Stephen Crane's New Year Ordeal: The Open Boat

What will you be doing tonight when 2010 comes onto the scene? We of the Stephen Crane blog will be working at our night job, unfortunately, rather than reading Crane stories aloud into the new year as we'd like to. Still, our labors tonight won't be nearly as bad as Crane's 1897 new year's party aboard the SS Commodore, a little steamer (pictured above) which twice ran up on sand before inconveniently sinking off the Florida coast. Two lifeboats were lowered but one sank, drowning the seven men aboard. The other boat preserved our hero Stephen Crane, the captain, and members of the crew, excepting one fated to die. This ordeal, which can be read in detail at this webpage, was the basis for Crane's most powerful short story, The Open Boat, which can be read online here.

Thankfully Crane was not a Romantic, or he probably would have drown'd at sea. Yet he'd survive for only a handful of years more, and relive The Open Boat experience in nightmares on his deathbed, his diseased lungs drowning him on dry land. Alas, the fatal reach of cruel Poseidon!

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There is at least one film version of The Open Boat floating around, but we haven't located or watched it yet, so if you can help please email or leave a comment below. And keep reading here all through 2010 as we celebrate Stephen Crane stuff!

Christmas Stove & Spanking Story?

We've found another Stephen Crane Christmas story for you this year. It's a Whilomville tale called "The Stove," first published in Harper's, April 1900. The "angel child" and her parents come to visit Jimmie Trescott and family for the Christmas holiday. The girl brings along her prized toy; a working mini-stove, and we're talking cast-iron, not a lightbulb-powered Easy Bake Oven!

Mrs. Trescott puts on a ladies' tea party along with the angel child's mother, but the kids do something to spice up the party, until Dr. Trescott takes things in a different direction with this: "You've hurt her, have you? Well, hurt her again. Spank her!" he cried, enthusiastically. "Spank her, confound you, man! She needs it. Here's your chance. Spank her, and spank her good. Spank her!"

Hard to believe such things are mentioned in a Crane story, is it? Well guess again, and read the tale for yourself. And remember, anything can happen at Christmas time!

Stephen Crane's House

The holidays are a good time for going home, so let's take a peek at the place Stephen Crane called home during his late childhood. 508 Fourth Avenue, Asbury Park, NJ, USA is the address of this holy shrine. Crane's mother moved her children there in 1883, when Stephen was nearly 12 years old. The Crane family retained it until 1899. Nearly a hundred years later, in 1995, Tom and Regina Hayes purchased it and rescued the home from demolition.

According to the Stephen Crane House website run by current owner Frank D'Alessandro, "Since 1995, the house has been the small venue for hundreds of literary, musical, film and other cultural programs all dedicated to the memory of Stephen and his very literary and artistic family."

The next event taking place there will be a December 13th "Season's Reading" and viewing of the film "A Christmas Story." Click here for full information.

We of the Stephen Crane Blog have not yet made it to the Stephen Crane House, but when we do it shall be an earth-shaking pilgrimage and well documented on this blog.

The bird that thwarted the feast

In the days leading up to Thanksgiving, many of us think of birds in terms of gigantic meaty turkey things, wrapped in plastic and perhaps frozen. Such birds, bred for consumption, stand little chance to ruin the feast they are destined for. Unless they are spiteful enough to fall into the hands of an unskilled chef...but even that would not be dramatic enough to compare to the grim role a bird played in the Stephen Crane story "Twelve O'Clock."

In this story a cowboy strolls into a hotel to book a dinner reservation for his troop, numbering...

"Oh, about thirty," replied the cowboy. "An` we want th` best dinner you kin raise an` scrape. Everything th` best. We don`t care what it costs s`long as we git a good square meal. We`ll pay a dollar a head: by God, we will! We won`t kick on nothin` in the bill if you do it up fine. If you ain`t got it in th` house russle th` hull town fer it. That`s our gait. So you just tear loose, an` we`ll -"

At this moment the machinery of a cuckoo-clock on the wall began to whirr, little doors flew open and a wooden bird appeared and cried, "Cuckoo!" And this was repeated until eleven o`clock had been announced, while the cowboy, stupefied, glassy-eyed, stood with his red throat gulping. At the end he wheeled upon Placer and demanded: "What in hell is that?"

This cowboy, aka Jake, then brings his gang to the hotel to see the splendorous cuckoo bird, and let's just say things don't go very well. Not when you throw a rude hotel clerk, a drunken badass, overzealous lawmen, and some mob antics into the mix. Think of The Blue Hotel with a bird replacing the cash register.

Or better yet just read the short story here.

And if that doesn't satisfy your Stephen Crane feasting desires, check out our post from Thanksgiving of last year.

Happy Birthday Stephen Crane!

When you read this it is likely our hero Stephen Crane will have celebrated another birthday. November 1, 1871 happened 138 years ago, so Crane would have been long in the tooth today. To read more about his life, stroll through this blog, the Stephen Crane Society website, or the Crane wikipedia entry in the links on the left.

November 1 also marks the one-year anniversary of this blog. Two Stephen Crane related posts per month for a total of, um, 25 posts. In 2008 we weren't so good with math, so we made one extra post. If you want to reminisce, check out our very first post: http://redblogofcourage.blogspot.com/2008/11/come-worship-stephen-crane-with-me.html

Looking back at the Crane calendar year, we've covered a Blue Hotel play and music cd, a bunch of memorabilia including the Lanthorn book, and we've looked at enough Crane stories to get us through the year. Check out the blog archives if you missed anything.

2010 will see this blog rolling along to more Crane glory! We are always seeking guest comments and posts, so chip in and help this blog grow. Also in 2010 we will be making a major announcement that is gonna surprise the stuffing out of a lot of people in Crane Land. So look to that and much more, after you properly celebrate Stephen Crane's birthday.

Spooky Stephen Crane

Looking at the calendar we are now less than two weeks away from Stephen Crane's birthday. What a glorious day that will be! November 1st also marks the one-year anniversary of this blog. That's right, one full year of celebrating Stephen Crane online nonstop, and we didn't even break a sweat.

Before Crane's birthday we have to endure this thing called Halloween, a time to dress up and pretend, while encouraging little kids to run around bothering strangers for candy. Since we can't fully hide from this day, we can at least taste it with a touch of style, in this case consuming a spooky article by the master.

Crane wasn't known for tales of terror, as Poe was, yet this little piece from an Asbury Park newspaper puts the chill in us with Crane's unmistakable pen knitting visions of a lonesome spectral indian & a ghostly shipwrecked dog, among others.

Zoinks!

Stephen Crane Studies 17.2

Now let's take a look at volume 17, number 2 of Stephen Crane Studies. The first article is "The Sound and the Fury in Stephen Crane's Maggie and George's Mother" by Shunji Kuga. This takes a look at the slang and speech habits of Crane's bowery folk. I'll spoil the surprise for you though...they mostly yell and curse a lot, and utter things like, "What'd hell?". I know many of you do as well.

Next is a piece about "An Unpublished Note and Inscription of Stephen Crane" by George & Jean Houston. The items are on photographs and date from 1897, sent to a man named Eben Alexander. I won't reveal what Crane wrote, you'll have to read Stephen Crane Studies 17.2 to find that out.

"'Our Own Steve Crane' in Chicago," by George Monteiro, samples some funny unsigned parodies of Crane's poetic style that appeared in newspapers during his lifetime. This one was published in the Duluth News-Tribune, August 6,1897:

A man walked along a crooked road.
The road was so twisted that sometimes the man met himself coming back.
"Ah," he said, and smiled. "Nit."
He was a wise man and bought a bottle of Keeley cure.

Last is a review of Patrick Dooley's "A Community of Inquiry: Conversations Between Classical American Philosophy and American Literature" submitted by John Clendenning.