SOURCE: Wertheim, Stanley. “Frank Norris and Stephen Crane: Conviction and Uncertainty.” American Literary Realism 1870-1910 24, no. 1 (fall 1991): 54-62.

In the following essay, Wertheim contrasts the naturalism of Stephen Crane and Frank Norris.

Frank Norris and Stephen Crane met in mid-May, 1898. Norris, a fledgling correspondent for McClure's Magazine, Crane, and his bureau chief Sylvester Scovel set forth aboard the New York World's dispatch tug Three Friends to garner what news they could of the stalled war from the American battleships blockading the coast of Cuba. They anxiously awaited the arrival of the missing Spanish Atlantic fleet of Admiral Pascual Cervera y Topete, four creaky cruisers, and three torpedo boats. Norris, almost two years senior to the twenty-six-year-old Crane, was probably more than a little envious of the achievements of his only notable competitor in the field of American literary naturalism. He had written a parody of Maggie and The...