Re: Robert Aickman
 

To get back on topic, I've only read Cold Hand in Mine (best collection of ghost stories I've read to date). Where to go from there??

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Unlike with other writers there isn't really a bad place to start with Aickman's short fiction. I'd say the same for Ligotti. All the collections are brilliant. I will say We are for the Dark is neglected, as is EJH's place in ghost story history.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

I don't think I've encountered a single bad story from Aickman. Aickman is simply sublime on all fronts.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

When the passion for Art remain stronger than the ego's all temptations to adapt to public market for commercial success ...

Re: Robert Aickman
 

His talent even applied to his work as an anthologist. The Fontana books are exceptionally well structured, and I love Aickman's introductions and how each book (bar one) features a ghost story of his own that further clarifies his criteria and respect for the form as one of high artistry and philosophical depth.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Sorry James, that jab about 'House of the Russians' and anti-weird was directed at me so I'm finishing this political thing.

Why are we surprised that Aickman was possibly a Mosley supporter? It's been known for a while and we've even had discussions of it on this board (I'd imagine just searching 'Growing Boys' would be enough to find it).

There was a time when people took a certain glee in pointing this out as it highlighted the hypocrisy of persons bashing the literary value of Lovecraft's work whilst applauding Aickman. Seriously: people complaining about SJWism and message fic should realise how immeasurably better things are now than they were in the 2000s when over-enthusiastic fans of Ramsey Campbell (who have since mellowed out) dominated the British Horror scene trying to enforce some spurious weird-activist variant on Ken Loach. One might not like Laird Barron or Scott Nicolay's work but the last I knew neither of those parties actively attacked others for not writing like them.

Aickman
 

Cold Hand In Mine or Painted Devils was my first encounter with Aickman.
I saw it in a used bookshop, and it had been inscribed.
Not by Aickman, rather the previous owner who scrawled -
"I do not like these sorts of stories at all!!!"
I laughed out loud and immediately purchased it.
Over the years, I have bought more of his work.
My least favorite remains The Model: A Novel Of The Fantastic.
I've tried reading it as a historical spoof, as campy horror, or as a writing exercise.
It never clicked for me, and this spring I sold it to a local used bookshop.
Maybe the next reader will appreciate it more.
And no, I did not inscribe my opinion of the book.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

I don't understand why Pages from Young Girl's Journal was his most acclaimed tale in his lifetime, but I can enjoy all of Aickman's stories – even Growing Boys, though it's pretty damn low in my ranking of his work.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

My favourite bit of Aickman comes from his Delius Notes...

“As there is no intrinsic virtue in denigration, the critic who resorts to it, should be required to pass a test of qualification and sensitivity, at least twice as stringent as that imposed upon a critic who loves. Normally, love is not blind but clairvoyant. […] Moreover, there is some degree of absolute nobility in praise; and a high degree of ignominy in belittlement, even in justified belittlement."

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Absolutely no one who's even remotely familiar with Aickman's private life and character would be surprised. The incident of the greyhound and the bicycle pump has already been mentioned, as have several of his other thoroughly indecent activities.

Whatever "man of his time" defenses can be mounted, Aickman’s paleo-misogyny was a manifestation less of toxic than of outright biohazardous masculinity. Once, at a party they both attended in 1959, Elizabeth Jane Howard was discussing her recent novel The Sea Change with a group of admirers. Aickman inserted himself into the group, removed a cricket ball from his pocket, and tossed it some ways ahead of them onto the lawn. As Howard explicated some of the difficulties involved in the composition of her book, Aickman enjoined her to "Be a good girl and fetch the ball, EJH!" Those present did their best to ignore Aickman's crude attempts at humor, but he persisted in drawing their attention to the ball and repeating“Fetch it like a good girl, EJH. Follow the pretty rubber orb.”

Besides being a fascist Nazi who rarely paid taxes and would in the privacy of his home repeatedly fondle small commemorative pictures of the monarchy, Aickman was once heard to remark, “We really need another twenty Hitlers. It’s a shame they don’t grow on trees, like medlars or pale white peaches.”

Aickman's grandfather was Richard Marsh, author of the popular Victorian supernatural novel The Beetle. Aickman had conceived of a sequel, The Beetle II: The Love Bug – Triumph of the Saxon Will, Part I: Step Up 2 The Streets, the plot of which was to concern an invincible German automobile possessed of its own inner volition, and which he asked Elizabeth Jane Howard to write, promising he would pay her in “cubes of brown sugar – as many as are required.” Howard made a valiant attempt at an initial treatment, but Aickman's extreme dissatisfaction with the results dissuaded her from any further involvement. In her 2002 autobiography Slipstream, Howard recounts how, regardless of how she emended the manuscript, Aickman would work himself up into a fury and repeat,

“More miniskirts, more Volkswagens, more Hitler!"