Transcripts For CSPAN2 Booknotes 20141101

A think as therapy, but oddly enough ive been writing in a way if i need to explain it to somebody and recently ive had a friend read it and she said you should really think about sharing this with somebody else. Maybe should turn it into some sort of boat. I was like that kind of ridiculous, but i started thinking about it in reworking everything. I thought if i did share with someone i would feel so guilty about sharing everything that i would want to do it under a pen name. I am curious if you ever felt any guilt for the things he wrote and if so, how you decided to be there right under your own name or not to the pen name because in my head im thinking i feel really killed the about right in the same general matter how many people read it i would want to pen name it. Im sorry, did you say you feel guilty . Wow. I dont think ive ever felt guilty about anything ive written. If anything, it has been very cathartic and empowering to go back and revisit my past and make peace with it. So it would have never occurred to me to write under a pen name. But i think it is great that you are writing and that you showed your work to a friend. I think that in itself is huge because i think i used to be really afraid to show my work to anybody. But i think, are you writing very personal things about people . You can always change everybodys names and hair color. That always helps. [laughter] i am a journalist, writes so im not a sociologist. I feel no obligation to protect somebody, to protect my sources. I think you have to think about what your purpose is and who your audience is. One of the things i want to say is lets be honest about American History and lets be honest about what our ancestors did and how he benefited from it and only, nonracist people armed with knowledge of the past can make this country live up to its goals. Its not enough just not to be racist. You also have to know the injury and those two things allow us to move forward. So i dont feel a lot of guilt. I also believe that great writing requires you to take all your clothes off and run into the public square. [laughter] [applause] linda davis appeared on booknotes in 1998 to discuss her book, badge of courage the life of Stephen Crane. She talked about Stephen Cranes life in the story behind badge of courage his most popular book. Ms. Davis talked about the challenges to become a published author in the 19th century. Cspan linda h. Davis, author of badge of courage the life of Stephen Crane, where did you get the idea for this book . Guest well, about 10 years ago, i happened to read Stephen Cranes great short work monster, which is not very wellknown. Its about a man who saves the life of a child in a fire and is horribly disfigured. Hehe lived, but he lives as a man without a face. And it touched a nerve for me because, when i was eight years old, my father lost his life in a house fire while trying to save me. And ever afterwards, i was tormented by dreams in which i couldnt see his face. And what crane had done in this novella was write my nightmare, in effect. There are a lot of small scenes, too, that were eerily like what happened to me when i was a child. And i thought who was Stephen Crane that he can write this way about a fire . I just had to know, and thats what got me started. Cspan where were you living when theyour father lost his life . Guest i was living in ft. Rucker, alabama. My father was a soldier, which Stephen Crane wanted to be at one time. He was a career man and hed been through the korean war and he was in Flight School in ft. Rucker. And it was just a house fire. Hed been through combat and all, and lost his life in a house fire, an irony that Stephen Crane wouldve appreciated. Cspan and you were saved . Guest i was saved, but not by my father. My father, i think, had underestimated how hot the fire was. He had to make his way down a hall to my bedroom and was overcome. He actually ended up bypassing my bedroom, ended up in the den right next to our room, found himself next to the desk where the telephone was and managed to call an operator for help. And apparently, a beam dislodged from the ceiling, knocked him unconscious, and thenand he died. In the meantime, one of thethis was on an army base, ft. Ruckerone of the men across the street thought to come around to the back to get me out and managed to pull this very heavy screen offi guess it was the adrenaline goingandand he got me out. He got. Cspan again, you. Guest he got the soldiers medal for that. Cspan again, you were how old . Guest i was eight years old. Cspan what do you rememdo you remember it . Guest i do. The things i remember are really the things that ive always been aware of remembering since i was a child. I have little patches of memory. I remember, for instance, the smell of the fire, but i dont remember seeing it or seeing smoke. The man who saved my life, who was retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in the army, dale harbert, told me that when he reached his arm in to pull me out, the smoke was really, really thick in my room and the doctor who examined me later told my mother that just a couple of minutes later, i wouldve been gone from smoke inhalation. But i dont remember seeing it. Captain harbert, at the time, told me to keep my head downdont remember that at all. I just remember this arm kind of reaching through and pulling me out and scraping my knee on a picnic table. Cspan did your dad ever regain consciousness . Guest no. No. Cspan and you read the monster knowing this, Stephen Cranes novel . Guest i knew that it had something to do with a man disfigured in a fire and i was curious about it, but i didnt know any of the details and i didnt know cranes work at all i somehow had missed the red badge and his other great short stories, so. Cspan where were you living when you did this . Guest when. Cspan when you read the monster . Guest when i read the monster . I was living in massachusetts. Cspan doing what . Guest i was in between books at the time. Id finished my first book and i was casting about for another idea, but i really wasnt thinking of doing another biography, so it kind of came out of the blue. Cspan what was your first biography . Guest it was of the new yorker Magazine Editor Katharine White. Cspan and what had gotten you interested in that . Guest well, i was a fan of the new yorker and of e. B. Whites writing in particular. When i was in graduate school in boston, letters of e. B. White were published and i read it and thought that it was a wonderful love story, really, about a man and his wife in addition to other things. I became very interested in Katharine White and started reading a little bit about her, and then during the summer of 1977, she died and William Shawn wrote an absolutely magnificent obituary on the last page of the new yorker. And i wrote a condolence note to e. B. White a couple of months later, and that started a correspondence. Cspan before we leave this subject. Guest mmhmm. Cspan . Who was e. B. White and when did he live . Guest e. B. White is bestknown as a Great American essayist and prose stylist and the author of three childrens books, including charlottes web, and he died i think it is exactly 13 years ago this fall. I remember because we went to the Memorial Service and took our oneyearold daughter, and she was the only baby there, and shell be 14, so i think its 13 years ago he died. Cspan did you get to know him at all . Guest i did pretty well, yeah. Cspan what was he like . Guest he was a very shy and very private man, but once you got to know him and he felt comfortable with you, he was very charming, very unpretentious, down to earth, a little bit of a crusty new englander, very ordinary, not the literary man that you might expect, not a great reader. He read the newspaper. He was a little behind inin book reading. He told me that just a few years earlier, hed finally got around to reading gone with the wind. This is just a few years before i met him. Cspan so youyou read the monster. Guest mmhmm. Cspan . You first introduction to Stephen Crane, and now herewhat . If i read correctly, eight years later, you got a book. What did you do next . Guest after i read the monster, you mean . Cspan mmhmm. Guest well, it was also around that time that there was an article in the New York Times about a new edition of cranes letters that were coming out edited by Stanley Wertheim and paul sorrentino, and there was a very interesting piece in the New York Times by Herbert Mitgang in which Stanley Wertheim said that a very new Stephen Crane emerged in these lettershundreds of new letters had come on the market. And the crane of legend proved to be very different fromfrom the real crane. And i did a little research, and seemed that hed been very underdone as a subject of biography, so it was. Cspan here were have an 1895 picture. Guest mmhmm. Cspan . Of him. Guest mmhmm. Cspan what was he doing in 1895 . Guest well, lets see. He had written the red badge of couragethat picture was taken here in washington, interestingly enough, and he fixed himself up to look nice for the camera. He was becoming famous for the red badge of courage, and he was here trying to write a political novel, actually, but he gave up on it. Cspan why . Guest he just felt that he couldnt understand politicians, couldnt get the hang of em. Cspan now i went looking for the red badge of courage after reading your bookor, in the middle of reading your book, and i found one of these. Guest mmhmm. Cspan . For 1, dover thrift editions, Stephen Cranes red babadge of courage, 100 pages. What is thissomebody thats never read this bookand why does it keep Stephen Crane in front of us after all these years . Guest mm. Well, of course, itsits considered one of the great novels of the civil war, if not the greatest novel ever written about the civil war. It depends on whose point of view it is. I think that the reason it lives and it speaks to us today is that crane wrote it, as he said, as a psychological portrayal of fear, and even those of us whove never been through combat, never been near a war zone, we all know what it is to be afraid. I think a. J. Liebling put it best when he called it, its about a boy in a dragons wood, and its timeless. cspan and whenwhen you read this, what was your reaction to it . Guest well, honestly, the red badge is not my favorite of cranes works. I think that there are certain passages in it, including the opening paragraph, which are among the most beautiful and arresting in all of literature. Cspan why dont you read it . Guest the rethe opening paragraph . Cspan opening paragraph, so people who have never read it can get some sense of. Guest i have to put my reading glasses on. Cspan well, i can read it if youif you dont have your glasses. Guest you read it. Cspan the cold passed reluctantly from the earth and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened and began to tremble with eagerness at the noises of rumors. It cast its eye upon the roads which were growing from long troughs of liquid mud to proper thoroughfares. A river, ambertinted in the shadow of its banks, purled at the armys feet, and at night, when the stream had become of a sorrowful blackness, one can see across it the red eyelike gleam of hostile campfires set in the low brows of distant hills. why is that so special . Guest well, the quality of the writing is absolutely magnificent. I mean, he instantly brings the picture of this army restingi love the way he places the word resting at the end of that sentenceto life, the wonderful changes in colorsitsits like a painting. You can just absolutely see this army on the hill. Cspan how long did it take him to write this . Guest the entire book . Cspan red badge of courage. Guest well, he said himselfand he was not always very accurate and precise about time and dates, but hehe said himself that he began the book late in his 21st year and finished it early in his 22nd year. Now that would mean the rough draft or a good revised draft. He made alterations after that, and its awful to think that somebody couldve written a masterpiece essentially in about six months, but. Cspan but its real short. Guest it is short, yeah, but its beautifully done. Cspan where did he write it . Guest he wrote it at his brothers house in lakeview, new jersey, and then he also wrote some of it in new york, in an apartment in new york on the lower east side. Cspan and when you started out to find out all about Stephen Crane, whered you go . Guest well, i went to various locations around the United States, to new yorknew york state, where hed gone to school in new jersey. Cspan where did he go to school . Guest well, he went to syracuse university, where i went as an undergraduate, in fact. He went to lafayette college, which is no longer in existence, pennington seminary. Yes, thats it. Mmhmm. Cspan and how long did he spend in those places . Guest well, lets see. He went away to pennington seminary when he was 14. He was there a couple of years. Then he went to Claverack College and hudson river institute, which was a semimilitary school, for a couple of years. He was at lafayette for one semester and then at syracuse for one semester, and thats when his experiment with college ended, as he said. Cspan and along the way, did you begin to change your attitude or did you begin to get excited, or what was your reaction to what you were learning . Guest well, i was really excited aboutabout writing a biography of him from the very beginning because i felt this deep, deep connection with him. Empathy is the whole key to writing a biography. You dont need to know all the facts up front. And i just liked him better and better as the years went on. I empathized with him more. I justii really grew to love him as a human being as well as as a writer. Cspan how long did he live . Guest he lived 28 years. Cspan what year did he die . Guest he died in 1900. Cspan where did he die . Guest in badenweiler, germany. Cspan did he every marry and have children . Guest he did not marry. He had a commonlaw wife named cora taylor who went by the wayby the name of cora crane. She was actually legally married to a british officer who would not divorce her. And he never had children that we know of. Cspan how did he write about the civil war without ever seeing battle . Guest well, he was very knowledgeable about the civil war. One of his older brothers, william, was very, very knowledgeable. He learned a lot from him. He read a lot. Its unclear exactly what books and things he mightve read growing up, but in the months preceding the actual writing of the war novel, he was reading old issues of the century magazine, which for years ran piecememoirs and pieces on the civil warvery dry, but they were the sorts of things from which he could pick up a lot of details about army life and camp life. So he was extremely knowledgeable about the facts of the civil war. Also, when crane was growing up, there were an awful lot of civil war veterans around. Crane was born, after all, in 1871, and so there were a lot of veterans for him to talk to. Cspan youactually, reading your book, i felt like i was where he wrote and all that kind of thing. Thisback to the century magazines, where was it that he started reading his firstthe guest he was at his artist friend Corwin Knapp Linsons studio in new york, and linson was painting and crane just wandered in and flopped down on a sofa one day and grabbed these magazines, which linson collected, and started reading them while his friend was painting. And after a couple of hours or so of reading, hed fling them down on the floor in hot disgust and say, you know, these fellows spout eternally of what they did, but they never say how they feel. They are as emotionless as rocks. and he started getting excited then about writing his own civil war novel. He wanted to know what did it feel like to be in a war . Cspan so if somebody reads the red badge of courage, what can they learn about war . Guest i think they get a wonderful, wonderful sense of place, of what it feels like to live in an army camp in the time in a makeshift tent, to live on hardtack andand coffee, to spend your time endlessly drilling and marching. Theyll learn a lot about the tedium of war, not of actual combat but all the waiting that soldiers go through before they actually get into the fight. They will not learn specifics about particular civil war battles. He rarely mentionsthe name longstreet, general longstreet, crops up in one of his civil war pieces, but thats highly unusual. He deliberately omitted all reference to specifics, geographical specifics and names and battles, because he wanted to make his battle a type in order to do what he was trying to do, which was to, as i said, portray fear. Cspan when shelby foote was here, he told us that when he wrote the civil war series that he went to all the battlefields on the same day that the battles were fought. Guest mmhmm. Cspan and i notice that Stephen Crane did some of the same, you say in your book. When did he go to the battlefields . Guest that was actually later. That was much later than the red badge. He didnt have the money to travel there when he was writing the red badge. He was really poor. His toes were coming through his shoes, just like Henry Flemings in the red badge. After the red badge was published, he was commissioned to do some magazine pieces or newspaper pieces on the civil war, and he was interested in writing a story based on the battle of fredericksburg, so he did visit the battlefields then and he did exactly what shelby foote did. He visited the battlefields at the time during which the battle occurred. Cspan did it have any impact on him . Guest well, not that you can tell reading the little regiment, which is the story based on theon fredericksburg its really a wonderful tale. Its a nice companion piece to the red badge. It certainly doesnt seem any more authentic than the red badge does. Cspan when the red badge was published in this country, it wouldve been 18. Guest 95. Cspan what was going on here . Guest oh, what was going on in the world in 1895 . Cspan what kind of a world did the book come into and. Guest oh. Cspan . How many copies were printed in the first place and how big a success was it . Guest yeah. Iim afraid ive kind of blocked out world events at that time. I dont know what the first printing was. The publishers records were lost, and so a lot of the details about the printing andprintings areare lost. Cspan someplace you refer to 500 copies and i wondered if that was. Guest mm. Cspan . In those days, if they had that sthat small a printing. Guest well, they would have, yeah, but im not sure if that was for the red badge. Cspan was it a bestseller . Guest it wasit wasnt a bestseller nationwide. In certain areas, it was on the bestseller list on and off, mostly on the eastern seaboard, but also in the midwest. It was briefly a bestseller in england. Cspan could you go find reviews on it in the newspapers . Guest yes, it was widely reviewed, mmhmm. Cspan how do you think it survived all these years andand, you know, here again, thisthis series, this littleof course, these arent copyrighted anymore, so they can sell them for a buck, but thyou know, they got the just long. Guest mmhmm. Cspan . Sstands of all these different books in them. But what do you thinkwhats the main reason . Guest well, ii think about what William Faulkner said in his nobel prize acceptance speech in the 1950s. He talked about what the duty of the writer is, that itit is the writers duty to write about the things that matter love and honor and pity and compassion and sacrificeim paraphrasing faulknerthe human heart in conflict with itself. These are the universal things. These are the things that matter. And thats what crane wrote about in the red badge and thats what makes it timeless, and the writing is absolutely beautiful. Cspan he died in germany. Guest mmhmm. Cspan why . Guest he had tuberculosis. And cora, his commonlaw wife, insisted that he go there to try to save his life. There was something called the nordrack cure or treatment, but cranes tb was far too advanced to benefit from it. And, in fact, the trip from england, which is where they were living at the time, probably hastened his death by several months because it was so rough, being jostled by carriage, and it took a while to get there. Cspan why were they living in england . Guest well, he had gone to the grecoturkish war in the spring of 1897 as a correspondent. That lasted only a month. Cora followed him there. Because she was something of a scarlet woman, they felt when the war was over, they couldnt really settle together in the United States. They couldnt get married because her husband wouldnt divorce her, and so they decided to move to england, which was more socially tolerant of such liaisons. Cspan where had he met her . Guest he had met her in jacksonville, florida, bebefore the spanishamerican war. Cspan what were the circumstances . Guest well, hed gone down to jacksonville to report the spanishamerican war for the new york journal, and he visited the houses of prostitution in jacksonville. Hers waswas the classiest joint in jacksonville. He was introduced to her there. Cspan and how did they fall in love, or did they fall in love . Guest well, apparently, they fell in love. We dont know an awful lot about how crane felt about her. None of his letters from her have survived as far as we know; none have ever turned up on the market. She was absolutely crazy about him. He seems to have been in love with her at least for a while, but its a little questionable about whether that just settled into another kind of love later on or not. Cspan there is a lot in here about the women in his life. Guest mmhmm. Cspan there were a lot of women in his life. Guest yes, hes. Cspan . For a 28yearold. Guest he was very young. Cspan how did he do it all and what werewhat were theheres a page, for instancelet me just show these picturesthere are three pictures, all of the same woman. Guest mmhmm. Mmhmm. Cspan amy leslie. Iinin different times in her life. Who was she . And lets start up here. When was this picture . Do you know . Guest ok. Yeah, thats a very early picture, and itheres no date on it. Its from the harvard theatre collection. Amy leslie was the drama critic for the Chicago Daily news, and it is not known exactly how crane met her. He seems to have met her around 1895 or 96. She was apparently divorced, perhaps not legally divorced yet, but had been estranged from her husband for a long time. We dont know exactly where they met, but they carried on an affair up until the time he went to jacksonville and got involved with cora taylor. Cspan and what happened after that . Was there a lawsuit involved in that relationship . Guest yeah, the lawsuit came later on. Amy leslie had loaned cranenot loaned crane, given crane 800 in november of 1896, i believe, to put in the bank, put in a bank account in her name. Instead of doing that, he gave it to a friend of his in new york, willis brookshockens, told him to put it in his own account and then sort of served asas his and amys banker. Amy went back to chicago, which is where she lived and worked as a drama critic. Crane was basically living in new york, but at the moment, in jacksonville. Cspan who was Nellie Crouse of akron, ohio . Guest she was a girl he met about 1895, a friend of a friend. They had a kind of epistolary romance. He courted her. She wasnt interested in him. He wrote some very revealing letters to her, but nothing ever came of it. I think he met her once or twice. Cspan where did you find all the letters . Guest well, the letters are at various crane collections around the country. Theres a big crane collection at syracuse university, one at the university of virginia. The amy leslie letters, cranes letters to amy leslie, are at dartmouth. Cspan did you go to all those places . Guest yes, i did. Cspan and as yourehow long did it take you to do this book inis eight years the right. Guest yeah, thatswell, it was eight years from the time i started it to the time i finished it, but it was very on and off. There was a period of two years in there i really wasnt working on it at all. I think if i added up the time, it would be more like four years full time. Cspan what cdo you still live in massachusetts . Guest yes. Cspan what city . Guest i live in thea town called harvard, a little orchard town not far from. Cspan right outside of boston . Guest about an hour from boston. Its near concord. Cspan and do you do this full time, writing . Guest yes. Cspan you married . Guest yes. Cspan cause you thank your husband in here, whose name is not davis. Guest yes. No, its chuck yanikoski. Cspan and whats he do . Guest he works for a Company Called American Financial systems and does some very complicated designing of computer programs, which i dont understand at all. Cspan and. Guest and he also helps me a lot with my research. Cspan and you mentioned you have children. You. Guest yes, two children. Cspan how old are they . Guest our daughter is 13, allieshes almost 14son randy, hes 12. Cspan and in your introduction, you thank someone thats been here also, Stephen Oates. Guest yes. Cspan what did he do for you . Guest well, Stephen Oates is a good friend of mine. Hes an eminent civil war historian and biographer, and he encouraged me to write a crane biography about 10 years ago because he felt there was a need for one and he felt that we were a good match. Cspan Houghton Mifflin bought this. Guest mmhmm. Cspan do you have any idea why . Do you rememberwere you in on the sale to the company . Guest yeah, it was originally bought by ticknor fields, which isno longer exists. Houghton mifflin folded iti dont knowfour or five years ago, i guess, and signed by a different editor who ended upfrofrom the editor i have now. And mythe editor who signed it liked it and the editor who inherited it liked it, and they felt there was a need for a crane biography. Cspan you also thank Stephen Cranes greatnephew. Guest mmhmm. Cspan . A fellow by the name of dr. Robert crane. Guest mmhmm. Cspan where is he . And what did he have to do with this . Guest hes a very private man, so im not sure if he wants me to reveal his whereabouts. He does live in the United States and he is a greatnephew of Stephen Crane. Hes descended from one of cranes brothers, and he was kind enough to loan me some family photographs and to answer a couple of questions i had about the family. Hes also written some very valuable genealogical papers about the crane family which corrects errors about crane. Cspan howd you find him . Guest i met him at a conference, actually, at the american literaryliterature association some years ago. Cspan when you say hes private, what was the first giveaway to you that he was private . Guest gosh, i think he told mewe happened to get into a conversation. There was aa lecture about Stephen Crane, and hei didnt know who he was, and he after a while, i guess, decided to tell me who he was and told me that one of the crane scholars who knew him well knew that he was very private and didnt give out his name and number and didnt give it out to me, even though he knew i was working on a crane biography. I think dr. Crane wanted to size me up for himself before he told me how to get in touch with him. Cspan now i assume bebecause Stephen Crane didnt have any children, there are no direct descendants. Guest mmhmm. Cspan . And so youare there a lot of other cranes around that came from his brothers . Guest not a lot. I understand there are just a few now, and ive never met any of the other ones. Cspan how many cranes were there in the family . Guest well, Stephen Crane was the 14th child in his family, but five of them had died before he was born. Cspan his parents are here on this. Guest mmhmm. Cspan . Page. Tell us about them. Guest Mary Helen Peck crane was a ministers daughter. The reverend Jonathan Townley crane was also a methodist minister. He was 52 when stephen was born and she was 45. Cspan how long did they live . Guest she died when she was 60 years old and crane was 20. He died at the age of 64, when Stephen Crane was eight. He was the same age when his father died as i was when my father died, another little connection. Cspan and syou have a picture here of agnes crane. Guest mmhmm. Cspan whats the story on her . Guest agnes was Stephen Cranes beloved older sister. He had a couple of sisters, but she was the one he was very close to. She was very literary and aspired to be a writer himhimself. And she was really a substitute mother for Stephen Crane when he was a little boy, and she also died. Cspan of what . Guest i think she died of spinal meningitismy god, ive forgotten. Im sorry. Cspan how old was Stephen Crane . Guest he was 11 or 12, i think, when his sister died. Cspan now his mother. Guest mmhmm. Cspan . Was with the womens christian temperance union. Guest mmhmm. Cspan in what regardwhat did she do . Guest well, sheshe was one of the women who went to temperance meetings and traveled around giving lectures on temperance, on the evils of alcohol. She did a lot of public talks about it. She had a brother who had a problem with alcohol and Drinking Alcohol was not in keeping with methodist teaching at that time. And so sheshe did a lot of lecturing. Cspan did Stephen Crane drink . Guest he did, but not to excess. Hehe drank a little beer and whatnot, but he was not a heavy drinker. Cspan you paint a picture of him, though, from time to time as someone whos not very wellkempt and. Guest mmhmm. Yeah. Cspan thi mean, the personal characteristicswhere did you find the descriptions of him . And what was the worst kind of thing people would say about him . Guest well, the worst thing people would say about him was that he was a degenerate, he washe was a drunk and a drug addict, and that came from jealous hack reporters who were jealous of his talent and from the police whom he had alienated when he went up against one of them on behalf of a prostitute hed seen falsely arrested in 1896. Ever afterwards, the cops were out to smear hishis name, and they did. And to this day, pea lot of people think that Stephen Crane was an alcoholic and a drug addict because of these rumors thatthat started about him. Cspan why were people out to get him . Guest well, the copswhy were the cops out to get him or. Cspan or anybody. You said a lot of people were jealous of him and. Guest well, i think that a la lot of thethe hack reporters he knew in his days in new york were jealous of his talent. I mean, here was this kid in his early 20s, this Brilliant Writer who could write circles around most of them with both hands tied behind his back, and that excited a lot of jealousy. Hes a very likable person. Wasnt anything about his personality, in particular. I think it was basically jealousy. Cspan the names that come up throughout thisat one point you say he was a friend of Theodore Roosevelts. Guest mmhmm. Cspan when was that, and how long did the friendship last . Guest well, he got to know Theodore Roosevelt in the summer of 1896 when roosevelt was Police Commissioner of new york they were introduced by a mutual friend. Roosevelt was a big fan of cranes writing. They had dinner a couple of times. There was a little bit of correspondence. They were really just getting to know each other when Stephen Crane happened to be out on the street one night in new york in a bad neighborhood. He was escorting a chorus girl to the subway or the streetcar and went back to find that one of the two girls who were left on the sidewalk had been falsely arrested by this very corrupt policeman, charles becker. She accusedhe accused her of soliciting. This is one or two in the morning. She wasnt soliciting. Crane was keeping his eye on the two girls to make sure they were safe while he was getting the other one safely home. And she was hauled off to the Police Station anyway. And against the advice of the desk sergeant, crane turned up the next day in court to speak up on this prostitutes behalf. She was a prostitute, as it turned outdora clarkbut she was not soliciting when she was with crane. And it was a big, big mistake for his career. He felt that it was the honorable and the right thing to do, but the cops would not forgive him after that. There was actually aan official police hearing afterward a couple of months later. Crane turned up again to testify. The policeman, becker, was exonerated, but the cops would not forgive crane after that. He literally could not set foot in new york without the cops trying to arrest him on trumpedup charges. He was finished as a working reporter in new york. Cspan so what happened. Guest . At the age of 25. Cspan . To the relationship with Theodore Roosevelt, because dont they pop up later in. Guest yes. Cspan . Down in cuba and. Guest well, roosevelt trapparently tried to persuade him not to testify at the police hearing, that it would be a big mistake. Crane decided to do it anyway because he felt that it would be dishonorable of him not to. And roosevelt sided with the cops, that was it. They were estranged at that point. A year and a half later, they both turn up in the spanishamerican war; crane as a reporter, roosevelt with the rough riders at that point. Cspan Stephen Crane was a reporter at how many different newspapers . Guest well, he was a reporter for the new york journal, for the bachelor Johnson Syndicate of newspapers, for the new york world in the United States. Cspan a journal owned by hearst. Guest mmhmm. And pulitzers world. Cspan and how many different wars did he cover . Guest two, the monthlong grecoturkish conflict in the spring of 1897 and the spanishamerican war, which was 100 years ago this summer. Cspan other names Joseph Conrad. Guest Joseph Conrad. Cspan who is he . Guest well, a great polish writer who learned to write in english, known for the heart of darkness, and lord jim and the secret sharer. He. Cspan i ought to ask you if you can remember his real name. Guest ah. Cspan i didnt write it down. Guest yeah. Its teodori cant pronounce it correctlyjozef korzeniowski or Something Like that. Cspan how did he get the name Joseph Conrad . Guest he americanized his name, i believe. Cspan where did they meet . Guest they met in england. They were both living in england. They had the same publisher. They were introduced atat lunch. Crane expressed a desire to meet conrad, who was some years older than he was. And it turned out that conrad had read the red badge and waand admired cranes work, and they hit it off and became very great friends. Cspan what was the age difference . Guest crane was in his mid to late 20s; conrad was 40. But as his biographer says, a very old 40. cspan h. G. Wells. Guest h. G. Wells, the english writer, was living in the same neighborhood that crane was living in, in east sussex in england. Cspan what kind of relationship developed there . Guest they were friends, too. They were not as close as crane and conrad. Conrad became the great friend of cranes later years. Cspan how was that manifested friendship . Guest they would get together when they could for lunch; they would stay at each others homes, visit each other; they wrote letters. Cspan another name on this list is willa cather. Guest willa cather, yes. Willa cather was working for the nebraska star journal. She was still in college but she was actually writing a column. She was reviewing plays, i believe. In 1895 aearly 1895, cranes red badge had appeared in a select number of newspapers across the country, including the newspaper she worked for in nebraska, in an extremely abbreviated and butchered form some months earlier. And he had been sent by the bachelor Johnson Syndicate out west as a reporter to gather local color, as crane put it. And one of his early stops was nebraska. He was covering a drought there she was in the office when he was and she tried to draw some conversation out of him during the few days that he was there. Cspan what happened to their relationship as time went by . Guest they really never had a relationship. They had one really good conversation and that was about it, although she wrote quite a bit about him afterwards. Cspan what wasi guess i was going to say relationship, toobut whatthe money problems that he had all his life. Guest mm. Uhhuh. Cspan did he ever make any money . Guest he did make money. He didnt make a lot of money. Hehe was very quick to sign a contract with d. Appleton for the red badge because he was really poor and really anxious to have the book published. And he got a bad deal. Instead of having a lawyer, including his brother william, who was a lawyer, look over the contract, he just signed on the dotted linethe first taker. And there washe got Something Likei thinkhe got no money up front and he was not going to earn any money until the publishers costs had been recovered. And there was no provision for foreign rights at all. Cspan i wrote down here that you say none of his books sold well after red badge. Guest mmhmm. Thats true. Cspan and in some way, you make an analysis that he earned an average of 2. 7 cents a word when he was writing, but kipling at the same time made 23 cents a word. Guest mmhmm. Mmhmm. Cspan whered you get that . Guest gosh, i forgot where i got that. One of the crane stollar scholars did some good digging on that andand got the financial records. I didnt do the original research on that. But he sometimes would earn as much as 5 cents a word for stories, but never earned a great deal of money. Cspan how many books have been written about Stephen Crane . Guest there have beenlets seeyou mean biographies. There was an early biography, which isnt really a conventional biography, by thomas behr in the 1920s. Then John Berryman wrote a critical biography. R. Wr. W. Stallman wrote a biography about 30 years ago. James colvert wrote a minibiography for a harcourt brace series in the 80s. Christopher benfey wrote a study about eight years ago, i think. And then mine. So mine is about the sixth book. Cspan how is yours different than the others . Guest well, its the first fulllength in 30 yearsfirst fulllength biography of crane since stallmans. Its not a critical or academic biography. I would describe it as a serious literary biography, but its perhaps a little more popular in approach than the others. Cspan the main character in the red badge of courage, Henry Fleming, got his name where . Guest fleming was the maiden name of one of Stephen Cranes sistersinlaw. And he used the wordthe name henry a lot. He washe was a little bit lazy about naming his characters, so he recycled the name henry a lot. Cspan and what was the character Henry Fleming like in red badge . Guest hes a boy whos gone off to join the war, which he thinks is something very romantic because of these very romantic accounts of war hes read as a boy, so he leaves hihis widowed mother on the farm to go off to fight in the great civil war. Hes very naive and finds the realities of war very different. Cspan inin ayou say this happens more than once that t hat he wrote a lot about Henry Flemings reaction to seeing his first corpse. Guest mmhmm. Yes. It happens a couple of times in the red badge. Its also a preoccupation with crane in his writing, not just his war writing; the sight of a dead face or the face of a wounded soldier, whatwhat that face reveals to us. One thinks of hamlets soliloquy as though you can inin reading the eyes of the dead soldier find the answer to what hamlet called the questionthe undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns. I think thats what was in cranes mind. And it was in cranes mind because he, himself, was very sickly. I think hehe knew that he would not live a long life and he was very intrigued byby what would happen after life. Cspan where did he get consumptionor, tuberculosis . Guest well, we dont know for sure. I suspect he got it in the household. You usually get tb by repeated exposure to somebody else with an advanced state of the disease, from repeated exposure for many hours a day, for perhaps a month at a time. There is some evidence that Stephen Cranes older brother, william, had tb. But the details are very vague. So were not absolutely sure. But it does seem to me that he probably contracted it as a boy, that the tb healed, at some point, went into a kind of remission, although he was sickly frequently throughout his adult life. Then he got malaria in the spanishamerican war, which was not great for somebody withwho had bad lungs to begin with, and the tb started to kick in again. Cspan where is he buried, by the way . Guest hes buried in elizabeth, new jersey. Cspan have you been to all these places that Stephen Crane either lived in or. Guest yes. Yes, i went down to drajacksonville, florida, and found the beach overlooking where the commodore ran aground the commodore was a filibustering tug crane went on before the spanishamerican war actually broke out. It was carrying arms to cuba, and went down off the coast of cuba. I drove down to florida; i found the lighthouse along the coast that crane refers to in the open boat which was based on this true story of a shipwreck. I went to all the crane locations in england. I went to basel, switzerland, and to badenweiler, germany, to see the house where he was buried. Cspan where is this house right here in this picture . Guest thats bree place thats in east sussex, england, and its a privately owned house. Cspan and how long did hemr. Crane live there . Guest he was there from the time he returned to england from the spanishamerican war, the beginning of 1899, until just before he died, may of 191899. Cspan where are these two pictures from . Guest those were taken on board the three friends, which was another filfilibustering tug in the spanishamerican war and thatthats crane wat his seediest, as you can see. Itswas living inin either pajamas or soiled duck trousers. Didnt take a bath, stopped shaving, let his hair grow, let his mustache grow about down to his chin, it looks like, andand really looked like a degenerate at that point. Cspan in the bree place over inin england, you talk about how they lived quite fancily, or at least they. Guest hmm. Cspan . Entertained a lot and he was there with hisi dont know what youd call herisit wasnt his wife, cora. Guest mmhmm. Cspan andbut they didnt have any money, so what was going on here . Guest mmhmm. Well, thethey got a lot of credit. I mean, even in this day before credit cards, you could run up credit at the local butchers and grocers andyou know, with the blacksmith and other people. And they ran up a lot of credit locally, which got them into huge trouble. Iveive often thought about what life would be like for them now with credit cards and thethe trouble they would get in now. But they ran up a lot of debt. They were constantly sending flares out to cranes english agent, the longsuffering james pinker, asking him to advance the money. And he advanced them hundreds of pounds outofpocket, which crane did not earn back before he died. Cspan how long did cora live . Guest cora did not live too many years after cranejust 10 years. She died in 1910 at the age of 46. Cspan was she older thanobviously, older than. Guest just six years older than crane. Cspan you say in the book that he wrote between midnight and 4 in the morning. Guest mmhmm. Cspan when do you write . Guest oh, notnot during that time. I write when i get my kids off to school. Thats my best time, from about 9 or 10 in the morning till 1 or 2 in the afternoon. Theyre on Different School schedules, so i have to adjust it somewhat. But thats athree or four hours a day are about all im good for, except if my back isis to the wall and i really have to do more than that. I just find that mymy concentration wanes after that i suppose because im not 28 like Stephen Crane was, so i cant. Cspan andand what impact did it have on him that he wrote in the middle of the night . What was the reason for that . Guest the house was quiet. He was living at his brothers house a lot of the time. His brother had a family, and there were a lot of kids and a lot of noise around. And he would wait until the family went to bed and climb up to this little attic room and write late at night when it was completely quiet and then hed sleep till about lunchtime. Cspan you have a picture in the book ofi guess wedi think we used to call in the service hot bedding inyou know, they do it in the submarines where ssame people sleep in the bed around the clock. Whats this all about . Where is this . Guest this isthis was taken in the Art Students League building or the old Art Students League building in new york. A lot of artists were living there and crane was bunking with a bunch of other guys in this studio. And they would sleep three to a bed and there was a cot. And the fourth fellow would take the cot. Stephen crane is the one on the left. His head is sort of turned in. And some of the other fellas came in and found him and one of the other guys asleep one morning and as a joke, piled up all the shoes that they all owned collectively at the foot of the bed and took the picture they had kind of a Community Closet of clothes and shoes and whoever had a Job Interview that day and had to look really nice or whoever was up first in the morning would get the best pick of the clothes and shoes. Cspan where is this from . Guest that is a photograph of a beautiful painting which hangs at the university of virginia in the Clifton Waller barrett collection, which is the Stephen Crane collection, at the alderman library. It is a photograph of an oil painting done by Stephen Cranes artist friend, Corwin Knapp Linson when Stephen Crane had written the red badge of courage. And itsits absolutely beautiful in life. You know, that doesnt catch the colors at all. Cspan you said a lot earlier that you grew to like him. Guest mmhmm. Cspan . Love Stephen Crane. Guest mmhmm. Cspan what is it that you liked about him . Guest well, he was very young and very full of the devil and a lot of fun. He had a wonderful sense of humor. He was very boyish because he was always very young. We both share a fondness for dogs and horses and horseback riding. And a preference for the color red. He loved the company of his friends. He was a wonderful, charming talker. A lot of writers cant talk. Theyeven if they can write beautifully, they cant talk. Crane could talk beautifully. I think he was extremely wellintentioned and kindhearted. He got into a lot of trouble, but he was wellmeaning. He was a good friend. And he had that indefinable something we call charisma. He was the sort of person who walked into a room and created a kind of magic. One of his friends said, he was a very alive person, even when he was sitting and observing in a room and being very quiet. he was so alive that his friend yar woodriff said that the news of his death seemed a mistake. Cspan what did you think when you found out that he had spent nine months away from cora and didnt communicate with anybody . Guest well. Cspan and what was that all about . Guest yeah. He was not actually incommunicado for nine months. He was away fromthe time he left england for the spanishamerican war, he was away for nine months altogether when the spanishamerican war ended during the summer of 1898, we hadnt kind of tied up all the loose ends yet. Stephen crane disappeared into the bowels of havana for four monthsthats when he was incommunicadoand apparently tried to desert corawent into hiding, first at a hotel, then at a boarding house; communicated with no one except his agent took to his room, didnt even see the correspondence very much. Cspan this is cora here. Guest mmhmm. As for what i thought of him im reminded of something somebody else said about biography. I think it was another biographer, but i dont remember who, who said that there theres a point in every biography when the biographer falls out of love with the subject. And i didnt exactly fall out of love with my subject, but i was quite disappointed in him. He behaved very badly. She was absolutely broke in england, desperate for money. Cspan and this is her also. Guest mmhmm. Cspan . Next to Stephen Crane. Shes dei guess you write her to be rather plump or. Guest mmhmm. Cspan what was his attraction to her . Guest well, i think she didnt photograph well, to be fair to her. Also, a lot of women in the late 19th century were plump. I mean, they didnt have to be thin to be considered attractiveattractive, and shes not wearing a corset there. This was taken at bree place, where she rather let herself go. She started making these homespun garments and she would let her hair down, which was rather shocking. You always had your hair done up when other people were around although she has her hair done up in that photograph. Cspan when was this taken . This is a photograph of her. Guest yeah. That was taken before she met crane. She has her corset on in that picture. This was when she was still married inmarried to and living with captain stewart. I think that was taken some years before she met crane. She hadthe attraction. Cspan 1889. Guest mmhmm. The attractioncranes attraction to hershe actually was a very attractive woman in person. She had beautiful goldenblond hair that it wasit was such a beautiful shade of goldenblond that a lot of people thought she dyed her hair, but she didnt. She had beautiful coloring. She was intelligent. She was literate. She absolutely adored him. She was a woman who knew how to take care of herself. She had been well traveled. She was a woman who knew how to function independently; veryvery loyal to him. Cspan now where did he get the name red badge of courage . Guest well, now we dont know for sure. My ideafirst of all, it appears in the novel. When Henry Fleming gets a wound, he is arguing with a soldier. Hes accidentally hit in the head by the end of a riflegets a rifle butt. This creates his red badge of courage. i think, however, that crane might have got the idea for using that line in the novel and then later titling his book, red badge of courage, from jacob risesor riis book, how the other half lives which was a photographic study of tenement life in the lower east side. Crane was familiar it. And jacob riis repeatedly uses the word badge as a metaphor. Most strikingly, theres the phrase, the white badge of mourning, which even scans the same as the red badge of courage. the red badge of courage was not the original title of the novel, however. It was private fleming his various battles. cspan when did they change it . Guest Stephen Crane changed it before publication, before he actually submitted it. He put it on the final copy of the manuscript. Cspan now after you got all your Research Done and wrote this book, go back to the beginning and tell us what impact this had on you anas it relates to yourthe story of your father saving you or trying to save you from that fire. Guest hm. Cspan did itdid it work out for you, i mean, working through this whole thing . Guest yes. Actually, something very strange happened, and i dont remember exactly how long id been researching the book. I hadnt started writing it yet, but i was pretty steeped in Stephen Crane at this point. I was continuing to have thesethese nightmares about my father in which i could never see his face. He would appear to me inin a pitchblack room, for instance. And id be strstraining my eyes through the darkness to see him. I couldnt see him. Or he was standing at a distance with his back turned to me or he was bandaged. But i was never able to see his face. At some point, when i was very steeped in Stephen Crane, i had a flashback, not an actual dream, in which i could very clearly see myseii was a child again, probably about seven or eight years old, standing in the kitchen in our house in ft. Rucker. My father was standing at the kitchen counter making one of his chef boyardee pepperoni pizzas which he liked to make. And he turned around to Say Something to me and grinned anmy father had this wonderful smile and beautiful straight, white teeth. And iand i remember very clearly seeing this grin from the perspective of a child who would be looking up at an adult andand smiling at me. And i could just suddenly see him in a way ive never been able to see him. I mean, he died in 1961, so that was a long time. It had been about 30 years since the fire oror longer than that. So i think that the deeper i dug into steStephen Crane, the more i found myself. You know, flaubert once said when he was writing madame bovaryi think it was at the end of the book, after insisting for years that momadame bovary was nothing like him, had nothing to do with him, at the end he was forced to admit, madame bovary cest moi. and i got to that point where i said to myself, Stephen Crane cest moi. it wasthethe deeper i dug the more i found myself. Cspan you went to syracuse to study what . Guest i was just in the college of liberal arts. I. Cspan did you go on from there to any other school . Guest i did. I went to graduate school in boston. I got a masters degree in english at simmons. Cspan in what . Guest in english. Cspan so afterthis is your second book . Guest mmhmm. Cspan you got a third one planned . Guest well, i do. I dont know whether my publisher wants it yet. Ive been kind of lazy about finishing the proposal. But id like to do a civil war biography of joshua chamberlain, who was commander of the 20th Maine Division at gettysburg, and do just a biography covering only the three years during which he served in the civil war. Cspan why . Guest well, i think its the crane influence again. Itsits being so steeped in his war writing. Also, im a soldiers daughter andso i think its the combination ofof being a soldiers daughter and coming to love great war writing through Stephen Crane. I want to write my own war tale, but nonfiction. Cspan so for those interested either in war or in being a journalist or in being a writer, if they pick up your book, badge of courage, what will theywhat do you hope that they take way from this that they might not have known before