e-Book Great Short Works of Stephen Crane (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) download

A most magnificent piece of war journalism The Red Badge of Courage was crafted from interviews with Civil War veterans. Crane wasn't born yet when the Civil War was actually happening but by some strange feat of the imagination he takes you there. You've probably read this at some point in your school days but read it as an adult too. The prose is actually less literary journalism and more a highly crafted and stylized subjective telling of the war experience through Henry Fleming's eyes. Crane was admired by Conrad(who called him the "best of the boys" and who like Crane is also called a literary impressionist) and Hemingway whose own prose and journalism owe much to him. The short stories("Open Boat"one of the best sea episodes ever described) are also excellent and since Crane only lived 29 years this volume contains all his important work. His work was groundbreaking and his style has an immediate quality to it that leaves one with the feeling of having lived through the experiences he describes. In his short life he constantly sought the extremes. The medium length work Maggie describes a prostitutes existence and in true Crane style does not spare any of the gritty details though again it is not strict objectivity which marks the Crane style. In my mind he belongs alongside Conrad as one of the great originals who were writing at a very high point in literary history. Some would say they have not been matched. There is still much in their styles which has never been improved upon.

These 11 stories run from a few pages to about 125 pages. Crane evokes a great deal of color describing his scenes with a relative economy of words. He uses irony alot in his writing but is never cruel. He objectively writes about people struggling in harsh environments against overpowering fates but shows compassion.
The first story and the longest is "The Red Badge of Courage." Of all the stories, it may be best overall. The motivations of Henry Fleming and his fellow soldiers are really well drawn. They really don't want to be there, but feel they have to be heroes and at times they force themselves to be. But when the going gets tough in battle, many of them turn around and run. Crane portrays Henry as overhearing a general as saying to the effect that Henry's regiment was expeendable cannon fodder and this revelation very much grates on Henry's fellows.
The next story is "Maggie: A Girl of The Street." The story seems to be set in the late 19th century in an Irish tenament slum in New York. The account of the younger years of Maggie and her brother Jimmie ends with a scene of the two huddling in a corner of the flat as their parents lay sprawled out asleep on the floor, amidst broken furniture and dishes, after a drunken brawl with each other. It is such an environment like this that Maggie grows up. Jimmie grows up to be a truck driver and a brute. But Maggie is something of a flower amidst tenament squalor and catches the eye of Jimmie's friend Pete. Jimmy hears, from an old lady in his building who overheard a conversation between Pete and Maggie after one of their dates, that Maggie begged Pete to say that he loved her. Obviously this is a discrete intimation that Pete has taken Maggie's virginity. Well, this sets Johnnie and his barbaric mother into quite a rage and it goes downhill for Maggie there.
The biographical note at the back of the book, presumably written by the author of the fine introduction, James Colvert, says that Crane dosen't get into Maggie's mind. I think that's because she's extremely ignorant, with a mind numbed by a violent environment and lack of stimulation. The characters in this story engage in really thick Irish accents. I think the funniest dialogue is Pete's drunken conversation with his lady friends in the bar towards the end. Another comes from Jimmie and Maggie's mother Mary's lamentations to the effect that she didn't understand how Maggie could turn out so bad after being raised so well by her, Mary. I liked the description of the scenes in the cheap theaters where Pete takes Maggie. I don't understand what the next to last chapter with "the girl" walking the streets is about.
Other stories include "The Monster," an effective tragedy about a black servant named Henry Johnson of a white doctor in rural New England, who gets his face literally burned off and his brain damaged after trying to save the doctor's son in a fire. Both whites and blacks in the town are terribly afraid of Henry because his burned off face makes him look like a monster....After several incidents, after Henry escapes from his confinement at the house of a black family rage, the town turns against the doctor for keeping him in the community. One incident is him merely looking into the window of a birthday party and scaring out of her wits, one little girl. The little girl's father greatly exagerates the harm done to her and talks of having the doctor arrested. The other is when he appearts in the black neighborhood in the evening and stops by his old girlfriend Bella's house where her family is sitting on the front porch. Bella's fat old mother breaks her leg jumping over a fence at the sight of Henry. Bella herself is reduced to crawling in terror on the porch trying to escape as Henry in his amiable mental retardation babbles invitations to her to go to a dance with him. Henry moves into his old place above the farm of the doctor's house, making one of the neighbors move away. I thought the scene was really superb where the doctor's son Jimmy and his friends are competing with each other to see who can approach "the monster" as he sits solitarily in the barn.
"An experiment in misery," is an 11 page account of a night and next morning experience of two homeless men. "A mystery of heroism" a tale about a civil war soldier's attempt to get water in the middle of a field where bullets and shells are flying back and forth. "The Open Boat" is a very technically well done story of four men, survivors from shipwreck, trying to survive at sea in their dinghy. The dialogue is excellent. "The Pace of Youth" is very succinctly written, about two young employees of a small merry-go-round place, who are prevented from having any communication by the girl's father, the manager of the place. Their silent flirtation is quite believable and really engaging. What they do at the end is incredible, but well managed by Crane. It is a superb romance. In "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky," I like the initial scenes where the young, naive couple, the groom being the sherrif of Yellow Sky, Texas, are viewed sardonically by the black porter and other passangers. "
The last story is "The Blue Hotel." It begins with the owner of a hotel in a small Nebraska town managing, fatefully, to convince three passangers on the train that has stoped there, to stay the night at his hotel. The travellers are refered to as "the Easterner," "the cowboy," and "the Swede." A major highlight is the fistfight between the owner's son Johnnie and the extremely demented Swede, officiated by the owner. Indeed Crane is very skilled at describing fights whether they be on civil war battlefields or in bars. The other fight in this story, is, of course, at its end but I won't tell about that.

Most of us read "Red Badge of Courage" in high school, and we probably think it was a dull, dated book that had only one merit: brevity. But upon rereading "Red Badge," I realized how much the book has stayed with me over the years and that my thoughts about the Civil War, war generally, and heroism have been deeply influenced by the story.

Now, having added the reading of other major Stephen Crane novellas and short stories, I have a fuller understanding of what he was trying to do and why he was so influential despite his fairly small output due to his death at age 28. He burst onto the literary scene with "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets," a pathos- and anger-filled book about life in New York's Bowery. The story wouldn't fly today because it's a little too obvious and the characters are too black-and-white, and they don't struggle hard enough against their fate. But it was a literary sensation at its time, and it brought Crane many opportunities to write for newspapers while he worked on new fiction. (His newspaper articles, which are not part of this collection, are pretty great, by the way.)

Crane masterfully characterizes (and satirizes) a number of people in "Maggie," as well as in several short stories in this collection by using irony that would be recognizable in a sitcom today. The bravado of people who have no right to it seems to be a recurring theme for him, and he repeatedly shows people cut back down to size, whether American soldiers in Cuba, Easterners going out to the West, or a Bowery tough guy. On the other hand, the good person doesn't always win, as seen most prominently in Maggie's downfall.

"Red Badge," of course, is his most enduring work. There's some satire and male-bonding humor, but mostly it's a story of anger and humility. Henry, the protagonist, not only develops courage, but even more importantly, he contemplates his place in the universe and comes to an understanding. What's fascinating to me is that Crane doesn't take the easy way out in this tightly woven story. Henry flees, then fights reluctantly, and then fights with insane bravery, but doesn't praise himself. The Union troops win a minor skirmish, but before they can even enjoy their victory, the Confederate troops charge and overrun them. The troops slog through some engagements and are justifiably scared, but are vilified by commanders for their lack of bravery and effort. Meanwhile, it's beautiful weather throughout the battles, until the enemy is thwarted --- and then it starts raining when the troops are marching to their new location. And so on.

In conclusion, these are memorable stories and still readily accessible in theme, tone, and language.