Adapted from the Twitter feed, Thursday night, November 14, 2019. Posted Saturday morning, November 16.
On my list of movies that are better than the books they’re adapted from: Audie Murphy as Henry Flemming with Bill Mauldin as the Loud Soldier looking over his shoulder in John Huston’s 1951 adaptation of Stephen Crane’s classic novel of the Civil War, “The Red Badge of Courage”.
A man said to the universe:“Sir, I exist!”“However,” replied the universe,“The fact has not created in meA sense of obligation.”
I don’t like Crane’s most famous stories---”The Blue Hotel”, “The Open Boat”, or “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky”---either.
I like his journalism.
And I like the fact of him. What a magnificent too-short life!
I like imagining what he could have been had he lived longer.
He didn't even make it to thirty! He was twenty-eight when he died in June of 1899.
I'm not just randomly musing here. Went to hear Clay Risen talk about his new book about Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders, "The Crowded Hour", at the FDR Library tonight [Thursday, November 14, 2019]. Crane the journalist features prominently in the book.
Risen read an exciting passage from his chapter on the Battle of San Juan Hill. (For the record, the Rough Riders did not charge up San Juan Hill. They charged up nearby Kettle Hill.) But when we got home and I looked up the passage in my now autographed copy of “The Crowded Hour”, I came across this one too:
Not long after fording the river, Roosevelt and his men looked up again at the balloon. At first, it had been pulled along on the ground by a wagon, but the road was too rough, and a gang of soldiers had taken over. It was already drawing fire from the Spanish cannons and rifles. A shot tore a hole in its side, then another flew through its middle. “The front had burst out with a roar like a brushfire,” wrote Stephen Crane, who was observing from El Poso and later incorporated the scene into his short story “The Price of the Harness”: “The balloon was dying, dying a gigantic public death before the eyes of two armies.” It was not a total waste: while aloft the two men slung aloft in a basket beneath it had spotted a hidden trail off to the left, and relayed their discovery to General Kent, at the head of the First Division, who immediately diverted his regiments along it, thereby relieving the congestion along the main path. But the discovery came at a high price: The balloon settled like a net in the tree branches along the Aguadores River, alongside the point where the path discouraged into the valley below San Juan Heights. It became a giant marker from where the American troops were pouring onto the battlefield.
I’ve never read “The Price of the Harness”. I’ll fix that over the weekend.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
I haven’t re-read “The Red Badge of Courage” since college. I’ve tried several times, although not recently. I gave up quickly each time, put off by the style---I found it mannered, almost precious, and too detached. It’s also the case that I prefer actual history to historical fiction, and books like Stephen W. Sear’s “Gettysburg”, Richard Slotkin’s “The Long Road to Antietam”, and James M. McPherson’s “Battle Cry of Freedom” provide the history, character, detail, direct writing and storytelling, and visceral excitement I think “The Red Badge of Courage” lacks. And I can’t read it without thinking “Oh, so that’s where Hemingway got it” and then putting it down to pick up “A Farewell to Arms”. John Huston’s movie version, however, is great. It’s high up on my list of movies that are better than the books they’re adapted from. Audie Murphy, war hero turned movie star, deserves more appreciation as an actor. Even better is the book “Picture”, Lillian Ross’ account of the making of the movie.
As far as Civil War fiction goes Mike Shaara's The Killer Angels is an above-average historical novel. As a former para I especially enjoyed the Buford chapters, where the Union cavalry officer arrives at Gettysburg before everyone else and "gets" what great ground - because as a recon trooper ground is something he does - Seminary and Cemetery Ridges are for defending.
Unfortunately for the rest of us his kid Jeff decided to pick up where dad left off. He's a an absolutely awful writer (in purely literary terms) and he doesn't know soldiers from bus conductors. I tried his "sequel" to the original book and didn't make it through the second chapter. Stay away.
Speaking of the man himself, Murphy's autobiography To Hell and Back is pretty good, as is his contemporary Bill Mauldin's The Brass Ring is outstanding. Perhaps the best of the WW2 memoirs is George MacDonald Fraser's Quartered Safe Out Here, which was written before he was badly bitten by Old Man's Disease and ended up yelling at clouds.
Another terrific soldier memoir is Tony Herbert's Soldier, which is probably long out of print.
Posted by: FDChief | Saturday, November 16, 2019 at 07:57 PM
May I make a correction? While you're right about how long Stephen Crane lived, you're wrong about the date of his death. It was 1900, not 1899.
1899 was the year Frank Norris published *McTeague,* which I've read twice and heard four times as an L.A. Theatre Works production (a variety of actors from Ed Asner to Michael York read the whole book: Stacy Keach is McTeague and Carol Kane is Trina)...and which leaves me feeling that while Norris might have become America's Emile Zola, he wasn't up to it there, no matter what Stephen King might say or Erich von Stroheim might have said.
What's your take on Norris?
Radio's "Escape" series adapted Crane's "Open Boat". Here's a link for you:
https://www.youtube.com › watch
War is kind, Sperlings may be cruel.
Posted by: Charles Sperling | Sunday, November 17, 2019 at 09:42 AM
So, like Bunker Hill, San Juan Hill is unfairly famous while Kettle languishes like Breed's does?
Debunkers unite!
Posted by: Linkmeister | Friday, November 22, 2019 at 02:20 AM