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The writing styles of two war correspondents: Stephen Crane and Ernie Pyle.

Article Excerpt
Despite a fourteen-year difference in age, Joseph Conrad and Stephen Crane were close friends from the time they met on 15 October 1897 until Crane died on 5 June 1900. Conrad had read The Red Badge of Courage and Crane had expressed an interest in meeting the author of The Nigger of the "Narcissus", so Sidney Pawling arranged a lunch for them in London (Crane Log 277-78), politely dismissing himself at 4:00 p.m. so the two would have time to get acquainted. Although we do not know what the instant friends discussed during their all-night trek through the streets of London, they might well have discussed the relationship between literature and art, especially since Conrad had recently finished his famous preface to that novel and the ideas would have been fresh in his mind. Moreover, Crane might well have read both novel and preface. In any case, the subject matter of Conrad's preface gets at the essence of the relationship between art and literature, and fundamentally informs the writing styles of these two famous war correspondents: Stephen Crane and Ernie Pyle. Their correspondences are indeed literary art worthy of regard.

In his preface Conrad speaks of the artist's intention to reach an audience and how he or she goes about the task. He says, "A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line" and ... the artist descends within himself, and in that lonely region of stress and strife, if he be deserving and fortunate, he finds the terms of his appeal. His appeal is made to our less obvious capacities: to that part of our nature which, because of the warlike conditions of existence, is necessarily kept out of sight within the more resisting and hard qualities--like the vulnerable body within the steel armor. His appeal is less loud, more profoud, less distinct, more stirring--and sooner forgotten. Yet its effect endures forever. (57) Conrad goes on to speak of the artist's appeal to "the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation" and of his attempt to reach "the secret spring of responsive emotions" (58). And in perhaps the best-known passage from the preface, he says, "My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see. That--and no more and it is everything (59).

The writing styles of both Crane and Pyle embody the principles to which Conrad calls attention in his preface-probably partially derived from Maupassant's preface to Pierre et Jean, incidentally--as well as aspects of the two writers' personalities. After all, Buffon was on the mark when he said, "Style is the man" [or "person," these days]. Crane's and Pyle's writings are, indeed, a reflection of their dedication to craft, their commitment to expressing themselves in such a way as to reach their audiences meaningfully (even profoundly), their scrupulous honesty, their uncanny knack of getting to the heart of the matter, and their insistence on being in the thick of the action. In their dispatches they convey not only vital information to keep an eager public informed about life-and-death matters, but also the feel of being involved in the high drama of war. Their work forms an enduring legacy to their efforts and, perhaps more...