A Literary Roman Candle: Stephen Crane and His Biographers

Stephen Crane’s powerful writing and brief, eventful life have attracted numerous biographers since his death in 1900 at age twenty-eight. Paul Auster’s Burning Boy: The Life and Work of Stephen Crane is the latest biography. Auster, one of America’s most inventive novelists, offers a complete account of Crane’s life, coupled with a detailed appraisal of virtually everything he wrote: novels, short stories, poems, sketches, journalism, and war correspondence. His biographical narrative is engrossing, beautifully written, and psychologically acute. His treatment of Crane’s partner Cora Crane and the other women in Crane’s life is detailed and sympathetic. However, Auster’s comprehensive plot summaries of Crane’s works, included on the assumption that his readers “have never read a word of Crane,” sap some of the pleasure from reading his passionate encomia to Crane’s works.