Conversation; or, Pilgrims' Progress: A Novel

by Conrad Aiken

A painter torn between his domestic arrangements and his artistic pursuits makes a fateful choice in this brilliant and provocative novel from a winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize

Timothy Kane brought his wife and young daughter to Cape Cod in order to find the peace and quiet necessary to paint. But the mood inside their small cottage is far from tranquil—a past affair weighs on Timothy’s conscience, and the strain of running a household by herself is causing Enid to resent her husband.
 
To make matters worse, Timothy’s friend Jim Connor has decided to move to the Cape and bring a gaggle of their Greenwich Village acquaintances with him. A committed anarchist, Jim does more than just preach the redistribution of He accomplishes it himself by shoplifting from department stores and giving the loot to struggling poets and painters. Jim and his rabble-rousing, art-obsessed crew stir up trouble wherever they go, and Timothy’s association with the group soon becomes a major point of contention between him and Enid. She expects him to sacrifice his friendship for the sake of his family’s security—a demand that runs counter to Timothy’s nature and his sense of what it means to be an artist. With the pressure mounting, he must find a way to balance his marriage and his work, or risk devastating consequences to both.  
 
An exquisitely crafted story about the hard truths of the creative life, Conversation has been lauded by the New York Times as a testament to “the brilliance of [Conrad Aiken’s] mind and the understanding of his heart.”   
 

102 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

Known American writer Conrad Potter Aiken won a Pulitzer Prize of 1930 for Selected Poems .

Most of work of this short story critic and novelist reflects his intense interest in psychoanalysis and the development of identity. As editor of Selected Poems of Emily Elizabeth Dickinson in 1924, he largely responsibly established her posthumous literary reputation. From the 1920s, Aiken divided his life between England and the United States and played a significant role in introducing American poets to the British audience.

He fathered gifted writers Joan Aiken and Jane Aiken Hodge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_...

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Conrad Aiken published his five novels in the span of a dozen years, between the ages 38 and 51. He lived another thirty-three years. Although Ushant, his autobiographical "essay" (as the subtitle identifies it), published in 1952 (at the age of 63), is a sort of sequel to his first novel, Blue Voyage, I find it odd that Aiken otherwise devoted his fifties, sixties, and seventies almost exclusively to his poetry (as well as the occasional short story or work of criticism). Perhaps his novels never sold that well to begin with, and money had been the only reason he'd written them at all? Until I've read Jay Martin's biography of the man, I suppose I won't know the answers to my many questions, in which case I should probably stop speculating. But this mystery pulls on me.

Anyway, now that I've read Aiken's final novel (again, not counting Ushant, which is up next), I feel a sort of sadness. None of his novels could be considered a masterpiece, alas, but his astute psychological insights into character, his dialogue, and his bee-yoo-ti-ful prose make for some real page-turners. I'm sorry that he stopped when he still had three decades to go. But then, perhaps I should stop lamenting and track down more of the man's poetry!

Conversation is a family melodrama. Timothy Kane is a struggling painter who's moved his young wife, Enid, and their daughter, Buzzer, to a small coastal town on Cape Cod in an effort to kickstart his creativity. For Tim and happy-go-lucky Buzzer, the tiny house is a dream. For poor Enid, the house is a prison. She misses her upper-crust life in Boston, and dislikes pretty much everything about the rustic New England town in which Tim has plopped them down. What's worse, an acquaintance of Tim's, Jim Connor--a sort of Greenwich Village version of Robin Hood who steals from the rich (in this case, big-city department stores) and gives to the poor (his Bohemian friends)--has rented a house down the way, and his presence has caused quite a stir in the quiet town. Enid believes Tim's relationship with Connor will destroy them, which the artsy Tim considers to be nonsense. The married couple's battle of words steadily intensifies throughout the novel, leading to an all-out shouting match, and a resolution of sorts, in the final chapter.

Conversation suffers from that distinct, early-twentieth-century version of American male chauvinism. I commend Aiken for providing Enid with a fully convincing point of view, but because Tim is the book's protagonist we are encouraged to side with his apparently calm and reasonable arguments, all of which happen to completely oppose Enid's opinions and desires. A reader in 2016 (like me) is much more likely to side with Enid, which would no doubt make this novel an object of scorn for most. Aside from Tim's close, affectionate relationship with his young daughter, he's pretty much a self-centered jerk. Despite protestations to the contrary, he is blind to his wife's many sacrifices, caring more about his art (which, Aiken makes clear, is on par with any other wannabe's middling talent) than his wife's feelings. He broke off an affair with a woman just before moving his family to the coast, and--as is typical in novels written by the likes of John Updike--we are meant to congratulate him for this decision. Well, good for you, Tim. Way to stop cheating on your wife!

This is the kind of book that begs for a new version, written by someone else, from Enid's point of view, a la Wide Sargasso Sea. But since Conversation has faded into relative obscurity, along with the rest of Aiken's oeuvre, this seems unlikely. Alas!

The book's "dead white guy" syndrome aside, I enjoyed this book. But then I'm a (future) dead white guy, so that's not too surprising. I just love Aiken's prose so much; I wish he had put it to better use in his novels. Now that I've read them all, if I had to rate them:

1. Great Circle
2. King Coffin
3. Blue Voyage
4. Conversation
5. A Heart for the Gods of Mexico

So far (about 70 pages in) Ushant seems as if it will lead the pack, which is a relief. Time will tell.

[Jared Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Unitarian Church clock began striking--ten o'clock. Or could it be eleven? Or nine?....But time, in such moonlight as this, obviously ceased to exist, became, by any ordinary human standards, incommensurable. It poured, it flowed, it was all at one level, like the sea--it was simply space, and to be measured, if at all, only by distances, as wave from wave, hand from hand, face from face. A moon, moons, half a moon--one elm tree tip to another, frosted with pure light--the creeping diagonal of dense shadow, like enchantment, along a white picket fence--the slow tide of silver mounting up the still slope of a shingled roof, and then pouring soundlessly away over the rooftree to leave it again in primordial darkness--good god, when you stopped to think about it what a terrifying and unearthly business it was. It was enough to give you the shivers. And when you thought of the whole world, or half of it, revolving in space through this lethal and ethereal light, itself looking dead and frozen, with its cold barnacles of houses--what must it look like, seen from the moon? Dreadful no doubt; like a vast skull; or worse still, like an exposed and frozen brain. And that mackerel sky, up there, those shoals of silver fish swimming softly away over the moon, momentarily touching and dimming it, but not obscuring it, themselves brightening or darkening in serried and evanescent rows, yet so orderly and precise--and the bare dark trees reaching upward towards them--yes the whole thing, he thought, was exactly like a quick cold shiver over the very top of the brain--frost on the eardrums, frost on the eyeballs, frost on the nerve ends! It was a taste, in advance, of the marrowy and foul bitterness of death.......