Word: aikens
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...this characteristically brutal self-appraisal, Aiken almost dispels the need for further criticism of his work. Conrad Aiken is not a great novelist. By every time-honored (or shall we say time-worn) criterion of criticism--characterization, plot, style--he is a failure...
...Aiken knows and understands himself, but no one else. The autobiographical character in each of his five novel emerges clearly from the "phantasmargoric world." But the author suffers from the plight of his central characters, such as the insane hero of King Coffin who flatly states, "It was true that no human being could ever achieve a real contact with anything or anyone." Aiken's characters are always distant and blurred for author, protagonist, and reader...
Plot--if we define it as things which happen in the course of a novel--is not overabundant in Aiken's works. In Conversation, a man and his wife have drifted apart, and finally drift back together. In Blue Voyage, a man discovers that his former lover is traveling on a ship with him and that she is now engaged. These would seem to be unsubstantial pegs on which to hang several hundred pages of prose...
...certainly no cardinal sin and hardly a unique characteristic in twentieth century literature. But when plot development stalls in Wolfe and Durroll, their brilliant use of language sustains our interest. The language in Eliot's poetry is hypnotic even when rational comprehension of his writing eludes us completely. Aiken, however, lacks the stylistic mastery of an Eliot or a Wolfe...
...Aiken's virtue as a novelist is not the way he writes, but the way he sees. Durrell has asked, "What is life but the way we interpret the silences around us?" Aiken interprets the silences of our lives and compels us to feel their pain. "Psychological novel" would be the term to describe the type of book Aiken writes, but no academic categorization or paraphrase can capture the poignancy and depth of his perception...