Robert Aickman
- Thread starter Jim Daze
- Start date
mistersloane
heavy heavy monster sound
Never heard of him before but he looks interesting, what did you think?
ok maybe I'll wait another ten years before I post anything. If any one is remotely interested in weird short foction then read this guy, otherwise get back to the dubstep...
Kate Mossad
Well-known member
I like his work a lot and am glad the Faber re-prints are available. Not sure about those covers though...
What is dubstep?
What is dubstep?
IdleRich
IdleRich
I got Scar City by Joel Lane the other day.... someone, I reckon @jenks or @catalog recommended it. Probably will start it tomorrow.
Robert Aickman, I did read one of his and I did enjoy it... but I dont think I got as much of it many people do. Wish I could remember it better to articulate why... I think that his strength is generally understood to be the gaps that he leaves. Let's make a tortuous analogy; say a story is like one of those join the dots pictures and a writer can fill in as many or as few dots as he chooses, the reader experiences the story (and here I am particularly talking about books or short stories that are pretty much narrative based) as the writer filliing in those dots for him or her. On the first page the whole picture is completely unfilled in, the story can go in any direction, anything can happen and it can be anything, and that's always the case I guess. But it's what the picture looks like at the end that I'm talking about here, and, let's take Agatha Christie cos we all know the format, she writes mysteries and at the end, as a rule, Poirot figures it out - we know who murdered whom and why, but it's not just that, in a typical Christie the whole grid is absolutely filled in, we know exaclty what everyone did at every point, the relations of each person to each other and so on. There is no mystery left, the whole thing is absolutely solved and there is no room for any kind of wriggling, the book is finished and entirely dead, every drop has been squeezed out.
I'm not knocking that by the way. Sure, many find that simplistic and old-fashioned and so on, and I suppose it is. But it's just one way of writing, I'm glad that it exists. But I am certainly glad that there are many others who leave gaps in the grid - sure we know that X was the murderer but did they escape or did they die in the flood? And some writers leave more room still, lots and lots of loose-ends and speculation and stuff to ponder on. But I personally would probably grow dissatisfied if all novels were like that and I'm glad for the Christie's of this world too. Anyway, the point is, even leaving these gaps, most writers do fill in a kind of critical mass of dots, they go beyond that certain point at which we get some sort of grasp of the overall picture. Maybe not enough to really satisfy, maybe we're frustrated, but almost all cross a certain invisible barrier. Whereas my feeling is that Aickman doesn't, he tends to leave it so you're still looking at the picture going "is it a horse or is it a spaceship... or could it be um?" - just enough foi you to know there is something there, but really you don't know what it is. And I think that in his chosen genre - horror - this is probably more effective than in many other genres, and he does it pretty well.
And that's my thoughts and memories of RA. I'd be interested to know if others agree with that horrible analogy thing. But the point is, yeah, he does it fairly well, but I remember that technique more than the stories. I don't remember any particular moments of skin crawling creepiness etc I don't remember any of the stories that well. OK, I remember the very first one I read, but I have a sneaking suspicion that that was mainly cos it was the first one.
Robert Aickman, I did read one of his and I did enjoy it... but I dont think I got as much of it many people do. Wish I could remember it better to articulate why... I think that his strength is generally understood to be the gaps that he leaves. Let's make a tortuous analogy; say a story is like one of those join the dots pictures and a writer can fill in as many or as few dots as he chooses, the reader experiences the story (and here I am particularly talking about books or short stories that are pretty much narrative based) as the writer filliing in those dots for him or her. On the first page the whole picture is completely unfilled in, the story can go in any direction, anything can happen and it can be anything, and that's always the case I guess. But it's what the picture looks like at the end that I'm talking about here, and, let's take Agatha Christie cos we all know the format, she writes mysteries and at the end, as a rule, Poirot figures it out - we know who murdered whom and why, but it's not just that, in a typical Christie the whole grid is absolutely filled in, we know exaclty what everyone did at every point, the relations of each person to each other and so on. There is no mystery left, the whole thing is absolutely solved and there is no room for any kind of wriggling, the book is finished and entirely dead, every drop has been squeezed out.
I'm not knocking that by the way. Sure, many find that simplistic and old-fashioned and so on, and I suppose it is. But it's just one way of writing, I'm glad that it exists. But I am certainly glad that there are many others who leave gaps in the grid - sure we know that X was the murderer but did they escape or did they die in the flood? And some writers leave more room still, lots and lots of loose-ends and speculation and stuff to ponder on. But I personally would probably grow dissatisfied if all novels were like that and I'm glad for the Christie's of this world too. Anyway, the point is, even leaving these gaps, most writers do fill in a kind of critical mass of dots, they go beyond that certain point at which we get some sort of grasp of the overall picture. Maybe not enough to really satisfy, maybe we're frustrated, but almost all cross a certain invisible barrier. Whereas my feeling is that Aickman doesn't, he tends to leave it so you're still looking at the picture going "is it a horse or is it a spaceship... or could it be um?" - just enough foi you to know there is something there, but really you don't know what it is. And I think that in his chosen genre - horror - this is probably more effective than in many other genres, and he does it pretty well.
And that's my thoughts and memories of RA. I'd be interested to know if others agree with that horrible analogy thing. But the point is, yeah, he does it fairly well, but I remember that technique more than the stories. I don't remember any particular moments of skin crawling creepiness etc I don't remember any of the stories that well. OK, I remember the very first one I read, but I have a sneaking suspicion that that was mainly cos it was the first one.
you
Well-known member
Hi @catalog @IdleRich it was probably my post here: https://www.dissensus.com/index.php?threads/27/page-315 I think I said I discovered Joel Lane via his essay collection on Tartarus Press I bought for his work on Aickman and Ligotti
Idlerich - if that comment is about Aickman then there is something to say. I recently finished the Ray Russell biography of Aickman. And his confidence to leave facets of narrative unexplained, unrecognised, has taken a different shade for me.
'Embark on no foolish explanations, for they only render down truth for the relief of the timid' is an oft cited Aickman quote, and in many ways what I found so fascinating in his short stories - the ambiguity, the constant nagging questions, the self doubt, after you put a book down.
Ray's Attempted Biography uncovers a side of Aickman that is obsessed with power, leadership and possibly had more than an academic curiosity in fascist leaders. Aickman always considered himself a 'leader of men', and he believed in inherited power and not democracy. He was rather, ahem, trad, in this way - and in the few photos of him, he appears Edwardian, but was living through 60s-70s.... One of his other mantras was that great men should 'never apologise and never explain themselves', which, going by the England Waterways anecdotes, he seemed to conduct himself with great fealty too. He observed relationships through a prism of power, very much. His treatment of women seems to have been a mix of Gaslighting and narcissistic abuse - he always took the role of great 'teacher' with friends. He was coercive and controlling with his wife.
So, why I am saying this? It's difficult to admire his recalcitrance to explain, his opacity, his closed off narratives in the same way. Were they superb literary ambitions? Or were they symptomatic of a stubborn man that refused to explain, that refused to be generous? That refused to consider the reader? He didn't get on well with many in publishing—like his life generally—so I wonder if edits were suggested and he never felt the need to be responsive (i.e. weak and subservient as he might see it, not a great man) in that way.
I do wonder if the supremely ambiguous nature that fans of Aickman love is not so much a literary ambition as symptomatic of his personality - insofar as I'm unconvinced by how aware he was of this aspect of his work being a general tendency of his. Much testimony in the biography paints him as a bristly man that could not bear to wrong, that had to win every argument, but was also aloof and unforthcoming.
Like an inversion of Hanging Rock - a book that is deeply mysterious and great precisely because the editor removed the explanatory last chapter.
Idlerich - if that comment is about Aickman then there is something to say. I recently finished the Ray Russell biography of Aickman. And his confidence to leave facets of narrative unexplained, unrecognised, has taken a different shade for me.
'Embark on no foolish explanations, for they only render down truth for the relief of the timid' is an oft cited Aickman quote, and in many ways what I found so fascinating in his short stories - the ambiguity, the constant nagging questions, the self doubt, after you put a book down.
Ray's Attempted Biography uncovers a side of Aickman that is obsessed with power, leadership and possibly had more than an academic curiosity in fascist leaders. Aickman always considered himself a 'leader of men', and he believed in inherited power and not democracy. He was rather, ahem, trad, in this way - and in the few photos of him, he appears Edwardian, but was living through 60s-70s.... One of his other mantras was that great men should 'never apologise and never explain themselves', which, going by the England Waterways anecdotes, he seemed to conduct himself with great fealty too. He observed relationships through a prism of power, very much. His treatment of women seems to have been a mix of Gaslighting and narcissistic abuse - he always took the role of great 'teacher' with friends. He was coercive and controlling with his wife.
So, why I am saying this? It's difficult to admire his recalcitrance to explain, his opacity, his closed off narratives in the same way. Were they superb literary ambitions? Or were they symptomatic of a stubborn man that refused to explain, that refused to be generous? That refused to consider the reader? He didn't get on well with many in publishing—like his life generally—so I wonder if edits were suggested and he never felt the need to be responsive (i.e. weak and subservient as he might see it, not a great man) in that way.
I do wonder if the supremely ambiguous nature that fans of Aickman love is not so much a literary ambition as symptomatic of his personality - insofar as I'm unconvinced by how aware he was of this aspect of his work being a general tendency of his. Much testimony in the biography paints him as a bristly man that could not bear to wrong, that had to win every argument, but was also aloof and unforthcoming.
Like an inversion of Hanging Rock - a book that is deeply mysterious and great precisely because the editor removed the explanatory last chapter.
Last edited:
you
Well-known member
@catalog if you've never read anything by Aickman just get the 'Cold Hand in Mine' Faber paperback. It's a best of collection. If you're really intrigued by Aickman then the Tartarus press editions are they way to go, as they are reprints of the original collections. So you can appreciate chronology. The later collections such as 'Night Voices' are bizarre at times, this is Aickman really finding his voice of not giving into foolish explanations. Whereas he's more confirming and traditional in the earlier texts. There are two versions of 'The View' short story - one where he added some explanation at the end. Which is interesting. I prefer the lesser explained one. More psychological.
Scar City 'scarcity' is Lane's last collection, not published in his lifetime, sadly. It's superb.
I've read a bit of Campbell (who met Aickman!). But he's so prolific I've only scratched the surface.
EDIT - confirming^^^ was a typo of conforming. Apt.
Scar City 'scarcity' is Lane's last collection, not published in his lifetime, sadly. It's superb.
I've read a bit of Campbell (who met Aickman!). But he's so prolific I've only scratched the surface.
EDIT - confirming^^^ was a typo of conforming. Apt.
IdleRich
IdleRich
That's odd, as I was reading through that post I started thinking about Picnic at Hanging Rock and what the author's relationship to its ambiguous ending might be and how that differs from in the case of Aickman.
Anyway, this is always the danger with reading too much about an artist or author isn't it? Too many mysteries explained and profound artistic choices rendered down to prosaic physical or logistical necessities. And then you face the tiresome debate on art vs artist and so on. As a rule I'd rather not learn too much about a given artist whose work I greatly admire - although of course, in the same annoying way as everything else, there are two sides to the coin and by choosing to avoid biographies etc one loses out on a potential deeper understanding of the books and maybe even some funny anecdotes too.
An aside. Many years ago I was chatting to someone I don't really know and they recommended an author whose name I promptly forget. I do remember however that they described his books as follows (obviously I'm paraphrasing) "Some authors there is a sort of mystery and when the story reaches the end they leave it a bit ambiguous. You know something has happened but you're not quite sure what or how. But with this author X that I'm recommending to you, when the story finishes the ambiguity is one stage more profound - you're not actually sure if something did happen or not". Maybe I'm projecting but that does sound a bit like he was describing Aickman right?
you
Well-known member
It absolutely sounds like Aickman. To give him his credit, there are numerous instances where he suggested that the ambiguities of a ghost story, the unanswered nagging demi-questions, are one of the points of writing about—or around—what we call 'the supernatural'. He dabbled in ghost and supernatural societies too - so there is something in this in the sense of his valuing vague possibilities over reduced and flat explanations.
I think some of the discomfort emerges from the shared zone that recent film has explored - being enchanted and spellbound working along similar lines to what we also call 'abuse'. A number of 'friends' in the biography say he was so smart and taught them a great deal (there is a motif of the pedagogue power dynamic), he was polite, charming and enchanting... of course. But it does emerge that he met them wholly on his terms. His female friends did all the driving, bought the theatre tickets - for when he said. It was a joke among his circle that he'd never made a cup of tea in his life, many said he was expert at finding people to do these things for him.
Of all he met he was probably worst to his wife. She bought him and his mistress breakfast in bed.... she did all the necessary admin at the EWA.... his mistress (Elizabeth Jane Howard) in his open marriage left him after he became too proscriptive about what she wear, where she should be etc. His wife left him and went to a convent iirc. Curiously, she is not mentioned in both his autobiographies....
A 'complex man'.
I think some of the discomfort emerges from the shared zone that recent film has explored - being enchanted and spellbound working along similar lines to what we also call 'abuse'. A number of 'friends' in the biography say he was so smart and taught them a great deal (there is a motif of the pedagogue power dynamic), he was polite, charming and enchanting... of course. But it does emerge that he met them wholly on his terms. His female friends did all the driving, bought the theatre tickets - for when he said. It was a joke among his circle that he'd never made a cup of tea in his life, many said he was expert at finding people to do these things for him.
Of all he met he was probably worst to his wife. She bought him and his mistress breakfast in bed.... she did all the necessary admin at the EWA.... his mistress (Elizabeth Jane Howard) in his open marriage left him after he became too proscriptive about what she wear, where she should be etc. His wife left him and went to a convent iirc. Curiously, she is not mentioned in both his autobiographies....
A 'complex man'.
Last edited:
you
Well-known member
Also, this thread really is a case in point of what I was talking about here: https://www.dissensus.com/index.php?threads/16606/page-3#post-648914
Interesting thread topic immediately shot down with negativity. It's a good case for my call to be generous and constructive.
The sarky-only-a-joke teflon Clarksoning up thread wouldn't be quite so irksome if I wasn't convinced Luka is very very well read and insightful.
Interesting thread topic immediately shot down with negativity. It's a good case for my call to be generous and constructive.
The sarky-only-a-joke teflon Clarksoning up thread wouldn't be quite so irksome if I wasn't convinced Luka is very very well read and insightful.