In Our Time (short story collection) we are in hell." Hemingway conjures a world where "the weak are pitilessly exploited by the strong, and ... all functions of life ... promise only pain." Hemingway's semi-autobiographical character Nick Adams is "vital to Hemingway's career", writes Mellow, and generally his character reflects Hemingway's experiences. Nick, who features in eight of the stories, is an alter ego, a means for Hemingway to express his own experiences, from the first story '"Indian Camp" which features Nick as a child. According to critic Howard Hannum, the trauma of birth and suicide Hemingway paints in "Indian Camp" rendered a leitmotif that gave
The Farewell Symphony The Farewell Symphony The Farewell Symphony is a 1997 semi-autobiographical novel by Edmund White. It is the third of a trilogy of novels, being preceded by "A Boy's Own Story" (1982) and "The Beautiful Room Is Empty" (1988). It depicts the later adulthood of its protagonist and documents his experience of homosexuality from the 1960s to the 1990s. The title alludes to the "Farewell" Symphony by Joseph Haydn. Writing in "The Wall Street Journal", the journalist James Wolcott suggested that the book "might have been more honestly titled "Hilly Buttocks I Have Known,"" wherein the author "invites us to join