Homage to Stephen Crane

He was 28 when he died, at a health spa in the Black Forest of Germany.  What had we achieved by that age, reader?  For my part, very little.  Perhaps you achieved more, or much.  But it's his age at death that makes him most remarkable, in light of what he did in his short life.

I wonder if they still make students read The Red Badge of Courage in high school.  It was during that four year--what?--that I read it.  I suppose that by making us do so at the time, it was intended in some respect to honor Crane.  I think that requiring books to be read during those years does an author a disservice.  It's difficult to enjoy or appreciate a book one is required to read.  But I suppose something else was intended as well, enjoyment and appreciation not being something to be expected by high school students in their studies, at least.

That particular work of Crane made quite a stir when published.  It was, for the time, a different depiction of war.  It's difficult to think of any other depiction in novels of the same sort up until then.  Ambrose Bierce served in the Civil War and wrote some striking short stories about it, but such as Tolstoy were too busy making grand moral points or indulging in Romantic fantasies to do it what can be called justice.  Unlike Bierce, however, Crane had never experienced war when he wrote that book.  It was entirely a work of his imagination, though considered by most to be unusual in its realism.  Crane experienced war subsequently in his capacity as a newspaper correspondent, "embedded" as we (curiously) say now with soldiers fighting the Greco-Turkish and Spanish-American wars.

I remember the words "realism" and "naturalism" associated with his works.  I read now that "impressionism" is associated with them as well.  It's difficult for a mere reader like myself to keep track of literary categorizations, let alone understand them.  But certainly he wrote of things that took place in life and that were not evidently such as it would be unlikely to encounter in life.  He's been compared, I see, with the prolix Emerson and the less prolix Thoreau among American writers.  I don't see it, really, especially the comparison with Emerson.  Crane was far too direct and spare an author to be compared with Emerson, who bloviated on many things; too many things, in fact.  One can understand why Hemingway thought well of him.  Now and then, Hemingway seems to have expressed admiration for certain writers already dead.  Hemingway thought well of Henry James and Mark Twain also.

Twain is an author I was also forced to read in high school and so neither enjoyed nor appreciated at the time.  I revisited him later, and alas was unimpressed.  That's not the case with Crane.  I confess I've paid no attention to James.  Perhaps I'm unduly concerned as it's been claimed that he wrote novels like a philosopher, while his brother William wrote philosophy like a novelist.  The thought of a philosopher writing a novel troubles me.

I think Crane was at his best writing short stories.  The Monster, The Blue Hotel, The Open Boat are certainly among the best I've read.  Short stories have an unfortunate reputation.  It seems to me that they're not taken seriously enough; all are looking to write or read The Great Novel.  Novels invite excess, however, and imprecision; or so it's seemed to me, and I've read my share of them.  Unless, that is, their chapters are written as short stories themselves, as a kind of serial or series of scenes in the life of a person or event.

With apologies to such as Chekov and others, I think it may be said that American authors have written the finest short stories, and it may also be said (by me at least) that this is to be expected.  American civilization isn't quite what Oscar Wilde claimed it to be (nonexistent) but it doesn't seem to encourage extended reflection or effort on any particular thing, and this would be a prerequisite for creating a novel. 

I'm not a fan of Crane's poetry.  His poetry makes him appear immature, while his prose does not.  His prose was innovative in a way we can't understand now, being used to Hemingway and others who succeeded in extending its precision and simplicity in description.  I'm old now, or old enough, and am astonished he wrote as he did and by what he did so young.  Certain geniuses (Mozart, Schubert come to mind in music) are at once prolific and intensely focused, and are enduringly special and unique as a result.  Crane was one of them.

Homage to Ambrose Bierce

I'm reading Ambrose Bierce's recollections of the Civil War, and am impressed once again by him as a man and as a writer.  I find his descriptions of the battles of Shiloh and Chickamauga particularly striking, for reasons unclear to me.  They are direct, cool reportage of mass slaughter by a participant in the chaos, and the prose is significantly different from that he would employ in his fiction, where he could sometimes be baroque, and his highly acerbic critiques and essays regarding various topics.   He does criticize some of the generals, true, but his criticism is unusually mild.  And he writes very little of himself and his deeds; when he does so, he shows no self-regard.

"Bitter" Bierce he was sometimes called, as was noted by Mencken in a piece he wrote about his encounter with Bierce at a funeral of a fellow-critic, and it seems Bierce did not disappoint on that occasion.  Mencken writes that he described in considerable detail and with amusement unfortunate cremations he had witnessed and their consequences.  Bierce and Mencken had later encounters as well, and would correspond in a friendly way, but Bierce was much older than Mencken, and despite their common contrariness and iconoclasm it seems that Mencken's view of the older man was ultimately somewhat uncharitable.

For my part, much as I admire the Sage of Baltimore, I think Bierce the more rounded and sophisticated man and writer.  Mencken had no experience of war, and like many who have not been soldiers could be somewhat cavalier about it.  Mencken was not a traveler, and Bierce seldom stopped wandering.  Finally and at a fairly mature age he ventured into Mexico during the days of Pancho Villa, and may have departed this life as he "predicted" in a letter--stood up against a wall and shot.  It's not known how he died or where he was buried, if indeed he was buried.

Bierce wrote fiction which was at times almost fascinating, similar to that of Poe as in the case of Occurrence at Owl Creek.  The war story he wrote in which a child encounters a group of wounded soldiers slowly crawling in an effort to reach water is chilling.  Bierce was a poet, an epigrammatist, as well as a journalist and critic.  Mencken, wisely I think, didn't venture into those areas.  Mencken was a critic, always.  He was a good one I believe, but his position as an amused, educated, intelligent observer became at times too elevated.  He had elitist tendencies, and was too quick to condemn people based on such characteristics as race and culture; thus his fondness for Nietzsche and his uncomfortably kind review of Mein Kampf.

Bierce was an honest and fierce man who was able to use words well and so was able to communicate peculiarly American experiences in a manner which was direct but also could be ornate, in a classic style.  I doubt he shared with Mencken, Hemingway and others the belief that Huckleberry Finn was the great American novel.  Perhaps in expressing that doubt I'm expressing my own feelings for that work of Twain; it's not a book a favor.  Bierce like Poe and Stephen Crane doesn't have the reputation other American authors have, but I think him far more interesting than most of our writers.

It's unfortunate such people are not given the same regard as the more popular artists we tend to laud excessively, for various reasons.  They are more attractive politically, more easily taught (always important in our Great Republic, where most of us are only taught art), more romantic, more erotic, more normal.  They are not interesting, however.

The soldier-adventurer-author is an attractive figure (and was to such as Hemingway, who longed to be one), and can be a Romantic figure as well.  Bierce was all that but it isn't possible for me to think of him as a Romantic.  The Civil War was in no sense a Romantic war, and Bierce wasn't inclined to rhapsodize about anything.   He was too much of a cynic, in the modern sense at least.  What a life he lead!  One must admire a man who lived as he did.

A Clean Well-Lighted Life

Hemingway is at his best, I think, in his short stories.  The same may be said of Stephen Crane.  In novels, they tend to wander; in their short stories, they make a single point, and that point is sometimes profound.

Someone once said to me that Hemingway is a Stoic author.  This was said in connection with his Old Man and the Sea, but I have some problems making that connection.  I doubt a Stoic would become all that involved in landing a fish, however great the fish might be, and while a Stoic might love nature I think a Stoic would find no pleasure, and surely no grandeur, in killing one of its creatures.  Papa took pleasure in killing many, apparently.  One wonders if he took pleasure in killing himself.

Someone once said to me that Hemingway was bipolar (a guide at his former Key West home).  That may be.  It seems to have run in the family, like alcoholism.  If he was, it would make sense that this would inform his work.

I've always liked A Clean Well-Lighted Place.  Age and a few near-death experiences have given me a different perspective of it, though, which I noted while reading it again the other day.  I was pleased, first, that I didn't feel the same disappointment in rereading him that I felt in rereading Mark Twain.  Perhaps I would have if I read something less precise, though; something like For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Though I flatter myself that I don't yet qualify as an old man, I feel a kind of sympathy with the old man in the story.  I believe I have a better understanding of why he found it hard to sleep.  I suspect he found it hard to sleep because it is hard to sleep, as one grows older; or rather, it is hard to stay asleep.  There are physical reasons for this, of course.  But I think the older one gets the more one has to be distracted, even tricked, into sleeping.  Thus it becomes necessary to read or watch TV for a time, once one is awake, to fall asleep again.  And, it can be useful sometimes to drink, as the old man does.  When one grows old one has more time to drink as well as to think.  So the old man annoys one of the waiters at the cafe.

The older of the waiters admires the old man as he drinks well--neatly and with dignity.  This is important.  When you drink, you shouldn't drink sloppily, noisily, stupidly.  You should do it well, as you struggle to do other things well, like walk away from your drink when it comes time to do so, as does the old man.

The older waiter understands the old man and respects his effort to do what he does well, even if it is merely drinking brandy.  He also understands the fact that it is necessary that where one drinks is important, when you're old.  The place should certainly be clean, I believe.  A mess is self-indulgent.  It is the result of being sloppy and unthinking in your ways.  It indicates you have no respect for yourself, or for others in the case of a bar or tavern.

I don't think it must be well-lighted, though, but it may be that the light is needed to establish the place is clean, and it's more important that it be clean.  I suppose the place may be dimly lit but still well-lighted, though, in some respects.

"Our Nada who art in Nada...."  The story is the story of two men who have no illusions, who perhaps have no hopes, but this does not overwhelm them.  There are things that they can do, that they can enjoy, and they can do them well, regardless of the fact that there may well be Nada.  In doing them well they show respect for themselves and the universe.  Perhaps there was something of the Stoic in Hemingway after all.  It is more the Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius than that of Epictetus, however.

The Dangers of Rereading

I suppose it's not unusual to find that authors you once were fond of, particularly during your adolescence, are not what you thought they were on a second reading.  I remember reading a good deal of Nietzsche, once.  Now, I'm not sure why I took the time to do so.  I suppose he can be said to have proclaimed quite a few things, some of them interesting, but it seems he did not think it significant to explain his many assertions in any reasonable manner.  As I grow older, I tend to think explaining is important; it's a good indication that one has actually thought about what one is contending.  There was a time I read Ayn Rand with something approaching pleasure, delighting in some perverse sense in her solemn and relentless sermonizing.  Now, I find it hard to read her without giggling.

I was surprised, though, to find myself disappointed when reading Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad.  I recalled Twain as being an insightful and thoughful critic of human affairs, and as a great American comic writer.  It was depressing to read his little sketches about this trip to Europe by what appeared to be a number of stock American comic characters, some of whom were characterized as mere buffoons, all of whom were uninteresting.  They seemed to lack all credibility.  Was Twain playing up to some readers back home, who actually found such stuff amusing?  Even his description of the sights of the Azores, Gibraltar and Tangiers, for example, were uninspired.  The foreigners are dirty and smelly, and so for that matter are their cities.

Now, I must confess that I simply stopped reading.  I found myself dreading to read any more, after a time.  It's quite possible that he eventually gave up his hackneyed descriptions of the antics of his fellow voyagers, and that he came to make interesting observations on the people and places he visited.  If so, I didn't have the patience to read on.  This work, and his other works, are apparently the subject of intense study by academics and creative writers.  Perhaps I'm at fault.

But it seemed shoddy stuff, and even if the quality of his writing is attibutable to the fact that he was writing on a deadline, as a journalist, I think he comes off looking rather shabby.  Mencken would have done far better with such subject matter.  Some creative writers can be outstanding journalists as well, e.g. Stephen Crane.  Did they have more respect for the intelligence of their readers, and their own intelligence, than old Sam?  I wonder if he came to be a tiresome parody of himself in time--the folksy humorist.  For that matter, Thurber would have done a better job making the characters amusing.