Burning Boy: Paul Auster on the Extraordinary Life and Work of Stephen Crane

[@williamcuozzi6949]

Terrific appreciation of Crane. Very insightful and helpful in my reading of Crane. I agree he deserves to be in the pantheon of truly great and original American authors. Thanks.

[@Dana_Lynn]

Thank you for this video! Stephen Crane was my grandfather's great uncle. I wish I could have met him.

[@46metube]

Thank you. Great talk. Book ordered.

[@pieterisp]

When in high school The Red Badge of Courage was required reading hence easily forgotten. For some inexplicable reason after discovering the "Creature in the Dessert" poem in some anthology I was stimulated to rediscover Stephen and his writings. I am now a devoted addict and like Paul Aster can't help but sing the praises to someone who brought light and chaos to this hum drum world of pop and protocol.

[@caroledrury1411]

Wow. Great interview. Thankful that Auster has taken Crane on. Will jump right out to the bookstore for this book.

[@Gustolfo]

Wonderful lecture.

[@Friendofoe]

The book by Paul Auster is captivating to say the least. I gather it is a milestone in the History of Literature, just as Crane’s works are. My recognition to both and gratitude to the LOA for this. Why have I written "captivating"? Because for many years I have been interested in writers' lives (some of them "non-lives") and literary essays, but this biography is barely comparable to a few ones in its intensity, and the way in which Auster introduces and analyses the production of Stephen Crane is authoritative and admirable to me.

[@davidnovakreadspoetry]

This is a brief-but-fascinating account of Stephen Crane's life and work. His poetry has been a companion, at least a psychic one, as long as I've been reading/writing poetry, and its indelible impression has never diluted; but I've never read his prose. This makes me want to investigate (and indeed I have ordered a copy of the LoA edition), though with time diminishing, I may not get to much; and the biography, which sounds fascinating-in-depth, may have to wait for another lifetime. Paul Auster, at the start of this discussion, neatly frames Crane in the literary context of his times, with an insight that I am grateful he shared, for, knowing Crane primarily through his poetry, he has always seemed to me a man apart or a man outside of time. This past summer I read LoA's four-volume civil war set; maybe it's time to try _The Red Badge of Courage_ to get a sense of the after-effects of that conflict as felt among the general public. Auster pegs Crane as a contemporary of WEB Du Bois (whose great _Black Reconstruction_ will be published in a LoA edition soon), though Crane died much earlier. I'm curious to see how the "great American war novel" (which at one time was much assigned to the classroom) delves into the combat, yet evades politics or the cause of it.

[@Friendofoe]

Oh, I should mind my reading business, dear Mr. Novak, but I cannot help suggesting you to read this biography, which can be treated like reference volume, a ready "Companion to S. Crane", for it is also a sort of immense introduction to SC's works by a fellow writer (which to me is a really great author). Indeed, it is a very long book though and I would understand that it is turned down. Still I have been reading it for weeks with a little extra effort, since English is neither my mother tongue nor I use it much nowadays, and I am happy to be doing it.

[@davidnovakreadspoetry]

The lecture makes me want to read the biography; but I suppose I owe it to Crane to read his prose first. What a pity he died so young.

[@Friendofoe]

@@davidnovakreadspoetry Yes indeed. He died very young but he managed to accomplish a great deal, as he was a force of Nature in a fairly small body, and also a really brave man, that you can tell from this book and what has been written about SC by all kinds of people. It is not too long a text bearing this in mind

[@aclark903]

Great American war novel? "Nobody could sleep. When morning came, assault craft would be lowered & a first wave of troops would ride through the surf & charge through the beach at Anopopei..." #Mailer, The Naked & the Dead.

[@mynameisnotjerome1803]

Please write more fiction now

[@theantinatalismzone1571]

Paul Auster is such a soy boy