A proper consideration of the Nick Adams stories has been seriously bedevilled by the current critical orthodoxy surrounding the notion of 'initiation'. The desire to 'initiate' or 'educate' Nick is more apparent in the critics than in his creator who, for the most part, is content to let Nick fool around, in and around Michigan, before lighting out for the territory ahead—Europe. The reason for this pedagogical obsession is to be sought in the desire of the critics to relate the Nick stories to the early novels, especially The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms, and see in Nick dim adumbrations of the sensitive but impotent Jake Barnes and the equally sensitive but potent Frederick Henry. A new departure with the same end in view (viz. Nick's 'initiation') has been to see the 'complex unity' of In Our Time by the simple manoeuvre of converting...