It is refreshing to turn from these jarring notes to the appreciations of those who take Mr. Crane at his word. It can no longer be doubted that the writer of “The Red Badge” possesses qualities that mark him indisputably as a great artist. In this episode of the American Civil War he has painted a picture that challenges comparison with the most vivid scenes that any of our fiction masterpieces contain. In his searching analysis of the average mind under the stress of the first battle, in his descriptions of battle events and battle scenes, and above all in his use of color adjectives, Mr. Crane has given us something that will hold its own for many a day to come in the field of American, or for that matter foreign, fiction. The stamp of truth, the aggressive vigor, the keen study for motive, the vim, the color, the movement, all unite in proclaiming this book a really remarkable achievement. And that a writer of but twenty-six years of age, a young man who knows no more of war or of soldiers than the as yet unborn child, should have been the creator of this work, renders the book all the more remarkable.
From: Longman’s Magazine, V. XXVIII, No. CLXIV, June 1896, p.216-218
Longman’s Magazine, V. XXVIII, No. CLXIV, June 1896
It is not always easy to please all Americans. There is a statement which hardly admits of cavil. When we do not admire their books, naturally they don’t like it; and when we do admire, we admire the wrong ones, or in the wrong way. Readers may have met Mr. Crane’s Red Badge of Courage (Heinemann). Like Trilby, it took abroad before it was applauded at home. In England it has been much praised — in my opinion, overpraised. It is the story of a recruit’s adventures in the American Civil War. A writer in The Dial is very angry at the English appreciation of ‘The Red Badge of Hysteria,’ as he calls it. He rakes together a few unfriendly quotations from old Blackwoods and Saturday Reviews on the tactics and strategy of the war. He finds (rightly or wrongly) that The Red Badge justifies these censures. I cannot understand his position. A two days’ battle is described as a raw recruit is supposed to see it. He knows nothing of strategy — how should he? In woods and wildernesses he finds shooting and charging, which is all a mystery to him, as far as the general disposition and movements of forces are concerned. It does not follow that the generals were all in a muddle. How should a raw recruit divine the plan and system? Moreover, the ablest generals are often puzzled; things occur unexpectedly. Frederick the Great and David Leslie both carried the news of their own defeat, when both had really been victorious. Nobody denies courage and skill to old David and young Fritz. Mr. Crane’s raw recruit runs away in a panic. Does the Dial critic deny that panics occurred in the Civil War, as in all wars? The recruit lives to fight another day, and fights like a Paladin, like the Fore and Aft when Mr. Kipling’s drummers beat the recall. There must be brave men and cowards and dubious people in all armies. ‘Fears of the brave’ are proverbial. Wherefore English admiration of a spirited picture of battle, as seen by a recruit, should be censured as English spite, nobody can imagine on this side of the water. We might as well be said to have similar bad reasons for praising M. Zola’s La Debacle, or Count Tolstoi’s La Guerre et la 1’aix. It is impossible to please people who are so suspicious and irritable as the critic of The Dial. Had the American war displayed nothing less than ‘the finished conduct of large bodies of men in presence of the enemy,’ it would have been a miracle. Large forces of citizen soldiers, under generals who have never commanded great masses of men in war, could not possibly fight as tidily as Napoleon’s or Frederick’s veterans. No sane historian of the war will pretend that they did. Soldiering has to be learned by experience like other arts; and a raw recruit like Mr. Crane’s hero cannot have experience.
To myself the book seems too long and greatly in need of maps. The reader should know, though the recruit does not, what is going on, where, and why. The style is flaring, flamboyant, and vigorously affected. But Mr. Crane is a very young man; only twenty-four, it is said. Mr. Dudley Warner makes a very fair criticism of the style. ‘The red sickness of battle’ is mere fustian; words denoting colour are peppered over the pages. There is strain, and there is shriek, and these do not strengthen but weaken the effect. Mr. Crane, in fact, is very young. But Mr. Warner says: ‘I was carried along by its intensity, and felt at the end as if I had experienced a most exciting and melodramatic dream, which I could not shake off when waking.’ My own experience was exactly the same. I wish for Mr. Crane un peu plus de gout, and not quite so many adjectives. He certainly has an appearance of genius. He reminds one oddly enough of Mr. Francis Thompson, who is also in his poems too conscientiously on the stretch. Mr. Warner’s opinion seems uninfluenced by international jealousies. Where will they not appear if they push into the question of the qualities of a romance?
A Lang
From: The Library Journal, V. 21, No. 12, December, 1896, p.144
Book Review September 1-4 and 8, 1896
Excerpted from a book review panel discussion held at Conference of Librarians at Cleveland and Mackinaw, September 1-4 and 8, 1896]
Mr. Larned. — What of Crane’s “Red badge of courage”?
A. L. Peck. — It abounds in profanity. I never could see why it should be given into the hands of a boy.
Miss Tessa L. Kelso. — I think the “Red badge of courage” is an important contribution to the literature of arbitration. I think it belongs to that. I think that any one who reads that book will say that it is the finest thing in the world to put into the hands of people to make them converts to the abolition of war, and therefore it should go under arbitration.
Miss C. M. Hewins. — There is a better war story than that, and that is Suttner’s, translated under the title of “Ground arms.”
C. W. Andrews. — I have had the pleasure of listening to the comments of men who stood high in the ranks of the army and who declared that the “Red badge of courage” is not true. Therefore I should be decidedly against leaving it on the list because of its not being true to the facts.
C. A. Nelson. — If we object to the English in children’s books I think we certainly should object to the English in this “Red badge of, courage.”
G. M. Jones. — This “Red badge of courage” is a very good illustration of the weakness of the criticism in most of our literary papers. The critics in our literary papers are praising this book as being a true picture of war. The fact is, I imagine, that the criticisms are written by young men who know nothing about war, just as Mr. Crane himself knows nothing about war. Gen. McClurg, of Chicago, and Col. Nourse, of Massachusetts, both say that the story is not true to the life of the soldier. An article in the Independent, or perhaps the Outlook, says that no such profanity as given in the book was common in the army among the soldiers. Mr. Crane has since published two other books on New York life which are simply vulgar books. I consider the “Red badge of courage” a vulgar book, and nothing but vulgar.
F. M. Crunden. — I think in all cases of doubt we ought to leave the book from the list. There certainly has been objection enough raised to make this a doubtful book.
J. N. Larned. — If it is a fact that the book is not true to the realities of war, then I think that that should be decisive against it. My own opinion was that it was a wonderful piece of writing. Whether a young man could have possibly acquired any notion of war that would enable him to imagine reality, is a question. If he has not, I do not think his book will stand.
S. S. Green. — Mr. Jones mentioned the name of Col. Nourse; he said the same thing to me.
The majority recommended striking the “Red badge of courage” from the list.
From: The Nation, V. 64, No. 1667, June 10, 1897, p.437
The Nation, V. 64, No. 1667, June 10, 1897
Scribner’s publishes Mr. Barrett Wendell’s “Ralegh in Guiana.” It is described as a “chronicle-history In the Elizabethan manner,” and has been produced under the author’s direction at Cambridge. The contributions which will attract most attention are Montgomery Schuyler’s “New Library of Congress”
(Illustrated) and Mr. Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat,” “being the experience of four men from the sunk steamer Commodore.” Some readers will think this powerful, others will find it weak, but realistic it cannot be called. The adventures of the little ten-foot dingey, with its load of four men, running through seas mountains high (many of which are from time to time shipped), standing out a gale on a dangerous coast for thirty-six hours and more, and finally beached through a deadly surf stern on, with only one life lost, are distinctly supernatural. We recall nothing equal to them in the pages of Marryat, or Charles Reade, or Clark Russell, all of whom in their day have spun pretty stiff yarns about the sea. We are glad Mr. Crane has given up realism, because any one could see from the first that with him it was a forced style, unnatural to him, and adopted of malice prepense. Realists describe what they have seen and lived through; Mr. Crane’s specialty is the unexperienced.
From: Literature, No. 29, May 7, 1898, p.535-536
The Open Boat by Stephen Crane
7 ½ x 5in., 301 pp. London, 1898. Heinemann. 6/-
For the reader’s information, we may say at once that this is a book to read, that is, if the reader does not expect too much from a writer who has been so unanimously praised as Mr. Crane. Nor do we dissent from the praise that has been bestowed upon him, although his admirers have been a little extravagant in their laudation. As far as we can judge — and Mr. Crane has not as yet written a great deal — his position in literature is in some ways peculiar. He has in a very unusual degree the power of bringing a scene, no matter what, before our eyes by a few graphic phrases. His subjects are not always interesting; it is his way of presenting them that is everything. In this respect he resembles those painters who care little for the subject but more for the method of their art, and are called, for want of a better term, Impressionists. To this extent, with his carefully-chosen details, his insistence on the main theme, and his avoidance of irrelevance, Mr. Crane is an Impressionist, and not a more descriptive writer. His book must not be regarded as a collection of short stories. They are incidents rather than stories, and are selected, not for their dramatic interest, which the author apparently wishes to exclude, but as a vehicle for the telling touches in which he paints aspects of nature, or analyses human emotions. When a writer works in this manner, generally, it must be admitted, with less success than Mr. Crane, his friends as a rule urge him to sustained efforts of which he is not capable, and lament that he does not write a “regular novel.” For ourselves, we see no evidence in these sketches that Mr. Crane is equal to any such undertaking. The sketches are complete in themselves, and owe their effectiveness to that fact, and by no means to their intrinsic interest; nor do they seem to contain raw material that might be further developed. This is their peculiarity, that they all have the one same merit, without which, to say the truth, they would be somewhat poor reading. Some of them are so extremely slight that one is tempted to think that almost any other ordinary incident would have served Mr. Crane’s purpose equally well. We can assure him that the value of his work, and the reader’s pleasure, would be much increased if he chose his subjects as carefully as the words in which he describes them. In “The Red Badge of Courage “ he had an excellent subject, certain aspects of which are repeated in one of these sketches ; the rest, however, appeal too exclusively to our appreciation of his power of vivid presentment, and that, in our opinion, is their chief defect.
Having said this much, it remains for us to show by quotations wherein Mr. Crane’s strength lies. “The Open Boat” records the experiences of four men from the sunk steamer “Commodore” who were endeavouring to make the nearest point of the coast of Florida.
It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that was here established on the seas. No one said that it was so. No one mentioned it. But it dwelt in the boat, and each man felt it was on him. They were a captain, an oiler, a cook, and a correspondent, and they were friends, friends in a more curiously iron-bound degree than may be common.
Then, when they near the land, where the boat was certain to be swamped among the breakers: —
As for the reflections of the men, there was a great deal of rage in them. Perchance they might be formulated thus ; — If I am going to be drowned — if I am going to be drowned — if I am going to be drowned — why, in the name of the seven marl gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees? Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred cheese of life? It is preposterous. In this old ninny-woman, Fate, cannot do better than this, she should be deprived of the management of men’s fortunes. She is an old hen who knows not her intention. If she has decided to drown me, why did she not do it in the beginning, and save me all this trouble? The whole affair is absurd. But no, she cannot mean to drown me. She dare not drown me. She cannot drown me. Not after all this work.
Every one in the dinghy was so tired with rowing that: —
it is almost certain that if the boat had capsized he would have tumbled comfortably out upon the ocean as if he felt sure that it was a great soft mattress.
Here, again, is one of many good bits of description from an account of an engagement between Greek and Turkish troops: —
An officer with a double stripe of purple on his trousers paced in the rear of the battery of howitzers. He waved a little cane. Sometimes he paused in his promenade to study the field through his glasses. “A fine scene, Sir,” he cried airily, upon the approach of Peza. It was like a blow on the chest to the wide-eyed volunteer. It revealed to him a point of view. “Yes, Sir, it is a fine scene,” he answered. They spoke in French. “I am happy to be able in entertain Monsieur with a little practice,” continued the officer. “I am firing upon that mass of troops you see there a little to the right. They are probably forming for another attack.” Peza smiled; here again appeared manners, manners erect by the side of death.
We will not say that we have chosen these passages quite at random, but there are many others like them, and they are fair instances of Mr. Crane’s style and of his power of rapid and penetrating description.
From: The Literary Digest, V. XXI, No. 22, December 1, 1900, p.647
The Literary Digest, V. XXI, No. 22, December 1, 1900
The collection of stories about the Spanish-American war upon which Mr. Crane was engaged at the time of his death, has lately appeared in book form under the title “Wounds in the Rain.” The St. James’s Gazette (London, September 27) thinks that in a few of the stories he rises almost, tho not quite, to the level of his masterpiece,” The Red Badge of Courage.” It says:
“The stories are shorter, there is not the same irresistible sequence of things, nor the pauseless, violent sweep of thought and deed which made ‘The Red Badge’ wonderful. Yet, just as in that book, there are some sentences which only Mr. Crane would, or perhaps could, have written. Take this from ‘ The Clan of No-Name.’ Eight men fire a volley at a Spanish blockhouse: ‘Then they laughed and yelled insulting language, for they knew that, as far as the Spaniards were concerned, the surprise was as much as having a diamond bracelet turn to soap.’ In some other of his books, Mr. Crane wrote once of a soldier’s knees ‘turning to bread.’ Take another instance: ‘On the way he passed many things: bleeding men carried by comrades; others making their way grimly, with encrimsoned arms; then the little settlement of the hospital squad; men on the ground everywhere, many in the path; one young captain dying, with great gasps, his body pale blue and glistening, like the inside of a rabbit’s skin.’
“That is a trick, or call it a habit, of Mr. Crane; a few commonplace sentences, with perhaps, a word like ‘encrimsoned’ gleaming in them; more commonplace words, dull and short; and then the horror of some homely comparison which does its work cleanly and quickly, yet leaves the wound of a queer weapon behind it. Perhaps owing to the fact that Mr. Crane writes of what he saw, not what he imagined, there is less of this kind of work in ‘Wounds in the Rain
’ than in the ‘Red Badge of Courage.’ But there is the same humor, the same power of making the behavior of his fighting soldiers subjective doings of his own, and the same picturesque language and pithy slang as Mr. Crane set down in so masterly a fashion in his first war story. Here and there he hits his reader too hard. He wishes to insist on the fact that a red-headed Spanish corpse lay near the enemy’s trenches. He therefore uses the words’ red-headed’ nine times in thirty-three lines. Or he wishes to point out that promotion in the army comes slowly: ‘I knew the kind. First lieutenants at forty years of age, captains at fifty, majors at 102, lieutenant-colonels at 620, full colonels at 1,000, and brigadiers at 9,768,295 plus. A man had to live two billion years to gain eminent rank in the regular army at that time.’
Complete Works of Stephen Crane Page 209
