 The Monster and Other Stories was the last collection of Crane's work to be published during his lifetime. In the mid-20th century, the novella received a resurgence of critical attention, especially in regard to studies of race relations in late 19th-century New York. Critic Chester L. Wolford wrote that the story "reveals truths not socially accepted for almost another hundred years. The story is, indeed, an excoriation of social conditions for the blacks, but more important ... it is an excoriation of all communities, all societies, in all places and all times." African-American author Ralph Ellison called The Monster, alongside Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, "one of the parents of the modern American novel". In a 1999 article, critic James Nagel stated that "no other work of short fiction in the decade was more important thematically, and nothing until William Faulkner's" The Bear " so enriched the genre of the United States. Screenwriter and director Albert Band adapted Crane's novella for the 1959 film Face of Fire, starring Cameron Mitchell as Dr. Trescott and James Whitmore as Johnson. Unlike in the original story, Johnson was depicted as white, and his first name was changed from Henry to Monk.
