Robert Aickman - Intrusions

[jonathan122]

Intrusions - Robert Aickman (Gollancz 1980)

Hand in Glove
No Time is Passing
The Fetch
The Breakthrough
The Next Glade
Letters to the Postman

The last book to be published by Aickman before his death, this is a fine swan-song for one of Britain's greatest horror writers. "The Fetch" and "The Next Glade" certainly rank amongst his best stories, whilst the multiple apparitions in "The Breakthrough" are particularly disturbing, even if the ending of the story seems slightly unsatisfactory. Elsewhere, "Hand in Glove" offers the rare chance to see Aickman doing a Ramsey Campbell impersonation, under guise of a title nicked from Elizabeth Bowen, and "Letters to the Postman" is the sort of charming fantasy which few other authors could get away with.

[lobolover]

In this weeks edition of Lobo's "Bitch and moan about lowest selling prices of books ridiculously recent to warrant them" corner

www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=1279043546&searchurl=kn%3DAickman%26sortby%3D3%26tn%3DIntrusions%26x%3D0%26y%3D0

The most pricey edition is signed by Aickman, okay, but what reason does this seller have ?

www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=67009484&searchurl=kn%3DAickman%26sortby%3D3%26tn%3DIntrusions%26x%3D0%26y%3D0

Do these things even sell ?

[weirdmonger]

THE FETCH by Robert Aickman

“Her lips were like dark rose petals, as one imagines them, or sometimes dreams of them.”

…being the polypetalous lips of one of Brodick’s women, a different woman in his life later, as women often do, ‘materializing in one’s rose garden.’ Most of us have already been fetched by the Aickwoman in this work at least once and if you are reading this review have successfully resisted it, but now it has happened to me for a second time, although I have for years blocked this work so as to prevent future approaches by the one who fetches. The one who needs to be let in so as to fulfil its fetching. On one occasion, leaving a trail of residue that “reeked of seabed mortality […] slimy-sleek head, always faceless…” Brodick Leith is our diversionary magnet or decoy here, the son of a Scottish judge, a father who terrified him, and Brodick eventually inherits a hard-to-reach house in the Scottish wilds with a so-called tower, and antlers and ‘death pictures’ on its walls, “stags exaggeratedly virile”, and “Dust was settling everywhere, even in that remote spot” — “the most burdensome and most futile of houses, so futile as to be sinister…” Brodick who, as a small boy, was in an implied relationship with the soft-body of his mother whom he loved. And his mother’s fetch one day fetched her, the fetch having arrived along what I myself recall, in my own life, as a dark landing of some large house where I lived at the time, such unknown figures often appearing there, whether dream or not. Brodick becomes a banker not the ‘weaver of dreams’ he wanted to be. He had a series of women, often seeking one to give him a child, women whom we believe in, because of the various quirks of their relationships with him, including a small black girl, a “rococo cherub”, called Aline (“her mouth full of prunes”), all of these women arguably fraught and then fetched or fetchable, eventually Brodick himself being fetched or is, even now, still fetchable in that most futile of all houses, if this work is to be fully believed. A work that attritionally progresses with a rambling, but nicely styled, narration of patient restraint. Most women are fetching in their own different ways, I guess, and in the shades of different meanings of the word ‘fetching’ itself. Don’t think Aickman, however, used the word ‘fetch’ even once in this work, except in the title, otherwise detachable from the story itself! One of Brodick’s women wrote a secret book, but is his later revelation of its contents true or a diversionary tactic? The parallel lift shafts, unlike Selfridges’ lifts, without women attendants to work them from inside, in a block of flats where he lives with one of his women. Oh to be as writerly as Sir Walter Scott, then we would have no doubts as to the meaning of this work. On the other hand, perhaps best never to be certain. Eugene O’Neill and Sartre’s Huis Clos, notwithstanding.

“Men chase the same women again and again; or rather the same illusion; or rather the same lost part of themselves.”

[helrunar]

That's a gorgeous dust jacket, WeirdMonger! I learned some interesting facts about Mr A from the back cover text, too.

I have to confess I've only ever read one story by Mr A. I'm not sure I got the required gene needed to embrace his work, but perhaps someday I'll make another sally into that dark and tangled thicket. We had a thread on here somewhere with people discussing their experiences reading Aickman's work. There were at least a couple who said "I read the story then wondered what had happened in it? Had anything happened in it?" 

Mr A makes me think of that tiresome old Malcolm Muggeridge's notorious comment about the Deity--"a riddle wrapped in an enigma, swaddled in mystery." Or something like that. I first head of Mr A and several other authors discussed in these delightfully cobwebbed halls via a youtube video of Mr Valentine discussing his library whilst one of his cats made it clear that S/He was the TRUE owner of ALL.

cheers, H.

[helrunar]

By the way, kudos from me (for what it's worth) on your own writing. Really rather magnificent.

Thanks for writing about  "The Fetch"--I was curious whether it had anything to do with the old folklore about a part of the human etheric anatomy known by the name of the Fetch? This lore is found in numerous parts of Europe--I think all parts, really, but I haven't read widely enough to make that statement definitively--and has been the subject of a number of intriguing horror tales (one of Manly Wade Wellman's Silver John stories comes to mind as I write this--I think it was the very first one he wrote, in fact). 

Your closing quote:

“Men chase the same women again and again; or rather the same illusion; or rather the same lost part of themselves.”

--makes me wonder if Aickman was a fan of Robert Graves' prophetic text The White Goddess.

cheers, H.

[helrunar]

Hi Lobolover,

You inquired:

The most pricey edition is signed by Aickman, okay, but what reason does this seller have ?

(Sorry to quote in this unorthodox matter; it seems my "operating system" doesn't "support" the Proboards quote protocol)

Neither of the links you posted worked for me--Abe said "I'm sorry, but what you are looking for doesn't exist." But we've discussed the practice of bookjacking on here in the past, which is the thing where you find a copy of the 13th Pan Book of Carnal Knowledge priced at $499 on a popular retail site's "vendor" section or similar. 

These prices seem to be generated by robots. If you try to buy it, apparently the seller will contact you and offer to find a copy at the stated price. At least, that is my understanding--I'm not independently wealthy and have never been nuts enough to want to throw away that kind of cash on a book. 

Abebooks is generally better than the popular retail sites in terms of pricing--ie. one tends to see more realistic prices, but even there I've seen books priced way higher than anything like an objective standard of value. In the old days, as some here will recall, price listings for used books of various categories and genres used to be issued annually (or perhaps less frequently)--same for old records. But I think those days are gone forever.

cheers, Hel

[weirdmonger]

Thanks, H, for your kind comments. I imagine Aickman would have read the Robert Graves book.

My subsequent reading and reviewing of TIME IS NOT PASSING is below, a story that immediately precedes THE FETCH in ‘Intrusions’.

======

NO TIME IS PASSING by Robert Aickman


“One does not turn aside from angels in order to count dustbins.”

That sense of time stopping and then starting again, whatever the constraints of Zeno’s Paradox. A remarkable opening you will not forget (of a man unexpectedly finding a river or creek at the bottom of his garden and sailing its ‘saline and sullen’ waters in a shallop or dory) but a gradual denouement that you probably will forget, as I have just done, forgotten too quickly even for a real-time review.
“Busy people have no time for twilight,” nor for endings.
A text I somehow recall as full of semi-colons. And prunes like those of Aline.

[weirdmonger]

Below are the Aickman stories I have recently re-visited in detail, as posted elsewhere on VAULT.
If I should die tomorrow, which other Aickman story should I squeeze in before I do!?


The Inner Room

The Trains

Meeting Mr. Millar

The Visiting Star

Residents Only

THE SWORDS

THE CICERONES

THE SAME DOG

THE HOUSES OF THE RUSSIANS

RINGING THE CHANGES

THE WAITING ROOM

THE STAINS

WOOD

INTO THE WOOD

THE FETCH

NO TIME IS PASSING

MARRIAGE

GROWING BOYs

RAvissante

PAGES FROM A YOUNG GIRL’S JOURNAL

THE UNSETTLED DUST

[cauldronbrewer]

Jul 27, 2021 17:00:03 GMT weirdmonger said:

Below are the Aickman stories I have recently re-visited in detail, as posted elsewhere on VAULT.
If I should die tomorrow, which other Aickman story should I squeeze in before I do!?

Of the ones not listed above, "The Hospice" would be my pick.

[weirdmonger]

Jul 27, 2021 17:07:08 GMT cauldronbrewer said:

Jul 27, 2021 17:00:03 GMT weirdmonger said:

Below are the Aickman stories I have recently re-visited in detail, as posted elsewhere on VAULT.
If I should die tomorrow, which other Aickman story should I squeeze in before I do!?

Of the ones not listed above, "The Hospice" would be my pick.

Thanks so much.
What an omission in my list! — although I have reviewed it twice in detail a few years ago!

[Middoth]

For me as non english-speaker "Meeting Mr. Millar" is highly troublesome for reading. Some choice of expressions is truly enigmatic:

He was at all times well dressed; at all times noticeably so, but not in a pejorative sense, except, conceivably, for such details as the suède shoes I have mentioned (he was wearing a townsman's country suit with them

Up to a point the explanation was obvious enough: in those days, and before Mr R. A. Butler's famous Act, there were streets in the immediate area where it was far easier to pick up a woman and do what you liked to her than to pick up a taxi.

'Well then,' said the man; but as if he were offhandedly agreeing to take no exception to a slight. He stared at me hard:

In the end, and inevitably, I met, or at least encountered some of Mr Millar's late visitors; on the doorstep, or surging upwards with Mr Millar in the midst...apprehending me and making way for me, drawing the others back, all as if with his pineal gland.

All of these moments are skipped in Russian translation.

The story tself one of the first examples of Corporate Horror

[Jojo Lapin X]

"A townsman's country suit:" something a man who lives in a city puts on when he visits the countryside. Suede shoes, being very delicate and easily stained, are obviously not appropriate for country wear, and hence do not go along with such a suit.

[Middoth]

Jul 27, 2021 17:00:03 GMT weirdmonger said:

If I should die tomorrow, which other Aickman story should I squeeze in before I do!?

"The Breakthrough"?

[helrunar]

Hi Middoth,

Mr Lapin X already explained about a "townsman's country suit." Others:

Up to a point the explanation was obvious enough: in those days, and before Mr R. A. Butler's famous Act, there were streets in the immediate area where it was far easier to pick up a woman and do what you liked to her than to pick up a taxi.

R. A. Butler was best known for the Education Act of 1944. So the significance of this reference is obscure to me. 


'Well then,' said the man; but as if he were offhandedly agreeing to take no exception to a slight. He stared at me hard:

A "slight" is an insult. I have a very young friend who actually uses the phrase "Well then" in precisely the manner described.


In the end, and inevitably, I met, or at least encountered some of Mr Millar's late visitors; on the doorstep, or surging upwards with Mr Millar in the midst...apprehending me and making way for me, drawing the others back, all as if with his pineal gland.

The pineal gland is considered by many modern authorities to be the physical basis or corresponding glandular center to the ajna chakra or "third eye" described in the scriptures of ancient yoga. It is an important chakra in traditional teaching. The actual meaning of the passage is that the man was using sheer force of will (willpower) to make the people move out of the way.

I hope this is helpful. 

Best, Hel

[Dr Strange]

Jul 27, 2021 17:32:59 GMT Middoth said:

"in those days, and before Mr R. A. Butler's famous Act, there were streets in the immediate area where it was far easier to pick up a woman and do what you liked to her than to pick up a taxi."

As Home Secretary, Butler introduced the 1959 Street Offences Act that aimed to crack down on street prostitution by increasing the penalties for soliciting.