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Post by Knygathin on May 23, 2012 23:41:05 GMT
Afterwards I was reeling, and felt as if walking in a fever dream. Something tells me this is not an infrequent occurrence. Oh I would say I am quite stable after all.
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Post by Knygathin on May 23, 2012 19:30:59 GMT
AOS (Yoji Kuri, 1964) is a black & white animated short film about nightmarish demonic little figures and their strange activities around a box. The first time I saw this was at a film festival in the mid 1980's. It played on a big screen, with very high volume. I was horrified, and almost had to rise and leave. Afterwards I was reeling, and felt as if walking in a fever dream. Seeing it again now at Youtube, strangely, it doesn't affect me in the same way at all. Perhaps because the lack of theatre screen, and volume effect. Or maybe because I have become grownup, and jaded. Or the world has changed its perspective. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JWuRnqE-2kThe Midnight Parasites (Yoji Kuri, 1972) is inspired by the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, and has many bizarre and disturbing images. www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtW_0rUUmKI
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Post by Knygathin on May 22, 2012 17:55:11 GMT
I once had a "friend" over, who was non-intellectual, and seemed to have an inferiority complex, because he got annoyed by all my books. He grabbed a paperback from the shelf, saying "And what's THIS?", reading the title out loud in a condescending manner. Then he opened the book with his carpenter's fists, and cracked the spine in one go.
As you may well imagine, I never invited him again.
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Post by Knygathin on May 18, 2012 23:19:44 GMT
Starting this thread has enriched, or delved deeper into, my memory. I remember more clearly now, for the first time in all those years since I rode that ghost train, . . . details reappearing.
In the last section of the ghost train, the track went through a straight corridor for maybe 10 meters, right alongside a great dinosaur skeleton painted in luminescent paint on the wall. This corridor was not really dark, but had a kind of simple twilight atmosphere of reeking Paleocene. By the end of the dinosaur's neck the car turned 90 degrees left round a corner, and there was the giant dinosaur skeleton head tilting towards you (just before the exit portal banged open into the daylight). Clearly the best part of the ride, it was not too bad actually, and effectively delivered an illusion by inexpensive means.
Strange how this ghost train is all gone now. Erased out of history. I don't know if I find it sad, or what. Maybe joyful. . . I still carry it in my mind.
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Post by Knygathin on May 15, 2012 19:50:19 GMT
Tales of Misery is perhaps be the most appropriate title for a Poe collection. That is his chosen field, isn't it after all? The imaginative in his stories is used symbolically, as a tool to describe human suffering.
No other author I have read, writes so artistically powerful and clearly defined prose. He pinpoints the quitessence of the human condition, and even seems to command the river source itself of reality. Seeing through life, and drawing out of it the most perfect symbols. He is the ultimate of all prose artists. It goes beyond the superficially intellectual, transcends the outer elements of his story structures. Other authors may have really fine or subtle styles . . . even be more sophisticated or intellectually complicated . . . more colourfully imaginative and enjoyable in their ecstatic explorations of the fantastic . . . but comparatively, they are still exploring and fumbling about like blind men. They have not grabbed the Source, and become masters of it, like Poe.
His wide forehead. Perhaps Poe really had a larger brain than other mortals?
I wish other authors, with interests closer to my own (the pagan ecstasy and beauty of supernatural forces in Nature, explorations of the weird and the cosmic) could write with such essence as Poe. But perhaps that is impossible, perhaps manifested life ultimately means misery, and that humans as such only can, by tapping into themselves, describe their own condition with such artistic power. Not possible for some vaguely imagined Nature force, supernatural spiritual condition, or life in outer space.
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Post by Knygathin on May 13, 2012 13:38:03 GMT
Would anyone enjoy give a synopsis of what the spookiness or strangeness in "Wood" is about? To see if its subject stirs up some part of my soul, enough to make it worthwhile chasing after another anthology collection for it. There is not much space left on my book-shelves, . . . even less time for reading all.
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Post by Knygathin on May 12, 2012 9:14:48 GMT
Is this the same story as "Into the Wood"?
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Post by Knygathin on May 12, 2012 0:10:03 GMT
Which story was it? Others might disagree with me, but I find Aickman to have written many different kinds of stories (not all of which I've enjoyed) - some are relatively straight-forward, some are (to me) extremely obtuse. It was "The Swords". I have also peeked a bit into a few other stories. In two ways he reminds me of Lovecraft; Lovecraft theorized that a good weird story, to pull the reader into its spell, first needs to build up a setting of believability by using convincing mundane details. Lovecraft did this really well, but it appears to me that Aickman is even better at it. He does it so well that it's hard to know if the story has actually started, or if he is still just chatting with the reader over preliminary circumstances to the story before it begins; he creates havoc between reality and fiction, making a very convincing illusion by using oddly unique, and seemingly haphazard situations not possibly invented and constructed (which therefore appear realistic). The second way he is similar to Lovecraft is that the milieu descriptions are not simply materialistically presented settings for the story, but are simultaneously filled with symbolic or larger perspective meaning. He understands the correlation between inner and outer reality. In the case of Charles Birkin I don't know. I want quality literature, by great minds. That's the most important guideline for me. Not light or speculative entertainment; then I might as well turn on the abominable TV. It is unlikely that you will see anything on television that resembles the work of Birkin, unless it is a public safety message. My interest is whether Birkin's fiction is speculative and light entertainment, or if it is more profound writing by a great mind. Do his descriptions surrounding the disturbing settings go beyond the trite? I am not implying that a writer necessarily is bad because of moral decadence and repulsive preferences. (Like most journalists and critics of today do, judging the quality of a work simply by its degree of political correctness). He can still have artistic integrity.
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Post by Knygathin on May 11, 2012 21:53:12 GMT
You might have been surprised. In person Robert was very civilised and (in my experience) anything but confrontational. Hugh Lamb is rather further to the left politically than I am, but got on with Robert very well, though he certainly didn't share his politics. Hello Ramsey, I believe you that Robert Aickman was civilised. He looks that way. Well dressed. Academic and architect. I may well be wrong, and perhaps would have got along fine with him; I'm sure he was interesting, in any case. To me there is something eccentric about his appearance on photos. Energy seething under the surface. Elizabeth Jane Howard says he had problems getting along with men and could snap into a rage.
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Post by Knygathin on May 11, 2012 10:49:01 GMT
Only one story by Aickman, which I enjoyed ultimately. I will continue with him after other books on my reading list. I am currently engulfed in masterful Nathaniel Hawthorne. Reading criticism, and listening to suggestions from readers on the Internet, has led to some of the best reading experiences of my life. And, after a round of suggestions well considered, each time, this approach has never failed me. When I was younger and had no similar guidance, I had to wade through piles of hogwash, gaudy garbage, to find a few glimmering genuine nuggets here and there. If possible, I wish to avoid wasting more time like that. You Jojo Lapin X led me, perhaps indirectly, to Robert Aickman. Thank you! He was an unlikely prospect, that I wouldn't have touched, if not overcoming my initial lack of attraction, and repellence to his aura. I imagine, if meeting him, that a heated, and possibly nasty conflict of personalities would have started immediately. Not so much a case of differing opinions, as of his eccentricity and emotional high-strung. My previous habit has been to choose authors with personalities I like, or whose opinions and perspectives I sympathize with and share. But it is exciting to overcome such primitive barriers, and widen the horizons. Read the ones you "dislike". It will temperate one's opinions, and even deepen them. I recently discovered a female author, feminist, communist, homosexual. Far from me. But she is interesting. In the case of Charles Birkin I don't know. I want quality literature, by great minds. That's the most important guideline for me. Not light or speculative entertainment; then I might as well turn on the abominable TV.
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Post by Knygathin on May 10, 2012 19:36:11 GMT
After this thread, for some reason, annoyingly, I think of Robert Aickman and Charles Birkin in the same breath, bundling them together. Is there any rationale for that?
I guess it's because they are of the same generation, both educated into another profession than that of writing, and both had, more or less, a provocative anti-social personality.
Is one a greater writer than the other?
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Post by Knygathin on Apr 25, 2012 15:46:24 GMT
Do you have memories of details from ghost trains?
Reading Campbell's "The Companion" I recollected a ghost train from my childhood.
When I was about twelve, by the end of sixth grade, I went with some classmates (before parting for good) to an amusement park, Liseberg in Gothenburg. There was a ghost train there called the "Blue Train" (long since gone, along with the tall wooden roller coaster that stood behind it). When I was younger and rode "Blue Train", it was scary. But at twelve we were more curious how things in it worked, and at the same time, I would guess, annoyed at the ordering officiousness of the young adults running it. And overly excited as we kids were these last moments together, perhaps some of my behaviour inside the "Blue train" may be, at least partly excused: The cars were shaped like big beetles, with ample room for two. I rode alone in mine. Once past the first portal, the car stopped and everything shook and rattled as though you were going down an elevator. Honestly I don't remember much of the "spooky" things that stood in the dark by the sides of the curving track, probably because they really were pretty much garbage. Everything glowed with luminosity. I vaguely think there was a witches's coven (or that may be too good to be true). Towards the end I distinctly remember a volcanic landscape, with lava pits; and I wondered how the lava was made, so I jumped out of the car and ran toward the pits . . . but the car was disappearing and I had to chase after it, . . . grabbing it so it tilted over and sparks spurted from underneath, but I managed to get inside with a big relief. Just at the end, before the final portal opening onto daylight, a big luminous dinosaur head tilted towards you as the car approached . . . I slided to my back on the seat, with my legs in the air and gave it a kick on the cheek so the head bobbed back and forth. Once out in the sunshine on the pavement, we were naturally in a hysterics of excitement and laughter. Youthful sins.
The only other ghost train I have been on was at Disney World, and it was naturally very impressive. I especially remember a three-dimensional tombstone head of a man that was talking, and an eerie miniature ghostly lady. I could never figure out how they did those.
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Post by Knygathin on Apr 14, 2012 6:16:02 GMT
But ooh, how I wish now I could have had The Hanging Tree, after all! Standing next to the Guillotine. It would have been so much fun! Alas.
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Post by Knygathin on Apr 14, 2012 6:10:25 GMT
. . . And look what a fine, well-adjusted adult I have turned into. I mean, I am not in prison or anything. With only a few odd posts now and then. He he. Well, I don't believe socially aberrant behaviour can come from the toys played with. Disturbances lie much deeper. The pistols and war toys so popular in those days were not damaging, at least not to me. They were relief of tension, and satisfied curiosity that otherwise would have clung on into maturity.
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Post by Knygathin on Apr 13, 2012 18:11:32 GMT
. . . I wonder if the rope would have been included in the Hang Tree Imagine a little kid, obsessively raising and lowering . . . excitedly experimenting with the best knots and branches to tie onto. Completely lost in a fit, even refusing to come and eat dinner. It was probably all for the best that this wasn't produced. I am not sure why, but I find this piece far more horrible than the Guillotine. No parent would give The Electric Chair or The Hanging Tree to their child for birthday-present . . . only in the twilight zone.
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