Men, Women, and Boats

Stephen Crane

Description

Though he is today best remembered as the author of the classic Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage, American author Stephen Crane was widely lauded as one of the foremost practitioners of the short-story format in the early twentieth century. This fine collection brings together a number of his most highly regarded short tales, including the largely autobiographical account of the aftermath of a shipwreck, "The Open Boat."

Sujets

• Short story

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776594894
• Langue: English

Extrait

MEN, WOMEN, AND BOATS
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STEPHEN CRANE
Edited by
VINCENT STARRETT
 
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Men, Women, and Boats First published in 1921 Epub ISBN 978-1-77659-489-4 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77659-490-0 © 2014 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Note Stephen Crane: An Estimate The Open Boat The Reluctant Voyagers The End of the Battle Upturned Face An Episode of War An Experiment in Misery The Duel that was Not Fought A Desertion A Dark-Brown Dog The Pace of Youth A Tent in Agony Four Men in a Cave The Mesmeric Mountain The Snake London Impressions The Scotch Express
Note
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A Number of the tales and sketches here brought together appear now forthe first time between covers; others for the first time between coversin this country. All have been gathered from out-of-print volumes andold magazine files.
"The Open Boat," one of Stephen Crane's finest stories, is used withthe courteous permission of Doubleday, Page & Co., holders of thecopyright. Its companion masterpiece, "The Blue Hotel," because ofcopyright complications, has had to be omitted, greatly to the regretof the editor.
After the death of Stephen Crane, a haphazard and undiscriminatinggathering of his earlier tales and sketches appeared in London underthe misleading title, "Last Words." From this volume, now rarely metwith, a number of characteristic minor works have been selected, andthese will be new to Crane's American admirers; as follows: "TheReluctant Voyagers," "The End of the Battle," "The Upturned Face," "AnEpisode of War," "A Desertion," "Four Men in a Cave," "The MesmericMountain," "London Impressions," "The Snake."
Three of our present collection, printed by arrangement, appeared inthe London (1898) edition of "The Open Boat and Other Stories,"published by William Heinemann, but did not occur in the Americanvolume of that title. They are "An Experiment in Misery," "The Duelthat was not Fought," and "The Pace of Youth."
For the rest, "A Dark Brown Dog," "A Tent in Agony," and "The ScotchExpress," are here printed for the first time in a book.
For the general title of the present collection, the editor alone isresponsible.
V. S.
Stephen Crane: An Estimate
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It hardly profits us to conjecture what Stephen Crane might havewritten about the World War had he lived. Certainly, he would have beenin it, in one capacity or another. No man had a greater talent for warand personal adventure, nor a finer art in describing it. Few writersof recent times could so well describe the poetry of motion asmanifested in the surge and flow of battle, or so well depict theisolated deed of heroism in its stark simplicity and terror.
To such an undertaking as Henri Barbusse's "Under Fire," that powerful,brutal book, Crane would have brought an analytical genius almostclairvoyant. He possessed an uncanny vision; a descriptive abilityphotographic in its clarity and its care for minutiae—yetunphotographic in that the big central thing often is omitted, to befelt rather than seen in the occult suggestion of detail. Crane wouldhave seen and depicted the grisly horror of it all, as did Barbusse,but also he would have seen the glory and the ecstasy and the wonder ofit, and over that his poetry would have been spread.
While Stephen Crane was an excellent psychologist, he was also a truepoet. Frequently his prose was finer poetry than his deliberate essaysin poesy. His most famous book, "The Red Badge of Courage," isessentially a psychological study, a delicate clinical dissection ofthe soul of a recruit, but it is also a tour de force of theimagination. When he wrote the book he had never seen a battle: he hadto place himself in the situation of another. Years later, when he cameout of the Greco-Turkish fracas , he remarked to a friend: "'The RedBadge' is all right."
Written by a youth who had scarcely passed his majority, this book hasbeen compared with Tolstoy's "Sebastopol" and Zola's "La Débâcle," andwith some of the short stories of Ambrose Bierce. The comparison withBierce's work is legitimate; with the other books, I think, less so.Tolstoy and Zola see none of the traditional beauty of battle; theyapply themselves to a devoted—almost obscene—study of corpses andcarnage generally; and they lack the American's instinct for the rowdycommonplace, the natural, the irreverent, which so materially aids hisrealism. In "The Red Badge of Courage" invariably the tone is kept downwhere one expects a height: the most heroic deeds are accomplished withstudied awkwardness.
Crane was an obscure free-lance when he wrote this book. The effort, hesays, somewhere, "was born of pain—despair, almost." It was a betterpiece of work, however, for that very reason, as Crane knew. It is farfrom flawless. It has been remarked that it bristles with as manygrammatical errors as with bayonets; but it is a big canvas, and I amcertain that many of Crane's deviations from the rules of politerhetoric were deliberate experiments, looking to effect—effect which,frequently, he gained.
Stephen Crane "arrived" with this book. There are, of course, many whonever have heard of him, to this day, but there was a time when he wasvery much talked of. That was in the middle nineties, followingpublication of "The Red Badge of Courage," although even before that hehad occasioned a brief flurry with his weird collection of poems called"The Black Riders and Other Lines." He was highly praised, and highlyabused and laughed at; but he seemed to be "made." We have largelyforgotten since. It is a way we have.
Personally, I prefer his short stories to his novels and his poems;those, for instance, contained in "The Open Boat," in "Wounds in theRain," and in "The Monster." The title-story in that first collectionis perhaps his finest piece of work. Yet what is it? A truthful recordof an adventure of his own in the filibustering days that preceded ourwar with Spain; the faithful narrative of the voyage of an open boat,manned by a handful of shipwrecked men. But Captain Bligh's account of his small boat journey, after he had been sent adrift by themutineers of the Bounty , seems tame in comparison, although of thetwo the English sailor's voyage was the more perilous.
In "The Open Boat" Crane again gains his effects by keeping down thetone where another writer might have attempted "fine writing" and havebeen lost. In it perhaps is most strikingly evident the poetic cadencesof his prose: its rhythmic, monotonous flow is the flow of the graywater that laps at the sides of the boat, that rises and recedes incruel waves, "like little pointed rocks." It is a desolate picture, andthe tale is one of our greatest short stories. In the other tales thatgo to make up the volume are wild, exotic glimpses of Latin-America. Idoubt whether the color and spirit of that region have been betterrendered than in Stephen Crane's curious, distorted, staccato sentences.
"War Stories" is the laconic sub-title of "Wounds in the Rain." It wasnot war on a grand scale that Crane saw in the Spanish-Americancomplication, in which he participated as a war correspondent; no suchwar as the recent horror. But the occasions for personal heroism wereno fewer than always, and the opportunities for the exercise of suchpowers of trained and appreciative understanding and sympathy as Cranepossessed, were abundant. For the most part, these tales are episodic,reports of isolated instances—the profanely humorous experiences ofcorrespondents, the magnificent courage of signalmen under fire, theforgotten adventure of a converted yacht—but all are instinct with thered fever of war, and are backgrounded with the choking smoke ofbattle. Never again did Crane attempt the large canvas of "The RedBadge of Courage." Before he had seen war, he imagined its immensityand painted it with the fury and fidelity of a Verestchagin; when hewas its familiar, he singled out its minor, crimson passages forbriefer but no less careful delineation.
In this book, again, his sense of the poetry of motion is vividlyevident. We see men going into action, wave on wave, or in scatteringcharges; we hear the clink of their accoutrements and their breathwhistling through their teeth. They are not men going into action atall, but men going about their business, which at the moment happens tobe the capture of a trench. They are neither heroes nor cowards. Theirfaces reflect no particular emotion save, perhaps, a desire to getsomewhere. They are a line of men running for a train, or following afire engine, or charging a trench. It is a relentless picture, everchanging, ever the same. But it contains poetry, too, in rich,memorable passages.
In "The Monster and Other Stories," there is a tale called "The BlueHotel". A Swede, its central figure, toward the end manages to gethimself murdered. Crane's description of it is just as casual as that.The story fills a dozen pages of the book; but the social injustice ofthe whole world is hinted in that space; the upside-downness ofcreation, right prostrate, wrong triumphant,—a mad, crazy world. Theincident of the murdered Swede is just part of the backwash of it all,but it is an illuminating fragment. The Swede was slain, not by thegambler whose knife pierced his thick hide: he was the victim of acondition for which he was no more to blame than the man who stabbedhim. Stephen Crane thus speaks through the lips of one of thecharacters:—
"We are all in it! This poor gambler isn't even a nou