On Dec. 13, I mentioned that I was reading Paul Auster’s book on the life and work of Stephen Crane. It took more than three months to read it.
It’s a long book, 738 pages plus notes and index, but I was reading slowly, pencil in hand. The margins are full of notes. Burning Boy is the kind of book that I can’t borrow from the library. I don’t so much read such books as digest them.
I think this is a wonderful book, but you might not. I admire Auster’s work, and Crane’s “The Open Boat” shook me awake when I was a teenager. I read it and decided I wanted to write short stories. Crane might not have the same affect on you and therefore couldn’t interest you in the way he interests me.
Crane died at 29. He struck people in vastly different ways. Some writers, such as Joseph Conrad, wrote perceptive things about him. Others, such as Willa Cather, seem to have been opaque. One of the most illuminating things in the book is a description of Crane by Otto Carmichael of the Minneapolis Times. They both worked as correspondents in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Carmichael described Crane this way:
• “A Bohemian.”
• “Absolutely worthless except for what he did.”
• “Irresponsible and unmanageable.”
• Not a newsman. Any city editor would have fired him within a week.
• “Nothing vicious about him or reckless.” He was just “serenely indifferent.” Meaning: “… trifles would change him and big things would not stop him; fancy would hold him to a place and money would not move him from it.”
• In other words, Crane simply followed his interests, and his main interest was danger, how people react to it. Crane didn’t fear it. He was fascinated by it.
Some people live that way because they have to live that way. They have to follow their own interests.
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