Sunday, May 01, 2005
Brain. Hurts.
I've been working too long. I'm trying to make it till 4, because at 4 I have to get ready to go to our Spring Retreat for RCC. There I'll be doing very little, since we don't have anyone running for my old job.
How painful is it?
Here ya go. These are my block quotes. Obviously, I won't be using all of them. I doubt I'll use half of them. They just represent the ideas I'm leaning toward in my essay.
They're not even sorted logically yet.
I've just been looking at them too long.
For the remainder of his career, Crane often expressed a distaste for the bureaucracy of journalism, but his love of truth compelled him to keep writing. (Bates-Eye 71)
Stephen Crane, when faced with a real life situation that embodied the naturalistic fears and concerns of an entire era, took the opportunity to speak from his experience, to convey not an invention, not a creation, but rather the truth, both of the experience and of the occurrence. It is our responsibility to accept the integrity of his vision as consistent with nonfictional truth-telling and consider "The Open Boat" as an early--perhaps one of the first--examples of literary nonfiction. (Bates-Eye 77)
"The Open Boat" picks up where "Own Story" leaves off and carries the reader through the rescue itself. Additionally, in August of 1897, he published a highly fictionalized story, "Flanagan and His Short Filibustering Adventure," which was also clearly inspired by his experience at sea. This narrative is about the captain and crew of the Foundling, which, like the Commodore, sinks in a squall, but only after it has successfully completed a filibustering expedition and fought off a Spanish gunboat. This short story is acknowledged to be Crane's attempt to capitalize on his real-life experience (Wertheim 281-82)
At the conclusion of "Own Story," as he closes the narrative and conspicuously leaves out the account of his perilous experience in the lifeboat, Crane explains, "The history of life in an open boat for thirty hours would no doubt be instructive for the young, but none is to be told here and now. For my part I would prefer to tell the story at once" (Crane,
"Own Story" 1).
Crane "knew enough not to put too much into a story for the papers; knew enough not to waste what he had to say, or wanted to say, on that most uncomprehending of all readers, the reader of the newspaper" (Hagemann 67).
And so he moved toward the type of fiction which best suited his needs: Naturalism.
The characters in "The Open Boat" are quite obviously dealing with the kind of forces in which naturalists believe; they face the indifference of nature and the opposition between hope and fear as they struggle for survival on the angry, open sea. Crane describes nature, which functions nearly as a character in this story, as "not . . . cruel . . . nor beneficent, nor treacherous, nor wise. But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent" ("Open Boat" 355). The entire action of the narrative reveals the correspondent's contemplation and resigned acceptance of his (humankind's)
insignificance and isolation in the face of an environment that simply does not care (Adams 422).
“What makes Crane’s realism remarkable is his search for the truth about what goes on inside a mind, given a certain set of circumstances. The circumstances did not matter to Crane as much as what they produced; and he was always willing to accept suggestions as to where he should go in search of material. His interest lay in . . . recording how the thoughts flowed through the mind of the sufferer.” (Lang, Art of Stephen Crane, p119)
In other words, there is some reason to believe that, for Crane, qualitative judgment is implicit in the act of perception itself; and because the ironist cannot help but perceive differently from the majority of his contemporaries, cannot be otherwise than more or less out of consonance with the assumptions of society, the huge will is instantly required merely to accept his perception as a valid basis for action which, if he is to be personally honest, will place him in conscious opposition to the convention.
Such a conclusion implies that Crane, from the beginning, relied ultimately upon his perception for his essential means of orienting his life, not upon his intellect, education, tradition, or even experience—if one can distinguish between detached perception and actual participative action. A direct acceptance and dependence upon perception, at any rate, best accounts for the odd air of authority that scholars have noted in both the man and his work, an enigmatic aura of psychological security not particularly open to argument in the man and not unduly vulnerable to analysis in his work.
Crane perceived that man’s mental machinery is ‘weak’ in comparison with the forces, both external and internal, with which it has to cope; and his several explorations of this particular perception constitute the essential subject of both his prose and poetry, as will be seen. (Linson 12)
He had no use for the old school of romance novelists. There was plenty of true romance in ordinary life. (Linson 31)
for I understand that a man is born into the world with his own pair of eyes, and he is not at all responsible for his vision—he is merely responsible for his quality of personal honesty. To keep close to this personal honesty is my supreme ambition.”
Starrett, Vincent “Stephen Crane, An Estimate.” Men, Women, and Boats. Boni and Liveright, 1921.
“Alternatively known as "literary journalism" or the "literature of fact," creative nonfiction is that branch of writing which employs literary techniques and artistic vision usually associated with fiction or poetry to report on actual persons and events. Though only recently identified and taught as a distinct and separate literary genre, the roots of creative nonfiction run deeply into literary tradition and history.” ( http://www.pitt.edu/~bdobler/readingnf.html )
I need a nap. ¶ 0 comments
How painful is it?
Here ya go. These are my block quotes. Obviously, I won't be using all of them. I doubt I'll use half of them. They just represent the ideas I'm leaning toward in my essay.
They're not even sorted logically yet.
I've just been looking at them too long.
For the remainder of his career, Crane often expressed a distaste for the bureaucracy of journalism, but his love of truth compelled him to keep writing. (Bates-Eye 71)
Stephen Crane, when faced with a real life situation that embodied the naturalistic fears and concerns of an entire era, took the opportunity to speak from his experience, to convey not an invention, not a creation, but rather the truth, both of the experience and of the occurrence. It is our responsibility to accept the integrity of his vision as consistent with nonfictional truth-telling and consider "The Open Boat" as an early--perhaps one of the first--examples of literary nonfiction. (Bates-Eye 77)
"The Open Boat" picks up where "Own Story" leaves off and carries the reader through the rescue itself. Additionally, in August of 1897, he published a highly fictionalized story, "Flanagan and His Short Filibustering Adventure," which was also clearly inspired by his experience at sea. This narrative is about the captain and crew of the Foundling, which, like the Commodore, sinks in a squall, but only after it has successfully completed a filibustering expedition and fought off a Spanish gunboat. This short story is acknowledged to be Crane's attempt to capitalize on his real-life experience (Wertheim 281-82)
At the conclusion of "Own Story," as he closes the narrative and conspicuously leaves out the account of his perilous experience in the lifeboat, Crane explains, "The history of life in an open boat for thirty hours would no doubt be instructive for the young, but none is to be told here and now. For my part I would prefer to tell the story at once" (Crane,
"Own Story" 1).
Crane "knew enough not to put too much into a story for the papers; knew enough not to waste what he had to say, or wanted to say, on that most uncomprehending of all readers, the reader of the newspaper" (Hagemann 67).
And so he moved toward the type of fiction which best suited his needs: Naturalism.
The characters in "The Open Boat" are quite obviously dealing with the kind of forces in which naturalists believe; they face the indifference of nature and the opposition between hope and fear as they struggle for survival on the angry, open sea. Crane describes nature, which functions nearly as a character in this story, as "not . . . cruel . . . nor beneficent, nor treacherous, nor wise. But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent" ("Open Boat" 355). The entire action of the narrative reveals the correspondent's contemplation and resigned acceptance of his (humankind's)
insignificance and isolation in the face of an environment that simply does not care (Adams 422).
“What makes Crane’s realism remarkable is his search for the truth about what goes on inside a mind, given a certain set of circumstances. The circumstances did not matter to Crane as much as what they produced; and he was always willing to accept suggestions as to where he should go in search of material. His interest lay in . . . recording how the thoughts flowed through the mind of the sufferer.” (Lang, Art of Stephen Crane, p119)
In other words, there is some reason to believe that, for Crane, qualitative judgment is implicit in the act of perception itself; and because the ironist cannot help but perceive differently from the majority of his contemporaries, cannot be otherwise than more or less out of consonance with the assumptions of society, the huge will is instantly required merely to accept his perception as a valid basis for action which, if he is to be personally honest, will place him in conscious opposition to the convention.
Such a conclusion implies that Crane, from the beginning, relied ultimately upon his perception for his essential means of orienting his life, not upon his intellect, education, tradition, or even experience—if one can distinguish between detached perception and actual participative action. A direct acceptance and dependence upon perception, at any rate, best accounts for the odd air of authority that scholars have noted in both the man and his work, an enigmatic aura of psychological security not particularly open to argument in the man and not unduly vulnerable to analysis in his work.
Crane perceived that man’s mental machinery is ‘weak’ in comparison with the forces, both external and internal, with which it has to cope; and his several explorations of this particular perception constitute the essential subject of both his prose and poetry, as will be seen. (Linson 12)
He had no use for the old school of romance novelists. There was plenty of true romance in ordinary life. (Linson 31)
for I understand that a man is born into the world with his own pair of eyes, and he is not at all responsible for his vision—he is merely responsible for his quality of personal honesty. To keep close to this personal honesty is my supreme ambition.”
Starrett, Vincent “Stephen Crane, An Estimate.” Men, Women, and Boats. Boni and Liveright, 1921.
“Alternatively known as "literary journalism" or the "literature of fact," creative nonfiction is that branch of writing which employs literary techniques and artistic vision usually associated with fiction or poetry to report on actual persons and events. Though only recently identified and taught as a distinct and separate literary genre, the roots of creative nonfiction run deeply into literary tradition and history.” ( http://www.pitt.edu/~bdobler/readingnf.html )
I need a nap. ¶ 0 comments
