Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations and maps
- Note on language and translations
- Introduction
- 1 James J. O'Kelly at Jiguaní (1873)
- 2 José Martí at Vega del Jobo (1895)
- 3 Richard Harding Davis in Santiago de Cuba (1897)
- 4 Edward Stratemeyer at Siboney (1898)
- 5 Andrew Summers Rowan in Bayamo (1898)
- 6 Josephine Herbst in Realengo 18 (1935)
- 7 Antonio Núñez Jiménez on Pico Turquino (1945)
- 8 ‘Less than human’: Guantánamo Bay (2002)
- Envoi
- Glossary
- Acknowledgements
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Edward Stratemeyer at Siboney (1898)
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations and maps
- Note on language and translations
- Introduction
- 1 James J. O'Kelly at Jiguaní (1873)
- 2 José Martí at Vega del Jobo (1895)
- 3 Richard Harding Davis in Santiago de Cuba (1897)
- 4 Edward Stratemeyer at Siboney (1898)
- 5 Andrew Summers Rowan in Bayamo (1898)
- 6 Josephine Herbst in Realengo 18 (1935)
- 7 Antonio Núñez Jiménez on Pico Turquino (1945)
- 8 ‘Less than human’: Guantánamo Bay (2002)
- Envoi
- Glossary
- Acknowledgements
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
First there came a flash as of lightning out of the depths of the ocean, followed by a grinding, ripping, sucking noise, and then up went the monster Chinese cruiser, blown into millions of fragments. With the wreckage went soldiers and sailors, guns, ammunition, spars, everything, straight into the sky!
(Edward Stratemeyer)While Frederick Ober and Richard Harding Davis wrote romances for teenagers and adults about the Cuban insurrection, the Spanish-American War which followed in the summer of 1898 produced several other kinds of writing, all still focusing on Oriente. The build-up to the war and the invasion itself saw huge amounts of journalism, followed by memoirs produced by participants—none more forthright than Theodore Roosevelt—with occasional stories and novels to follow. Richard Harding Davis also had a leading role here as the most prominent journalist of his generation, though even he acknowledged the primacy of his younger contemporary, Stephen Crane, who moved efortlessly—and in some cases imperceptibly—between journalism and fiction. John Fox, Jr turned his journalistic experiences into a reflective novel, whose title, Crittenden, echoed Soldier of Fortune's return to an earlier US experience of Cuba. Less expectedly, the war also provided prime subject matter for futuristic romances aimed at younger readers, building on the possibilities of weapons construction in that US steel industry which was now drawing its key ingredient from Oriente. The important figure here was Edward Stratemeyer, a true literary phenomenon of the early twentieth century.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Cuba's Wild EastA Literary Geography of Oriente, pp. 171 - 225Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2011