Re: Robert Aickman
 

Thanks for that.

I think MEETING MR MILLAR is my favourite Aickman.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

I have posted many times on here about how I'm in weird fiction for the 'uncanny sadness', and Aickman at his best hits the spot like few since Poe. Ligotti's pessimism comes from there never having been any good times, but Aickman's comes from his belief that the good times have been and gone.

Whilst this can manifest itself in quite reactionary and conservative ways, there is also that deep tragic pining for lost times and loves that makes Aickman's work so frequently heart-breaking. In The Same Dog we see that everything the narrator loved as a child has changed apart from the worst embodiment, which lingers as a yellow taint on time itself. In The Trains the advent of modern technology has created a Quiet Valley of desolate emotional isolation which creates a perfect trap for the protagonists (I'm firmly in the camp that believes there is no escape for them).

The other element of sadness I find appealing in Aickman's work is that not only are we always one step away from death or madness like in most of the great weird writers' works, but our human relationships are even more fragile, with each one consigned to an arbitrary doom. In The Same Dog merely looking at the wrong time causes the central relationship to die, and in The Stains an unknowable father creature looms as an inevitability throughout, with no sanctuary available. In The Clock Watcher we have a relationship in which clocks serve as a constant reminder for the frailties of the protagonists idyllic relationship, until it too faces the arbitrary doom that is completely beyond their control. In each instance these relationships are torn apart forever by inexplicable supernatural occurrences, but these are clearly symbolism for certain unconscious forces that dictate our interactions.

When I finally got to reading about Aickman and his obsessive relationship with one woman in particular, the details seemed to be a missing piece to the source of much of the haunting imagery in his fiction, in the same way I felt when I discovered Poe's tragic relationships. I think it is for this reason also that Ligotti finds Aickman 'cliched', as Aickman's pessimism is wholly anthropocentric and about personal attachments Ligotti may find frivolous or absurd. Personally I see great beauty in how he expressed his pain, and he was clearly a very sensitive man with a lot to say, in a way most 'horror' writers are not.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

A short quote from "The Attempted Rescue" I once posted on anther thread:

"We should have died together, ten years or so earlier, rather then let it all happen to both of us. It is a good rule: when, at last, you are really happy, die at once."

Re: Robert Aickman
 

This is one of my favorites as well. I believe S.T. Joshi also thinks this is Aickman's best story.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

I have enjoyed your posts very much, James. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

I'm also enjoying your posts James. I just wish I had the time to discuss your points with the same depth you have put in to them yourself.

I have always had this sense of 'good times gone' in Aickman. In both his stories and what we know of the man himself.. e.g. the Inland Waterways conservation, loss of pre WW2 world.

I am one of those who don't really get terrified or spooked by weird fiction or horror. I'm probably not alone in that. I read more for the art, atmosphere and aesthetics of weirdness and if I'm lucky something to ponder upon. The Same Dog is one of the very few stories that freaked me out when I first read it. Maybe I was in the right state of mind to be fully receptive. Aickman has done that to me on a few occasions, The Inner Room had a similar effect.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

I only have the collections Dark Entries, The Wine-Dark Sea, The Unsettled Dust and Cold Hand in Mine. I do wish somebody would start printing Aickman's other work, as whilst I've read all of the stories usually deemed his best work I do often hear about Wood being another of his gems. Unless it once again sees print, the story shall remain with others in my own personal inner room I can never access as I'm not throwing down hundreds of pounds for his complete stories in my current situation.

Today I read The Next Glade, which enraptured me and I've spent the last hour thinking about it as I'm not sure I can yet reconcile my various interpretations. A tale of somebody learning to move on with their life to the 'next glade' told in a purely symbolic and non-linear fashion. The woodland sequences contained palpable dread and tension, with the character's guilt of extramarital sexual longing hiding in the foliage, perhaps even killing her husband.

Each time her fantasy man tries to enter the glade he vanishes, unlike her fantasy version of her own fantasy man – who lives there for a time. Her husband suffers a mortal injury in the process of trying to break through the thicket, with even psychological cheating shown as fully destructive to the relationship. The truth beneath her imagined home and extramarital life seems to be seemingly unimaginably convoluted hard work on a mass scale, showing the unconscious truth of human relationships.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Nevermind. Seems I can order individual collections from Tartarus, which was beyond esoteric for me to discover through Google. With minimal overlap I'll cut through most of my unread Aickman with two purchases.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

What about the novels Faber & Faber put out?
Search results for: 'Robert Aickman' | Faber Faber
Not much talk about them. Shame they didn't get the fancy new covers.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

The seeds of The Real Road to the Church and Niemandswasser are still growing in my mind, the stories now blooming in to excellence. The only story in Cold Hand in Mine I don't now have ecstatic praise for is the one that won the big award. There's democracy for you.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

I recently had this experience with Aickman that I never realized before. I was rereading Sub Rosa and although I absolutely know I read the stories when I tried to recall them it was like trying to recall a dream. I knew the basic outline but God, it was so hard to recall it. I've never had that happen with any other writer. When I reread them it was like re-dreaming the same dream. Like having a recurrent dream that you can't remember when you wake up but when you're back in the dream everything is crystal clear. It wasn't a disturbing feeling, quite the opposite, but it is unlike anything I've ever experienced with any other writer. Don't think it improves the aesthetics of the work or detracts, it's just simply so different than any other literary experience I've had.

Does that make any sense at all???

Re: Robert Aickman
 

It makes perfect sense to me, as he captures the feeling of dreams in prose so exquisitely. You feel like you're in a trance when reading/listening to his stories. I felt an uncanny sense of deja vu when first reading The Same Dog, just as I did when reading Ligotti's Gas Station Carnivals story. Both tales tapped in to something deep and disturbed in my unconscious ocean. Very unsettling.

I have complex feelings about Aickman the man. Most things I read about him make him seem unlikeable, but there is a real sensitive anguish in his stories that makes me sympathise with him deeply. His mind was stuck in the same obsessive trap mine is when it comes to... certain things. I'll say no more, but he's the weird fiction writer who has moved me to tears more than any other. It all feels so personal and real when I'm reading his works. I felt this way upon reading The School Friend – my first encounter with Aickman. For such 'strange stories', they sure do capture emotional reality so perfectly.

I find his stories so upsetting that I'm taking a break for a little while. He articulates all too well what I find depressing, distressing and frustrating about existence, human interactions and time.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

The Inner Room is a story I've found myself pondering a lot today. Its ending is one of sheer despair. The protagonist is so innocent and powerless; guilty before ever having been given a chance. As a young girl there is no reasonable way for her to play landlord to the dolls whose house she cannot enter. She then loses absolutely everybody close to her, even being rejected at the end by the anthropophagic inhabitants of the house as she is told that she doesn't even have a heart for them to eat, before being cast back to her lonely path without even being given the consolation of understanding.

Much like a few David Lynch films I can think of (particularly Inland Empire), this story is more powerful upon encountering a second time once you are aware of what to look out for in the first half. Much as he did with The Same Dog, Aickman perfectly communicates the idea of the unjust arbitrary umbrage that the past casts over further existence. A masterpiece of literature.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

On the rare occasion I'm left underwhelmed by Aickman it's because the story lacks what Harmony Korine would call the margin of the undefined. An example is The Waiting Room, which is by far the least interesting story in Dark Entries and feels like a normal filler ghost story you'd find in any anthology.

He works with many of the trappings of the ghost story, and it is to be remembered that many of MR James' best and most famous stories don't even include ghosts (Canon Alberic's Scrapbook, Casting the Runes, The Ash Tree). Conversely, some of Aickman's tales are unambiguously about supernatural manifestations of the undead, such as Ringing the Changes (his most famous story), The Waiting Room and The Unsettled Dust,

If you peruse the contents of Aickman's Fontana books you'll see he had a quite specific and uncommon definition of what constituted a ghost story. He included Walter de la Mare's Seaton's Aunt, which not only has nothing to do with ghosts whatsoever but may contain no paranormal elements at all. When considering Aickman's views on genre it sometimes makes sense for me to think that he means ghostly stories rather than ghost stories.

I agree he is only occasionally even slightly similar to MR James, but Aickman had a profound influence on a certain stage of Ramsey Campbell's stories. Practically every story in Demons by Daylight exhibits the spectre of Aickman, particular tales such as The End of a Summer's Day, At First Sight, Concussion and The Second Stairway.

The Kafka comparison is valid with some stories (The Hospice or The Stains) yet doesn't quite fit as an umbrella title as many of his other stories are too different and clearly do on some level exhibit the format of a ghost story. The Inner Room isn't a ghost story but it deliberately plays with the motif of the haunted dolls house and subverts the audience's expectations. If you reduce The Same Dog to a plot only synopsis it is a normal horror story and yet emotionally it is hardly recognisable as one.

Robert Aickman did to the ghost story what Hideaki Anno did to the mech genre of anime. He stretched the genre's boundaries so far you wonder if they even count as ghost stories any more. Perhaps they don't, but I'm starting to see the limitations of genre and I admire Aickman for eschewing all clichés and going his own way with his weirdness. Whether they count as ghost stories or horror or not, they are undeniably weird fiction. In politics and demeanour he was a conservative, but as a writer of supernatural fiction he was the ultimate rebellious revolutionary.

His first collection in particular is a momentous achievement in the form, and my appreciation of his later tales is deepening.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Had a nice wintry morning reading of Robert Aickman's story Wood and am now left feeling pleasantly disturbed. With my birthday money I have been able to nearly complete my Aickman collection and this was the last prominently discussed story of his that I had yet to read. It was a stunning piece of work and worth the price of the collection alone. A meticulously patient, only slightly quirky story that dissolves in to a surreal nightmare in the final few pages.

'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?', indeed.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Do we know what his opinion of Henry James' ghostly fiction was?

I know he was a Walter de la Mare fan, and Walter's ghostly fiction owed a great debt to James', but Aickman didn't include any of James' tales in his Fontana collections. I'm aware he considered his own ghostly fiction to have more variety than the works of Henry or M. R. James (which I would agree with), but I haven't found any evidence of him enjoying the former's stories. In my mind I see Aickman as mastering the process within ghostly fiction that Henry James kicked off with The Turn of the Screw, which continued to evolve with Walter de la Mare, Edith Wharton, Oliver Onions and others until Aickman definitively tweaked the psychological ghostly fiction tradition and added a heavy dose of his own eccentricity and personal pathology.

The Hospice is astounding. By the time Maybury was lay awake waiting for Bannard to return, I was feeling deeply uncomfortable and couldn't tell why. After becoming acquainted with practically all the big name weird fiction writers old and new, it was refreshing to be frightened in a way that I hadn't encountered before. Aickman's multivalent fiction is still giving me such reactions after many readings.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

I have read two collections of Aickman's "strange stories", and I am still trying to wrap my brain around them, especially "The Hospice". I was just blown away. What a frisson! These stories demand to be re-read because they rearrange the circuits in your brain. Aickman's perspective is a whole other angle at seeing reality, where nothing is sure or secure, and we are trapped in a nightmare of existence. Our whole world is a hospice.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

The Trains was the story that cemented Aickman as my favourite ghostly/weird writer, and due to my somewhat odd reading order I read it after a ton of other stories of his I thought were excellent. It was already a moody, atmospheric story of melancholy and mystery, but the way the story seemed to devolve in to a feverish nightmare at the very end and abruptly stop struck me as such a bold artistic gambit.

I have probably said this before, but Aickman sort of lessened my appreciation of other ghostly writers due to his astonishing level of consistency. The rare level of perfect excellence other great writers would stumble on in a handful of stories was the consistent level Aickman reached throughout the decades of his career. My first collection was Dark Entries, and I thought every story bar The Waiting Room was top notch. Thinking about it, only Ligotti approaches Aickman's level of consistency over a sustained period and body of work.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

As I read and re-read Aickman's stories, the consistency is evident. There is not a failed story among them so far. Robert Aickman is becoming my favorite weird writer, and I agree that only Ligotti approaches his excellence of conjuring the uncanny. His books should be more available. I have three of his story collections, all used and bought on the internet.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Many of Aickman's stories are like dreams. As you read them you feel as though you are trapped inside of a slow nightmare.Aickman has a way of luring you into a story with banal or trivial details until there is an eruption of the uncanny.
The story "Ringing the Changes", for example, has this slow nightmare effect and brings to mind some of Ligotti's stories because of its atmosphere of dread.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

We have made our documentary, Robert Aickman, Author of Strange Stories, available in full on youtube:

For those who haven't yet seen it, we hope you like it!

Re: Robert Aickman
 

I did indeed. Nice to see Reggie Oliver, whose stories I am currently enjoying.

Are those Aickman TV adaptations any good? The 90s version of The Swords seems to have missed the point (a shame as Tony Scott was a good director), but I am curious about the other surviving ones.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

I thought Night Voices - The Hospice was good, and surprisingly faithful to the story.
It's a shame the other adaptations in the series (Hand In Glove, The Trains and The Inner Room) are so elusive.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

The Aickman documentary Tartarus did is outstanding. Flat out.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

In a goodreads group, I put forth an interpretation of Aickman's story "The School Friend" and comments from goodreads members on my interpretation were along the lines of "You might be on to something." So I'll throw out the interpretation here and I'd like to know what others think. What follows will have "spoilers".

I think that Sally was raped and impregnated by a supernatural being. Sally inherited the house from her father. There were occult books in the house. Sally's friend Mel saw a specter in the house.

Some details early in the story might lead one to think that Sally is a lesbian. So she didn't get pregnant by a boyfriend or from a casual fling, for she is not interested in men.

Mel hears a creature upstairs that is scampering about like a pig. Sally also makes interesting comments about her offspring.

There is another horror, at the very end of story. Sally meets Mel and tells Mel that she sold the house. OK, I'm wondering "What about her offspring?"

Robert Aickman showed good taste in how he wrote this story. A much lesser writer of the splatterpunk variety might have gone into details about the rape and given a visual description of the creature that Sally gave birth to. Well, splatterpunk is a movement that is long dead, while Aickman's stories are read long after his death.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

That is my interpretation of the story also. It fits with how the narrator doesn't believe the spectre is Sally's father. Aickman's decision to leave the easy visceral shock of the rape out of the narrative and to instead focus on the dinginess of the house and the aloofness of the character in order to create unease in the reader is to be commended. Such scenes of explicit repulsion wouldn't fit the misty style of his stories.

The School Friend is one of the few Aickman stories that can be decoded in to a typical supernatural narrative that works on a literal level. I don't even bother offering my interpretations of certain stories, as Aickman seemed to withhold several pieces of the narrative. The important thing is that in doing so he often achieved a desired effect.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

The Robert Aickman documentary is fascinating. I especially like the point made that we should not judge a writer by his or her personal life, but only by their works. This applies to Aickman, Lovecraft, and other artists whose personal foibles are given more copy than the works they put together.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Here's an interpretation of another Aickman story, "My Poor Friend".

The narrator is employed by an organization which advocates the use of rivers and streams for the generation of local electricity. The narrator finds someone in Parliament, named Enright, who support's our narrator's cause. At the end of the story, the MP who supported our narrator's cause is horribly killed.

There are curious things related in the story. For example, another MP tells our narrator, "Well, you'll do no good with Enright...I advise you to make a change..." . Another curious thing is a comment made by Enright about his children.

I think there is something beneath the surface of this story.

Robert Aickman, who co-founded the Inland Waterways Association, must have had experience dealing with the government and the media. Aickman probably drew upon his experience in writing this story. Also, being in contact with the government and media, Aickman might have heard rumors about child sexual abuse by media and government officials.
Extensive U.K. Child Abuse Probe Includes High-Profile Figures
Perhaps what happened to Enright in the story is something that Aickman would have liked to see happen to the pedophiles he heard about.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

It's a given that there's "something" beneath the surface of the story, but I think you've taken the wrong tack with this interpretation. If I recall correctly, there are strong hints that the children are... well, I'll just suggest that you consider the Gorey image for the cover of Painted Devils.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Hi cannibal cop, thanks the reply. I'm agree that Enright's kids are apparently shapeshifters. But I wonder why the kids would attack their father, and not someone else?

Re: Robert Aickman
 

My recollections of the story may not be much help here, and then too part of the beauty of Aickman's stories lies in their refusal to yield simple, straightforward answers. Still, as I recall, my reading of it (possibly involving spoilers) was that the children were probably not human. Their mother was apparently something of a mysterious, Circe-like character, as well, which may or may not help explain that. I seem to recall an oddly funny scene where somebody is peevishly pointing out the damage the "children" are doing to the windowsill of the room they've apparently been shut up in. Anyway, long story short, I got the impression that Enright had murdered his wife and children and was intent on disposing of the evidence towards the end of the story, at which time he received some unwelcome visitors.

I wouldn't be surprised if Aickman's dealings with the government, and any resulting antipathy towards the political class, played a major role here.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

I don't know if this has been posted yet, but Valancourt Books is publishing this book in early October.


Has anyone listened to the Aickman books narrated for Audible.com? What did you think?

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Reece Shearsmith is sometimes magnetic and sometimes intones in an uninvolving manner, which is particularly irksome when he's building up to the climax of certain stories. They seem to just stop as a result.

I don't regret getting them, as it's nice to listen to Aickman during walks, but definitive readings are still to be done.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Re: Robert Aickman
 

We Are For The Dark by Robert Aickman and Elizabeth Jane Howard


Tartarus Press came out with an edition of _We Are For the Dark_ a few years ago. However, the edition I read is one of the earlier ones, obtained via inter-library loan.

Three stories are by Robert Aickman, the other three by Elizabeth Jane Howard. Curiously, this edition does not specify who wrote what stories. One might think that these stories were written by the same person, if one didn't know that that this book had joint authors.

Although these stories are tied to the Gothic and ghostly genre, I think this book marked a major development in the genre. Robert Aickman preferred to describe his own work as “strange stories”, rather than horror fiction. These well written stories relate curious details and strange events and have a sense of mystery. When this type of story is done well, the plot is very interesting.

Two train stories in this book, the novella length "The Trains" and the short story "Left Luggage." I conjectured that a sign of an excellent weird/horror writer is that they wrote a fine story involving trains, and that conjecture is corroborated again here. In "The Trains", two teenagers, Margaret and Mimi, are walking through an area with train tracks and trains going by, seeking shelter. Here is an extract from the story which I think exemplifies Aickman's fiction. Here, a man tells Margaret and Mimi:

" Well, every time a train passes Miss Roper's house, someone leans out of a bedroom window and waves to it. It's gone on for years. Every train, mark you. The house stands back from the line and the drivers couldn't see exactly who it was, but it was someone in white and they all thought it was a girl. So they waved back. Every train. But the joke is it's not a girl at all. It can't be. It's gone on too long. She can't have been a girl for the last twenty years or so. It's probably old Miss Roper herself. The drivers keep changing round so they don't catch on. They all think it's some girl, you see. So they all wave back. Every train.' He was laughing as if it were the funniest of improprieties."

In the other train story, "Left Luggage"--a type of story that Grabinski could have written, I think--the protagonist is haunted by the legacy of a relative.

In the novella "Perfect Love" the narrator puts together information about the tragic life of a superb opera singer. In another medium length work, "The Insufficient Answer" a journalist meets a prominent sculptor in order to write an article about her. At her castle, the journalist interacts with two other women. An Aickman interpreter online makes a case that all three women are super-natural beings; I agree. In "Three Miles Up" two men, traveling on a canal, are led, I'm inclined to think, into a death trap. In "The View" our protagonist travelled to an island with time anomalies. Interesting that in these stories the protagonist(s) are traveling. Perhaps that is a sign of the "strange" story, like some of short fiction of Daphne du Maurier.

Re: Robert Aickman
 

What a book! I find myself rereading it often. Perfect Love is a forgotten classic of the genre. The ending opera sequence is dazzling and moving in its grandeur. Aickman took a lot of elements from it for his stories A Visiting Star and The School Friend. I also believe Three Miles Up must surely have influenced his ending for Never Visit Venice. Left Luggage is the simplest of Howard's tales in the book, but it is nevertheless effective. My favourite story in the collection may be Aickman's The Trains, but Howard shows herself to be every bit the equal of Aickman as a writer. It's a shame she didn't write more ghostly fiction.

Perhaps of interest is a recent BBC reading of The Hospice:

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Robert Aickman - The Hospice: Omnibus

Re: Robert Aickman
 

If any of you guys could list your top 5 favorite Aickman stories for me I'd much appreciate it. I own The Wine-Dark Sea, Dark Entries, and Cold Hand In Mine, and although I've read and enjoyed "The Hospice" and "The Swords" I still need a little direction, if only to conserve the time I allocate for study.

List your top 5!

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Meeting Mr Millar
The Same Dog
Wood
Into the Wood
The Trains

Plus the two you mention!

Re: Robert Aickman
 

My top 5 Aickman stories:

- The Hospice
- The Swords
- The Real Road to the Church
- The Inner Room
- Into the Wood

There are others that "go the other way" deep into the uncanny.Even a "weak" Aickman story is light-years beyond the usual horror "best-seller".

Re: Robert Aickman
 

Top 5 Favorites Aickmans:

The Hospice
The Wine-Dark Sea
Into the Wood
Pages From a Young Girl's Journal
The Swords