The Stories of Robert Aickman

Thanks for that link J.D., it shall prove interesting reading I'm sure.

If anyone's interested BBC Radio 4 recently aired a programme about Aickman hosted by Jeremy Dyson. It can be found here.

nomadman said:

If anyone's interested BBC Radio 4 recently aired a programme about Aickman hosted by Jeremy Dyson. It can be found here.

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Thanks nomadman, that sounds very interesting. I shall have to hav a listen shortly. Here's the program info in case anyone's interested:

Screenwriter Jeremy Dyson praises the supernatural stories of British author and conservationist Robert Aickman and argues they should receive greater recognition for their contribution to literature.

Robert Aickman was the grandson of the prolific Victorian novelist Richard Marsh whose occult thriller The Beetle (1897) was in its time as popular as Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Aickman is best remembered today for co-founding the Inland Waterways Association, but his Grandfather's work influenced him to write around fifty so called "strange" stories involving the supernatural and macabre over a thirty year period starting in the late forties.

In recent years League of Gentlemen writer Dyson has adapted Aickman's work into various forms of Drama including the BBC Radio Four play 'Ringing the Changes'.

By speaking with fans of Aickman and introducing students to his work for the first time, Dyson argues that Aickman's literary gifts have been undervalued and during his lifetime he should have received greater critical acclaim.

Contributions from horror writer Ramsey Campbell, Broadcaster Stuart Maconie and televisions Mark Gatiss.

Written and presented by Jeremy Dyson.

With readings by Jayne Ashbourne the programme is produced in Salford by Stephen Garner.

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Finally got around to listening to this programme today. Great to know that he has at least a few dedicated devotees out there.

I just read this in the "Dark Entries" collection.

This story was, in some ways, quite unusual for Aickman in that there are some quite explicit references to something supernatural or overtly strange going on although pinning down its precise nature remains as elusive as ever. The narrative seems scattered with clues that enticingly hint at a meaning just below the surface but critical details are snatched away leaving us just short of enough information to put it all together in a cohesive manner.

The story seems to suggest that Sally came into this world through some form of inverted immaculate conception. She has a father but no mother (in the conventional sense). Her father, it would appear, had stumbled upon some method of producing off-spring in a profoundly unconventional manner. The details and nature of which presumably become apparent to Sally when she moves back in to the family home after her father dies. She then sets about undergoing some form of variation of the process in order to produce an offspring of her own.

One of the things that I find most strange about this story is that the protagonist seems to be directly affected in some oblique way, more directly than merely as a consequence of being Sally's friend. What was happening to Mel as she returned to Sally's house for the last time, when the boy in the street was shocked at the sight of her?

This is most definitely aimed at disturbing the reader's sense of reality, their sense of the proper order of things.

Erm...I just realised I forgot to name the story I was talking about in the previous post......It was called "The School Friend".

Anyway, I'm slowly making my way through this collection, taking my time so that I can savour the stories.

I was looking forward to reading "Ringing the Changes" as this appears to be one of his most celebrated stories and I can see why. A classic and quite conventional horror story (by Aickman's standards) which doesn't leave your head throbbing with confusion after reading it. Atmospheric and scary, brilliant stuff.

And then I came to "Choice of Weapons". Wow, what an incredible, mind-blowing, insane story that is. Not so much horror as just weird, this is a tale of lust, obsession, and madness. What a brilliant term for the subconscious that Aickman coined in this story: The magnetic under-mind.

I've read it twice through now and I still can't make much sense of it. If anyone else has read it and can shed some light on it, I would greatly appreciate it...

I just read this story in the collection Powers of Darkness and find myself with the familiar feeling of being simultaneously satisfied and confused.

I'll definitely need to read it again before I can offer any kind of interpretation of what went on here but I did find it very interesting how this revealed some of the inner workings of parliament and wonder how much Aickman drew from his own experiences with his involvement with the Inland Waterways Association.

Hmmm...I keep forgetting to name the stories I'm talking about! Above refers to: "My Poor Friend".

Anyway, I've just read another story (for the second time) called: "Your Tiny Hand is Frozen". I love this story and here are my thoughts on it:

It often comes across that Aickman had a general dislike for all things modern. In this story, it is the horror of telephones that the author attempts to illustrate, in his own rather oblique way.

Aickman must have seen the rise of popularity of telephones as something of a social sickness that was destroying our capacity for "real" social interaction making us agoraphobic and dependent on a faceless, bureaucratic organisation.

Throughout the story Edmund's phone is behaving strangely. He is beset by frequent miscalls, sometimes silence, sometimes wrong numbers but always clips, pops and hissing in the background. Unable to penetrate the uncaring, unresponsive attitude of the telephone company, he is forced to endure these problems.

While initially quite disdainful of the telephone, he finds himself forced to use it to seek out acquaintances who might want to join him for Christmas day. Once he stumbles upon the mysterious Nera, the telephone becomes an increasingly important part of his life. He becomes obsessed by Nera and the thought of her next phone call that every other aspect of his life begins to suffer. He begins to ignore letters from his convalescing girl friend Teddie, his quality of work deteriorates until he is no longer employed, he is barely able to go out and feed himself. The analogue is clear, he has become a telephone junkie.

Throughout the story we are increasingly lead to believe the telephone system has somehow become connected to the spirit world and that Nera is the spirit of someone who has died. In the end Nera manifests in some undefined way in Edmund's flat but he cannot overcome his fear to face her, she is ultimately rejected.

But the last scene turns that idea on it's head. When the now sick Edmund mutters her name in hospital, it is revealed that Teddie knows Nera. Nera was infact some kind of agoraphobic telephone stalker who used to pester Teddie. Somehow, Nera had managed to inject her essence into the phone system in order to travel to Edmund's flat, rather than endure going outside. Obviously the process was irreversible but she was able to make one last act of defiance after Edmund's rejection, cutting herself off from the telephone system for good by sawing through the flex cable with a bread knife.

I always thought this was a great name for a story but it gives us no clue to what lies within as far as I can see, unless it is an oblique reference to Nera's "still well formed hand" that clutched the bread knife in the final scene.

It may also be an oblique reference to a line in Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers, as they are escaping the castle and the young man is attempting to comfort his love (whom they've just rescued from the vampires). As he attempts to keep her warm in the icy landscape, he makes this remark... the first real indication that she herself has now become a vampire and is about to, with their unwitting help, spread the plague throughout the world....

Given your comments on the telephone here......

J.D., your explanation sounds more likely although I am unfamiliar with the work you refer to.

"Marriage" (In "Tales of Love and Death"):

I've seen some reviewers describe this story as one of Aickman's more straightforward. It didn't strike me that way at all, I finished this story last night feeling as bemused as ever. It must have affected me quite deeply as I had an Aickmanesque inspired nightmare that night from which I awoke in cold sweats.

On the surface this is a tale about a sexually inexperienced man, who still lives with his mother, who starts dating a women he meets at the theatre, but begins having a sordid affair with her more attractive friend and room-mate.

The protagonist finds it increasingly difficult to juggle two relationships and the guilt and events culminate in a tragic (and possible fatal) accident to one of the women as he runs from the flat in a panic. He runs back home, to the comforting and safe bosom of his mother.

But as usual there are throwaway lines that don't seem to make much sense and look like clues to a deeper layer of meaning beneath the surface. Many comments seem like superfluous to the purposes of the story and yet may offer an insight into the heart of the story. What was the true nature of the relationship between the two women (with such similar names) Helen and Ellen?

When I awoke from my nightmare, the story popped straight back into my head and it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps Ellen was the embodiment of the protagonist's fantasising, a stark contrast from his dull, cold and conventional dates with Helen who always seemed so blank and devoid of emotion. Ellen was everything Helen wasn't; warm, sensuous and highly sexualised. His visions of seeing Helen everywhere, there watching he and Ellen, reflected his guilt and shame. His gradual laming a physical manifestation of his emotional trauma. When Helen finally tried to develop their relationship into something more intimate and physical, he couldn't handle it; the conflation of reality and his fantasies.

Seeing events in this light, it makes the ending all the more tragic. His abandoning of an attempt at a mature, adult relationship, his running back to mother, from who's comforting embrace one feels he is now unlikely ever to leave again.

Fried Egg said:

Anyway, I've just read another story (for the second time) called: "Your Tiny Hand is Frozen". I love this story and here are my thoughts on it:

[...]

I always thought this was a great name for a story but it gives us no clue to what lies within as far as I can see, unless it is an oblique reference to Nera's "still well formed hand" that clutched the bread knife in the final scene.

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Hi, I just stumbled across this thread/forum while searching for Aickman info. I too recently read the above story.

The title is actually the standard English translation of an aria from Puccini's opera La Bohème ('Che gelida manina' - I did not remember that off the top of my head), which, though never directly alluded to in the story, has some thematic similarities (tragic love, starving in garrets - no ghosts, though). The male protagonist of the opera is a poet; Teddie remarks that the emaciated Edmund resembles a poet, i.e. the tortured bohemian stereotype.

As for the death of Nera, I don't think it's clear from the story when (or even how) it took place. It's possible that she was alive during the earlier phase of their exchanges, but it's also possible that she was dead before they began. Not that it matters, of course - endings are hardly the point with Aickman.

Indeed, in this genre, whether we call it the 'ghost story', 'strange story', or 'weird tale', anticlimactic, spell-breaking endings are a recurring pitfall; Aickman generally avoids them by keeping things muted and ambiguous throughout (although things do go a bit grand guignol towards the end of 'The Trains', the previous story in Wine-Dark Sea). So much more effective, in my opinion, than the overblown hysteria of someone like Lovecraft, who tends to turn his prose up to 11, as it were.

P.S.* I realise it's probably slightly ill-advised to denigrate Lovecraft in one's first post on a horror forum, so I should clarify: I've got nothing against HPL really, but have never quite understood his titanic status within the genre. He strains so hard to convey the hideous unspeakable terror of everything that, for me as a reader, it just too often tips over into pantomime gothic. The only way I can really appreciate it is by reading it as a kind of psychological horror in which the most horrific thing is in fact the neurotic first-person narrator himself, apparently so paralytic with fear (of dark shadows, dark skins, old things, new things) as to be scarcely human. (I admit that I might be missing something, since as intelligent a scholar as S.T. Joshi has based his whole career around the man.)

In contrast, Aickman would seem to belong to a different literary universe, even though it shares some DNA with Lovecraft (almost all of the Edwardian writers cited in the 'Supernatural Horror' essay were subtler stylists than HPL). By eschewing capital 'H' Horror – an elusive emotional state for all but true neurotics and excitable occultists – he achieves a more refined sense of existential melancholy and unease with the world, as close to Kafka and Sartre as anything else.

* The 'edit' button seems to disappear after a certain interval.

Hi Sourdust, welcome to the forums and thank you for sharing your thoughts on that story as well as illuminating the origins of the title.

I have to say that I also prefer Aickman to Lovecraft although I like many of Lovecraft's stories a lot. I just don't think that Lovecraft's stories are of a consistently high standard, I find them quite variable in quality.

Anyway, if you are making your way through the "Wine-Dark Sea" collection, please share your thoughts on any of the other stories as you read them. I'm actually re-reading some of the stories in that collection and am in the middle of "Into The Wood" right now, possibly my favourite Aickman story.

Allow me to recommend Henry James's "The Friends of the Friends" (originally "The Way It Came") to Aickman fans. I'm not deeply read in James yet, but this strikes me as having affinities with some of Aickman's stories. It's a story about a man and a woman whom others think should meet, particularly because each of them had the paranormal experience of seeing a distant parent at the moment of the parent's death, but who somehow do not seem to be able to meet. There is some question at the end as regards whether they did at last or not. A first-person narrative. I'm already looking forward to reading it again, and I just read it yesterday.

It may be read here:

The Way it Came

I read it in the collection Leon Edel edited of the Ghostly Tales of Henry James.

Thanks for the recommendation, I do need to read some Henry James as I haven't gotten around to it yet. Perhaps that is the place to start.