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In Our Time: Stories
A Vintage Classics edition of the early collection of short fiction that first established Ernest Hemingway's reputation, including several of his most loved stories
Ernest Hemingway, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, did more to change the style of fiction in English than any other writer of his time with his economical prose and terse, declarative sentences that conceal more than they reveal. In Our Time , published in 1925, was the collection that first drew the world's attention to Hemingway. Besides revealing his versatility as a writer and throwing fascinating light on the themes of his major novels--war, love, heroism, and renunciation--this collection contains many stories that are lasting achievements in their own right, including the Nick Adams stories "Indian Camp," "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife," "The Three-Day Blow," "The Battler," and "Big Two-Hearted River."
Ernest Hemingway, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, did more to change the style of fiction in English than any other writer of his time with his economical prose and terse, declarative sentences that conceal more than they reveal. In Our Time , published in 1925, was the collection that first drew the world's attention to Hemingway. Besides revealing his versatility as a writer and throwing fascinating light on the themes of his major novels--war, love, heroism, and renunciation--this collection contains many stories that are lasting achievements in their own right, including the Nick Adams stories "Indian Camp," "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife," "The Three-Day Blow," "The Battler," and "Big Two-Hearted River."
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1924
About the author
Ernest Hemingway
2,223 books33.9k followersErnest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Best known for an economical, understated style that significantly influenced later 20th-century writers, he is often romanticized for his adventurous lifestyle, and outspoken and blunt public image. Most of Hemingway's works were published between the mid-1920s and mid-1950s, including seven novels, six short-story collections and two non-fiction works. His writings have become classics of American literature; he was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature, while three of his novels, four short-story collections and three nonfiction works were published posthumously.
Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school, he spent six months as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star before enlisting in the Red Cross. He served as an ambulance driver on the Italian Front in World War I and was seriously wounded in 1918. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms. He married Hadley Richardson in 1921, the first of four wives. They moved to Paris where he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s' "Lost Generation" expatriate community. His debut novel The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926.
He divorced Richardson in 1927 and married Pauline Pfeiffer. They divorced after he returned from the Spanish Civil War, where he had worked as a journalist and which formed the basis for his 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940. He and Gellhorn separated after he met Mary Welsh Hemingway in London during World War II. Hemingway was present with Allied troops as a journalist at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris. He maintained permanent residences in Key West, Florida, in the 1930s and in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s. On a 1954 trip to Africa, he was seriously injured in two plane accidents on successive days, leaving him in pain and ill health for much of the rest of his life. In 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho, where, on July 2, 1961 (a couple weeks before his 62nd birthday), he killed himself using one of his shotguns.
Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school, he spent six months as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star before enlisting in the Red Cross. He served as an ambulance driver on the Italian Front in World War I and was seriously wounded in 1918. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms. He married Hadley Richardson in 1921, the first of four wives. They moved to Paris where he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s' "Lost Generation" expatriate community. His debut novel The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926.
He divorced Richardson in 1927 and married Pauline Pfeiffer. They divorced after he returned from the Spanish Civil War, where he had worked as a journalist and which formed the basis for his 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940. He and Gellhorn separated after he met Mary Welsh Hemingway in London during World War II. Hemingway was present with Allied troops as a journalist at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris. He maintained permanent residences in Key West, Florida, in the 1930s and in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s. On a 1954 trip to Africa, he was seriously injured in two plane accidents on successive days, leaving him in pain and ill health for much of the rest of his life. In 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho, where, on July 2, 1961 (a couple weeks before his 62nd birthday), he killed himself using one of his shotguns.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,986 reviews
July 13, 2020
Hemingway’s first published work, a collection of short short stories, really 18 vignettes. You can read this book in a half-hour because almost all are less than a page.
NOTE: There are more than 200 editions of this book. I read the one published originally in 1924, which is short and just contains the 18 vignettes. Another edition was originally published in 1925, containing short stores as well, such as Two Big-Hearted River. Modern editions of both versions sometimes have the same cover, so it is confusing.
Here we see an introduction to many of the themes that Hemingway would carry through to later works. We meet Nick, a wounded soldier who is probably the Nick of the Nick Adams short stories and the novel, In Another Country.
There’s a lot of drinking. In the very first story we meet a battery of French soldiers on their way to the front. All are drunk, especially the leader. Nick has been shot in the spine, but the narrator tells us that things are “going well.”
Several stories involve matadors getting gored, dying, getting crap thrown at them in the ring - or all three.
One is autobiographical. A wounded American soldier falls in love with his Italian nurse. They agree she will come to the States and marry him. Instead, when he’s back home, he gets a Dear John letter. This is exactly what happened to Hemingway when he fell in love with his Italian nurse after we was wounded in Italy and was recovering in a hospital in Milan.
Two solders talk about making “a separate peace,” a title later used in John Knowles’ famous novel.
There is a lot of violence, appearing random, disconnected and place-less. Four German soldiers climbing over a garden wall are shot one by one. Six cabinet ministers are lined up against a hospital wall and shot. We don’t know what country, who they were, or who shot them. An American soldier shoots and kills two Hungarians robbing a cigar store, apparently just because they were “wops.” In a county jail in the US, five men are hanged, three of them Negroes. A man wounded and immersed in fighting begs and makes promises to Jesus to get him out. He gets out and forgets his promises by nightfall.
Are these good stories? Yes and no. They are typical Hemingway but too short, even for short stories, to make much out of them or to develop any feeling for the characters. Still worth a read.
Here are links to my reviews of two other books by Hemingway:
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Garden of Eden
Top photo from unsplash.com
Middle photo of WW I soldiers from knowledge.ca
Hemingway's 1923 passport photo from wikipedia
NOTE: There are more than 200 editions of this book. I read the one published originally in 1924, which is short and just contains the 18 vignettes. Another edition was originally published in 1925, containing short stores as well, such as Two Big-Hearted River. Modern editions of both versions sometimes have the same cover, so it is confusing.
Here we see an introduction to many of the themes that Hemingway would carry through to later works. We meet Nick, a wounded soldier who is probably the Nick of the Nick Adams short stories and the novel, In Another Country.
There’s a lot of drinking. In the very first story we meet a battery of French soldiers on their way to the front. All are drunk, especially the leader. Nick has been shot in the spine, but the narrator tells us that things are “going well.”
Several stories involve matadors getting gored, dying, getting crap thrown at them in the ring - or all three.
One is autobiographical. A wounded American soldier falls in love with his Italian nurse. They agree she will come to the States and marry him. Instead, when he’s back home, he gets a Dear John letter. This is exactly what happened to Hemingway when he fell in love with his Italian nurse after we was wounded in Italy and was recovering in a hospital in Milan.
Two solders talk about making “a separate peace,” a title later used in John Knowles’ famous novel.
There is a lot of violence, appearing random, disconnected and place-less. Four German soldiers climbing over a garden wall are shot one by one. Six cabinet ministers are lined up against a hospital wall and shot. We don’t know what country, who they were, or who shot them. An American soldier shoots and kills two Hungarians robbing a cigar store, apparently just because they were “wops.” In a county jail in the US, five men are hanged, three of them Negroes. A man wounded and immersed in fighting begs and makes promises to Jesus to get him out. He gets out and forgets his promises by nightfall.
Are these good stories? Yes and no. They are typical Hemingway but too short, even for short stories, to make much out of them or to develop any feeling for the characters. Still worth a read.
Here are links to my reviews of two other books by Hemingway:
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Garden of Eden
Top photo from unsplash.com
Middle photo of WW I soldiers from knowledge.ca
Hemingway's 1923 passport photo from wikipedia
July 31, 2017
“In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure he would never die”—Hemingway, “Indian Camp”
“Dear Jesus, please get me out. Christ, please, please, please, Christ. If you only keep me from being killed I'll do anything you say. I believe in you and I'll tell everybody in the world that you are the only thing that matters. Please, please, dear Jesus' The shelling moved further up the line. We went to work on the trench and in the morning the sun came up and the day was hot and muggy and cheerful and quiet. The next night back at Mestre he did not tell the girl he went upstairs with at the Villa Rosa about Jesus. And he never told anybody”--Hemingway
In Our Time is a book I have read several times over the years. In my view, Hemingway is one of the greatest writers of all time. Certainly one of the most influential writers, in terms of style, a kind of tough-minded minimalism that allows for very little commentary, few adverbs. Not flowery or “showing off” as he would have said; straightforward, simple, direct prose. Hem started out as a journalist and maybe his style in part extends out of that reporter’s call for description/observation, in a just-the-facts, ma’am approach. His depictions of women can be problematic, of course. He married many women, he slept with many more. That energy, the fame, who knows why? But I can guess at it through a reading of the prose, those central characters. The joie de vivre and the anguish. And I love the central great novels—The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Old Man and The Sea—but the real gems are the stories, which I am re-reading.
A couple weeks ago I was heading to northern Wisconsin for a short vacation, so thought to begin re-reading In Our Time, his second book, because it is a north country book. Tomorrow I head for a few days to northern Michigan, to the exact geographical area of these stories—the Petoskey, Michigan region, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where Hem spent his early summers. I have a photograph I recently found of my mother holding me in her arms when I was four months old, near Lake Manistique in the U. P. where I stayed in a cabin every year in the summer for more than thirty years with my family. Hem traveled each summer from Oak Park, Illinois where he lived and I now live, to this area in the north where his family had a cottage.
The construction of this book is unique, experimental, even now, mostly short short stories, some of them 2-3 pages, set in northern Michigan, interspersed with even shorter vignettes set in WWI where Hem had served as an ambulance driver. The (mostly) war stories depict violence; there’s a couple stories about bullfighting he would have seen in Spain in the/his early twenties. The domestic stories are the Nick Adams stories, about nature, hunting, fishing, backpacking, skiing, mother and father, friends, drinking, girls. In general one might be tempted to call this Hemingways’s tales of Innocence and Experience, a record of contrasts, but there is trauma in both the Michigan and European stories.
Reading them this time I see these early stories as gems—not all of them amazingly good, but he is already the model in these stories for generations of writers all over the world. What I am reading in the stories now is a prophecy of what is to come: There’s early drinking, early struggles with girls/women, there’s plenty of depression (though in my early reading I might have thought of it as a kind of existential brooding, something I found then more attractive than I might now.). There is plenty of unhappiness in these stories, yes, and at one point Nick asks his father about suicide, which his father did, and Hem himself committed in 1961, after having won the Nobel Prize in 1953. A lifelong struggle with depression leading to suicide, and you can see this in the stories. It was always there for him, a family history of depression and suicide.
But the style of the stories here is wonderful, in the early gems, especially, “The Three Day Blow,” about a break-up with a girl Nick was nearly engaged to; “My Old Man,” a heart-breaking story about a boy’s admiration for his jockey father, who as he got older became corrupt, involved in “funny” business; “Soldier’s Home,” about Nick’s coming home from the war, depressed and alienated, changed; and the wonderful trout-fishing story, “Big Two-Hearted River” (it’s in the U.P., but it’s a lie, a fisherman never reveals his fishing holes; this isn’t his favorite fishing river); "Indian Camp," where Nick's father delivers a baby by c-section with less than adequate resources, let's just say. Not all the stories are great here, but the few great stories hold up the collection as great, and the experimental concept is also great, overcoming some slighter, earlier stories. And there is everywhere his style, his irony, his barely contained emotions, his darkness and isolation.
“Dear Jesus, please get me out. Christ, please, please, please, Christ. If you only keep me from being killed I'll do anything you say. I believe in you and I'll tell everybody in the world that you are the only thing that matters. Please, please, dear Jesus' The shelling moved further up the line. We went to work on the trench and in the morning the sun came up and the day was hot and muggy and cheerful and quiet. The next night back at Mestre he did not tell the girl he went upstairs with at the Villa Rosa about Jesus. And he never told anybody”--Hemingway
In Our Time is a book I have read several times over the years. In my view, Hemingway is one of the greatest writers of all time. Certainly one of the most influential writers, in terms of style, a kind of tough-minded minimalism that allows for very little commentary, few adverbs. Not flowery or “showing off” as he would have said; straightforward, simple, direct prose. Hem started out as a journalist and maybe his style in part extends out of that reporter’s call for description/observation, in a just-the-facts, ma’am approach. His depictions of women can be problematic, of course. He married many women, he slept with many more. That energy, the fame, who knows why? But I can guess at it through a reading of the prose, those central characters. The joie de vivre and the anguish. And I love the central great novels—The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Old Man and The Sea—but the real gems are the stories, which I am re-reading.
A couple weeks ago I was heading to northern Wisconsin for a short vacation, so thought to begin re-reading In Our Time, his second book, because it is a north country book. Tomorrow I head for a few days to northern Michigan, to the exact geographical area of these stories—the Petoskey, Michigan region, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where Hem spent his early summers. I have a photograph I recently found of my mother holding me in her arms when I was four months old, near Lake Manistique in the U. P. where I stayed in a cabin every year in the summer for more than thirty years with my family. Hem traveled each summer from Oak Park, Illinois where he lived and I now live, to this area in the north where his family had a cottage.
The construction of this book is unique, experimental, even now, mostly short short stories, some of them 2-3 pages, set in northern Michigan, interspersed with even shorter vignettes set in WWI where Hem had served as an ambulance driver. The (mostly) war stories depict violence; there’s a couple stories about bullfighting he would have seen in Spain in the/his early twenties. The domestic stories are the Nick Adams stories, about nature, hunting, fishing, backpacking, skiing, mother and father, friends, drinking, girls. In general one might be tempted to call this Hemingways’s tales of Innocence and Experience, a record of contrasts, but there is trauma in both the Michigan and European stories.
Reading them this time I see these early stories as gems—not all of them amazingly good, but he is already the model in these stories for generations of writers all over the world. What I am reading in the stories now is a prophecy of what is to come: There’s early drinking, early struggles with girls/women, there’s plenty of depression (though in my early reading I might have thought of it as a kind of existential brooding, something I found then more attractive than I might now.). There is plenty of unhappiness in these stories, yes, and at one point Nick asks his father about suicide, which his father did, and Hem himself committed in 1961, after having won the Nobel Prize in 1953. A lifelong struggle with depression leading to suicide, and you can see this in the stories. It was always there for him, a family history of depression and suicide.
But the style of the stories here is wonderful, in the early gems, especially, “The Three Day Blow,” about a break-up with a girl Nick was nearly engaged to; “My Old Man,” a heart-breaking story about a boy’s admiration for his jockey father, who as he got older became corrupt, involved in “funny” business; “Soldier’s Home,” about Nick’s coming home from the war, depressed and alienated, changed; and the wonderful trout-fishing story, “Big Two-Hearted River” (it’s in the U.P., but it’s a lie, a fisherman never reveals his fishing holes; this isn’t his favorite fishing river); "Indian Camp," where Nick's father delivers a baby by c-section with less than adequate resources, let's just say. Not all the stories are great here, but the few great stories hold up the collection as great, and the experimental concept is also great, overcoming some slighter, earlier stories. And there is everywhere his style, his irony, his barely contained emotions, his darkness and isolation.
March 28, 2019
Hot on the heels of reading 'The Sun Also Rises' & 'A Moveable Feast' (loved them both), I couldn't resist trying some of his short fiction. I had read the odd Hemingway short-story before, but this my first collection, and I wasn't disappointed. Basically this is the book that thrust Hem into the limelight, and set him on a path to write some of the 20th century's best known novels. His style is again a sparse, simple but efficient prose that works so well, and he has that knack similar to Richard Yates of easily conveying deep emotions within a matter of minutes through the great use of dialogue. There is mixture of experimentation and autobiographical elements with themes Hemingway would return to in his later writings - that of war and returning from war, bullfighting, hunting, fishing, difficulties of marriage, and disappointments. One of his strongest attributes here is exploring moral values. Some vignettes / stories connect characters, some don't. All though are classic Hemingway. The pick of the bunch for me were - 'The End of Something', 'Soldier's Home', 'Out of Season', and 'My Old Man'.
June 6, 2021
Nope. Too boring for me. Don't know what I was expecting but this is not what I usually like.
June 24, 2011
I think there is a common theme that runs through these short stories. Nearly all of them are about people on a leisurely break from life. And even though they are generally having a good time, the sadness from the approaching return to ordinary life keeps creeping up into their thoughts. Or you could say they are about people experiencing happiness but they are saddened by thoughts that this happiness is only fleeting and sadness is just around the corner.
The stories with the Nick Adams character are special. Especially Big Two-hearted River Parts 1 and 2 where Nick Adams goes trout fishing. They are written with a lot of tenderness. I bet Hemingway had a great time writing part 1. The story makes you want to head out into the woods with some canned food and have a good time. So he definitely succeeded.
This man could write!
The stories with the Nick Adams character are special. Especially Big Two-hearted River Parts 1 and 2 where Nick Adams goes trout fishing. They are written with a lot of tenderness. I bet Hemingway had a great time writing part 1. The story makes you want to head out into the woods with some canned food and have a good time. So he definitely succeeded.
This man could write!
October 2, 2015
I have a deep, unabiding dislike of Hemingway's style. It's sparse, it's soulless, and reads like it was written by a third-grader who just learned to construct sentences.
Whether you like him or not, have a gifset of Nick Miller trying to be Hemingway:
Whether you like him or not, have a gifset of Nick Miller trying to be Hemingway:
October 26, 2022
In Our Time is a collection of eighteen vignettes, presented as chapters, about the years prior to, during, and after the first world war.
Each story is very brief with hardly any context that will allow the reader to get at its intent. These are unhappy vignettes about folks fleeing the war, cabinet ministers being shot against a hospital wall, drunk soldiers trudging to the war front in the dark, a soldier shot in the spine, waiting for an ambulance amongst the dead, another soldier praying for deliverance from death, a hanging, and a failed romance. There are also five gory stories about matadors slaying bulls or being gored to death.
I cannot say I appreciated any of these stories. They are conveyed in a sparse and nonchalant fashion. There is subtle humor in grim situations. I detected a note of elation in ‘potting’ one’s enemies.
I read the edition published in 1924 which apparently contains only vignettes between major stories.
Two stars. More a function of my inability to relate to these vignettes than Hemingway’s skills.
Each story is very brief with hardly any context that will allow the reader to get at its intent. These are unhappy vignettes about folks fleeing the war, cabinet ministers being shot against a hospital wall, drunk soldiers trudging to the war front in the dark, a soldier shot in the spine, waiting for an ambulance amongst the dead, another soldier praying for deliverance from death, a hanging, and a failed romance. There are also five gory stories about matadors slaying bulls or being gored to death.
I cannot say I appreciated any of these stories. They are conveyed in a sparse and nonchalant fashion. There is subtle humor in grim situations. I detected a note of elation in ‘potting’ one’s enemies.
I read the edition published in 1924 which apparently contains only vignettes between major stories.
Two stars. More a function of my inability to relate to these vignettes than Hemingway’s skills.
March 16, 2025
The idea of my reviewing this collection of stories, which are classic and experimental and incalculably influential, is a bit silly.
Nothing I can possibly say will be new, or illuminating, so I won't even try, on that score. What I'll say is wow - some of these stories still hold up beautifully today, still hold an immense power.
This is the author's first collection, published in 1925, and came before his novels, and before his fame, so there is no overtly masculine posturing here. What I felt was a post war wounding, and the "iceberg theory" that is used to describe his writing. So much under the surface, much unsaid, and in a style that rejects the 19th century writers that came before him.
I read 'Indian Camp' through twice, and was brought to tears both times. I dare you to get through it dry-eyed. 'A Very Short Story' sounds like something that happened countless times to young people at the end of the war, with a decidedly unromantic return to reality. 'Big Two-Hearted River' - a vision of a soldier returned home, finding healing in nature (but none of that actually stated, buried deep under the almost plot-less images).
Certain stories feel wholly relevant, while others seem dated. This is something to see, though, it's a big part of what brought literature to where it is today.
(Besides the one about the soldier who begs Christ to help him survive, and who makes desperate promises, I could have done without the little vignettes between each story, I have to admit. Particularly the ones involving bulls and matadors. As soon as bullfighting is a thing on the page, I fall asleep. Why so much bullfighting, Ernest Hemingway? WHY?)
Nothing I can possibly say will be new, or illuminating, so I won't even try, on that score. What I'll say is wow - some of these stories still hold up beautifully today, still hold an immense power.
This is the author's first collection, published in 1925, and came before his novels, and before his fame, so there is no overtly masculine posturing here. What I felt was a post war wounding, and the "iceberg theory" that is used to describe his writing. So much under the surface, much unsaid, and in a style that rejects the 19th century writers that came before him.
I read 'Indian Camp' through twice, and was brought to tears both times. I dare you to get through it dry-eyed. 'A Very Short Story' sounds like something that happened countless times to young people at the end of the war, with a decidedly unromantic return to reality. 'Big Two-Hearted River' - a vision of a soldier returned home, finding healing in nature (but none of that actually stated, buried deep under the almost plot-less images).
Certain stories feel wholly relevant, while others seem dated. This is something to see, though, it's a big part of what brought literature to where it is today.
(Besides the one about the soldier who begs Christ to help him survive, and who makes desperate promises, I could have done without the little vignettes between each story, I have to admit. Particularly the ones involving bulls and matadors. As soon as bullfighting is a thing on the page, I fall asleep. Why so much bullfighting, Ernest Hemingway? WHY?)
August 16, 2019
مجموعة قصص تتكون من 17 قصة قصيرة كتبها هيمنجواي في بداية حياته وتحديدا في عام 1925 وتعد أول مجموعة قصصية يصدرها
القصص بها تنوع كبير لكن الحبكات غير ناضجة وينقصها عنصر التجديد والإبداع وإن كان اسلوب الكاتب مميز في وصف المشاعر الانسانية
القصص بها تنوع كبير لكن الحبكات غير ناضجة وينقصها عنصر التجديد والإبداع وإن كان اسلوب الكاتب مميز في وصف المشاعر الانسانية
July 16, 2022
A Hemingway dan ganas de leerlo con una copa delante, sí, pero conviene no equivocarse de bebida. Aquí no estamos ante el señor de la barba, los safaris, los puros, los toros y toda esa mitología viril que a veces parece haber sido diseñada por una agencia de publicidad para vender masculinidad en lata. En En nuestro tiempo todavía tenemos a un Hemingway joven, afilado, seco sin ponerse estupendo y más pudoroso de lo que su leyenda posterior deja imaginar, como si hubiera descubierto muy pronto una cosa bastante amarga: que el dolor, cuando se explica demasiado, empieza a mentir.
Este libro es su primera gran declaración de principios. Y lo curioso es que apenas declara nada. Son cuentos breves, escenas cortadas casi siempre antes de que el lector pueda instalarse, viñetas de guerra que aparecen entre relatos como fogonazos, conversaciones donde nadie dice justo aquello que más pesa, familias rotas, hombres que vuelven de algún sitio sin haber regresado del todo, mujeres atrapadas en habitaciones, niños que ven demasiado pronto lo que quizá nadie debería ver nunca.
Hemingway no está todavía escribiendo sus grandes novelas, pero ya está probando el método que después convertirá en marca de fábrica: decir poco, cargar mucho y dejar que el silencio haga la parte sucia del trabajo. Uno podría preguntarse qué tiene que pasarle a alguien —o a una época entera— para empezar a hablar así de poco. En Hemingway, la sequedad tiene algo de elección estética, sí, pero también de defensa, vergüenza, cicatriz con buena sintaxis.
Lo más peligroso de este estilo es que, visto desde lejos, parece fácil. Frases cortas. Vocabulario limpio. Poca psicología explícita. Nada de adornos. Uno podría caer en la tentación de pensar: “Bueno, esto lo escribe cualquiera con un poco de contención y una resaca decente”. Error. La prosa de Hemingway en En nuestro tiempo tiene esa cualidad rara de las cosas muy trabajadas que fingen no haberlo sido. Cada frase parece colocada para que no se note la mano, pero se nota el peso. Una conversación banal sobre pesca, una comida, una excursión, un gesto doméstico o una frase dicha al pasar pueden abrir una grieta tremenda. Y Hemingway se aparta justo en el momento en que otro escritor habría encendido los focos.
El primer golpe serio llega con “Campamento indio” ★★★★★. Nick Adams acompaña a su padre, médico, a atender un parto en una comunidad indígena, y esa salida nocturna, que podría parecer una iniciación más o menos ordenada, acaba convertida en una escena brutal sobre el nacimiento, el dolor, la muerte y la manera en que los adultos administran el horror delante de los niños. Nick no entiende todo lo que ve, por supuesto. Pero el lector sí entiende lo suficiente como para sentir que algo se ha roto ahí para siempre. Es uno de esos cuentos donde Hemingway demuestra que la inocencia puede romperse sin discursos, apenas con una imagen mal digerida que se queda dentro como una espina. Y por eso el cierre del relato es tan cruel: en medio del lago, mientras su padre rema, Nick se siente seguro de que él no morirá nunca.
Nick Adams funciona en el libro como una especie de hilo discontinuo: una conciencia que va apareciendo en distintas edades, distintos paisajes, distintas heridas. Tiene algo de doble parcial de Hemingway, aunque reducirlo a simple alter ego sería empequeñecerlo; importa menos como máscara biográfica que como modo de ordenar una experiencia rota. Leído seguido, En nuestro tiempo parece menos una colección ordenada que un expediente emocional: infancia, familia, ruptura, guerra, regreso, naturaleza, y en medio de todo eso un tipo aprendiendo a no decir demasiado.
“El médico y su mujer” ★★★★. El conflicto entre el padre de Nick y unos trabajadores indígenas parece al principio una escena de tensión social menor, casi una anécdota áspera de convivencia. Pero por debajo late algo más feo: orgullo masculino, humillación, autoridad doméstica, cobardía, resentimiento. Hemingway deja al padre y a la madre respirar mal en la misma casa, sin convertirlos en emblemas. Basta con oírlos hablar para entender que esa familia guarda cosas que nadie sabe poner sobre la mesa.
Después vienen relatos como El fin de algo y El vendaval de tres días, donde Hemingway mira las relaciones sentimentales con una mezcla de sequedad y puntería que todavía hoy sorprende. “El fin de algo” ★★★★. Una ruptura amorosa aparece ligada a un paisaje industrial abandonado, como si el final de una pareja y el final de una forma de vida se reflejaran sin tocarse demasiado. Nick rompe con Marjorie casi sin escena, con una conversación seca y un silencio que termina haciendo más ruido que cualquier portazo.
“El vendaval de tres días” ★★★★★. Nick y Bill beben, hablan de libros, de béisbol, de mujeres, de pesca, de tonterías importantes y de cosas importantes disfrazadas de tonterías. Es un cuento magnífico porque capta algo muy masculino sin ponerse solemne: esa capacidad absurda de hablar durante páginas para evitar una sola frase verdadera. Y ahí Hemingway resulta más ácido de lo que a veces se le concede: esa masculinidad sale tocada, casi ridícula, precisamente porque se queda sin lenguaje cuando más lo necesita. Uno puede imaginar a dos tipos levantando un vaso y construyendo una filosofía entera para no hablar de una ruptura que todavía no saben mirar de frente. Tampoco hace falta mirar muy lejos para reconocer el mecanismo, seamos sinceros.
“El hogar del soldado” ★★★★★. Me parece uno de los relatos más devastadores del conjunto. Krebs vuelve de la guerra, pero vuelve tarde, cuando el entusiasmo patriótico ya ha caducado y nadie tiene demasiadas ganas de escucharlo. La familia quiere que encaje, que trabaje, que rece, que ame, que sea útil, que haga todo eso que la normalidad exige con una sonrisa más o menos presentable. Krebs, mientras tanto, parece mirar su propia vida desde otra habitación. Su apatía seca da más miedo precisamente porque parece tranquila. Hemingway entiende muy bien que algunos traumas no entran dando portazos; se sientan en una silla, miran por la ventana y dejan pasar la vida.
También está “Gato bajo la lluvia” ★★★★★. Podría parecer poca cosa si uno lo cuenta mal: una pareja estadounidense en un hotel italiano, lluvia, una mujer que quiere rescatar un gato, un marido que lee y contesta desde la cama. Pero ahí está medio matrimonio metido en una habitación. La soledad, el deseo de cuidado, la insatisfacción, la necesidad de ser mirada, todo acaba concentrado en ese gato, animal y síntoma a la vez. Es un cuento pequeño solo en tamaño. Hemingway lo deja casi suspendido, con esa crueldad elegante de quien sabe que una vida puede revelarse en una petición mínima. Quiero un gato. Quiero otra cosa. Quiero que alguien se levante de la cama y me vea.
“Fuera de temporada” ★★★★. Hemingway trabaja una tirantez parecida en otro paisaje: una pareja, un guía italiano, una excursión de pesca que parece condenada antes de empezar y la sospecha de que la conversación va siempre unos pasos por detrás de lo que realmente ocurre. El cuento avanza entre alcohol, malentendidos y frases cortadas, como si la escena entera estuviera esperando una explicación que nunca llega. Y quizá por eso funciona: porque Hemingway sabe que a veces una pareja empieza a romperse durante una caminata absurda hacia un río al que nadie parece tener demasiadas ganas de llegar.
Y luego está “Río de dos corazones” ★★★★★. Dividido en dos partes, es uno de los grandes relatos de Nick Adams intentando recomponerse después del daño. Nick llega a un paisaje quemado, camina, monta su campamento, pesca, prepara café, observa el río. Dicho así parece un manual de supervivencia con buena literatura. Pero el cuento funciona porque Hemingway convierte cada acción concreta en una forma de contención mental. La guerra, o lo que la guerra ha dejado en Nick, queda fuera de foco, y precisamente por eso pesa más. Nick hace cosas. Ordena objetos. Ata anzuelos. Cocina. Mira el agua. La precisión material del relato es una manera de no desmoronarse. Pocas veces la literatura ha mostrado con tanta sobriedad que seguir vivo a veces consiste en concentrarse en lo siguiente: clavar una tienda, encender un fuego, mirar una trucha, respirar. Nick pesca, pero no es el pez lo que busca.
Las viñetas intercaladas dan al conjunto una violencia seca, casi documental. Soldados, toreros, caballos destripados, cadáveres, estampas de guerra y de violencia pública. Leídas de forma aislada, algunas pueden parecer demasiado bruscas o casi sueltas; dentro del libro, en cambio, cumplen una función decisiva: cortan el paso cuando el lector empieza a instalarse en un relato. Cada vez que una historia parece ofrecer un refugio narrativo, aparece una de esas piezas breves y devuelve el libro a su intemperie. Funcionan como esquirlas, restos de una explosión que En nuestro tiempo nunca termina de dejar atrás. La guerra no ocupa todo el libro, pero lo contamina. Está en el fondo de las conversaciones, en la manera de cortar una escena, en la dificultad de decir ciertas cosas, en esa sensación de que la juventud de estos personajes ya viene con golpes antiguos.
Lo fascinante es que Hemingway todavía no está completamente cristalizado en la estatua de sí mismo. Tiene juventud, filo y alguna aspereza, pero no inmadurez. Hay algún relato menos memorable, alguna pieza con aire de ejercicio de estilo o de fragmento preparatorio, y aun así el conjunto tiene una unidad extraña. Se lee como un álbum de heridas. No todas tienen el mismo tamaño, pero todas pertenecen al mismo cuerpo. Y ese cuerpo es el de una generación que ha aprendido a hablar poco porque hablar demasiado sería exponerse, romperse o hacer el ridículo. A veces las tres cosas. La respiración más amplia de Adiós a las armas llegará después; aquí todo parece más cortado, más abrupto, casi como si el cuento terminara antes de que el personaje pudiera protegerse con una explicación.
También se entiende aquí por qué Hemingway fue tan influyente y por qué tantos imitadores suyos terminaron pareciendo camareros enfadados apuntando frases cortas en una servilleta. Lo difícil no era escribir seco. Lo difícil era escribir seco y que debajo hubiera corriente. Hemingway encierra la emoción y la obliga a circular por debajo de la frase, como agua negra bajo una capa de hielo. Cuando funciona, el efecto es poderosísimo. Cuando uno lee a Carver, a Tobias Wolff o incluso ciertos cuentos de Salinger donde la herida se insinúa más de lo que se confiesa, la deuda se nota enseguida. Hemingway ayudó a cambiar la temperatura del cuento moderno: bajó la voz y, paradójicamente, hizo que algunas cosas sonaran más fuerte.
Quizá por eso mismo resulta tan fácil malentenderlo ahora: que si está sobrevalorado, que si ha envejecido mal, que si tanta pesca, tanto toro, tanto hombre callado y tanta frase corta ya no impresionan a nadie. Entiendo parte del rechazo. Hay una zona de su imaginario que puede parecer oxidada, incluso caricaturizada por la posteridad, como esos discos de jazz que algunos creen conocer porque han escuchado a cien imitadores tocar peor la misma idea. Pero confundir el cansancio de la leyenda con la debilidad de la obra sería una pereza crítica demasiado fácil. Hemingway no importa porque escribiera corto, del mismo modo que Miles Davis no importa porque tocara pocas notas. Importa por lo que hizo posible con esa reducción: cambió el oído del lector, limpió la frase de retórica heredada y demostró que una escena mínima podía cargar con una guerra entera sin ponerse a declamar en mitad del salón.
En nuestro tiempo tiene poca calidez y aún menos ganas de caer simpático, pero también tiene una juventud rarísima, una mezcla de dureza y vulnerabilidad que lo mantiene vivo un siglo después. Hemingway está fundando una manera de escribir, pero lo más interesante quizá sea que también está fundando una manera de callar. Y quizá por eso estos cuentos, tan breves algunos, dejan más eco del que deberían. Uno los termina sin sentir que ha asistido a una exhibición de estilo, aunque estilo hay para repartir y vender en el mercado negro.
Lo que queda, más bien, es la impresión de haber visto a un escritor joven descubrir que una frase sencilla puede contener un disparo, una ruptura, una guerra, un matrimonio entero o el miedo de un niño en una barca.
Y que, después de descubrirlo, tuvo la inteligencia —y la mala leche suficiente— para no explicárnoslo demasiado.
DC
Este libro es su primera gran declaración de principios. Y lo curioso es que apenas declara nada. Son cuentos breves, escenas cortadas casi siempre antes de que el lector pueda instalarse, viñetas de guerra que aparecen entre relatos como fogonazos, conversaciones donde nadie dice justo aquello que más pesa, familias rotas, hombres que vuelven de algún sitio sin haber regresado del todo, mujeres atrapadas en habitaciones, niños que ven demasiado pronto lo que quizá nadie debería ver nunca.
Hemingway no está todavía escribiendo sus grandes novelas, pero ya está probando el método que después convertirá en marca de fábrica: decir poco, cargar mucho y dejar que el silencio haga la parte sucia del trabajo. Uno podría preguntarse qué tiene que pasarle a alguien —o a una época entera— para empezar a hablar así de poco. En Hemingway, la sequedad tiene algo de elección estética, sí, pero también de defensa, vergüenza, cicatriz con buena sintaxis.
Lo más peligroso de este estilo es que, visto desde lejos, parece fácil. Frases cortas. Vocabulario limpio. Poca psicología explícita. Nada de adornos. Uno podría caer en la tentación de pensar: “Bueno, esto lo escribe cualquiera con un poco de contención y una resaca decente”. Error. La prosa de Hemingway en En nuestro tiempo tiene esa cualidad rara de las cosas muy trabajadas que fingen no haberlo sido. Cada frase parece colocada para que no se note la mano, pero se nota el peso. Una conversación banal sobre pesca, una comida, una excursión, un gesto doméstico o una frase dicha al pasar pueden abrir una grieta tremenda. Y Hemingway se aparta justo en el momento en que otro escritor habría encendido los focos.
El primer golpe serio llega con “Campamento indio” ★★★★★. Nick Adams acompaña a su padre, médico, a atender un parto en una comunidad indígena, y esa salida nocturna, que podría parecer una iniciación más o menos ordenada, acaba convertida en una escena brutal sobre el nacimiento, el dolor, la muerte y la manera en que los adultos administran el horror delante de los niños. Nick no entiende todo lo que ve, por supuesto. Pero el lector sí entiende lo suficiente como para sentir que algo se ha roto ahí para siempre. Es uno de esos cuentos donde Hemingway demuestra que la inocencia puede romperse sin discursos, apenas con una imagen mal digerida que se queda dentro como una espina. Y por eso el cierre del relato es tan cruel: en medio del lago, mientras su padre rema, Nick se siente seguro de que él no morirá nunca.
Nick Adams funciona en el libro como una especie de hilo discontinuo: una conciencia que va apareciendo en distintas edades, distintos paisajes, distintas heridas. Tiene algo de doble parcial de Hemingway, aunque reducirlo a simple alter ego sería empequeñecerlo; importa menos como máscara biográfica que como modo de ordenar una experiencia rota. Leído seguido, En nuestro tiempo parece menos una colección ordenada que un expediente emocional: infancia, familia, ruptura, guerra, regreso, naturaleza, y en medio de todo eso un tipo aprendiendo a no decir demasiado.
“El médico y su mujer” ★★★★. El conflicto entre el padre de Nick y unos trabajadores indígenas parece al principio una escena de tensión social menor, casi una anécdota áspera de convivencia. Pero por debajo late algo más feo: orgullo masculino, humillación, autoridad doméstica, cobardía, resentimiento. Hemingway deja al padre y a la madre respirar mal en la misma casa, sin convertirlos en emblemas. Basta con oírlos hablar para entender que esa familia guarda cosas que nadie sabe poner sobre la mesa.
Después vienen relatos como El fin de algo y El vendaval de tres días, donde Hemingway mira las relaciones sentimentales con una mezcla de sequedad y puntería que todavía hoy sorprende. “El fin de algo” ★★★★. Una ruptura amorosa aparece ligada a un paisaje industrial abandonado, como si el final de una pareja y el final de una forma de vida se reflejaran sin tocarse demasiado. Nick rompe con Marjorie casi sin escena, con una conversación seca y un silencio que termina haciendo más ruido que cualquier portazo.
“El vendaval de tres días” ★★★★★. Nick y Bill beben, hablan de libros, de béisbol, de mujeres, de pesca, de tonterías importantes y de cosas importantes disfrazadas de tonterías. Es un cuento magnífico porque capta algo muy masculino sin ponerse solemne: esa capacidad absurda de hablar durante páginas para evitar una sola frase verdadera. Y ahí Hemingway resulta más ácido de lo que a veces se le concede: esa masculinidad sale tocada, casi ridícula, precisamente porque se queda sin lenguaje cuando más lo necesita. Uno puede imaginar a dos tipos levantando un vaso y construyendo una filosofía entera para no hablar de una ruptura que todavía no saben mirar de frente. Tampoco hace falta mirar muy lejos para reconocer el mecanismo, seamos sinceros.
“El hogar del soldado” ★★★★★. Me parece uno de los relatos más devastadores del conjunto. Krebs vuelve de la guerra, pero vuelve tarde, cuando el entusiasmo patriótico ya ha caducado y nadie tiene demasiadas ganas de escucharlo. La familia quiere que encaje, que trabaje, que rece, que ame, que sea útil, que haga todo eso que la normalidad exige con una sonrisa más o menos presentable. Krebs, mientras tanto, parece mirar su propia vida desde otra habitación. Su apatía seca da más miedo precisamente porque parece tranquila. Hemingway entiende muy bien que algunos traumas no entran dando portazos; se sientan en una silla, miran por la ventana y dejan pasar la vida.
También está “Gato bajo la lluvia” ★★★★★. Podría parecer poca cosa si uno lo cuenta mal: una pareja estadounidense en un hotel italiano, lluvia, una mujer que quiere rescatar un gato, un marido que lee y contesta desde la cama. Pero ahí está medio matrimonio metido en una habitación. La soledad, el deseo de cuidado, la insatisfacción, la necesidad de ser mirada, todo acaba concentrado en ese gato, animal y síntoma a la vez. Es un cuento pequeño solo en tamaño. Hemingway lo deja casi suspendido, con esa crueldad elegante de quien sabe que una vida puede revelarse en una petición mínima. Quiero un gato. Quiero otra cosa. Quiero que alguien se levante de la cama y me vea.
“Fuera de temporada” ★★★★. Hemingway trabaja una tirantez parecida en otro paisaje: una pareja, un guía italiano, una excursión de pesca que parece condenada antes de empezar y la sospecha de que la conversación va siempre unos pasos por detrás de lo que realmente ocurre. El cuento avanza entre alcohol, malentendidos y frases cortadas, como si la escena entera estuviera esperando una explicación que nunca llega. Y quizá por eso funciona: porque Hemingway sabe que a veces una pareja empieza a romperse durante una caminata absurda hacia un río al que nadie parece tener demasiadas ganas de llegar.
Y luego está “Río de dos corazones” ★★★★★. Dividido en dos partes, es uno de los grandes relatos de Nick Adams intentando recomponerse después del daño. Nick llega a un paisaje quemado, camina, monta su campamento, pesca, prepara café, observa el río. Dicho así parece un manual de supervivencia con buena literatura. Pero el cuento funciona porque Hemingway convierte cada acción concreta en una forma de contención mental. La guerra, o lo que la guerra ha dejado en Nick, queda fuera de foco, y precisamente por eso pesa más. Nick hace cosas. Ordena objetos. Ata anzuelos. Cocina. Mira el agua. La precisión material del relato es una manera de no desmoronarse. Pocas veces la literatura ha mostrado con tanta sobriedad que seguir vivo a veces consiste en concentrarse en lo siguiente: clavar una tienda, encender un fuego, mirar una trucha, respirar. Nick pesca, pero no es el pez lo que busca.
Las viñetas intercaladas dan al conjunto una violencia seca, casi documental. Soldados, toreros, caballos destripados, cadáveres, estampas de guerra y de violencia pública. Leídas de forma aislada, algunas pueden parecer demasiado bruscas o casi sueltas; dentro del libro, en cambio, cumplen una función decisiva: cortan el paso cuando el lector empieza a instalarse en un relato. Cada vez que una historia parece ofrecer un refugio narrativo, aparece una de esas piezas breves y devuelve el libro a su intemperie. Funcionan como esquirlas, restos de una explosión que En nuestro tiempo nunca termina de dejar atrás. La guerra no ocupa todo el libro, pero lo contamina. Está en el fondo de las conversaciones, en la manera de cortar una escena, en la dificultad de decir ciertas cosas, en esa sensación de que la juventud de estos personajes ya viene con golpes antiguos.
Lo fascinante es que Hemingway todavía no está completamente cristalizado en la estatua de sí mismo. Tiene juventud, filo y alguna aspereza, pero no inmadurez. Hay algún relato menos memorable, alguna pieza con aire de ejercicio de estilo o de fragmento preparatorio, y aun así el conjunto tiene una unidad extraña. Se lee como un álbum de heridas. No todas tienen el mismo tamaño, pero todas pertenecen al mismo cuerpo. Y ese cuerpo es el de una generación que ha aprendido a hablar poco porque hablar demasiado sería exponerse, romperse o hacer el ridículo. A veces las tres cosas. La respiración más amplia de Adiós a las armas llegará después; aquí todo parece más cortado, más abrupto, casi como si el cuento terminara antes de que el personaje pudiera protegerse con una explicación.
También se entiende aquí por qué Hemingway fue tan influyente y por qué tantos imitadores suyos terminaron pareciendo camareros enfadados apuntando frases cortas en una servilleta. Lo difícil no era escribir seco. Lo difícil era escribir seco y que debajo hubiera corriente. Hemingway encierra la emoción y la obliga a circular por debajo de la frase, como agua negra bajo una capa de hielo. Cuando funciona, el efecto es poderosísimo. Cuando uno lee a Carver, a Tobias Wolff o incluso ciertos cuentos de Salinger donde la herida se insinúa más de lo que se confiesa, la deuda se nota enseguida. Hemingway ayudó a cambiar la temperatura del cuento moderno: bajó la voz y, paradójicamente, hizo que algunas cosas sonaran más fuerte.
Quizá por eso mismo resulta tan fácil malentenderlo ahora: que si está sobrevalorado, que si ha envejecido mal, que si tanta pesca, tanto toro, tanto hombre callado y tanta frase corta ya no impresionan a nadie. Entiendo parte del rechazo. Hay una zona de su imaginario que puede parecer oxidada, incluso caricaturizada por la posteridad, como esos discos de jazz que algunos creen conocer porque han escuchado a cien imitadores tocar peor la misma idea. Pero confundir el cansancio de la leyenda con la debilidad de la obra sería una pereza crítica demasiado fácil. Hemingway no importa porque escribiera corto, del mismo modo que Miles Davis no importa porque tocara pocas notas. Importa por lo que hizo posible con esa reducción: cambió el oído del lector, limpió la frase de retórica heredada y demostró que una escena mínima podía cargar con una guerra entera sin ponerse a declamar en mitad del salón.
En nuestro tiempo tiene poca calidez y aún menos ganas de caer simpático, pero también tiene una juventud rarísima, una mezcla de dureza y vulnerabilidad que lo mantiene vivo un siglo después. Hemingway está fundando una manera de escribir, pero lo más interesante quizá sea que también está fundando una manera de callar. Y quizá por eso estos cuentos, tan breves algunos, dejan más eco del que deberían. Uno los termina sin sentir que ha asistido a una exhibición de estilo, aunque estilo hay para repartir y vender en el mercado negro.
Lo que queda, más bien, es la impresión de haber visto a un escritor joven descubrir que una frase sencilla puede contener un disparo, una ruptura, una guerra, un matrimonio entero o el miedo de un niño en una barca.
Y que, después de descubrirlo, tuvo la inteligencia —y la mala leche suficiente— para no explicárnoslo demasiado.
DC
May 7, 2025
Some of Hemingway's earliest stories, published when he was in his twenties.
This shows the great range of the young writer, with creative and experimental styles in the short stories. While ubiquitous Hemingway themes like loneliness and isolation, family, relationships, a certain kind of nihilism can be read and explored, the vignettes provides a more subtle tone than does his longer works.
This also introduces us to Nick Adams and we see in his stories about the Michigan woods both a sturdy resourcefulness and a world weary angst. We see some of of his best sports stories, particularly the bull fighting scenes where he celebrates death and this is like a voyeuristic guide to death.
Dark, mysterious, sometimes difficult to follow, this sets the tone for much of his later writing.
This shows the great range of the young writer, with creative and experimental styles in the short stories. While ubiquitous Hemingway themes like loneliness and isolation, family, relationships, a certain kind of nihilism can be read and explored, the vignettes provides a more subtle tone than does his longer works.
This also introduces us to Nick Adams and we see in his stories about the Michigan woods both a sturdy resourcefulness and a world weary angst. We see some of of his best sports stories, particularly the bull fighting scenes where he celebrates death and this is like a voyeuristic guide to death.
Dark, mysterious, sometimes difficult to follow, this sets the tone for much of his later writing.
December 5, 2020
December 15, 2024 Update Again had to fix the link to the 2015 Introduction in the outside links section.
October 14, 2024 Update The link to the pdf copy of this 2015 edition at the University of Victoria no longer worked. I have instead added a link to the 2015 Introduction by James Gifford and a separate link to the Project Gutenberg public domain edition.
The Ur-Hemingway Vignettes
Review of the Modernist Versions Project / University of Victoria facsimile eBook edition (2015) of the 1924 chapbook original
In my initial Goodreads years and my Hemingway enthusiasm I added the original 1924 chapbook edition of in our time (lower case) to the database as it was missing. Since then I have to regularly monitor that it doesn't get merged with the later 1925 or 1930 book of short stories In Our Time (upper case) where the original 18 vignettes became 16 inter-chapters and 2 were expanded into longer short story versions. Call me an obsessive, but I can't see how 18 short vignettes on 32 pages can be considered the same book as another with 14 (15 as of 1930) short stories + 16 vignettes on about 160 to 200 pages in the various later editions.
Hemingway's short vignettes were based around themes that recurred throughout his life. These were people or animals in extreme situations, often at the point of death. The passages are drawn from wars (World War I and the Greco-Turkish War) and their aftermaths, or matadors with horses and bulls in the bullfighting ring. Often they are based on previous newspaper articles that he wrote, some of which are collected in anthologies such as By-Line: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades (1967). Others were expanded into short stories such as the Nick Adams Stories (1966) {Hemingway's proxy Nick makes his first appearances in the vignettes] or novels such as The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929).
The vignettes are an experimental laboratory for what later was called the Iceberg Theory, where the contexts and backgrounds for stories were omitted and were left to the reader's imagination. Using chapter 4 as an example:
This is shortest of the vignettes, so it is also the easiest to copy. 1924 readers would probably easily imagine this as being a scene from the Battle of Mons in World War I, but a century later that is a more difficult mental jump for most. It is left unexplained who Buckley was or why the Germans would keep coming over the wall despite the obvious easy shooting, as if of targets, by the British forces. The reader has to imagine all of that for themselves.
Trivia and Updated Links
The 46 page Modernist Versions Project edition of in our time is freely available (as of early December 2020) at the University of Victoria website here [Link was no longer working and has been deleted] in pdf format. In addition to the original 32 page text, it includes an Introduction, Textual Notes and End Notes by editor James Gifford.
You can now read the Introduction and a portion of the Textual Notes by editor James Gifford here.
You can read a facsimile edition of in our time at Project Gutenberg here.
October 14, 2024 Update The link to the pdf copy of this 2015 edition at the University of Victoria no longer worked. I have instead added a link to the 2015 Introduction by James Gifford and a separate link to the Project Gutenberg public domain edition.
The Ur-Hemingway Vignettes
Review of the Modernist Versions Project / University of Victoria facsimile eBook edition (2015) of the 1924 chapbook original
In my initial Goodreads years and my Hemingway enthusiasm I added the original 1924 chapbook edition of in our time (lower case) to the database as it was missing. Since then I have to regularly monitor that it doesn't get merged with the later 1925 or 1930 book of short stories In Our Time (upper case) where the original 18 vignettes became 16 inter-chapters and 2 were expanded into longer short story versions. Call me an obsessive, but I can't see how 18 short vignettes on 32 pages can be considered the same book as another with 14 (15 as of 1930) short stories + 16 vignettes on about 160 to 200 pages in the various later editions.
Hemingway's short vignettes were based around themes that recurred throughout his life. These were people or animals in extreme situations, often at the point of death. The passages are drawn from wars (World War I and the Greco-Turkish War) and their aftermaths, or matadors with horses and bulls in the bullfighting ring. Often they are based on previous newspaper articles that he wrote, some of which are collected in anthologies such as By-Line: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades (1967). Others were expanded into short stories such as the Nick Adams Stories (1966) {Hemingway's proxy Nick makes his first appearances in the vignettes] or novels such as The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929).
The vignettes are an experimental laboratory for what later was called the Iceberg Theory, where the contexts and backgrounds for stories were omitted and were left to the reader's imagination. Using chapter 4 as an example:
WE were in a garden at Mons. Young Buckley came in with his patrol from across the river. The first German I saw climbed up over the garden wall. We waited till he got one leg over and then potted him. He had so much equipment on and looked awfully surprised and fell down into the garden. Then three more came over further down the wall. We shot them. They all came just like that. - chapter 4 of in our time
This is shortest of the vignettes, so it is also the easiest to copy. 1924 readers would probably easily imagine this as being a scene from the Battle of Mons in World War I, but a century later that is a more difficult mental jump for most. It is left unexplained who Buckley was or why the Germans would keep coming over the wall despite the obvious easy shooting, as if of targets, by the British forces. The reader has to imagine all of that for themselves.
Hemingway is, then, a far more difficult author than the simplicity of his prose suggests. This is, in many respects, the greatest challenge and the greatest reward for reading Hemingway: he is both extremely easy and extremely difficult. The contrast lies between his clear and simple prose versus his unstated or implicit concerns. This leads many readers to assume they have “understood” Hemingway by simply reading him when we must first recognize how he trains us to be more careful and more critical readers. In this respect, Hemingway is a pedagogical writer insofar as he teaches his readers a new form of attention, a new form of sensitivity to language. - from the Introduction by James Gifford, editor for the 2015 edition.
Trivia and Updated Links
The 46 page Modernist Versions Project edition of in our time is freely available (as of early December 2020) at the University of Victoria website here [Link was no longer working and has been deleted] in pdf format. In addition to the original 32 page text, it includes an Introduction, Textual Notes and End Notes by editor James Gifford.
You can now read the Introduction and a portion of the Textual Notes by editor James Gifford here.
You can read a facsimile edition of in our time at Project Gutenberg here.
June 16, 2023
Another day, another Hemingway short story collection. I like this one a little bit less. Weird thing to admit, seeing as this collection got me really excited to take a look at The Nick Adams Stories as a whole (so that one will be next). There were a lot of stories that were just meh, and a few that were truly fantastic. I liked the contrast between the always bleak nature of the vignettes and the more neutral topics of the stories. You would go from a story about the dissolution of a relationship right into the middle of war.
I read two of my favourite stories of his here, The Three-Day Blow and Soldier’s Home. The two parts of Big Two-Hearted River were pure, gorgeous writings of scenery. Unfortunately, I wasn’t a fan of either of Cat in the Rain or Mr. and Mrs. Elliot. Nothing negative, but they didn’t blow me away.
I read two of my favourite stories of his here, The Three-Day Blow and Soldier’s Home. The two parts of Big Two-Hearted River were pure, gorgeous writings of scenery. Unfortunately, I wasn’t a fan of either of Cat in the Rain or Mr. and Mrs. Elliot. Nothing negative, but they didn’t blow me away.
January 16, 2017
Short review on short stories. I would amend those 3 stars down to 2.5 stars.
These short stories are credited with being the turning point for Hemingway, having made him famous. This is why I chose them for my next Hemingway read.
On the stories themselves. Most of them were a bit bland, not a lot happened in them, and they lacked a certain emotion. There were a couple, however, that I enjoyed - The End of Something, Cross-Country Snow were good. Although these two stories were only a few pages in length, they did manage to portray emotion, which seemed to bring the pages to life.
And regarding his writing. It is of course unique. Once in a while he inserts a brief sentence of only a few words, and it's like being punched in the gut, having the result of really pulling you into the story. Something I noticed that distracted me while reading was his use of the adjective 'very.' He overuses it, even in his dialogue. Hemingway's use of dialogue in these stories was hit and miss. Some stories were well done, others I found the dialogue unnatural. I think, though, that this is likely a reflection of living a century apart. There are obviously going to be colloquialisms a part of 20th century language that don't hold true today.
Next stop on the Hemingway train for me: The Sun Also Rises.
These short stories are credited with being the turning point for Hemingway, having made him famous. This is why I chose them for my next Hemingway read.
On the stories themselves. Most of them were a bit bland, not a lot happened in them, and they lacked a certain emotion. There were a couple, however, that I enjoyed - The End of Something, Cross-Country Snow were good. Although these two stories were only a few pages in length, they did manage to portray emotion, which seemed to bring the pages to life.
And regarding his writing. It is of course unique. Once in a while he inserts a brief sentence of only a few words, and it's like being punched in the gut, having the result of really pulling you into the story. Something I noticed that distracted me while reading was his use of the adjective 'very.' He overuses it, even in his dialogue. Hemingway's use of dialogue in these stories was hit and miss. Some stories were well done, others I found the dialogue unnatural. I think, though, that this is likely a reflection of living a century apart. There are obviously going to be colloquialisms a part of 20th century language that don't hold true today.
Next stop on the Hemingway train for me: The Sun Also Rises.
November 27, 2016
In Our Time, much like Hemingway's
Farewell to Arms,
is a meditation on suffering. Between the short stories, half page vignettes illustrate tableaus of violence and death taken from fleeing refugees, the bull rings of Spain, and the collapsing monarchies of Europe.
My favorite linked sections of this book followed Nick Adams, in part because his story is full of intriguing holes, and in part because much that concerns him here is so banal and slow in contrast to the vignettes. One gets the sense that Nick is holding a great well of experience inside him, that trout fishing in a river is a great relief from the anxiety of his memories.
Interesting too, on the topic of death and violence, was the means by which the author met his own end. Particularly when the following passage from "Indian Camp" speaks to it directly.
Why did he kill himself, Daddy?"
"I don't know, Nick. He couldn't stand things, I guess."
"Do many men kill themselves, Daddy?"
"Not very many, Nick."
"Do many women?"
"Hardly ever."
"Don't they ever?"
"Oh, yes. They do sometimes."
"Daddy?"
"Yes."
"Where did Uncle George go?"
"He'll turn up all right."
"Is dying hard, Daddy?"
"No, I think it's pretty easy, Nick. It all depends."
They were seated in the boat, Nick in the stern, his father rowing. The sun was coming up over the hills. A bass jumped, making a circle in the water. Nick trailed his hand in the water. It felt warm in the sharp chill of the morning.
In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.
My favorite linked sections of this book followed Nick Adams, in part because his story is full of intriguing holes, and in part because much that concerns him here is so banal and slow in contrast to the vignettes. One gets the sense that Nick is holding a great well of experience inside him, that trout fishing in a river is a great relief from the anxiety of his memories.
Interesting too, on the topic of death and violence, was the means by which the author met his own end. Particularly when the following passage from "Indian Camp" speaks to it directly.
Why did he kill himself, Daddy?"
"I don't know, Nick. He couldn't stand things, I guess."
"Do many men kill themselves, Daddy?"
"Not very many, Nick."
"Do many women?"
"Hardly ever."
"Don't they ever?"
"Oh, yes. They do sometimes."
"Daddy?"
"Yes."
"Where did Uncle George go?"
"He'll turn up all right."
"Is dying hard, Daddy?"
"No, I think it's pretty easy, Nick. It all depends."
They were seated in the boat, Nick in the stern, his father rowing. The sun was coming up over the hills. A bass jumped, making a circle in the water. Nick trailed his hand in the water. It felt warm in the sharp chill of the morning.
In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.
April 22, 2026
Hemingway style is in full splendor. Flashbacks to fun times with his dad hunting, horrible times in war with vivid descriptions, a fishing trip that was utopian & crisp dialogue which set the style for American writers forever.
Only one fly in the ointment was a crooked jockey with a sad tale with his son.
Only one fly in the ointment was a crooked jockey with a sad tale with his son.
March 25, 2008
As I am now part of an Ernest Hemingway Short Story book club, I will write reviews of the stories that strike my fancy and add them to the books from whence they came.
Cat in the Rain -- This story represents one of my favourite aspects of Hemingway's work -- his simplicity.
There is nothing, and I mean nothing, superfluous in Cat in the Rain. Every word is purposefully placed for its ability to invoke emotion or conjure an image. Reading Cat in the Rain can transport you to another time and place: to a square near the ocean in Italy during an afternoon rainstorm.
But don't just read it once on the page, read it again out loud and be dazzled by the rhythms of the rain that Hemingway embeds in the staccato dripping and dropping and dripping and dropping of his words. He repeats and repeats to make the rain come alive, and unless you read it out loud you can't hear it.
Then when the American girl and her husband talk you can hear truth that few other authors are willing to attempt, and even fewer can achieve with so little said. They love, they want, they are, but the distance between them makes us wonder if they do any of those things together.
And all of this comes down to a cat in the rain, tightening itself into a little ball beneath a cafe table so that no water will touch its fur.
Papa could write.
Cat in the Rain -- This story represents one of my favourite aspects of Hemingway's work -- his simplicity.
There is nothing, and I mean nothing, superfluous in Cat in the Rain. Every word is purposefully placed for its ability to invoke emotion or conjure an image. Reading Cat in the Rain can transport you to another time and place: to a square near the ocean in Italy during an afternoon rainstorm.
But don't just read it once on the page, read it again out loud and be dazzled by the rhythms of the rain that Hemingway embeds in the staccato dripping and dropping and dripping and dropping of his words. He repeats and repeats to make the rain come alive, and unless you read it out loud you can't hear it.
Then when the American girl and her husband talk you can hear truth that few other authors are willing to attempt, and even fewer can achieve with so little said. They love, they want, they are, but the distance between them makes us wonder if they do any of those things together.
And all of this comes down to a cat in the rain, tightening itself into a little ball beneath a cafe table so that no water will touch its fur.
Papa could write.
January 18, 2025
Jan 17, 8pm ~~ Review asap.
Jan 20, noon thirty ~~ First of all, the information geek in me insists on copying the GR blurb of my edition of this book.
This edition of "in our time" (lower case) is for copies of the 1924 original edition of 170 copies or the 1977 facsimile edition of 1,700 copies or other facsimiles containing only the original 18 vignettes on 32 pages. This edition should not be combined with the later 1925 or 1930 editions where the 18 vignettes became the 16 inter-chapters to the longer short stories of "In Our Time" (upper case) and vignette Chapter 10 became "A Very Short Story" and vignette Chapter 11 became "The Revolutionist".
I read the 1924 edition, the one with only 18 'vignettes', at Project Gutenberg. But nearly every review I saw at this edition's book page talked about the later expanded editions, and claimed that one or the other of them was Hemingway's first book. HIs first book was 1923's Three Stories and Ten Poems. His second book was this 1924 edition of in our time and his third book was an expanded In Our Time from 1925,
I am no Hemingway scholar, but when I see conflicting information and reviews of different editions of books all showing up under one title, I get confused. To sort myself out I like to track down the actual facts to the best of my ability. My information in this case comes from WIki.
So, now that my griping about the data is out of my system, I will get to my griping about EH and this book. I never cared for Hemingway, probably because I was forced to read him in school. But I am doing a Buddy Read of Death in the Afternoon with GR friend Mr. James, and when real life put our book on pause for a bit, I happened to notice this title at Gutenberg. I thought it would be a chance to see early writing and maybe even answer some of my questions about the man.
I read this little book three times before I was all done. Once for a first gut reaction, once again to compare the timeline of the author's experiences in WWI, and once again to try harder to discover what about the writing supposedly made EH so special.
Gut reactions ~~ Intense scenes, could be made into incredible stories but feel more like random thoughts to build on, like in a writer's notebook. Is this really all he wanted to say on these topics? Or did he simply not know how to expand his ideas? Are these his experiences? If so, then that is why he obsesses so much about cowardice in DITA! And this is why he hates women. Overall, not impressed.
Timeline comparison ~~ EH was a volunteer ambulance driver with the Red Cross Motor Corps. Left USA in May 1918, was in Paris, and by June was in Italy. Severely injured on July 8, spent six months in hospital where he fell in love with Agnes. Returned to America January 1919. Safe to assume that all the war 'vignettes' came from his own experiences.
Special? ~~ Why? His style was not new, according to the wiki article about Jim Tully. I quote passages here since GR has no biographical info about him at all.
Born near St. Marys, Ohio, to James Dennis and Bridget Marie Lawler Tully, an Irish immigrant ditch-digger and his wife, Tully enjoyed a relatively happy but impoverished childhood until the death of his mother in 1892. Unable to care for him, his father sent him to an orphanage in Cincinnati. He remained there for six years. What further education he acquired came in the hobo camps, boxcars, railroad yards, and public libraries scattered across the country. Finally, weary of the road, he arrived in Kent, Ohio, where he worked as a chain maker, professional boxer, and tree surgeon. He also began to write, mostly poetry published in the local newspapers.
He moved to Hollywood in 1912, when he began writing in earnest. His literary career took two distinct paths. He became one of the first reporters to cover Hollywood. As a free-lancer he was not constrained by the studios and wrote about Hollywood celebrities (including Charlie Chaplin, for whom he had worked) in ways that they did not always find agreeable. For these pieces, rather tame by current standards, he became known as the most-hated man in Hollywood—a title he relished. Less lucrative but closer to his heart were the books he wrote about his life on the road and the American underclass. He also wrote an affectionate memoir of his childhood with his extended Irish family, as well as novels on prostitution, boxing, Hollywood, and a travel book. While some of the more graphic books ran afoul of the censors, they also garnered both commercial success and critical acclaim from, among others, H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan, and Rupert Hughes, who wrote that Tully "has fathered the school of hard-boiled writing so zealously cultivated by Ernest Hemingway and lesser luminaries."
When I finish with EH, I have two Tully titles to read. One is a reread which I remember being as quite coarse but honest and impressive. That is not something I have felt yet about EH, but I still have half of DITA to go and then a reread of his non-fiction work The Dangerous Summer, so there is a possibility he will still surprise me. But I doubt I will return to EH after this project is completed. So far there has been nothing that compels me to explore beyond these plans.
If anyone is still reading at this point, thanks for your time!
Jan 20, noon thirty ~~ First of all, the information geek in me insists on copying the GR blurb of my edition of this book.
This edition of "in our time" (lower case) is for copies of the 1924 original edition of 170 copies or the 1977 facsimile edition of 1,700 copies or other facsimiles containing only the original 18 vignettes on 32 pages. This edition should not be combined with the later 1925 or 1930 editions where the 18 vignettes became the 16 inter-chapters to the longer short stories of "In Our Time" (upper case) and vignette Chapter 10 became "A Very Short Story" and vignette Chapter 11 became "The Revolutionist".
I read the 1924 edition, the one with only 18 'vignettes', at Project Gutenberg. But nearly every review I saw at this edition's book page talked about the later expanded editions, and claimed that one or the other of them was Hemingway's first book. HIs first book was 1923's Three Stories and Ten Poems. His second book was this 1924 edition of in our time and his third book was an expanded In Our Time from 1925,
I am no Hemingway scholar, but when I see conflicting information and reviews of different editions of books all showing up under one title, I get confused. To sort myself out I like to track down the actual facts to the best of my ability. My information in this case comes from WIki.
So, now that my griping about the data is out of my system, I will get to my griping about EH and this book. I never cared for Hemingway, probably because I was forced to read him in school. But I am doing a Buddy Read of Death in the Afternoon with GR friend Mr. James, and when real life put our book on pause for a bit, I happened to notice this title at Gutenberg. I thought it would be a chance to see early writing and maybe even answer some of my questions about the man.
I read this little book three times before I was all done. Once for a first gut reaction, once again to compare the timeline of the author's experiences in WWI, and once again to try harder to discover what about the writing supposedly made EH so special.
Gut reactions ~~ Intense scenes, could be made into incredible stories but feel more like random thoughts to build on, like in a writer's notebook. Is this really all he wanted to say on these topics? Or did he simply not know how to expand his ideas? Are these his experiences? If so, then that is why he obsesses so much about cowardice in DITA! And this is why he hates women. Overall, not impressed.
Timeline comparison ~~ EH was a volunteer ambulance driver with the Red Cross Motor Corps. Left USA in May 1918, was in Paris, and by June was in Italy. Severely injured on July 8, spent six months in hospital where he fell in love with Agnes. Returned to America January 1919. Safe to assume that all the war 'vignettes' came from his own experiences.
Special? ~~ Why? His style was not new, according to the wiki article about Jim Tully. I quote passages here since GR has no biographical info about him at all.
Born near St. Marys, Ohio, to James Dennis and Bridget Marie Lawler Tully, an Irish immigrant ditch-digger and his wife, Tully enjoyed a relatively happy but impoverished childhood until the death of his mother in 1892. Unable to care for him, his father sent him to an orphanage in Cincinnati. He remained there for six years. What further education he acquired came in the hobo camps, boxcars, railroad yards, and public libraries scattered across the country. Finally, weary of the road, he arrived in Kent, Ohio, where he worked as a chain maker, professional boxer, and tree surgeon. He also began to write, mostly poetry published in the local newspapers.
He moved to Hollywood in 1912, when he began writing in earnest. His literary career took two distinct paths. He became one of the first reporters to cover Hollywood. As a free-lancer he was not constrained by the studios and wrote about Hollywood celebrities (including Charlie Chaplin, for whom he had worked) in ways that they did not always find agreeable. For these pieces, rather tame by current standards, he became known as the most-hated man in Hollywood—a title he relished. Less lucrative but closer to his heart were the books he wrote about his life on the road and the American underclass. He also wrote an affectionate memoir of his childhood with his extended Irish family, as well as novels on prostitution, boxing, Hollywood, and a travel book. While some of the more graphic books ran afoul of the censors, they also garnered both commercial success and critical acclaim from, among others, H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan, and Rupert Hughes, who wrote that Tully "has fathered the school of hard-boiled writing so zealously cultivated by Ernest Hemingway and lesser luminaries."
When I finish with EH, I have two Tully titles to read. One is a reread which I remember being as quite coarse but honest and impressive. That is not something I have felt yet about EH, but I still have half of DITA to go and then a reread of his non-fiction work The Dangerous Summer, so there is a possibility he will still surprise me. But I doubt I will return to EH after this project is completed. So far there has been nothing that compels me to explore beyond these plans.
If anyone is still reading at this point, thanks for your time!
January 8, 2024
Some good stories here and some not so good ones. The Nick Adams ones especially I can never tell, except for The Killers that one rules, are they naïve or is there something there? But really the point of these stories, even when they were first published, was to see him work on his technique while we wait for him to produce something more substantial. And considering he went to on to pen three of the best novels of the twentieth century, it's worth checking out his preparations.
He's already very good at describing anything he's actually experienced (skiing, fishing, cooking camp food, disappointing women, propping up a newspaper on a breakfast table). He's not good at the invention part of writing, in fact he's downright cruel about it at times (he was mean to Agnes von Kurowsky, vicious to Chard Powers Smith and his wife Olive, bullied his own father, he himself did not catch 'gonorrhea from a sales girl while riding in a taxicab through Lincoln Park'). And he's struggling between being an upstanding Oak Park boy who mustn't write about some things, a soldier who's seen some things, and the worldly writer who is obligated to write about these things. He's working on the iceberg technique stuff, which is a good way to split the difference of his dilemmas, but sometimes he leaves a little too much out, at least from my perspective decades on.
On the Quai at Smyrna — not really a story but strong imagery, very reminiscent of stuff coming out of Gaza right now, but about Greek refugees after the Greco-Turkish War. Women clinging to dead babies until they’re separated. Horrible stuff. Must’ve been mindblowing back in the day when the newsreels were so tame.
Indian Camp — I go back and forth on this one every time I read it. It feels very simplistic, almost childish. But there is something going on. It’s about the genocide of the Indigenous peoples of North America, and about recognizing mortality. Or so I’ve read. But it always just feels kind’ve simplistic. And Hemingway did kill himself, in the end. I don’t know.
The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife — kind of bullying towards his own father, and of course Hemingway ended up the same way
The End of Something — I like the ruins of the mill as a symbol of the end of the relationship, with her seeing it as a castle because she doesn’t know it's over.
Three-Day Blow — Nice story about getting drunk with your boys. Always starts out fun but then ends with one of you getting morose.
The Battler — Nick meets a hobo and his Black manservant on the road. My favourite Nick Adams story of this lot, but obviously The Killer is the best.
A Very Short Story —Hem’s romance with a nurse
Soldier’s Home — Maybe the most vulnerable this Hemingway gets
The Revolutionist — Very cool obviously but would’ve liked more
Mr and Mrs Elliot — Very rude to 'the Elliots,' who he actually named in the orignial version.
Cat in the Rain — Touching
Out of Season — Hemingway working his own nervousness to good effect
Cross-Country Snow — a fun enough story with a sad enough ending to make it feel like it was worthwhile
My Old Man — probably the best story that isn't based on his own experiences and that's more than a vignette (that is, it's a story of invention, though I think he based a lot of it on a story making the rounds in the tabloids)
Big Two-Hearted River parts one and two: that cooking stuff was so good it made me hungry even after I'd just eaten but I need more than just camping. Yes the grasshopper stuff was cool and I get that it's about recovering from the war but Hemingway isn't good enough of a landscape writer to sustain my interest
The Vignettes — the war stuff was cool but the matador stuff? Come on, man. That's just cruelty. The political stuff might be interesting if there was more of it, but feels out of place in snippets.
He's already very good at describing anything he's actually experienced (skiing, fishing, cooking camp food, disappointing women, propping up a newspaper on a breakfast table). He's not good at the invention part of writing, in fact he's downright cruel about it at times (he was mean to Agnes von Kurowsky, vicious to Chard Powers Smith and his wife Olive, bullied his own father, he himself did not catch 'gonorrhea from a sales girl while riding in a taxicab through Lincoln Park'). And he's struggling between being an upstanding Oak Park boy who mustn't write about some things, a soldier who's seen some things, and the worldly writer who is obligated to write about these things. He's working on the iceberg technique stuff, which is a good way to split the difference of his dilemmas, but sometimes he leaves a little too much out, at least from my perspective decades on.
On the Quai at Smyrna — not really a story but strong imagery, very reminiscent of stuff coming out of Gaza right now, but about Greek refugees after the Greco-Turkish War. Women clinging to dead babies until they’re separated. Horrible stuff. Must’ve been mindblowing back in the day when the newsreels were so tame.
Indian Camp — I go back and forth on this one every time I read it. It feels very simplistic, almost childish. But there is something going on. It’s about the genocide of the Indigenous peoples of North America, and about recognizing mortality. Or so I’ve read. But it always just feels kind’ve simplistic. And Hemingway did kill himself, in the end. I don’t know.
The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife — kind of bullying towards his own father, and of course Hemingway ended up the same way
The End of Something — I like the ruins of the mill as a symbol of the end of the relationship, with her seeing it as a castle because she doesn’t know it's over.
Three-Day Blow — Nice story about getting drunk with your boys. Always starts out fun but then ends with one of you getting morose.
The Battler — Nick meets a hobo and his Black manservant on the road. My favourite Nick Adams story of this lot, but obviously The Killer is the best.
A Very Short Story —Hem’s romance with a nurse
Soldier’s Home — Maybe the most vulnerable this Hemingway gets
The Revolutionist — Very cool obviously but would’ve liked more
Mr and Mrs Elliot — Very rude to 'the Elliots,' who he actually named in the orignial version.
Cat in the Rain — Touching
Out of Season — Hemingway working his own nervousness to good effect
Cross-Country Snow — a fun enough story with a sad enough ending to make it feel like it was worthwhile
My Old Man — probably the best story that isn't based on his own experiences and that's more than a vignette (that is, it's a story of invention, though I think he based a lot of it on a story making the rounds in the tabloids)
Big Two-Hearted River parts one and two: that cooking stuff was so good it made me hungry even after I'd just eaten but I need more than just camping. Yes the grasshopper stuff was cool and I get that it's about recovering from the war but Hemingway isn't good enough of a landscape writer to sustain my interest
The Vignettes — the war stuff was cool but the matador stuff? Come on, man. That's just cruelty. The political stuff might be interesting if there was more of it, but feels out of place in snippets.
August 29, 2016
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November 10, 2021
Difficult to rate this early collection from a famous American writer. The stories are over 100 years old at this point, and the rude language can be jarring to modern ears. On the other hand, writers like Hemingway were trying to capture the way that people really spoke, and is perhaps displaying authentic language from early 1900. The use of vernacular and realistic speech was a startling development in fiction at the time.
This collection includes the "famous Nick Adams" stories, but I have to say these were not among my favourites. In the last two fishing stories ("Big Two-Hearted River," parts I and II) the protagonist is named Nick, but the pieces, and some of the other Nick Adams stories, feel like sketches intended to be part of a novel that never happened. My favourite in the collection was Soldier's Home which is an early and insightful depiction of the lingering effects of trauma.
This collection, dedicated to his first wife Hadley Richardson, is even more interesting if one knows the background in terms of Hemingway's biography, the sources of his material and inspiration, and where he was when he wrote each of these pieces. For example, he was inspired by events in Europe to write about situations in the U.S.
This is an important work in terms of the development of an influential writer, but not an essential work by this writer. Therefore, rounding down to 3 stars, because I believe winning the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize should be enough for any writer.
This collection includes the "famous Nick Adams" stories, but I have to say these were not among my favourites. In the last two fishing stories ("Big Two-Hearted River," parts I and II) the protagonist is named Nick, but the pieces, and some of the other Nick Adams stories, feel like sketches intended to be part of a novel that never happened. My favourite in the collection was Soldier's Home which is an early and insightful depiction of the lingering effects of trauma.
This collection, dedicated to his first wife Hadley Richardson, is even more interesting if one knows the background in terms of Hemingway's biography, the sources of his material and inspiration, and where he was when he wrote each of these pieces. For example, he was inspired by events in Europe to write about situations in the U.S.
This is an important work in terms of the development of an influential writer, but not an essential work by this writer. Therefore, rounding down to 3 stars, because I believe winning the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize should be enough for any writer.
August 28, 2012
Hemingway's minimalist writing style is polarizing - this isn't news. His sparse sentences, staccato pacing and seemingly adjective free narratives aren't for everybody. But if you like this type of writing, this book of stories is for you.
This is the first time in reading Hemingway that it dawned on my just how much like poetry his writing can be (I'm slow - my GR friends have probably written thesis on this). Here's an example, with line breaks at each period:
He did not want any consequences
He did not want any consequences ever again
He wanted to live along without consequences
Besides he did not really need a girl
The army had taught him that
It was all right to pose as though you had to have a girl
Nearly everybody did that
But it wasn't true
You did not need a girl
That was the funny thing
This is the first time in reading Hemingway that it dawned on my just how much like poetry his writing can be (I'm slow - my GR friends have probably written thesis on this). Here's an example, with line breaks at each period:
He did not want any consequences
He did not want any consequences ever again
He wanted to live along without consequences
Besides he did not really need a girl
The army had taught him that
It was all right to pose as though you had to have a girl
Nearly everybody did that
But it wasn't true
You did not need a girl
That was the funny thing
April 25, 2017
Hemingway at his most experimental. A fantastic book, written before he was "Hemingway."
January 20, 2018
I don't agree with those who try to discredit Hemingway as a mediocre writer. I have talked with and read reviews by these people and I understand their criticisms but their points could apply to any writer. Also, and maybe more importantly, they don't like his false macho affectation. Okayyy. That's fair. But to go so far as to argue that the shouldn't be remembered as a great writer is just plain silly.
Have these people never had a tight-lipped uncle who liked to go fishing?
Or a brother who got into too many fist fights?
Apparently not.
OK, rant over.
In Our Time is one of Hemingway's immortal books. It was his first, a collection of short stories which was like nothing else that came before it. It's hard to believe it was published in 1924, the age of Sinclair Lewis and Edith Wharton.
These stories are like little gusts of Chekhovian sweetness. There are great moments of tenderness and tragedy that seem impossible to fit in the space Hemingway manages. Each one seems to be overflowing. Like it wants to say more but knows it shouldn't. I love stories like this and that's maybe why I am able to give Hemingway the benefit of the doubt overall. Insofar as he is an American Chekhov, I really love his writing. And this is the golden age in Hemingway's career for this sort of thing. At the time of its publication New York Times called "In Our Time," fibrous and athletic, colloquial and fresh, hard and clean, his very prose seems to have an organic being of its own. I think they were right. Had he continued along this line, and avoided his later self-imitations and "sentimentality," I think he would have been a far better writer, and much lesser known.
To me, the bottom line for what makes Hemingway a worthwhile read is that--although his attempts are not always perfect--he makes literature un-literary. "Literature" at its best is always fresh, coming back down to earth to see how things are going and how people are talking to one another, and then going back up for air. Literature that never comes down to earth, but stays suspended in academia, or in esoteric little hipster sanctuaries of trendiness and high-mindedness, never connects for me. I hate those books.
In college I once had a life-defining conversation with an old girlfriend of mine. We were debating whether or not everyone has the ability to have deep thoughts. She said no, not everyone has deep thoughts. I said yes, I think they do--many people just don't know how to talk about them or they'd rather not talk about them. She said she didn't think so. She said there are some people out there, beer-guzzling mouth-breathers, who, honest-to-goodness, just don't produce a single profundity their entire lives. They just sit around and take up oxygen. I said I didn't see it that way. The topic never came up again, and we broke up after only a few months of dating.
Fast forward three years.
Walking around campus one morning, I ran into her again. I hadn't really seen or talked to her for those three years. The conversation was awkward at first. We shifted our weight back and forth. She asked me what I was reading. I said Hemingway. She laughed. Now, she was loosened up. She said isn't his stuff pretty simple and macho? Yes, I said. But there's a lot there if you're willing to look for it. Well, she said she didn't think she'd ever get around to reading him.
Have these people never had a tight-lipped uncle who liked to go fishing?
Or a brother who got into too many fist fights?
Apparently not.
OK, rant over.
In Our Time is one of Hemingway's immortal books. It was his first, a collection of short stories which was like nothing else that came before it. It's hard to believe it was published in 1924, the age of Sinclair Lewis and Edith Wharton.
These stories are like little gusts of Chekhovian sweetness. There are great moments of tenderness and tragedy that seem impossible to fit in the space Hemingway manages. Each one seems to be overflowing. Like it wants to say more but knows it shouldn't. I love stories like this and that's maybe why I am able to give Hemingway the benefit of the doubt overall. Insofar as he is an American Chekhov, I really love his writing. And this is the golden age in Hemingway's career for this sort of thing. At the time of its publication New York Times called "In Our Time," fibrous and athletic, colloquial and fresh, hard and clean, his very prose seems to have an organic being of its own. I think they were right. Had he continued along this line, and avoided his later self-imitations and "sentimentality," I think he would have been a far better writer, and much lesser known.
To me, the bottom line for what makes Hemingway a worthwhile read is that--although his attempts are not always perfect--he makes literature un-literary. "Literature" at its best is always fresh, coming back down to earth to see how things are going and how people are talking to one another, and then going back up for air. Literature that never comes down to earth, but stays suspended in academia, or in esoteric little hipster sanctuaries of trendiness and high-mindedness, never connects for me. I hate those books.
In college I once had a life-defining conversation with an old girlfriend of mine. We were debating whether or not everyone has the ability to have deep thoughts. She said no, not everyone has deep thoughts. I said yes, I think they do--many people just don't know how to talk about them or they'd rather not talk about them. She said she didn't think so. She said there are some people out there, beer-guzzling mouth-breathers, who, honest-to-goodness, just don't produce a single profundity their entire lives. They just sit around and take up oxygen. I said I didn't see it that way. The topic never came up again, and we broke up after only a few months of dating.
Fast forward three years.
Walking around campus one morning, I ran into her again. I hadn't really seen or talked to her for those three years. The conversation was awkward at first. We shifted our weight back and forth. She asked me what I was reading. I said Hemingway. She laughed. Now, she was loosened up. She said isn't his stuff pretty simple and macho? Yes, I said. But there's a lot there if you're willing to look for it. Well, she said she didn't think she'd ever get around to reading him.
August 21, 2017
این، یک مجموعه داستان کوتاه است.
با خوندن این مجموعه متوجه میشید که همینگوی چرا بین نویسندگان داستان کوتاه اینقدر مطرح شده. داستانهاش، از ساده ترین مسائل و احساسات انسانی صحبت میکنند به شکلی که برای تمام انسانهای دنیا معنا دارند. پر از جزئیات شفاف و خردهکاریهایی که این نویسنده باعث میشه نظرمونو بهشون جلب کنیم. افعال رو بهقدری دقیق توضیح میده که میتونی مثل یک فیلم توی ذهنات تصوراش کنی و باعث میشه خودت هم توی انجام دادن کارهای روزانه دقت بیشتری به خرج بدی و متوجه جزئیات بشی.
جملاتش کوتاه کوتاه و بدون تکلف اند.
اتفاقات گاهی بدون هیچ دلیل خاص یا محکمهپسندی رخ میدن. دقیقن مثل زندگی! (مخصوصن دورهای که همینگوی توش زندگی میکرده)
با خوندن این مجموعه متوجه میشید که همینگوی چرا بین نویسندگان داستان کوتاه اینقدر مطرح شده. داستانهاش، از ساده ترین مسائل و احساسات انسانی صحبت میکنند به شکلی که برای تمام انسانهای دنیا معنا دارند. پر از جزئیات شفاف و خردهکاریهایی که این نویسنده باعث میشه نظرمونو بهشون جلب کنیم. افعال رو بهقدری دقیق توضیح میده که میتونی مثل یک فیلم توی ذهنات تصوراش کنی و باعث میشه خودت هم توی انجام دادن کارهای روزانه دقت بیشتری به خرج بدی و متوجه جزئیات بشی.
جملاتش کوتاه کوتاه و بدون تکلف اند.
اتفاقات گاهی بدون هیچ دلیل خاص یا محکمهپسندی رخ میدن. دقیقن مثل زندگی! (مخصوصن دورهای که همینگوی توش زندگی میکرده)
August 18, 2019
قصص لا بأس بها، لكني توقعت أفضل من ذلك
January 23, 2021
Free In Our Time
Review of the AmazonClassics Kindle eBook edition (2021) of the Boni & Liveright original In Our Time (1925)
The Hemingway industry shows no signs of slowing down, even as we approach the centenary of his first published works. His forever publisher Scribner will issue yet another repackaging of short stories The Hemingway Stories: As Featured in the Film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick on PBS (expected March 2, 2021) to coincide with a new 6-hour documentary on PBS (expected April 5, 2021). The projected 16 volume / 20 year project of the Complete Letters of Ernest Hemingway is only up to The Letters of Ernest Hemingway: Volume 5, 1932-1934: 1932-1934 as of 2020. The Ernest Hemingway Library Edition of reissues expanded with early drafts and deletions is perhaps only a third of its way to completion. A seemingly infinite number of biographies continue to be written with The Man Who Wasn't There: A Life of Ernest Hemingway (2020) and Ernesto: The Untold Story of Hemingway in Revolutionary Cuba (2019) being the most recent.
AmazonClassics have gotten in on the act by issuing a Kindle only reissue of the 1925 Boni & Liveright edition of the "In Our Time" vignettes and short stories. They call it the "New York edition" to distinguish it from the original 1924 Paris chapbook edition in our time (lower-case letter title) which contained only the original 18 vignettes. This first American edition added 14 short stories, expanded 2 original vignettes into short stories and used the 16 remaining vignettes as inter-chapters. When Scribner took over Hemingway's publishing it added an additional short story "On the Quai at Smyrna" for the 1930 American edition In Our Time.
Hemingway's early short stories are among my favourites of his writing. Any collection with Indian Camp, The Battler, Soldier's Home, Cat in the Rain, Out of Season and Big Two-Hearted River will rate an easy 5-stars from me. In Our Time also acts as somewhat of a novel-in-short-stories as 7 of the 14 have the Hemingway proxy character of Nick Adams as their explicit protagonist and several of the others would seem to have Hemingway/Adams as an anonymous or renamed character. The overall arc takes Nick from the immortality of childhood in the face of death seen in Indian Camp through to the chastened world-weary Adams returned from the horrors of World War I and seeking revitalization while fishing in the Big Two-Hearted River.
Trivia and Link
I read In Our Time (1925) in its AmazonClassics edition which is available free for Amazon Prime members through Amazon Kindle https://www.amazon.com/b?node=1866070... (link is to Amazon USA, although I used Amazon Canada).
Review of the AmazonClassics Kindle eBook edition (2021) of the Boni & Liveright original In Our Time (1925)
The Hemingway industry shows no signs of slowing down, even as we approach the centenary of his first published works. His forever publisher Scribner will issue yet another repackaging of short stories The Hemingway Stories: As Featured in the Film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick on PBS (expected March 2, 2021) to coincide with a new 6-hour documentary on PBS (expected April 5, 2021). The projected 16 volume / 20 year project of the Complete Letters of Ernest Hemingway is only up to The Letters of Ernest Hemingway: Volume 5, 1932-1934: 1932-1934 as of 2020. The Ernest Hemingway Library Edition of reissues expanded with early drafts and deletions is perhaps only a third of its way to completion. A seemingly infinite number of biographies continue to be written with The Man Who Wasn't There: A Life of Ernest Hemingway (2020) and Ernesto: The Untold Story of Hemingway in Revolutionary Cuba (2019) being the most recent.
AmazonClassics have gotten in on the act by issuing a Kindle only reissue of the 1925 Boni & Liveright edition of the "In Our Time" vignettes and short stories. They call it the "New York edition" to distinguish it from the original 1924 Paris chapbook edition in our time (lower-case letter title) which contained only the original 18 vignettes. This first American edition added 14 short stories, expanded 2 original vignettes into short stories and used the 16 remaining vignettes as inter-chapters. When Scribner took over Hemingway's publishing it added an additional short story "On the Quai at Smyrna" for the 1930 American edition In Our Time.
Hemingway's early short stories are among my favourites of his writing. Any collection with Indian Camp, The Battler, Soldier's Home, Cat in the Rain, Out of Season and Big Two-Hearted River will rate an easy 5-stars from me. In Our Time also acts as somewhat of a novel-in-short-stories as 7 of the 14 have the Hemingway proxy character of Nick Adams as their explicit protagonist and several of the others would seem to have Hemingway/Adams as an anonymous or renamed character. The overall arc takes Nick from the immortality of childhood in the face of death seen in Indian Camp through to the chastened world-weary Adams returned from the horrors of World War I and seeking revitalization while fishing in the Big Two-Hearted River.
“Is dying hard, Daddy?”
“No, I think it’s pretty easy, Nick. It all depends.”
They were seated in the boat, Nick in the stern, his father rowing. The sun was coming up over the hills. A bass jumped, making a circle in the water. Nick trailed his hand in the water. It felt warm in the sharp chill of the morning.
In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.
- excerpt from Indian Camp
He walked along the road feeling the ache from the pull of the heavy pack. The road climbed steadily. It was hard work walking up-hill. His muscles ached and the day was hot, but Nick felt happy. He felt he had left everything behind, the need for thinking, the need to write, other needs. It was all back of him. - excerpt from Big Two-Hearted River
Trivia and Link
I read In Our Time (1925) in its AmazonClassics edition which is available free for Amazon Prime members through Amazon Kindle https://www.amazon.com/b?node=1866070... (link is to Amazon USA, although I used Amazon Canada).
September 23, 2018
از اعجاز داستان های همینگوی که تا الان خوندم( پیرمرد و دریا - در زمان ما) همین قدر که منی که تو عمرم ماهیگیری نرفتم موقع ترسیم صحنه ماهیگیری و فرار ماهی و... استرس میگرفتم:))
نمیدونم پشت این داستان چه مفهوم خاصی بود که منتقدها روش اصرار کردن چون عادت به خوندن نقد، قبل از خوندن کتاب ندارم. دید رو محدود میکنه. اما همینقدر که منِ فراری رو آشتی داد با ادبیات آمریکا، برام معجزه ست.
متنی از کتاب :
نمیدانم چرا وقتی بعضی ها دهان باز میکنند تا همه چیز طرف را از او نگیرند دست از سرش بر نمیدارند.
نمیدونم پشت این داستان چه مفهوم خاصی بود که منتقدها روش اصرار کردن چون عادت به خوندن نقد، قبل از خوندن کتاب ندارم. دید رو محدود میکنه. اما همینقدر که منِ فراری رو آشتی داد با ادبیات آمریکا، برام معجزه ست.
متنی از کتاب :
نمیدانم چرا وقتی بعضی ها دهان باز میکنند تا همه چیز طرف را از او نگیرند دست از سرش بر نمیدارند.
April 15, 2021
This is a wonderful collection of short stories that cover many many topics. It covers periods of Hemingway‘s party times in Spain and later moves through is outrageous drunken times ( although this. Does last the rest of his life).
Providing support and developed characters are pretty enjoyable.
I recommend
Providing support and developed characters are pretty enjoyable.
I recommend
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