On this summer trip to Tanzania, my beloved motherland, I brought with me Ernest Hemingway’s “The Garden of Eden.” I have carried it everywhere I have gone, including the Ngorongoro Crater, where the photo you see was taken.
I am a great Hemingway fan, but I had not read “The Garden of Eden,” even though I have had a copy of it for more than ten years. Now I am enjoying this tale of David, a young American writer, and his wife Catherine on a honeymoon in France and Spain.
It is pleasant to encounter, again, features of Hemingway’s writing that I have come to anticipate and adore in his novels, such as striking descriptions of landscapes and reflections on writing.
Reading the “Garden of Eden,” I have been struck, for example, by how David elaborates on the idea of writing simply, which is a key feature of Hemingway’s own style. Here is the relevant passage:
“Catherine had gone out in a raincoat after breakfast and had left him to work in the room. It had gone so simply and easily that he thought it was probably worthless. Be careful, he said to himself, it is all very well for you to write simply and the simplar the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.” (p. 37)
