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Rating: 
Summary: Stephen Crane as Impressionist
Review: "The battle flag in the distance jerked about madly. It seemed to be struggling to free itself from an agony. The billowing smoke was filled with horizontal flashes." (Crane, TRBOC).If you were to mix Monet with the Civil War you would have "The Red Badge of Courage," penned by one of America's finest writers, Stephen Crane. His sense of hues and the dripping colors of the sky come together to paint some of the most beautiful literature humanly possible. Stephen Crane is, above all, an Impressionist. His writing is strongly suggestive of the culmination of myriad viewpoints and perspectives. Scenes are not depicted from a distance, but rather from isolated instances on the battlefield. Esoteric symbols are utilized to bombard the reader with a certain cosmopolitan consciousness. "The Red Badge of Courage," however, is not my favorite of Crane's works, but "The Open Boat." This short story is the monument to Crane's genius, the triumph of his language and arbitrary mode of experience, it is like viewing a story from many assorted "first person(s)." Words could not explain my love of "The Open Boat." Read Crane, love Crane, regardless of your High School preconceptions.
Rating:
Summary: Stephen Crane as Impressionist
Review: "The battle flag in the distance jerked about madly. It seemed to be struggling to free itself from an agony. The billowing smoke was filled with horizontal flashes." (Crane, TRBOC). If you were to mix Monet with the Civil War you would have "The Red Badge of Courage," penned by one of America's finest writers, Stephen Crane. His sense of hues and the dripping colors of the sky come together to paint some of the most beautiful literature humanly possible. Stephen Crane is, above all, an Impressionist. His writing is strongly suggestive of the culmination of myriad viewpoints and perspectives. Scenes are not depicted from a distance, but rather from isolated instances on the battlefield. Esoteric symbols are utilized to bombard the reader with a certain cosmopolitan consciousness. "The Red Badge of Courage," however, is not my favorite of Crane's works, but "The Open Boat." This short story is the monument to Crane's genius, the triumph of his language and arbitrary mode of experience, it is like viewing a story from many assorted "first person(s)." Words could not explain my love of "The Open Boat." Read Crane, love Crane, regardless of your High School preconceptions.
Rating:
Summary: the black rider
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: The Very Best of Stephen Crane
Review: Anybody who has graduated from an American high school, or taken an introductory course in American literature at the college level, has been exposed to The Red Badge of Courage. This story of cowardice, courage, and self discovery is often ranked with the hallmarks of American literature. However, after this story has been read and discussed, all too often the author of this work is soon forgotten. This is unfortunate. Crane produced an amazing amount of work, some equal to or superior to The Red Badge, but very few contemporary readers are aware of these writings. This collection of short works and stories group together the very best of Crane's work and hopefully will help bring him to the attention of a new generation of readers. Although Crane wrote some of the best descriptions of warfare ever written, not to mention other forms of action from gunfights to the power of sea and fire, his main interest was always concerned with how the individual reacts to the various challenges posed by a flatly indifferent universe. His characters invariably react with the egotistical assurance that they are in control of their destiny only to be knocked flat by life's viscisitudes. The character that can strip away his illusions finds redemption; those that don't are simply condemned to repeat the patern over and over again. Two stories in particular deserve renewed attention. The Blue Hotel and The Monster rank with the very finest short stories ever written by an American. Both deal with false impressions and how these fallacies eventually lead to the ruin of the characters who hold them. In the two stories, one dealing with 19th century romantic notions of the American west, and the other with the unseemly side of American small town life, Crane combines realistic dialogue with his wonderful descriptive powers to create a world of his own making, one in which assumptions and prejudices are ever bit as powerful as decent behavior and civil responsibility.
Rating:
Summary: The Very Best of Stephen Crane
Review: Anybody who has graduated from an American high school, or taken an introductory course in American literature at the college level, has been exposed to The Red Badge of Courage. This story of cowardice, courage, and self discovery is often ranked with the hallmarks of American literature. However, after this story has been read and discussed, all too often the author of this work is soon forgotten. This is unfortunate. Crane produced an amazing amount of work, some equal to or superior to The Red Badge, but very few contemporary readers are aware of these writings. This collection of short works and stories group together the very best of Crane's work and hopefully will help bring him to the attention of a new generation of readers. Although Crane wrote some of the best descriptions of warfare ever written, not to mention other forms of action from gunfights to the power of sea and fire, his main interest was always concerned with how the individual reacts to the various challenges posed by a flatly indifferent universe. His characters invariably react with the egotistical assurance that they are in control of their destiny only to be knocked flat by life's viscisitudes. The character that can strip away his illusions finds redemption; those that don't are simply condemned to repeat the patern over and over again. Two stories in particular deserve renewed attention. The Blue Hotel and The Monster rank with the very finest short stories ever written by an American. Both deal with false impressions and how these fallacies eventually lead to the ruin of the characters who hold them. In the two stories, one dealing with 19th century romantic notions of the American west, and the other with the unseemly side of American small town life, Crane combines realistic dialogue with his wonderful descriptive powers to create a world of his own making, one in which assumptions and prejudices are ever bit as powerful as decent behavior and civil responsibility.
Rating:
Summary: have you read Red Badge since High School ?
Review: Let's assume that the American public schools haven't completely gone to the dogs and that everyone had to read this book at some point. So you're all familiar with the basic story: young Northern man boldly sallies forth to war despite Mom's entreaties, but then realizes that he has no idea why he's there and fears that he may prove to be a coward. Indeed, given his first taste of battle, he does bolt and then wanders the battlefield too ashamed to return to his unit. But when he finally rejoins them a blow from the rifle butt of another soldier is mistaken for a battle wound and his cowardice is not discovered. Given a second chance, the youth redeems himself gloriously and in the process becomes a man. The novel's excellent reputation is well deserved; it is brief but brutally powerful. Its descriptions of battle certainly seem realistic and the moral dilemma of the young man is one of the central problems of manhood. There's nothing not to like. So did I miss something? Why does my copy, and why do so many references to the book, refer to it as an antiwar statement? I actually read it as a pro war novel. Let's go through the steps: First, we've got the young man doubting his own courage and fearing that this feeling is unique to him. But the words of another soldier demonstrate that his fears are normal: The tall private waved his hand. "Well", said he profoundly, "I've thought it might get too hot for Jim Conklin in some of them scrimmages, and if a whole lot of boys started and run, why, I s'pose I'd start and run. And if I once started to run, I'd run like the devil, and no mistake. But if everybody was a-standing and a-fighting, why, I'd stand and fight. Be jiminey, I would. I'll bet on it." The youth of this tale felt gratitude for these words of his comrade. He had feared that all of the untried men possessed great and correct confidence. He now was in a measure reassured. I've argued elsewhere that every male has a little demon within him asking if, when push comes to shove, he will have the physical and/or moral courage to be a man in the face of death. This is one of the reasons that war has always been with us, the desire to find the answer to the demon's question. This is the element of Red Badge of Courage that makes it a universal tale. At first, the young man is able, like millions of men before and after, to put aside his doubts by subsuming himself within the fighting unit: He suddenly lost concern for himself, and forgot to look at a menacing fate. He became not a man but a member. He felt that something of which he was a part--a regiment, an army, a cause, or a country--was in crisis. He was welded into a common personality which was dominated by a single desire. For some moments he could not flee no more than a little finger can commit a revolution from a hand. If he had thought the regiment was about to be annihilated perhaps he could have amputated himself from it. But its noise gave him assurance. The regiment was like a firework that, once ignited, proceeds superior to circumstances until its blazing vitality fades. It wheezed and banged with a mighty power. He pictured the ground before it as strewn with the discomfited. There was a consciousness always of the presence of his comrades about him. He felt the subtle battle brotherhood more potent even than the cause for which they were fighting. It was a mysterious fraternity born of the smoke and danger of death. He was at a task. He was like a carpenter who has made many boxes, making still another box, only there was furious haste in his movements. He, in his thoughts, was careering off in other places, even as the carpenter who as he works whistles and thinks of his friend or his enemy, his home or a saloon. And these jolted dreams were never perfect to him afterward, but remained a mass of blurred shapes. Presently he began to feel the effects of the war atmosphere--a blistering sweat, a sensation that his eyeballs were about to crack like hot stones. A burning roar filled his ears. Following this came a red rage. He developed the acute exasperation of a pestered animal, a well-meaning cow worried by dogs. He had a mad feeling against his rifle, which could only be used against one life at a time. He wished to rush forward and strangle with his fingers. He craved a power that would enable him to make a world-sweeping gesture and brush all back. His impotency appeared to him, and made his rage into that of a driven beast. Buried in the smoke of many rifles his anger was directed not so much against the men whom he knew were rushing toward him as against the swirling battle phantoms which were choking him, stuffing their smoke robes down his parched throat. He fought frantically for respite for his senses, for air, as a babe being smothered attacks the deadly blankets. There was a blare of heated rage mingled with a certain expression of intentness on all faces. Many of the men were making low-toned noises with their mouths, and these subdued cheers, snarls, imprecations, prayers, made a wild, barbaric these subdued cheers, snarls, imprecations, prayers, made a wild, barbaric these subdued cheers, snarls, imprecations, prayers, made a wild, barbaric these subdued cheers, snarls, imprecations, prayers, made a wild, barbaric song that went as an undercurrent of sound, strange and chantlike with the resounding chords of the war march. I have often heard it said that when a battle starts, soldiers aren't fighting for themselves or for their countries or for ideas and ideals, fundamentally they are fighting to protect their buddies and fellow soldiers. As long as the young man keeps the battle in this perspective he is okay. But then, he comes to doubt his fellows and seeks to save himself. And it is this selfish decision to flee which will haunt him and self loathing causes him to hate his victorious comrades: The youth cringed as if discovered in a crime. By heavens, they had won after all! The imbecile line had remained and become victors. He could hear cheering. He lifted himself upon his toes and looked in the direction of the fight. A yellow fog lay wallowing on the treetops. From beneath it came the clatter of musketry. Hoarse cries told of an advance. He turned away amazed and angry. He felt that he had been wronged. He had fled, he told himself, because annihilation approached. He had done a good part in saving himself, who was a little piece of the army. He had considered the time, he said, to be one in which is was the duty of every little piece to rescue itself if possible. Later the officers could fit the little pieces together again, and make a battle front. If none of the little pieces were wise enough to save themselves from the flurry of death at such a time, why, then, where would be the army? It was all plain that he had proceeded according to very correct and commendable rules. His actions had been sagacious things. They had been full of strategy. They were the work of a master's legs. Thoughts of his comrades came to him. The brittle blue line had withstood the blows and won. He grew bitter over it. It seemed that the blind ignorance and stupidity of those little pieces had betrayed him. He had been overturned and crushed by their lack of sense in holding the position, when intelligent deliberation would have convinced them that it was impossible. He, the enlightened man who looks afar in the dark, had fled because of his superior perceptions and knowledge. He felt a great anger against his comrades. He knew it could be proved that they had been fools. He wondered what they would remark when later he appeared in camp. His mind heard howls of derision. Their density would not enable them to understand his sharper point of view. He began to pity himself acutely. He was ill used. He was trodden beneath the feet of an iron injustice. He had proceeded with wisdom and from the most righteous motives under heaven's blue only to be frustrated by hateful circumstances. A dull, animal-like rebellion against his fellows, war in the abstract, and fate grew within him. He shambled along with bowed head, his brain in a tumult of agony and despair. When he looked loweringly up, quivering at each sound, his eyes had the expression of those of a great criminal who thinks his guilt and his punishment great, and knows that he can find no words. His self centered actions and cowardice have reduced him to an animal state. His chance for redemption comes when he is unwittingly accepted back into the unit without anyone knowing that he fled. His very survival in the face of what he was sure was certain death actually becomes a source of strength to him: He did not give a great deal of thought to these battles that lay directly before him. It was not essential that he should plan
Rating: 
Summary: The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky, Stephen crane
Review: The short story "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky," by Stephen Crane is a short western story written around 1890. It concerns the effort of the town marshal, Jack Potter, bringing his new bride to the "frontier" town of Yellow Sky, Texas, at the time when the Old West was slowly being civilized. While you are reading through the book, and waiting for something to happen, you are lead to the climax. At this turning point, the stereotypical gunfight between Jack Potter and his enemy Scratchy Wilson, the drunken troublemaker from Yellow Sky, was averted. Potter told Scratchy he didn't have a gun with him bacause he married now. Upon hearing this, Scratchy came to the realization he doesn't want to fight him anymore.
The averted gunfight, a main feature of the western story, makes you, as the reader, think all such gunplay is a thing of the past. This is, in fact, Crane's description of the "end of an era." Scratchy realizes through potter's change in behavior, which is now more mature, that a new way of life has started. "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" is a short story one can read in twenty minutes. When the reader returns to the story, he or she realizes, it is a short story with thoughts and meanings to be ieferred beyond the actual words. It may seem simple - even boring to read, but the message is meaningful. As a student whose first language is German, I struggled with the vocabulary but came to realize the significance of the situation once I had finished reading. Therefore it is a good story, due to Crane's depiction of the western civilization.
Rating:
Summary: Among the very best fiction I've read
Review: 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.
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