Re: Robert Aickman
 

http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/13740-2/

This is the last section of my review of THE INMATES (which I am convinced Aickman must have read), and this warns you not to read the last chapter of the book because I feel that this last chapter has been to blame for very few people ever reading the whole novel at all in the first place!
------------------------------
16. The Escape
"Come on now, honest for once. Is it that Mr. Hush-a-baby of yours who sits, so they tell me, night after night with the worst loonies in the place and at a table you polishes hour by hour till it's as sleek as a suet-grub?"
I think I now understand why this is an obscure novel. It's this last longish chapter that maddeningly throws everything and everyone, and some new characters, into an Ealing Comedy or Whitehall Farce, into a realm, sadly, beyond the more engaging Fawlty Towers scenario I mentioned earlier in this review. Sadly, for me, there is now abandoned (perhaps in perverse deliberation by Powys in this book's final wildest card throw of madness) the previously absurd-mystic nurturing of the Thomas Mann soul and, also, retrocausally, as if by the Large Hadron Collider, of the Robert Aickman soul, abandoning both souls as filtered through an even greater soul: that of John Cowper Powys.
If the novel had finished or stayed unfinished at the end of the previous chapter, we would now be dealing with an original, memorable novel that, despite my earlier perception of some shortcomings, might have been considered Powys's masterpiece, blending a skilfully unskilful literary extrapolation about madness by madness with an experimental spiritual absurdity. A blend that might have arguably created a masterpiece. Instead we are left with something else. Perhaps, if you omit reading this last chapter, you will be gifted with that missing literary masterpiece that nobody else (including me) will ever experience because it is too late by the time you've read this last chapter – or too early, more likely, as you will never even start the novel nor even read this review of it.
I will not try to tell the tale of this last chapter, not for fear of spoilers in the normal sense, but for fear of spoilers in an abnormal sense. But it does echo that "spiritual helicopter" I picked out earlier in my review, here for real, in a splendid clattering hugeness, giving this chapter even more of a cinematic feel, as intimated by my mention of an Ealing Comedy. It also has people being pushed into the morass of Dr Echetus like John tried to push himself earlier into the spruce leaves in his physical rapprochement with Antenna Sheer. It also has the most retrocausally politically-incorrect references to the N word. So, yes Escape `The Escape'….if you can. It's too late for me.
But then this chapter has already faced us with the "Unalterable".

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Night Voices will soon be available from Tartarus.
http://tartaruspress.com/aickmannightvoices.htm
Including The Model AND all the introductions by Aickman from the Fontana series, and a text by Ramsey Campbell about memories of Aickman, which I assume (it's the same title) is the same that accompanied the Collected Aickman volumes.

Huzzah!

Re: Robert Aickman
 

I don't want to harp on about this, but I genuinely think that - at least in part - that The Hospice (and Into The Wood?) forms a tribute to 'The Magic
Mountain' and covers many of its themes which you can tick off one by one. And I think we know that Thomas Mann was one of Aickman's major influences according to his letters. But I have been the first to decry this biographical type of literary criticism based on my life-long interest in the Intentional Fallacy! So I am torn.

Fascinating observation elsewhere about 'blood' as a theme in 'The Hospice' - something I had not noticed. In the Mann book, there is a very significant descriptive nosebleed scene central to a particular memory of Hans Castorp (like Proust's tea and petite madeleine scene) that in turn becomes a memory central to the whole book. I would have to re-examine the text for any other 'blood' themes in the Magic Mountain, though...!

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Received Tartarus Press's "Night Voices" yesterday. They REALLY did an INCREDIBLE job on this volume. Went way above and beyond including "The Model" and all the essays and intro's. Very well done.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Aickman Studies, a new online journal edited by Tom Baynham and hosted by Gary William Crawford, has started publication. It is still under construction, but three essays are already available in Volume One, Number One (January 2014):

‘Studies Of Sad Beauty: Robert Aickman, Philip Steegman, And Arthington Worsley’ by Mark Valentine;

‘Alone With The (Archetypal) Horrors: Monstrous Women In RobertAickman's Strange Stories’ by Anthony J. Fonseca‘;

'Skim Milk As Cream: Reality Versus Illusion In The School Friend’ by Rebekah Memel Brown

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Elizabeth Jane Howard, co-author of We Are for the Dark and Aickman's one-time lover, as well as a significant novelist in her own right, died today at age 90. A BBC obituary, in which Aickman is glancingly mentioned, can be found here.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Faber Finds has

Re: Robert Aickman
 

In case this hasn't already been posted elsewhere:
Don't know how I feel about filming an Aickman story, but this isn't altogether bad.

Oh, and has anyone actually read The Late Breakfasters or The Model? Just curious what they are like. I'm certainly looking forward to getting both of them when they come out!

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Thanks, Pan Michael. I'm not claiming "The Cicerones" is one of Aickman's finest tales but it is my favorite. I'll definitely check out the film.
Maybe I value it so because it reminds me so much of De la Mare.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

I wish someone would let Jeremy Dyson make a whole series of them. He did a radio programme about Aickman fairly recently and I think he's one of the few writers for TV who really "gets" him. Having said that, the adaptation of The Hospice in the Night Voices series is surprisingly faithful and well worth seeking out.

I've got The Model which is an interesting fantasy. I don't regard it as one of Aickman's best but it's about time I gave it another reading. According to Gary Crawford's booklet on Aickman "In a letter to Mike Ashley dated 5 February 1980 Aickman wrote of the novel 'I regard it as one of the best things I have ever written, if not the very best; but it is extremely difficult to sell, being about 35,000 words in length and in a manner not expected of me (indeed I can think of no very exact comparison)'". It's ages since I read The Late Breakfasters so I have very little memory of it. I borrowed it from the library and cursed myself ever since for not photocopying the damn thing. The price of used copies is ridiculous and I'm delighted it's finally getting a reprint.