Literary Horror discussion

This is the thread for The Wine Dark Sea by Robert Aickman.

Enjoyed this collection. Gave it 5 stars. Robert Aickman is a master of the quiet weird tale. My favorites in this volume are: The Wine-Dark Sea, Never Visit Venice, The Inner Room and Into The Wood.

I could have sworn we did this one already. Anyway, I had to quit after the first few stories, but I might give it another go sometime.

This book might have some stories that this group previously.

Must have been for another literary horror group, then.

This is the second time I'm reading the Faber and Faber ebook edition. This edition has an introduction by Peter Straub.

I usually like to read the introduction of a book. A potential downside is that the introduction might give spoilers. Peter Straub does not do this. Straub discusses the qualities of Aickman's short fiction. I'm in agreement with what Straub says, and I think his analysis is insightful.

In a goodreads review of one of Aickman's books, I said that Aickaman's stories relate strange events, curious details, and have a sense of mystery.

My project here is to see if those three characteristics are a useful way at analyzing Aickman's stories.

Am a huge fan of Aickman, will join in. Probably start tomorrow.

It seems that in "strange" or "weird" tales the protagonist is often a traveller. Such is the case in "The Wine Dark Sea".

The protagonist is visiting Greek islands when he sees a boat go towards another island. The protagonist inquires about this but the others don't want to talk about it.

The protagonist steals a boat and heads toward this island to investigate this mystery. He interacts with three--probably supernatural-persons on the island. There is also another supernatural being related to this island.

On my second reading of this story a though occurred to me which did not occur to me on the first reading. Something like a "counter-Christianity" is developed in the story. There is some reference to Greek Orthodox Christianity. Our protagonist drinks wine, which I think is produced by the supernatural being. This wine gives him vitality. This is a parallel with the wine drinking in the mass of various Christian denominations.

I also consider this story a kind of utopian fiction, a genre which enthralls me. The island that the protagonist is on I find highly appealing.

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars.

The story is actually strongly informed by the theories about pre-Olympian/pre-Homeric Greek matriarchy that were popularized by Graves et al, something that doesn't surprise me Aickman bought into given how much of a lover of feminine he was.

(view spoiler)[‘The Greek Church says that work was the fruit of sin. Here the fruit is more wholesome.’
And, indeed, for a moment Grigg almost felt that he knew what the Garden of Eden had really been like: not the boring, moral attenuation of it; but the physical splendour, with flowers perfumed like these, with tiny, aquamarine birds, singing like honey, with indifference as to whether one was clothed or naked, with beauty to make it indifferent.
‘The Greek Church,’ said Lek, ‘had once a prophet. “Take no thought for the morrow,” he said; and spoke of lilies.’
‘But not of lilies only,’ said Grigg. ‘Far from it, alas.’
‘You must not expect a Greek prophet to be always wise. The Greeks used to decorate their houses with flowers, and sing songs. Now they buy tinsel from shops and listen to radios. The Greek radios are the noisiest in the world. It is not surprising that Greek prophets often make mistakes.’
‘You can’t prophesy,’ said Tal, ‘when there’s such a noise that no one can hear you.’
‘But the radio is new,’ objected Grigg.
Lek would have none of it. ‘The radio has been with us since the dawn of time,’ she said.
‘I believe that men thought of it when they took over the world,’ said Tal. (hide spoiler)]

I am not sure of he was familiar with Joseph Campbell, who also bought into that theory to some extent, but the story mirrors something of Hero's Journey. Also, symbolism employed is perennial, not specific to any particular religion. Christianity is only directly invoked as yet another only partially right teaching.
IMO, story itself is a very good anti-Modern fable.

"...the island surrounded by the waters, the rock, the unshakable stone. Finally, symbols of inviolability and inaccessibility; the invisible or not-to-be-found castle or land, a wild mountain peak, a subterranean region. Moreover, the "Land of Light," the "Land of the Living," the "Holy Land." Yet again, all the variations of the golden symbolism, which, on the one hand, includes all the notions of solarity, light, regality, immortality, and incorruptibility while, on the other hand, it has always had some relationship
with the primordial tradition and with the age characterized by gold. Other symbols point to "life" in the higher sense of the word (e.g., the "perennial food;' the "Tree of Life"), to a transcendent knowledge, to an invincible power; everything appears variously mixed in the fantastic, symbolic, or poetic representations that in the various traditions have foreshadowed this constant theme of the invisible regnum and of the Supreme Center of the world, in itself or in its emanations and reproductions."
...
"Such an island was mainly conceived, in later times, as a place inhabited by women who attract heroes there to make them immortal. "

From Evola's "The Mystery of the Grail".

Anyway, "The Wine Dark Sea" is so goddamned gorgeous and poignant. It is, at its core, simple, but it is so rich in symbolism (that of paradisiacal state, of the Divine Feminine, of that union of God and The World). It is the protagonist who fails, in failing to properly assume his archetypal role, but such failure of masculinity is so common in Aickman.

(btw, anyone else feels certain echoes of one of his - in my mind - best early tales? I shan't name it, just wanna see if anyone recognizes which one it is. Ya can find it in "Dark Entries")

The next story in _The Wine Dark Sea_ is the medium length "The Trains". This story originally appeared in the book _We Are For The Dark_.

_We Are For The Dark_ , which also has three stories by Elizabeth Jane Howard, I highly recommend.

Here again, in "The Trains" the protagonists Margaret and Mimi are travelers. The protagonists are walking through an area with train tracks and trains going by, seeking shelter. During their travel they are told--and this passage from the story I think exemplifies Aickman's fiction:

" Well, every time a train passes Miss Roper's house, someone leans out of a bedroom window and waves to it. It's gone on for years. Every train, mark you. The house stands back from the line and the drivers couldn't see exactly who it was, but it was someone in white and they all thought it was a girl. So they waved back. Every train. But the joke is it's not a girl at all. It can't be. It's gone on too long. She can't have been a girl for the last twenty years or so. It's probably old Miss Roper herself. The drivers keep changing round so they don't catch on. They all think it's some girl, you see. So they all wave back. Every train.' He was laughing as if it were the funniest of improprieties."

Margaret and Mini reach the house of a middle-aged guy who owns a train business.

What happens in the house I think would be spoilerish if I describe it here.

I read online reviews and comments of this story, and I agree that its a Gothic tale.

Aickman hit one of my reading interests in the previous story, and with this train story hits it again.

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars.

Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen

The main character, Edmund, who initially didn't like the telephone because of strange phone calls he receives, resorts to the telephone to solve his loneliness. Through the phone he comes across Nera, and becomes a telephone junkie. Nera refuses to reveal some facts about herself. During the story I became inclined to think that Nera is a ghost.

I wonder what Aickman would have made of our current world of cell phones and the internet.

My rating: 3.5 stars

Growing Boys

I found this to be an atypical Aickman story, perhaps because of its action plot and violence. Two teen aged boys grow absurdly big and criminally violent. My rating: 3.5 stars

The stories in the book are more straight forward than some of other fiction in other books, such as "The Hospice".

I'm not confident on what "The Hospice" is about.

Ronald wrote: "The stories in the book are more straight forward than some of other fiction in other books, such as "The Hospice".

I'm not confident on what "The Hospice" is about."

This is precisely why my favorite Aickman stories are my favorites: you're never confident on what they're about. But they inspire that delicious unease, and keep gnawing away after they're done.

And it's pretty much why Wine Dark Sea is my least favorite Aickman collection: most of the stories are so straightforward (and verbose, especially in their preoccupation with dated tropes).

Aye, "Your Tiny Hand" is eerily relevant to the current situation. Actually, it reminds me of the phase I went through with the early 00s messageboards.

Any thoughts on "The Fetch"? Viscerally scary stuff, its "apparition" and the manner in which Aickman handled her appearances are remarkably reminiscent of Asian horror.

There is definitely some insecurity and fear, yet on the other hand you have his weird obsession, even celebration, of lesbianism that certainly cannot be reduced to mere sexual objectification of lesbians. (there is even a bit of it in this collection, in "The Growing Boys" even, though nothing on the scale of "The Late Breakfasters")

I think that this collection is probably the most personal as well as the most political of his collections. My copy actually has a quote from Russell Kirk, containing his high praise of Aickman, which is kinda appropriate.
How much enjoyment one can extract out of it largely depends on how much sympathy one has for Aickman's worldview (with only a couple of exceptions, like "The Trains). I suspect that few among the modern readers of weird fiction have much if any.

"The Fetch" The first person narrator tells a story of his life, stating more than once that he is haunted. A supernatural being, a 'fetch' or perhaps a Cailleach, is involved in the death of three important women in his life: his mother, and his first and second wife.

Wikipedia article on the Cailleach: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cailleach
Wikipedia article on the Fetch (folklore):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetch_(...

Another story with a straight-forward plot. 3.5 stars

"The Inner Room"

I think this is a fine example of an 'Aickmanesque' story. My sense is that this story is most like "The Hospice" than the other stories in this book, but I can't really explain why.

In "The Inner Room", a girl gets a doll house house from a dingy shop. It is brought to her house. She has terrifying dreams about the inhabitants. Then, much later, it comes back to haunt her, in a real manner.

I came across comments on the story in the book Night Shadows: Twentieth-century Stories of the Uncanny edited by Joan Kessler. Although I think that psycho-analysis is bunk, the comments I think are interesting:

"...the reader suspects that Lena's family relationships and unacknowledged emotions may hold the key to this enigmatic story.
Like most of Aickman's 'strange tales', "The Inner Room" can be read again and again without exhausting its mysteries or diminishing its power to haunt. "The Inner Room" may even move some readers to concur with the author's lifelong conviction that "the supernatural, Freud's Unheimliche, can give one...a sensation of knowing oneself and the world that otherwise can be found (equally rarely) poetry, music, travel, and love."

My rating:4 stars

"The Fetch" is not necessarily that straightforward. Consider this bit regarding the fate of the narrator's mother:

(view spoiler)[I am sure that my particular malady went on for weeks, and that when I was once more deemed able to make sense out of things, I learned that my mother was dead, and, indeed, long buried. No one would tell me where. I further gathered that there was no memorial. (hide spoiler)]

I loved the atmosphere of the stories in this book. I found the stories very easy to read, and I felt that they drew me in to themselves. I liked the range of the stories-- some same-author collections seem to be one idea from many angles, which can be interesting if well-done, but a variety of topics is always nice. My favorite stories from this collection were The Wine-Dark Sea, The Inner Room, and Never Visit Venice.

"Never Visit Venice"

In this story, the protagonist is a traveller, this time to Venice.

I came across a pretty good synopsis of the story by Michael Dirda, who has been the book reviewer for The Washington Post for years, and champions speculative fiction. Dirda wrote: "...in "Never Visit Venice" the young Henry Fern yearns for the glamour and romance symbolized by a recurrent dream in which he floats along in a Venetian gondola in the embrace of a beautiful dark-haired woman. Late in life he finally travels to Venice, finds it horrible: vulgar tourists, loud motorboats, everything tawdry, venal and kitsch. But on his last night he meets an aristocratic beauty, who invites him for a ride in her gondola and his dream is gradually realized in every detail. But only the most naive reader will fail to realize the identity of the enigmatic stranger."

My rating: 3.5 stars

"Into the Wood"

I think this is a good example of an 'Aickmanesque' story. Margaret Sawyer is a middle-aged Englishwoman, whose husband owns a construction firm. Her husband takes a road-building contract in a remote area of Sweden.

On an outdoor excursion , Margaret takes notice of a peculiar lodge in the woods. With her husband away on business, Margaret spends some time there. The people at this place seem eccentric.

They are also insomniacs. They also spend their evenings traversing a labyrinth of paths that surrounds the place.

I get a sense this story has something to do with 'depth psychology'. Robert Aickman was influenced by Freud. As stated previously, I think that type of psychology is intellectually bogus.

My rating: 3.5 stars.

I finished the book earlier this month. Here's my review (I gave the book 3 stars):

This posthumous collection showcases too much of what I don't enjoy in Aickman's work (the diffuseness and aimless wordiness, the snobbishness, the narcissism, the whingeing about the modern world) for me to give it a higher rating, but there are a few stories here that are worth reading, two of those truly remarkable.

"The Inner Room" is a creepy, beautifully imagined dolls' house tale that will appeal instantly to any reader who ever obsessed over a miniature home of her own. Aickman appears to have been quite familiar with antique dolls' houses (the miniature moments in The Model confirm this) and he wrings every bit of weirdness from their specific peculiarities.

"Into the Wood" also features a female narrator and an unusual setting: a "rest home" in Sweden. Aickman here bridges the metaphorical and the literal and watching our narrator move from sleep to wakefulness, from ignorance to knowledge, is both horrifying and deeply satisfying.

While meandering too long, "The Trains" offers final paragraphs that are powerful in their sheer, brutal awfulness (among the most flat-out horrific Aickman penned) and "Your Tiny Hand is Frozen" seems in some ways to presage the work of Ligotti and Cisco, but the other stories in this collection are generally weak and seem desperately to need an editor's hand. Too long, too flabby, and lacking in focus, they lose impact well before the close; whatever chills Aickman manages to work up are attenuated by his fussiness and his narrator's frequent self-absorption. The title story is perhaps the worst of these (although "Never Visit Venice" is a close second).

Randolph wrote: "Growing Boys is the only one I hated outright."

I loathed 'Growing Boys'. It just tried so hard and fell so dreadfully flat.

Randolph wrote: "Growing Boys is the only one I hated outright."

I completely agree with you about Growing Boys. It adds a very jarring note to the collection.

"Growing Boys" is indeed dreadful and painfully unfunny. Aickman became too much of a stereotypical hateful old conservative towards the end.

I'm surprised that you guys chose this exact collection TBH. Least Aickman-like of Aickman collections.

"The Trains" is the best and the most "Aickmanesque" of the bunch... and, unsurprisingly, it is also the oldest. "The Inner Room" is also great and, again, it was decades older than some other stories in this collection. Same goes for "Your Tiny Hand is frozen". "The Fetch" is alright as a horror story, it is even pretty chilling, but it isn't particularly endowed with Aickman-like qualities (unless you insist on counting some brutally unsubtle Freudian elements).

Rest is, IMO, more or less tainted by his increasingly odious politics. Even "Never Visit Venice" is filled with smug & shallow anti-modern elitism....