ten a defining sentence, “Le style est lernstyle”—which can be read as “the style isrnthe stylus” or vice versa. Aiken’s stylusrnhad cut through to the essence of Frenchrnsymbolism and the experiments of thernpre-World War I literary breakthroughrnwithout affecting his style, which wasrnpurely Aiken during a period when sornmany American poets were plagiarizingrneach other’s method. And his goodrnsense had pierced the mass—somernwould say the mess—of Freudianism,rnseparating from it those elements whichrnwere relevant to his life, his thinking, andrnour contemporaneity.rnThe book by Conrad Aiken whichrnCap Pearee had published was Ushant,rnan autobiography in the form of a novel,rncouched in a flowing stream of consciousnessrnwhich no other writer hadrnachieved. Over the months, as it movedrnfrom manuscript to bound book. Caprnhad spoken to me of the impact it wouldrnhave on the literary world and on writingrnin general. “It is sui generis,” he wouldrnsay, “and yet in the great tradition ofrnEnglish letters. It is a book about life andrntragedy. No, it is none of these things,rnbut it is probably the most importantrnbook I have ever published, and the closestrnto me.” Cap expected great things ofrnUshant, but they never happened. Irnthought then that at least MalcolmrnCowley—who had once written thatrnAiken was “perhaps the greatest masterrnthat we now have”—^would speak up forrnit, and to give it the discussion it merited.rnBut Cowley was busy fighting the wars ofrnthe left—diving like a loon for thernLIBERAL ARTSrnTHE UNMELTABLE POTrn”Just as the native population wasrnable to maintain its distinctive culturerndespite centuries of invadingrnarmies, so in the United States, Iraniansrnseem to cling to their ethnic heritagernin the face of pressures to assimilate.rn. . . Among the Los Angelesrnstudents and businessmen studied byrn[Diane M.] Hoffman, ‘Americanrnwork culture, and perhaps the notionrnof work as applied to self, such as inrnthe philosophy of self-help or self-development,rnwere the only domains inrnwhich Iranians enthusiastically espousedrnAmerican values.'”rn—from the Gale Encyclopedia ofrnMulticultural America, J 995.rn”meaningful,” in William Hazlitt’srnphrase, and coming up with his pocketrnhandkerchief—and Ushant was dumpedrnby the critics, when they simply did notrnignore it, into the cauldron of the whoshot-rnJohn of “proletarian” literary poUtics,rnthen dominated by a crypto-Marxismrnwhich is still with us—and to Cap’srnsorrow, it neither made the best-sellerrnlists nor opened doors of the art. Therernis nothing in Edmund Wilson’s “diaries”rnfor roughly that time except a note:rn”Conrad Aiken is back at Brewster [NewrnYork] and suffering from poison ivy.”rnFor some strange reason, there arernthree men who, in my mind’s eye, sharernphysical characteristics—John Dos Passos,rnPablo Casals, and Conrad Aiken.rnDos Passos I got to know quite wellrnwhen we served together on the board ofrndirectors of the American ConservativernUnion. I had spent several hours interviewingrnCasals and been the only newsmanrnpresent when he suffered a heart attackrnwhile rehearsing the orchestra forrnthe Festival Casals in San Juan. Aiken Irnonly know from that one meeting in CaprnPearce’s office in 1952. Perhaps for mernthe aura of greatness materializes only inrnone form. But that is how I rememberrnConrad Aiken as we sat in a second-floorrnoffice of a converted townhouse on arntree-lined street in New York’s East Thirties.rnHe was already there when I walkedrnin, and Cap had said some kind things tornhim about me as a writer and poet—rnenough perhaps to convince Aiken that Irnwas no questing newsman seeking torncatch him in a misspelling.rnI was not there to ask questions. Aikenrnspoke about Ushant with a friendly impersonality,rnas if it were a novel he hadrnread, and not a deeply probing autobiography,rnin a third-person-singular mode,rnreaching into himself. He was matter-offactrnwhen I spoke of student days when Irncarried a volume of his Selected Poemsrnunder my arm on the Columbia campusrn—matter-of-fact but with no falsernmodesty or condescension. I had a copyrnof Ushant in my hands—I desperatelyrnwanted it autographed but never had therngall to request it—and thrust it a littlernforward as I asked, almost biting myrntongue immediately after, how far backrninto his childhood he went. I had inrnmind the opening of Tristram Shandy, arnbook whose spoor is visible in Ushant,rnand in Laurence Sterne’s did-you-windthe-rnelock opening. There was a slightrnstiffening, but no resentment that it hadrntouched on a terrible memory—thernfinding of his mother and father, horriblerndead in their bedroom. I rushed tornsome technical question, and Aikenrnsmiled. “But you are a writer, you mustrnknow,” he said.rnI took Ushant home and spent muchrnof that night and the next reading it.rnFor those who will seek it out and turn tornit with seriousness of purpose, it is arnunique yet universal autobiography andrna roman a clef—a memoir of literaryrnworlds before my time and a penetratingrninward view of the life of a man whornlived for himself, for his art, and for thosernwomen and men who impinged on hisrnexistence. But as Cap put it in the jacketrnblurb he so lovingly wrote, Ushant is arnmix a nu of man and of men moving inrnthese misbegotten times. That is the onlyrnway it can be read today or by later generationsrnnot keyed in to memoirs of thernliterati who existed between the twornWorld Wars. And it is a kind of epiloguernand binder to the four novels he wrote, asrnwell as to his poems—novels about ConradrnAiken and his wives and his anguishrnand life itself. They have been broughtrntogether in one volume, with an ultraliteraryrnintroduction by R.P. Blaekmur.rnThey should be read today so that thernseeking may discover that a novel is morernthan a sexual limepit.rnIt has been many years since I readrnConrad Aiken’s critiques of literaturernand the arts—to be found now only inrnsuch storage places as the New York PublicrnLibrary and the Library of Congress.rnBut it is the poetry that counts, and thernpoetry which should be on the readingrnlist of every college course in Americanrnliterature—though I am certain it is not.rnI have tried to find out what undergraduatesrnread today in their “survey” coursesrnbeyond Erica Jong and Stephen King—rnand I have come to the conclusion thatrnthe mimeographed lists are little morernliterate than “gangsta” rap. In my youth,rnwe could follow the argument: DidrnAiken want the colon in the title ofrnPunch: The Immortal Liar—left out inrnthe first printing—or did he invite thernimplied mayhem? “If is morning, Senlinrnsays”—a morning enwrapped. The poemrnwas read to us in class, and we readrnit ourselves. Perhaps what reached out tornmc, as an adolescent honing his poeticrnskills, was Aiken’s striving to merge thernspoken word with musical utterance—rnhis “symphonies,” as he put it, whichrnpredated Eliot’s “quartets”—and his realizationrnthat English speech in itsrnheightened forms flows in and out of thern44/CHRONICLESrnrnrn