Over time, the L.A. Times saw Conrad Aiken as brilliant, misunderstood and dishonest

How is a writer’s reputation made — and how does it change? In 1939, we called Conrad Aiken “brilliant and misunderstood”; in 1963, “brilliant but dishonest.” Here’s a sample of our reviews of Aiken’s work, over time.

1920, “Scepticisms: Notes on Contemporary Poetry”

Mr. Aiken intensely admires the work of William Carlos Williams, Jean de Roseberry and a few others, and says so in a few paragraphs. But it isn’t so much what he admires as what he does not that concerns Mr. Aiken in his addition of vitriol to criticism.

1927, “Blue Voyage”

This is Conrad Aiken’s first novel, though he is well known as a poet and a writer of short stories. He adopts in “Blue Voyage” the method of James Joyce, in which the stream of consciousness of one, William Demarest, poet and playwright, is followed from the beginning to the end of a voyage from New York to Liverpool. William thinks he is definitely and spiritually in love with a certain English Cynthia… . But his wandering thoughts reveal that his whole mind and heart are not bound up in Cynthia. … It is all cleverly done, but will please only the few and unfit.

1931, “The Coming Forth by Day of Osiris Jones”

In a strange and mystical way Conrad Aiken describes the passage out of nothingness and back again of a typical life. Through a series of kaleidoscopic impressions and the interpretative comment of a chorus of onlookers, we are shown the progress of human consciousness over the dark stage of life. A poem for the mystic and the poet.

1933, “Great Circle”

A pathetic nympholept, beating against the bars of the Real; a romantic, ill-at-ease in the House of Life; a symbolist, striving to interpret to himself the discordant cries of his own tormented soul: Mr. Conrad Aiken is all of these and more. … More coherent than Joyce or Eliot, his writing has a wider appeal. … Mr. Aiken takes his time and makes a profound study of his themes. And let me say at the outset this is not a pleasant book. If the reader desires entertainment let him not peep into these bloodstained pages. … “Great Circle” is what may be called a Freudian self-analysis, a masochistic divellication during the processes of which pain is translated into perception. … The sympathetic reader puts this book aside with a feeling that he, too, has passed through a great sickness, but that he has, during the fevered process, acquired a new and profound insight into the mysteries of life.

1952, “Ushant: An Essay”

Certainly, Aiken is rich in invention, and sometimes he is also rich in art. But the average reader will wonder just what other reader Aiken had in mind when he wrote this book. Was it done for the novel reader, critic, student or the historian of American culture? Is it essay, novel, autobiography? My guess is that it is a combination of all. It is enough to say that it is an illuminating book about one of the most interesting men of letters we have produced in many decades. But because it rather defies classification and does not move in straight lines nor in confined channels, a mere reviewer grows a little dizzy and may (indeed, must) also wander around. … Aiken is not everybody’s writer. He does not care to be but he is one of the most significant and stimulating writers of our time.

carolyn.kellogg@latimes.com

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