Stephen Crane, Journalist: a Prismatic Career in the Gilded Age
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Central Washington University ScholarWorks@CWU All Master's Theses Master's Theses 1963 Stephen Crane, Journalist: A Prismatic Career in the Gilded Age Donna M. Hughes Central Washington University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/etd Part of the Higher Education Commons, and the Liberal Studies Commons Recommended Citation Hughes, Donna M., "Stephen Crane, Journalist: A Prismatic Career in the Gilded Age" (1963). All Master's Theses. 401. https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/etd/401 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Master's Theses at ScholarWorks@CWU. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@CWU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STEPHEN CRANE, JOURNALIST: A PRISMATIC CAREER IN THE GILDED AGE ~l '~~t'~~-·. l.\W''"l'~' ... ·'tf, A Thesis Presented to the Graduate Faculty Central Washington State College In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Education by Donna M. Hughes December 1963 'FJOl1::>31103 1Vl::J3dS <;.fh3 H £. tl..l.. 9 Cl'I APPROVED FOR THE GRADUATE FACULTY ________________________________ David Burt, COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN _________________________________ Gerald L. Moulton _________________________________ Keith Rinehart ACKNOWLEDGMENT This thesis is the outgrowth o! a Crane-Hemingway seminar conducted at Central Washington College in the summer of 1962. I am profoundly indebted to David Burt for his inspiration, counsel, and criticism. He encour aged this study by a willingness to listen and by stimu lating inquiry. His scholarship concerning Ernest Hemingway made his suggestions invaluable and enriched my insight into Crane's writing. His keen criticism and patience to read and reread my paper have been a source ot inestimable help at all times. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. iii INTRODUCTION . 1 Chapter I. A CRil'lSON BLOTCH: THE TRIBUNE YEARS AND THE BOWERY, 1891-1894. • • • · · · · · . 17 II. A BLUE FUTURE: THE BACHELLER SYNDICATE AND THE WEST, 1894-1897· . 78 III. A YELLOW PRESS: THE PULITZER-HEARST YEARS AND WAR, 1897-1900 • . · · . 142 BIBLIOGRAPHY •• . 220 iv INTRODUCTION Between 1891 and 1900 Stephen Crane wrote a place for himself in American literature. Poet, novelist, play wright, short story writer, journalist--his creative output was prodigious. Although he died when he was twenty-eight, Crane's writings fill more than twelve volumeso Eighty-six sketches and tales, five novels, one play, three books of verse and over one hundred and twenty-eight newspaper arti cles are credited to Crane from the ten years that encompass his writing life (138:xii). Much of his fame is based on the American classic, The Red Badge of Courage; but he is recognized also for Maggie, the first naturalistic novel in American literature; "The Open Boat, 11 an excellent short story based on experience, and which employs symbolism and sentence structure exemplifying the rise and fall of the waves which menace the ten-foot craft; three books of poetry termed 11 imagist impressionism 11 twenty years before the "imagist" poets; a Cuban war dispatch, "Red Badge of Courage Was His Wig-Wag Flag, 11 which is one of the best written pieces of journalism to come out of a much publicized war, and "The Blue Hotel," which foreshadows Hemingway at his best. Crane's work still commands a great deal of inter pretation and criticism. Crane is a paradoxical figure since he was a product of his time, yet some of his work 2 is a harbinger of modern literature. Some of his work is unquestionably related to what was being written at the time. Jimmie Trescott is a counterpart of Twain's Tom Sawyer and Tarkington's Penrod (80:Vo1.5,xi); the Sulli ~ County Sketches are kin to the style of Kipling, Poe, and Bierce (12:41); the wry observations, stilted phrases and hyperbole of the early tales and articles echo Josh Billings, Artemus Vard, and Petroleum V. Nasby (132:19)· Despite all of these parallels, among the avant-garde writ ers of the 1890's, Crane most clearly prefigures twentieth eentury literature. Using two modes of creation, imagined experience and actual experience, Crane created The Red Badge of Courage and "The Open Boat," which are credited with beginning two main technical movements in modern fiction--realism and symbolism (138:vii). These accom plishments point up the importance of Crane the writer in American literature. Crane is a worthy subject for study because of the diverse writers who acknowledge his literary worth and their dependence on his accomplishments. Mencken, Hemingway, Dos Passos, Sandburg, Amy Lowell, Dreiser, and Villa Cather com pose part of the listing (93:v). Crane also invites study because of the range of estimation of his work.1 Crane 1stallman (138:vii) places Crane "among the half dozen major artists • • • in the nineteenth century--not 3 causes speculation because of the bizarre tales which sur round his legendary figure2 and because of "metoric" development of his style as a writer.3 Crane typifies the American writer of the past and present. American society in the late nineteenth century had begun to acquire charac teristics which set it apart from its European origins; modern American literature is a search for a new literary idiom which would correspond with and reflect these changeso Crane exemplifies this search for a new style, a new tech nique, and a new subject.4 Crane's work is a literature of in the first rank with Hawthorne and Melville and Henry James but • • • in the second rank with Poe and Howells and Twain." Gibson (93:xv) terms him "a naturalist whose sense of form and proportion and of intense human loyalties allies him with the best of his contemporaries and their successors in the twentieth century." Eric Solomon (14: 323) writes "In spite of the abundance of war novels pro duced by two world conflicts, The Red Badge of Courage is still the masterwork of war fiction. • • • it has rarely been approached in scope or intensity since it was first published in 1895· 11 Another critic, Mo Solomon places the Civil Var novel in nthe great tradition of classic litera ture, from the J~Q.. Q}L QI Job and the Oresteia to Hamlet and Egmont" (14:281). 2 C,rCl~e. · Cady (17:Ch.1J~eompares to Chatterton and states "He blazed intensely, even scandalously, on the public i;;cene." 3uFrom his very first sketches it becomes evident that here.is the rarest of artistic phenomena--a literary prodigy" (104:7). He "sprang into life fully armed,u said Howells~ 4 From the time the American society began, it pos- sessed some special characteristics that separated it from 4 rebellion and a search for a national vernacularo The amount of research being done on his work and the vast areas which are left open for examination, make Crane of continuing interest.5 The speculation, re-examination, and interest in Crane has varied a great deal in the years since his death. His popularity in the 1900's fell as rapidly as it had risen in the ninetieso He seemed doomed to literary obscu rity until the twenties when a collection of some of his European societies, but it demanded even more originality than in its new people and places in literatureo Irving, Cooper, Hawthorne treated local folklore, frontier life, and religion, and later Poe and 'Whitman strove for a new, distinctly American poetry. Ganerally these efforts were individual and short-lived. Mark Twain, more than any other man, made American literature strictly .American. One reason can be found in Paine's comment, urn spite of the immediate success of his book (Innocents Abroad)--a success the like of which had scarcely been known in Alner ica--Mark Twain held himself to be, not a literary man, but a journalist" (112:162). His stories and tales were written originally for newspaper publication. His use of vernacular speech in The Adventures of Tom Sa!Yer is the first time a great author had written as .Americans actually spoke. The search for the vernacular continued in Crane's work and can still be found even in a modern like Eudora W'elty. 5one critic feels that Crane critics have over simplified while Crane is "more complex, less categoriz able than presented.u Furthermore "He has been neglected as athlete, sportsman, and outdoorsman; as an intellectual of his age; as aspiring gentleman and moralist; and even ••• as an existentialist saint for all time. And interpretations of his work have been tyrannized by unitary views of the man and mind" (17:8). 5 short stories was made by Starrett in Men, Yomen and Boats in 1921. Thomas Beer's biography followed in 1923. A fac tor which dampened enthusiasm and interest in Crane was the scarcity of his published writing. Consequently, he in creased in popularity in the twenties when the twelve volumes of his York were published in 1925-27. Interest in his work lagged again in the thirties and heightened during the for ties. Williams and Starrett aided in 1948 with their Stephen Crane: ~ Bibliograph.y. John Berryman•s Stephen Crane cor rects and adds to Beer's picture of the man. A small but important group of letters followed in 1954, Stephen Crane's Love Letters to Nellie Crouse. The little-known Sullivan County Sketches became available to the public in 1949 when Schoberlin published the ten early sketches, seven of which had never appeared in book form. Linson•s !:!z Stephen Crane, published in 1958, throws light on a previously dim period, the years between Crane's Syracuse University days and his sudden fame in 1895 with the publication of The Red Badge 21.