THE COLLECTED SHORT STORIES OF CONRAD AIKEN (566 pp.)World($6).
Reading through a big collection of short stories is like staying too long at a noisy party. Individual impressions blur; one woman waiting uncertainly with an unlit cigarette becomes all women with that mannerism, and a silly remark made once too often makes fools, unfairly, of all who repeat it. Similarly, the impression persists that at least one-quarter of these Conrad Aiken stories begin with characters waking up in the morning, and that most of his women have "the blackest and fiercest eyes I...
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