Indian Camp - Reception and Legacy

Reception and Legacy

Hemingway's writing style attracted attention when in our time (without capitals) was published in Paris in 1924—in a small-print run from Ezra Pound's modernist series through Three Mountains Press. Edmund Wilson described the writing as "of the first distinction", enough to bring attention to Hemingway. When "Indian Camp" was published, it received considerable praise. Ford Madox Ford regarded "Indian Camp" as an important early story by a young writer. Critics in the United States claimed Hemingway reinvigorated the short story by his use of declarative sentences and his crisp style. Hemingway admits In Our Time is a collection of stories with "pretty good unity" and generally critics agree.

In the 1970s Carlos Baker wrote of the stories from In Our Time, and specifically "Indian Camp", that they were a remarkable achievement. Hemingway scholars, such as Benson, rank "Indian Camp" as one of Hemingway's "greatest short stories," a story that is described as "best known", "violent" and "dramatic". In 1992, Frederick Busch wrote in The New York Times that Hemingway had gone out of fashion. While his antisemitism, racism, violence, and attitudes toward women and homosexuals made him a politically incorrect writer, he turned violence into art unlike any other American writer of his time by showing that "the making of art is a matter of life or death, no less". Busch believes Hemingway's characters either faced life or chose death, a choice shown most starkly in "Indian Camp". The saving of a life in "Indian Camp" is at the center of much of Hemingway's fiction, Busch writes, and adds power to his fiction.