This is not my review, it belongs to D. H. Lawrence (b1885-d1930) as I read it in the book 'Selected Literary Criticism', edited by Anthony Beal. I'm copying Lawrence's review of Hemingway's 'In Our Time' here because it is an outstanding review others who come to Amazon ought to read:
" In Our Time is the last of the four American books, and Mr. Hemingway has accepted the goal. He keeps on making flights, but he has no illusion about landing anywhere. He knows it will be nowhere every time.
In Our Time calls itself a book of stories, but it isn't that. It is a series of successive sketches from a man's life, and makes a fragmentary novel. The first scenes, by one of the big lakes in America--probably Superior--are the best; when Nick is a boy. Then come fragments of war--on the Italian front. Then a soldier back home, very late, in the little town way west in Oklahoma. Then a young American and wife in post-war Europe; a long sketch about an American jockey in Milan and Paris; then Nick is back again in the Lake Superior region, getting off the train at a burnt-out town, and tramping across the empty country to camp by a trout-stream. Trout is the one passion life has him--and this won't last long.
It is a short book: and it does not pretend to be about one man. But it is. It is as much as we need know of the man's life. The sketches are short, sharp, vivid, and most of them excellent. (The 'mottoes' in front seem a little affected.) And these few sketches are enough to create the man and all his history: we need know no more.
Nick is a type one meets in the more wild and woolly regions of the United States. He is the remains of the lone trapper and cowboy. Nowadays he is educated, and through with everything. It is a state of conscious, accepted indifference to everything except freedom from work and the moment's interest. Mr. Hemingway does it extremely well. Nothing matters. Everything happens. Pne wants to keep oneself loose. Avoid one thing only: getting connected up. Don't get connected up. If oyu get held by anything, break it. Don't be held. Break it, and get away. Don't get away with the idea of getting somewhere else. Just get away, for the sake of getting away. Beat it! `Well, boy, I guess I'll beat it." Ah, the pleasure in saying that!
Mr. Hemingway's sketches, for this reason, are excellent: so short, like striking a match, lighting a brief sensational cigarette, and it's over. His young love-affair ends as one throws a cigarette-end away. `It isn't fun any more.'--`Everything's gone to hell inside me.'
It is really honest. And it explains a great deal of sentimentality. When a thing has gone to hell inside you, your sentimentalism tries to pretend it hasn't. But Mr. Hemingway is through with the sentimentalism. `It isn't fun any more. I guess I'll beat it.'
And he beats it, to somewhere else. In the end he'll be a sort of tramp, endlessly moving on for the sake of moving away from where he is. This is a negative goal, and Mr. Hemingway is really good, because he's perfectly straight about it. He is like Krebs, in that devastating Oklahoma sketch: he doesn't love anybody, and it nauseates him to have to pretend he does. He doesn't even want to love anybody; he doesn't want to go anywhere, he doesn't want to do anything. He wants just to lounge around and maintain a healthy state of nothingness inside himself. And why shouldn't he, since that is exactly and sincerely what he feels? If he really doesn't care, then why should he care? Anyhow, he doesn't."
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Reviews with images
NOT the novel “In Our Time”
My son ordered this thinking it was the book he had to read for his summer homework. IT IS NOT. It is only 24 pages and on the final page there is a printed on date of June 3 (the day we ordered it).
Top reviews from other countries
I. Jones
Excellent collection of Hemingway's early short stories
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 8, 2019Matt
My old Man was absolutely amazing. The writing style is so modern feeling
Reviewed in Canada on October 15, 2016
Matt
Reviewed in Canada on October 15, 2016
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