oh, good. oh, thank yo [inaudleveations] how's everything going? yeah? .. >> thank you so very much.

tiyo mfokihe >> excellent. we are very proud. how re you? >> what's going on? [inaudible] aru g hl? >>h. >> congratulations. you are a? what grade are you going into next year? and you? you ar 11? ri ghawn t e s de oin any healthy eating?

nice to meet you. thanks forcoming. u kn, girlweo rcer [inaudible] they are a little older. [iibonat]e] >> author linda davis appeared in8 alourok not po bck

ra "e e" the life of stephen crane. you can watch that interview in which she describes mr. crane's life and how and why hwrote the red begich of courage the story of an ordinary soldi in the civil r. davita a t ales ra had in becoming an author in the 17 century. this is about an hour. c-span: linda h. davis, author of "badge of courage: the life of stephen crane," where did you get the idea for this book? gut: well,bout 10 years ago, haedrete e'eaorrk on,"chnory well-known. it's about a man who saves the life of a child in a fire and is horribly disfigured. he--he lived, but he lives as a wit a ce. d ou ave m ca wi eiyes old, my father lost his life in a house fire while trying to save me.

and ever afterwards, i was tormented by dreams in which i inecwrmyht,e his face. there are a lot of small scenes, too, that were eerily like what happ to me when i was a child. and i thought: who was stephen crane that he can write this w about a fire? c-: e yivat when the--your father lost his life? >> guest: i was living in ft. rucker, abama. my father was a soldier, which stephen crane wanted to be at one time. he was a career man and he'd been through the korean war and he was in flht school in ft. rucker. it ja e . 'dn ugmbnd aoss life in a house fire, an irony that stephen crane would've appreciated. c-span: and you were saved? >> guest: i was saved, but not by my father. my fathe i think, had wadestimated h hot the fire admais d

hao ed and was overcome. he actually ended up bypassing my bedroom, ended up in the den right next to our room, found himselnext to the desk where the telephone was and maged to anpalybeised from the ceiling, knocked him unconscious, and then--and he died. in the meantime, o of the--this was on an army base, ft. rucker--one of the men roheeeouto ad hek et ut medpuhi h sn -iss it was the adrenaline going--and--and he got me out. he got... c-spanagain, you... >> guest: he got the soldier's medal for that. c-span: again, you were how old? >> guest: i waeight years old. c-span: what dyou remem--do >>stdo awofemngceas a child. i have little patcheof memory. i remember, for instce, the smell of the fire, but i don't

remember seeing it or seeing smoke. e whve l w red len loin a d harbert, told me that when he reached his arm in to pull me out, the smoke was really, really thick in my room and the doctor who examid me later told my mother that just a i wod'eenem eutes later, la. but i don't remember seeing it. captain harbert, at the time, told me to keep my head down--don't remember that at all. i just remember this arm kind oud piy o cnab c-span: did your dad ever regain consciousness? >> guest: no. no. c-span: and you read the "monster" knowing this, stephen crane's novel? >> guest: i knew that it had something to do with a man disfigured in fire and i was riabitt dn knnythtaan didn't know crane's work at all

i somehow had missed "the red badge" and his other great short stories, so... c-span: where were you living when you did this? >> guest: when.. c-span: when you read the "monster"? >> guest: when i read the "monst i li issse at twa benks d shy t a s sting about for another idea, but i really wasn't thinking of doing another biography, so itind of came out of the blue. c-span: what was your first biography? >> guest: it was of the new yorker magazine editor katharine it spanat gn teedth g: well, i was a fan of the new yorker and of e. b. white's writing in particular. when i was in graduate school in boston, letters of e. b. white were published and i read it and thought that it was a wonderful love story, really, about a man otth. tio i became very interested in katharine white and started reading a little bit about her, and then during the summer 1977, she died and willia

shawn wrote an absoluty anwra olla note to e. b. white a couple of months later, and that started a correspondence. c-span: before we leave this subject... >> guest: mm-hmm. c-span: ... who was e. b. white d wh de li? >>uee.whis -k agraman essayist and prose stylist and the author of three children's books, including "charlotte's web," and he died i think it is exactly 13 years ago this fall. i remember because we went to e rier aoo onar dtend wae bth a she'll be 14, so i think it's 13 years ago he died. c-span: did you get to know him at all? >> guest: i did pretty well, yeah. c-span: what was he like? veri mbucehe was a very shy and cotawiou w very charming, very

unpretentious, down to earth, a little bit of a crusty new englander, very ordinary, not the literary man that you might expect, not a eat reader. boea.lhin-r. he told me that just a few years earlier, he'd finally got around to reading "gone with the wind." this is just a few years before c-: ouu t st.. >> gst: mm-hmm. c-span: ... you first introduction to stephen crane, and now here--what? -- if i read correctly, eight years later, you got a book. at did you do next c-: mmn? ar ttihaers an article in the new york times about a new edition of crane's letters that were coming out edited by stanley wertheim and paul sorrentino, and there was a very interesting piece in the new york times by herbert ang whi sey

heaiaterw heanerinse letters--hundreds of new letters had come on the market. and the crane of legend proved to be very different from--from unon ajefyndne. biography, so it was... c-span: here were have an 1895 picture... >> guest: mm-hmm. c-span: ... of him. >> guest: mm-hmm. c-span: what wase doing in >>stllt'e. hri "redg hen in,e t interestingly enough, and he fixed himself up to look nice for the camera. he was becoming famous for "the red badge of courage," and he was here trying to write a political novel, actually, but he gave up on it. co'terd tis, ul gheg em c-span: now i went looking for "the red badge of courage" after reing your book--or, in the

middle of reading your book, and i found one of these... >> guest: mm-hmm. c-an: . fo$1veri editions, stephen crane's "red ba--badge of courage," 100 pages. what is this--somebody that's never read this bookand why does it keep stephen crane in front of us after all these years? weofrst't'mm. id of ealsthviwar, if not the greatest novel ever written about the civil war. it depends on whose point of view it is. i think that the reason it lives d petotois atnete a s as a psychological portrayal of fear, and even those of us who've never been through combat, never been near a war zone, we all know what it is to be afraid. i think a. j. liebling put it best when he called it, 'it's about a b in a dragon's wood, and it's timeless.'

spanenen rd itat yreon >> guest: well, honestly, "the red badge" is not my favorite of crane's works. i think that there are certain passages in it, including the opening paraaph, wch are litug ll spwhn'u i >> guest: the re--the opening paragraph? c-span: opening paragraph, so people who have never read it can get some sense of... >> guest: i have to put my reading glasses on. c-span: well, i can read it if you--if you don't have your glasses. >> guest: you read i c-span:'the cold passed reluctantly from the earth and the retiring fs revealed an army stretched o on thhill as lcaha f awed b t tremble with eagerness at the noises of rumors. it cast its eye upon the roads which were growing from long troughs of liquid d to proper thoroughfares. a vembinin adf ba pd ar f at t, en sm be o a sorrowful blackness, one can see across it the red eye-like gleam of hostile campfires set in the low brows of distant

hills.' why is that so special? >> guest: well, the qualitof thwrg bsel ift. i mean, he instantly brings the picture of this army resting--i love the way he places the word 'resting' at the end of that sentence--to le, yon autseisge mythll c-span: how long did it take him to write this? >> guest: the entire book? c-span: "red badge of courage." >> guest: well, he said himself--and he was not always very accurate and precise about time and dates, but he--he said mselthate n bo tehistr finished it early in his 22nd year. now that would mean the rough draft or a good revised draft. he made alterations after that, and it's awful to think that somebo cou've ita ere nty bo mo, ..

spbu'sl t. >> guest: it is short, yeah, but it's beautifully done. c-span: where did he write it? >> guest: he wrote it at his brother's house in lakeview, new jersey, and then he also wrote some of it in new york, in an c-: whourtut to find out all about stephen crane, where'd you go? >> guest: well, i went to various locations around the united states, to new york--new york state, where he gone to c-: e hetoners. >>stll wt to syracuse university, where i went as an undergraduate, in fact. he went to layette college, which is no longer in existence, penningtoneminary. s,t'. mm and loid spend in those places? >> guest: well, let's see. he went away to pennington seminary when he was 14. he was there a couple of years.

then he went to claverack inuthiaser -marhofo up of years. he was at lafayette for one semester and then at syracuse for one semester, and that's when his experiment with college end, as he said. c-sp: and along the way, did you begin tohayo tuder yogi g reonwhoue ni g: , s ly teoubori a raof fthry beginning because i felt this deep, deep connection with him. empathy is the whole key to writing a biography. you don't need to know all the anjuikimted better as the years went on. i pathized with him more. i just--i--i really grew to love him as a human being as well as as a writer. >>st l 2ar anatr he? uehed 90 spwhdi d ueinener an c-span: did he every marry and have children?

>> guest: he did not marry. he had a common-law wife named cora taylor who went by the way--by the name of cora crane. she was actually legally married to a britishfficer who would not divorce her. heer creat kof sphod ribo e l wit seeing battle? >> guest: well, he was very knowledgeable about the civil war. one of h older brothers, william, was very, very knowledgeable. hed t.rned a lot from him. boanine t' read growing up, but in the months preceding the actual writing of the war novel, he was reading old issues of the century magazine, which for years ran piece--memoirs and pieces othe vil r--vy t wthrt inroic cld pick up a lot of details about army life and camp life. so he was extremely knowledgeable about the facts of thcivil war. also, when crane was growing up, there were an awfut of

crwarntel, 71d heerlo veterans for him to talk to. c-span: you--actually, reading your book, i fellike i was listening to one of these interviews because there's so much about writi and where he wrote and all that kind of thing. -- te ur zi w wt h fiis oatt him interested in the civil war? >> guest: he was at his artist friend corwin knapp linson's studio in new york, and linson was painting and crane just a oay gedseand flopped down on zi w ln lld, seddi them while his friend was painting. and after a couple of hours or so of reading, he'd fling them down on the floor in hot diust d say, youno oft dbueyer say how they feel. they are as emotionless as

rocks.' and he started getting owcivil r novel.ut writing his antow:t it ele e w an ime r radge of courage," what can they learn about war? >> guest: i think they get a wonderful, wonderful sense of place, of what it feels like to live in an army camp in the time in a makeshift tent, to live on rd aanffto enure esy drilling and marching. they'll learn a lot about the tedium of war, not of actual combat but all the waiting that soldiers go through before they thilt n if into the figh bas. c w he rarely mentions--the name longstreet, general longstreet, crops up in one of his civil war pieces, but that's highly unusual. he deliberately omitted all antt bsewaes specifics,

to make his battle a type in order to do what he was trying to do, which was to, as i said, portray fear. c-span: when shelby foote was wrthvir esust h en ahetlld on the same day that the battles were fought. >> guest: mm-hmm. c-span: and i notice that stephen crane did some of the same, you say in your book. when did he go to the battlefields? >> guest: that was actually later. that was much later than "the red badge." he didn't have the money to travel there when he was wting he ry s wco through his shoes, just like henry fleming's in "the red badge." after "the red badge" was published, was commissioned to do some magazine pieces or newspaper pieces on e civil wrg orse te was interestn disie ledsn and he did exactly what shelby foote did. he visited the btlefields at the time during which the battle

occurred. c-span: did it have any impact on him? teea "thli me w ie y based on the--on fredericksburg it's really a wonderful tale. it's a nice companion piece to "the red badge." mouticn r e"s. anene ba w bld hiuny, it would've been 18... >> guest: '95. c-span: what was going on here? >> guest: oh, what was going on in the world in 1895? c-span: what kind of a world did the book come into and... >> guest: oh. c-span: ... how many copies were printed in the first place a how big a success was it? g: . ev aate. i don't know what the first printing was. the publisher's records were lost, and so a lot of the details about the printi and--printings are--are lo. c-span: someplace you refer 500 copies and i wondered >>st.

sp: ... in those days, if they had that s--that small a printing. >> guest: well, they would have, yeah, but i'm not sure if that was for "the red badge." c-span: was it a best-seller? >> guest: it was--it wast a best-seller nationwide. in certain areas, it was on the -sr od stn ean oa aln mit. it was briefly a best-seller in england. c-span: could you go find reviews on iin the newspapers? >> guest: yes, it s widely reviewed, mm-hmm. c-span: how do you think i suived all these years d--and, you owre ain --s esis ar cig are they can sell them for a buck, but th--you know, they got the just long... >> guest: mm-hmm. c-span: ... s--stands of all thesdifferent books in them. but what do you think--what's e main reason? >> guest: well, i--i think about what william faulkner said in his nobel prize acptance speech in the 1950 alabwhhe oe er t itthit dto write about the things that matter: love and honor and pity and compassion and

sacrifice--i'm paraphrasing faulkner--the human heart in confcth itlf thare gstn er d 'st e wrote about in "the red bae" and that's what makes it timeless, and the writing is absolutely beautiful. c-span: he died in germany. >> guest: mm-hmm. c-span: why? >> guest: he had tuberculosis. and ra, his coon-law wife, si thethto avs . there was something called the nordrack cure or treatment, but crane's tb was far too advanced to benefit from it. and, in fact, the trip from england, which is wherthey wereivat t t abasd deby vemo bsewa ugei jostled by carriage, and it took a while to get there. c-span: why were they living in england? >> guest: well, he had gone to the greco-turkish war in the copot. o1897 as a

that lasted only a month. cora followed him there. because she was something of a scarlet woman, they felt when the war was over, they couldn't really settle together in the united states. theyouldn't get married moocy raf edhusband wouldn't so. c-span: where had he met her? >> guest: he had met her in jacksonville, florida, be--before the spanish-american war. c-span: what were the circumstances? sph-icar tewll, he'd gone down jald is t houses of prostitution in jacksonville. hers was--was the classiest joint in jacksonville. he was introduced to her there. loor tfan ? fen .pntth we don't know an awful lot about how crane felt about her. none of his letters from her have survived as far as we know; none have ever turned up

his lu c aket. s tven wh bt'a little questionable about whether that just settled into another kind of love later on or not. c-span: there is a lot in here about the women in his life. >> guest: mm-hmm. c-span: there were a lot of women in his life... >> guest: yes, he's... >>st: werun anw heit a juhoespictes--there are three pictures, all of the same woman. >> guest: mm-hmm. mm-hmm. c-span: amy leslie. i--in--in different times in her life. who was she? and let's start up here. when was this picture? do you know? ueok pie,nd i--there's no date on it. it's from the harvard theatre collection. amy leslie was the drama critic for the chicago daily news, and it is not known actly how hemshaet ader. o6. e apntivd, perhaps nolegally divorced

yet, but had been estranged from her husband for a long time. we don't know exactly where they met, but they carried on an affair up until the time he went jonvie govo tha or spanatpeafr that? was there a lawsuit involved in that relationship? >> guest: yeah, the lawsuit came amsladneanot inemof6,el, to put in the bank, put in a bank account in her name. instead of doing that, he gave it to a friend of his in new york, willis brookshockenstold to i hwnou hid s er-- amy went back to chicago, which is where she lived and worked as a drama critic. crane was basically living in new york, but at the moment, in jasonville.

c-span: who was nellieus rohi g: wagie fr. ief they had a kind of epistolary romance. shsnntte h her. les ert iner o. in mere ice. c-span: where did you find all the letters? >> guest: well, the letters are at various crane collections around the country. there's a big crane collection at syracuse university, one at the university of virginia. the amy leslie letters, crane's daut amyes at pl?iu o th g: i. and ou-hon did it take you to do this book in--is eight years the right... >> guest: yeah, that's--well, it was eight years from the time i started it to the time i finished it,ut it was ve on and f.ers rif ye t illsnor on it at a. i think if i added up the time, it would be more like four years full time. c-span: what c--do you still

live in massachusetts? >> guest: yes. c-span: what city? >> guest: i live in the--a town called harvard, a little orchard town not far from... c-span: right outside of boston? >> guest: abouan hour from boston. iteanc tiwrg?thul ueye anu ied? >> guest: yes. c-span: 'cause you thank your husband in here, whose name is not davis. >> guest: yes. no, it's chuck yanikoski. c-span: and what's he do? >> guest: he works for aompany called american finaial systems and does se ve lid gnof c-: d... >> guest: and he also helps me a lot with my research. c-span: and you mentioned you have children. you... >> guest: yes, two children. c-span: how old are they? >> guest: our daughter is 13, allie--she's almost 14--son randy, he's 12. inuc, thsoe >>sts.o,ph c-span: what did he do for you? >> guest: well, stephen oates is a good friend of mine. he's an eminent civil war historian and biographer, and he encouraged me to write a crane biography about 10 years ago because he felthere was a c-: htif bt

>>st-h. c-span: do you have any idea why? do you remember--were you in on the sale to the company? >> guest: yeah, it was originally bought by ticknor & fields, which is--no lger exists. houghton mifflin folded it--i don't know--four or five years ag iss, d eda fft or e up--fro--from the editor i have now. and my--the editor who signed it liked it and the editor who inherited it liked it, and they felt there was a need for a crane biography. anu t sen e'eaph. g: mm an. lly na dobcr >> guest: mm-hmm. c-span: where is he? and what did he have to do with this? >> guest: he's a very private man, so i'm not sure if he wants me to reveal his whereabouts. he does live in the united states and he is a great-nephew steenne. dndroe crane's brothers, and he was kind enough to loan me some family photographs and to answer a couple of questions i had

about the family. he's also written some very vaable genealogical papers c-: d fiimcrne fily which >> guest: i met him at a conference, actually, at the american literary--literature association some years ago. c-span: when you say he's private, what was the first giveawayo you that he wa private? me hne gntgosh, thinhe td conversation. there was a--a lecture about stephen crane, and he--i didn't know who he was, and he after a while, i guess, decided to tell me who he was and told that one tra lahow pre di gous a number and didn't give it out to me, even though he knew i was working on a crane biography. i think dr. crane wanted to size me up for himself before he told me how to get in touch withim. c-span: now i assu be--because stheandnavy deda.. dt

uemm. c-span: ... and so you--are there a lot of other cranes around that came from his brothers? >> guest: not a lot. i understand there are just a few now, and i've never met any of the other ones. c-span: how many cranes were there in the family? fa, fif he died before he was born. c-span: his parents are here on this... >> guestmm-hmm. c-span: ... page. tell us about them. >> guest: mary helen peck crane was a minister's daughter. the reverend jonathan townley crane was also a methodist he 5enphasn shs c-span: how long did they live? >> guest: she died when she was 60 years old and crane was 20. he died at the age of 64, when he tame hane was eight. thie i wmy thieno le connection. c-span: and s--you have a picture here of agnes crane. >> guest: mm-hmm. c-span: what's the story on her? >> guest: agnes was stephen

crane's loved older sister. he had a couple of sisters, but asd e itd him--himself. and she was really a substitute mother for stephen crane when he was a little boy, and she also died. c-sp: of what? >> guest: i think she died of foteal meningitis--my d, i've m y. crw waep uehe 1 1 think, when his sister died. c-span: now his mother... >> guest: mm-hmm. c-span: ... was with the women's christian temperance union. >> guest: mm-hmm. c-span: in what regard--what did she do? >> guest: ll, sh-she was one tomhot er mngd el ouiving lectures on temperance, on the evils of alcohol. she did a lot of public talks about it. she had a brother who had a problem with alcohol and inking alcohol was tengthimis d hee a of ur c-span: did stephen crane drink?

>> guest: he did, but not to excess. he--he drank a little beer and whatnot, but he was not a heavy drinker. c-span: you paint a picture of him, though, from me to time as someone who's not very >>uest: mm-hmm... yeah an--ane on characteristics--where did you find the descriptions of him? and what was the worst kind of thing people wou say about him? >> guest: well, the worst thing people would say about him was that he was a degenerate, he was--he was a drunk and a drug adct, and that came from alhaeprs w thliho hlied when he went up against one of them on behalf of a prostitute he'd seen falsely arrested in 1896. thid hhimedards, the cops were d hiy,-a o lenkt heane was an alcoholic and a drug addict because of these rumors that--that started about him. c-span: why were people out to get him? >> guest: well, the cops--why were the cs out to get him or...

c-span: or anybody. you said a lotf people were jealous of h a... reer kin din new york were jealous of his talent. i mean, here was this kid in his early 20s, this brilliant writer who could write circles around most of them with both hands tied behind his back, and that excited a lot of jealousy. he ay liblrs snnyg t i k it was basically jealousy. c-span: the names that come up roughout this--at one point you say he was a friend of theodoreoosevelt's. >> guest: mm-hmm. c-span: when was that, andow long didhe friendsp st? uewehe tow doooltthmm 1whoolt police commissioner of new york. they were inoduced by a mutual friend. roosevelt was big fan of crane's writing. they had dinner a couple o s. copoce o were really just getting to know each other when stephen crane happened to be out on the

street one night in new york in a bad neighborhood. he was escorting a chorus girl to the subway or the streetcar of t tirhoe to find thatne t silk bfay arrested by this very corrupt policeman, charles becker. she accused--he accused her of soliciting. this is one or two in the crwaephie he o girls to make sure they were safe while he was getting the other one safely home. and she was hauled off to the police station anyway. and against the advice of the desk sergeant, cne turned up spupthrout ha she was a prostitute, as it turned out--dora clark--but she was not soliciting when she was with crane. and it was a big, big mistake for his career. he felt that it was the

dot coouot forgive him after that. there was actually a--an official police hearing afterward a couple of months later. crane turned up again to testify. the policeman, becker, was exonerated, but the cops would noforgive crane after that in ywit coly could notet foo trd-ha. wind wng reporter in new york... c-span: so what happened... >> guest: ... at the age of 25. c-span: ... to the relationship with theodore roosevelt, because don't they pop up later in... >> guest: yes. c-span: ... down in cuba and... >> guest: well, roosevelt hit es ae cely tried to persuade inha w bbi mistake. crane decided to do it anyway because he felt that it would be dishonorable of him not to. and roosevelt sided with the cops, that was it. they were esanat in ar af r, eyh u t spanish-american war; crane as a reporter, roosevelt with the

rough riders at that point. c-span: stephen crane was a reporter at how many different newspapers? >> guest: well, he was a reporter for the new york jon icofsps,achelor thw wld in the united states. c-span: a journal owned by hearst. >> guest: mm-hmm. and pulitzer's wld. c-span: and how many different wars did he cover? >> guest: two, the monthlong sp o97 trkish coctn th iser wwhwa yeagisme anhemeosh conrad. >> guest: joseph conrad. c-span: who is he? >> guest: well, a great polish writer who learned to write in english, known for the "heart of darkness," and "lord jim" and het er anouto yf you can remember his real name. >> guest: ah... c-span: i didn't write it down. >> guest: yeah. it's teodo-i can't pronounce it correctlyjozef korzeniows or somhingike at jo cd?et n ueherizes

, li anerd m >> guest: they met in england. they were both living in england. they had the same publisher. they were introduced at--at lunch. crane expressed a desire to meet the soeald d urouatra had read "the red badge" and wa--and admired crane's work, and they hit it off and became very great friends c-sp: what was the age difference? >> guest: crane was in his mid- to late 20s; conrad was 40. but as his bioapher says, 'a very old 40.' sph.we enh ers ving in the same neighborhood that crane was living in, in east sussex in england. c-span: what kind of relationship developed there? >> guest: they were friends, too. they were not as close as crane d conrad. be grfr c'serrs sphos mes friendship? >> guest: they would get together when they could for lunch; they

would stay at each other's homes, visit each other; they ottt anotnan illth >> guest: willa cather, yes. willa cather was working for the nebraska star journal. she was still in college but she was actually writing a column. she was reviewing plays, i believe. "radhape i select number of newspapers across the country, including the newspaper she worked for in nebraska, in an extremely abbreviated and butchered form and heentthearlier. ch jondi o west as a reporter to gather local color, as crane put it. and one his early stops was nebraska. he was covering a drought there she was in the officwhene ane d rame

conversation out of him during the few days that he was there. c-span: what happened to their relationship as time went by? >> guest: they really never had a relationship. they had one really good conversation and that was about bioum rw.ugh she wrote quite a goto riop, too--but what--the money problems that he had all his life. >> guest: mm. c-: her a ne g: ide y. dt a oney. he--he was very quick to sign a contract with d. appleton for "the red badge" because he was really poor and really anxious to have the book published. and he got a bad dea instead of having a lawyer, including his brother william, who was a lawyer, look ovethe contract, he just signed on e dott lin-tirak thwae soin like--i think--he got no money up front a he was not going to earn any money until the publisher's costs d been recovered.

and there was no provision for foreign rights at all. c-spani wre down here that u nof boso llerd e. g: mmmm that's true. c-span: and in some way, you make an analysis that he earned an average of 2. 7 cents a word at stiad c a . uemm. mm-hmm. c-span: where'd you get that? >> guest: gosh, i forgot where i got that. one of the crane stollar -- schors did some good digging on that and--and got the financial records. i didn't do the original research on that. but he sometimes wld earn as mu as 5 cents a word for ieuterned c-: maooaven >>sterven-'s see--you mean biographies. therwas an early biography, which isn't really a conventional biography, by thomas behr in the 1920s. then john berryman wrote a critical bography. r. w--r. w. stallman wrote raab30rs. melvwra

mini-biography for a harcourt brace series in the '80s. christopher benfey wrote a study soe bohethk.years ago, i think. anw ouifnt an others? >> guest: well, it's the first full-length in 30 years--first llgtogy ra ncstallman's. it's not a critical or academic biography. i would describe it as a serious literary biography, but it's perhaps a little more popular in approach than the others. c-an: the main charaer in "the red badge of coure," nrem gise >>stemwae en name of one of stephen crane's sisters-in-law. and he used the word--the name henry a lot. he was--he was a little bit lazy

about naming his characters, s rlee h a and whe character henry fleming like in "red badge?" >> guest: he's a boy who's gone off to join the war, which he thinks is something very romantic because of these very romantic accounts of war he's read as a boy, so he leaves hi--his widowed mother on the farm to go off to fight in the t l vnaannde realities of war very different. c-span: in--in a--you say this happens more than once -- that --t hat he wrote a lot about henry fleming's reaction to seeing his first corpse. >> gue: mm-hmm. yes. "tedgeple t i aa ccioth crane in his writing, not just his war writing; the sight of a dead face or the face of a ou seratat rlsus one thinks of hamlet's soliloquy as though you can

in--in reading the eyes of the dead soldier find the answer to what hamlet called the question--the discovered country from whoseourne no traverurns. crs .as d asn crane's mind because he, himself, was very sickly. i think he--he knew that he would not live a long life and he was very intrigued by--by what would happen after life. c-span: where dihe g consumption--or, tuberculosis? >> gst: well, d k r . sphe i t household. you usually get tb by repeated exposure to somebody else with an advanced state of the disease, from repeated exposure for many hours a day, for perhaps a month at a time. er sevce brr,liha. but the details are very vague. so we're not absolely sure. but it does seem to me that he probablyontrted

a, tb ed mentnto nd remission, although he was sickly frequently throughout his adult life. then he got malaria in the spanish-american war, which was not great for somebody with--who had bad lungs to begin with, and tbrto iai spwhisbu, >>st'sie elizabeth, new jersey. c-span: have you been to all these places that stephen crane either lived in or... >> guest: yes. yes, i went down to dra--jacksonville, florida, and thmme a agbeacoverlooking filibustering tug crane went on before the spanish-american war actually broke out. it was carrying arms to i e wn to florida; i found the lighthouse along the coast that crane refers to in

"the open boat" which was based on this true story of a shipwreck. i went to all the crane locatis in england. i went to basel, switzernd d adilgey, e howhhe ie c-span: where is this house right here in this picture? >> guest: that's bree place that's in east sussex, england, and it's a privately owned house. c-span: and how long did he--mr. cra live there? g: asrem rne endm e iser wth beginning of 1899, until just before he died, may of 19--1899. c-span: where are these two pictures from? >> guestthoswereakenn d thfrs,ch s hel-ibri tug in the spanish-american war and that--that's crane w--at his seediest, as you can see. it's--was living in--in either pajamas or sled duck tus

dnakbastd shaving, let his hair ow, let his mustache grow about down to his chin, it looks like, and--and really looked like a degenerate at that poi. c-span: in the bree place er in--in england, you talk about how eyedteanci, or >>stm.y. an. rtd t d heasreh -i t wyoca -is--it wasn't his wife, cora. >> guest: mm-hmm. c-span: and--but they didn't have any money, so what was going on here? >> guest: mm-hmm. well, the--they got a lot of credit. cr ae l hendthay bore erd- k wth ks ath people. and they ran up a lot of credit locally, which got them into huge trouble. i've--i've often thought about what life would be like for them now with credit cas d -tro two in. t ran up a lot of debt. they were constantly sending flares out to crane's english agent, the long-suffering james pinker, asking him to advance the money. and he advanced them

hundreds of pounds out-of-pocket, which crane did not earnack before he di. sphong cli uecoid lto ny years after crane--just 10 years. she died in 1910 at the age of 46. c-span: was she older than--obviously, older than... >> guest: just six yearslder anne c-span: you say in the book that he wrote between midnight and 4 in theorning. >> guest: mm-hmm anenyoit g: nooting tooo i mds 'sbeimroou 9 or 10 in the morning till 1 or 2 in the afternoon. they're different school schedules, so i have to adjust it somewhat. but that's a--three or four hours a day are about all i'm good for, except if my back is--is to the wall and i really have to do more than that. i just find that my-y concentration wanes after that i suppe becae i'not senne, n' and- wim d

av h that he wrote in the middle of the night? what was the reason for that? >> guest: the house was quiet. he was living at his brother's house a lot of the time. his brother had a family, and there were a lot of kids and a lot of noise around. fa wento alip until the wrlat t is completely quiet and then he'd sleep till about lunchtime. c-span: you have a picture i the book of--i guess we'd--i think we used to call in the service hot bedding in--you , d ie slin broth clock. what's this all about? where is this? >> guest: this is--this was and taken in the art students league building or the old art stents league building in new york. a lot of artists were living there and crane was bunking with st.cofer gs hi bed e a o and the fourth fellow would take the cot. stephen crane is the one othe left.

his head is sort of turned in. and some of the other fell mog asoke,ilp all the shoes that they all owned collectively at the foot of the bed and took the picture they had kind of a community closet of clothes and shoes and whoever had a job interview that orevasfiinto look ally nice niouet bpi hethndes c-span: where is this from? >> guest: that is a photograph of a beautiful paintinwhich hangs at the university of virginia in the clifton waller rrcotiwhis heanllon t alderman library. it is a photograph of an oil painting done by stephen crane's artist friend, corwin knapp linson when stephen crane had written "the red badge of courage." and it's--it's absolutely aul if u , d'tch lors at all. c-span: you said a lot earlier

that you grew to like him... >> guest: mm-hmm. c-span: ... love stephen crane. >> guest: mm-hmm. c-span: what is it that you liked about him? >> guest: wehe was very young and very full of the devil and a lot of fun. he ade s o r. because he was always very young. we both share a fondness for dogs and horses and horseback riding. and a preference for the color red. he ade, minyf s lk a lot of writers can't talk. they--even if they can write beautifully, they can't talk. crane uld talk beautifully. i think he was extremely well-intentioned and kind-hearted. oto t ro, he wmeg. asooie and he had that indefinable something we call charisma. he was the sort of person who walked into a room and created a ki of magic.

one of his fendsa' w he sng ovin rondngy t. he was so alive that his friend yar woodriff said that the news of his death seemed a mistake. spanwhatid y t w u d the sp ms fcond 'tmuteh od >> guest: well... c-span: and what was that all about? >> guest: yeah. he was not actually incommunicado for nine months. he was away from--the time he left eland for the spanish-american war, he was away for ne months altogether endu tumof8, ht oedal the loose ends yet. stephen crane disappeared into the bowels of havana for four months--that's when he was trtoerrantodo--and apparently di first at a hotel, then at a boarding house; communicated

communicated with no one except his agent took to his room, didn't en see the correspondence very much. c-span: this is cora here. >> guest: mm-hmm. asort ouof: biphe a i think it was another biographer, but i don't remember who, who said that there -- there's a point in every biography when the biographer falls out of love with the andi elyl of wmyjebuwa e ppedhi he behaved very badly. she was absolutely broke in england, desperate for money. c-span: and this is her also... >> guest: mm-hmm. c-span: ... next to stephen crane. she's de--i guess you write her c-: w his attraction... to her? >> guest: well, i think she di't photograph well, to be fair to her. also, a loof women in the late attiattianerplum

e't inco er wakt p, where she rather let herself go. she started making these homespun garments and she would let her hair down,hi was rather shocking. you waysadr dup o pe ad ouhe haine n pgr anen tta isa otograph of her. >> guest: yeah. that was taken before she met crane. she has her corset on in that picture. this was when she was still married in--married to and living with captain stewart. ththas ten arfohe c. e -tttio c-span: 1889. >> guest: mm-hmm. the attraction--crane's attraction to her--she actually was a very attractive woman in person. she had beautiful golden-blond befuad gn-dt was suc a oopho s dyed her hair, but she didn't. she had beautiful coloring. she was intelligent. she was literate.

she absolutely adored him. she was a woman who knew how to shd weltred herself. e a n know tindde; very--very loyal to him. c-span: now where did he get the name "red badge of courage?" >> guest: well, now we don't know for sure. my idea--first of all, it hearg th aoldier. he's accidentally hit in the head by the end of a rifle--gets a rifle butt. this creates his 'red badge of coure.' th heratne ghve tder g lin n and then later titling his book, "red badge of courage," from jacob rise's--or riis' book, tente heertu ofhalf lives" which

. ans lit. and jacob riis repeatedly uses the word 'badge' as a metaphor. most strikingly, there's the monghiveane 'e baof ag "the red badge of courage" was not the original title of the novel, however. it was 'private fleming: his various battles.' c-span: when did they change it? >> guest: stephen crane changed it before publation, before he yoesh arooptted it. this book, go back to the beginning and tell us what impact this had on you an--as it relates to your--the story of your father saving you firying to save u fr tha g: fou,eaor tgh w t? >> guest: yes.

actually, something very strange happened, and i don't remember exactly how long i'd been researching the book. i hadn't srted wting it yet, but i was etteep i abt my father in which i could never see his face. he would appear to me in--in a pitch-black room, for instance. eyhr tars eeing coul't h hs dit st with his back turned to me or he was bandaged. but i was never able to see his face. at some point, when i was very steeped in stephen crane, i had dr iiccove not an actual easese-i a child again, probably about seven or eight years old, standing in the kitchen in our hoe in ft. rucker. my father was stanng at the kitccor ng o choye er zzhie d ak heneouo

something to me and grinned an--my father had this wonderful smile and beautiful straight, white teeth. and i--and i remember very clearly seeing this grin from thpectof ahild who d oo u aul -ami a. and i could just suddenly see him in a way i've never been able to see him. i mean, heied in 1961, so that was a long time. it had been about 30 years since the fire or--or longer than that. inkt de i to--heanhe more i found myself. you know, flaubert once said when he was writing "madame bovary"- think it was at the end of the book, after insisting for years that mo--"madame bovary" was nothing ke, hanog o m,thd asce m'daovc' moi.' and i got to that point where i said to myself,'stephen crane c'est moi.' was--the--the deeper i dug the more i found myself. c-span: you went to syracuse to

study what? >>uesti wajun eg libals. c-: yo oomre nyeroo g: d. ntgrteoo on i got a master's degrein english at simmons. c-span: in what? >> guest: in english. c-span: so after--this is your second book? >> guest: mm-hmm. c-span: you got a third one planned? i t wer: welli do. iswait. ven ozyut nig pral but i'd like to do a civil war biography of joshua chamberlain, who was commander of the 20th maine division at gettysburg, and do just a biography covering only the three years during which servein the l spwh uewei k 's the crane influence again. it's--it's being so steeped in his war writing. also, i'm a soldier's daughter and--so i think it's the combination of--of being a soldier's daughter and coming to bun-io oare, writing through c-span: so for those interested either in war or in ing a

journalist or in being a writer, if they pick up your book, "badge of courage," what will they--what do you hope that they take way from this that they >>sthohekey ns hiftets with--with writing, of how--how the two are constantly folding into each other, of what edith wharton called 'the discipline of the daily task,' which rey a erenane knew, of how n-ioitik, n really have more to do with the pasomemean lter is creating on the writer is actually living out in the world. c-an: linda h. davis, author of "badge of courage: the life of stephen crane," thank you very much for joining us. very much for joining us.very