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The Portable Stephen Crane
The Portable Stephen Crane allows us to appreciate the full scope and power of this writer's vision. It contains three complete novels - Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, George's Mother, and Crane's masterpiece, The Red Badge of Courage; nineteen short stories and sketches, including " The Blue Hotel" and "The Open Boat", a barely fictionalized account of his own escape from shipwreck while covering the Cuban revolt against Spain; the previously unpublished essay "Above All Things"; letters and poems, plus a critical essay and notes by the noted Crane scholar Joseph Katz.
550 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1969
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153 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Crane
1,444 books1,028 followersStephen 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.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
May 7, 2019
This was a frustrating reading experience. Crane has the ability to be a great writer. A lot of times he is not, mostly due to his subject matter. 'Maggie A Girl of the Streets' is among the most frustrating tales I've ever encountered. Dickens it's not. Dickens wrote of poor people who held onto their dignity and remained essentially decent despite their circumstances. Crane's characters are turds floating in a septic tank; there isn't a damn thing good about them. They're vicious, cruel, drunkenly, slovenly, and care nothing for their fellow man or animals. (See 'A Dark-Brown Dog' if you want something particularly heinous.) If you enjoy hopeless pessimism about human garbage then this is for you. 'Red Badge of Courage' is something I was forced to read in high school. Didn't like it then, don't care for it now. A coward lucks his way into a medal. How does one root for that? 'Open Boat' and 'Blue Hotel' are very good; they're still pessimistic but so well-told you can overlook it.
My chief gripe here tho is the horrible job of editing by Joseph Katz, a supposed Crane scholar. If 'scholarship' can be defined as littering the text with needless footnotes, as many as 3 per page, that contribute nothing to the story, then Katz is definitely a big time scholar. It's his incompetent editing that earned this book a 3-star rating as all he manages to do is distract the reader and break the flow of the narrative with comments that are needless and useless.
My chief gripe here tho is the horrible job of editing by Joseph Katz, a supposed Crane scholar. If 'scholarship' can be defined as littering the text with needless footnotes, as many as 3 per page, that contribute nothing to the story, then Katz is definitely a big time scholar. It's his incompetent editing that earned this book a 3-star rating as all he manages to do is distract the reader and break the flow of the narrative with comments that are needless and useless.
January 8, 2022
I read a different collection than this one, slightly less comprehensive and compiled in 1924. But since this version has more ratings, I'll add my comments here.
There's a lot to like about Stephen Crane's short stories, and there's a lot that's severely out of date and doesn't work for the modern reader. It's a matter of taste, I think more than many other great writers of the past.
The thing I like best about Crane is his close observation of everyday life. Because he was observing everyday life of 150 years ago, it's especially interesting in both what's different from now and what has remained universal in human nature. Trains were a new technology, and there's a stunning story that is merely a description of the train ride from London to Scotland -- an experience that very few people would have had at the time of his writing. So what's new then is old now.
On the other hand, because he's often writing about city life (when he's not writing about war experiences), we can recognize a lot of similarity to our lives today. Most of America was still rural when Crane was alive, but he spent his time in New York, and he writes beautifully about Eastern Seaboard towns and about London.
Consider this passage, as a traveler's first impression of London, where he's riding in a horse-drawn carriage over smooth asphalt roads, on wheels covered with rubber to deaden the sound.
"It was not too late at night, but this London moved with the decorum and caution of an undertaker. there was a silence, and yet there was no silence. There was a low drone, perhaps a humming contributed inevitably by closely-gathered thousands, and yet on second thoughts it was to me a silence. I had perched my ears for the note of London, the sound made simply by the existence of five million people in one place. I had imagined something deep, vastly deep, a bass from a mythical organ, but found as far as I was concerned, only silence," he writes about London.
And then, in the next paragraph, he contrasts New York City: "New York in numbers is a mighty city, and all day and all night it cries its loud, fierce, aspiring cry, a noise of men beating upon barrels, a noise of men beating upon tin, a terrible racket that assails the subject skies. No one of us seemed to question this row as a certain consequence of three or four million people living together and scuffling for coin, with more agility, perhaps, but otherwise in the usual way. However, after this easy silence of London, which in numbers is a mightier city, I began to feel that there was a seduction in this idea of necessity. Our noise in New York was not a consequence of our rapidity at all. It was a consequence of our bad pavements."
Or this shorter observation in an NYC about a starving man trying to decide how to spend his few pennies on a rainy night: "A saloon stood with a voracious air on a corner. ... The swinging doors, snapping to and from like ravenous lips, made gratified smacks as the saloon gorged itself with plump men, eating with astounding and endless appetite, smiling in some indescribable manner ..."
Wow.
Crane can do trauma like few others. The story "The Open Boat" shows the stoicism and exhaustion of men trying to stay afloat in a wood lifeboat in a storm. "The Brown Dog" is an aching point-of-view story about a loyal dog and his abusing owners. A couple of stories about young women and their beaus show the sadness that always comes when youth leave their parents' homes to build their own lives with their chosen mates. And there's a deeply sad story about a doomed patrol in the Civil War, holed up in a farmhouse and destined to be killed by an enemy of much superior numbers.
While all the above is highly credible, I don't know that most modern readers will like the stories. They often fall into cliche or caricature, particularly about down-and-outers, that's a little grating. And big shares of the humor or satire is lost on me, such as a strange story, "The Reluctant Warriors," or the old world/new world juxtaposition in "The Duel that Was Not Fought." I get where he's going in those two stories, but they are more about the culture and morality of that day than they are great reads now.
Still, every story has its great moments of description, humor, pathos, and so on. I found I was reading more for the nuggets to genius than for the overall effect. And that's ok.
There's a lot to like about Stephen Crane's short stories, and there's a lot that's severely out of date and doesn't work for the modern reader. It's a matter of taste, I think more than many other great writers of the past.
The thing I like best about Crane is his close observation of everyday life. Because he was observing everyday life of 150 years ago, it's especially interesting in both what's different from now and what has remained universal in human nature. Trains were a new technology, and there's a stunning story that is merely a description of the train ride from London to Scotland -- an experience that very few people would have had at the time of his writing. So what's new then is old now.
On the other hand, because he's often writing about city life (when he's not writing about war experiences), we can recognize a lot of similarity to our lives today. Most of America was still rural when Crane was alive, but he spent his time in New York, and he writes beautifully about Eastern Seaboard towns and about London.
Consider this passage, as a traveler's first impression of London, where he's riding in a horse-drawn carriage over smooth asphalt roads, on wheels covered with rubber to deaden the sound.
"It was not too late at night, but this London moved with the decorum and caution of an undertaker. there was a silence, and yet there was no silence. There was a low drone, perhaps a humming contributed inevitably by closely-gathered thousands, and yet on second thoughts it was to me a silence. I had perched my ears for the note of London, the sound made simply by the existence of five million people in one place. I had imagined something deep, vastly deep, a bass from a mythical organ, but found as far as I was concerned, only silence," he writes about London.
And then, in the next paragraph, he contrasts New York City: "New York in numbers is a mighty city, and all day and all night it cries its loud, fierce, aspiring cry, a noise of men beating upon barrels, a noise of men beating upon tin, a terrible racket that assails the subject skies. No one of us seemed to question this row as a certain consequence of three or four million people living together and scuffling for coin, with more agility, perhaps, but otherwise in the usual way. However, after this easy silence of London, which in numbers is a mightier city, I began to feel that there was a seduction in this idea of necessity. Our noise in New York was not a consequence of our rapidity at all. It was a consequence of our bad pavements."
Or this shorter observation in an NYC about a starving man trying to decide how to spend his few pennies on a rainy night: "A saloon stood with a voracious air on a corner. ... The swinging doors, snapping to and from like ravenous lips, made gratified smacks as the saloon gorged itself with plump men, eating with astounding and endless appetite, smiling in some indescribable manner ..."
Wow.
Crane can do trauma like few others. The story "The Open Boat" shows the stoicism and exhaustion of men trying to stay afloat in a wood lifeboat in a storm. "The Brown Dog" is an aching point-of-view story about a loyal dog and his abusing owners. A couple of stories about young women and their beaus show the sadness that always comes when youth leave their parents' homes to build their own lives with their chosen mates. And there's a deeply sad story about a doomed patrol in the Civil War, holed up in a farmhouse and destined to be killed by an enemy of much superior numbers.
While all the above is highly credible, I don't know that most modern readers will like the stories. They often fall into cliche or caricature, particularly about down-and-outers, that's a little grating. And big shares of the humor or satire is lost on me, such as a strange story, "The Reluctant Warriors," or the old world/new world juxtaposition in "The Duel that Was Not Fought." I get where he's going in those two stories, but they are more about the culture and morality of that day than they are great reads now.
Still, every story has its great moments of description, humor, pathos, and so on. I found I was reading more for the nuggets to genius than for the overall effect. And that's ok.
January 20, 2022
I got this book from the NYRB, which seems a little strange since it is not a new book. Maybe the review was more about how Crane wrote a lot of different stories, magazine and newspaper articles, not just The Red Badge of Courage. Interestingly, Crane was not in the Civil War; he made the whole thing up! It was the book that made him famous at 24.
Crane is Jersey guy! Born in Newark in 1871, his father died when he was 9 and his mother moved Crane, his brother and sister to Asbury Park, which is about 15 minute south of here. He worked for his brother Townley's New Jersey Coast News Bureau. His mother died when he was 21 and he moved to New York city. Later he wrote for the New York Tribune; uncle Tom Lambert wrote for the merged paper (The New York Herald Tribune) years later.
Crane wrote many stories or newspaper articles about people living in crappy neighborhoods of NYC. Since most of the stuff was written from around 1893-1900, it's sort of 'old timey.' That's just the way things were written back then. But they are very well written. There is despair for all of the main characters, they're poor and there isn't a way for them to get out of their lousy neighborhoods and boozed-up families. Thoreau said, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation." Thoreau died in 1862. These are their stories.
The stories cover a young pretty girl (Maggie: A Girl of the Streets), a slum dweller with a drunk for mother and father. There's a story about Crane's real life experience of being on a boat carrying guns through the American naval blockade of Cuba; the boat sinks and it's just four men in a small boat on the stormy ocean trying to get to shore (The Open Boat).
These are good stories or articles. He gets inside how people feel about their lives. A few of the stories are about children and he shows what they think when they're made fun of or bullied.
Highlights...
- "There are those who have opportunities, there are those who are robbed of them."
- of two bums sitting on a bench. "slumbrously conscious of the march of the hours which for them had no meaning."
These are good 'old timey' stories. Crane was definitely rooting for the luckless and donwtrodden.
Crane is Jersey guy! Born in Newark in 1871, his father died when he was 9 and his mother moved Crane, his brother and sister to Asbury Park, which is about 15 minute south of here. He worked for his brother Townley's New Jersey Coast News Bureau. His mother died when he was 21 and he moved to New York city. Later he wrote for the New York Tribune; uncle Tom Lambert wrote for the merged paper (The New York Herald Tribune) years later.
Crane wrote many stories or newspaper articles about people living in crappy neighborhoods of NYC. Since most of the stuff was written from around 1893-1900, it's sort of 'old timey.' That's just the way things were written back then. But they are very well written. There is despair for all of the main characters, they're poor and there isn't a way for them to get out of their lousy neighborhoods and boozed-up families. Thoreau said, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation." Thoreau died in 1862. These are their stories.
The stories cover a young pretty girl (Maggie: A Girl of the Streets), a slum dweller with a drunk for mother and father. There's a story about Crane's real life experience of being on a boat carrying guns through the American naval blockade of Cuba; the boat sinks and it's just four men in a small boat on the stormy ocean trying to get to shore (The Open Boat).
These are good stories or articles. He gets inside how people feel about their lives. A few of the stories are about children and he shows what they think when they're made fun of or bullied.
Highlights...
- "There are those who have opportunities, there are those who are robbed of them."
- of two bums sitting on a bench. "slumbrously conscious of the march of the hours which for them had no meaning."
These are good 'old timey' stories. Crane was definitely rooting for the luckless and donwtrodden.
April 15, 2024
The Portable Stephen Crane by Stephen Crane, edited by Joseph Katz (Viking Press 1969) (818) (3933).
Before author Stephen Crane’s death at 28, he wrote two memorable novels and a number of well-regarded short stories along with other assorted literary output. This is a collection of some of his best-regarded work.
Having previously read two of the works reprinted here (The Red Badge of Courage (1895) and Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893)), I picked up this volume to read “The Open Boat” (1897), which has been called one of the finest short stories ever written.
“The Open Boat” is Crane’s thinly-disguised autobiographical account of a terrifying experience in 1896 in which the ship aboard which he was bound for Cuba sank at sea, and Crane spent parts of two days drifting in a small dinghy before being rescued.
Now that I have finished “The Open Boat,” I am also finished with Stephen Crane. Yes, “The Open Boat” was scary. Yes, surviving a ship’s sinking would be a memorable experience. But no, this story doesn’t rise to the heights promised by reviewers. While it is a well-told tale, I fail to see what all the fuss was about.
Having thus completed reading Crane’s most-praised works (and thus the majority of the instant volume The Portable Stephen Crane), I declare my foray into the works of Stephen Crane to be at an end.
My rating: 7/10, finished 4/14/24 (3933).
May 23, 2019
I feel a little silly reviewing the work of Stephen Crane. I can only say that it had been a long time since I read The Red Badge of Courage, which is of course included in this anthology, and it was better than I remembered. Crane's almost poetic ability to recreate atmosphere and the psychology of characters in this and his other works is nothing short of awe-inspiring. The only hard to read story, The Knife, is hard to read because it deals with racist issues. I am sure it accurately portrays the power dynamics between whites and poor African-Americans, but it is based on the idea of the African-American as trickster. Certainly a survival technique, but still the story gave me a very uneasy feeling.
December 2, 2019
A generous selection of the most important work of Crane. All that you are likely to need or want by this author.
Crane's prose is not difficult except for the instances of dialect which do require extra reading effort.
The author was perhaps the earliest American contributor to the naturalism genre. All of the material associated with the "Maggie" character and milieu are really depressing. Zola's novels were also depressing but far more vivid and deeper in character. His variation on naturalism is usually referred to as realism.
In this collection my favorites were "The Red Badge" and several of the short stories.
Crane's prose is not difficult except for the instances of dialect which do require extra reading effort.
The author was perhaps the earliest American contributor to the naturalism genre. All of the material associated with the "Maggie" character and milieu are really depressing. Zola's novels were also depressing but far more vivid and deeper in character. His variation on naturalism is usually referred to as realism.
In this collection my favorites were "The Red Badge" and several of the short stories.
April 11, 2025
I reread the “Red Badge of Courage” and the rest of Cranes fiction after reading Paul Auster’s biography of Crane. Both books were excellent. Crane led a fascination though short life. (Died at 27) but was a master short story writer. It’s too bad he did not have a longer literary career. He would have been even more outstanding as an icon of 20th century American literature.
October 4, 2009
This book is THE BOOK to have: Maggie, Red Badge, and most if not all of his short stories, plus letters to people and poems.
-----------------------
“Above All Things”
It might perhaps be said—if any one dared—that the most worthless literature of the world has been that which has been written by the men of one nation concerning the men of another.
“A Letter from Stephen Crane to Demorest’s Family Magazine” [ca. May, 1896:]
I have heard a great deal about genius lately, but genius is a very vague word; and as far as I am concerned I do not think it has been rightly used. Whatever success I have had has been the result simply of imagination coupled with great application and concentration. It has been a theory of mine ever since I began to write, which was eight years ago, when I was sixteen, that the most artistic and the most enduring literature was that which reflected life accurately. Therefore I have tried to observe closely, and to set down what I have seen in my writing. Preaching is fatal to art in literature. I try to give readers a slice out of life; and if there is any moral or lesson in it I do not point it out. I let the reader find it for himself. As Emerson said, “there should be a long logic beneath the story, but it should be kept carefully out of sight.”
Before “The Red Badge of Courage” was published I often found it difficult to make both ends meet. The book was written during this period. It was an effort born of pain, and I believe that this was beneficial to it as a piece of literature. It seems a pity that this should be,--that art should be a child of suffering; and yet such seems to be the case. Of course there are fine writers who have good incomes and live comfortably and contentedly; but if the conditions of their lives were harder, I believe that their work would be better.
Personally, I like my little book of poems, “The Black Riders,” better than I do “The Red Badge of Courage.” The reason is, I suppose, that the former is the more ambitious effort. In it I aim to give my ideas of life as a whole, so far as I know it, and the latter is a mere episode,--an amplification. Now that I have reached the goal for which I have been working ever since I began to write, I suppose I ought to be contented; but I am not. I was happier in the old days when I was always dreaming of the thing I have now attained. I am disappointed with success. Like many other things we strive for, it proves when obtained to be an empty and a fleeting joy.
"The Open Boat"
Presently it seemed that even the captain dozed, and the correspondent thought that he was the one man afloat on all the oceans. The wind had a voice as it came over the waves, and it was sadder than the end.
-----------------------
“Above All Things”
It might perhaps be said—if any one dared—that the most worthless literature of the world has been that which has been written by the men of one nation concerning the men of another.
“A Letter from Stephen Crane to Demorest’s Family Magazine” [ca. May, 1896:]
I have heard a great deal about genius lately, but genius is a very vague word; and as far as I am concerned I do not think it has been rightly used. Whatever success I have had has been the result simply of imagination coupled with great application and concentration. It has been a theory of mine ever since I began to write, which was eight years ago, when I was sixteen, that the most artistic and the most enduring literature was that which reflected life accurately. Therefore I have tried to observe closely, and to set down what I have seen in my writing. Preaching is fatal to art in literature. I try to give readers a slice out of life; and if there is any moral or lesson in it I do not point it out. I let the reader find it for himself. As Emerson said, “there should be a long logic beneath the story, but it should be kept carefully out of sight.”
Before “The Red Badge of Courage” was published I often found it difficult to make both ends meet. The book was written during this period. It was an effort born of pain, and I believe that this was beneficial to it as a piece of literature. It seems a pity that this should be,--that art should be a child of suffering; and yet such seems to be the case. Of course there are fine writers who have good incomes and live comfortably and contentedly; but if the conditions of their lives were harder, I believe that their work would be better.
Personally, I like my little book of poems, “The Black Riders,” better than I do “The Red Badge of Courage.” The reason is, I suppose, that the former is the more ambitious effort. In it I aim to give my ideas of life as a whole, so far as I know it, and the latter is a mere episode,--an amplification. Now that I have reached the goal for which I have been working ever since I began to write, I suppose I ought to be contented; but I am not. I was happier in the old days when I was always dreaming of the thing I have now attained. I am disappointed with success. Like many other things we strive for, it proves when obtained to be an empty and a fleeting joy.
"The Open Boat"
Presently it seemed that even the captain dozed, and the correspondent thought that he was the one man afloat on all the oceans. The wind had a voice as it came over the waves, and it was sadder than the end.
July 6, 2009
Stephen Crane is certainly the father of the contemporary American novel. I hadn't read Crane for years and was surprised--or at least had forgotten-- to see how perfect he holds up. I especially like the street novels and short stories. However, I still cannot read The Open Boat, which was forced on me i college. I hated it then, and I hated it now, so I just skipped it. Re-reading Crane is depressing., too. It reminds me of how perfectly dreadful the American novel has become. Who really care about neurotic suburbanites.
September 8, 2011
I've had this book on my shelf for awhile but am just now beginning to work through it. Editor Joseph Katz has distilled about 600 pages of Crane's poetry, fiction and personal correspondence into five "parts." The only one I have read so far is "Part Two: The World of Henry Fleming," anchored by The Red Badge of Courage. Anyway, independently, Crane's many works are hard to love; five stars for this volume that highlights and contextualizes the best of his short but prolific career.
October 8, 2015
I only picked this up for The Red Badge of Courage. I quite enjoyed the story and the touch of social commentary that it provided. It's always interesting to read older fiction to see both how alike and how different living conditions, social views, and opinions are. The last 3 chapters, originally unpublished in the first newspaper printing, were very interesting. I like Henry's rage against the generals who belittled the accomplishments of his regiment.
July 3, 2008
Don't forget his short stories.
May 17, 2015
Crane is an underrated writer. I really enjoyed this collection.
April 26, 2021
My favorite short story was "The Monster."
February 18, 2008
Many of his writings in here. Very discriptive.
February 23, 2015
Crane. Short stories are best. Love "The Open Boat." Loved what he tried to do in MAGGIE, also.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews