Stephen Crane "was an explosion of color in a gray age," writes his biographer Linda H. Davis in a well-turned phrase typical of the acuity and aplomb displayed throughout her perceptive examination of his short (1871-1900), dramatic life. Crane was only 23 when the serial newspaper publication of The Red Badge of Courage made him famous, yet he had already developed the artistic credo that blew fresh air into the stale atmosphere of Victorian American literature. "Art is not a pulpit," this son of a Methodist minister wrote in 1893, commenting on his controversial first novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. Like his friend Joseph Conrad, Crane believed that fiction should tell the truth about human beings" behavior and motives; understanding, rather than judgment, was his goal. His own standards were casually bohemian, as Davis shows in her vigorous chronicle of his numerous love affairs, his gallant defense of a woman unjustly accused of soliciting that gained him the enmity of New York City Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, a nasty lawsuit with a former lover, and a common-law marriage to a woman who ran a brothel in Florida. On the literary front, the biographer sifts out Crane"s finest stories and journalism from the large amount of hackwork he cranked out for money--of which he never had enough. Davis"s appreciative commentary will send readers back to Crane"s fiction; her perceptive evaluation of his personality inspires renewed interest in the man who wrote it. --Wendy Smith