Novel on Bisexuality Comes Out of Hemingway’s Closet

“The Garden of Eden,” an unpublished Ernest Hemingway novel dealing with the bisexual urges of a young bride, is coming out of the closet in these more permissive times and will be published in May by Charles Scribner’s Sons, it was reported today.

The novel, which Hemingway worked on for 15 years beginning in 1946, “shows a lot of the tenderness and vulnerability that was usually obscured by his public image” and macho themes, Tom Jenks, who edited the manuscript, told the New York Times.

Jenks said he took five months to edit the book down to a third of its original length of 200,000 words.

Newlywed Couple

The book deals with a newlywed couple--the man an American writer--and a woman they are both attracted to sexually. It will be the 10th Hemingway book published since the writer’s suicide July 2, 1961.

“The theme of bisexuality is not as strange today as it was 25 years ago,” said Charles Scribner Jr., whose company has published Hemingway since 1926, in explaining the decision to bring out the book.

Jenks said: “What’s important is there’s nothing in the book that’s not Hemingway. The book is absolutely identical to the structure--scene by scene, chapter by chapter, line by line.”