#WHY THROW AWAY YOUR LIFE SO RECKLESSLY FULL#

He later got himself hired as a reporter during both the Greek-Turkish and Spanish-American Wars - partly for money but mostly to see what war was really like, and he made a point of putting himself in harmвЂ™s way. Similarly, Crane wrote вЂњThe Red Badge of Courage,вЂќ his great novel of the Civil War, at the astonishingly young age of 23, when he had never seen combat of any kind. Listen to our podcast:В Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review PodcastВ helps you delve deeper into your favorite books.That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125.See whatвЂ™s new in October: Among this monthвЂ™s new titlesВ are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric.Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this seasonВ includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more.Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. He attended college for just two semesters: one at Lafayette and one at Syracuse, where he seldom went to class but was elected captain of the baseball team. Crane rebelled early: He was drinking and smoking by the age of 6, and he quickly developed a fondness for poker as well. His father was a minister of the sort who took a dim view of dancing, drinking and card playing. He was born in 1871, the ninth surviving child of old-school Methodists. The official cause of CraneвЂ™s death was tuberculosis (not the only way he reminds you of Keats), but as AusterвЂ™s title suggests, a case could be made that he simply burned himself out. He is an excellent reader, it turns out, alert to all the nuances and surprises of CraneвЂ™s style, but these lengthy passages of analysis inevitably slow the book down and can make you forget that CraneвЂ™s was a life lived at a hectic, almost frantic pace.

#WHY THROW AWAY YOUR LIFE SO RECKLESSLY FULL#

Crane should be read while youвЂ™re вЂњsitting bolt upright in your chair,вЂќ Auster says, and he needs to be read вЂњslowly and deliberately, sentence by sentence, with brief pauses вЂ¦ to digest the full import of what they contain.вЂќ For long stretches here, Auster does just that, unpacking Crane paragraph by paragraph, line by line, sometimes word by word. On the assumption that his reader is unfamiliar with Crane, he summarizes and quotes extensively. He also devotes at least half the book to the work, not the life. Crane scholars ever since have been trying to get the facts straight, and Auster, who has thoroughly mastered all this material, takes more time than he probably needs to lead his readers through the weeds of whatвЂ™s reliable and what isnвЂ™t.

In 1923, CraneвЂ™s first biographer, Thomas Beer, solved that problem by simply making things up, including people when he needed a letter, he forged one. He died in June 1900, when he was just 28, and left behind few of the clues biographers usually rely on: no diary or journal, few letters that reveal much. Though you wouldnвЂ™t know it from the length of this book, one of the challenges of writing CraneвЂ™s life is that there was so little of it. вЂњBurning BoyвЂќ is seldom dull - itвЂ™s often thrilling, in fact, to see a contemporary American writer engage so deeply with one of his forebears - but it can be exhausting. AusterвЂ™s book is aimed, instead, at civilians, so-called general readers, and he must think they have a lot of stamina. But as Auster points out, even that book has lately fallen off the reading lists and Crane is now read, if heвЂ™s read at all, only by grad students and lit majors. If youвЂ™re of a certain age, you were probably assigned CraneвЂ™s вЂњRed Badge of CourageвЂќ in high school - partly in recognition of its genuine greatness and partly on the mistaken assumption that itвЂ™s antiwar. But, for all their differences, Auster loves Crane and cares so much about his reputation that in this enormous, impassioned book he has taken it upon himself to restore him to his rightful place in the American canon. His sentences are long, allusive and sometimes deliberately flat. Auster, on the other hand, is the dean of American postmodernists, one of those writers whose books are always chasing their own narrative tails. HeвЂ™s interested not in ideas but in experience and sensation, which he describes in language thatвЂ™s vivid, direct and often metaphorical. Crane is among the least cerebral of writers. Other than that, you wouldnвЂ™t think they had a lot in common. Paul Auster and Stephen Crane were both born in Newark. BURNING BOY The Life and Work of Stephen Crane By Paul Auster

Why throw away your life so recklessly