New Hemingway book shouldn't have left shelf

TRUE AT FIRST LIGHT, by Ernest Hemingway (edited by Patrick Hemingway); Scribner, $26One hundred years after his birth, 38 years after he committed suicide, Ernest Hemingway's literary legacy is the subject of intense debate. That debate will be clouded by publication of "True at First Light," a so-called "fictional memoir" gleaned from manuscripts Hemingway scribbled, then put aside not too many years before he chose death over life.

The problem, of course, is that any truly great writer is judged by the entirety of his printed output. With "The Sun Also Rises," "To Have and Have Not," "The Old Man and the Sea," "A Farewell to Arms" and "For Whom the Bell Tolls" on his resume, Hemingway deserves consideration as America's greatest modern-day writer. But that shining list has already been tarnished with posthumous publications like "Islands in the Stream," stuff we naturally assume Papa never would have wanted the world to read.

"True at First Light" is, by objective comparison to Hemingway's best, simply abysmal. It's a first-person narration of Hemingway and Mary Welsh, his fourth wife, on safari in Africa. The puzzle is meant to be deciphering how much is real and how much is fiction. Hemingway's son Patrick, who edited the incomplete drafts left behind by his father, explains in a convoluted introduction, "Hemingway's untitled manuscript is about 200,000 words long and is certainly not a journal. What you will read here is a fiction half that length . . . ambiguous counterpoint between fiction and truth lies at the heart of this memoir."

Son Patrick assumes that most readers will be familiar with his father's history. Accordingly, he dumps us into Kenya during 1953-54, as Miss Mary hunts a rogue lion and her husband divides his time between her and a native tribeswoman Miss Mary dubs her husband's "fiancee." Why Miss Mary is so eager to blow a lion away is explained only in notes following the main book, when we learn that a previous Hemingway wife had killed a lion, and so Wife No. 4 feels compelled to shoot one herself.

The plot, if one can be described at all, meanders. There are marauding Mau Mau about, but they are captured somewhere else, even though Hemingway and his hearty band of native helpers are prepared to fight them. There are mentions of books to be written, appointments to be kept and futures to be determined, but mostly, Hemingway and his wife hang around camp drinking gin, shooting hoofed and feathered creatures and talking about how much they love each other. Even when Hemingway indulges in literary chest-thumping, he produces tubercular coughs instead of full-blooded roars. Readers learn how to load hunting rifles, and where on animals' skulls one should aim the killing shot. But we don't learn anything new about writing as an art or Hemingway as a man.