Stephen Crane

Willa Cather, When I knew Stephen Crane

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American author Stephen Crane in 1899

Stephen Crane, 1899 (Photographer unknown; Presumed public domain, via Wikipedia)

I haven’t reviewed a Library of America offering for a while and so have decided it’s time I dipped again into its offerings. Willa Cather‘s essay/journalistic piece “When I knew Stephen Crane”, which they published last month, appealed to me because of a couple of synchronicities. One is that Lisa of ANZLitLovers reviewed Crane’s The red badge of courage a few days ago, reminding me that I have yet to read Crane. The other is a little more obscure. Colleen of Bookphilia wrote a post earlier this week in which she complained about Anthony Trollope‘s admission that he would, in order to meet a deadline, submit work that he believed was not very good. The synchronicity is that in her essay Cather writes that Crane

gave me to understand that he led a double literary life; writing in the first place the matter that pleased himself, and doing it very well; in the second place, any sort of stuff that would sell. And he remarked that his poor was just as bad as it could possibly be …

Not having read Crane, I don’t know whether he really did present poor stuff, but Colleen, I suspect, would not be impressed with this admission!

“When I knew Stephen Crane” was first published in 1900, two weeks after Crane’s death. It documents 21-year-old Cather’s meeting with 23-year-old Crane in 1895 at the offices of the Nebraska State Journal not long after the journal had published The red badge of courage. The introductory notes state that she changed some facts and suggests she did this “to foretell his tragic fate and to reflect [her] own interest in writing and literature”. I can believe this may be the case as the article is peppered with foreshadowings of his early death. Nonetheless, the notes argue that her report “sounds authentic”.

Certainly, she doesn’t try to present him in a heroic light. She describes him as “thin to emaciation, his face was gaunt and unshaven … His grey clothes were much the worse for wear … He wore a flannel shirt and a slovenly apology for a necktie.” He had, in other words, “a disreputable appearance”. She writes that she had read and helped edit, for the journal, The red badge of courage:

… the grammatical construction of the story was so faulty that the managing editor had several times called on me to edit the copy. In this way I had read it very carefully, and through the careless sentence structure I saw the wonder of that remarkable performance.

She writes eloquently of her moment of revelation from Crane, saying that

The soul has no message for the friends with whom we dine every week. It is silenced by custom and convention … It selects its listeners wilfully, and seemingly delights to waste its best upon the chance wayfarer who meets us in the highway at a fated hour.

Hmm … I think there’s a lot of truth in this, at least in my experience as a giver and receiver of such “messages”. Anyhow, Cather, on a night when “the white, western moonlight threw sharp, blue shadows below us”, felt lucky to have had such a moment with Crane, one in which he talks about his craft, “his slow method of composition”. He tells her that while The red badge of courage had been written in 9 days, he had been unconsciously working on it throughout his boyhood. He also tells her that it would be months after he got an idea for a story before he’d feel able to write it:

‘The detail of a thing has to filter through my blood, and then it comes out like a native product, but it takes forever’, he remarked.

Cather also briefly refutes the criticism by some that Crane is “the reporter in fiction”, arguing that his newspaper account of a shipwreck he’d experienced was “lifeless” but his “literary product” (“The open boat”) was “unsurpassed in its vividness and constructive perfection”.

She concludes the article on a somewhat sentimental note which is not surprising given its publication so soon after his death … but even this sentimentality is expressed in the robust language that we know Cather for:

He drank life to the lees, but at the banquet table where other men took their ease and jested over their wine, he stood a dark and silent figure, sombre as Poe himself, not wishing to be understood …

It is for Cather’s own writing and her insights into character, as much as for what I learnt about Crane, that I enjoyed reading this offering from LOA. I will still, however, read Crane one day.

Stephen Crane, When man falls, a crowd gathers

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Stephen Crane

Stephen Crane (Presumed public domain, via Wikipedia)

This week’s Library of America offering is a sketch/article by Stephen Crane. Now, while I suppose most Americans have read what I believe to be Crane’s most famous work, The red badge of courage, I’m afraid I haven’t – and so, when this opportunity to read something by him arose, I was more than happy to take the opportunity. You can too, by reading it here. (It’s well worthwhile, and is less than 5 pages.)

According to the Library of America’s notes, the story was published in 1894 in The New York Press under the following heading:

When man falls, a crowd gathers
A Graphic Study of New York Heartlessness
Gazing with Pitiless Eyes
“What’s the Matter?” That too Familiar Query

That pretty much sums it up really. The notes also say that it was based on a real incident. It’s a simple story: a man and a boy are walking in the street one evening, when the man suddenly falls to the ground. Immediately a crowd gathers, ready to criticise (“Oh, a jag, I guess”) rather than help. The boy indicates, however, that it’s a fit but this still doesn’t result in any obvious sympathy or assistance. Instead, the crowd pushes closer and closer wanting a view. The language used to describe the crowd’s behaviour leaves us in no doubt as to the intent:

Those in the foremost rank bended down, shouldering each other, eager, anxious to see everything. Others behind them crowded savagely for a place like starving men fighting for bread.

This is writing that pulls out all stops to make its point: the rhythm (“shouldering each other, eager, anxious to…”), the word choice (“savagely”) and the imagery (likening their behaviour to that of survival) work together to create a powerful picture in just two sentences. The language continues in this vein building up a tension between the crowd, which shows more interest in the spectacle, and the helpless boy who is unsure what to do to help his companion. It’s not until halfway through the story that someone offers some help – but still the majority stands by:

There were men who nearly created a battle in the madness of their desire to see the thing.

Meanwhile others with magnificent passions for abstract statistical information were questioning the boy. “What’s his name?” “Where does he live?”

Eventually, a policeman (“a man whose life was half-pestered out of him by the inhabitants of the city”) appears, exhibiting “the rage of a placid cow”. (A wonderful oxymoron that reminded me of Tony’s recent post on the subject.) Gradually, but with continued difficulty described in similar evocative language, the man is helped.

This is delicious writing: it’s almost, but not quite, over the top in the way it piles up the imagery. What saves it from being hyperbolic is that it is, unfortunately, all too believable – for then, and for now. It’s not for nothing I think that Crane titles it “when man falls” not “when a man falls”, making it rather clear that this is not a one-off situation. What a shame Crane (1871-1900) died so young.