Re: Robert Aickman
 

Your approach to criticism is admirable.

Most of the criticism I read is pushing an agenda. I don't mean political agenda. I'm fine with Marxist, feminist or racial critiques of texts and think that in an age of American concentration camps and and the rise of fascism that art is a good place for these discussions. No, the main agenda seems to be one of the ego of the critic, which is a wall stopping the critic from understanding the work. Many don't want to understand the work. They want to write an entertaining, barbed piece to show off, which I think I understand on some level, but it means a lot of the criticism I read is essentially useless as anything but potential entertainment. It's rare I don't read a book or see a movie I was interested in due to bad reviews.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

I think there is a difference between reviews and real criticism, not that the former can't contain the latter. However, the former is just part of the media, a kind of elaboration of "What's on and where to go", so that the reviewer is like a cultural tour guide with a tour guide's patter.

Reviewers have a job to do, and it's a worthwhile job, I think. But, for instance, it tends to include things like avoiding spoilers, which would inhibit a serious critic. It's in this kind of thing that we can begin to see distinctions.

Criticism really, it seems to me, is an act of engaging deeply (usually publicly and with the written word) with a particular text or work of art as a model of the kind of contemplation that is possible in relation to art. I don't see why this contemplation shouldn't include an exploration of what seem to be the flaws of any given piece. Having said that, a failure to see a piece of art on its own terms (possibly as well as from other angles) is, indeed, a critical failure.

I agree that using barbs merely for entertainment is more in line simply with a reviewer's patter and is far less appropriate to proper criticism.

On the whole I tend to agree with Samuel Johnson's dictum that he who praises everyone, praises no one.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Passage (comparing railway- and waterway-possessed people) written by Robert Aickman in 1967 and published in ‘The River Runs Uphill’ (1986) :

“…the railway movement, such as it is, is crippled by the temperamental limitations that Freud divined. They manifest mainly in obsession with detail, in inability to perceive the whole wood as being in any way as real as the separate trees, even the separate, intricate, fascinating leaves, all so different from one another. The railway-possessed man (it is always a man) tends to be a Freudian obsessional walking.
[…] The waterway-possessed man or woman is more likely to be hallucinatory than obsessional. Water winding and twisting between banks; rising and falling by locks and weirs; cataracting or quiescent beneath the arches of bridges; much hidden from the common world; secret and initiatory; decked by beautiful buildings as by bountiful botany: water either sparkling and glinting or sullen and boding; at once tended and untendable – and ultimately uncontrollable; always a little mysterious, with a life of its own, like a cat; water is of all sex symbols the superlative, and where the sea is sadistic, as Swinburne divined, the river or canal is sweetly seductive. Conflict, and bitter, inexpressible, often unthinkable, feelings are certain. The water-possessed are likely to be inwardly driven; to cling to their separate, private dreams with the desperation of the drowning; to beset with strange ferocity all conceived of as rivals.“

Re: Robert Aickman
 

This line might have gotten a chuckle out of me, once upon a time.

"They are unable to perceive the whole, being too fixated on the individual trees, and even on all the separate leaves. Those intricate, beautiful, particolored leaves, so fascinatingly DIFFERENT from each other...."

His description of the railway movement is more than a little evocative of that curious social phenomenon known as "fandom" today. But as i understand it, that is not only men, perhaps not even largely men.



Something I wanted to touch on here, but have mostly forgotten now, is an impression I got from reading Aickman's World Fantasy Award address. He made a few remarks in there that seemed to suggest an outlook that verged on antinatalism or a sort of cosmic pessimism at least.

It might have been his comments on religion, about which he seemed to have an ambivalent attitude. I believe he acknowledges the need for a belief in a world beyond this one, due to the general misery of most people's lives, but he also raises the possibility that God may in fact be the Devil. (Though, as I recall, he also admits that he doesn't address this idea in his fiction, so as not to upset his readers. Quite unlike Lovecraft, say.)

Re: Robert Aickman
 

I wonder if Tartarus will be printing softcover versions of their Aickman collections. I own the original two book set, but I would prefer others as reading copies. The hardcover price is prohibitive. The Faber and Faber, beyond not being true reprints, don't seem up to snuff.
Does anyone know if Tartarus has any plans for the softcover versions?

Re: Robert Aickman
 

" I own the original two book set, but I would prefer others as reading copies, but the hardcover price is prohibitive. "

I would be interested in seeing this. I also like to have inexpensive "reading copies" suitable for travel along with finebound editions.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Tartarus Press only has the rights for the hardcover reprints of original Aickman collections (albeit that they have been augmented.) I believe that Faber have ALL paperback rights, although they have chosen to only issue a few titles at the moment.

Scrolling down through the comments, I love the Aickman quotes that Des has provided. Freudianism, like Christianity, is a wonderful belief system that enables followers to understand the world exactly as they would like to see it. :)

But I am not sure if Cannibal Cop’s comparison of railway enthusiasts to fandom is quite correct. I must admit that I have more and more time for people who immerse themselves in obscure and arcane (some may say pointless) knowledge. Whether they are train-spotters, enthusiasts for static-engines, ornithologists, scholars of Coptic texts, obsessive collectors of cigarette packets, or bibliophiles. At heart, these people acquire information for its own sake, and true enthusiasts share that knowledge with anyone who will listen to them. However, this is rarely about self-aggrandisement or self-promotion. And that is where such enthusiasts often differ from people in fandom…

Scrolling further down … When it comes to criticism, of course, there has never been a totally unbiased critic. All we can hope for is to find critics who share our own prejudices and preferences. I have tended to find Peter Tennant at Black Static a reliable critic, although it may just be that we have similar tastes. I’m sad to see him stepping down. Other critics in our field, like S.T. Joshi, are worth reading, but one takes their prejudices into account.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

I see what you're saying, but just to be clear, I didn't intend that comparison. I was only talking about Aickman's comments about "the railway movement"--I'm not even sure this includes rail enthusiasts; perhaps he was talking about political lobbyists. But it's his (largely negative) characterization that brought fandom to mind for me.

On the whole, I tend to agree with you. Except about ornithology, which I consider a vital subject of central importance to all of us. Which no doubt makes me sound like just another obsessive.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Do we know of Aickman's opinion of Henry James' ghost stories? He didn't include any in his Fontana series. H. James was such a huge influence on Walter de la Mare, Oliver Onions and the form of the psychological ghost story Aickman was writing that Aickman's silence seems like ambivalence or dismissal.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

My instinct is that RA was imbued with all sorts of literature and I have satisfied myself he was into European literature like Thomas Mann, possibly more than into traditional ghost stories, although the latter were what he found himself well known for because his own written literature appealed to Ghost story lovers.