Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Western Writings of Stephen Crane ed. by Frank Bergon

1980; University of Nebraska Press; Volume: 15; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wal.1980.0068

1948-7142

Chester L. Wolford,

Polar Research and Ecology

Reviews 45 heroic crossing in the winter of 1810-11 of the Athabasca Pass opened a route used by trappers for many years. Included, too, is a record of explorations by Dr. James Hector of the British-backed Palliser Expedition, scientists who, in mid-19th century, sought to learn more of western Canada. An amusing aspect of Whyte's treatment of the history of the climbing of the Rockie's greatest peaks (between 1894 and 1925) is his account of the proprietary attitudes of climbers toward what they regarded as "their" mountains .and their attempts to achieve the first ascents; the conqueror of Mt. Assiniboine met his packer secretly in early morning and was rushed to his target in two days instead of the usual three. Inclusion of an excellent, understandable, exposition of geological theories as to origins of mountain systems seems the source of what must be editorial error. The reader, following the 1858 movement of the Hector party, encounters the geological material; then, without warning transition, finds himself with a party of mountain climbers in 1896. In the first section of the text and two later, much shorter ones, "Mountain Spring, Mountain Summer," and "Mountain Autumn, Mountain Winter ," Whyte shows himself to be much more than a writer of terse, forceful exposition. An almost lyrical quality characterizes his description of what one who roams the mountains may see, feel, hear, smell as the seasons transform the high country. Readers who have been much in the mountains will find the writing highly evocative. Of Sugin6's more than 50 photographs, best reproduction is achieved in dose-ups of flora, rock faces and moving water, and some of the longrange shots from helicopter. There is some over-emphasis in the number of broad and vertical views with the wide-angle lens. The printers may be responsible for some lack of color balance, with much concentration on rather unnatural blue shades, and the appearance of scratches on some pictures. The subject matter, however, the loom of peaks, the pitch of wild water, the glow of alpine meadow, the eroded and crevassed surface of the glacier: these can only stir the pulse of the fireside reader. REX E. ROBINSON, Logan, Utah The Westem Writings of Stephen Crane. Edited by Frank Bergon. (New York: New American Library, 1979. 240 pages, $1.95.) An excellent book for teachers and students of western American literature. The Introduction is learned, concise, well written, and relatively comprehensive. Based upon the University of Virginia edition, the text is sound and, amazingly for a paperback these days, contains very few typo- 46 Western American Literature graphical errors. The Bibliography is incomplete, but is somewhat by the inclusion of Milne Holton's Cylinder of Vision, the best Crane study. Western Writings is not a paperback version of Katz's Stephen Crane the West and Mexico (1970). Katz's book, unlike Bergon's contains little Crane's western fiction, and his Introduction is largely confined to ....~1I1.",<" inating when Crane was where. Bergon includes much of Crane's western fiction, "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky," "The Blue "One Dash - Horses," and "Moonlight on the Snow." Because the edition is in most libraries, there is little need for Katz's book now. Bergon however, presents a collection of stories, dispatches, and letters (one fro~ Teddy R. himself!) for the classroom which provides a reasonably compre- c hensive overview of the writings that came out of Crane's 1895 trip west. \ The final justification for the book lies in whether or not Crane's'? western writings, within the canon of all western American writing, are',': significant enough to warrant a separate book for the classroom. Bergon's' Introduction convinces on two arguments: 1) Crane uses and debunks the traditional "western" before it became traditional; 2) Crane documents the rapid "easternization" of the "Old West" in nearly all of its aspects - capital' over land, collectivism over individualism - and all the while hinting that the heroic individualism of the Old West was largely, although not exclusively , more an ideal than a fact. The collection itself demonstrates something Bergon doesn't mention, but which nevertheless places Crane squarely in the mainstream of writings about the American West. Many of the stories seize upon the landscape as a metaphor of ego-annihilation. "Conceit" may be "the very engine of life," , as Crane says in "The Blue Hotel," but it is a notion that one must repeat to oneself in the middle of a Nebraska blizzard on the edge of the Texas plains near the Rio Grande, across the Mexican desert, and elsewhere in the Great American West. In his "eastern" stories, Crane associates this realization with dead men; his western stories evoke it by juxtaposing men against a huge and threatening landscape. Crane differs from contemporary writers in that his is basically a classical or naturalistic outlook; contemporary western writers actively seek the annihilation found in the land; Crane sought it but was simultaneously attracted to and afraid of it. In his biography Stephen Crane (1950), John Berryman v\'fote that Crane's single illusion was the heroic one, but that even that failed to escape his irony. Thirty years later, The Western Writings of Stephen Crane goes far toward proving Berryman right. One can say for Bergon's Introduction what Bergon says of Crane's western writing: it "shines with intelligence." CHESTER L. WOLFORD The Behrend College of The Pennsylvania State University ...