The More You Know

The post-college student, especially those of the naive and ultimately doomed English-major variety are swamped, Hoarders-style, in a mountain of books. Books we probably should have sold back to the bookstore for ten cents on the dollar like normal kids, but just couldn't. My strategy was simple: if I liked one of the books I read in class, I kept it. I figured I would eventually get around to reading it again since I liked it so much the first time around. Predictably, this has not happened. I have not reread ANY of the books I saved. Books are too plentiful and life too finite to waste precious minutes rereading the words of a some guy who didn't live to see iPods or flat-screen TVs.

I was trying to realign some of these books on the bookshelf -- How does the saying go? My bookshelf needs a bookshelf? -- and nearly realigned my spinal cord instead. In the middle of this burdensome work, I unearthed a little brown book, tucked away behind some Mark Twain and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The book, pictured right, was The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane. My professor bumped it from the syllabus because she wanted to spend more time on a previously ignored feminist text that predated the feminist movement. I don't remember the feminist text or the author because I'm a bad person. I did save The Red Badge of Courage, though, because I didn't have a chance to read it and would have received about two cents back from the bookstore. So there it was, hidden all this time, a book on the shelf I had not read.

I used to always skip Introductions in college, but now I find them fascinating. So-and-so was huffing paint while writing in the closet of his second-cousin's one-room apartment. You don't say? Critic Alfred Kazin made a point of hammering home two things in the Introduction:

1) This was the first American novel to describe war as it truly was. Basically, Crane called bullshit on the idea of a flawless and heroic soldier, always-competent leadership, and patriotism. Soldiers were scared sometimes, lieutenants were not the smartest men in battle, and neither always knew what they were fighting for.

2) Crane was only 21* when he completed this novel and never fought in battle. His experiences were drawn from what he read. Many Civil War veterans who read the book were shocked to find out such a realistic portrayal of battle and nuanced psychological profile of a soldier could be penned by someone who was not once a soldier himself.

* -- There's nothing like reading a novel firmly established in the American literary canon, written by a 21-year-old to remind you of how little you've done with your life.


I finished the book today. There's tales of a soldiers handing over their personal belongings before battle, anticipating death. There's a colony of ants crawling over the face and into the eyes of a dead soldier. There's a cloud of gray smoke hovering over every scene, including the battle-free scenes. There's the overwhelming sense of paranoia that you would expect in a war novel. Where the book truly shines, in my opinion, is when Crane delves into Henry's (the protagonist, referred to as "the youth") psyche. We see a a soldier who believes in the glory of war and is reduced to fleeing the scene when it comes time to fight. Henry describes the guilt of walking past the wounded soldiers and wishes he suffered a wound himself. He is forced to leave a dying comrade at one point, and reminisces on the looks girls gave him in uniform and the support he received back home when being sent off. It's powerful stuff that reads like a memoir if memoirs were written in third person.

Reading Crane got me to thinking about sports writing. Most sportswriters didn't play college sports. Some didn't even play in high school yet they are entrusted with telling these stories. It's one thing to a write a simple game recap, but but how adequately can a writer assess a player's ability to breakdown a defense if they've never broken down a defense? Or even, how can a writer truly understand what's going through a player's mind on the court? Interviews are becoming more and more useless every year, as players know better than to express anything that can provide headlines or damage their brand.

We've accepted the writer-player relationship because it's the best we can do. Players cannot play and write full-time during the season. And just as their counterparts weren't good enough to play professionally, they probably wouldn't be good enough to write professionally. So we cling to our Stephen Crane's. The ones who are so good they can make you feel like they were chasing Ray Allen around screens or standing at the free throw line, down a point with two free throws. They command the respect of the players they write about and so on.

Either way, I'm glad to have experienced one of Stephen Crane's literary contributions. I wish he could have listened to his Abe Holzmann on an iPod.