On Stephen Crane

This month, my office book club read three short stories by Stephen Crane: "The Open Boat," "The Monster," and "The Blue Hotel." Now, I was not an "Americanist" in college or grad school, so I'm pretty sure the last time I read anything by Crane was high school. Although naturalist fiction will never be my favorite genre, I do think I appreciated his work much more this time around. His narratives force readers to grapple with complex moral issues; the questionable concept of free will in an indifferent, often hostile environment; and the senselessness of many life events.

Reading these three stories, I never felt sure where the author was taking me. And, after finishing and reflecting upon the tales, I found myself struggling to shape my myriad observations into a coherent interpretation. Surely there must be some elusive core buried beneath the layers of details and literary conventions. It is startling to realize that perhaps there is no such core, that naturalistic fiction would not have a hidden message or truth. This may even be part of Crane's genius: engaging readers in a futile search for meaning that parallels the actions unfolding in the narrative. I'm not really sure though... for some reason, I don't feel altogether confident as a reader when dealing with his work.

Crane's narratives were selected as a loose connection with Halloween ("creepy naturalist stories"), so I read them with that association in mind. And, in terms of moral ambiguities and a kind of dull psychological horror, these stories were creepy! They create a sense of unease that is slow to leave, and they really make you think... in many ways, it's like probing a dilemma that has no solution. Crane seems to like casting his characters as a kind of "everyman," and he is very deft at implicating the reader in the questionable decisions and actions taking place in the story. In the case of "The Monster" and "The Blue Hotel," we ponder the hard question of whether we would truly act differently if faced with the same situations entangling the characters. This pondering engenders doubt, which then implies a degree of guilt, as if we too participated in (or allowed to happen) the terrible events in the story. Certainly food for thought.

After I finished the stories, I read a little of Crane's biography online. Considering that he died of tuberculosis at the age of 28, he certainly produced a large body of work. (The anthology I checked out from the library was almost 800 pages!) Crane married Cora Stewart-Taylor, a well-born New Yorker who had been thrice married and was the proprietress of a brothel in Jacksonville, Florida. Also a writer, she worked alongside Crane as a war correspondent during the Greco-Turkish War. Pretty fascinating stuff. I'd be interested in reading the biography of the formidable Cora!