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With his first novel, The Western
Shore, Clarkson Crane (‘16) took
the cliché-ridden genre of the “college story” — with its pennants and
hip flasks and coonskin coats — and gave it a new and unexpected twist:
one of the main characters is a homosexual professor of English teaching
at Berkeley in the year 1919. First published in 1925, the book failed
to find an audience, and received mixed reviews from literary critics.
“Through personal shrewd seeing and dry notation,” droned the New
Republic, “the book stands as the first mature presentation of the
material of the American college. Having abstracted several pregnant
figures from state university life — for though his scene is Berkeley,
his types are true of a great number of democratic schools — [he] has
coolly exposed them in a series of significant related episodes, and
discovered where others had found romance and childish fantasy, the
outlines of a tragedy of youth.” Stephen Vincent Benét, writing in the
New York Herald, was less sure, warning that some readers might
find parts of narrative “distasteful.”
While an undergraduate at Berkeley, Crane was a member of the editorial
board of the Blue and Gold, the Pelican and the
Occident, and only a few months after graduation he sold his
first story to the Atlantic Monthly. With the outbreak of World
War I, he joined Section 586 of the U.S. Army Ambulance Corps, made up
largely of University of California students and recent alumni. He was
cited for bravery in action by the French Army. After the war he
returned to California, but found it difficult to support himself with
the sale of an occasional short story. In 1924 he returned to France
and took up the bohemian life of an expatriate writer, living on a small
stipend provided by an aunt. It was in Paris that he wrote The
Western Shore, in a small hotel on the Left Bank. He drew on his
experiences as a Berkeley student, but the gay professor (called Philip
Burton in the novel) has never been identified.
From The Western Shore:
“And so you’re going away. I’m sorry. I hoped I’d see you during the
summer.”
The tender melancholy in the man’s voice disconcerted Milton. He
replied:
“Yes, I’m going with my aunt. We’ll stay for a while in Paris, and
then go down into Italy.”
He gave a few more facts, talking rapidly. As they entered the campus
and walked along the dark path beneath the trees toward the library,
Burton took his arm and pressed it slightly against him and seemed so
much on the point of saying something that Milton turned his face and
waited. But no sound came forth, and Burton, looking down, seemed
preoccupied, and held Milton’s arm as if he had taken it by chance, and
now, thinking of other things, had forgotten to release it. The same
uneasiness that he had felt before on the mountain invaded the boy. He
said, as naturally as he could:
“Aaron told me that George Towne is living up with you. I know him
slightly. We were in the same German class at the beginning of the
year.”
After a moment, Burton answered:
“Oh, yes. He’s been staying with me for a while. I — ah — he couldn’t
find a place to live, and I let him have that little upstairs room of
mine.”
Silence came. Once more Milton felt that Burton, who had turned toward
him, was about to speak. After a while, Milton said:
“I hardly ever see him now.”
“He thinks he may go back to Wyoming this summer,” Burton remarked.
Then, squeezing Milton’s arm more tightly, he said in a gentle and
agitated, almost broken, voice:
“You’re a nice boy. I’m awfully glad I met you.”
Embarrassed, Milton laughed. The sediment of innumerable jokes heard
at school or in the fraternity house and long forgotten rose now from
the bottom of his mind into memory, and he waited, a bit nervous, half
pleased, almost understanding, for Burton to say more. But suddenly
Burton dropped his arm and said in a drawling and slightly ironic
manner:
“I envy you your trip abroad this summer. Perhaps in a year or two
I’ll be able to go over for a few months. But I hope you’ll come back.”
“I don’t know. Perhaps I shall.”
He was unable to say more. For a while they went on without speaking.
Then Burton laughed and said:
“You may have noticed that I have the Thousand and One Nights at
my place. I read them all the time. It — ah — I — it has given me a
rather curious habit of mind. Sometimes, when I’m off on a holiday or
something of that sort, I imagine I’m some one else. I’ve told people
strange things.”
The gray façade of the library was dim before them. Milton smiled.
“Yes,” he answered, somehow pleasantly disturbed. “I often do that
too.”
Laughing shortly, Burton took his arm again.
He accompanied him to the Alpha Chi Delta house, and said good-by
rather gruffly, and walked on toward College Avenue where he would take
a car. Milton watched his stocky form move away in the darkness, and
then climbed slowly to his room on the third floor. His roommate was
snoring lightly. Undressing, he thought that if he should return to
Berkeley for another year, the instructor would be an interesting person
to know.
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- Clarkson Crane. The Western Shore (Salt Lake City : Peregrine
Smith Books, 1925, c1985), p. 280-282.
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