The Blue Hotel
1898 short story by Stephen Crane
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"The Blue Hotel" is a short story by American author Stephen Crane (1871–1900). It first appeared in 1898 in two installments in Collier's Weekly, on November 26 and on December 3, 1898.[1] It subsequently was republished in the collection The Monster and Other Stories.
Background
It is one of the most well known of the short stories in the collection The Monster and Other Stories.[citation needed] Although it appears to be a reasonably simple tale about a man who encounters trouble following a stay at the Palace Hotel, several complex themes underpin the story and define many of the overarching themes in novels like Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and more generally, Crane's corpus.[citation needed] Stylistically, the story breaks free from the norms of the period, often entering the realms of Expressionism, an unusual style to encounter in American literature.[citation needed]
Adaptations
- 1977: "The Blue Hotel", a TV movie adaptation directed by Ján Kadár
- 1999: The Coxcomb (1999 album), a musical adaptation by David Grubbs
Response
Author Ernest Hemingway references the story in his 1935 book Green Hills of Africa and calls "The Blue Hotel" and "The Open Boat" Crane's two best stories.[2]
The short story was a partial inspiration for the film The Shining (1980).[3]
