Hotel de Dream: A New York Novel – A Brilliant Historical Novel of Forbidden Love and Tragic Passion in 1890s Manhattan

Edmund White, gratefully, is a prolific writer, a gifted man of letters who has become one of America's more important authors. While much of Edmund White's oeuvre is about gay life, he does not confine his talent to the one topic: he is a brilliant biographer, a fine man of research, and a poet with prose. HOTEL DE DREAM: A New York Novel is his latest foray into fictional biography and for this reader the book succeeds on every level. The short novel is ostensibly a 'biographical' account of the sadly brief life of novelist Stephen Crane, a nineteenth century literary giant who is best known for THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, but who also wrote a few other short novels and story collections. Basing the concept of this novel on both fact and fantasy, Edmund White gives us the last days of Stephen Crane's life, a tortured existence as he succumbed to tuberculosis, nursed by his beloved mistress Cora, an ex-Madame who had run a bordello in Florida called the Hotel de Dream. Crane had in fact befriended a poor youth who happened to be a male prostitute infected with syphilis: White takes this fact and uses it as a unique approach to explore the mind of Crane, using the fragment of thought that Crane was planning to create a story 'Flowers of Asphalt' based on the sad lad as the impetus for this brilliant book, the composition of a final novel called 'The Painted Boy.' The novel deals with myriad aspects of Crane's life, but in the end it focuses on Crane dictating to Cora a…

This book contains a short novel within a short novel. The stories overlap and intersect as the dying Stephen Crane dictates the story of a male hustler to his wife as his health deteriorates from end-stage TB. The entire story is built on known facts about Stephen Crane and his wife, Cora, a former whore-house owner in Jacksonville Florida. The house of prostitution was named Hotel de Dream, from which the novel gets its name. However, the shifting of Stephen Crane's consciousness as he dictates the novel to Cora is dream-like in its mixture of reality and fantasy. The Cranes leave Sussex England and make it to the Black Forest in Germany in a last-ditch effort to find a miracle cure for Crane's TB. The love and devotion of Cora Crane to her common-law husband Stephen is mirrored in the love affair between a married business man and a young street male prostitute. In both stories we see devotion pushed to the limits. White bases the novel on the claims that Crane was writing or had written significant portions of a novel about a male prostitute but had been convinced to destroy the document as socially unacceptable, or at least the document may have been destroyed by his colleagues. White also bases the story on Crane's experiences as a journalist and foreign correspondent and development of stories from original sources. Therefore the story of Elliot the male prostitute is mirrored by an interview Crane held with a male prostitute, also named Elliot, for background…

Hotel de Dream: A New York Novel takes place in England, mostly and New York, hmm. Stephen Crane, author of Red Badge of Courage, Maggie: A Girl of The Streets and other stories and poems of the the end of the 19th C America is dying in England. On his deathbed he dictates the story he always wanted to write, but having once started it saw it destroyed because it didn't fit into that period's sexual sensibilities. It's a story about a male street prostitute. Now, on death's door-step (in England), he dictates his story to his, "wife", Cora. Hotel de Dream is a story within a story. We are reading a story of Crane's last days, and the story of a New York male street prostitute. I liked the story of Crane's last days as he struggles with the terminal stage of tuberculosis. . However, this is a battle he knows he can't win. Tuberculosis in the 19th C was a sure killer, and Crane fades in and out of consciousness, or sleep. Still, he's able to dictate his story. As he struggles first in England and finally in Germany he dictates his story, the story of Elliot, The Painted Boy. It was this story about the male (boy) prostitute which troubled me as I got deeper into that story. It didn't read like a fin de siecle story, let alone one written by Stephen Crane. Allowing for the fact that Crane is not the author and White is writing in his stead, I wouldn't expect him to write like Crane. But, on the other hand, I wouldn't expect him to write like he's a 21st C author either.…

It can well be called a "biographical fantasy," but regardless, Edmund White's "Hotel de Dream" is well worth the read, particularly to students of Ameican literary history. In "Hotel," Edmund gives us (fictionally, of course) a dying Stephen Crane, on his way to Germany for some last-minute health remedies. There have long been rumors of Crane's last and lost work and White has the foundation for a fascinating story along these lines. Crane is credited with one of America's best and literarily important novels (The Red Badge of Courage), as he established in the modern world "realism in the novel," a theme not even remotely (or successfully) achieved before this. Thus, White gives us a look at what he believes to be the "real" Crane, as he struggles with a form to tuberulosis, and uses flashback to give us some background on this "lost novel" Crane is writing, with the help of his common law wife Cora. "The Painted Boy" tells the story of Elliott, a young male prostitute in New York City, a farm boy abused by his family who runs away to the City to get away, only to find that prostituting himself is the only way to survive. This "story within a story" is the backbone of "Hotel de Dream" and the idea of such a story seems to hold water. White is very careful not to mar Crane's reputation (he actually takes Crane, the author we all had to read in high school, and humanizes him, honorably). White's ability to use Crane's style of writing (well-paced, terse, to the point) is…

This novel is an excellent read. Very well written, which is the writer’s hallmark. He is captivating and knows how to turn out beautiful phrases that are poetic and evocative.Good fun and a good portrait of Stephen Crane, a truly brilliant writer who deserves to be read again, after quite unreasonable neglect.