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The Attempted Rescue
Sewn hardback printed and bound by the Atheneum Press in burgundy wibalin cloth with head and tailband and silk ribbon marker.
500 copies.
Contents:
Foreword by Jeremy Dyson
Proem/ The Misty Giants/ I Loom/ I am Born and Immediately Fall Ill/ My Father’s History and Disposition/ My Father’s Life as a Displaced Person/ I Begin to Read the Classics/ I First Realize Myself/ I Assume a Mask/ Mixed Friends/ Relatives are All Alike/ Relatives as Divinities. I. Their Domain/ Relatives as Divinities. II. Their Mores/ Splendours and Miseries of Childhood/ My Struggles at Schools. I. The Dames and the Prep/ My First Projects for a Better World/ My Struggles at Schools. II. The Big House/ The Illnesses and the Flights (I)/ My Second Projects for a Better World/ The Illnesses and the Flights (II)/ I Suffer from Loneliness/ The Great Flower of Light/ The Poet and the King/ Deaths of the Divine Relatives/ A Distant Star/ I Love and Lose/ Tableau.
This is the provocative and very literary autobiography of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers of ghost stories.
The Attempted Rescue was first published by Gollancz, 1966.
500 copies.
Contents:
Foreword by Jeremy Dyson
Proem/ The Misty Giants/ I Loom/ I am Born and Immediately Fall Ill/ My Father’s History and Disposition/ My Father’s Life as a Displaced Person/ I Begin to Read the Classics/ I First Realize Myself/ I Assume a Mask/ Mixed Friends/ Relatives are All Alike/ Relatives as Divinities. I. Their Domain/ Relatives as Divinities. II. Their Mores/ Splendours and Miseries of Childhood/ My Struggles at Schools. I. The Dames and the Prep/ My First Projects for a Better World/ My Struggles at Schools. II. The Big House/ The Illnesses and the Flights (I)/ My Second Projects for a Better World/ The Illnesses and the Flights (II)/ I Suffer from Loneliness/ The Great Flower of Light/ The Poet and the King/ Deaths of the Divine Relatives/ A Distant Star/ I Love and Lose/ Tableau.
This is the provocative and very literary autobiography of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers of ghost stories.
The Attempted Rescue was first published by Gollancz, 1966.
223 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1966
About the author
Robert Aickman
154 books547 followersAuthor of: close to 50 "strange stories" in the weird-tale and ghost-story traditions, two novels (The Late Breakfasters and The Model), two volumes of memoir (The Attempted Rescue and The River Runs Uphill), and two books on the canals of England (Know Your Waterways and The Story of Our Inland Waterways).
Co-founder and longtime president of the Inland Waterways Association, an organization that in the middle of the 20th century restored a great part of England's deteriorating system of canals, now a major draw for recreation nationally and for tourism internationally.
Grandson of author Richard Marsh.
Co-founder and longtime president of the Inland Waterways Association, an organization that in the middle of the 20th century restored a great part of England's deteriorating system of canals, now a major draw for recreation nationally and for tourism internationally.
Grandson of author Richard Marsh.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 6, 2019
This review was previously posted on the Side Real Press website in 2011.
This is Robert Aickmans autobiography and covers the period from birth to approximately 1940. I imagine most reading this review will know of Aickman but, very briefly, he is best known in literary circles for his enigmatic 'strange' stories which really are very odd, in the best possible way, and well worth discovering.
On first reading one would think Aickman to have been an Edwardian child - he was in fact born 1914 - as his memoirs abound with anecdotes concerning aunts, uncles and family friends that might have walked from the pages any high Victorian novel, or perhaps more accurately, a story by Saki. And what anecdotes! Flip the pages at random and virtually every one will reveal some strange incident that might well, and at times no doubt did, find its way into Aickmans own stories. Page 59, and he hears his first radio play about the devil (on headphones, alone ) which terrifies him; p.67 an uncle drives his car deliberately into a steamroller because it was on the wrong side of the road; p.73 the clutter in his great uncles house was so great that he found it hard place anything of his own, "I also remember the smell of senile waterproof and long dead open air".
Looming throughout are his parents, Aickman describes his father as ....."the oddest man I have ever known", a gross understatement. They fought long and bitterly every evening, often over his fathers appalling timekeeping (a 'morning start' might not begin until late afternoon); but this was not until after he had crept into Aickmans room to silently stare at him (the detail of a woolly rabbit was placed in the door to prop it open, rendering the whole episode with a dual vividness and sinisterness). He also had rages four or five times a week in which he emit a continuous and rising "throaty gurgling scream of frustration" which would rise in intensity and volume until be heard in the street, a noise that was only stopped by the, eventual intervention of his mother or of Aickman himself, his father seemingly unable to do so.
And so it goes on. In this respect it is a thoroughly depressing read - Aickman was (unsurprisingly) miserable all his life, relieved (slightly) only towards the end when he discovers, through attendance at the operatic concerts and the ballet, women. As one might imagine, these relationships are also problematic.
The book was first published in 1966 (it is an enormous pity that the book stops just at the outbreak of WWII) and it is obvious that in the interim Aickman had some acquaintance with the psychoanalytic process. The prose is informed by this overtly and covertly, for example he describes his first love (a nursemaid), an affair over before he is two(!), and his precocious reading where he states he had great problems pronouncing the word 'because', "much could obviously be made of this significant block". In the chapter titled 'Relatives as Divinities. I. Their Domain ', I pondered the typo. Why the full stop after 'I'? It was a few pages later that I realized that the 'I' was meant to be read as the numeral 1. One suspects that this may have deliberate.
The book which is written in a beautiful style that is succinct, evocative and intensely of its time. Consider, for example phrases such as "at schools I also disliked the compulsory surface conformity with alien (often indeed evil) ideals"; or describing a teacher who "snorted about on a motorbike".
I highly recommend this to anyone who has an interest in autobiography, strange fiction or good writing generally.
This is Robert Aickmans autobiography and covers the period from birth to approximately 1940. I imagine most reading this review will know of Aickman but, very briefly, he is best known in literary circles for his enigmatic 'strange' stories which really are very odd, in the best possible way, and well worth discovering.
On first reading one would think Aickman to have been an Edwardian child - he was in fact born 1914 - as his memoirs abound with anecdotes concerning aunts, uncles and family friends that might have walked from the pages any high Victorian novel, or perhaps more accurately, a story by Saki. And what anecdotes! Flip the pages at random and virtually every one will reveal some strange incident that might well, and at times no doubt did, find its way into Aickmans own stories. Page 59, and he hears his first radio play about the devil (on headphones, alone ) which terrifies him; p.67 an uncle drives his car deliberately into a steamroller because it was on the wrong side of the road; p.73 the clutter in his great uncles house was so great that he found it hard place anything of his own, "I also remember the smell of senile waterproof and long dead open air".
Looming throughout are his parents, Aickman describes his father as ....."the oddest man I have ever known", a gross understatement. They fought long and bitterly every evening, often over his fathers appalling timekeeping (a 'morning start' might not begin until late afternoon); but this was not until after he had crept into Aickmans room to silently stare at him (the detail of a woolly rabbit was placed in the door to prop it open, rendering the whole episode with a dual vividness and sinisterness). He also had rages four or five times a week in which he emit a continuous and rising "throaty gurgling scream of frustration" which would rise in intensity and volume until be heard in the street, a noise that was only stopped by the, eventual intervention of his mother or of Aickman himself, his father seemingly unable to do so.
And so it goes on. In this respect it is a thoroughly depressing read - Aickman was (unsurprisingly) miserable all his life, relieved (slightly) only towards the end when he discovers, through attendance at the operatic concerts and the ballet, women. As one might imagine, these relationships are also problematic.
The book was first published in 1966 (it is an enormous pity that the book stops just at the outbreak of WWII) and it is obvious that in the interim Aickman had some acquaintance with the psychoanalytic process. The prose is informed by this overtly and covertly, for example he describes his first love (a nursemaid), an affair over before he is two(!), and his precocious reading where he states he had great problems pronouncing the word 'because', "much could obviously be made of this significant block". In the chapter titled 'Relatives as Divinities. I. Their Domain ', I pondered the typo. Why the full stop after 'I'? It was a few pages later that I realized that the 'I' was meant to be read as the numeral 1. One suspects that this may have deliberate.
The book which is written in a beautiful style that is succinct, evocative and intensely of its time. Consider, for example phrases such as "at schools I also disliked the compulsory surface conformity with alien (often indeed evil) ideals"; or describing a teacher who "snorted about on a motorbike".
I highly recommend this to anyone who has an interest in autobiography, strange fiction or good writing generally.
January 3, 2013
The strangest set of memoirs anyone could ever read, but also the most intriguing.
May 12, 2018
This memoir should be considered a must read for anyone hoping to arrive at some sort of understanding (if one is possible) behind the meanings and psychology in Aickman's creepy fiction. Nothing is handed to you, but a few things become clearer. He details his relatively loveless upbringing defined by a detachment from his father and school years into early adulthood, filled with unrequited loves and a pervading sense of forlorn gloom. He was such a bitter, conservative guy, but thankfully his dour persona produced some of the best weird fiction. "It is a good rule: when, at last, you are really happy, die at once."
February 25, 2015
A glimpse into a forgotten world...
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews