From Stephen Crane: Prose & Poetry
A few months after 26-year-old Stephen Crane moved to London in 1897, he asked his editor at Heinemann to arrange a meeting with Joseph Conrad, who was also published by the firm. Born to Polish parents in an area of northern Ukraine that was then part of the Russian Empire, Conrad had settled in England four years earlier after spending fifteen years in the British Merchant Navy. Since arriving, he had published two novels and his third was in proofs. Conrad had just read Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage and was impressed not only by the book but also by “the personality of the writer” that emanated from its pages. “The picture of a simple and untried youth becoming through the needs of his country part of a great fighting machine was presented with an earnestness of purpose, a sense of tragic issues, and an imaginative force of expression which struck me as quite uncommon and altogether worthy of admiration.”
After they met, Conrad decided that “in his writing he was very sure of his effects. I don’t think he was ever in doubt about what he could do. Yet it often seemed to me that he was but half aware of the exceptional quality of his achievement.” Conrad was 13 years older than Crane, yet they quickly formed what Crane called “a warm and endless friendship” in which they shared story ideas and influenced each other’s work. One British reviewer even observed that Conrad had adopted Crane “for his example” and seemed “determined to do for the sea and the sailor what his predecessor had done for war and warriors.”
One idea that Crane discussed with Conrad the tale that became Crane’s last great work, “The Upturned Face,” a 1,400-word story called a “tiny masterpiece” by one biographer. It was published in March 1900, just three months before Crane died, and we present it as our Story of the Week selection, along with an introduction describing the harrowing event that inspired the tale.
