"In Our Time -- Interchapters"

Critical Sources:

• Benson, Jackson J., ed. The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: Critical Essays. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1975. On reserve.
• Burhans, Clinton S., Jr. "The Complex Unity of In Our Time." Modern Fiction Studies 14 (1968): 313-28. Rpt. in Benson 15-29.
• Hagemann, E. R. "'Only Let the Story End as Soon as Possible': Time-and-History in Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time." Modern Fiction Studies (Summer 1980): 255-62. Rpt. in Reynolds 52-60.
• Reynolds, Michael S., ed. Critical Essays on Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1983. On reserve.
• Slabey, Robert M. "The Structure of In Our Time." South Dakota Review August 1965: 38-52. Rpt. in Reynolds 76-86.
• Smith, Paul. A Reader's Guide to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1989. On reserve.

  Discussion starters

• Burhans notes: "For the 1925 In Our Time, Hemingway took the vignettes of the Paris in our time, made two of them into the stories 'A Very Short Story' and 'The Revolutionist,' changed the order of the rest and used them as interchapters between the stories, and added four new stories, 'The End of Something,' 'The Three Day Blow,' 'The Battler,' and 'Cat in the Rain.' And finally, for the 1930 edition of the book, he added the introductory sketch now entitled 'On the Quai at Smyrna.' Clearly, in all this maneuvering, Hemingway was getting at something more coherent and significant than a simple anthology of loosely related stories and sketches" (15). What was Hemingway "getting at"?
• Burhans claims that the collection as a whole, with the interplay between the stories and the interchapters, says: "here are the world and the human condition with the masks off, with all the fraudulent illusions stripped away. It's not a pretty world and certainly not a very safe or comfortable one for men to live in; but, taken as it really is it's a world men can live in with meaning and value if they look in the right places for them" (18). What evidence might you provide to agree or disagree with him?
• Hagemann posits that the interchapters are a kind of collective observation of the decade 1914-1923 but that they are arranged "haphazard as to time" (52). What advantage does Hemingway gain by skewing the chronology of them?
• Slabey claims that the arrangement of the interchapters is "not chronological but ideological" (77). How do you make sense of that claim?