The form of In Our Time defies precise description, and critics have long expressed divergent views: Is this just a collection of short stories? Or is it a more or less tightly woven story-cycle?

Or is it really an experimental novel whose form reflects the typical technical and stylistic concerns of the high tide of modernism in the 1920s? It would seem that the latter view — even if the debate is unlikely to be resolved to the satisfaction of all readers — holds the greatest promise for deeper understanding of the form, style, and techniques of In Our Time.

The problem of defining the book's form is somewhat exacerbated by the fact that certain stories — or, in the modernist view, chapters of this experimental novel -— have been extracted from their context and so frequently anthologized that they seem to stand alone and have acquired...