Poet of the Extreme
BURNING BOY: The Life and Work of Stephen Crane
BY PAUL AUSTER
Henry Holt, 800 pp., $35
THE LIFE AND WORK of Stephen Crane derived gravity from brevity. Not one of his novels is much more than a hundred pages long, and they and his short stories strip language to its potent minimum. Crane’s short but prodigious life—he died, of tuberculosis, five months before his 29th birthday—observed the same concision. His hold on the public imagination has also lacked longevity. Crane’s most famous novel, (1895), is no longer required reading in American schools, and his other greatest (1893), “The Open Boat” (1897), (1898), “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” (1898), and “The Blue Hotel” (1898)—have fallen out of the cultural conversation.
