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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN num: 9780684822761
ISBN number: 0684822768
Label: Scribner
Manufacturer: Scribner
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 160
Printing Date: January 31, 1996
Publishing house: Scribner
Sale Popularity Level: 5470
Studio: Scribner
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THIS COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES AND VIGNETTES MARKED ERNEST HEMINGWAY'S AMERICAN DEBUT AND MADE HIM FAMOUS
When In Our Time was published in 1925, it was praised by Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos, and F. Scott Fitzgerald for its simple and precise use of language to convey a wide range of complex emotions, and it earned Hemingway a place beside Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein among the most promising American writers of that period. In Our Time contains several early Hemingway classics, including the famous Nick Adams stories 'Indian Camp,' 'The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife,' 'The Three Day Blow,' and 'The Battler,' and introduces readers to the hallmarks of the Hemingway style: a lean, tough prose -- enlivened by an car for the colloquial and an eye for the realistic that suggests, through the simplest of statements, a sense of moral value and a clarity of heart.
Now recognized as one of the most original short story collections in twentieth-century literature, In Our Time provides a key to Hemingway's later works.
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No writer has been more efficiently overshadowed by his imitators than Ernest Hemingway. From the moment he unleashed his stripped-down, declarative sentences on the world, he began breeding entire generations of miniature Hemingways, who latched on to his subtractive style without ever wondering what he'd removed, or why. And his tendency to lapse into self-parody during the latter half of his career didn't help matters. But In Our Time, which Hemingway published in 1925, reminds us of just how fresh and accomplished his writing could be--and gives at least an inkling of why Ezra Pound could call him the finest prose stylist in the world.
In his very first commercially published book (following the small-press appearance of Three Stories and Ten Poems in 1924), Hemingway was still wearing his influences on his sleeve. The vignettes between each story smack of Gertrude Stein, whose minimalist punctuation and clodhopping rhythms he was happy to borrow. 'My Old Man' sounds like Huck Finn on the Grand Tour: 'Well, we went to live at Maisons-Lafitte, where just about everybody lives except the gang at Chantilly, with a Mrs. Meyers that runs a boarding house. Maisons is about the swellest place to live I've ever seen in all my life.' But in the 'The Battler' or 'Indian Camp' or 'Big Two-Hearted River,' Hemingway finds his own voice, shunning the least hint of rhetorical inflation and sticking to just the facts, ma'am. His reluctance to traffic in high-flown abstraction has often been chalked up to postwar disillusion--as though he were too much of a simpleton to make deliberate stylistic decisions. Still, nobody can read 'Soldier's Home' without drawing a certain connection between the two. Returning home to Oklahoma, the hero finds that his tales of combat are now a bankrupt genre: Even his lies were not sensational at the pool room. His acquaintances, who had heard detailed accounts of German women found chained to machine guns in the Argonne forest and who could not comprehend, or were barred by their patriotism from interest in, any German machine gunners who were not chained, were not thrilled by his stories.
If we are to believe Michael Reynolds and Ann Douglas, this passage reflects the author's own dreary homecoming as a member of the lost generation. It's also a fine example of a surprisingly rare phenomenon, at least at this point in his career: Hemingway being funny. --James Marcus
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Rated by buyers -
The story goes, that when Ernest Hemingway's parents very first received copies of In Our Time, they were horrified and furious. His old man sent the books back to the publisher. A year later, in a letter to his father, Hemingway explained to his father what it was he was attempting as a young writer: "You see I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across - not to just depict life - or criticize it - but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing. You can't do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful."
We know Hemingway more for his off-the-page exploits than those he published, but in these short pieces, peppered with very short (mostly one page) pieces, Hemingway very first introduces his hard-boiled style to an American audience. An earlier, much shorter version of this book was published the year before in Paris. Hemingway expects something of his readers. Much remembered for his belief that a good writer can say much more by employing omission than by saying too much, he leaves the job of applying sentiment and emotion to the reader.
Rated by buyers 
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Hemingway is the master of the understated short story. He takes simple themes and without use of superlatives, makes it real. This book is a collection of short stories where most feature a man name Nick, from his time as a young boy to manhood as it closes with two stories about him fishing. There is one story where no male name is given, so it may also be about Nick.
The most gripping story is "Soldier's Home", which features a character called Krebs. He is back in Kansas after serving in the European theater in World War I. Unlike many of his fellow Americans, he did not return until the middle of 1919, so he missed most of the ecstasy of the welcome-home parades. Krebs has difficulty coming back to what he left in Kansas. He has no interest in women, a job or anything that could lead to a bettering of his current condition. Living with his parents, they are growing disturbed at his listlessness, his mother sits down with him and wants to pray for his changing. While Krebs vows to change, it is not a heartfelt pronouncement, rather it is more of a "whatever" change in his attitude.
Given his experience, Hemingway knew war. But he also knew the difficulties of peace for men of war and a great deal about the simpler challenges of life. Much of that knowledge and experience is demonstrated in these stories.
Rated by buyers -
It is not true that Hemingway would go on to create works better than some of the stories in this work. In some of these short pieces we have the essential Hemingway, the best that he has to give. In fact his whole picture of the world, the emphasis on 'grace under pressure' the devastating effect of war and violence, the presentation of a kind of code hero, above all the simplicity and beauty of the language are here.
This is the beginning of Hemingway but it is also the essence and the best.
Rated by buyers -
Reading the assembled vignettes and short stories of In Our Time, "Hemingway's American debut," is like taking a look at an artist's working sketches that eventually evolve into masterpieces. The reader finds all of the usual denizens of Hemingway's world: anglers, ex-patriates, toreadors, soldiers, men and women who are in love, and those who have fallen out. And, of course, Nick Adams. In these tales, Hemingway demonstrates the superfluousness of semicolons and the superiority of spartan sentences for which he is famous.
While it isn't my favorite of Hemingway's works, it makes a good sampler for those wishing to get short doses of Hemingway, especially for those whose only exposure to Hemingway was reading The Old Man and The Sea in high school.
Rated by buyers -
This is a fine collection of (exceedingly) short stories that deal with existential themes: nature, alienation, and death. In between the stories Hemingway includes even shorter vignettes of cruelty. Brief comments on the stories (with some plot spoilers) follow:
"On the Quai at Smyrna" - An American encounters casual cruelty among the Turks and Greeks during World War I.
"Indian Camp" - Nick Adams and his father, a scientific man who is quite detached from other people, visit an Indian camp where his father performs a Caesarian without anesthetic. While he performs the operation, the baby's father kills himself by cutting his throat with a straight razor.
"The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife" - Nick's mother is revealed to be weak willed and self-deceiving, and we are not too surprised to learn that Nick prefers his father's company.
"The End of Something" - The adolescent Nick ends a relationship with a girl. Before the end comes, Hemingway provides a typically economical but touching depiction of Marjorie, his girlfriend, as they row across a lake with their lines in the water: "She was intent on the rod all the time they trolled, even while she talked. She loved to fish. She loved to fish with Nick."
"The Three-Day Blow" - Nick and his friend Bill drink quietly in front of a fireplace during a storm - they are just learning to drink - and later disregard an important gun safety precaution.
"The Battler" - Nick encounters a damaged former prizefighter.
"A Very Short Story" - (Well, they almost all are.) An American develops an affection for an Italian nurse and expects to marry her, but she loses interest after the end of the war.
"Soldier's Home" - A young man returns home after World War I, disillusioned and alienated.
"The Revolutionist" - Not really a story at all but a very brief character sketch of a young communist traveling through Italy after World War I.
"Mr. And Mrs. Elliot" - A young poet supposes himself to be a superior sort of person but turns out to be ordinary.
"Cat in the Rain" An American wife tries to rescue a kitten from the rain.
"Out of Season" - A young man wants to go fishing but then decides not to.
"Cross-Country Snow" - Nick Adams and a friend go skiing in Switzerland and find it to be a very satisfying experience.
"My Old Man" - A man's father dies in an accident, tragically, since his son knows that he is crooked.
"Big Two-Hearted River: Part I" - Nick Adams returns to his home ground for a solitary camping trip.
"Big Two-Hearted River: Part II" - He goes fishing too.
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