Men, Women and Boats

by Stephen Crane

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Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics

245 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1921

About the author

Stephen Crane (1871-1900) was an American novelist, poet and journalist, best known for the novel, The Red Badge of Courage. That work introduced the reading world to Crane's striking prose, a mix of impressionism, naturalism and symbolism. He died at age 28 in Badenweiler, Baden, Germany.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Reviews

[Perry Whitford · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important knack to writing a good short story is come flying out of the blocks with an arresting first sentence. How about this one from 'The Pace of Youth':

'Stimson stood in a corner and glowered. He was a fierce man and had indomitable whiskers, albeit he was very small.'

Straight away we get strong emotion, faint comedy, and a desire to read on. I've never been on a writing course so don't know if they teach it this way but they ought to.

I read nine of the sixteen stories contained here before in the only other collection by Crane I sampled. Most were better than I remembered them to be, especially the trio of war stories.

Of those three 'The End of the Battle,' in which a sergeant and his men defend a house surrounded by the enemy, was entirely brilliant; no Hollywood heroes here, just men in a tight spot.

'The Open Boat' kicks things off in the best possible way, a tragi-comedic shipwreck story where safety is never far from sight. It was based on an actual experience Crane had so I guess that he was 'the correspondent', one of four men forced to row, bail, and curse their way through a couple of days in a wave-tossed dingy.

The three Sullivan County Sketches are camping tales with walk-on parts for a bear, a hermit, and a mountain that moves, sort of. 'The Snake' involves another confrontation between man and beast, a rattler.

Other stories portray various lowdown folk such as cadging hobos, drunken brawlers, abusive fathers, and a poor little dark-brown dog. Some people don't deserve the affection of dogs.

I'm going to be reading more of Crane's sadly curtailed work before long.

[Shirley Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a compilation of short stories and sketches by Stephen Crane. Some of them are serious and others a hilariously funny. Human nature is evident in all of them. I enjoyed mostly "The Open Boat", "The Reluctant Voyagers", "The Upturned Face", "A Tent In Agony", and "The Pace of Youth." It is a quick read, yet was quite enjoyable. Yes, he is the author, of "The Red Badge of Courage". I'm tempted to reread that book for which he most famous. His life was too short as he died of tuberculosis when quite young. I particularly liked part of a paragraph he wrote in a letter to Vincent Starrett a Rochester editor,......"for I understand that a man is born into the world with his own pair of eyes, and he is no tat all responsible for his vision--he is merely responsible for his quality of personal honesty. To keep close to this personal honesty is my supreme ambition."

[elika lor. · Rating 1 out of 5]

I took way too long to finish this book because I got caught up in Uni, but I truly didn’t understand most of the writing within the book. I completely understand this book is around one hundred years old, so of course the text is going to be different than now, but even so, I still managed to push through and get through the whole thing while only being able to picture some small settings and descriptions.

Also, there was hardly any talk about women in this book. Just men and boats, more like.