The Color of the Sky

David Halliburton’s book is a richly textured study of the complete writings of Stephen Crane, including Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, The Red Badge of Courage, and the less well-known fiction, newswriting, and poetry. Offering close readings of the works within a broad framework, Halliburton sets out to explore the imaginative world Crane created in his total œuvre of fiction, poetry and reportage. Comparative and interdisciplinary methods, combined with insights from historians such as Toynbee and Hofsteader, enable Halliburton to shed light on a number of issues. These include Crane\'s interest in musicality, the importance of his poetry and journalism to his other writings, the phenomenology of his social structures, his mastery of prosody, and the relation of his writings to the ideas of thinkers such as William James, Santayana, Weber and Sartre. This ambitious and comprehensive book sets a standard by which to measure all future interpretations of Crane.

1. Introduction; 2. The little: early writings; 3. Conflict as condition: Maggie: A girl of the streets; 4. Doing without: George\'s mother; 5. Eternal fact and mere locality: The red badge of courage: An episode of the American Civil War; 6. The mysteries of heroism and the aesthetics of war: Army tales and other war writings; 7. Community and crisis: \'The Monster,\' Tales of Whilomville, \'The Blue Hotel,\' \'The Bride comes to yellow sky\'; 8. The ethics of their condition and the unreal real: \'The Open Boat,\' \'The five white mice\'; 9. The farther shore: poems; Notes; Index.