Hotel de Dream

by Edmund White

In a damp, old Sussex castle, American literary phenomenon Stephen Crane lies on his deathbed, wasting away from tuberculosis at the age of twenty-eight. The world-famous author has retreated to England with his wife, Cora, in part to avoid gossip about her ignominious past as the proprietress of an infamous Florida bordello, the Hotel de Dream. In the midst of gathering tragedy, Crane begins dictating what will surely be his final work: a strange and poignant novel of a boy prostitute in 1890s New York and the married man who ruins his own life to win his love.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, LGBT, Queer, Gay, Historical, Gay Fiction

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Edmund Valentine White III was an American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer, and essayist. He was the recipient of Lambda Literary's Visionary Award, the National Book Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award, and the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction. France made him Chevalier (and later Officier) de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1993.
White was known as a groundbreaking writer of gay literature and a major influence on gay American literature and has been called "the first major queer novelist to champion a new generation of writers."

Reviews

[William2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

What’s taken me so long to read Edmund White? What’s that line in Rilke’s Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus? “You must change your life.” That’s how I feel. Such a divine writer is so rare, he recalibrates one’s soul. There’s a fascinating freshness on every page. Great narrative thrust, force, propulsion— call it what you will, it carries me breathlessly along. Stephen Crane is dying from TB. He and his wife Cora, a former brothel keeper, are in Sussex, England, as his last days play out. He’s a very famous American writer, Stephen Crane—see The Red Badge of Courage and his stories, especially “The Open Boat,” “The Blue Hotel,” and “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky”—and he’s visited in his decline by Henry James (the description of James alone is a gem) and Joseph Conrad. Within this novel of Crane’s last days is another novel, which Crane means to be his last; he dictates it to wife, Cora, between bouts of illness. It’s called The Painted Boy, and it’s written ostensibly as a counterpart to his Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. In it a 15 year old boy hooker, benumbed by a childhood in which both father and brothers buggered him senseless, meets thirtyish bank official Theodore who falls in love with him. Fortunately, the kid’s by now taken a liking to anal pleasure and lives with Theodore in an all too brief idyll. But it ends tragically for both of them. Then, just before he can finish The Painted Boy, Crane dies in a sanitarium in Switzerland’s Black Forest.

[Gerhard · Rating 5 out of 5]

He’d devised a few books as a bird might build a nest out of straw, foil, and the discarded collar button, and with any luck they’d outlast him by a decade or two, but authorship, reputation, friendship, and the few scratches one might have made on the papyrus—well, it all seemed friable and empty now, the merest exercise in vanity. And yet.

It is certainly no spoiler to reveal that Stephen Crane dies at the end of Hotel de Dream. He was only 28. I’m still struggling to get that final image of Crane’s lingering death from tuberculosis out of my mind: The open mouth welling over with blood; his eyes open and fixed. Just before this, Crane imagines he sees the statue of The Painted Boy come to life in the doorway to his room, in the form of a youngster scrubbing the floor. White describes the precise moment of death in an extraordinary scene:

Simultaneously, he felt he was on some great battleship being christened and launched. He could feel hawsers and guylines giving way as tons and tons of painted steel plunged into the surprisingly warm ocean.

Cora promptly annotates the manuscript of the novel-within-the-novel and sends it off to Henry James to edit and complete, thereby preserving Crane’s legacy (and giving Cora a much-needed source of future income.) Instead, James sends Cora a letter informing her he had consigned the “embarrassment” of a manuscript to the fireplace at Rye in order to preserve Stevie’s genius, which he notes was “sunny and virile”.

Indeed, there is a running joke throughout the book about how stuck-up and pretentious Henry James was. I am unsure how much of this White based on the actual author, but James does come across as a kind of lightning rod for the times, forever caught in the throes of his inexpressible nature. Hence we get such wonderfully barbed lines: “Why did he write such beardless sentences?”

It is interesting to note that The Red Badge of Courage was published the same year as Wilde’s trial, whom White does not let off lightly either:

“I’m afraid it would offend people so much you’d have trouble getting it published. Ever since poor Wilde’s trial, society has grown even less tolerant.”
“Well, Wilde,” Stevie said. “Anyway, a crime against nature was only one of his sins. He was also a dreadful cad.”

Another larger-than-life writer that graces White’s pages is Conrad:

Conrad was as small as Stevie but he bristled with energy. His eyes were pinpoints of trouble, his mouth a flat line of pain, his shoulders so strong and high that he appeared to have no neck at all. He entered the room as if he’d just been asked to ascend a throne and, after an initial reluctance, now meant to show just how decisive he could be. The tips of his waxed, black mustaches and spade-shaped black beard preceded him. His skin was sallow and the lines in his face spoke of long night watches on the ship of art.
He sat beside Stevie and planted both hands on the sick man’s shoulders. “My dear friend,” he said, his breath smelling of tobacco and sardines, “I can see you’re about to leave this world.”

White describes his novel as “my fantasia on real themes provided by history”, and comments in his Postface:

Crane is one of the classic American authors of the nineteenth century, along with Hawthorne, Melville, Dickinson, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, and James, but in many ways he remains one of the most mysterious. Of course this very obscurity has provided me with the space necessary to invent. I have tried to imagine in this book what “Flowers of Asphalt” might have been like, though not one word of it is extant. How would a heterosexual man who had wide human sympathies, an affection for prostitutes, a keen, compassionate curiosity about the poor and downtrodden, a terminal disease—how would such a man have responded to male homosexuality if he was confronted with it? How would he have thought about it in an era when homosexuals themselves were groping for explanations of their proclivities?

While reading this I was reminded of Writers & Lovers by Lily King, another book about writers struggling with penury, infidelity and a wide range of existential ailments. Seems as if not much has changed since Crane’s day. Despite his (modern) reputation, Crane spends a lot of time fretting over his finances, ill-health and whether or not his books will outlive him. It is quite a sad state of affairs, and a pretty shoddy existence to boot.

This is an incredibly well-written book that gives massive insight into the world that Crane inhabited. White’s writing is economical but evocative, and he has a knack for a turn of phrase or observation that brings his wide cast of characters alive. White also loves to combine grace with vulgarity, and is as much prone to point out beauty as honing in on perversion, debauchery or general ugliness and degradation. This gives quite an edge to Hotel de Dream, which never shies away from the more intimate or salubrious details of Crane’s world.

To me, this represents White’s great generosity of spirit and innate humanity. It also explains why he is so anti-James in this book, who represents the antithesis to White’s approach. As Crane explains to Cora: “Henry James will know how to subtle-ize all this, but don’t let him cobweb it out of existence.”

[°°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ʜᴇʟᴇɴ Ροζουλί Εωσφόρος ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°° ★·.·´¯`·.·★ Ⓥⓔⓡⓝⓤⓢ Ⓟⓞⓡⓣⓘⓣⓞⓡ Ⓐⓡⓒⓐⓝⓤⓢ Ταμετούρο Αμ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Το “Hotel de dream” με πραγματικό όνομα
“Jacksonville bordelo” είναι ένα μυθιστόρημα μέσα σε ένα άλλο μυθιστόρημα.
Για την ακρίβεια, είναι μία πραγματική ιστορία κρυμμένη και μακιγιαρισμένη σαν μία ανήλικη
αρσενική πόρνη που βρήκε καταφύγιο και αγάπη
μέσα σε αυτήν την ρεαλιστική μυθιστοριογραφία.

Ο συγγραφέας Στήβεν Κρέιν, ένας νέος, σπουδαίος λογοτέχνης της Αμερικής καίγεται και σιγολιώνει απο φυματίωση.
Δίπλα στο νεκροκρέβατο του ξενυχτάει και υποφέρει μαζί του η τελευταία σύντροφος της ζωής του.
Η Κόρα Κρέιν, υπήρξε πόρνη, μαστροπός και
ιδιοκτήτρια του πορνείου “Hotel de dream”.
Λατρεύει τον Κρέιν και προσπαθεί να αντιμετωπίσει
και να παρατείνει το αναπόφευκτο.
Εγκατεστημένοι στο Σάσσεξ , όπου δεν τους
στοιχειώνει το παρελθόν της Κόρας, με διάσημους φίλους και γνωστούς απο το χώρο της τέχνης να τους στηρίζουν ηθικά ή τυπικά, αρνούνται την επιδείνωση της αρρώστειας.
Ο Τζόζεφ Κόνραντ και ο Χένρι Τζέιμς, επισκέπτονται συχνά τον ταλαντούχο συνάδελφο και φίλο που ψυχορραγεί.
Γνωρίζουν την οικτρή οικονομική κατάσταση του ζευγαριού, βλέπουν ουσιαστικά και μεταφυσικά τον θάνατο να τους χαμόγελα σε κάθε ελπίδα ή όνειρο που τολμούν να ανταλλάξουν,
μα δεν καταφέρνουν με την μαγεία της λογοτεχνικής τους ευφυΐας να κρύψουν μέσα σε παραγράφους, σελίδες, βιβλία, τόμους απο αλληλεγγύη και συμπόνοια τον Στήβεν Κρέιν και να κοροϊδέψουν με μια τραγική, μυθιστορηματική φαντασμαγορία τον θάνατο.

Ο Στήβεν και η Κόρα ξεκινούν το ταξίδι στα Kύθηρα ως ύστατη σπονδή στην αγάπη τους.
Ταξιδεύουν στον Μέλανα δρυμό με το όνειρο της αναζήτησης θεραπείας.


Αυτή είναι η κεντρική ιστορία και ο Έντουμντ Ουάιτ την κατεργάζεται σαν κοντυλογραμμένη ομορφιά με μια ασυνήθιστα λεπτή ένταση.
Ο Έντμουντ Ουάιτ είναι ένας παραγωγικός λογοτέχνης, ένας έξοχος βιογράφος, ερευνητής και ποιητής της πεζογραφίας.

Στο σύντομο μυθιστόρημα
“ Hotel de dream “ γίνεται ένας βιογραφικός απολογισμός της σύντομης ζωής του Στήβεν Κρέιν ( πεθαίνει σε ηλικία 28 ετών).
Ο σπουδαίος αμερικανός μυθιστοριογράφος παίρνοντας κομμάτια απο την ζωή του αφήνει, ανάμεσα σε άλλα σπουδαία έργα και τα απομεινάρια μιας ημιτελούς καταραμένης και αποτρόπαιας ιστορίας, που δεν θα μπορούσε να εκδοθεί την εποχή που έζησε.

Ανάμεσα στους φίλους του υπάρχει και ένα ανήλικο αγόρι που πουλάει την αρσενική πορνη του εαυτού του και πάσχει απο σύφιλη.
Γι’αυτό το παιδί, Γι αυτό το βαμμένο αγόρι,
που ήταν μεγαλωμένο μέσα σε ψυχικούς και σωματικούς βιασμούς απο τον πατέρα και τα αδέλφια του
γράφεται το κύκνειο άσμα του Κρέιν.
Το αγόρι, εγκαταλείπει το σπιτι του και καταλήγει σε πορνεία και υπόκοσμο.
Ο δεκαεξάχρονος Έλιοτ γίνεται το «βαμμένο αγόρι» του Ουάιτ που ψωνίζει πελάτες και μοιράζει εφημερίδες σε καθωσπρέπει οικογενειάρχες που ιδρώνουν με θρησκευτική κατάνυξη και άτεγκτη ηθική πάνω στο κορμάκι του βαμμένου αγοριού.

Ο Στήβεν Κρέιν είχε δώσει τον τίτλο «Τα λουλούδια της ασφάλτου» στην μισό γραμμένη ιστορία του που καταστράφηκε με την παρότρυνση κάποιου φίλου του. επίσης γνωστού συγγραφέα.

Ο Έντμουντ Ουάιτ βρήκε τα απομεινάρια απο τα βήματα της χαμένης ιστορίας και περπάτησε σε εκείνες τις ασφάλτους της Παναγίας των Λουλουδιών, μέχρι να συναντήσει και πάλι τον Στήβεν Κρέιν και τον Έλιοτ.

Έγραψε, ένιωσε, τόνισε, όλα τα ασυμβίβαστα χάσματα των ανθρωπίνων σχέσεων με ειδικό βάρος στην σχέση ανάμεσα σε έναν ετοιμοθάνατο και τους δορυφόρους του, όπου οι περισσότεροι μετατρέπουν τον πόνο και την φυσική αταξία σε μοιραίες εξαιρέσεις ή πτυχές του επαγγέλματος τους.

Ένας χείμαρρος είνα, ιυποβλητικών λεπτομερειών για την ψυχαναγκαστική αγάπη ενός ανθρώπου και του χάους που ακολουθεί.
Αν ήταν το τελευταίο καταναγκαστικό πάθος των συγγραφέων που το ξεκίνησαν, το μελέτησαν και το ολοκλήρωσαν ας μην βάλουμε ταμπέλες ορθολογικής κρίσης.
Είναι ένα γενναία συναρπαστικό μυθιστόρημα που δημιουργεί μέσα του άλλο ένα αληθινό και αξέχαστο έργο τέχνης.

✍🏻💥💥💥💥

Καλή ανάγνωση.
Πολλούς ασπασμούς.

[George Ilsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Historical fiction based on the life of author Stephen Crane. Crane famously wrote a book about a "fallen" woman, Maggie, a Girl of the Streets, and there is a rumour in Crane-world that he may also have written about a young man in the same situation.

Edmund White researched the New York world of the 1890s, with thanks to George Chauncey and his book Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940. Hotel de Dream weaves together a tale of Crane's last months, as he is dying of tuberculosis and malaria, and Crane's feverish (fevered?) efforts to write a book based on a young man of his acquaintance.

"The Painted Boy" is the novel within the novel, and whether it is something in the style of Crane is not something I can judge. It feels quite modern; but then again, Crane was an early modernist.

White's own style incorporates both the beautiful and the banal. In a recent interview he suggested Hotel de Dream was a book he was especially fond of, but perhaps that is because it required so much research. Henry James features in the novel as a late-in-life friend with Stephen Crane; in this telling James is an object of mockery.

I enjoyed this novel, and read it quickly.

{Edmund White, now one with the Dream, RIP
June 3, 2025}

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of Hotel de Dream: A New York Novel is one of two pairs of lovers, Stephen Crane and his wife Cora and the young prostitute Elliott and his lover Theodore the Banker, who are products of Stephen Crane's literary imagination. In this novel Crane is writing a companion piece to his earlier novel, Maggie, Girl of the Streets, and it is this novel, The Painted Boy, that occupies Crane as he slowly succumbs to the ravages of tuberculosis. What is fascinating is the seamless way that White is able to meld the stories of Crane's life and Crane's writing. Sections of The Painted Boy are interspersed throughout the novel as Crane dictates it to his wife Cora. The description of the young boy of the streets, Elliott is both moving and heartbreaking as he loses his childhood in an attempt to simply survive. Yet no less moving is the image of Stephen Crane as his life slowly fades away:
"Stephen felt his life force flickering, no more than a candle about to blow out, and his whole pained body hovering around this fragile blue light. His mind still registered odd details, and he knew his lips were workinf thouugh no sound was coming out. His body was wracked with pain. Pain was all he knew."(p 123)

In an inter textual delight for the reader Crane is a character both in White's novel, as journalist studying the boy, and in the novel he is writing within Hotel de Dream. It reminds me of a favorite novel of mine, The Counterfeiters, by Andre Gide, wherein the protagonist Edouard is writing a novel titled The Counterfeiters, thus making Gide's tale a novel within a novel. White is using a modern approach to the novel to tell an apparently authentic fin de siecle tale.

He is almost successful since I have difficulties with the somewhat melodramatic ending; yet the reader is drawn along by the atmospheric seediness of turn-of-the century Manhattan as it is contrasted with the quiet, ironically idyllic, countryside of England where Stephen passes his final days with Cora. There is an injection of realism from visits by Henry James and Joseph Conrad that add to the book's milieu. I found White's prose elegant and his realization of Crane's novel within the novel believable. The contrasting portraits of passion and pain help make this novel a gem. It makes me want to explore more of both writers in the near future.

[Έλσα · Rating 4 out of 5]

Υπέροχη ιδέα! Καθηλωτική ιστορία που συνδυάζει αληθινά γεγονότα με μυθοπλασία!

[Erastes · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s a book of two halves, really. The first half, with Stephen Crane–who spends the entire book dying–is as slow as a meandering river. Suddenly, the “book within a book” which he’s writing hots up and the pace increases–it’s just that the two don’t really gel with each other. If you had told me two different people had written the book I would have believed you.

It begins with lengthy descriptions of Stephen Crane dying of tuberculosis and living in Engand in preparation for travel to the Black Forest for a hopeful cure. Crane is writing the “O’Ruddy” and he regrets that a manuscript he began about Elliott, a boy-prostitute he met in New York and who he interviews with journalistic zeal, was burned by another writer friend, so he begins it again, dictating it to his common-law-wife, Cora. This book “The Painted Boy” has become a writing myth, as there’s only that, and rumour to substantiate its existence, but it makes an interesting premise.

What I suppose I couldn’t really get over is that White could easily have made this story about a fictional author and it would have worked just as well. The fact that he’d set himself to write The Painted Boy himself, to take on the task of emulating Crane’s style seemed to me to be rather hubristic. Whether he does it well I will have to leave to others, as I haven’t read any of Crane’s works, but I couldn’t really tell the difference in style between White’s prose and that of what he puts forward as Crane’s.

I must apologise because this book didn’t appeal to me in any aspect. It was really a case of “gah, how many pages left?” and I appreciate that makes me a bit of a illiterate slob as this book has been lauded all over the place as being a work of genius, but frankly I’ve read books labelled “M/M” that have more literary merit in my eyes.

I’m more than slightly baffled about a couple of things. One, it’s called “A New York Novel” and this doesn’t really come over. You would have to squint hard to see much about the city–it’s mentioned here and there, more so towards the latter end of the novel, when the book gets more interesting, but it’s certainly nothing on the scale of other books that are steeped in the late 19th century city. Gaderene by Tina Anderson and C.B. Potts is far more New York than this, as is The Alienist by Caleb Carr. Not only is Crane iving in Engand and travelling to Germany in the book, but when he,or any of the other characters, are shown in New York, they are inside somewhere, and very little flavour of the city at that time is shown. There’s one segment which smears on description, thick as lard, about the Five Points and Manhattan towards the end, but it really feels like the author had done a bit of research and wanted to shoehorn this local colour in instead of threading it through the entire book.

Also baffling is the title. Crane met his ex-prostitute Cora at the brothel “Hotel de Dream”, but unless I’m missing something (probably) it’s not mentioned otherwise, so any symbolism to the name entire skidded over my head.

That being said I liked the characterisation a good deal. From the real Elliott who Crane interviews–and has him take around part of the queer scene in New York of the time–namely a gay bar and a visit to an androdyne, to the characters they meet in their investigative travels, to Cora, Crane’s mistress who loves Crane so hugely and does anything it takes to try and get him the help he needs, from mumping off friends to writing her own hack stories (which sell) just to support them in their financial troubles. But the most compelling characters in the book for me were the fictional Elliott portrayed in The Painted Boy and his obsessed, entirely in love protector, Theodore Koch. The love that can come to an older man this late in love can be a frightening and destructive love and so it is here, the seven year itch taken to its nth degree. I think of all the characters in the book, it is Koch that will stay with me, as he’s so in love, and ultimately so destroyed–but hey, it wouldn’t be gay literature if everyone wasn’t as miserable as hell.

Oscar Wilde said this of The Old Curiosity Shop: “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.”

And I’m afraid you will think badly of me when I tell you that I roared with laughter at the denouement in Hotel de Dream. It was probably not meant to be funny, and I have a sick sense of humour but I thought it was hilarious. It reminds me of the best kind of shaggy dog story, so be warned.

Do I recommend this? It’s probably fifty fifty. I’d say get it from the library, and see what you think.

[Ruthiella · Rating 2 out of 5]

I actually had two copies of this book and I don’t know why. It was OK. The novel is a book within a book with the dying American author, Stephen Crane, dictating his would-be final novel to his lover. The novel is supposed to be a companion to Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, only it is about a boy prostitute and a tragic love affair he has with a married man. The story is based possibly on Crane’s real life encounter with such a person.

I don’t know anything about Stephen Crane and this book didn’t even make me curious about reading his works. I generally don’t like literary ventriloquism or historical fiction with historical personages as main characters. There was some interesting writing about NYC at the turn of the 20th century which I did find interesting.

[Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Painted Boy: Resurrection from the Deathbed of Stephen Crane

Edmund White, gratefully, is a prolific writer, a gifted man of letters who has become one of America's more important authors. While much of Edmund White's oeuvre is about gay life, he does not confine his talent to the one topic: he is a brilliant biographer, a fine man of research, and a poet with prose. HOTEL DE DREAM: A New York Novel is his latest foray into fictional biography and for this reader the book succeeds on every level.

The short novel is ostensibly a 'biographical' account of the sadly brief life of novelist Stephen Crane, a nineteenth century literary giant who is best known for THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, but who also wrote a few other short novels and story collections. Basing the concept of this novel on both fact and fantasy, Edmund White gives us the last days of Stephen Crane's life, a tortured existence as he succumbed to tuberculosis, nursed by his beloved mistress Cora, an ex-Madame who had run a bordello in Florida called the Hotel de Dream. Crane had in fact befriended a poor youth who happened to be a male prostitute infected with syphilis: White takes this fact and uses it as a unique approach to explore the mind of Crane, using the fragment of thought that Crane was planning to create a story 'Flowers of Asphalt' based on the sad lad as the impetus for this brilliant book, the composition of a final novel called 'The Painted Boy.'

The novel deals with myriad aspects of Crane's life, but in the end it focuses on Crane dictating to Cora a 'fictionalized' story about a married banker, Theodore, who becomes enamored with a teenage, poor, syphilitic hustler named Elliott, only to find that his coming to grips with buried secrets of lust (tenderly satisfied by the very lovable Elliott) plunges him into a downward spiral that ends with a series of tragedies that parallel Stephen Crane's own consumptive death from tuberculosis. As Crane lies dying he shares his ideas for the conclusion of the story with the stalwart Cora, asking her to present the manuscript to Crane's respected colleague Henry James to complete after Crane dies. The story ends with a surprise that traces a circle to the beginning: the period of the turn of the century simply was not the time a story such as 'A Painted Boy' could be published.

Edmund White's ability to create a novel within a novel in such a fascinatingly credible manner is matched only by his gift for writing some of the most beautiful prose before us today. He understands character development, he knows the agony of personal tragedy, and his intellectual honesty dissects history so smoothly that his novel feels like true biography. And yet he takes the time to pause for moments of writing that are so touching they make the reader reflect with respect: 'He glanced down and saw that his sheet was stained yellow. He must have pissed himself. He started to cry. So it's come to this, he thought. He'd gone back to infancy and incontinence - with this difference: an infant has everything ahead of him and a loud tamtam is beating in his heart with anticipation, where as he, Stephen, felt the rhythm slowing into a valedictory murmur./ He was so ashamed of himself.'

HOTEL DE DREAM is a brilliant little novel and should please lovers of historical fiction as well as readers who long to find tomes of gleaming, eloquent writing. Highly Recommended.

Grady Harp

[Ann Herendeen · Rating 5 out of 5]

You don't have to be a writer to love this book--but if you are a writer, you'll be entranced by what White does in Hotel de Dream, and horrified by the appropriate but depressing ending.

White imagines the last months of late-19th-century writer Stephen Crane (The Red Badge of Courage) as he's dying, at age 28, of tuberculosis. Crane needs money to leave to his companion, Cora, a former prostitute whom he can't marry--because she's still legally married to her husband. He works doggedly at finishing a work of genre fiction that he knows will sell.

But like so many writers, Crane has another manuscript in the works, a labor of love, about a New York City street boy, a "ganymede" named Elliott. Crane has always been happiest among the city's underclass, the poor and dispossessed, and when he meets Elliott he's fascinated. Crane, unlike his friends and colleagues, is able to overcome his initial disgust at Elliott's syphilitic condition and the life that has led to it, and he begins a novel about a growing romance between Elliott and a client, a middle-aged, middle-class married man.

There's a basis in fact for this idea, rumors that Crane left an unfinished manuscript at his death. White calls this imaginary novel "The Painted Boy," and he does a beautiful, subtle job of recreating it for us, capturing both the mood of Crane's time and place, and the style of his writing.

For me, the most moving aspect of the story is the conflict in the mind of a dying artist, knowing his time is limited and that he can't do everything. For Crane, writing the genre novel is boring and tedious. He's so depleted by his illness that he doesn't have the mental or even physical strength to write both books, and he surreptitiously works on his passion, "The Painted Boy," whenever he has a moment alone.

After Crane's death, Cora knows that this manuscript is precious. It's the last product of a gifted writer, the work that inspired him to superhuman efforts even as his body failed. She approaches Crane's friends, including the famous writer Henry James, for help in publishing it. But of course they're appalled at the subject matter, and concerned with maintaining Crane's reputation.

Anybody who's ever written--or read--a controversial book on an unpopular or "disreputable" subject will be moved by this brilliant work of imagination from a great writer. And all readers will appreciate the contrast in standards between then and now. The details of what's acceptable may have changed, but the situation for unconventional artists is eternal.

[Lorenzo Muccioli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prima di essere stroncato dalla tubercolosi, Stephen Crane ha scritto un romanzo su di un giovane femminiello marchettaro; quel bigotto megalomane di Henry James, però, ha preso il manoscritto e l’ha buttato nel caminetto. E’ questa, su per giù, la polpa del romanzo di Edmund White, Hotel de Dream ( Playground, Roma 2008, euro 15).

Bello, succulento, intrigante, ma una domanda lo accompagna: chi diavolo è Stephen Crane? Se masticate un po’ di letteratura americana, dovreste esservi già ritrovati con questo fastidioso ossicino incastrato fra i denti, anche se a dire il vero non avete mai approfondito più di tanto. acciamo un passo indietro e, stuzzicadenti alla mano, togliamoci questa benedetta scheggia d’endocarpo dagli incisivi. Stephen Crane nasce in New Jersey nel 1871, quattordicesimo figlio di un ministro metodista. Da giovane fa il giornalista per il New York Tribute, che lo spedisce un po’ dappertutto, dai sobborghi malfamati della grande mela alle trincee di Cuba, infiammata in quel periodo dalla guerra fra spagnoli e americani. Nel 1895 scrive un romanzo sulla guerra civile americana, Il segno rosso del coraggio, che riscuote un successo planetario; l’opera segna la rottura di Crane con il naturalismo, e il suo approdo ad un impressionismo rivoluzionario. Calunniato dalla stampa americana, nel 1897 è costretto a riparare in Inghilterra, dove riceve l’acclamazione dei grandi letterati. Muore in Germania il 5 giugno del 1900.Sciorinata la scheda biografica, vediamo di riassumere: un giornalista americano impavido e mordace, che si fa scrittore e stupisce il mondo con le sue rocambolesche storie d’avventura; vi ricorda mica niente? Già, proprio così: Hernest Hemingway: la somiglianza è netta, e non solo dal punto di vista biografico.

Lo stile puntiforme, incisivo, dalla forte carica pittorica, è un debito che il premio Nobel contrae proprio dal nostro Crane che, con il suo pirotecnico impressionismo, scardinò le normali strutture del romanzo, amalgamando sapientemente la cruda realtà ad allucinanti folgorazioni visive ( leggiamo nell’enciclopedia americana: “sia il realismo che il simbolismo, i due filoni principali del romanzo moderno, hanno i loro inizi americani nell'opera di Crane”). Crane scrive in totale cinque romanzi; più un presunto sesto volume, appena abbozzato ed intitolato Fiori d’asfalto, che sarebbe poi quello gettato alle fiamme da Henry James. Ed è proprio da questa ipotesi sul libro incompiuto, da questo mistero di luci e ombre, che nasce il romanzo di Edmund White. L’autore ammette di aver dedotto la vicenda da una dichiarazione di James Gibbons Huneker, amico newyorkese di Crane: “Una sera di aprile o di maggio 1894 incontrai Crane sulla Broadway. Sulla Union Square ci si avvicinò un ragazzino che chiedeva l’elemosina. Arrivammo alla Everett House, e notammo che il ragazzo era truccato. Era molto bello, come un angelo di Rosetti, ma Crane ne fu disgustato. Poi si incuriosì. Lo fece parlare. Quello aveva la sifilide, ovviamente e voleva dei soldi per farsi curare. Cavò un bel po’ di informazioni dal ragazzo e si mise a scrivere un romanzo su un giovane prostituto. Forse la miglior prosa che Crane abbia mai scritto. Che io sappia, non lo completò mai. Lo voleva chiamare ‘Fiori d’asfalto ’”.


White ha arraffato le parole di Huneker e ci ha ricamato sopra la storia di un giovanissimo Gitone newyorkese, costretto a prostituirsi per soldi. Un borghesotto se ne innamora, e ne fa il suo amasio, ma un mafioso siciliano, ingelosito, decide di sottrarglielo con la forza, proprio come fa Ascilto con Encolpio. Questa, in sintesi, la trama del romanzo segreto. Nel calderone predisposto da White, oltre all’enigma “Fiori d’asfalto”, è finita anche la vita dello stesso Crane, immortalato nei suoi ultimi tragici istanti. Assistito dall’amante Cora (ex - tenutaria di un bordello cubano, l’Hotel de Dream, appunto), lo Stephen Crane del romanzo è impegnato in un duello mortale con la malattia, in una corsa contro i granelli di sabbia della clessidra, contro istanti sempre più brevi e dolorosi, per il compimento finale dell’opera.


La tubercolosi imperversa, inondando di sangue i polmoni dello scrittore: il romanzo deve essere completato prima che l’inevitabile si compia, prima che il morbo mandi in scatafascio l’organismo, infliggendo il colpo di grazia. “Si sentiva come Tristano nell’ultimo atto dell’opera impossibile di Wagner. Egli è ferito, desidera morire e quasi muore, se non che il disgraziato filtro d’amore che gli scorre nelle vene continua a tenerlo sveglio, riempiendolo di desiderio”. Il filtro d’amore che scorre nelle vene del nostro Crane è quello del narratore per gli uomini e le loro burrascose vicende, il suo desiderio quello di ultimare il lavoro, e andarsene senza lasciare nulla in sospeso. Come Orwell alle Ebridi, che scrive il suo 1984 con la tisi alle calcagna, Crane stringe l’anima coi denti e si immola in nome della sua storia. Egli è una partoriente che non si lascia vincere dall’emorragia fintanto che il bambino non è venuto alla luce.

Le fitte di dolore e la febbre dilatano a dismisura il tempo della sua lotta, ostacolando la corsa del maratoneta verso il traguardo; ma ecco che un angelo salvifico, in questo caso l’amata Cora, soccorre il moribondo, l’uomo sfiancato e finito, e lo traghetta fino alla meta, come il giudice che sorregge Dorando Pietri e lo aiuta a tagliare il nastro della vittoria. E’ qui che l’eroismo dello scrittore si fa simbolo, che il suo dramma si compie; ed egli infine muore, con un ultima esalazione che è allo stess o tempo la frase conclusiva di Fiori d’asfalto; o almeno lo è nelle dimensione fittizia del romanzo. Mi piace pensare, tuttavia, che la morte del vero Crane sia stata altrettanto gloriosa, impavida e combattiva – una morte sul campo! – di quella del suo alterego di inchiostro. Sono un romantico: che posso farci?

[Celia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Historical Fiction based on fact

Stephen Crane (known as Stevie since childhood). VERY sickly. Died at the age of 28. TB was the cause.

Towards the end of life, he started, but did not complete The O'Ruddy which I plan to read in 2022.

4 stars

[peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Been wanting to read this one for a while and finally picked it up and finished it in 2 days... lovely.

[Tocotin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I haven’t read anything by Stephen Crane – tried, but it was one of his less known novels and it didn’t suck me in, maybe I’ll return to it – but he seems a decent human being. I liked him in this book, and his wife Cora too. The writing was good when it dealt with the Cranes, worse when doing the Elliott part.

The book itself was something of a problem. It was too short. I expected more of, well, everything: Cora, the publishing milieu, James, Conrad et al on one side, and more of Elliott on the other. It was supposed to be about Elliott, not about Theodore! I don’t care about Theodore and his stupid decisions. I don’t care and don’t think he was in “love” – in heat, maybe; he ended up exploiting and ruining lives left and right. I wanted to see what was in Elliott’s head and what he was doing all those days, apart from selling newspapers.

New York wasn’t shown that much, either. The tour of Crane around the underworld was worse than a newspaper article – in fact, I’ve read far superior newspaper articles. And Elliott was robotic. Elliott! I wanted more of him and his friends. And Cora.

(The ending was horrible and everything was understated and depressing at the same time. Maybe apart from the descriptions of Crane’s illness. Poor Crane! I wish the legend were true and that he would have written the book and hidden it somewhere. Also &)((*&^%, I don’t believe Conrad didn’t know the word “cad”. Please try harder.)

[Christy B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hotel de Dream is a fictional novel about real life author Stephen Crane. Told during his last days, Crane starts dictating a story he's always wanted to tell: The Painted Boy. Based on an actual painted boy he met a few years earlier, it's the story of a boy and a married man who's obsessed with him.

The story is told from Crane's point-of-view as he lay dying, sometimes reflecting back to the time when he knew the boy; it is also told from the point-of-view of Crane's 'sort of' wife Cora. And then, of course, we get to read the story that Crane dictates to Cora. So, Hotel de Dream is a story within a story, and I loved that.

The ending blew me away. Or, I should say, both endings blew me away. If you know what happened to Crane, then you can probably figure this isn't a happy book. However, it wasn't Crane's death that made it sad, it's what happened after, to his story. I almost felt sick when I read it.

Of course, The Painted Boy was never a real story, but it felt like it was. It was more compelling than the 'real' story.

Hotel de Dream is a fantastic piece of historical fiction that I just stumbled across. I never heard of it before, but once I read the synopsis, I knew I absolutely had to read it. It was beautifully written, and while it felt a bit stuffy at some points, I knew it was worth it. And it was.

[Sian Lile-Pastore · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is our reading group book and reading group is tomorrow so I'm totally living on the edge.
If this hadn't been something I had to read I would probably have given up on it - it just didn't grab me and I wasn't crazy about the style of writing, but.. but, by the end I found parts of it really interesting. The thing I enjoyed the most was the double narrative - Stephen Crane is dying and writing a book - so half of the novel is about that, and then the other half of it is the story that Crane is writing, and during his telling of this story he makes it clear that it's a made up one and so it's kind of furstrating as you want the made up bit to be true, but it's not because it's a story and the whole thing is made up - apart from it's sort of not too, as stephen crane is a real person. Argh! So that's intersting, but I actually think it's done better in Erasure or books by Paul Auster.

It's also got a saucy, bawdy type of humour which i'm not a fan of.

[Bob Redmond · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two stories at once: Stephen Crane's dying days, and the story that Stephen Crane dictated from his deathbed. Both are as the author imagined, a big "what if" exercise. I think White would've done better to write the second novel (about a boy prostitute in late 19th-century New York) and then write an essay about the first (Stephen Crane being dragged from England to Germany as he died of TB). The end result is gorgeous writing, intriguing stories, but joined oddly. He called it "Hotel de Dream" after a hotel (whorehouse) one of the characters ran in Florida, but the narrative never resides in Florida, and so it's both misguided: no hotel of dreams; and apt: a kind of syphylitic fever that you aren't sure about... effective but not completely satisfying.

[Lawrence · Rating 1 out of 5]

I always love Edmund White's ideas for novels, but the novels themselve almost always disappoint me. The novel within the novel just made for two thin stories. Teen prostitutes and transexuals aren't enough to make a story interesting, at least not anymore. Turn of the century details about New York or famous literary figures have been done much better in "The Alienist" or "The Master."

[P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A surprise favorite owed to the gods of serendipity. Edmund White’s name caught my eye one pleasant afternoon while I was lazily scanning the sea of books at Bookworm - a bookshop located right in the heart of Bangalore; one whose collection is the stuff of a reader’s wet dreams. I’d previously read some White - initial sections of A Boy’s Own Story and half of his autobiographical City Boy. I picked this up tentatively, expecting lavish prose and little else. After Hotel de Dream, I‌ look forward to enjoying his other novels and his complete backlist.

In a recent interview, Ann Patchett mentioned that she always begins her next book by borrowing some element of her latest one - be it first-person narrative or the central theme. As a reader, I’m surprised to be currently experiencing this thematic continuity in the books I read. The Man Who Saw Everything gave way to 10 minutes 38 seconds, both novels sharing the structure of a jigsaw puzzle and both dealing with life in an oppressed country and forbidden desire. In 10 minutes 38 seconds, Leila escapes her orthodox village in hopes of finding freedom in Istanbul, only to fall prey to the wolves in the city. Elliott meets a similar fate in Hotel de Dream and his life trajectory is eerily parallel to Leila’s. Elliott also reminds me of the protagonist in Neel Mukherjee’s first novel Past Continuous. While Past Continuous is about global immigration and is set in London 100 years after Elliott’s times in Manhattan, their journey in navigating migration and gay desire remains similar. This timelessness, though ominous, is charming.

Hotel de Dream is about a rapidly debilitating writer flung between his death throes and an all-consuming creative spree. Most books about writers writing books appear a bit contrived, and the stories that these writers write within these books are not very organically integrated into the narrative; they stick out as a mere literary technique. But here, the writer dictates a work named The Painted Boy to his wife in his deathbed, and it’s fascinating to observe his process - the fluid and elegant transformation of his influences (events & characters from his life) into a work of art. The details he leaves out, the details he includes, the details he modifies, the effect of his art on his life and vice versa - everything is etched out so beautifully here, making it one of the most natural books I’ve read about creation of art.

Edmund White takes quite a lot of digs at the queer writers of yore, especially Oscar Wilde and Henry James. Colm Toibin’s biography of Henry James had cast a cloud of reverence around James in my mind. With Hotel de Dream, Edmund White has totally vaporized that cloud with his sarcasm. One of the funniest lines in this book is about Henry‌ James being so subtle in his writing that he’d cobweb the central theme out of existence.

Apart from the process of writing, the book also has some interesting insights to offer on realities of the past: war journalism, the conflict between American &‌ European traditions, the hypocrisies of the Victorian era, homelessness, street life, pick-pocketing, poverty, logistics of transferring a patient from one country to another, jealousy between writers, drag culture, uncertain desire.


SPOILER AHEAD:

The story works itself into an unforgettable conclusion with an ironic, supremely funny, philosophical, and madly absurd climax that turns the whole books on its head.

This book deserves a much wider readership. The very queer themes that the Victorians found disagreeable might be responsible for the obscurity of this book at this age. And it must change.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finished in the evening. Recommended by luke. I will never not love stories within stories so I automatically loved this. Loved the concept of White writing a story half-hinted at by historical accounts, loved the insertion of real people (the derogatory portrayal of Henry James is excellent… although I mixed him up for the entire reading of the novel with Thomas Mann for some bizarre reason… they are both tedious writers!) and the pull of the fictive novella ‘The Painted Boy’, which is often much stronger than the story of Stephen Crane. Unfortunately, the first half of the novel is pretty weak - it fluctuates confusingly from Cora’s POV then to Stephen’s within the first two chapters, then it floats around Stephen’s fragmented memories, but it all tightens up once Stephen’s TB gets bad and the nexus between the story of the writer and the story of the writing grows bolder and more knitted. The last third or so of the novel is un-put-down-able and the ending is elite!

[Patrick Notchtree · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting idea, a book within a book. I'm not sure which of the two parallel books I preferred. It was only some way through that realised that Stephen Crane had been a real person. Personally, I would have doubts about writing such intimate things and a real person, presumably fictional things. But there was a lot about I liked, especially the book within the book. I felt a lot of empathy for Elliott. There were aspects of him that took me back to my own adolescence. He was sometimes called Ellen, I was sometimes called Patricia. I'll say no more about that at the moment. I found these books easy to read and to follow. (By the way Badenweiler is not in Bavaria but in Baden-Baden. But that's a small point.) I found the descriptions of New York interesting. I was there some years ago and in terms of atmosphere, it does not seem to have changed much. I kept having to remind myself that this was more than a century ago.
It was largely chronological so it scores points for me there. The occasional retrospectives were well placed and it is obvious that is what they are.
I liked it.

[Marius Ghencea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Molto molto bello nella seconda parte del libro. Consiglio.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 3 out of 5]

(extensively edited to read better in August 2024).

It is only my great admiration for Edmund White that allows me to give this novel three stars. Although as a fiction about Stephen Crane, author of 'The Red Badge of Courage' (please see my footnote *1 below), it has strengths but also enormous weaknesses, most particularly the cliched portrayal of Henry James which falls so far short of Colin Toibin's wonderful 'The Master' of 2004 that it should make White hang his head in shame.

My real problem is White's creation of a lost or never written novel by Crane 'The Painted Boy' about a boy prostitute. If Crane had written a novel on such a subject, and there is tantalizing evidence that he thought about it, I am sure it would have resembled Crane's first novel 'Maggie: A Girl of the Streets' rather than White's utterly modern and completely un-19th century creation. I don't imagine even Zola would have written with such frankness - even if it is not late 20th century frankness. It just doesn't work - it grates - White is to good a writer to be boring but this farrago of anachronistic back dating just won't do. Trying to imagine a fiction in another author's style is not impossible - White did it with great aplomb in his novel 'Fanny: A Fiction' - but here we don't even rise to the level of pastiche. I very much wanted to like this novel but I can't. I'll probably learn to love 'The Red Badge of Courage' before I manage to love this novel.

*1 'The Red Badge of Courage' was a novel foisted on me in grammar school (primary school for UK and others - essentially pre-secondary school) as was the film version and, like almost every book I was forced to read via school I hated it because it was presented to us as a solid example of what the 'all American' boy should be in terms of doing his duty. This all had more resonance then because it was the 1960's at the height of Vietnam and the anti-war movement etc. It took me years to realise (partially because I was by then in school and later University in Ireland and later the UK) that 'The Red Badge of Courage' wasn't a piece of Disney/John Wayne propaganda. I should reread it, if I ever will is another thing.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure why, but I have never much connected with Edmund White's writing. It wasn't for lack of trying. I have started more than a few of his books but soon lost interest. I managed to get through "A Boy's Own Story", which had its moments, but perhaps I just found it a little too much like my own discomfiting, sexually confused boyhood. I discovered Mr. White's memoir "The Last Symphony" and it was like being at a very long dinner party in which everyone was trying to impress one another with intellectual blather, Wilde-inspired wit, or elitist b.s. rather than just having a good time. Thus it was with marked ambivalence that I toted this book home from a trip to my local library. BINGO!, he got me... I loved the book within a book structure, the writing, the characterization, and I pretty much devoured this one. I suppose it helped that the entire time I was reading "Red Badge of Courage" by Stephen Crane I was intrigued by the author himself. There was something enigmatic and, (dare I say it?),HOT about him that I couldn't put my finger on. This book is quite moving, particularly the relationship depicted between Crane and his devoted wife Cora. As for the death-bed writing of his last book, "The Painted Boy", that story within a story is also moving. Crane seemed to have had no problem with people his contemporaries viewed as "immoral" or trashy low-lives; perhaps he just preferred to see the humanity in everyone rather than judging the behavior or surface appearances, particularly of people not exactly strait-laced when it came to sex.. (Perhaps that openness is why I think Crane may have been "hot".. This book was enough to draw me back to White's other books and try again. He is a wonderful writer, even if at times he gets a little too florid, arty, and pretentious for my taste. I enjoyed this book every bit as much as "Grief" by Andrew Holleran or "The Hours" by Michael Cunningham.

[Gary Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Out in paperback: 10/14/2008!

After the near-atrocity that was 2007's Chaos collection, White returns with a fantastic novel: a novel that shows he might be through with trying to prove his (quickly waining) relevance to gay fiction, and instead embracing his age and his status of a (albeit, unknown) literary icon.
Hotel de Dream runs with the myth that Stephen Crane -- The Red Badge of Courage -- once wrote a short story based on an (non-sexual) experience he had had with a teenage male prostitute, as a sort of companion piece to Maggie: A Girl of the Streets; he supposedly presented this story to a friend of his, and was told 'this is the best material you've ever written; and if you don't destroy it now, you will never have a career', and thus he threw his story into the fire. White expounds on this concept -- giving voices to Crane, Crane's wife, the boy whore, and a married man who is in love with the boy. Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and a few other historic icons pop in from time to time as well.
This is one of the best novels White has produced in nearly a decade.

[Gael Impiazzi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hmm.

This was well written, and literary, but I don't think I liked it really.
It is based on the life (well death actually) of a American writer called Stephen Crane - an actual person, although I've never heard of him. He died in 1899, and knew Henry James & Josef Conrad.

The novel tells how he dictates his final novel to his wife, while he is dying of tuberculosis. It's a novel within a novel. The one he dictates would have been very controversial at the end of the 19th century - a story about the relationship between a middle aged man and a teenage boy. The subject matter is quite challenging even for today. But that's not why I didn't like it - at least I don't think so.

I just found it quite depressing.

[Murat Aydogdu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I quite liked this book. It is really a story within a story where an American writer living his last days in Europe decides to write a novel about the love affair between a married banker and an underage male prostitute, with his wife's help.
I liked the back and forth between the last days of the writer and the story unfolding. I'd recommend it.

[Patrick Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who but Edmund White could bring Stephen Crane to life--even as Crane is dying? A wonderful novel about art, desire, and New York.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the end, after all the suffering, it was all for nothing.

[Alistair Sutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recently, I re-read Edmund White's Hotel de Dream and it certainly showcases his skills as a writer. White, who is best known for his autobiographical fiction documenting late 20th-century New York and the AIDS epidemic, created an evocative and sensual novel in Hotel de Dream. In this work, White conjures an atmospheric portrayal of doomed love, blackmail, and flawed beauty set against a backdrop of 19th-century values. White re-creates this world in a realistic, if impressionistic way, skilfully interweaving the twin narratives of real-life author Stephen Crane’s struggle with tuberculosis and the obsessive love story played out in his novella, The Painted Boy.

As Crane succumbs to the disease, with his devoted common-law wife Cora as attendant and nurse, he dictates the story of a male prostitute he’d met and interviewed some years previously, his inspiration for The Painted Boy. Elliott is a streetwise lad who sells newspapers, along with ‘extras’, to certain older men. He becomes the obsessive fixation of Theodore Koch, respectable banker, up till now at any rate, and married man. Koch sets Elliott up in a room and visits him on the way home from work. As he becomes increasingly besotted by the engaging Elliott, Koch commissions a statue to be made of his idol. This act inadvertently triggers a sequence of events that proves to have catastrophic outcomes.

White based the premise for this short, beautifully crafted novel on the apocryphal account of one of Crane’s contemporaries. It was alleged that the author had written and then destroyed an early draft of a novella about a boy prostitute. White poses the question to the reader, “How would a heterosexual man (Crane) who had wide human sympathies have responded to male homosexuality if confronted by it?” White answers this by seeking to re-create a work which probably never existed. (Crane, a famous author of his day, wrote The Red Badge of Courage, amongst other prose and poetry). White achieves this with an economy of words and a masterful sense of place and time; the reward for the extensive research any historical novel requires (he alludes to this in a postscript). The title, Hotel de Dream, takes its name from the bordello Cora operated as Madam, prior to her association with Crane.

White’s spare prose successfully evokes the rigours of terminal disease without resorting to sentimentality; instead, he imbues Crane’s suffering with a poignant yet straightforward clarity. Crane’s quiet acceptance of his fate contrasts with his increasing desperation to see his final work completed. White’s insight into terminal disease is vividly captured in the text and no doubt drew from his own long-term battle with HIV. The humanity of the syphilitic boy, Elliott, is conveyed in his apparent regard for Koch and his heartfelt, if ineffectual, attempts to rectify a situation beyond salvation. The resolution and tragedy of this storyline is mirrored in Crane’s own fate, his steadfast wife at his side to the end.

The dual love stories of Crane and Cora and Elliott and Koch evoke an era long past, while illustrating the themes of obsessive love and betrayal, which are timeless. Hotel de Dream is a darkly entertaining read and one that I can thoroughly recommend.