Critical Reception: Three Stories and Ten Poems and In Our Time
Vivian Davis
Three stories and Ten Poems was published in 1923 in Paris by the Contact Publishing Co., and contains the short stories, “Up in Michigan”, “Out of Season”, and “My Old Man”. Ten poems were also included in the volume. In Our Time was first published in Paris in 1924 and contains 14 or so short stories of varying length- most very short. Due to the nature of the publication of the two pieces, many of the few reviews of Three Stories and Ten Poems often included references to the Paris edition of In Our Time. In Our Time did garner a much larger critical reception once the second edition was released.
Three Stories and Ten Poems
In these early reviews, critics attempted to define Hemingway’s style and were generally impressed by the writer’s experimentation. Priority was given to the short stories and the poems contained in the volume were either dismissed or ignored. Edmund Wilson of the Dial wrote that the, “Poems are not particularly important, but his prose is of first distinction,” (1). The Kansas City Star, where Hemingway was formerly a reporter, concurred in its review, which stated that Three Stories and Ten Poems, “contains some of the best writing …seen from the pen of contemporary American authors. I say this primarily of the stories,” (3).In Our Time
The reviews of In Our Time were on the whole more willing to consider Hemingway as a serious artist. The reviews also seemed very much concerned with Hemingway’s style and his connection with other artists. Edmund Wilson, of the Dial writes of the 1924 Paris edition, “He is strikingly original, and in the dry compressed little vignettes of In Our Time has almost invented a form of his own,” (2). Wilson goes on to say that “[Hemingway’s] bull-fight sketches have the dry sharpness and elegance of the bull-fight lithographs of Goya,” (2). The New York Times Book Review states that, “Mr. Hemingway is oblique, inferential, suggestive rather than overt, explicit, explanatory,”(7) and likewise notes his “delightful economy of dialogue,” (8). Here, “The Three-Day Blow” is highlighted and its characters are deemed “priceless yet poignant with a hint of that fleeting, ephemeral quality, youth,” (8).
The later reviews of In Our Time also began to consider Hemingway’s influences. Time magazine, for example, wrote that Hemingway’s stories were reminiscent of Katherine Mansfield, the author of the short story “The Garden Party”, but more “brutally masculine and natural,” (13). Time goes on to gush, “Make no mistake- Ernest Hemingway is somebody; a new, honest, un-‘literary’ transcriber of life- a writer,” (13). In a similar manner The Nation compares his style to eighteenth century writers Swift and Fielding, and mentions “Big Two-Hearted River” as an example of Hemingway’s excellent economy of story telling.
Hemingway’s emerging literary circle was also considered in the reviews of the second edition of In Our Time. The Saturday Review of Literature wrote that Hemingway’s “First book of short stories comes fortified with the praise of men like Sherwood Anderson, Ford Madox Ford, Waldo Frank, and John Dos Passos…It indicates Hemingway must have merit; it implies that his work is experimental, original modernistic…” (15). The reviewer goes on to say that his stories are “as much an achievement as an experiment,” (15). Likewise, the New York Herald Tribune Books wrote that “He is the first representative of that post-war group that calls itself … the Paris School,” and mentions that “He shows the influence of Gertrude Stein very strongly, that of Joyce almost not at all; he is also very strongly under the influence of Sherwoood Anderson,” (16).
Interestingly enough F. Scott Fitzgerald also wrote a review of In Our Time in a publication called the Bookman. He singles out “Big Two-Hearted River” as one of the best contemporary American short stories and says that he read it “with the most breathless unwilling interest I have experienced since Conrad first bent my reluctant eyes upon the sea,” (18). Fitzgerald then singles out “My Old Man” as the least successful story in the series. Fitzgerald goes on to give Hemingway substantial praise and cites “‘The King of Greece’s Tea Party,’ ‘The Shooting of the Cabinet Ministers,’ and ‘The Cigarstore Robbery’” as stories which “particularly fascinated” him.
Though In Our Time did receive consideration as a serious literary work and was given considerable praise, it was viewed more as a promise, a contract of greater artistic work waiting in the wings. As the Kansas City Star observed, “In Our Time is admittedly a slight and fragmentary enterprise. It is, however, a promise, almost an assurance, or richer and more important things to come,” (11).Vivian Davis