piece for later publication as a book.nThat it took a quarter of a century tonappear between hard covers is evidencenenough that Hemingway and, for antime, his literary executors did not wishnto see it included in his canon. Butneven Hemingway’s assessment of hisnwork would not matter, in the end, tonthe publishers.nA year after The Dangerous Summernappeared came an even worsenblow to the writer’s reputation, thensorrowfully bad novel The Garden ofnEden, which Hemingway’s biographernCarlos Baker rightly described as “annexperimental compound of past andnpresent, filled with astonishing ineptitudes.”nHemingway had set tonwork on the book in 1946, completingnone thousand pages of manuscript innonly six months, and had tinkered withnit until the year of his death, by whichntime the much-revised text had balloonednto fifteen hundred pages. Unablento overcome the ultimate mediocritynof his story with even his bestntechniques, and unable clearly to isolatenits many problems, thanks to thenquarts of alcohol he was then consumingndaily and his growing self-doubtnabout his abilities as a writer, Hemingwaynabandoned the manuscript, wellnaware that it was unpublishable.nStill, 25 years after his suicide,nHemingway’s publishers longed for anothernaddition to the lucrative roster ofnHemingway titles, and so Scribner’sncommissioned a highly accomplishednfiction editor, Tom Jenks, to cut ThenGarden of Eden to publishable length.nThe company had a precedent for this,nof course, in Maxwell Perkins’s famousncut-and-paste editing of ThomasnWolfe’s half-million-word effusions,nbut it underplayed Jenks’s thanklessnsurgery: in the publisher’s note at thenhead of the book, Scribner’s modestlynaverred that “in preparing the book fornpublication we have made some cuts innthe manuscript.” For all Jenks’s superbneditorial work, the story that emergednfrom the operating theater was still farnfrom matching Hemingway’s talent.nThe great distinction oiThe Gardennof Eden is its open exploration ofnbisexuality, a theme that Hemingwaynno doubt regarded as being suitablyndaring at a period when many criticsnwere publicly calling him a has-beennwho no longer had the courage to takenrisks. (Hemingway had toyed with then50/CHRONICLESntheme of bisexuality and mateswappingneariier in the prefiguring storyn”Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” collected innIn Our Time, as well as in portions ofnFor Whom the Bell Tolls. And severalnof the stories in Winner Take Nothingnaddress or hint at male and femalenhomosexuality, usually alongside somenintimation of castration.) The Gardennof Eden tells the story of DavidnBourne, a writer, whose bibulousnFrench seaside honeymoon with hisnwife Catherine — a composite ofnHemingway’s first two wives, Hadleynand Pauline, with a dollop of ZeldanFitzgerald thrown in for good measuren— is punctuated by endless lunches,ndesultory conversations, ineptly renderednbouts of drunken lovemaking,nand a languid affair conducted by bothnhusband and wife with a mystery womannwhose character is developed withnall the care of a letter to Penthousenmagazine. (Catherine: “I brought youna dark girl for a present. Don’t you likenyour present?” David: “I like my presentnvery much.”)nPerhaps recognizing that what henhad was not much of a story, Hemingwayncomplicated the plot with curiousnelements of autobiography: when inndoubt, he seems to have thought, resortnto the roman a clef, full of sexualnyearning and angst and adventure.nDavid Bourne has just published hisnsecond novel, one that is earning him anstring of letters from his publisher,neach enclosing highly favorable reviewsnthat serve only to depress him, sincenthey remind him that he ought to benwriting instead of dallying with wifenand playmate—or, in Hemingway’sncase, skirt-chasing and guzzling. Innlater sections of The Garden of EdennHemingway accordingly inserts whatnare supposed to be passages fromnDavid’s novel-in-progress about an elephantnhunt in East Africa. Hemingwaynprobably discarded these passages fromnthe final draft of his book The GreennHills of Africa, although his recentnbiographer Kenneth Lynn uneasilynsuggests that he plagiarized them fromnBeryl Markham’s memoir West Withnthe Night, which he admired.nWhatever their origin, they marknthe best writing in the book, certainlynas contrasted with the surroundingndialogue between David and Catherine,nanother typical snippet of which isnthis:nnn”Can you publish it [the booknof African stories] or would it bentoo bad to?”n”I’ve only tried to write it.”n”Can I ever read it?”n”If I ever get it right.”n”I’m so proud of it alreadynand we won’t have any copiesnfor sale and none for reviewersnand then there’ll never benclippings and you’ll never benself-conscious and we’ll alwaysnhave it just for us.”nNow Hemingway was guilty, here andnthere, of publishing second-rate material,nbut in better times he would not havenlet such dialogue pass by unchanged.nEven To Have and Have Not andnIslands in the Stream rarely descend tonsuch banality. Nor would Hemingwaynhave been contented, one hopes, withnthe listless melodrama that emergednfrom his mass of manuscript to becomenGarden of Eden: boy meets girl, boynand girl meet girl, boy and girl lose girl,nboy loses girl, boy meets girl again. It isnnot much of a story, but Hemingway,nwho did not bring it before the public,nis not to blame.nAs if to add insult to injury, Scribner’snin 1987 issued The CompletenShort Stories of Ernest Hemingway:nThe Finca Vigia Edition, with a perfunctorynforeword by the writer’s sons,nJohn, Patrick, and Gregory, and anpublisher’s preface suggesting that thennew book, a purportedly minor editorialnundertaking, stood with the best ofnPapa’s work. Meant to supplant thenearlier Complete Short Stories ofnErnest Hemingway, available for a thirdnof the price of its preferred replacement,nthe Finca Vigi’a edition (namedafternHemingway’s Cuban home)ngathers 21 pieces not included in thenearlier omnibus. But of these, only anhandful are polished stories that Hemingwaynpublished on his own account,namong them “Get a Seeing EyenDog,” “A Man of the World,” andn”Summer People.” The rest are fragmentsnof the dreadful, ubiquitous Islandsnin the Stream, or short storiesnlater incorporated into novels — twonHarry Morgan stories are given here,nboth of them chapters from the readilynavailable To Have and Have Not — ornpieces written privately, such as “ThenGood Lion” and “The Faithful Bull,”nfables dashed off in a few minutes asn