are clear.  His terse prose perfectly captures the inhumanity of war and the emptiness it leaves inside of the participants.  It is so easy to see deaths in war as numbers on a page, but Henry’s personal tragedy reminds us of how important a single life can be to another human being.  Even knowing from the start how it will end, this book breaks your heart.  For Whom the Bell Tolls is still my favorite Hemingway book, but A Farewell to Arms runs a very close second.

The Current Count:

52 Read, 48 To Go

#27: True at First Light by Ernest Hemingway

Tags

100 books, book review, books, Hemingway, literature

 I know, I know.  Three books in the past three weeks.  Not exactly a championship pace.  I could make excuses (grades, dogsitting, etc.), but I won’t.  The truth is, I have just been lazy.  From time to time I have to relax the pace in order to avoid burnout.  I will definitely make up for lost time when the summer rolls around. 

I did recently spend a week dogsitting for my mother and stepfather, a situation which inspired my choice for book twenty-seven.  Ernest Hemingway’s True at First Light is a fictional memoir recounting Hemingway’s African safari of 1953-1954.  My own adventure with the Heart of Darkness (an affectionate nickname for the canine trio that owned my house for a week) made True at First Light the perfect choice.  Hemingway worked on this book for the next several years but gave up due to struggles with his failing memory.  The book remained unpublished until 1999, when Patrick Hemingway (son of Ernest) edited the manuscript by half and released it as True at First Light.

The Heart of Darkness-- Elroy the Bulldog, Cricket the Dachshund, and my dog Duke.

I enjoyed this book very much, but also felt a certain amount of guilt while reading it.  The circumstances of the publication seem wrong.  The fact that Hemingway did not want this book released and doubted his writing powers during its composition make reading it seem like violating the dead.  That said, the pleasure of reading it far outweighs the guilt.  The book presents a Hemingway aware of his advancing age and waning confidence as a writer.  The descriptions of African life are evocative and sincere.  This book proves that Hemingway on the decline is a far better writer than just about anybody.  True at First Light has the signature Hemingway heartache– a beautiful but bittersweet story that reminds the reader of the fleeting nature of beauty and worldly happiness.

The Current Count:

27 Read, 73 To Go

#11: A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Tags

100 books, book review, books, classics, Hemingway, literature, Nobel Prize, Paris, travel

Papa Hemingway provides my eleventh book of the year.  A Moveable Feast is a collection of memoirs from Hemingway’s time in Paris during the early 1920’s.  The story behind the book is an interesting one.  In 1956 a trunk was discovered in the basement of the Ritz Hotel in Paris containing notebooks Hemingway had filled during his time in the city.  He had them transcribed and worked on editing them into book form during the last few years of his life.  His fourth wife edited the manuscript following his death.  The end result was controversial, with many experts later questioning the validity of Mary Hemingway’s edits.  Another (equally controversial) edition has since been published, edited by a Hemingway grandson. 

Hemingway in Paris

 

A Moveable Feast is an enjoyable read but is not my favorite Hemingway work.  It contains many fine examples of the classic Hemingway style, but has a somewhat artificial feeling.  Whether it is the result of posthumous edits or Hemingway trying to recapture a youth that lived up to his tremendous reputation, the book doesn’t have the same depth of emotion as his short stories, novels, or other non-fiction works such as Death in the Afternoon.  The book does paint a romantic and irresistible picture of a time and place that no longer exist.  Hemingway makes 1920’s Paris sound like a Bogart movie put on paper.  His descriptions of meals, locations, and people are charming and evocative.  Read it for the glimpse of a bygone era and for the glimpse of Hemingway before he was the legend.  Just don’t read it expecting another For Whom the Bell Tolls.

The Current Count:

11 Read, 89 To Go