I was disappointed with the Oliver Onions selections but I guess nobody can write
The Beckoning Fair One every time...
The Asquith anthologies would go on to provide the backbone of the Aickman-edited
Fontana Ghost books thirty years later.
Dem's comments on
A Century Of Creepy Stories above, reminded me that I'd been meaning to write something about
The 3rd Fontana Book Of Great Ghost Stories for months now but never quite managed to summon up the necessary energy. Luckily, I see he's already done most of the hard work for me so I'll try and build on his review by taking a slightly different tack.
The 3rd Fontana Book Of Great Ghost Stories was the first anthology I'd read for a long, long time when I picked it up earlier this year. The thing with old anthologies, I feel, is that even if it's one you haven't seen before, there are more than likely going to be quite a few stories you've read elsewhere. Furthermore, if they're stories that have been anthologised widely, it's also likely that those are going to be some of the best stories. It's true that you'll come across the odd neglected classic now and then, and there's no harm at all in reacquainting yourself with old favourites, but I do find that old anthologies can lose much of their freshness as a result of this. That was my general feeling anyway when I started this.
I very much enjoyed the introduction by Robert Aickman, a writer who initially left me utterly bemused (I'm guessing that I'm not entirely alone in that) but who I've subsequently come to regard as totally beguiling and endlessly fascinating. I'd like to quote his introduction in its entirety but, for reasons of time and space (not in a cosmic sense), I'll try and be selective.
He suggests there are two good reasons for selecting a ghost story. The first reason I won't concern myself with here but the second one is this;
"the need to escape... from a mechanistic world, ever more definable, ever more predictable... As an antidote to daily living in a compulsorily egalitarian society, a good ghost story, against all appearances, can bring real joy."
I found this interesting because he might well be talking about his own work. He goes on to remind us that he believes "the successful ghost story is akin to poetry and seems to emerge from the same strata of the unconscious". Again this seems to echo what he was doing in his stories. Perhaps most telling is his assertion that the ghost story shouldn't be attempting to provide definitions and solutions, to 'close a door' as he puts it.
"On the contrary, it must open a door, preferably where no one had previously noticed a door to exist; and, at the end, leave it open, or, possibly, ajar."
I could go on, as indeed does he, but I think you see what I'm getting at with this. In fact, I think that not just with his introduction, but also with the stories he selects, Aickman puts a lot more of himself into this collection than other editors might do.
So what about these stories. His selections, as Dem has already pointed out, tend to be influenced by Cynthia Asquith's anthologies and similar collections produced several decades previously. There is something rather old-fashioned about the book as a whole, but certainly little of the quaint.
While reading this I kept thinking of some comments made on this board a while back by redbrain when he was reviewing, I think, one of the
Black Magic Omnibus volumes. Comments to the effect that many of the stories included weren't actually 'Black Magic' stories at all. I couldn't help thinking that, regardless of how great or otherwise they might be, many of the selections in this book weren't necessarily what I'd decribe as ghost stories.
However, they do, for the most part, meet the criteria laid out in Aickman's introduction; they provide an escape from the everyday, many of them have a poetic, dreamlike quality, and they ultimately pose more questions than they answer.
After all, a book of ghost stories isn't quite the same thing as a book of horror stories. A collection of Ghost stories may unsettle and disturb, may trouble the neck hairs, but if you're after visceral shocks and "sadistic thrills" then you might be better off with a different type of anthology or, as Aickman suggests, "A daily newspaper".
That said, E. F. Benson's 'Negotium Perambulans...' is easily the most 'horrific' story included here. No surprise that it's used to kick things off and no great surprise either that the whole of the blurb on the back is devoted to it, rather than some of the other, less grisly, offerings. Benson's 'monstrous slug as flail of the Lord' gem is unforgettable once read yet I was still more than happy to devour it again.
In his earlier review, Dem described W. Somerset Maugham's 'The End Of The Flight' as "slight". I can't really add much more to that. A man relates how he has been followed across much of Asia by a man (or presumably ghost) who he's previously wronged (presumably murdered) and then dies (presumably horribly) in his sleep. Well-written, as you might expect from Somerset Maugham, but not a tale that's ever likely to haunt either my sleeping or waking hours.
'The Beckoning Fair One' by Oliver Onions is third up to bat but the last story I read. Partly because it's the longest piece but mostly because I knew it of old and felt, quite wrongly as it turns out, that I was sufficiently familiar with it. The first couple of pages were exactly as I remembered but as I went on I became so immersed in the claustrophobic atmosphere, the little world, that Oliver Onions creates, that it really was like reading the story for the first time. Generally considered a classic and no arguments from me. How he manages to sustain such an essentially simple tale over seventy-odd pages is still remarkable. Truly haunting.
I can see why A. J. Alan's 'The Dream' would have appealed to Aickman. The somewhat surreal quality that parts of it have, and there are some nice ideas contained within, but Alan's chatty and sometimes snobbish style irritated me more than anything else. Dem has this one down as Alan's 'masterpiece' but I couldn't really get on with it at all.
Hugh MacDiarmid's 'The Stranger' is a very short and fairly strange piece, again with lots of Aickman appeal. A man walks into a pub...
Nice one.
'The Case Of Mr. Lucraft' by Sir Walter Bessant & James Rice is described by Aickman thus;
"If Bessant and Rice ever wrote anything better in the field, I have never found it".
My feelings are that if they ever wrote anything even worse than this, I certainly never want to read it. Dem didn't review this one and I don't blame him. Interminable tosh about some failed actor who sells his stomach to The Devil. Pish.
Next up, 'The Seventh Man' by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. Now this is what I call a ghost story. Wonderful atmosphere. Nicely drawn characters, who we join on a descent into feverish despair and spiritual madness all in and around a one-roomed cabin in the Arctic. Masterfully done.
Lady Eleanor Smith's 'No Ships Pass' is another one which is right up Aickman's alley. Very nice central idea. A disparate group of lost souls who fetch up on some deserted island where the only way to cope with the day-to-day tedium of existence is to empty your mind and just get on with it. You're not wrong, Lady Eleanor, you're not wrong. I was less convinced by the continual descriptions of the local flora than Aickman seems to have been, but the characters are fun, especially pirate Captain Micah Thunder, who's a delightfully unpleasant creation.
That's 'life'.
William Gerhardi's 'The Man Who Came Back' is another slight one. Not a great deal to it, but I'm sure we can all relate to the old man here who wants nothing more from life (or the afterlife) than sufficient time to enjoy his beloved books.
Which brings us finally to Robert Aickman's own contribution, 'The Visiting Star'.
Colvin is researching into lead and plumbago mining in some "drizzling and indifferent town" where he meets the once-great, and apparently ageless, actress Arabella Rokeby. He also encounters the bizarre Mr Superbus with his oddly heavy suitcases and... well, anyone who's ever tried to explain what a Robert Aickman story is 'about' will know that it's a fruitless task. Beautifully written. Quite unexplainable. Possibly unfathomable. Basically Aickman goes around opening previously unknown doors in your head and leaves them all slightly, just ever so slightly, ajar. He told you he would.
A mostly enjoyable collection. Some pleasant surprises amongst the stories I hadn't seen before and in the case of the more widely-anthologised tales, such as 'The Beckoning Fair One', Aickman is quite right. They're still a "real joy".
