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Robert Aickman: An Introduction
Robert Aickman was one of the most important writers of ghost stories in the last century. His personal, deeply felt tales were consummately poetic. Very much feeling a sense of twentieth century Angst, Aickman wrote elegant, moving tales of subtle terror. Aickman also founded The Inland Waterways Association in Britain, which upgraded Britain's rivers and canals. He was a drama and film critic as well as on the boards of opera and ballet companies. This book is an overview of the man writer Fritz Leiber hailed as "the weatherman of the unconscious."
76 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 25, 2015
I'm not 100% what I think about this book. On the plus side:
+ Still the most concentrated source of Aickman critique available.
+ Has many unique pieces/impressions of Aickman from people close to Aickman through letters to the author.
+ Extensive bibliography in the back leading to a lot of other critique.
+ Adds some insights into most (but not all, unless I overlooked some passing glances) of Aickman stories.
+ Fairly readable, more-so than some other books of its type.
The problems I have with it, though, eat away at several parts of this. The book frequently has time/logic jumps that can lead the reader to false conclusions. This might simply be a personal problem on my shoulders. For instance, "Elizabeth Jane Howard...had already some success as an actress, and Robert was fascinated with her...She had captivated many men—including her second husband, the novelist Kingsley Amis." Which reads to me that her second (actually third, I believe) husband was already in the picture when Aickman met her, but she married Amis years later. The book goes on to say this by the end of the chapter, but in the moment it reads off.
This gets even more striking during some of the analysis of the stories. Without trying to spoil too much, there are moments like, referring the latter part of "The Inner Room": "The women who live there, she discovers, are each named after their birthstones, and the most horrifying thing about them is that they have a photograph of Lene as a child with a pin through her heart." Crawford then goes on to explain that Lene did no wrong, so the transgression is inexplicable and tragic, but fails to note that the women are clearly meant to be the dolls from earlier in the story. Likewise, in describing "Wine-Dark Sea", Crawford makes a scene where Grigg sees a dead body floating into "at one point the women say there is a dead body nearby," and then in conjunction with a note that the sea is red, implies it is Gregg's body and this is all a vision of a dead man. Despite in the story it reading as...
Many of Crawford's descriptions are similarly at odds with the story, either leaving out details that help to add to the story or citing details wrong—"The Trains" has an additional female added to the end, for instance, while "Into the Woods" is described incorrectly as starting in Manchester.
Perhaps the thing that I found most lacking was an insistence to read nearly all the stories across two theses: first that Aickman was engaging in Breton-defined surrealism (which seems true in some stories, less true in others), and secondly that Aickman was driven by the motif of the female as the outsider/other, sometimes dangerously so. In this light, some stories are strangely miscast. Certain techniques—e.g., Aickman's use of color repetition and myth structure in "Wine-Dark Sea"—are overlooked to focus instead on sexual confusion in stories where it does not quite feel a driving force, while sexual confusion in stories where it does seem to be a driving force—"The Swords" and "Growing Boys"—are described as stories where sexual confusion and outsider-ness aren't as important. By focusing on gender-specific otherness, the disjoint of human-against-modernity becomes only a tool to talk about gender, and feels weaker. "The Trains" Margaret is sexless against her desire, and fails to understand many of the cues given to her (including those that say that people should be against the city), while Mimi is almost oversexed but fits in (later to her detriment). This distinction is broader than simply having Margaret and Mimi represent two women-as-outsiders as though they were equally so.
All in all, read it for what it adds to the body of critique, and take some of its ideas about the stories as a jumping off point, but perhaps read the stories for yourself before accepting the analysis within. There are things that made me rethink some ideas, such as the contrast of "The Inner Room" into the heart-of-horror versus the ability to be accepted, so I am not entirely against Crawford's interpretation, I think overall feel that the definitely glance at Aickman's tales is yet to be written.
+ Still the most concentrated source of Aickman critique available.
+ Has many unique pieces/impressions of Aickman from people close to Aickman through letters to the author.
+ Extensive bibliography in the back leading to a lot of other critique.
+ Adds some insights into most (but not all, unless I overlooked some passing glances) of Aickman stories.
+ Fairly readable, more-so than some other books of its type.
The problems I have with it, though, eat away at several parts of this. The book frequently has time/logic jumps that can lead the reader to false conclusions. This might simply be a personal problem on my shoulders. For instance, "Elizabeth Jane Howard...had already some success as an actress, and Robert was fascinated with her...She had captivated many men—including her second husband, the novelist Kingsley Amis." Which reads to me that her second (actually third, I believe) husband was already in the picture when Aickman met her, but she married Amis years later. The book goes on to say this by the end of the chapter, but in the moment it reads off.
This gets even more striking during some of the analysis of the stories. Without trying to spoil too much, there are moments like, referring the latter part of "The Inner Room": "The women who live there, she discovers, are each named after their birthstones, and the most horrifying thing about them is that they have a photograph of Lene as a child with a pin through her heart." Crawford then goes on to explain that Lene did no wrong, so the transgression is inexplicable and tragic, but fails to note that the women are clearly meant to be the dolls from earlier in the story. Likewise, in describing "Wine-Dark Sea", Crawford makes a scene where Grigg sees a dead body floating into "at one point the women say there is a dead body nearby," and then in conjunction with a note that the sea is red, implies it is Gregg's body and this is all a vision of a dead man. Despite in the story it reading as...
Floating in the emerald sea beneath the emerald sky was a body; though it was unlikely to be afloat much longer, as the women knew how to throw, and every stone hit true and hard. Grigg could see the body quite well: it had belonged to a fat, elderly, clean-shaven man with a big, bald head, and was dressed in a dark, conventional suit, of which the open jacket spread out in the water, like a pair of fins. All round the body the sea was red, like the death of a whale.
Many of Crawford's descriptions are similarly at odds with the story, either leaving out details that help to add to the story or citing details wrong—"The Trains" has an additional female added to the end, for instance, while "Into the Woods" is described incorrectly as starting in Manchester.
Perhaps the thing that I found most lacking was an insistence to read nearly all the stories across two theses: first that Aickman was engaging in Breton-defined surrealism (which seems true in some stories, less true in others), and secondly that Aickman was driven by the motif of the female as the outsider/other, sometimes dangerously so. In this light, some stories are strangely miscast. Certain techniques—e.g., Aickman's use of color repetition and myth structure in "Wine-Dark Sea"—are overlooked to focus instead on sexual confusion in stories where it does not quite feel a driving force, while sexual confusion in stories where it does seem to be a driving force—"The Swords" and "Growing Boys"—are described as stories where sexual confusion and outsider-ness aren't as important. By focusing on gender-specific otherness, the disjoint of human-against-modernity becomes only a tool to talk about gender, and feels weaker. "The Trains" Margaret is sexless against her desire, and fails to understand many of the cues given to her (including those that say that people should be against the city), while Mimi is almost oversexed but fits in (later to her detriment). This distinction is broader than simply having Margaret and Mimi represent two women-as-outsiders as though they were equally so.
All in all, read it for what it adds to the body of critique, and take some of its ideas about the stories as a jumping off point, but perhaps read the stories for yourself before accepting the analysis within. There are things that made me rethink some ideas, such as the contrast of "The Inner Room" into the heart-of-horror versus the ability to be accepted, so I am not entirely against Crawford's interpretation, I think overall feel that the definitely glance at Aickman's tales is yet to be written.
May 4, 2008
This book is 76 pages, the last 12 pages of which are dedicated to bibliography. The production is fairly basic, with a front cover featuring a detail from the cover illustration of Aickman's The River Runs Uphill. The book is staple-bound, which unfortunately means that there is no readable spine--hence, the book is not destined for the bookcase.
The book's first chapter, "The Life," runs 20 pages and pulls together a biographical sketch of Aickman, synthesizing threads from such sources as Aickman's The Attempted Rescue and The River Runs Uphill and David Bolton's The Race Against Time: How Britain's Waterways Were Saved. For those who have not read these books, this chapter will be especially interesting.
The remaining chapters seem to touch briefly on all of Aickman's published fiction--the two novels and 48 short stories. Crawford is particularly interested in Aickman's aesthetic proximity to surrealism and in Aickman's distinctive gender themes.
Among the portions of the book I found particularly interesting are the helpful bibliography and the personal letters Crawford received from Aickman's acquaintances in the early to mid 1980s, in the years following Aickman's death. Crawford quotes extensively from other sources throughout the book, but twice he shares large portions from these letters. In one instance nearly two pages of the book are given over to a letter from Barbara Balch, Aickman's long-time personal secretary. In another case, close to three pages are taken up with an essay-letter from Aickman's friend Valerie Butler. Crawford also draws occasionally from sources as recent as the 2002 memoir by Elizabeth Jane Howard, Slipstream (where Aickman pops up as a former lover of E.J.H.).
The book's first chapter, "The Life," runs 20 pages and pulls together a biographical sketch of Aickman, synthesizing threads from such sources as Aickman's The Attempted Rescue and The River Runs Uphill and David Bolton's The Race Against Time: How Britain's Waterways Were Saved. For those who have not read these books, this chapter will be especially interesting.
The remaining chapters seem to touch briefly on all of Aickman's published fiction--the two novels and 48 short stories. Crawford is particularly interested in Aickman's aesthetic proximity to surrealism and in Aickman's distinctive gender themes.
Among the portions of the book I found particularly interesting are the helpful bibliography and the personal letters Crawford received from Aickman's acquaintances in the early to mid 1980s, in the years following Aickman's death. Crawford quotes extensively from other sources throughout the book, but twice he shares large portions from these letters. In one instance nearly two pages of the book are given over to a letter from Barbara Balch, Aickman's long-time personal secretary. In another case, close to three pages are taken up with an essay-letter from Aickman's friend Valerie Butler. Crawford also draws occasionally from sources as recent as the 2002 memoir by Elizabeth Jane Howard, Slipstream (where Aickman pops up as a former lover of E.J.H.).
Read
February 15, 2013Nice little biographical sketch, but the following analysis is almost academically worthless. Pointing out that the tales in a volume called Tales of Love and Death ARE, in fact, about love and death makes the majority of this pamphlet not really worth reading. It's compounded by the fact that the only people who will ever read this probably already know Aickman's stories (given how rare and expensive anything to do with Aickman tends to be). As such, it doesn't add at all to one's appreciation or comprehension of the stories in question.
June 18, 2024
[Gothic Press] (2003). SB. 76 Pages. Purchased from Richard Dalby's Library.
- Introduction
- The Life
- Robert Aickman and the Ghost Story
- The Late Breakfasters
- Aickman’s Women
- Aickman’s Men
- A World Elsewhere
- The Model
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
A competent, interesting early survey. Quite scarce (£80-£100).
Ray Russell’s monumental, definitive and brilliant biography remains available from the most excellent Tartarus Press at a fraction of that cost.
http://tartaruspress.com/russell-aick...
- Introduction
- The Life
- Robert Aickman and the Ghost Story
- The Late Breakfasters
- Aickman’s Women
- Aickman’s Men
- A World Elsewhere
- The Model
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
A competent, interesting early survey. Quite scarce (£80-£100).
Ray Russell’s monumental, definitive and brilliant biography remains available from the most excellent Tartarus Press at a fraction of that cost.
http://tartaruspress.com/russell-aick...
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews