Hmm, what to say about the book that supposedly marked Hemingway's USA debut and launched his career? Umm, it was ok. This was the first time I've ever read Hemingway, and maybe I need to talk to an English professor or something, but I don't get the allure. Eh, I guess it's not that I don't get the allure, it was a good book, I read it in one night. But I guess I just don't get what all the fuss is about. It was interesting, it was entertaining, but was it amazing, I don't think so. I remember being on a cruise for spring break one year, and we stopped in Key West for the day, and my friend and I were walking around and we saw Hemingway's house. If they preserve your house, and nickname you Papa, and all the other accolades and stuff, you must have been doing something right. What makes him so different from every other author out there. I hope someone can tell me, because I don't understand what makes him so special. His writing style was strange, almost like quick hit sentences. They were all very short and rapid fire. Is his style what does it? He was very descriptive, I could really visualize everything he wrote about it, is that it?
What can I say, besides all this rambling, I just don't get the fuss. Don't get me wrong, I really liked the book and it was good and fun and all that, I just don't get what makes Hemingway so beloved and all. ( )

In truth, I've already read In Our Time twice before. The first was back in 2013 when I read The Snows of Kilimanjaro, which grouped all the stories of In Our Time with two of Hemingway's best stories, 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro' and 'Up in Michigan'. The second time was in 2018, when I read The First-Forty Nine Stories, which contained those of In Our Time and plenty more besides. But as a long-time fan of Hemingway's writing, I wanted to have read every title, so I picked up In Our Time for the first time with great familiarity.

The good thing is that you grow more appreciative of Hemingway's short stories the more you read them. When I read that Snows of Kilimanjaro collection back in 2013, I was fairly new to Hemingway and much preferred his novels. His style was difficult to crack in short doses, where as a reader you lack the weight of a novel to break through your ignorance, and I remember describing 'Big Two-Hearted River' as "dull". By 2018, I had cracked it, and The First Forty-Nine Stories was like a revelation to me. The exquisiteness of many of the pieces became evident.

In Our Time, Hemingway's first major work, does not contain the best of his short stories. Those came later, as he honed his craft, and some of those in In Our Time can seem folksy and redundant. Some, like 'The Battler' and 'Cross-Country Snow', remain unmemorable to me even after reading them for a third iteration. But others like 'Indian Camp' and 'Soldier's Home', are stellar, and nowhere is my earlier point about growing appreciative of Hemingway's writing more apparent than in 'Big Two-Hearted River'. Having first thought this dull, an undynamic story of a young man on a fishing trip, casting for trout and brewing coffee, I've come to recognise it as a prime example of Hemingway's style. Hemingway wrote that he was "trying to do the country like Cézanne" did in his paintings, and when you read the story you do get that same rich, restful feeling you get from contemplating a fine landscape painting. As a collection, In Our Time isn't the most consistent example of the quality in Hemingway's writing, but it has plenty of moments that show excellent craft and the writer's fledgling genius. ( )

short fiction (classic literature, 1910s?). Short stories (including some very early flash fiction) and some connected stories (recurring characters/themes). Without the background context, some of this goes over your head, but just from the stories you can make sense of, you get that this is a great writer. ( )

ספר הסיפורים הקצרים הראשון של המינגווי. האיש כותב כמו מלאך ( )

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 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

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=18660703011 (link is to Amazon USA, although I used Amazon Canada). ( )