Stephen Crane: A Life of Fire by Paul Sorrentino (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Stephen Crane: A Life of Fire by Paul Sorrentino Kevin J. Hayes (bio) Stephen Crane: A Life of Fire, by Paul Sorrentino. Cambridge, ma: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014. x + 494 pp. Cloth, $39.95; E-book, $39.95. Stephen Crane: A Life of Fire has been a long time coming. The work Paul Sorrentino accomplished beforehand amply prepared him to write this biography, as there may be few better ways to prepare for writing a literary biography than editing an author’s letters. Sorrentino first established his scholarly reputation as the co-editor, with Stanley Wertheim, of The Correspondence of Stephen Crane (1988). The oddest aspect of this edition is its appendix, which reprints letters known solely from Thomas Beer’s Stephen Crane (1923), the first book-length biography of Crane and for decades the starting point for further research. Questioning the authorship of these letters, Wertheim and Sorrentino removed them from the chronological order of their edition but hesitated to exclude them altogether. The year after Correspondence, Sorrentino organized “Stephen Crane: A Revaluation,” a conference held at Blacksburg, Virginia. At this conference, Wertheim presented new findings, convincingly demonstrating that Beer had indeed fabricated those letters. I remember the conference well. Then a graduate student at the University of Delaware, I had driven down to Blacksburg eager to present a paper on how Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage. Wertheim’s new information astonished me, especially since I had unwittingly quoted some of those fabricated letters. Happily, my session came after Wertheim’s, so I could revise my paper before I had to present it. At the United States Air Force Academy Stephen Crane conference commemorating the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Red Badge of Courage in 1995, Sorrentino presented a follow-up paper showing that Beer had not only fabricated the letters, but he had also invented many of his so-called facts. In short, Beer’s biography presents a huge stumbling block for any would-be Crane biographer. Not only must biographers exclude everything in Beer’s Stephen Crane, [End Page 224] they must also scrutinize everything published since Beer to excise any misinformation others have perpetuated or arguments based on Beer. One is tempted to say that the Crane biographer needs a good pair of Beer goggles, but a microscope might make a better metaphor. Sorrentino first told me about his plans to write a Crane biography at the Blacksburg conference. I got the impression that he intended to write a beefy tome, a work that could be recognized as the standard biography, but he had much additional background work before he could hunker down and write the biography. Wertheim and Sorrentino collaborated again on The Crane Log (1994), a work patterned on Jay Leyda’s innovative documentary biography, The Melville Log (1951). This project helped Sorrentino further prepare for his narrative biography, letting him sort fact from fiction and determine what happened when and how. In 2006, Sorrentino edited and published Stephen Crane Remembered, a collection of reminiscences from Crane’s friends, which helped him further prepare for his biography. When Stephen Crane Remembered was published, I thought to myself, “Okay, enough preparation: let’s see the biography.” At the American Literature Association Symposium on Biography held at Puerto Vallarta in late 2006, Sorrentino presented a progress report, announcing that as he now conceived it, his Crane biography would be a short work, not the long biography he had previously projected. At first, I was disappointed to hear about Sorrentino’s change in scope. I had been looking forward to his biography as the new standard. The more I considered the matter, however, the more I questioned the whole concept of a “standard biography.” Is there really such an animal? Or can there be many different biographies, all worthwhile but each with their own voice, audience, and purpose? Now, eight years after the American Literature Association Symposium in Biography, a conference that has been responsible for inspiring much excellent work in literary biography, Sorrentino has finally published Stephen Crane: A Life of Fire. While Sorrentino’s original concept for his Crane biography may have been too long and...