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    In Our Time
    In Our Time
    In Our Time
    Ebook151 pages3 hours

    In Our Time

    By Ernest Hemingway

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A collection of vignettes and stories, including the Nick Adams tale “Indian Camp,” from one of American literature’s greatest twentieth-century writers.
     
    This volume of short fiction offers brief glimpses into Ernest Hemingway’s life and mind, portraying the evolution of an artist—a writer of nonfiction testing the form’s limits, stretching his imagination, and experimenting with the “fibrous and athletic” language that would propel his novels and make its mark on literary history (The New York Times).
     
    In Our Time features famous Nick Adams stories such as “Indian Camp,” in which Nick gets a hard lesson in the reality of birth and death, “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife,” “The Three-Day Blow,” “The Battler,” and “Big Two-Hearted River,” Parts I and II. There are scenes of war, bullfights, and brutality, but also moments of humor, albeit dark, and beauty. In Our Time captures a moment in a master’s career, in which we are given a hint of what is to come . . .
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateApr 7, 2020
    ISBN9781504061384
    Author

    Ernest Hemingway

    Ernest Hemingway did more to change the style of English prose than any other writer of his time. Publication of The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms immediately established Hemingway as one of the greatest literary lights of the twentieth century. His classic novel The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. His life and accomplishments are explored in-depth in the PBS documentary film from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, Hemingway. Known for his larger-than-life personality and his passions for bullfighting, fishing, and big-game hunting, he died in Ketchum, Idaho on July 2, 1961. 

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    Reviews for In Our Time

    3.5/5

    510 ratings14 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I like using this book in undergraduate creative-writing classes sometimes because he wrote it when he was in his 20s, and the book is uneven in instructive ways.
    • 4/5
      These were the first collection of stories from the pen of the late, great, Ernest Miller Hemingway. They are known by Papa afficiandoes as "the Nick Adams stories" and are written in EH's characteristic sparse style. Although published by Scribner in the late 1920s, this title was first used on a limited edition published by Hemingway in Paris circa 1924. The best use of language herein comes with "Big Two-Hearted River, parts I and II," where he uses his verbal paint brush in a pointilistic manner to create the picture of the land Nick travels through. You are there, tasting the beans (at least until he puts ketshup on them), the trout, and the sharp country air. And you feel the ice coldness of the river water as Nick enters it to fly-fish. Of course, many knew there was something "different" about Hemingway's style, but they didn't know then that he was kicking off a whole school of 20th-century writing called "minimalism.," as well as contributing the literary version of the philosophy of existentialism."
    • 5/5
      In Our Time by Ernest HemingwayDifferent stories of war times, helping the woman birth the children with the Indians, Stories of bull fights, fishing, skiing in the snow, jockeys and horse racing,I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).
    • 3/5
      Definitely wouldn't have liked this book as much had I read it outside of an English class. There's so many more emotions and layers and interpretations that could be given beyond what is merely written on the page. Hemingway uses these stories to critique on war, relationships, home, modernity, maturity, family, etc. etc.
    • 4/5
      If, like me, you'd never read Hemingway and are thinking it might be time, you can't go wrong starting with this collection of early short stories. Setting aside the stories themselves are damned entertaining, it's a wonderful introduction to Hemingway's spare prose style (which he was honing while writing them) and it's also a very short book, containing a number of themes that, should you continue reading him, you'll find he returns to again and again, such as combat on the Italian front and bullfighting.

      The book also contains a number of "Nick Adams" stories, concerning a young man growing up in Michigan, that feel as fresh today as they must have when he wrote them.

      I think the story that stuck with me the most was "The Three-Day Blow," and if you've ever gotten drunk with your best friend, I suspect it might stick with you as well.

      Another cool thing about this book?

      Some of the stories are as short as this review.
    • 5/5
      In Our Time is a collection of short stories and vignettes written by Ernest Hemingway during his Paris years in the 1920s. (In fact, the book is dedicated to Hadley of The Paris Wife fame.) While the pieces in the volume vary in topic from war scenes to personal relationships between men and women to bullfighting, the connecting theme throughout is the author’s effort to make sense of his experiences in World War I. Deploying his legendarily terse Modernist writing style, Hemingway explores the nature of bravery and fear, love and loss, physical action and introspection. There is a melancholy feel that pervades the entire work as Hemingway comes to grip with the loss of innocence that accompanied the “Great War” in much the same way that Tim O’Brien chronicled his experiences in Viet Nam almost a century later in the equally compelling The Things They Carried. The stories themselves are all very brief—they range in length from just a single page to eight or ten pages—but they are, for the most part, all remarkably powerful. My favorites involved the exploits of Nick Adams, Hemingway’s alter ego, before, during and after the war. The strongest pieces were “Indian Camp,” “The End of Something,” “The Three-Day Blow,” “My Old Man,” and “Big Two-Hearted River, Parts I and II”. I know that Hemingway’s reputation has suffered in recent years as some of the more sordid details of his personal life have emerged, but there is no denying that he was an incredibly talented writer with a deep understanding of human nature. Although better known for his longer works, these short stories stand as great examples of a world-class author finding his voice. Indeed, this is the book that put Hemingway on the literary map and it was an absolute pleasure to read.
    • 4/5
      His first published book. This is a very good collection of shorts by a young man clearly confident in his own style and with an ability to write stories that have a straight and clear voice, and that I think (with one or two cultural exceptions) has aged really well. The book's structure in itself has a modern feel to it - the stories alternate with very short bursts of what would probably now be called micro-fiction. There are tales here covering subject matter that would become especially familiar to followers of his writing: of soldiers returning home from battle; vagrants on the road; young Americans at leisure in Europe; assorted 'butch' pursuits that you'd wear a cosy plaid shirt for: hunting, fishing, skiing, boozing, etc. I enjoyed most of the stories, but the stand-outs for me were: "The Battler"(I wanted more of those characters!), "The Three-Day Blow", "Soldier's Home", and "Big Two-Hearted River" (both parts).Hemingway introduces his character Nick Adams in many of these stories. From boyhood to manhood we see the character grow, passing through the horrors of service in the First World War, returning back home to small town America. The writing is really very good. Hemingway's skill as a nature writer alone is remarkable - his ability to describe with such clarity - yet without verbosity - and so beautifully, precisely what the reader needs to 'see' in their mind's eye, has very few equals. Very hard to believe that this collection is not far off being a hundred years old! Well worth reading.
    • 3/5
      Not a bad collection of short stories, but not a great one either. Hemingway is hit or miss for me. Some of his short stories just read as pointless to me while others read as very poignant.
    • 5/5
      Most of this stunning collection was a reread for me. I borrowed the collected Nick Adams stories 20 years ago and never returned it: sorry Dr. Kennedy. The structure of In Our Time is a marvel. The pacing and economy have been canonized elsewhere.

      Having spent most of Friday in the rain, I've been just outside the pale of a cold all weekend. The talons of infirmity appeared so close today. After United's victory at Stamford Bridge I retreated. This collection is a jewel.
    • 4/5
      In 1925, a relatively unknown World War I veteran named Ernest Hemingway released a collection of short stories entitled In Our Time. This new author was a treat to the readers, as he wrote with a style very different than what the readers were accustomed to. Instead of long, flowing prose, Hemingway's stories were written in short, declarative sentences, with an oblique style of emotions for the characters. This new minimalist approach to literature would become one of the greatest changes in literary style, influencing the entire literary scene until - and much past - World War II. The book consists of many short stories, separated by short vignettes. Many of the short stories contain the character Nick Adams, initially a young boy learning about death in the company of his father who is a doctor. Then, he begins growing up. He has relationships with young women and great friends. These stories are divided by very short vignettes portraying the violence and emotions suffered in World War I. Very notable is Chapter VII,...he lay very flat and sweated and prayed oh jesus christ get me out of here. Dear jesus please get me out. Christ please please please christ. If you'll only keep me from getting killed I'll do anything you say...Please please dear jesus...The next night back at Mestre he did not tell the girl he went upstairs with at the Villa Rossa about Jesus. And he never told anybody.The Nick Adams stories come to a close at the end of the book with the two part Big Two-Hearted River, which shows an older, more mature Nick Adams, returned from the war and returning to the calming lifestyle of his youth by camping and fly-fishing in an amazingly described river and meadow.In Our Time set the stage for Ernest Hemingway to become one of the most influential writers (some would argue he was the most influential) of the twentieth century. His short, terse, masculine prose would set the literary world on fire and paved the way for Hemingway's other masterpieces, including The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea. In Our Time is an excellent introductory work to the writing of Hemingway and is a classic sure to be enjoyed by many.
    • 3/5
      I believe this collection of stories is from Hemingway’s beginnings as a writer. There were a few moments, but overall I’d say it’s probably not his best work. Still, there is no such thing as ‘bad’ Hemingway so it’s well worth the read.
    • 3/5
      This was my first experience with Hemingway. I remember reading of how Hemingway and Faulkner fought over writing styles. I sided with Faulkner, due to word extinction. I was yet shocked at the simplicity of Hemingway's prose; and yet, I could not deny there was something there, some dark force just under the surface that led you along.I think people have fun reading Hemingway and adding their own conclusions about that darkness just under the surface. For instance, in "On the Quai At Smyrna" was it the most humane thing for the Greeks to break the forelegs of all the animals they couldn't take with them and let them drown in shallow water? Was it a pleasant business? It was a way of coping with experience.In "Indian Camp" I found two things of interest: (1. Nick's father, the doctor, said he doesn't hear screams because the aren't important. This is not a doctor I'm not sure I would like to be under the care of. Does empathy play a part in being a good physician? On the other hand, I rather have a cold but sure hand rather than an empathetic one. Both would be nice. Something is lacking in the former. (2. Why did the Indian father kill himself when it was that the doctor was there to deliver his baby? Perhaps his foot-wound was something he felt would not heal properly. Can we be sure it was suicide? How many people kill themselves by cutting their own throats?"The Doctor And The Doctor's Wife" reveals that the doctor isn't keen on fighting, is a thief in denial, and that his wife is a Christian Scientist. The latter reveals the likely catalyst of much of Nick's problems."The End of Something" was the end of Nick's childhood and the beginning of the years of confusion."The Three Day Blow" shows us that Nick turns to alcohol for answers."The Battler" is Nick's initiation into manhood."Cross Country Snow" could be said to be a tale of freedom verses entrapment, which results in resignation."My Old Man" is another man not unlike the doctor—a good man, but dishonest—a paradoxical disappointment."Big Two Hearted River" was Nick, at home, in his own environment. It was, I believe, an attempt to disassociate, withdraw, and become self-sufficient. The swamps will be the undoing of Nick. It will be his greatest time of learning."
    • 4/5
      A literary sorbet for sure. Read this 30 years ago and needed some clean crisp writing to read after the mess that is 100 Years of Solitude. The Broken-Hearted River rings so true. It brings me back to the Maine north woods. Love the Nick Adams but the Italian stories were ok. Will read another EH for sure.
    • 4/5
      This is a powerful work - an unconventional grouping of stories that marked Hemingway's first major success as a writer. I believe these are the stories he is writing in A Moveable Feast and this time in his life when he is writing these is well covered in Paula McLain's The Paris Wife. In some ways the success that started here doomed his marriage to Hadley Richardson. One can also see many elements of Hemingway's life so far within these stories and the creation of the post WWI 'Lost Generation'. Stuff like this is why Hemingway is one of my favorite writers.I thought that (roughly) the first half of the book was the strongest with some hard hitting sketches and stories. Towards the middle I felt there was a small slump, a fumble lets call it as well as a story or two where Hemingway lays on that Hemingway style just a little too thick, which on reflection keeps me from rating this higher than 4 stars. The Nick Adams stories in here were my favorites overall, but I like how Hemingway broke things up in a very interesting manner. A few of these stories might bother a sensitive reader for the language, topics and sensibilities of the times (1920's).This was a reread for me - first read sometime in the early to mid 90's.

    Book preview

    In Our Time - Ernest Hemingway

    cover.jpg

    In Our Time

    Ernest Hemingway

    Contents

    Indian Camp

    The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife

    The End of Something

    The Three-Day Blow

    The Battler

    A Very Short Story

    Soldier’s Home

    The Revolutionist

    Mr. and Mrs. Elliot

    Cat in the Rain

    Out of Season

    Cross-Country Snow

    My Old Man

    Big Two-Hearted River: Part I

    Big Two-Hearted River: Part II

    L’Envoi

    Note

    In view of a recent tendency to identify characters in fiction with real people, it seems proper to state that there are no real people in this volume: both the characters and their names are fictitious. If the name of any living person has been used, the use was purely accidental.

    Chapter One

    Everybody was drunk. The whole battery was drunk going along the road in the dark. We were going to the Champagne. The lieutenant kept riding his horse out into the fields and saying to him, I’m drunk, I tell you, mon vieux. Oh, I am so soused. We went along the road all night in the dark and the adjutant kept riding up alongside my kitchen and saying, You must put it out. It is dangerous. It will be observed. We were fifty kilometers from the front, but the adjutant worried about the fire in my kitchen. It was funny going along that road. That was when I was a kitchen Corporal.

    Indian Camp

    At the lake shore there was another rowboat drawn up. The two Indians stood waiting.

    Nick and his father got in the stern of the boat and the Indians shoved it off and one of them got in to row. Uncle George sat in the stern of the camp rowboat. The young Indian shoved the camp boat off and got in to row Uncle George.

    The two boats started off in the dark. Nick heard the oar-locks of the other boat quite a way ahead of them in the mist. The Indians rowed with quick choppy strokes. Nick lay back with his father’s arm around him. It was cold on the water. The Indian who was rowing them was working very hard, but the other boat moved further ahead in the mist all the time.

    Where are we going, Dad? Nick asked.

    Over to the Indian camp. There is an Indian lady very sick.

    Oh, said Nick.

    Across the bay they found the other boat beached. Uncle George was smoking a cigar in the dark. The young Indian pulled the boat way up the beach. Uncle George gave both the Indians cigars.

    They walked up from the beach through a meadow that was soaking wet with dew, following the young Indian who carried a lantern. Then they went into the woods and followed a trail that led to the logging road that ran back into the hills. It was much lighter on the logging road as the timber was cut away on both sides. The young Indian stopped and blew out his lantern and they all walked on along the road.

    They came around a bend and a dog came out barking. Ahead were the lights of the shanties where the Indian bark-peelers lived. More dogs rushed out at them. The two Indians sent them back to the shanties. In the shanty nearest the road there was a light in the window. An old woman stood in the doorway holding a lamp.

    Inside on a wooden bunk lay a young Indian woman. She had been trying to have her baby for two days. All the old women in the camp had been helping her. The men had moved off up the road to sit in the dark and smoke out of range of the noise she made. She screamed just as Nick and the two Indians followed his father and Uncle George into the shanty. She lay in the lower bunk, very big under a quilt. Her head was turned to one side. In the upper bunk was her husband. He had cut his foot very badly with an ax three days before. He was smoking a pipe. The room smelled very bad.

    Nick’s father ordered some water to be put on the stove, and while it was heating he spoke to Nick.

    This lady is going to have a baby, Nick, he said.

    I know, said Nick.

    You don’t know, said his father. Listen to me. What she is going through is called being in labor. The baby wants to be born and she wants it to be born. All her muscles are trying to get the baby born. That is what is happening when she screams.

    I see, Nick said.

    Just then the woman cried out.

    Oh, Daddy, can’t you give her something to make her stop screaming? asked Nick.

    No. I haven’t any anesthetic, his father said. But her screams are not important. I don’t hear them because they are not important.

    The husband in the upper bunk rolled over against the wall.

    The woman in the kitchen motioned to the doctor that the water was hot. Nick’s father went into the kitchen and poured about half of the water out of the big kettle into a basin. Into the water left in the kettle he put several things he unwrapped from a handkerchief.

    Those must boil, he said, and began to scrub his hands in the basin of hot water with a cake of soap he had brought from the camp. Nick watched his father’s hands scrubbing each other with the soap. While his father washed his hands very carefully and thoroughly, he talked.

    You see, Nick, babies are supposed to be born head first but sometimes they’re not. When they’re not they make a lot of trouble for everybody. Maybe I’ll have to operate on this lady. We’ll know in a little while.

    When he was satisfied with his hands he went in and went to work.

    Pull back that quilt, will you, George? he said. I’d rather not touch it.

    Later when he started to operate Uncle George and three Indian men held the woman still. She bit Uncle George on the arm and Uncle George said, Damn squaw bitch! and the young Indian who had rowed Uncle George over laughed at him. Nick held the basin for his father. It all took a long time.

    His father picked the baby up and slapped it to make it breathe and handed it to the old woman.

    See, it’s a boy, Nick, he said. How do you like being an interne?

    Nick said, All right. He was looking away so as not to see what his father was doing.

    There. That gets it, said his father and put something into the basin.

    Nick didn’t look at it.

    Now, his father said, there’s some stitches to put in. You can watch this or not, Nick, just as you like. I’m going to sew up the incision I made.

    Nick did not watch. His curiosity has been gone for a long time.

    His father finished and stood up. Uncle George and the three Indian men stood up. Nick put the basin out in the kitchen.

    Uncle George looked at his arm. The young Indian smiled reminiscently.

    I’ll put some peroxide on that, George, the doctor said.

    He bent over the Indian woman. She was quiet now and her eyes were closed. She looked very pale. She did not know what had become of the baby or anything.

    I’ll be back in the morning, the doctor said, standing up. The nurse should be here from St. Ignace by noon and she’ll bring everything we need.

    He was feeling exalted and talkative as football players are in the dressing room after a game.

    That’s one for the medical journal, George, he said. Doing a Caesarian with a jack-knife and sewing it up with nine-foot, tapered gut leaders.

    Uncle George was standing against the wall, looking at his arm.

    Oh, you’re a great man, all right, he said.

    Ought to have a look at the proud father. They’re usually the worst sufferers in these little affairs, the doctor said. I must say he took it all pretty quietly.

    He pulled back the blanket from the Indian’s head. His hand came away wet. He mounted on the edge of the lower bunk with the lamp in one hand and looked in. The Indian lay with his face toward the wall. His throat had been cut from ear to ear. The blood had flowed down into a pool where his body sagged the bunk. His head rested on his left arm. The open razor lay, edge up, in the blankets.

    Take Nick out of the shanty, George, the doctor said.

    There was no need of that. Nick, standing in the door of the kitchen, had a good view of the upper bunk when his father, the lamp in one hand, tipped the Indian’s head back.

    It was just beginning to be daylight when they walked along the logging road back toward the lake.

    I’m terribly sorry I brought you along, Nickie, said his father, all his post-operative exhilaration gone. It was an awful mess to put you through.

    Do ladies always have such a hard time having babies? Nick asked.

    No, that was very, very exceptional.

    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.

    Chapter Two

    Minarets stuck up in the rain out of Adrianople across the mud flats. The carts were jammed for thirty miles along the Karagatch road. Water buffalo and cattle were hauling carts through the mud. There was no end and no beginning. Just carts loaded with everything they owned. The old men and women, soaked through, walked along keeping the cattle moving. The Maritza was running yellow almost up to the bridge. Carts were jammed solid on the bridge with camels bobbing along through them. Greek cavalry herded along the procession. The women and children were in the carts, crouched with mattresses, mirrors, sewing machines, bundles. There was a woman having a baby with a young girl holding a blanket over her and crying. Scared sick looking at it. It rained all through the evacuation.

    The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife

    Dick Boulton came from

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