Uh, where do I start? It took me more than a year to finish this book. At first, I fell asleep after each sentence, but this has nothing to do with the work itself, this is what happens during the schoolyear with books I read only in bed. The sheer volume of the text was daunting. So I set it aside for some months, and restarted this year.

I love Auster, he is my absolute favourite author, I would read anything, even his shopping list (to steal someone else’s go-to saying). But a shopping list that’s 739 pages long? (And, you know, one more “Poe-etic effect”, and we’re done, that’s a final warning.) Being non-fiction makes it a more challenging experience to read, it simply requires more mental effort.

Frankly, I have never heard of Stephen Crane before (or I don’t remember having heard of him). Which is quite strange considering the huge effect he had on writers we all know and consider to be important literary figures. To name just a few: his friends (Joseph Conrad, H. G. Wells), a contemporary of his for one year only (Ernest Hemingway), or someone who is not mentioned in this book but is the author of it, and is clearly a devoted fan (Paul Auster).

In this book I received what I always miss in public education: the connections between events in world history, between artists living and creating at the same time, between the events and art, other public figures, the general social codes, accepted beliefs and attitudes in an era, and artists. I enjoyed seeing the interconnectedness immensely.

These intense 739 pages gave me a number of stories. An extraordinary life story of Stephen Crane (not omitting his flaws, embracing him as human, not a hero), and quite a number of stories written by him. Every time Auster introduced a new story of Crane’s, his enthusiasm was simply contagious, and I wanted to read the wonderful, excellent, brilliant, outstanding, unique piece being discussed. But then I got so many quotes and such a thorough analysis of the work, that I felt deflated, with my initial drive all gone by the time he switched to another topic. I think I will read some of Crane’s works after some time spent without him, it has been just overwhelming by now. However, I came to appreciate his talent, his “cinematic style before the language of movies had been invented” (p92) and I am very curious to see it for myself. I will definitely remember Auster’s (and Conrad’s) admiration.
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I chanced upon the work of Stephen Crane in an unusual way, not by being required to read his famous novel The Red Badge of Courage, but by finding his volume of poetry on the shelves of my high school library. It knocked my socks off and it became one of the first books I purchased for my library. I was perhaps sixteen.

Over the years I read his most famous short stories and Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, but still have not read Red Badge! (I will correct that soon.) I knew that Crane was the son of a Methodist pastor and that he had died young of tuberculosis. Then came Paul Auster’s book Burning Boy: The Life and Work of Stephen Crane.

I had expected it to be a brief book, as brief as the writer’s life. Instead, I happily read it for over two weeks. For Auster also introduces readers to Crane’s work, including excerpts and critical insight. Readers do not need to be familiar with Crane’s work because it’s all covered. The novels, the poems, the short stories, the news stories, the first hand accounts of war.

Auster intends to resurrect an interest in Crane, whose star has risen and fallen over the years. “The prose still crackles, the eye still cuts, the work still stings,” Auster writes. I know it struck me.

Reading the excerpt from Crane’s short story The Blue Hotel, I read the line, “Every sin is the result of a collaboration.” It was like a revelation. Crane was twenty-six when he wrote that line. Sin is not what an individual commits; it is what a community commits when we deny our interdependence. “We are all responsible for one another,” Auster interprets; “No American writer since then has formulated anything that surpasses it.”

Crane’s beloved father was a Methodist pastor. His early death send Crane spiraling into disbelief. He left home for New York City, where he shared an apartment and lived in poverty, sometimes without proper clothing to wear and eating one meal a day–a meal that came free with a 5 cent glass of beer. He hung out in bars and enjoyed the company of prostitutes. He fell for society women, a victim of unrequited love. He had a child and pledged his love to the woman, then left them. On the surface, he looked self-indulgent, a drop-out, but he was writing all of the time, thinking long before he set pen to paper. He wrote what he saw around him, telling the shocking truth.

He was also brave, ignoring flying bullets while a war correspondent, and his actions during a shipwreck were heroic. (Leading to the story The Open Boat.)

He was a loving uncle. He enjoyed music and silliness and fun. He loved dogs. He found his life partner late in life, a woman who had given up proper society for freedom. Cora became a mistress at seventeen, and had two failed marriages when she met Crane. She was running a Florida hotel with a salon that attracted society visitors. She walked away from it all to follow Crane. She thought Crane was a genius. “They were fine people,” wrote a woman who lived with them for some months; “They were good….They were ethically good. They were kind.”

Crane was so good that it got his name into the New York City paper’s headlines. He had been with several women of the street when one was accused of solicitation by the police. Crane insisted she was under his protection and innocent and volunteered to be a witness at her court trial. The famous author of The Red Badge of Courage became a pariah. Even the police were on the lookout for him and he was on police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt’s bad side. He had to leave NYC.

Crane was not a good businessman and his publishers, especially McClure’s Magazine, took advantage of him. Consequently, he was eternally in debt and in desperate need of cash. Always restless and always needing an income, Crane took jobs writing stories about world events, traveling to Greece and Cuba and to the Western states of America. He and Cora ended up in England where he hung out with the likes of Henry James, H. G. Wells, and Joseph Conrad. They believed Crane was a genius. A friend called him “the greatest genius America has produced since Edgar Allan Poe.”

Auster shows how Crane’s writing broke new ground and was year ahead of its time. His love for Crane is infectious. I admit I was moved at the description of Crane’s death. And spurred to revisit the work I have read and to read the many stories I have not read.

received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased. ( )