Book Review: Paul Auster – Burning Boy

 

(Audio version of this review to follow on the Reading in bed Podcast at the start of April 2022. Available at all of the usual places)

Blurb:

Booker Prize-shortlisted and New York Times bestselling author Paul Auster's comprehensive, landmark biography of the great American writer Stephen Crane.

With Burning Boy, celebrated novelist Paul Auster tells the extraordinary story of Stephen Crane, best known as the author of The Red Badge of Courage, who transformed American literature through an avalanche of original short stories, novellas, poems, journalism, and war reportage before his life was cut short by tuberculosis at age twenty-eight.

Auster’s probing account of this singular life tracks Crane as he rebounds from one perilous situation to the next: A controversial article written at twenty disrupts the course of the 1892 presidential campaign, a public battle with the New York police department over the false arrest of a prostitute effectively exiles him from the city, a star-crossed love affair with an unhappily married uptown girl tortures him, a common-law marriage to the proprietress of Jacksonville’s most elegant bawdyhouse endures, a shipwreck results in his near drowning, he withstands enemy fire to send dispatches from the Spanish-American War, and then he relocates to England, where Joseph Conrad becomes his closest friend and Henry James weeps over his tragic, early death.

In Burning Boy, Auster not only puts forth an immersive read about an unforgettable life but also, casting a dazzled eye on Crane’s astonishing originality and productivity, provides uniquely knowing insight into Crane’s creative processes to produce the rarest of reading experiences—the dramatic biography of a brilliant writer as only another literary master could tell it. 

Strengths:

Auster’s last book 4 – 3 – 2 – 1 took me 18 months to build up the guts and about 4 months to actually finish it. This new book took me about a month to build up the courage to read that and about three months to read because of the length off it (Close again to 800 pages).

Anybody who knows the life and work of Stephen Crane would know he only lived to 28 and 800 pages covering his life is some going.

Thankfully Crane lived a heck of a life serving as a war correspodent in Greece and Cuba and barely survived a shipwreck too.

Auster however doesn’t write this as a straight biography but as much a critic of his work going through most of his work.

Before this book, I knew his two more famous books ‘Maggie of the Streets’ and ‘Red Badge of Courage (which I will be reviewing in future episodes of Reading in Bed) but I certainly wasn’t aware of a lot of his other work.

Auster to give him credit I’ve heard him say 4 3 2 1 his last fiction novel was very Stephen Crane ish and reading his biography you can see elements of Auster being influenced certainly after this one.

I don’t know a writer without anywhere near Auster’s gifts as a writer would have dared write and I did find it interesting to note Auster wrote this in about 18 months or so which frankly is pretty amazing and his prose is frequently heartfelt and witty and you never cease to feel him in awe of Crane.

Weaknesses:

The book is certainly too long like 4 3 2 1 and does feel like it could have benefited from being losing some off it as there is certainly segments which didn’t add anything to the book and again I’ve seen quotes from Auster over this too as well as 4 3 2 1 where he apologies for the length off it.

However, it is a remarkable book and let’s hope he does bring Crane back to into the classroom as Crane’s work certainly a revisit over a hundred years since he died.

8/10