I look forward to the release of this new adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s posthumously edited and published novel The Garden of Eden. The film has been adapted by James Scott Linville and directed by John Irvin, and stars Mena Suvari, Jack Huston, Richard E. Grant and Caterina Murino.
The trailer is here.
See also my post on the novel: A call for a new edition of Hemingway’s Garden of Eden
That book was dreadful, Matt!
Disagree, RJ. The book as published probably doesn’t bear much resemblance to EH’s original intentions, but those early chapters at Le Grau du Roi, the days at the beach, the pleasures of writing and drinking – Hemingway really brings that 1920s existence to life. And that story of the elephant hunt – extracted for the Finca Vigia edition of the stories as ‘An African Story’ – is powerful as well, and adds a new dimension to the public image forged by works like Green Hills of Africa.
Maybe I need to revisit it; the only edition I read was about ten years ago and it was a review copy picked up in a secondhand bookstore in L.A. I just remember this absolutely banal dialogue about dinner (“How is the asparagus?” “Crisp!”) that really turned me off.
It’s worth it. And, if you can, have another look at that African Story in the (incomplete) Complete Finca Vigía Edition, extracted from GoE.
Will do. I have the Finca Vigia edition. In fact, I’ll read it this evening and let you know what I think. BTW, my editors at PM asked me two nights ago to send along the pics for your feature so I think it will be running shortly.
Look forward to your thoughts, RJ.
You were on the money, Matt, a most excellent story:
“I’ll never ever tell him or anybody anything sgain, never anything again. Never ever never.”
Haunting, beautiful, especially the images of the elephant visiting the dried bones of his dead friend on the eve of his own demise. Good Lord, it almost brought tears to my eyes. In the context of “Garden of Eden”, is this a flashback sequence?
Great! The way I remember it, the story is presented in fragmented form in ‘The Garden of Eden’. The main character, David, is shown writing the story piece-by-piece towards the end of the novel. It’s based on David’s childhood experience of elephant hunting in Africa. And then Hemingway fictionalises the famous Hadley-losing-the-suitcase-of-stories incident (throwing in some malicious intent on the woman’s part) resulting in the destruction of the African story. I think. It’s been awhile.
As you say, the story is a gem on its own in the Finca Vigia collection. It’s the one regrettable omission from my otherwise terrific Everyman’s Library ‘Collected Stories’ – the editor ditched it because it is simply an edited extract from GoE.
Well, despite it’s power it does have holes every here and there that reveal it is an extract from a larger piece, such as never being able to figure out David’s age — I had a hunch he was a boy and you just validated that suspicion.
Incidentally, I read another good piece in the Finca Vigia this evening, “The Denunication”, one of Hem’s Spanish War pieces that I had never explored before, clearly autobiographical, about the fingering of a Fascist spy in a local bar; it charts some of the same emotional territory of the Africa story and has a chilling final sentence.
I like ‘The Denunciation’ – that’s a really funny sick joke about the waiters at the end of that story. I’ve drank in the Museo Chicote on the Gran Via in Madrid where the action takes place. I later used the bar as one of the settings in my farcical vegan-Hemingway-scholar-on-the-loose story ‘Red Hills of Africa’, which was published as a limited edition chapbook last year –
http://matthewasprey.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/sydney-samizdat-issue-1-story-jazz-short-film/
- and will be available shortly on Amazon.com for Kindle download.
My story also has a scene upstairs at El Botín on Calle de los Cuchilleros – see the last chapter of ‘The Sun Also Rises’. The rest is set in Marrakech and the Atlas Mountains.
‘Red Hills of Africa’ is now available for the Kindle e-reader at Amazon:
Red Hills of Africa
See also the sample chapter at:
http://matthewasprey.wordpress.com/2010/07/18/matthew-aspreys-red-hills-of-africa-now-available-on-kindle/
Special requests for free copies will be considered.
Lovely discussion. I was delighted by Hem’s description of fighting a fish in the canal (Garden of Eden)–almost as good as his “Big Two-hearted River” tale. It brought back my teenage memories of fishing the Yuba River up in the Sierra Nevada where the course of that stream was diverted by blasting a bed through solid granite leaving a canyon of stone 80 feet deep and but a stone’s throw in breadth. Those lunker rainbows and steelhead held in that very fast current and if they took my bait were nearly impossible to hoist up the man-made cliff.
It has been a while since reading “The Garden of Eden,” and the fictionalized loss by Hadley of the manuscript on the train from Paris to the Cote De Azure. In the historical sense, I believe that script became “The Sun Also Rises.” after it was rewritten and sent to Maxwell Perkins at Scribner’s.
As a beardless lad I went to the war in Korea which may tell you why I saw more in Hemingway’s story “Blackass at the Crossroads” in that Finca Vigia edition Rodger mentioned. Hem nailed the emotional reaction one has when he discovers that the enemy soldier he’s killed was merely a boy. A boy bugging out on a bicycle. A bicycle rider himself, Hem must have carried such an image and feeling for the rest of his life.
I’ll order your book next month–I’m tapped out right now.