Master of the Strange

Aickman, Robert. Robert Aickman: The Collected Strange Stories. 2nd ed. London: Tartarus Press, 2001. 2 vols. 868 p.

Robert Aickman, a British short story writer best known for his strange stories which infuse magical realism with dark fantasy and gothic horror, wrote only forty-eight tales. Not too surprisingly, this softspoken British Civil Servant is probably the best horror/dark fantasy/weird tale writer that most people have never heard of. Nonetheless, he has managed to make enough of an impression on the literary and publishing world that his works are continually collected and anthologized. Recently, Tartarus Press and Durtro Press did a great favor for horror fans, as well as for the literary world in general, with the publication of Robert Aickman: The Collected Strange Stories, a two volume onmibus. This wonderful collection contains the full contents of all of Aickman's short fiction collections, namely We Are for the Dark: Six Ghost Stories (1951), Dark Entries (1964), Powers of Darkness (1966), Sub Rosa (1968), Cold Hand in Mine: Eight Strange Stories (1975), Tales of Love and Death (1977), Painted Devils: Strange Stories (1979), Intrusions: Strange Tales (1980), Night Voices: Strange Stories (1985), The Wine-Dark Sea (1988) and The Unsettled Dust (1990).

Tartarus Press took a good bit of flak for its decision to limit the collection to two volumes instead of three, and for its choice of such a small font (and for its inclusion of some 50 typos in the first edition). Indeed, these poor decisions cheapen what would normally be a book collector's (especially one in the genre) dream. Regardless, fans of the weird tale and of the traditional ghost tale will rejoice in its decision to make virtually all of Aickman's work accessible, as his individual publications are often difficult to find. In addition to the forty-eight stories themselves, the 2nd Edition includes essays by David Tibet and Ramsey Campbell, as well as Aickman's 1976 acceptance speech upon winning the award for Best Short Work for the vampire story "Pages From a Young Girl's Journal."

Despite his lack of name recognition in the world of the average horror fan, Aickman has long been considered a modern master of the English ghost story, writing in the tradition of Joseph Sheridan LeFanu and M. R. James. Miriam Greenspan of Library Journal sums Aickman's style as one that "allows events to build little by little until the mood becomes overwhelmingly eerie," a phrase which describes work of traditional favorites such as M. R. James and Oliver Onions (whose ouevre has also been collected by Tartarus Press, with a new edition planned for 2003). Even as early as his first few tales in We Are for the Dark, Aickman's fictions possess a sense of coherence and unity, reading like extended dark metaphorical flights of whimsical quirkiness. Aickman's clever turn of a phrase and use of metaphor-turned-metamorphosis can be seen in his earliest work, "The Trains," where two young female hitchhikers find themselves lost near a country house and a busy railway hub. The trains, with their constant coming and going, become a metaphor for the girls' confused states of mind. They encounter what may or may not be a ghost, and are never quite sure just what they have experienced.

Also included in this collection is one of Aickman's most memorable tales, and one of my personal favorites, "The View." In this wonderful story, a civil servant / amateur painter named Carfax visits an Irish mansion on an isolated island, only to find that the landscape constantly changes before his eyes (what a nightmare for a landscape artist!), with the urban city encroaching daily. Here, through the compression of time, Aickman examines both its fluidity and the human perception of it. Whether Carfax, or the island (and its master, an enigmatic woman named Ariel) exists in a different dimension of time than do normal humans is unclear, and to some extent, unimportant, as Aickman's Rip Van Winkle ending is both poignant and sad. As in many of his stories, Aickman here leaves the reader with more questions than answers, having enjoyed the ride no less because of the uncertain destination.

Overall, this collection attests to the fact that Aickman rarely writes about traditional ghosts, vampires, or ghouls, or more accurately, rarely does he treat his supernatural subjects in traditional ways. Rather, he creates these horror types anew, often presenting them as half paranormal, half metamorphic manifestation of his characters' psychological states. If he does have a weakness, it is that he always attempts to have it both ways, and sometimes readers are left feeling as if they've just missed an inside joke.

Aside from open endings, the resistance to sure interpretation, and the erudite, neo-Victorian quality of the prose, the other defining trait of Aickman's stories is the lack of violence and the total absence of gore, which will appeal to fans of classic horror. This can be seen in another early tale, "Ringing the Changes," from Dark Entries. A newly married couple (the man is 30 years the senior of his wife) honeymoons at a small seaside town where the church bells ring incessantly, in order to literally wake the dead. Here, Aickman fuses sex and death as the younger wife discovers a fierce sexuality as a result of her encounter, and this awakening threatens the marriage itself. Regardless of the necessity of presenting zombies as somewhat repulsive, Aickman limits the gore to just a few references to the smell of decay, and one obtuse reference to something "squishy" being stepped on accidentally. And again, Aickman choses an open ending for the tale, as the fate of the couple is never made quite clear--nor is the relationship between their marriage and the waking dead made clear (although this reader seems to think her dancing with the dead is a commentary on her choosing a partner so much older than herself). As most typical Aickman stories, "Ringing the Changes" is about effect, rather than about producing a linear narrative.

In general, Aickman's tales are preoccupied with finding both the wonderous and the unsettling qualities of ordinary existence, the latter exemplified by characters who are imprisoned in their memories and perceptions. These character's fears, often sexual in nature, metamorphose into grotesqueries, such as in "Ravissante," from Sub Rosa, and "The Swords," from Cold Hand in Mine. In the former, a young man is confronted by a crone like figure who threatens his masculinity with a pair of scissors, and in the latter, a young man becomes infatuated with a female freak show performer who allows men to pass swords through her. In the end, he is allowed by her manager to have sex with her, only to pull her arms off by accident. Likewise, in his later fiction, in a story which is somewhat autobiographical in nature, as it confronts Aickman's recurring cancer metaphorically, he creates a maiden-as-Death character. Though not grotesque physically, Nell in "The Stains" (Night Voices) is associated with grotesque imagery, as her home is described as a tomb-like cave. In one of the more grotesque moments in Aickman's fiction, the moldy stains in the cave's walls eventually infect the protagonist and begin covering his body as well, as he courts Nell. "The Stains" is much more traditional, much less ambiguous than most of Aickman's stories because at the end, the protagonist's body is found in an advanced degree of decomposition, and his car is rusted beyond recognition, implying that his death may have actually occurred upon his first meeting with Nell, early on in the story which he narrates.

Of the more traditional type of horror is "The Fetch" (Intrusions), which is the story of Brodick Leith, who as a young boy grew up with a deathly fear of his father, which was rivaled by his dependence on his mother. His mother, however, is often ill, and while she is on her deathbed, she is visited by her doppelganger, the witch-like carlin. The auld carlin, commonly known as the fetch, is a crone figure of Scottish folklore who visits the living when they are to meet their death. But even after her death, Brodick's mother fixation never disappears: It causes him to dislike his stepmother when his father decides to remarry, and it causes his marriage his first wife to fall apart. The fetch reappears at the end of the story to collect Brodick, right after he has an argument with his present wife, who has left him as well.

The themes of time/loss, death, and sex, are the major concerns that can be found throughout Aickman's fiction, as is the nature of heterosexual relationships and sexuality. Stories such as "No Stronger Than a Flower," "Marriage," and "The Wine-Dark Sea" examine the changes that the sexual revolution, gender equality, and covert lesbianism/bisexuality usher into patriarchal society. "No Stronger Than a Flower" (Sub Rosa) is a masterful vignette wherein a young, submissive wife, after a visit to a Dr. De Milo, is transformed into a being composed of mainly wild hair and long, sharp nails. In the end, she attacks her husband like a threatened beast when he corners her. In "Marriage" (Painted Devils), a middle-aged bachelor finds himself involved in a surreal threesome with two women who symbolize the Western virgin-whore dichotomy. Ultimately, he cannot handle the sexuality of either, and finds himself crawling into bed with his mother. "The Wine-Dark Sea" deals with sexuality and gender in a much broader sense: the male narrator finds himself marooned on an island paradise with three goddess figures. He is able to live in harmony with them, until he accidentally kills one of the island's creatures.

Aickman's weird tales are a marriage of the E. T. A. Hoffmann/Edgar Allan Poe school of the grotesque and the Jamesian psychological horror tale--mixed with a little Hawthornesque romanticism. Peter Straub, in his introduction to Aickman's The Wine-Dark Sea, asserts that Aickman, who has heretofore been pigeonholed as a horror writer, cannot be categorized at all because he "uses almost none of the conventional imagery of horror" and his aim is not to invoke fear of the supernatural, the monstrous, or the unknown, but to show that ". . . ordinary life can be horrific and tedious at once."

Ultimately, what makes Aickman so fascinating is that he is impossible to categorize, and therefore his stories are difficult to predict. Personally, I prefer not to be able to guess the ending of a tale after only a few pages, which makes Aickman's brand of non-formulaic structure and imagery a good match for me. If nothing else, he is as unique in his vision as he is in his subject matter. That is what makes this little known author worthy of the word "master." And that is what makes his tales modern classics.

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