Word: aiken
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...articles represent quite different attitudes towards Faulkner's style. To take the more conventional first, Conrad Aiken examines the various peculiarities of Faulkner's writing as semi-deliberate technical devices that may be judged in terms of their effect on the reader. He maintains, to begin: "Mr. Faulkner's style, though often brilliant and always interesting, is all too frequently downright bad." After quoting several horrible examples he complains of the "overelaborate sentence structure"; this complaint, by the way, is in a column of type consisting of five of his own sentences, of median length 67 words...
These two approaches are, to some extent, mutually exclusive. Kazin stresses the subjective elements, those that seem necessary to Faulkner, while Aiken looks for conscious technical choices, presumably changeable. Aiken's critique is surely relevent to many passages in Faulkner's work, passages that could be made more intelligible and still no less satisfactory to the writer. But those inspired by Kazin to look with greater tolerance and sympathy on a writer's inclinations will find their eyes opened to unsuspected values in Faulkner's art. Kazin writes out of a powerful enthusiasm that compels a like excitement...
This issue of the Advocate is certain to achieve the twin aims of all such special editions, to fill the coffers and enhance the prestige of the organization. A question remains: is it worth one dollar to non-subscribers? On the basis of the Kazin and Aiken contributions alone, I would say that it is--to all those who are interested in Faulkner and many, as well, who think they...
Included in the issue will be work by Albert Guerard, Jr., associate professor of English, and Archibald MacLeish, Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory. Others contributing are Conrad Aiken, Cleanth Brooks, Albert Camus, Carvel Collins, Leonard Doran, Pierre Emmanuel, Jerome Gavin, Alfred Kazin, Thomas Mann, and John Crowe Ransom...
...AIKEN TAYLOR Burlington...