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PARTISAN REVIEW
this context the verb betrays more aggressive connotat ions than
at first declare themselves) . .. defines the enterprise of writ–
ing-of inscribing and thereby in effect covering the blank page
with text - as an "unnatural" process that undoes but also com–
plements an equally or already "unnatural" state of affairs. (It
goes without saying that the text in question is invariably
organized in
lines
of writing, a noun that occu rs , both in plural
and singular form , with surprising frequency in C rane's prose,
as for example in the [first] sentence).
It is, undeniably , a virtuoso critical performance. Fried's ten–
dentiousness carries everything before it. One admires his ability to
marshal his troops so ingeniously and to remain completely un–
daunted by conflicting artistic or worldly facts . In the first place,
since he is committed in advance by his argument to describing the
text as a site for writing, it becomes unimportant that a sheet of
paper is not actually comparable in size to a face . (For those who
haven't explored such arcana, I would point out that in my rough
reckoning in front of a mirror, a face measures approximately only
one-half the size ofa sheet of standard typewriter pape r, and I would
further add that one of the few facts that we know conclusively about
Stephen Crane's writing is that he used paper that was larger than
standard typewriter size, paper that was approximately legal-sized,
making the equation of the size of the face and that of the paper he
used even less apt than it would otherwise be.)
It
becomes further unimportant that in this passage the face is
not metaphorized in terms of the qualities one would normall y asso–
ciate with a piece of paper (that is to say, it is not said to be "blank,"
or even "white," but rather is called "ashen"), or that the soldier's face
and the reference to paper are not even mentioned in the passage in
connection with each other. Since he is determined in advance to
link the blankness of faces and pieces of paper, Fried can invoke a
"displacement" and bravely move the paper me taphor from "one end
of the body to the other." One's only objection is that in doing it,
Fried attributes the movement to Crane, not to himself. That is what
I mean by saying that Fried does it all. H e free ly and loosely moves
around in the text, and then, by means of a kind of critical sleight of
hand, attributes his movements to the text itself.
Finally, consider Fried's treatment of the relationship of the
wind and the dead soldier's beard . Crane writes: "The wind raised
the tawny beard.
It
moved as if a hand were stroking it." But com–
mitted to a rhetoric of disfiguration and violence, Fried turns this
