Right now I'm going to go to the J.F.K. Library [in Boston] to read the manuscript of The Garden of Eden. That was Hemingway's last book. The published version is not the whole thing; it's only 250 pages. There are two thousand pages of manuscript. Hemingway was trying to find a language that was about relationships and about community. In some senses he failed because now he is known for shooting all those animals, for bullfights and his suicide. But he was reaching for something else. He didn't burn the book; he just left it there. But he wasn't strong enough to see it through to publication. A lot of it has to do with sexual roles, and so I just want to see what he was aiming for. He's got a map of the shape of a novel, and I expect him to take me so far and then I'm going to have to go the rest of the way…he is our father. He is everybody's "papa." He told us he was, so I guess he is [she laughs]. He left some kind of a map. Like I say in China Men, my grandfather left the railroad as a message. Well, Father Hemingway left The Garden of Eden manuscript, and I want to find out where I'm going next.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Right now I'm going to go to the J.F.K. Library [in Boston] to read the manuscript of The Garden of Eden. That was Hemingway's last book. The published version is not the whole thing; it's only 250 pages. There are two thousand pages of manuscript. Hemingway was trying to find a language that was about relationships and about community. In some senses he failed because now he is known for shooting all those animals, for bullfights and his suicide. But he was reaching for something else. He didn't burn the book; he just left it there. But he wasn't strong enough to see it through to publication. A lot of it has to do with sexual roles, and so I just want to see what he was aiming for. He's got a map of the shape of a novel, and I expect him to take me so far and then I'm going to have to go the rest of the way…he is our father. He is everybody's "papa." He told us he was, so I guess he is [she laughs]. He left some kind of a map. Like I say in China Men, my grandfather left the railroad as a message. Well, Father Hemingway left The Garden of Eden manuscript, and I want to find out where I'm going next." in the context of "Maxine Hong Kingston, 1991 interview, in Conversations with Maxine Hong Kingston (1998)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.