Maggie, a Girl of the Streets and Other New York Writings

Maggie, a Girl of the Streets and Other New York Writings

Maggie, a Girl of the Streets and Other New York Writings

Maggie, a Girl of the Streets and Other New York Writings

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Overview

This harrowing tale of a young girl in the slums is a searing portrayal of turn-of-the-century New York, and Stephen Crane's most innovative work. Published in 1893, when the author was just twenty-one, it broke new ground with its vivid characters, its brutal naturalism, and its empathic rendering of the lives of the poor. It remains both powerful, severe, and harshly comic (in Alfred Kazin's words) and a masterpiece of modern American prose.

This edition includes Maggie and George's Mother, Crane's other Bowery tales, and the most comprehensive available selection of Crane's New York journalism. All texts in this volume are presented in their definitive versions.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780307769732
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Publication date: 12/08/2010
Series: Modern Library Classics
Sold by: Random House
Format: eBook
Pages: 288
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

Luc Sante is the author of Low Life, Evidence, and The Factory of Facts. He teaches at Bard College and lives in New York.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1

A very little boy stood upon a heap of gravel for the honor of Rum Alley.

He was throwing stones at howling urchins from Devil's Row who were circling madly about the heap and pelting at him.

His infantile countenance was livid with fury. His small body was writhing in the delivery of great, crimson oaths.

"Run, Jimmie, run! Dey'll get yehs," screamed a retreating Rum Alley child.

"Naw," responded Jimmie with a valiant roar, "dese micks can't make me run."

Howls of renewed wrath went up from Devil's Row throats. Tattered gamins on the right made a furious assault on the gravel heap. On their small, convulsed faces there shone the grins of true assassins. As they charged, they threw stones and cursed in shrill chorus.

The little champion of Rum Alley stumbled precipitately down the other side. His coat had been torn to shreds in a scuffle, and his hat was gone. He had bruises on twenty parts of his body, and blood was dripping from a cut in his head. His wan features wore a look of a tiny, insane demon.

On the ground, children from Devil's Row closed in on their antagonist. He crooked his left arm defensively about his head and fought with cursing fury. The little boys ran to and fro, dodging, hurling stones and swearing in barbaric trebles.

From a window of an apartment house that upreared its form from amid squat, ignorant stables, there leaned a curious woman. Some laborers, unloading a scow at a dock at the river, paused for a moment and regarded the fight. The engineer of a passive tugboat hung lazily to a railing and watched. Over on the Island, a worm of yellow convicts came from the shadow of a grey ominous building and crawled slowly along the river's bank.

A stone had smashed into Jimmie's mouth. Blood was bubbling over his chin and down upon his ragged shirt. Tears made furrows on his dirt-stained cheeks. His thin legs had begun to tremble and turn weak, causing his small body to reel. His roaring curses of the first part of the fight had changed to a blasphemous chatter.

In the yells of the whirling mob of Devil's Row children there were notes of joy like songs of triumphant savagery. The little boys seemed to leer gloatingly at the blood upon the other child's face.

Down the avenue came boastfully sauntering a lad of sixteen years, although the chronic sneer of an ideal manhood already sat upon his lips. His hat was tipped with an air of challenge over his eye. Between his teeth, a cigar stump was tilted at the angle of defiance. He walked with a certain
swing of the shoulders which appalled the timid. He glanced over into the vacant lot in which the little raving boys from Devil's Row seethed about the shrieking and tearful child from Rum Alley.

"Gee!" he murmured with interest, "A scrap. Gee!"

He strode over to the cursing circle, swinging his shoulders in a manner which denoted that he held victory in his fists. He approached at the back of one of the most deeply engaged of the Devil's Row children.

"Ah, what deh hell," he said, and smote the deeply-engaged one on the back of the head. The little boy fell to the ground and gave a hoarse, tremendous howl.

Table of Contents

Biographical Notev
Introductionxi
Maggie, a Girl of the Streets1
George's Mother71
New York Tales and Sketches
A Great Mistake131
An Ominous Baby134
A Dark-Brown Dog138
The Broken-Down Van145
An Experiment in Misery152
An Experiment in Luxury165
Mr. Binks' Day Off174
Stories Told by an Artist183
The Men in the Storm192
Coney Island's Failing Days200
The Fire207
When Man Falls, a Crowd Gathers214
New York's Bicycle Speedway219
An Eloquence of Grief223
In the Tenderloin: A Duel Between an Alarm Clock and a Suicidal Purpose226
The "Tenderloin" As It Really Is230
In the "Tenderloin"236
Stephen Crane in Minetta Lane240
Adventures of a Novelist248
Note on the Text255
Commentary257
Discussion Guide265

Reading Group Guide

1. Taking the writings in this volume together, discuss the picture of slum life in turn-of-the-century New York that Crane gives us. What are some of its defining features? How is poverty reflected in the lives of Bowery dwellers?

2. Reflect on the continuities and differences between the characters in Crane’s two Bowery Tales, “Maggie” and “George’s Mother.” For instance, how does Jimmie compare to George Kelcey?

3. How does “Maggie, a Girl of the Streets” speak to the constraints imposed by gender conventions? What choices are available to Maggie? Why does she go with Pete? Why is she driven from her mother’s house?

4. Alcohol figures centrally in Crane’s depiction of poverty and “low life, ” from the status that accrues to Pete because of his job as bartender, to the powerful hold of alcohol over the lives of the poor in general. Discuss Crane’s depiction of alcohol in his New York writings.

5. Critics have praised Crane’s style-especially in “Maggie, a Girl of the Streets, ” with its stark, minimal style-as breaking with nineteenth-century literary conventions, and in many ways anticipating major features of subsequent American writing. What makes Crane’s writing unique and innovative?

6. In his emphasis on the realistic depiction of the inexorable effects of outside forces-social and natural-on the lives and destinies of individual characters, Crane is often described as a literary naturalist. Is this an apt description? Discuss naturalism in relation to Crane’s New York writings, and the relationship of Crane’s work to that of otherwriters (like Dreiser and Norris) usually associated with the term.

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