Flowers of Asphalt

[1] The genesis of the novel is reported in a document found among the papers of Crane biographer Thomas Beer.

The letter reads: One night in April or May of 1894, I ran into Crane on Broadway and we started over to the Everett House together, I'd been at a theater with Saltus and was in evening dress.

Acknowledging that its attestation is not the greatest, Berryman noted that the projected theme was in line with the themes of other Crane works, including Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, George's Mother and to a lesser degree The Red Badge of Courage: "the movement in youth from innocence to experience, seen as degradation."

Finally, the purported title, the report of Crane's opinion of À rebours and the railway station setting led him to conclude that the account was genuine.

However, Beer's known propensity for fabricating information about Crane makes accepting the passage as factual problematic.

[5] He noted that Huneker told writer Vincent Starrett that Crane had started a book called Flowers in Asphalt in October 1898, but at that time Crane was in Havana and was "no longer innocent about New York street life".

[6] Avant-garde filmmaker Gregory Markopoulos took the title of his 1951 film Flowers of Asphalt from the Crane novel.