| Welcome to the Number One Ranked Stephen Crane Fan Site! |
| That's right, this is the top "Stephen Crane fan site" according to Google! We're very proud of this achievement. Google's mysterious yet all-knowing system says we're NUMBER ONE, better even than our arch-rivals in Crane Worship: the so-called Stephen Crane Society! Wow! |
| The ghost of Stephen Crane says: Read my collected works or I'm gonna kick the shit out of you. |
| The philosophy of this site: Listen nancy, we are some of the baddest Stephen Crane fans around. We've been reading Crane and studying his life since we were 12 years old, so if you don't know who Stephen Crane is, you'd better take your ass back to the library and read The Red Badge of Courage. This here fan site is a collection of random stuff that has caught the eye of true Crane connoisseurs like us. Or us. Actually, just us. We didn't learn about Crane in any fancy pants college, we learned about him on the streets, prior to attending a fancy pants college! Enjoy the site and remember, we're not the top ranked Stephen Crane Fan Site for nothing! We've paid our dues and made our bones, and the motto "Stephen Crane for Life" is tattooed on our hairy chests! |
Stephen Crane Stuff...
Thank God Stephen Crane never had to deal with the internet!
UPDATES! NOVEMBER 2008
1) This website can now be accessed at stephencrane.org, see?
http://www.stephencrane.org/
2) Check out the NEW Stephen Crane blog we established on Nov.1, 2008:
http://redblogofcourage.blogspot.com/
UPDATES! NOVEMBER 2008
1) This website can now be accessed at stephencrane.org, see?
http://www.stephencrane.org/
2) Check out the NEW Stephen Crane blog we established on Nov.1, 2008:
http://redblogofcourage.blogspot.com/
Stephen Crane post-mortem art?
We bought a mini-portrait of Stephen Crane made
by an artist named A. Kelly. It didn't cost much and
we really like it. Only questions a Stephen Crane
nerdy might have:
1) Does it look enough like Crane to be called
anything but a "stylized" portrait? We don't quite
know, but a good guess is this looks most like
Crane shortly before he DIED of consumption!
2) We've also got problems with this because it
looks like a caricature of Crane that another artist
did, so we're wondering how original A. Kelly's
concept is?? Oh well, we still love it!
We bought a mini-portrait of Stephen Crane made
by an artist named A. Kelly. It didn't cost much and
we really like it. Only questions a Stephen Crane
nerdy might have:
1) Does it look enough like Crane to be called
anything but a "stylized" portrait? We don't quite
know, but a good guess is this looks most like
Crane shortly before he DIED of consumption!
2) We've also got problems with this because it
looks like a caricature of Crane that another artist
did, so we're wondering how original A. Kelly's
concept is?? Oh well, we still love it!
Crane's Signature
This is Crane's signature which
is owned by us, the top ranked
Stephen Crane Fan Site.
It was expensive but a good
deal, and we bought it from a
dealer with a rock-solid
reputation.
Many men died so that we
could obtain this signature,
and share it with you today.
(We can't decipher who did
the illustration of Crane, so if
anyone does know, contact us).
This is Crane's signature which
is owned by us, the top ranked
Stephen Crane Fan Site.
It was expensive but a good
deal, and we bought it from a
dealer with a rock-solid
reputation.
Many men died so that we
could obtain this signature,
and share it with you today.
(We can't decipher who did
the illustration of Crane, so if
anyone does know, contact us).
Courtesy of the Simonelli Crane archives. All rights reserved.
| Maggie: A Girl of Da Streetz At right is a copy of Crane's first book, which he published himself under the name Johnston Smith. This is probably our favorite longer Crane fiction, overall. The image at right is a cover from the first edition. We don't own it, we just thought it'd be worlds of fun to include it on this page. We don't collect Crane editions anyway, although we did buy an old copy of The Red Badge of Courage that (we later found out) had antique mouse turds all up in the spine! We removed the turds, but goddamn if we can't pick up that book without thinking of them falling all over us. |
| More shit we can't afford: This is a Stephen Crane letter that was auctioned recently. |
| Harding Davis vs Crane Photo of correspondents Richard Harding Davis (left) and Stephen Crane during the Spanish American War. They were the two hotshots of their time, and while Harding Davis has much love from the Top Ranked Stephen Crane Fan Site, Crane always had the edge and Harding Davis knew it! |
| The boy genius and his mentors Above we find a young Stephen Crane nestled between the hungry glares of writers Hamlin Garland (left) and Willie Dean Howells (right). While Crane had more talent than either writer, they were the literary pimps of their day, and helped Crane get his reputation as a writer established. For that we're ever grateful, as since Crane died so young, he didn't have time to languish in obscurity. Mr. Garland and Mr. Howells each have their own Society that worships them as gods, which is especially understandable given their great moustaches. |
| Crane's main squeeze, Cora At left is a photo of Stephen Crane's eventual commonlaw wife, Cora Stewart-Taylor-Crane. They met in a Jacksonville brothel in 1896 and stayed together the rest of Crane's life. Cora might have had something of a shady past, but we at the Top Ranked Stephen Crane Fan Site approve of her. She was a loyal partner who stuck by Crane when he was broke and sickly during the last years of his life. After he died, she kept his papers in pretty good order. Cora, writing as Imogene Carter, was one of the first female war correspondents. She was also pretty damn hot. |
| Crane Scholars: Wertheim and Sorrentino We'd like to give a shout-out to two of the top-ranked Crane experts in the country: Stanley Wertheim and Paul Sorrentino. Sorrentino puts out the Stephen Crane Studies journals, and Wertheim's many scholarly books on Crane include the Crane Encyclopedia at left. This is a great book and some stores sell it really high, but you can find it for as little as 99 cent on Ebay. These two guys are down with the posh Stephen Crane Society, but maybe one day they'll defect to our side. |
| Thomas Beer: Drunk On Something!! Wertheim and Sorrentino helped give a smackdown to the credibility of Thomas Beer, who wrote a biography of Crane's life in the early 1920's. Turns out, Mr. Beer was making shit up off the top of his head: quoting from letters that didn't exist and inventing entire scenarios involving Crane. While Beer was a fraud, his tall tales did help revive interest in Crane's life and works. If only Beer would have done proper research, he'd have found out that Crane's life was so interesting, there was no need to embellish or make stuff up! |
| How to Become a Member of the Top Ranked Stephen Crane Fan Site Fan Club, aka The Stephen Crane Crusaders! It's no surprise that you would want to join us. We are the hottest group of Crane fans out there. Others may seem more powerful or smarter than we are, but it's just a matter of time before we outstripe their pathetic Crane worship. Yeah that's right, they know who we are, and they can't stop us. To join, you need to email us explaining why you are the baddest Stephen Crane Fan on your block, and what you have done and are going to do to make sure Crane is the most revered dead author ever! Email to: crane@litvision.org |
Our hits just keep coming!
>Coming Soon as we get time, energy, and a plan: We're gonna load up this site with our thoughts, questions, impressions etc. of Crane's writing. This is going to be an anti-academic site, because impressions are fun and Crane relied heavily upon them. >Stephen Crane links (because even though we is the Number One Ranked Stephen Crane Fansite, there are some sites who have more actual content than we do at this point)... link: Stephen Crane Society link: A great Jacksonville Florida site with mucho info on Cora Crane. link: Interesting comments from Paul Sorrentino, a cool Crane scholar link: A good number of Crane's stories can be read on this person's site. >Contact a fellow Stephen Crane junkie: In case a living soul stumbles across this jewel of internet technology and literary Garden of Eden, ya can email me, Patrick Simonelli, at crane@litvision.org >Thanks!! |