There is good reason why he should be a part of the vogue of the time — especially as he is dead. It would be interesting to know how Crane’s reputation will stand fifteen years from now, when the world will be vibrating with the successes of the great new Filipino-American poet and romancist, Emilio Coaklobogan Jones, or agonizing over the latest translation from the Bulgarian of Vatchef Bogomsky.
Even the admirers of Stephen Crane, however, may fear that a certain conscious uncertainty and literary fickleness that there was in the man has really so -impaired the quality of his work that the coming generation will fail to find in it the steady high note that compels lasting admiration. Crane does not seem to have known how he wanted to write. He polished and sophisticated his style, after the critics had told him — what was certainly true — that the “Red Badge” was in bad English — and he never wrote so vividly again as he did in that book. Perhaps his nearest approach to it was in that sharp and clear running account of his experiences in the Spanish war which he contributed to Lady Randolph Churchill’s Anglo-Saxon Review.
Crane was a sensitive plant, and changed as the wind blew on him. He went to England — and was lost. If he had been kicked about, unappreciated, on this rude continent, for ten years longer, he might have been great. In the “Whilomville Stories,” true to the main points of child life as they are, you can hardly glance at a page without finding some of these conscious uncertainties of style — these artificial expressions which Crane seems to have picked up in England along with the English accent which he had in his last two years, and which with him was no affectation; he simply could not help adopting it.
And as we go on, we find many and many a paragraph that makes us sigh for the rude Saxon tumult of words in the “Red Badge” or the pat compression of the “Black Riders.”
As to the matter of the book, it has all been put in better shape by Mr. Howells and Mr. William Allen White, if not by several ethers. Yet, there are gleams of the great Crane that the author really is, as in the description of the boy who could answer the questions in the Sunday-school class:
“He had the virtue of being able to walk on very high stilts, but when the season of stilts had passed, he possessed no rank save this Sunday-school rank, this clever-little-Clarence business of knowing the Bible and the lesson better than the other boys; the other boys, looking at him meditatively, did not actually decide to thrash him as soon as he cleared the portals of the church, but they certainly decided to molest him in such ways as would establish their self-respect. Back of the superintendent’s chair hung a lithograph of the martyrdom of St. Stephen.” (Harper. $1.50.) — Mail and Express.
From: The Literary News, V. XVII, No. 7, July 1896, p.215
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. (The Literary News, V. XVII, No. 7, July 1896)
“The conviction is forced upon one that by writing ‘Maggie’ Mr. Crane has made for himself a permanent place in literature. It matters not if he continues to grind out grotesque verse and slipshod short stories. These may injure him temporarily go far as money returns are concerned. But it is enough that he has written ‘Maggie’ — one of the most powerful, terrible, and hideous studies of the dregs of humanity that have been produced in the English language” — Henry Edward Rood in the Mail and Express.
From: The Literary World, V. XXXI, No. 3, February 3, 1900, p.43
New York Letter (Active Service ) by John D. Barry
In Active Service, Mr. Stephen Crane has given us a new expression of his talent. The work is more like the conventional novel than anything Mr. Crane has previously done. On the whole, it cannot be said to show any advance in his art. It is plain enough that he was not greatly interested in his plot, and that, before the end of his task was reached, he had grown very tired of it. In spite of its faults, however, the book bears the marks of those qualities that lead some of the admirers of Mr. Crane to believe that he is the most promising literary man who has come to the front in this country during the past twenty-five years. We have no one else who could so vividly, so accurately, and so dramatically describe the office of a sensational newspaper of New York as Mr. Crane has done in these pages. That description alone makes his new achievement valuable. It at least suggests that he still retains his originality and vigor. His sending his hero to Greece on a love — chase, made the more romantic by the outbreak of a war, suggests that Mr. Crane wanted both to return to the field of writing which first made him famous, and to use material he had stored in his mind during his adventures as correspondent while Greece was making her ineffective struggle against Turkey. His pictures of Greece have considerable picturesqueness; but, like most writers, he does his best work on the ground with which he is most familiar, that is, in typically American scenes and situations.
The stories of boy life which Mr. Crane is now publishing in magazine form, present him in a better light than his latest novel. He has an extraordinary insight into the minds and character of children. Several years ago, before his name became known, he published in The Arena a little sketch of child-life that was unmistakably the work of genius, and he has since done other work equally good in a similar vein. Lately, however, his stories about children have taken on a superior and patronizing tone that greatly injures their artistic value. This is a pity, for few writers are able to present children as they are. It is the fashion among most of our authors, even our popular and more esteemed authors, in describing child life, to sentimentalize and to falsify it out of recognition.
From: The Publishers’ Circular, V. 68, No. 1664, May 21, 1898, p.608
The Open Boat and Other Stories by Stephen Crane
From Mr. William Heinemann.—’The Open Boat,’ and other stories by Stephen Crane. ‘The Open Boat’ is a strong story, and is evidently a personal experience of the time when Mr. Crane was shipwrecked on his way out to the scene of the Cuban war. It is an account of the sufferings, mental and physical, of four men who escaped from the sinking steamer Commodore, and were tossed about in a small boat for days on a stormy sea. The four were the captain, the cook, an oiler, and the correspondent. When they sighted land they dared not approach because the surf was so heavy, and they were weak and ill after the exposure and long fasting. At last they saw houses and people, and they determined to make a dash through the surf. The boat was, of course, swamped, and three of the men were rescued, but the oiler was drowned. All this is told with remarkable vividness. Some of the other stories are also good, but we must confess that others are but trifles of rather poor quality. A few are mere descriptions of incidents not worth recording. The good stories, however, are so good that the volume taken as a whole is decidedly worth reading. There are seventeen stories and sketches written in the peculiar impressionist style which Mr. Stephen Crane has made his own. It is not a style which will please everybody. But even those who resent the manner will acknowledge the uncommon ability displayed in ‘The Open Boat’ and some of its companion sketches.
From: Literature, No. 196, July 20, 1901, p.65
Mr. Stephen Crane’s: Last Book: Great Battles of the World. (Literature, No. 196, July 20, 1901)
In Great Battles of the World, by the late Stephen Crane (Chapman and Hall, 6s.), we see a writer usually brilliant attempting a task for which he had no particular qualifications and failing in it. The thing which Stephen Crane understood and knew how to depict was the psychology of the battle-field. In attempting to describe a number of battles in a series of papers about the length of magazine articles he had little opportunity of displaying this talent; and the particular talents required by the military historian he did not possess. No one but Stephen Crane could have written “The Red Badge of Courage.” Almost any war-correspondent might have written the book before us. Not only is it inferior to Napier’s work, it is inferior to the work of the Rev. W. H. Fitchett. Any one who will compare the accounts given by the three writers of the storming of Badajoz will see that. Stephen Crane’s account is a bad third to the other two. His battles, besides
Badajoz, are Vittoria, Plevna, Burkersdorf, Leipzig, Lutzen, New Orleans.
Solferino, and Bunker Hill.
From: The Saturday Review, December 29, 1900, V. 90, No. 2357, p.831
Wounds in the Rain by Stephen Crane
“Wounds in the Rain.” By Stephen Crane. London: Methuen. 1900. 6s. Here we have the last collected writings of the author of “The Red Badge of Courage.” To a certain extent the fate of Mr. Stephen Crane was similar to that of Mr. G. W. Steevens. And in the work of each there is an affinity of interest. Mr. Crane served as a newspaper correspondent during the Spanish-American War of 1898. War correspondents, their exploits and their special hardships, figure prominently in these pages, which, it is conceivable, may be useful to the future historian of the Cuban campaign. Certainly the book will convey something more than amusement to the thoughtful reader. Mr. Crane’s insight into the hidden springs of thought and action differentiates his writing from that of the mere chronicler of effects. His is the better realism and in “Wounds in the Rain” his special gifts are seen to advantage.
From: The Saturday Review, August 18, 1900, V. 90, No. 2338, p.213-214
Bowery Tales by Stephen Crane
“Bowery Tales.” By Stephen Crane. London: Heinemann. 1900. 6s. We should hesitate to say positively that the early work of Mr. Stephen Crane does not deserve republication, but when he wrote ‘‘George’s Mother” he had certainly not found himself. It is a story of the familiar American kind: endless trouble expended to explain how very dull a dull woman can be. “Maggie” is in a different shelf. It is undoubtedly dramatic, a squalid miserable drama played by living human creatures. Mr. Hubert Crackanthorpe, had he been an American, might have written it. But it is difficult for erring human critics, though they would fain be just, to like a story prefaced by Mr. W. D. Howells’ “Appreciation.” Mr. Howells is not seen at his best when he stands outside a penny gaff and bangs the big drum. His most salient phrase is merely a prose repetition of those great lines in a certain “Ballad of a Bun:” “I am sister to the Microbe now And cousin German to the Worm.” It is hard on poor Stephen Crane that Mr. Howells should overstate the case: “Maggie” was a very remarkable work for a young man, and, unpleasant as the theme is, there is no mud for mud’s sake about it. It is a piece of true tragedy, which only a very young man would have had the heart to -write.
From: The Review of Reviews, V. XIII, No. 5, May 1896, p.630
The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War. By Stephen Crane. 12mo, pp. 333. New York: D. Appleton & Co. II.
Mr. Crane’s much talked of book would be a remarkable enough piece of work in a man who had gone through the whole war and in whose mind the minutiae of camp-life and battlefield were indelibly stamped by experience. But when one reads the “Red Badge of Courage” with the realization that the author is hardly twenty-three years old and consequently never saw a battlefield, the extent and vividness of his imagination becomes apparent. For the universal testimony of those who were in that great conflict seems to show that there is hardly an error in the story, although it describes the life in detail. The whole tale is really a study of the emotions of a youth, Henry Fleming, during his first battle. After a trying winter of inaction, it becomes evident that a conflict is imminent, and the young man finds himself brooding continually over the question of his own conduit, with a haunting fear that his heart will fail at the critical moment. He keeps his place through the first charge of the enemy, but just as he and his raw companions, exhausted and gasping, are congratulating themselves upon having repulsed the attack, the gray lines surge up again, and Henry, becoming panic-stricken, turns and runs, fancying that his regiment has been driven back, too. After wandering around amid the most ghastly sights, described with almost sickening minuteness, he is struck on the head and severely wounded by a fleeing soldier of his own side. After a while he gets back to his regiment, pretends that he was wounded in the fight, and the next day behaves with such conspicuous gallantry that he is publicly praised to his colonel by the profane lieutenants. The book ends with the close of the next day’s fighting, and Henry, having gained a sense of perspective, very humanly forgets his previous conduct in the feeling of resolute manhood which comes to him. Mr. Crane has already been singled out by a very eminent critic as a shining example of the unadulterated American author and his next book will be awaited with no common interest.
From: The Saturday Evening Post, V. 176, No. 27, January 2, 1904, p.20
The O’Ruddy — An unfinished novel by the late Stephen Crane, brought to a close by, Robert Barr.
There is a passage in Stevenson’s letters on the perplexities of collaboration. It was written when he was busy with Lloyd Osbourne on one of the tales they did together; and, in view of the unhappy treatment the unfinished St. Ives received at the hands of Mr. Quiller-Couch, it reads like a prophecy. For if, with both authors in close touch, the difficulties of the task proved almost insuperable, how could they remain otherwise than frankly impossible when the master spirit was silent? To finish a work left uncompleted by death is a thankless and ill-advised task. There can be no addition to the dead man’s fame and there is likely to be a serious detraction from that of the living one. Even the necessities of the author’s estate ought to be silent before the more permanent claims of his name.
When Stephen Crane died he left the manuscript of an unfinished novel of adventure, The O’Ruddy (Frederick A. Stokes Company). Robert Barr has completed it. Beyond doubt Mr. Barr was quite as well aware of the dangers of his task as are any of his critics. He has fronted them as bravely as could be expected and there is nothing more to say. He must have had his reasons.
The line of cleavage between the two parts of the book is sharp. For that part which is to be attributed to Stephen Crane there is little of the distinctive quality that stamped his earlier work. It is a promising adventure in a new manner. What might have come of it no man may tell, for Mr. Barr cannot, in the nature of the case, answer the question.
From: Current Literature, V. XXVII, No. 3, March 1900, p.280
The Monster and Other Stories by Stephen Crane. New York. Harper & Bros., il. $1.25.
The best of Mr. Crane’s three stories is the one that gives the title to the book, The Monster. This is admirably conceived, especially in all that relates to the developments following the tragic event on which the narrative hinges. Knowledge of life is reflected in these passages. Mr. Crane has exhibited with striking effect the curious traits of a provincial neighborhood. His style is, as usual, amateurish and tortured. The sound of the feet of a crowd on the pavement is likened to “the peaceful evening lashing at the shore of a lake.” The dispersal of a band of young men by an alarm of fire calls to the author’s mind “a snowball disrupted by dynamite.” In his search for the right phrase Mr. Crane almost invariably fixes, by some strange fatality, on the wrong one. But The Monster is a good story. The Blue Hotel and His New Mittens, its companions, are far less successful. — New York Tribune.
From: The Critic, V. XXXVII, No. 4, October 1900, p.374
Whilomville Stories (The Critic, V. XXXVII, No. 4, October 1900)
Whilomville Stories shine superior to much of the late Stephen Crane’s work. They are by no means masterpieces, these acutely human little sketches, for simplicity is ever lacking. They show observation and sympathy, but are in many places baroque, overweighted. Throughout his career Mr. Crane was a consistent victim of the shoddy in word or phrase. That which stood most in his way was an absence of fine, discriminating, aesthetic perception. Hence his splendors are largely tinsel, his triumphs often tawdry. Though brilliant and colorful, Mr. Crane’s pages do not burn with anything approaching Pater’s “gem-like flame”; they are, after all, mere flashes in the pan. (Harper, $1.50.)
From: The Atlantic Monthly, V. LXXVII, No. CCCCLXI, March 1896, p.422
Comments on New Books (The Red Badge of Courage)
The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane (Appletons),
is a narrative of the experience of a raw youth in battle, and of the steady screwing of his courage to the point of heroism. So vivid is the picture of actual conflict that the reader comes face to face with war. He does not see its pump, which requires a different perspective, but he feels the sickening horror of slaughter and becomes a part of the moving line of battle. The process of becoming a hero is so naturally unfolded that the reader no more than the hero himself is aware of the transformation from indecision and cowardice to bravery. This picture, so vivid as to produce almost the effect of a personal experience, is not made by any finished excellence of literary workmanship, but by the sheer power of an imaginative description. The style is as rough as it is direct. The sentences never flow; they are shot forth in sharp volleys. But the original power of the book is great enough to set a new fashion in literature.
From: The Atlantic Monthly, V. LXXVI, No. CCCCLX, February 1896, p.271-272
Excerpted from “Six Books of Verse”
If the Sister-Songs are intricate, an antipodal word must be found for The Black Riders, by Stephen Crane. As completely as the one book is overlaid with ornament, the other is stripped bare of it. The strange little lines of which The Black Riders is made up are not even rhymed, and have but a faint rhythmic quality. Surpassing the college exercise in verse, to which the shrewd instructor made objection that every line began with a capital letter, these small skeletons of poetry are printed entirely in capitals, and in the modern fashion which hangs a few lines by the shoulders to the top of the page, as it more had meant to come below, but had changed its mind. The virtue of these lines, however, is that they often have enough freshness of conception to set the reader thinking, and so perhaps the blank spaces are filled. The spirit of the lines is generally rebellious and modern in the extreme, occasionally blasphemous to a degree which even cleverness will not reconcile to a liberal taste. One feels that a long journey has been taken since the Last Poems of Mr. Lowell were read. But it is too much to think that the writer always takes himself seriously. Many of the lines are intentionally amusing, and the satiric note sometimes serves to mollify the profanity. The parable form into which many of the fragments are cast gives them half their effectiveness. The audacity of their conception, suggesting a mind not without kinship to Emily Dickinson’s, supplies the rest. Instead of talking more about them or discussing the possibility of their production before Tourgénieff”s Prose Poems, let us quote, without all its capital letters, this characteristic bit, which might serve either as a credo for the modern pessimist or as a felicitous epigram at his expense: —
Complete Works of Stephen Crane Page 203
