albie
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 134
|
Post by albie on Mar 27, 2009 10:48:21 GMT
I've read almost everything he's done. He himself was cagey about any similarity between his writings and Aickman's. Seemed to be annoyed that he was compared, or that he was a fan. But you can't tell with Ligotti. I personally haven't put too much thought into it. They deal with crumbling reality. So much horror does. I would say Ligotti is a step on from Aickman, in an attempt to lay blame for the crumbling.
|
|
albie
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 134
|
Post by albie on Mar 26, 2009 13:03:46 GMT
|
|
albie
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 134
|
Post by albie on Mar 24, 2009 10:54:01 GMT
> Can you be specific? Which stories? "The Hospice", "The Swords", "The Same Dog", "The Trains", ...etc. THIS POST MAY CONTAIN SPOIERS. ALERT!!!!!!! The Hospice, I thought, was a fine tale. The others are so so. But, The Hospice is one of my top fave stories. If you can't get any chills out of that one then you are doomed never to like Aickman. The story suggests a place that is not quite real. That's the story behind all his fiction. It's the same monster each time: unreality. That's something best left to the imagination. But Aickman still gives you stuff to enjoy that's more apparent. Like the horrible guy he shares a room with. You could see the hospice as being his world, set up to give him what he wants; food and women, and whatever he does to them. He could be a ghost, he could be worse. It's not that there is no meaning, but lots of meanings; overlapping to create a greater fear. That's how I see his stuff working. If Aickman had no solid idea, it doesn't matter. We don't know if he did or not anyway. The swords is of the same ilk but lesser.
|
|
albie
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 134
|
Post by albie on Mar 23, 2009 11:44:07 GMT
And liver is foul. As is kidney, country music; most music, actually.
Shell suits, fedoras, leather trousers....(ten years later)...tinned garden peas, soap operas....
|
|
albie
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 134
|
Post by albie on Mar 23, 2009 11:42:24 GMT
>>A lot of Aickman's writing seems to me not just to not explain, but to suggest that there isn't an explanation - that Aickman himself couldn't "explain" what happens in the story.
Can you be specific? Which stories?
>>And I have to say I don't see the link from Aickman to Campbell -what I have read of Campbell's work has seemed to me to be very much at the opposite end of the spectrum to Aickman, i.e. "straight" horror with an obvious (though supernatural) explanation.
Then you must have stuck to the novels. Try reading THE COMPANION, a short story of his. He writes both kinds, but I find his best is the open ended stuff. He himself delights in the tales that he has written that remain a mystery to him. (if that makes sense) So, yeah, often these people do write stuff that that has no meaning ti even themselves. But they work for people. That's what matters.
|
|
albie
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 134
|
Post by albie on Mar 21, 2009 11:29:59 GMT
Well, I've gotten more out of weird stories than I have straightly plotted ones. But I enjoy both. As an amateur writer I know how hard it is to write a weird story. I could easily knock off dozens of straightly plotted ones, because it is basically repition of prexisting plots. I would suggest that we simply have different kinds of brain. You like to have it explained at the end, and get off on a linear sense of excitment. And I like the story to continue outside of the book, to suggest something about reality itself. Some people enjoy eating liver, you know? LIVER! I mean, if it was purely about confusion then Aickman and Campbell and others would always succeed in their fiction. But they don't. The art is not confusion, it is suggestion. Not everybody is open to suggestion. Which doesn't mean we Aickman fans are weak minded, I hope. Perhaps it means we are more perceptive rather than receptive. Not everyone will get a double entendre. If you are not filthy minded, you probably would think Carry On films were bad Ken Loach movies. I think we establish our tastes in horror and it can be hard to change track. Luckily I found Aickman early. The likes of Stephen King and Herbert just seem parochial to me.
|
|
albie
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 134
|
Post by albie on Mar 20, 2009 11:10:28 GMT
>>Favourite is probably "Pages from a Young Girls Journal" - always reminds me of "Carmilla", which is one of my all-time favourite stories.
His least weird work in my eyes. There is a clear distinction between the lover of the uncanny and the gothic story.
it would be interesting to know what forms that schism. Have you ever experienced oddness in your own life, I wonder? a mistrust of reality?
|
|
albie
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 134
|
Post by albie on Mar 17, 2009 11:30:09 GMT
The Pylon is a weird story, all right. Even more weirder when I found out Hartley was gay. If you've read the story you will know what I mean. He had balls to write it.
|
|
albie
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 134
|
Post by albie on Mar 17, 2009 11:27:35 GMT
Barker's stuff kind of withers with age, because it has no mystery to it. Even the cenobites are just weird perverts. Candyman is explained away, even though the explanation is odd.
But tales Aickman and Campbell and etc etc produce still have a mystery and a class to them. The majority of anthology tales are of a more violent, throwaway nature. But probably the statistics are skewed by the quantity of Pan books.
|
|
albie
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 134
|
Post by albie on Mar 16, 2009 12:31:58 GMT
I've got wood. In some book. That Aickman came from nowhere, as far as I'm concerned. Just where did he get the style from? The view? Whatever you call it. Some would say MR James. I don't know. I don't see it. I suppose originality gathersin increments, unseen, then the full object is revealed one day and we cannot see the roots of it.
|
|
albie
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 134
|
Post by albie on Mar 16, 2009 11:11:50 GMT
>>I was amused and pleased when he said to pick whichever was the cheapest!
I like him more and more, if that's possible. A giant of words.
|
|
albie
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 134
|
Post by albie on Mar 16, 2009 11:08:32 GMT
His general view of the world is what I read him for. The lucid fakery of reality itself, is as best as I can make it sound. I haven't read a writer who conjures up such an internal oddness. Nothing looks right, when he's doing it right. I don't even know if you could call it dreamlike. Only in a sense that things are wrong looking. Maybe I just have a tumor.
|
|
albie
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 134
|
Post by albie on Mar 16, 2009 11:04:00 GMT
Scared Stiff has its moments. Not many. But Loveman's Comeback is a grim story indeed. I haven't been that urged to read many more in that anthology, but I might one day.
I recall HORROR CAFE. Ramsey got a laugh when in the round robin he said "Meanwhile..." altering the run of the story.
|
|
albie
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 134
|
Post by albie on Mar 14, 2009 12:51:54 GMT
Obsession is a sketchy novel. I've read it a few times, because it vanishes from the memory. It gets better. I would choose INCARNATE everytime. It's the one most like his short stories.
|
|
albie
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 134
|
Post by albie on Mar 13, 2009 14:03:55 GMT
Brr. A serial killer novel written and published at the time of the Yorkshire Ripper killings. That took balls. And it has a character called Peter in it!
|
|