Re: Robert Aickman
 

Mark, I often feel I'm struggling to perform a similar trick whenever I try to 'stand up' as a reviewer of books!
Have you ever read the wonderful 'Dogs With Their Eyes Shut' by Paul Meloy?

Re: Robert Aickman
 

A book I have compared to both 'The Magic Mountain' by Thomas Mann and 'The Hospice' by Robert Aickman is 'The Inmates' by John Cowper Powys: HERE

“and a dog’s eyes answered his stare with a look of such unutterable loneliness…” - from 'The Inmates'

My assumption is that Aickman would not only have been a big fan of Mann but also of Powys.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

I thought Barron's article on Aickman was excellent.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Yes, it is. I certainly gained much from it. Yet no article on 'The Hospice' can ever aspire to being literally 'excellent' by doing complete right by the story, because of the work's persistently resistant nature towards such efforts, I feel.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

I don't think any review can do " complete right" to a work.. since the subjective nature of art. Its like saying Monet didn't do complete right to a landscape.. well correct.. but I feel it should be enjoyed for what it is.. not what its reflecting.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Yes, I agree, but a review of Monet is perhaps meant to reflect the Monet. And I feel some works of art are easier to reflect than others.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Though Aickman's prose is often an exemplar of restrained, unhurried elegance I confess the famous subtlety people so enthusiastically attribute to his stories increasingly comes as a surprise: it only takes a brief look through the lens of sub-Freudian symbolism to see most of them as at best paeans to a vanished world and an inter-war ideal of Free Love, and more often than not just reactionary political allegories few people nowadays would care to be associated with. In my more cynical moments I'm given to suspect that one of the reasons why his work is so well liked is because adolescents are enthralled by the psycho-sexual elements and think they can lend their own fiction an aura of pseudo-sophistication by aping it in a more low-brow setting.

As for Laird Barren, well, hard-drinking protagonist (eight foot tall and reeking of predatory manhood) + carnivorous cosmos = recipe for literary epics. Joking aside the man is the future of this type of literature and deserves all the plaudits which go with that mantle.

Edit: of course I should make clear that I am not accusing anyone here of being adolescent

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Quote Originally Posted by Nemonymous http://www.ligotti.net/images/autumn...s/viewpost.gif
I happen currently to be real-time reviewing 'Ancient Sorceries and other chilling tales':
by Algernon Blackwood | THE DES LEWIS DREAMCATCHER REVIEWS

A surprising discovery I have made there regarding 'Ancient Sorceries' by Algernon Blackwood, The Magic Mountain' by Thomas Mann and 'The Hospice' by Robert Aickman.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

This used to be thread without stupid comments, last page ruined it.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

My sister is studying over in London at the moment, and she was able to pick 4 Aickman books at a store called Waterstones. They are the Faber and Faber editions of Dark Entries, The Unsettled Dust, Cold Hand In Mine and The Wine Dark Sea. I'm quite new to Aickman, but after reading 'The Hospice' the other night, I can see why he is so highly regarded.