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Lincoln (Lincoln_brown)
Username: Lincoln_brown

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 120.144.25.22
Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2011 - 05:10 am:   

Up until last week, I'd never read anything by Aickman. Since then I've read 'The Hospice', 'The Same Dog', and I'm halfway through 'The Swords'. Would be fair to say that I'm hooked! Are all his stories this good, or have I just struck it lucky with these three?
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2011 - 06:29 am:   

They're all, that I've read, pretty much that good. Though his obliquity can be taxing after long and repeated exposure (sometimes you need something that just spells it all out!), I find myself always compelled by Aickman. The other one I just read recently myself, from this DARK DESCENT anthology, "Larger Than Oneself," was simply phenomenal, I must say. And a favorite of mine has always been "Pages From A Young Girl's Journal," look for that one. But you can't go wrong with Mr. Aickman!
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Tom_alaerts (Tom_alaerts)
Username: Tom_alaerts

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.176.7.244
Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2011 - 06:50 am:   

Yes, most of his stories are very good. I consider it best to spread the reading over some time. One of my faves is The Stains.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.172.61
Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2011 - 09:08 am:   

Aickman is one of the most ambitious and creative of modern weird fiction writers. His version of the ghost story adheres to the psychological and metaphysical approach of Walter de la Mare and John Metcalfe rather than the plot-driven and technique-based approach of M.R. James and H.R. Wakefield. A few of Aickman's stories go down the blind alley of peevish social satire and tiresome conservative polemic, but more often than not he comes up with astonishing symbolic deformations of reality, visions of the world turned inside out by weird psychological forces. He raised the bar for weird fiction readers and writers in terms of what the genre could do and what it could mean.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 61.216.47.162
Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2011 - 09:13 am:   

Nicely put, Joel.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.153.151.150
Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2011 - 09:33 am:   

He's a great writer full-stop, Lincoln. But yes, reading too much in one go reveals repetition and a diminishing in his effects (but that happens with all authors), and he can come across as cold or cruel at times. Spread the stories out or read no more than one antho at a time.
God, what a bland statement...
No, he's great. Once you read him your list of favourite horror writers shrinks.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2011 - 12:45 pm:   

Joel puts it perfectly. Aickman wasn't infallable, though. Read "Growing Boys" to see what I mean - it's a terrible story. Lovely prose, of course, but it reads like an extended Goodies sketch.

At his best, though (which he was often), nobody writes a better, or more ambitious and affecting weird tale.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2011 - 12:48 pm:   

I recently picked up two Walter de la Mare collections and must read more of John Metcalfe - are there any collections available?

Robert Aickman is the best of all post-war short story writers who chose to work in the field of weird fiction imo. I hesitate to call him a horror writer, or even a ghost story writer, his style and the effect of his tales is so unique. Unsettling, haunting, mystifying, enigmatic and dreamlike, his stories demand to be reread over and over again, and reveal glimpses of a malign pattern or consciousness beneath the surface of everyday reality. His was the most delicate of talents and the most difficult to emulate. A few writers here manage to do so, from time to time...
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R.B. Russell (Tartarusrussell)
Username: Tartarusrussell

Registered: 02-2010
Posted From: 81.154.85.73
Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2011 - 01:02 pm:   

"Growing Boys" an extended Goodies sketch! What an appalling thing to say, but absolutely right...
Yes, Joel distills Aickman perfectly. I'd suggest that reading a lot of Aickman actually has a cumulative effect -- I've been reading a lot lately :-)
The only trouble with reading all of a fine author's work, all together, is that you run out of material too soon...
De la Mare is an obvious precursor to Aickman, and I'd agree that Metcalfe should be mentioned, perhaps along with L.P. Hartley. (Collected supernatural stories by de la Mare and Hartley are still in print with a certain small press...)
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2011 - 01:04 pm:   

Hey, Ray, there's nowt wrong with The Goodies!
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2011 - 01:04 pm:   

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R.B. Russell (Tartarusrussell)
Username: Tartarusrussell

Registered: 02-2010
Posted From: 81.154.85.73
Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2011 - 01:10 pm:   

Nowt at all!
I consider myself blessed to have been brought up with the Goodies...
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2011 - 03:35 pm:   

I loved 'The Goodies' as a child but was shocked at how embarrassingly unfunny it was on watching the DVDs in recent years. A product of its time I fear - like Benny Hill or 'On The Buses'.
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R.B. Russell (Tartarusrussell)
Username: Tartarusrussell

Registered: 02-2010
Posted From: 86.130.79.215
Posted on Thursday, January 20, 2011 - 02:56 pm:   

I would be remiss in my duties as a publisher if I didn't note that "Sub Rosa" by Aickman is available here:
http://www.tartaruspress.com/aickmansubrosa.htm

and that "Dark Entries" by Aickman will soon be available here:
http://www.tartaruspress.com/aickmandarkentries.htm

Furthermore, The Goodies work is available here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Goodies-Disc-BBC-Box-Set/dp/B00079ZB9Y/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF 8&s=dvd&qid=1295531655&sr=1-2
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.166.117.210
Posted on Thursday, January 20, 2011 - 02:59 pm:   

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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.153.151.150
Posted on Thursday, January 20, 2011 - 03:27 pm:   

The Goodies are hit and miss - some had us in pain over Christmas, with laughter, some for other reasons.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 81.145.100.125
Posted on Thursday, January 20, 2011 - 04:02 pm:   

De la Mare is an obvious precursor to Aickman, and I'd agree that Metcalfe should be mentioned, perhaps along with L.P. Hartley. (Collected supernatural stories by de la Mare and Hartley are still in print with a certain small press...)
=================

And much of the work of Elizabeth Bowen, I'd add.
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R.B. Russell (Tartarusrussell)
Username: Tartarusrussell

Registered: 02-2010
Posted From: 86.130.79.215
Posted on Thursday, January 20, 2011 - 04:25 pm:   

And much of the work of Elizabeth Bowen, I'd add.
=========
Hi Des,
And there would be something to be gained from looking at the influence of Elizabeth Jane Howard, judging by her contributions to "We Are for the Dark", which are entirely in sympathy with Aickman's own....
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 81.145.100.125
Posted on Thursday, January 20, 2011 - 04:30 pm:   

Yes, Ray, I agree.
Regarding Bowen, I think anyone (not Bowen-versed) who enjoys Aickman will enjoy her many fiction quotes I've assembled on-line - then read the actual works in full.
des
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Thursday, January 20, 2011 - 05:02 pm:   

We're forgetting Henry James, surely one of the main influences too upon Aickman.

And perhaps Algernon Blackwood? I'm struck by how much I see now, in retrospect, of "The Willows" in almost every horror to come after it in the 20th Century: you can take almost any horror writer, and make an argument that that one story was an influence.

The horrors are both real, and perceived in that tale - the mastery of it is, even as the narrator is telling you exactly what he's seeing, with total clarity and sanity... you still doubt his authenticity... but can't totally dismiss it, either. Everything witnessed, is unclear or ambiguous or its meaning wholly alien to our understanding (very much like Aickman). The wholly alien nature of what's being witnessed too, as in Aickman, IS the horror. I don't wonder if "The Willows" (just 100 years old), is not the real source of the Nile for all the horror literature in its wake...
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Thursday, January 20, 2011 - 05:03 pm:   

Looked at one way as a very Aickman like horror movie? Robert Altman's 3 WOMEN.

Wait, deja vu... this has been brought up before, hasn't it?...
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, January 20, 2011 - 05:11 pm:   

I still haven't read 'The Willows'... and would love to know if there is a definitive affordable collection of Algernon Blackwood available?

The only one I have is 'Tales Of The Uncanny And Supernatural' (1962), which does not include 'The Willows.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Thursday, January 20, 2011 - 05:25 pm:   

Stevie, go down to your local library, look for collections of horror stories there - I can't believe "The Willows" isn't an easily available story in any given collection, it's not one of the difficult ones to locate. Try FAMOUS GHOST STORIES, edited by Bennett Cerf.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 220.138.163.19
Posted on Thursday, January 20, 2011 - 07:19 pm:   

Stevie, there are various Blackwood compilations out there (many out-of-print), but I think the best to start with is Dover's Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood. It's the first Blackwood book I bought after reading 'The Willows' and it contains a very good selection of his work, along with an insightful introduction by E.F. Bleiler.

By the way, did you read Night's Black Agents? I keep forgetting to ask you!
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Thursday, January 20, 2011 - 08:55 pm:   

The wind is a major element in "The Willows." Coincidentally, we are experiencing violent winds here today, in Simi Valley - we get these violent winds at various times of the year (I've heard the claim that "simi" is some indian dialect for "wind"). Indeed, I don't know how many have experienced constant, unceasing heavy winds; but yes, when they thrash certain trees, especially as I've noticed them, seen from a distance... it can take on the eerie, disturbing effect of writhing giants: of living things engaged in some monstrous alien activity, without human reason or understanding, though most certainly malevolent, alien, terrible....
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John Forth (John)
Username: John

Registered: 05-2008
Posted From: 82.24.1.217
Posted on Thursday, January 20, 2011 - 09:45 pm:   

Stevie, there's a decent Blackwood collection currently available from Penguin: Ancient Sorceries. I've seen it in the local Waterstones, so it should be fairly easy to get your hands on.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, January 21, 2011 - 11:36 am:   

Seen that one too, John, at £12.50 or something ridiculous, but I will probably end up getting it in their next 3 for 2 offer or maybe off Amazon.

From my experience of Blackwood his stories range from the finest written in the field to actually quite formulaic and forgettable, though always with a certain something in the prose. Was he perhaps too prolific for his own good?
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, January 21, 2011 - 03:35 pm:   

Huw, still have 'Night's Black Agents' & 'Shadows With Eyes' near the top of my TBR pile. Watch the "What Are You Reading?" thread.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.153.151.150
Posted on Saturday, January 22, 2011 - 09:48 am:   

Stevie - yes, he can stick too much to his own formula. The amount he wrote does highlight it. But what to do? Destry some of the stories, or just comprise a best-of? Sometimes when you write you are sketching and don't realise, and when the correct and perfect form of your message appears you should put the rest away.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.152.147
Posted on Saturday, January 22, 2011 - 10:50 am:   

Eeek. There's a sore subject for most writers, I'm sure. If you write as a way of life, and especially if it puts food on the table, you keep writing and some works are going to be better than others. You try hard to maintain a standard and not fall below it, but giving up on a story because it's not your best would be as wrong as a footballer walking off the pitch because he wasn't on blinding form – or a band walking off stage because their sound wasn't quite what it could be. Work is work, and it can't be the best you've ever done every day, you'd quickly drive yourself insane. Yes, Blackwood's output is particularly uneven, especially when you look at work produced in different phases of his long writing career. But if he'd only published the very best stories (and that might have been impossible for him to judge at the time) he wouldn't have been a writer. He'd have been a cat-breeder or something who wrote a few great stories, and we'd be saying "He missed his vocation, there could have been so much more."
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Saturday, January 22, 2011 - 12:11 pm:   

Well said, Joel.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.211.119
Posted on Saturday, January 22, 2011 - 12:21 pm:   

We'd have had better cats, mind you.

Imagine the great line of British cats from Blackwood's Ancient Saucers (of Milk)... and the comparable line of American cats from Lovecraft's business The Lurking Fur...
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Saturday, January 22, 2011 - 01:01 pm:   

Or Blackwood's classic "The Pussy Willows".

Don't worry; I already have my coat on. It was nice knowing you all.
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.68
Posted on Saturday, January 22, 2011 - 01:19 pm:   

"I still haven't read 'The Willows'... and would love to know if there is a definitive affordable collection of Algernon Blackwood available?"

I agree with Huw:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Best-Ghost-Stories-Algernon-Blackwood/dp/0486229777/ref= sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1295698606&sr=1-1
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.183.149
Posted on Saturday, January 22, 2011 - 01:52 pm:   

Having said that, it's also true that sifting and selecting is what editors are for. Lovecraft's repution would be a lot higher if his dozen worst stories had never been collected, or had been relegated to a special 'Here's the rest' volume. Had he lived longer, he would never have wanted to inflict 'The Temple' or 'The Moon-Bog' or the utterly fuck-dreadful 'Herbert West – Reanimator' on an innocent posterity.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Saturday, January 22, 2011 - 04:31 pm:   

... But then we'd never have that movie, Joel! And it's one of my guiltiest pleasures of the 80's.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Sunday, January 23, 2011 - 01:34 pm:   

'Herbert West : Reanimator' is a wonderful piece of work, I'll have you know!!

Lovecraft was mercilessly ripping the piss out of his own style for the serialised readies and I find the story a brilliant black comedy pastiche full of memorably OTT language and imagery. That was one story that Stuart Gordon's cartoonish direction was perfect for imo.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.139.244
Posted on Monday, January 24, 2011 - 08:58 am:   

Given that Lovecraft had published relatively little apart from twee Dunsany imitations at that time, I don't think he was parodying himself – what would have been the point? He didn't yet have a literary identity to parody. Yes, he was parodying the extremes of pulp horror, but that doesn't make the story any good – especially as he only shifted to parody mode when it became obvious the original premise wasn't working out.

The second episode is reasonably good. The third is stupid and objectionable. Thereafter it's sheer foolishness all the way.

Sadly, the prevalence of 'Herbert West' means it's the story most readers whose acquaintance with Lovecraft is casual consider as indicative of his writing. When you move on to something like 'The Whisperer in Darkness' you realise quite how bad most of the pre-1926 stories are, because you start to see what Lovecraft could do with his ideas as his writing matured. What we think of 'Lovecraftian' prose is mostly a kind of juvenilia drawn from a childhood that extended into his early thirties.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.118.79.176
Posted on Monday, January 24, 2011 - 02:59 pm:   

I remember wading through a thick french-language Lovecraft book in the early seventies and stumbling upon all those 'lessor' (as one American correspondent called them) tales. I was reading lots of horror comics at the time (Eerie, Creepy, Vampirella, the Italian Psycho) and remember thinking some of those stories had more literary merit than "Herbert West". The movies are indeed guilty pleasures, I chiefly recall the delightful Barbara Crampton.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, January 24, 2011 - 03:42 pm:   

God, I even love the so-called twee Dunsany imitations lol. We'll just have to agree to differ on Lovecraft's merits as a writer.

The early material is on a par with the best of William Hope Hodgson, or other similarly inventive pulp writers imo, while the later, more mature stories, are amongst the greatest weird tales in literature. The man's always distinctive voice and imaginative energy, throughout his career, makes his complete collected writings far more than the sum of its parts. In my view 'Herbert West' is a joyous homage to scattershot pulp horror at its most gruesomely barmy and entertaining.
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R.B. Russell (Tartarusrussell)
Username: Tartarusrussell

Registered: 02-2010
Posted From: 213.120.33.253
Posted on Friday, February 11, 2011 - 12:55 pm:   

Copies of "Dark Entries" by Robert Aickman are now being shipped!
http://tartaruspress.com/aickmandarkentries.htm
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.25.141.120
Posted on Friday, February 11, 2011 - 09:50 pm:   

Agree: Aickman has been a favorite of mine since the 1980s. Peter Straub edited a wonderful collection of his tales, "The Wine Dark Sea" with one of my favorite dust jackets ever.

Not only that, but did you know that Mr. Aickman also provided EXCELLENT HOME IMPROVEMENT INTERIOR DESIGN!! Just look here! http://www.aickman.com/

God, I LOVE Wikipedia!
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 61.216.50.224
Posted on Friday, February 11, 2011 - 10:36 pm:   

It's great to see new editions of Aickman's original collections being published. Good job, Ray!
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.153.144.35
Posted on Saturday, February 12, 2011 - 08:28 am:   

But the price! If they all come out this much I'll have to remortgage.
:-(
I'll just keep up my attempts at rewriting the tales from memory and binding them myself.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Saturday, February 12, 2011 - 09:44 am:   

Tony - I've just bought the Faber editions. Lovely looking paperbacks, and resonably priced. I can't comfortably read the massive Tartarus Collected Aickman editions because the font's too small, so bought the Fabers as "reading copies".
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 220.138.167.149
Posted on Saturday, February 12, 2011 - 04:45 pm:   

The thing about the Faber editions is that they're reprints of the easier to find Aickman collections - the original collections (Painted Devils, Cold Hand in Mine, etc.) can usually be found on the secondhand market (ABE, Ebay, etc.) for only a few pounds each, with the original cover art by people like Edward Gorey. I've also heard that they are full of typos. But hey, any new Aickman editions are better than none - and I should think they'd be very handy as reading copies, as Zed's pointed out.

Personally, I'll always keep and treasure my Aickman first editions that took me years to collect during the eighties and nineties. It's a shame the Tartarus editions of the original collections aren't available in a less expensive paperback format as well as the hardbacks.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 86.143.99.210
Posted on Monday, May 09, 2011 - 10:10 pm:   

Robert Aickman was mentioned on a BBC TV programme this evening, in connection
with a documentary walk along the Birmingham - Worcester canal.
And this plaque was shown on screen:
http://m1.ikiwq.com/img/xl/q1FRADK2q6o5tZW1sZcg2b.jpg
(I plied that canal myself in the eighties by Narrow Boat).
des
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.179.195.21
Posted on Monday, May 09, 2011 - 10:56 pm:   

Des - was that the Julia Bradbury canal walks programme on BBC4? Hopefully so, as we're recording those.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 86.143.99.210
Posted on Monday, May 09, 2011 - 10:59 pm:   

Yes, it was, Mick.
des
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.179.195.21
Posted on Monday, May 09, 2011 - 11:23 pm:   

Excellent - thanks.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 86.168.21.43
Posted on Monday, May 16, 2011 - 11:17 pm:   

Tom Rolt and Robert Aickman were mentioned at length in a programme tonight on
BBC4 TV about the opening of the British Waterways after the 2nd world war.
Including some motion pictures of both of them in the past - and Elizabeth Jane
Howard talking to camera today. Pity they didn't mention that Aickman and Rolt
also wrote fiction ... but it was a good programme reminding me of my own canal
holidays in the 1980s.
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.5.59.81
Posted on Wednesday, May 18, 2011 - 11:05 am:   

For anyone who missed it, the documentary is repeated tomorrow night.
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.178.81.136
Posted on Wednesday, May 18, 2011 - 01:09 pm:   

Cheers, Ramsey - I've been following the Canal Walks series but missed this programme and would much rather see it on TV than on iPlayer.
There've been mentions of Aickman in two of Julia Bradbury's programmes so far.
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R.B. Russell (Tartarusrussell)
Username: Tartarusrussell

Registered: 02-2010
Posted From: 217.42.141.87
Posted on Monday, July 11, 2011 - 12:40 pm:   

Just to let you all know, Cold Hand in Mine is the next Aickman reprint from Tartarus :-)

http://tartaruspress.com/aickmcoldhandinmine.htm}}
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Lincoln (Lincoln_brown)
Username: Lincoln_brown

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 143.238.239.100
Posted on Sunday, January 15, 2012 - 02:15 pm:   

Can't believe it's been a year since I started this thread! I also can't believe I didn't continue with my Aickman reading.
I recently finished five of Ramsey's collections back to back and decided to try some more Aickman while I wait for my reading copies of 'Told by the Dead' and 'Just Behind You' to arrive.
Kicked things off with 'The Inner Room', the lovely Tartarus paperback. Great stuff, the kind of fiction that really scares me. Can anyone recommend which collection to tackle first? - I have all the Tartarus re-prints.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.29.252.215
Posted on Sunday, January 15, 2012 - 02:27 pm:   

'The Inner Room' is in my Top 10 short horror stories of all time list. The first time I read it I couldn't sleep afterward for puzzling over its meaning and replaying its oddly nightmarish imagery. I was driven to read it again the following night and then to read it aloud to my then girlfriend the following week - desperate to share this ghostly enigma for some peace of mind - and it continues to haunt me at odd moments to this day.

I've only read a fraction of his tales but every one of them is like a rare jewel of stunning perfection and I rank him easily up there with the all-time greats on the strength of them. Only Walter de la Mare has equally impressed me on such relatively little evidence.
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Lincoln (Lincoln_brown)
Username: Lincoln_brown

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 143.238.239.100
Posted on Tuesday, January 17, 2012 - 02:08 pm:   

We're off to Tasmania (http://www.discovertasmania.com.au/) for a week, I'm taking 'Cold Hand in Mine' with me because it's the only Aickman I have in paperback.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 86.147.86.41
Posted on Monday, October 29, 2012 - 04:21 pm:   

Robert Aickman in the Guardian newspaper today ... about THE HOSPICE:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2012/oct/29/scary-stories-halloween-ro bert-aickman
Des

PS: I wrote a short blog inspired by seeing this article:
http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/the-hospice-by-robert-aickman/
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 2.24.28.1
Posted on Monday, October 29, 2012 - 11:49 pm:   

Never understood why people see so much in 'The Hospice'. It's the first of a number of anti-liberal polemics that Aickman wrote in the seventies. It's about a community of people who need protection from the trauma of simply facing reality. They need a constant excess of food, sex and comfort all the time, and death has to be hidden from them. That's simply Aickman's comment on the ways of suburban liberals. If he'd written it thirty years later they'd have been a Facebook group giving each other 'support' every five minutes. It's a clever bit of social satire, extremely well written, but that really is all there is to it.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - 04:20 am:   

That's a fascinating take, Joel—it seems to make sense to me, because I'm in the other camp that never could make much sense of that story, though like the others admired it for being so unsettling. Your explanation makes it that much more accessible-seeming; I should revisit it now with this in mind.

It's a kind of victory fpr Aickman and that story to be mentioned in the mainstream press at all!
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 1.169.146.48
Posted on Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - 07:27 am:   

That's an interesting take on the story, Joel. I don't necessarily agree, but it's always interesting to see other interpretations. I really need to revisit some Aickman again - it's been a long time since I last read his books.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 2.24.29.186
Posted on Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - 08:57 am:   

I think the story has to be read in the same light as 'Growing Boys' and 'Compulsory Games', which are less good and more obvious. But with characteristic restlessness, Aickman revisited the theme in 'No Time is Passing' and did something far more impressive with it. He was never content with repetition.
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 92.232.244.38
Posted on Thursday, November 01, 2012 - 07:11 pm:   

I just started up a new thread for this - and then I spotted this thread too. So I'll post this here as well ...

Danica Grijak, the organiser of the Halifax Ghost Story Festival, has been busy tracking down all but one of the Robert Aickman-inspired films in the HTV "Night Voices" series, and there's now an online petition set up to get these long-lost gems released to DVD. If you'd like to see these on DVD too, please sign the petition linked below. Thanks!
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/a-ghost-of-a-chance/
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 92.232.244.38
Posted on Friday, November 02, 2012 - 02:26 pm:   

Looks like the link isn't working right though - so just cut and paste into your browser if you want to go to the petition site to sign it!
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 86.145.224.90
Posted on Saturday, April 20, 2013 - 03:01 pm:   

Having completed my month-long real-time review of THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN by Thomas Mann (here: http://weirdmonger.wordpress.com/186-2/ ), I am convinced that it must have been an enormous influence, outweighing any other inluence, on the fiction of Robert Aickman. This is not only because of the similarity I seem to be the first to observe between The Hospice and The House Berghof, and their residents, and their meals, but also because of many other factors, including tone and beguiling disarming undercurrents and tropes, an absurd-weirdness that borders on nightmare as well as rationality.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 212.183.128.37
Posted on Saturday, April 20, 2013 - 06:58 pm:   

It was Mann's favourite of all his novels - and the one that was most dismissed by the critics - which means I'll be seeking out a copy on your recommendation. Thanks, man!
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 86.145.224.90
Posted on Saturday, April 20, 2013 - 10:28 pm:   

Thanks, Stevie. Hope you enjoy it.

And since writing the above and having completed my review of 'The Magic Mountain', I have now re-read INTO THE WOOD by Robert AickMANN!
This novella seems to house a balustraded Sanatorium equivalent to that in `The Magic Mountain' (except it is for the Half-Sleep not the Half-Lung Club!) where Mann's `horizontals' have become Aickman's `uprights', ritually walking off into the benighted wood, much like Hans Castorp once tried walking off into the white-out of snow. Mann's sanatorium conveys tropes for the First World War, and Aickman's for the Second World War. Both `rest cures' of encroaching death-luxury… Both sleep and hunger unpredictable quantities.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 86.145.224.90
Posted on Sunday, April 21, 2013 - 08:44 am:   

A favour from those gathered here?
Another big theme in 'The Magic Mountain' is the plasticity of Time. Can anyone
remind me of any story I should re-read by Aickman in this context, assuming
there is one?
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 86.145.224.90
Posted on Sunday, April 21, 2013 - 08:59 am:   

Or music?
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 86.145.224.90
Posted on Sunday, April 21, 2013 - 01:15 pm:   

Meanwhile, some of you may remember the Aickman and Cannibalism thread that John Magwitch broached some time ago. I recorded it for posterity here:
http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/john-magwitchs-thesis-on-robert-a ickman-cannibalism/
Well, you may not be surprised to learn that there is a significant cannibalistic dream scene in Mann's 'The Magic Mountain' that, during my
real-time review, I recorded at the start of the page here:
http://nemonymousnight.wordpress.com/485-2/#comment-232
But only those with strong stomachs should look at that!
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.239.243.21
Posted on Sunday, April 21, 2013 - 08:00 pm:   

Just found a 1965 fontana paperback edition of dark entries buried on my bookshelves. I've never read any of the stories in it so i don't know if i like it, but it smells bloody lovely.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 1.169.143.167
Posted on Monday, April 22, 2013 - 02:19 pm:   

Des, it's been a while since I read Aickman, but just going by titles alone I'd suggest 'No Time is Passing' and 'The Clock Watcher'.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 86.145.224.90
Posted on Monday, April 22, 2013 - 02:41 pm:   

Thanks, Huw. :-)

As an aside, I just found this quote in Aickman's INTO THE WOOD:


“So eat up your mört, Margaret, and take no notice of all these gloomy thoughts.”
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, April 22, 2013 - 03:10 pm:   

For me it is not so much the plasticity of time as the illusory nature of time and matter. Consciousness is all that really matters in the Universe. I see the illusion of linear time and material reality as mental constructs of the blind idiot god in its aeon spanning flashes of clarity.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 1.169.143.167
Posted on Monday, April 22, 2013 - 05:59 pm:   

You're welcome, Des! 'Le Miroir' and 'Laura' also come to mind as having some time-related theme, but honestly, I really must read Aickman again to be sure. It's been far too long!
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 81.157.50.70
Posted on Monday, April 29, 2013 - 09:03 am:   

Thanks.

I have learnt, since writing my posts here about Mann's Magic Mountain, that Aickman himself is reported to have said that Mann was a big influence on his work.

For example this article here:
http://grimreviews.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/robert-aickman-treasure-trove-goes-on. html

And if you click on 'influences' on the right hand side of Aickman Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Aickman

I know that is not categorical, especially to someone like me who has lived with 'the Intentional Fallacy' since I was a youthful reader, but the correlations between 'The Magic Mountain' and Aickman's work I found astonishing when I carried out my recent marathon Mountain review here:
http://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/the-magic-mountain-thomas-mann/
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 81.157.50.70
Posted on Monday, April 29, 2013 - 09:42 am:   

......and for those who can access the All Hallows forum, an interesting reference by someone else to 'Death in Venice' vis-a-vis Aickman here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/All_Hallows/message/76596
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 81.157.50.70
Posted on Wednesday, May 01, 2013 - 06:57 pm:   

I have found another potential lookalike for Aickman's Hospice and the Aickman
'disarming strangenesses':-
A novel entitled 'The Inmates' (1952) by John Cowper Powys.

I have started a RTRcausal of it here:
http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/13740-2/
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.158.252.15
Posted on Wednesday, May 01, 2013 - 09:52 pm:   

Recently I went to a mental hospital and in the grounds was a little wood. I could see people walking about in the depths, smoking or talking on phones. On the way out I saw a woman walking out of them towards us, but then after a step I couldn't see her anymore, no matter how hard I looked. If she was a ghost she was very modern and ordinary.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 81.157.50.70
Posted on Wednesday, May 01, 2013 - 10:18 pm:   

'The Inmates' takes place in a mental institution, Tony, and your scene could be a scene from it.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.158.252.15
Posted on Thursday, May 02, 2013 - 01:00 am:   

Is it the one where people don't sleep anymore but walk round a wood? I think it was in my mind when I saw this woman in this place.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.158.252.15
Posted on Thursday, May 02, 2013 - 01:02 am:   

Ah, sorry - thought you were talking about Aickman, not Powys.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 81.157.50.70
Posted on Thursday, May 02, 2013 - 08:36 am:   

Yes, Powys in connection with Aickman. You're referring to Aickman's INTO THE WOOD, Tony, but it could also be a description of THE INMATES!
My take on INTO THE WOOD: http://weirdmonger.wordpress.com/186-2/#comment-294
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 86.128.128.75
Posted on Saturday, May 04, 2013 - 12:37 pm:   

I have found another potential lookalike for Aickman's Hospice and the Aickman
'disarming strangenesses':-
A novel entitled 'The Inmates' (1952) by John Cowper Powys.
I have started a RTRcausal of it here:
http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/13740-2/

=========================

In fact, there has now been a scene that reminds me of Mr Bannard in Aickman’s ‘The Hospice’ and the goings-on surrounding a benighted Lucas Maybury – and in fact we are here in ‘The Inmates’ given this passage:
“They’re all right in the day. It’s in the night that the thoughts and dreams of the sleepers come out of their rooms and shuffle about, and shiver, and squeak and gibber.”
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 2.30.199.63
Posted on Saturday, May 04, 2013 - 01:30 pm:   

There's even a YouTube clip of Aickman singing:

'I could read Cowper Powys
Be a lion, not a mowys
If I only had the noive'
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 86.128.128.75
Posted on Saturday, May 04, 2013 - 11:52 pm:   

There's a wonderfully terrifying 'finger' horror in the latest chapter I've read in THE INMATES.
WF Harvey, eat your heart out!
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 86.128.128.75
Posted on Tuesday, May 07, 2013 - 09:00 am:   

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".
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.24.62.55
Posted on Tuesday, May 07, 2013 - 09:44 am:   

The prisoner escapes to Brazil, perhaps, Des?

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