The Art of Youth: Crane, Carrington, Gershwin, and the Nature of First Acts

The Art of Youth is a moving inquiry into the nature of artistic prodigies who did their major work at an early age. Renowned novelist Nicholas Delbanco gives us a triptych of indelible portraits: the Ameri­can writer Stephen Crane (immortalized by The Red Badge of Courage); British art­ist Dora Carrington (called “the most ne­glected serious painter of her time”); and the legendary composer George Gershwin (Rhapsody in Blue, Porgy and Bess).
 
All three lived colo…