In "The Red Badge of Courage" invariably the tone is kept down
where one expects a height: the most heroic deeds are accomplished with
studied awkwardness.
Crane was an obscure free-lance when he wrote this book. The effort, he
says, somewhere, "was born of pain--despair, almost." It was a better
piece of work, however, for that very reason, as Crane knew. It is far
from flawless. It has been remarked that it bristles with as many
grammatical errors as with bayonets; but it is a big canvas, and I am
certain that many of Crane's deviations from the rules of polite
rhetoric were deliberate experiments, looking to effect--effect which,
frequently, he gained.
Stephen Crane "arrived" with this book. There are, of course, many who
never have heard of him, to this day, but there was a time when he was
very much talked of. That was in the middle nineties, following
publication of "The Red Badge of Courage," although even before that he
had occasioned a brief flurry with his weird collection of poems called
"The Black Riders and Other Lines." He was highly praised, and highly
abused and laughed at; but he seemed to be "made." We have largely
forgotten since. It is a way we have.
Personally, I prefer his short stories to his novels and his poems;
those, for instance, contained in "The Open Boat," in "Wounds in the
Rain," and in "The Monster." The title-story in that first collection is
perhaps his finest piece of work.
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