| Title | : | The Open Boat and Other Stories |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0486275477 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780486275475 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 112 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1898 |
The Open Boat and Other Stories Reviews
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Nel 1936, Hemingway scrisse in Verdi colline d'Africa che "I buoni scrittori sono Henry James, Stephen Crane, e Mark Twain. Ma si badi che così non sono in ordine di valore. Non è possibile stilare una classifica dei buoni scrittori."
Leggere tre racconti è poco per conoscere uno scrittore. Posso dire che La scialuppa, che racconta un fatto verificatosi nella vita di Crane –un naufragio nelle acque tra Cuba e la Florida, da cui si salvò con altri tre membri dell’equipaggio, grazie ad una scialuppa- è un racconto intenso, drammatico, che avrebbe potuto essere scritto da Hemingway. -
Read these stories in an edition combined with Red Badge two or three years ago. May have reviewed it then. At any rate, fine reading.
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In the Lake of the Woods
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New Hampshire Robert Frost
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___
Previous library review:
Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume Two B
Next library review:
The Red Badge of Courage -
The Open Boat is one of the best short stories that I have read. If you want to know how to write 50 heart wrenching and dramatic pages essentially about floating in the surf between a sand bar and a rocky shore then this is the right book for you.
Crane's naturalism style is not one of plot twists but still dramatic because his use of imagery and especially his knack for writing engaging characters are so superb.
An interesting note is that this story is autobiographical. -
Once, in a royal fit of frustration, I jumped up on the bed in the middle of night, the mattress balanced precariously on stolen cinder blocks, and yelled: Just put me on a boat in the middle of the ocean with one gallon of water and one box of biscuits and let me die there and then I'll tell you what life is like. My boyfriend was speechless. And half asleep.
Stephen Crane, as a young journalist, was actually stranded in a boat in the middle of the sea, and this is the true story of that. He made it home, married a beautiful girl, and died of TB at the age of 29. I'm 29. -
gli albatri volavano obliqui verso est, dove il cielo era grigio, desolato ...
Tre racconti. Il primo, La scialuppa, ti coinvolge e ti emoziona e, a mio avviso, nulla ha da invidiare ad altre brevi avventure sul mare, narrate da autori come Conrad o Stevenson. Mentre ero lì con loro sulla barca, bagnato fradicio nonostante il mio… sud-ovest, mi veniva in mente la barca dei pescatori islandesi del Paradiso e Inferno di Stefánsson. Bah! Che azzardo.
«Se sto per affogare… se sto per affogare… se sto per affogare, perché, in nome dei sette numi folli padroni degli oceani, dovevo arrivare fino a qui a contemplare la terra e gli alberi?».
Gli altri due racconti, meno degni di nota. -
I liked this story a lot more than I thought I would. The more I read of Crane, the more I like his style -- and wonder what else he might have produced if he hadn't died so young. This story fits in with the Crane poem:
A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
In "The Open Boat" the cadence of his words when the boat is on the water evoked the rising and falling of the rough waves that rock the open boat. -
Tragic and suspenseful stories that rend the heart and fill with wonder. Intriguing characters imbue a variety of colorful American landscapes in this exceptional collection of realism. Stephen Crane is a gem; shame on me for not having read his works earlier.
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I was impressed with Crane's ability to write so fully and beautifully in a short story. The battle between the natural world and mankind and our apparent helplessness. Naturalism...
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Clear, crisp prose that doesn't turn sparse. Nature's brutality head-on. There is something about this stuff that I love, and it's somewhere between the words.
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Stephen Crane is the man. He writes some of the best sentences ever. And then puts those awesome sentences together to write stories. Jealous!!
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Sicuramente non sdraiato, in 28 anni di vita collezionò un po’ di tutto: padre pastore metodista, madre con problemi di equilibrio mentale (dovette sfornare 14 figli!), collegio militare, percorso scolastico svolazzante, scrittura e giornalismo.
Le vie fatiscenti di New York, le misere sale da ballo, la Bowery e gente che a lui piaceva (da qui uscì Maggie, ragazza di strada), relazioni sentimentali non facili, denutrito e sempre preda della tosse, gran lettore di resoconti sulla guerra civile pieni di fatti, ma privi delle sensazioni personali dei soldati (da qui uscì Il segno rosso del coraggio), le miniere di carbone della Pennsylvania (con i suoi reportage “tagliati”).
La difesa di una prostituta dall’arresto di un agente, poi Cuba e il viaggio sul Commodore che naufragò (è lui il giornalista del racconto La scialuppa), l’incontro con una signora un poco più vecchia di lui e l’amore, inviato per la guerra Greco-turca, e, dopo l’Inghilterra, la guerra ispano-americana (era lì quando i marines presero Guantanamo), si aggravò in Inghilterra e andò a morire a Baden.
Ha continuato ad essere in movimento in un’epoca dove i viaggi non erano molto brevi. Chissà cosa avrebbe combinato ora.
Di racconti ne scrisse molti.
Quello che apre la raccolta è proprio la descrizione del suo naufragio, della minuscola scialuppa su cui si trovò con il comandante, il cuoco ed il macchinista. Per un giorno e mezzo sballottati davanti alla costa, sulla quale riuscirono ad arrivare mandando in malora la scialuppa tenuta fino all’ultimo momento e proseguendo a nuoto. Sembra nulla, ma il macchinista non ce la fece.
In Un uomo e altri il protagonista è un uomo che ha vissuto molte vite, come molti degli uomini finiti sul confine del Messico e che hanno dato linfa al cinema western; miliardario, giocatore, buttafuori, vagabondo, astuto, il classico uomo+cavallo+pistola.
In Fuga a cavallo, uno yankee e il suo servitore messicano vivono una notte di terrore in un minuscolo villaggio, circondati da una banda di banditi ubriaconi. Riescono a fuggire, ma, inseguiti, se la caveranno solo per l’intervento dei rurales.
Aleggia una vena vagamente umoristica, specie il primo, e soprattutto la prossimità con McCarthy.
Anche I cinque topolini bianchi e Uomini saggi sono episodi che si svolgono a Città del Messico, con giovani yankee che bevono troppo, amano le scommesse e giocano ai dadi.
L’arrivo della sposa a Yellow Sky è un delizioso racconto sull’arrivo di coppia di sposi e su un uomo ubriaco che cerca rogne. La sposa non è particolarmente giovane, né bella, ma la galanteria è la galanteria.
La morte e il bambino. Un giornalista alla guerra greco-turca si fa travolgere e sconvolgere dall’esodo della popolazione civile. Poi il garbo di un ufficiale, la divisa, le piccole lontane nuvole dell’artiglieria turca. In nuce c’è il fantasma della bella morte che si nutrirà di tanto sangue nel secolo a venire. E’ greco e vuole combattere. Avanza. Le truppe in retrovia gli sembrano serene, curiose di quel ragazzo che vuol andare al fonte. Poi, ex abrupto, il sangue, le mascelle distrutte, i morti, la tracolla delle munizioni presa ad un cadavere e messa sulle sue spalle, che sembra volerlo strangolare. Fugge fino a crollare vicino ad una casupola dove un bimbo piccolo piccolo, lasciato indietro nella fuga, lo guarda stupito e gli chiede “Sei un uomo?”.
Un paio di appunti alla Ellio: nell’indice il secondo racconto non compare. Nella succinta biografia di Crane c’è, almeno, lo svarione dei giorni passati sulla scialuppa. Cavolo, ce li dice lui nel racconto!
16.02.2014 -
"La scialuppa":
Quattro uomini, un cuoco, un macchinista, un capitano e un giornalista, si ritrovano, dopo l'affondamento dell'oro piroscafo, su una piccola scialuppa sballottata dall'oceano.
Li attenderanno giorni di sofferenza in continua lotta per sopravvivere.
"La scialuppa" è il racconto del vero naufragio, avvenuto nel 1896, in cui si trovó lo stesso Crane (il giornalista nel racconto è proprio lui) durante il suo viaggio verso Cuba.
Con una scrittura asciutta, diretta, senza forzature o infiocchettamenti epici molto spesso presenti in questo genere di racconti, lo scrittore riesce a mettere il lettore davanti alla lotta nuda e cruda per la sopravvivenza, sviluppando quelle sensazioni di impotenza, solitudine e microscopicità tipiche dell'uomo davanti alla forza degli elementi mosso da Madre Natura.
Un breve racconto tragico e d'impatto.
"Fuga a cavallo":
Messico, Richardons, un pistolero Americano e José, il suo servitore messicano, fanno tappa in un piccolo villaggio per passare la notte, qui faranno la sgradevole conoscenza di un gruppo di uomini molesti ed ubriachi rosi dalla voglia di derubarlo.
"Fuga a cavallo", breve ma intenso racconto dal sapore di avventura del West, si propone come un racconto teso e d'atmosfera.
In poche pagine i pochi personaggi del racconto emergono con tutta la loro forza nonostante la mancanza di notizie sul passato degli stessi.
Un bel racconto, scorrevole e ben scritto da leggere tutto d'un fiato.
"Flanagan e la sua breve avventura di filibustiere":
Flanagan, irlandese con l'amore per il comando decide di cimentarsi nell'arte filibustiera, sceglierà così di mettersi al comando della "Foundling" una vecchia nave che sin da subito avrà problemi, con l'obiettivo di rifornire d'armi un manipolo di Cubani rivoltosi, il mare peró si sa puó essere a volte davvero pericoloso.
Un racconto che prende piede piano piano, una storia che prende le mosse dalla filosofia oer diventare poi cruda e dura realtà.
Una storia sì di mare ma soprattutto delle emozioni che chi lo solca puó trovarsi intimamente a vivere.
In questa raccolta di tre brevi racconti, Crane, uno degli scrittori americano simbolo dell'800 per quanto riguarda la letteratura realista, naturalista e impressionista, ci accompagna in un viaggio nelle emozioni umane, a fronte infatti di "fondali" ben dipinti, il lettore si imbatterà in un umanità vera, credibile e capace di connettersi a chi affronterà queste pagine.
Tre racconti brevi ma di sicuro impatto, grazie ad una scrittura immersiva e d'atmosfera. -
4.5 stars
Stephen Crane is a master of the Realism genre, and its a shame that he died at 28; I would have loved to have more work from him. The four short stories in this collection are at varying degrees of success; the first story, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, is a mixed bag of Crane's strengths and weaknesses. The story could have been twenty pages shorter and still have hit the mark of a piece about Irish American poverty and the struggles of class differences. The title story, The Open Boat, is the most prominent of the four, with characters representing different portrayals of human survival, sharp, invigorating prose, and a dangerously intriguing setting: the ruthless, unforgiving ocean. I believe this is his most critically acclaimed story, and rightfully so. The third story, The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky, is only ten pages, and is the most forgetful of the collection. I believe this is the case because Crane is a master of developing characters, and the people in this story weren't as well developed. The last story is my favorite. The Blue Hotel never lets you know which character you should root for, always surprising you with sympathy you never thought you'd feel for certain characters. This jumble of human emotion and grievance is set against the backdrop of a Nebraskan blizzard, the plot as unyielding and ruthless as the setting. And of course, Stephen Crane can bloody well write, a feature I cannot live without:
"We picture the world as thick with conquering and elate humanity, but here, with the bugles of the tempest pealing, it was hard to imagine a peopled earth." -
3 racconti ben scritti e scorrevoli.
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Onvan : The Open Boat and Other Stories - Nevisande : Stephen Crane - ISBN : 0486275477 - ISBN13 : 9780486275475 - Dar 112 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 1898
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The Open Boat is an intriguing short story by Stephen Crane that recognizes man's relationship to nature. This story portrays nature in sharp contrast to the romanticism of early American Romantic writers, who viewed nature as there nurturing mother. In many ways this story can be read as an allegory of mans loss of innocence due to the harsh reality of a changing world. This loss of innocence is portrayed as the men in the boat ship there view of nature from a romantic view to that a realist view. Written at the height of the Guided age in America this story provides great commentary to the then accepted views of social darwinism.
This is by far once of the best short stories I have ever read. -
“When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples.”
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Read to color in a reference in "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again." Not really my kind of reading, but Wallace is right. The sea is "primordial nada, bottomless, depths inhabited by cackling tooth-studded things rising toward you at the rate a feather falls."
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"The Open Boat" is great. Some funny dialogue. I liked it much better than "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets."
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Read, "The Open Boat"
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adventure
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Great short-stories.
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Hit and miss. When on, it's the best.
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Four men in a dinghy adrift on a sea for 30 hours. The tempest of waves and a great shark occasionally circling around the perimeter of the boat. And the men rowing endlessly as if it was their only tangible way of protesting against their fates. It all happened in reality because the author Stephen Crane himself experienced the ordeal as one of the four men from the sunk SS Commodore off the coast of Florida en route to Cuba, where Crane had been sent as a war correspondent. The story of the Open Boat is as realistic as it can be based upon a factual event the author himself was fatefully partaken in.
The four survivors of the vessel were aggregates in a dinghy bound by a remote hope of finding a rescue crew in the middle of the ocean that moved them with terrible grace of waves. The men were a captain, a cook, an oiler, and a correspondent, who was the author himself. There was a subtle brotherhood of men built in the boat who took care of each other. Crane surmised that the captain's heartfelt devotion to the safety of the motley crew resulted in comradeship, which the author himself had always regarded as a hypocritical concept of men until then.
There were indeed moments of despair as their drifting became protracted, and the author saw this as nature not regarding human as important. He would jeer at any signs of nature in any deity form because thinking of the captain and the two other seamen who had worked so hard on the sea in such distress was the abominable injustice.
Stephen Crane was a great American realist writer who later influenced Ernest Hemingway. Born in 1871 as a ninth child of Protestant Methodist parents in Newark, NJ, his literary talent began when he wrote his first poem at the age of eight. Although brilliant, Crane was not academically inclined, so he left University of Syracuse and became a kind of itinerant writer. It is said that Crane was a naturalist writer who emphasized observation in the portrayal of reality based on scientific principles of objectivity and detachment applied to the story of human characteristics. However, in my opinion, he was more of a realist writer who focused on objective, truthful presentations of details of the ordinary lives influenced by Gustave Flaubert and George Eliot. In this story, Crane's use of vocabulary was pity and straightforward with elegant expressions of emotions and feelings that so appropriately described the situations in which the characters were trapped.
After Crane's untimely death at the age of twenty-eight in a Black Forest sanitorium in Germany, Crane's works began to gain their long overdue acclaim, one of which was this story of the sunk vessel and his own experience thereof. Stephen Crane's works should deserve wider readership because he's the first and foremost American writer in Realism literary movement who paid attention to the lives of the ordinary by being the experience of living among the ordinary and writing the existential presentations of the ordinary lives. -
I have to admit that Stephen Crane is not my favorite author. I read "Red Badge of Courage" because everyone else had to in high school - but I already knew war was harrowing and bloody. And I read "Maggie, a Girl of the Streets" later in life - I'd been carrying it in my luggage for a while and was already a bit down in the mouth because I had a airplane issue, and so the story of this poor girl, horrifically treated by everyone who should have loved her, did not make me any happier.
But then, making the reader happy is not where Stephen Crane made his mark. His literary innovation was wrenching authenticity, at a time when pains were taken to shield the average reader from the unpleasant truths of grime, blood, sex (and birth) out of wedlock, penury, prostitution, and loveless death (no doubt in the gutter). He's not one for escapism. For the time it was written, his work was a stark introduction to the rude realities; for us today, it's a literate reminder of the hard times of the late 19th century.
"The Open Boat" is a particularly interesting story; although technically fiction, the story was based on Crane's own experience, when the USS Commodore on which he was traveling to Cuba hit a sand bar near Jacksonville, Florida. Survivors Crane and three others made their way to Daytona Beach in an open dinghy, a desperate journey as they continually hoped for assistance from land. Crane's experience didn't end there; he had quite a time of it finding money in order to continue his journey.
The other stories in this book (in addition to "Maggie") - "The Bride Comes to Yellow Skies," and "The Blue Hotel" - are Interesting in the juxtaposition; the former is a story showing how the rules of the old west are changing, while the later shows how human vanities have not changed and perhaps never will.
Stephen Crane died at 28; I wonder how his desire to write accurately about Bowery residents and war might have evolved, if he was allowed to mature along with the 20th century. I don't find his turn of phrase, or the flow of his stories, to stand above others of his time; but when you add in the happenings of the world around him, and the literary innovation he offered in subject matter - then, his work is highly significant. -
“'If I am going to be drowned – if I am going to be drowned – if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?'
During this dismal night, it may be remarked that a man would conclude that it was really the intention of the seven mad gods to drowned him, despite the abominable injustice of it. For it was certainly an abominable injustice to drowned a man who had worked so hard, so hard. The man felt it would be a crime most unnatural. Other people had drowned at sea since galleys swarmed with painted sails, but still –
When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples. Any visible expression of nature would surely be pelted with his jeers.
Then, if there be no tangible thing to hoot, he feels, perhaps, the desire to confront a personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one knee, and with hands supplicant, saying, 'Yes, but I love myself.'
A high cold star on a winter’s night is the word he feels that she says to him. Thereafter he knows the pathos of his situation.
The Open Boat -
I've read this collection to understand Eudora Welty's
On Writing.
I have enjoyed the Bride Comes to Yellow Sky, The Open Boat and The Blue Hotel. When I got to Maggie, A Girl of the Streets, initially I was moved, reminded of Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.
But unlike them, there's no hope of improvement for Maggie Johnson. Born in a poor and unloving family, her fate is to remain used, abused and die alone. Not a big fan of naturalism for its deterministic nature. The story is well crafted, and I don't ask necessarily for a happy ending, but there is a slightly "she had it coming" sensation as one reads this.
Pete and her family are of no help to her. Her mother and brother are abusive, her father wasn't bad towards her but was really cruel with her son and wife. She had a terrible relationship with her perpetually angered mother.
Maggie's only distinctive quality that would apparently give her a better social standing was beauty, but that's where she by lack of education, commits a fatal mistake.
