The story of Hotel de Dream: A New York Novel is one of two pairs of lovers, Stephen Crane and his wife Cora and the young prostitute Elliott and his lover Theodore the Banker, who are products of Stephen Crane's literary imagination. In this novel Crane is writing a companion piece to his earlier novel, Maggie, Girl of the Streets, and it is this novel, The Painted Boy, that occupies Crane as he slowly succumbs to the ravages of TB. What is fascinating is the seamless way that White is able to meld the stories of Crane's life and Crane's writing. Sections of The Painted Boy are interspersed throughout the novel as Crane dictates it to his wife Cora. The description of the young boy of the streets, Elliott is both moving and heartbreaking as he loses his childhood in an attempt to simply survive. In an inter textual delight for the reader Crane becomes a character both in White's novel, as journalist studying the boy, and in the novel he is writing within Hotel de Dream. It reminds me of a favorite novel of mine, The Counterfeiters, by Andre Gide, wherein the protagonist Edouard is writing a novel titled The Counterfeiters, thus making Gide's tale a novel within a novel. White is using a modern approach to the novel to tell a very authentic fin de siecle tale.

He succeeds; and the reader is drawn along by the atmospheric seediness of turn-of-the century Manhattan as it is contrasted with the quiet countryside of England where Stephen and Cora are passing their days. There is also the realism of visits from Henry James and Joseph Conrad that add to the book's milieu. I found White's prose elegant and his realization of Crane's novel within the novel believable. The contrasting portraits of passion help make this novel a gem. It makes me want to explore more of both writers in the near future. ( )

fictionalized stephen crane by a wonderful writer. But start with his earlier books. ( )

The segments where White is re-creating Stephen Crane's "lost" novel are intriguing. It is a story of obsessive love that rings true with other gay fiction of the time. It is sometimes glorious, but more often, excruciatingly painful.

White doesn't keep the same momentum going with the primary story of Crane on his death-bed, dictating the story to his wife, Cora. Their interaction is stilted and contrived. She is constantly reminding the reader that Crane is America's great writer, and he name drops so often that the one begins to get that feeling of being trapped with the worst guest at a cocktail party. ( )

An OK read, with some neat historical details but...I don't know, it didn't really do it for me. I mean, it was all right, but...meh. ( )

Edmund White displays his storytelling talent to impressive effect as he artfully weaves together two narratives in his latest novel, Hotel de Dream. The first story follows the American expatriate author Stephen Crane as he and his wife Cora travel from his home in England to Germany’s Black Forest on a desperate quest for a cure for his advanced case of tuberculosis. Interspersed with the account of Crane’s travels is the second story, his novel The Painted Boy, which he dictates to Cora along the way; in this narrative, the New York banker Theodore falls in love with the boy prostitute Elliott in spite of the risks to his career and family.

The Hotel de Dream, the name of the brothel Cora ran in Florida before her marriage to Crane, plays an insignificant role in the unfolding of both narratives. Yet as a symbol, it is important enough to give the novel its name. Cora’s establishment was both a hotel, a refuge for the traveler away from home and the routine of everyday life, and a place of dreams, an opportunity to live out longings and fantasies, if only for a night. Seen in these terms, the novel’s Stephen Crane and Theodore the banker live in their own personal Hotels de Dream. Crane, staying in a series of hotels as he travels towards Germany, is trying as his last achievement to dictate the novel that he had wanted to write for years; Theodore, visiting Elliott in the illicit love nest that the adoring banker rented for him, is attempting to find a haven for the love that he has to hide from a disapproving society.

Life being what it is, however, hotel stays are sometimes plagued with annoyances and dreams don’t always live up to their promise. The outcomes of Crane’s efforts and of Theodore’s yearning, revealed at the end of the novel, tie both narratives up neatly; interestingly, another American author-cum-fictional character, Henry James, has the last, conclusive word before White’s Postface. Yet, as with any work of literature worth a careful perusal, it is ultimately up to the readers to draw whatever conclusion they please from the outcome of White’s engrossing tale of literature, passion, and disease. ( )