1 - Introduction

Summary

In the preface he wrote for Thomas Beer's biography of Crane, Joseph Conrad recalls a visit from his young American friend when to both men life was being, to use a phrase from “The Open Boat” that was a favorite of Conrad's, “barbarously abrupt.” The crucial exchange between the two on that occasion, though familiar to Crane specialists, is worth retelling since it raises issues central to the present study.

After a longish silence, in which we both could have felt how uncertain was the issue of life envisaged as a deadly adventure in which we were both engaged like two men trying to keep afloat in a small boat, I said suddenly across the width of the mantelpiece:

“None of them knew the colour of the sky.”

He raised himself sharply. The words had struck him as familiar, though I believe he failed to place them at first. “Don't you know that quotation?” I asked. (These words form the opening sentence of his tale.) The startled expression passed off his face. “Oh, yes,” he said quietly, and lay down again. Truth to say, it was a time when neither he nor I had the leisure to look up idly at the sky. The waves just then were too barbarously abrupt.

The veteran sailor's own knowledge of dangers at sea might have been enough to make him appreciate the appropriateness of Crane's comment.