forAcross the River and into the Trees (1950). In 1958 he again tackled the story, incorporating material from his second African safari and his life with Mary Welsh, his fourth wife. Somewhat later he began a third revision, which he never completed.

Faced with these various manuscripts, Tom Jenks, an editor for Scribner’s, has produced a remarkably coherent and nearly excellent novel of some sixty thousand words, about one-third the length of the original. In this version, he has removed the story of the painter Nick Sheldon and his wife, Barbara—apparently intended to parallel the lives of David and Catherine Bourne—and has made other editorial alterations. The book which has resulted is far better than Across the River and into the Trees or Islands in the Stream and hints at the greatness of Hemingway’s earliest, and best, fiction.

The Garden of Eden is a semiautobiographical account based on Hemingway’s honeymoon with his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, in May, 1927, at Le Grau-du-Roi, a fishing village in the Carmargue, on the Mediterranean coast of France. Like Hemingway, David Bourne, the novel’s hero, has recently written a successful novel (The Sun Also Rises, 1926, in Hemingway’s case) and has even more recently married.

Life for David and his bride, Catherine, is at first Edenic. They spend their days eating, drinking, and enjoying the beach; their nights they pass in lovemaking and peaceful sleep. As David reflects, “He had many problems when he married but he had thought of none of them here nor of writing nor of anything but being with this girl whom he loved and was married to. . . . It was a very simple world and he had never been truly happy in any other.”

Like the first Eden, though, this paradise is short-lived. Hemingway described the theme of the book as “the happiness of the Garden that a man must lose,” the same message he had developed in A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). As early as the third page of the novel Catherine warns David, “I’m the destructive type, . . . and I’m going to destroy you.” In the tradition of Frances Clyne (The Sun Also Rises) and Mrs. Macomber (“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”), she becomes an emasculating heroine.

Unlike the ideal Hemingway heroine, Catherine has wants. At first these seem innocent—a tan and a haircut—but she wants to cut and dye her hair so that she can appear more masculine. Although Hemingway provides no details of what occurs in the Bournes’s bedroom, the reader does eavesdrop on their intimate conversations, which again reveal Catherine’s desire to be a man. She tells David, “I’m Peter. You’re my wonderful Catherine. You’re my beautiful lovely Catherine.” Later, in La Napoule, near Cannes, they find Marita, a beautiful bisexual young woman whom Catherine sleeps with and then encourages David to bed as well. Again Hemingway draws on autobiography here, for in 1926 Pauline Pfeiffer joined the Hemingway household first as the friend of Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley, then as Hemingway’s lover and second wife. Pauline was smaller and darker than Hadley, as Marita is smaller and darker than Catherine. As in life, too, Marita finally supplants Catherine, for even though Catherine has proposed the ménage à trois, she becomes increasingly jealous of David’s relationship with Marita. Her jealousy extends to David’s work as well; she wants him to write about nothing except their life together.

He, however, is trying to confront the hard story of his boyhood in Africa. One night he and his dog, Kibo, spot an old elephant long sought for his huge ivory tusks. There had once been a pair of these elephants, but David’s father had killed one years before. At first David is delighted at his discovery, which he quickly relays to his father. Together he, Kibo, his father, and their guide set off to find the elephant. As they get closer to their goal, though, David regrets having betrayed the animal, and he finally rejects the expedition and elephant hunting in general as barbaric.

Hemingway interweaves David’s story of this youthful elephant hunt with his current life. Each morning David writes, then drinks, eats, and loafs with Catherine and Marita. Although the writing is physically isolated from the rest of the day’s activities and its events are separated from the present by many years, the hunt parallels David’s changing relationship with Catherine. Both the boy David and the man lose their innocence through an ordeal for which they bear much responsibility. Further, both losses of innocence lead to wisdom; both, then, like Adam’s Fall, are fortunate. From the death of the elephant David learns respect for life, and his sorrow drives him to produce a powerful story. Although Catherine’s increasingly bizarre behavior and jealousy cause her to burn David’s manuscript and then desert him, he finds a more suitable mate in Marita. Catherine had wanted things for herself; Marita wants things for David. She is less demanding, more supportive. She will not destroy him or his work, and with her he is able to create an even better account of his boyhood adventure.

Hemingway’s sentiments are with David and Marita, the writer and the docile mate. Still, the novel shows a movement toward new attitudes. An obvious shift emerges from David’s story about the hunt, where the writing sympathizes with the hunted rather than the hunter. Similarly, Hemingway does not dismiss Catherine as merely a bitch. In Madrid, an acquaintance of the Bournes observes that Catherine reminds him of a “young chief of a warrior tribe who had gotten loose from his councillors.” Her role-playing, both sexual and nonsexual, stems from her desire to escape the restrictions that society has imposed on women. Like Hemingway’s new perspective on hunting, his understanding of Catherine marks a major shift in sensibility.

Toward the end of the book David reflects,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.

This observation illuminates the creation of The Garden of Eden. Hemingway uses the elements of his life—marital difficulties, African safaris, a lost manuscript—to create a powerful novel. Clearly, the work is unfinished. The style at times seems more a parody of Hemingway than his own lean phrasing: One sentence has no fewer than eleven and’s. Further, the daily repetition of eating and drinking, complete with menus, grows tiresome.

Despite its weaknesses, though, this novel will not harm Hemingway’s reputation as the other posthumously published works have. Rather, it suggests that in his last decade and a half he was struggling to fuse old material and themes with new attitudes and insights. One must regret that he never overcame the obstacles to completing and polishing The Garden of Eden. Yet one must be glad that Scribner’s has chosen to publish even this truncated version. For one sees here a different Hemingway, one compassionately concerned with people’s daily, inner lives. From this sympathy comes a sense of hope, uncommon in Hemingway’s work, that while men and women must lose their Eden, they may yet find contentment in this flawed world.

For the most part, the methods Hemingway uses in this novel will be recognizable to those familiar with his previous works. A consistent feature in Hemingway's writing is his precise, disciplined, and economical prose, which goes beyond mere factual accuracy. His concise style is more akin to poetry than to straightforward reporting. Observant readers will notice how his prose possesses "the dignity of movement of an iceberg," as Hemingway described, "due to only one-eighth of it being above water." This guiding principle of writing leads to Hemingway's techniques of implication, indirectness, and the intentional omission of certain details to evoke more profound feelings in the reader (a concept he called his "theory of omission"), along with subtle and deeply embedded references.

Another technique showcasing Hemingway's command of style is his construction of dialogue. His skill in crafting dialogue shines in The Garden of Eden, where conversations reveal character, drive the plot, and create intense tension—all without the typical interference of a narrator. Hemingway shows rather than tells, compelling the reader to experience the events firsthand, attuned to the exact pitch, tone, and the subtlest nuances.

More than any other of his novels, The Garden of Eden explores the act of creation, particularly the writing and crafting of fiction. Nearly every chapter offers significant insights into the art of writing. For instance, at the start of chapter five, Hemingway describes David: "He started to write and he forgot about Catherine and what he saw from the window and the writing went by itself as it did when he was lucky. He wrote it exactly and the sinister part only showed as the light feathering of a smooth swell on a calm day marking the reef beneath." This passage exemplifies Hemingway's "iceberg theory," where tension and danger lurk beneath a calm surface. However, while some critics have highlighted this passage as a clear example of Hemingway's theory and technique, it is worth noting that, in the original manuscript, this passage specifically referred to writing dialogue, not writing in general. Hemingway originally wrote: "He wrote it exactly and it went by itself as conversation did with him when he was lucky and the sinister part only showed as the light feathering of a smooth swell on a calm day can mark the reef beneath." Nonetheless, the point remains Hemingway's meticulous attention to the "light feathering" of the "sinister part" beneath the surface of things, whether in conversation, behavior, or action.

Another insightful commentary on the craft of writing appears in Chapter 25: "He had, really, only to remember accurately and the form came by what he would choose to leave out. Then, of course, he could close it like the diaphragm of a camera and intensify it so it could be concentrated to the point where the heat shone bright and the smoke began to rise." Additionally, a challenging issue for writers is concisely defined in Chapter 21: "The hardest to make truly was how he had felt and kept it untinctured by how he had felt later." These reflections on the art and process of writing are plentiful throughout the novel, strongly supporting the argument that the art of writing is a central theme of the book. Indeed, The Garden of Eden could be considered Hemingway's artistic manifesto, his most thorough guide to the complexities of writing well.

Other techniques and methods from Hemingway, illustrated in both The Garden of Eden and The Complete Short Stories (1987), include his intense poetic concentration of language, the structured image patterns to create effective symbolism, and the use of symbolic landscapes. As in his earlier works, Hemingway removes ornamentation and meticulously selects the precise image or phrase to convey what he calls "the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion." Delving into his recurring images provides readers with a deeper understanding of the layers of meaning.

For instance, in The Garden of Eden, imagery involving eggs, from consuming eggs to references to Humpty Dumpty, should be thoroughly examined, as should the fish imagery, from the significant fishing scene early in the novel to subsequent mentions of fish and eating fish. In The Complete Short Stories, readers might analyze the water and spring imagery in "Summer People," or the weather and landscape imagery in "The Porter." Moreover, Hemingway's use of symbolic landscapes merits close attention. In The Garden of Eden, much of the action occurs in le Grau-du-roi and Aigues Mortes. Hemingway enthusiasts should research these locations and their historical significance to understand how Hemingway uses place, landscape, or setting to reinforce and reveal thematic concerns.

For example, Aigues Mortes translates to "dead waters," and while it is now a small, out-of-the-way town in the South of France, it remains one of the most spectacular walled cities in Europe and a significant site in European history. It was from here that Saint Louis, King of France, embarked on the Crusades. Hemingway was aware of this, and he utilized this knowledge allusively in his work.

Hemingway's literary influences for these two volumes, which show no direct or obvious impact from other writers, are essentially the same influences that inform all his work. His most frequently cited statement about literary precedents references Mark Twain: "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." However, this remark might mislead some readers, as Hemingway's primary influences are found in European writers, particularly those from the modern period. His style owes a significant debt to Imagism, particularly the principles of the Imagist poets, with Ezra Pound being the most notable. These principles demand that writers depict things accurately and convey "an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time." Pound's writings and theories about writing serve as a far more critical precedent for Hemingway than Twain's work. Hemingway once stated, "Nobody taught me as much about writing as Ezra." What Pound imparted to him included the tenets of Imagist poetry, the avoidance of "emotional slither," the pursuit of economy and precision in language, and the necessity to "strip language clean, to lay it bare to the bone." Additionally, Hemingway drew from the narrative strategies of French novelists like Flaubert and Stendhal.

Other significant influences on Hemingway include Gertrude Stein's prose rhythms and use of repetition, James Joyce's epiphanic approach to short stories, and T. S. Eliot's thematic concerns and religious vision. Hemingway's own list of influences and "literary forebears" encompassed many writers, painters, musicians, and even mystics. Besides the aforementioned writers, he cited Conrad, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Maupassant, Shakespeare, Dante, and Virgil. He also mentioned artists like Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Goya, and composers like Bach and Mozart, along with mystic San Juan de la Cruz. To dispel the common notion that Hemingway was merely a writer who traveled, fished, hunted, and then wrote straightforwardly about his experiences, one must recognize that few writers have undergone such an intense literary apprenticeship as Hemingway. Few have read and absorbed such a wide array of influences, and few, like H. R. Stoneback of SUNY-New Paltz, have managed to create from such diverse precedents a style, language, and vision that are so compelling, fresh, and innovative.

Considering the transformation of the lengthy and intricate manuscript of The Garden of Eden into a brief, posthumously edited novel, it might be premature or even irrelevant to explore its relationship to Hemingway's earlier works. Nevertheless, the novel does explore themes he has previously addressed: androgyny, sexual roles, betrayal, and the vocation of writing. The Garden of Eden, in whatever final form it takes, could be seen as Hemingway's most comprehensive, detailed, and compelling examination of these themes. Additionally, as the sole lengthy Hemingway fiction centered around the portrayal of a writer at work, it might be his most self-reflective and "contemporary" novel. This perspective, currently held by many critics, may or may not prove to be accurate or useful in the long term, but it does highlight some ways in which The Garden of Eden represents a significant departure from Hemingway's earlier works.

The connection of The Complete Short Stories to Hemingway's previous work can be summarized succinctly: the finest pieces in this volume, the enduring contributions to fiction, are found in the earlier works reprinted here. Much of the later work included is of lesser intensity and refinement, primarily interesting to biographers, Hemingway scholars who need to examine everything he wrote, and the curious who wish to understand the lessons from studying his less successful works.