The Mumpsimus

Through a discussion of something else on a friend's Facebook page, I learned of a tv series I ought to have known about before: The Hunger , which played on Showtime in the US, the Sci Fi Channel in the UK, and The Movie Network in Canada from 1997 to 2000. It was a co-production between Ridley and Tony Scott's company Scott Free and others, and Tony Scott directed the first episodes of the two seasons. It's an anthology show, so has a "host" — in the first season Terrence Stamp, in the second David Bowie. The show can currently be seen on Freevee , Amazon's ad-supported channel. There are many reasons I should have known about this show, but I did not have a tv from 1994 to 2008, so most shows from those years are ones I am unfamiliar with if I did not catch up on them later or have friends who insisted I come over and watch them at the time (and that was basically just Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica ; understandably, friends obsessed with one became ob...

In writing about Brian Evenson's book about Raymond Carver, I noted that both Evenson and I first read Carver right around the time we first read Kafka and Beckett, and we did so without knowledge of the contemporary American fiction writers he's often set alongside (e.g. Ann Beattie, Tobias Wolff, etc.). Later, I gained that context and, consequently, the context I'd originally brought faded, which is one reason why Brian's book so effectively brought Carver back to me — which is to say, it brought a way of reading Carver back to me. I don't mind the American writers Carver typically gets grouped with, but I'd be lying if I said their work really excites me. Kafka and Beckett, on the other hand, are among a very small group of 20th century writers whose work I am in awe of, work that I feel utterly incapable of writing about analytically, work that I can only point to and say, " That . Whatever great literature is, it must surely be that ." Now,...

Electric Literature  has published an essay I wrote about Robert Aickman , one of the greatest of the 20th century's short story writers: Thirty-five years after his death, Robert Aickman is beginning to receive the attention he deserves as one of the great 20th century writers of short fiction. For the first time, new editions of his books are plentiful, making this a golden age for readers who appreciate the uniquely unsettling effect of his work. Unsettling is a key description for Aickman’s writing, not merely in the sense of creating anxiety, but in the sense of undoing what has been settled: his stories unsettle the ideas you bring to them about how fictional reality and consensus reality should fit together. The supernatural is never far from the surreal. He was drawn to ghost stories because they provided him with conventions for unmaking the conventional world, but he was about as much of a traditional ghost story writer as Salvador Dalí was a typical designer of p...

I just told Ray Russell at Tartarus Press that I think the impending release of The Strangers  by Robert Aickman is the publishing event of the year. That's not hyperbole. Aickman's stories are among my favorite works of 20th century art, and I always thought the canon was complete. Indeed, I thought that once Tartarus had brought all of Aickman back into print that I was done with being insanely grateful to Tartarus. But no! The Strangers and Other Writings includes previously unpublished and uncollected short fiction, non-fiction and poetry by Robert Aickman. Dating from the 1930s to 1980, the contents show his development as a writer. Six unpublished short stories, augmented by one written for broadcast, follow his fiction from the whimsical through the experimental to the ghostly, with ‘The Strangers’ a fully-formed, Aickmanesque strange tale. The non-fiction samples Aickman’s wide-ranging interests and erudition: from the supernatural to Oscar Wilde; from 1940s fi...

photo via Tartarus Press Once Tartarus Press publishes their new edition of Robert Aickman's Night Voices  at the end of the month, they will have brought all of Aickman's short stories back into print. (The new Night Voices  will also include Aickman's "An Essay", written when he won the World Fantasy Award; his various prefaces to the volumes of The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories  that he edited; and Ramsey Campbell's remembrance of Aickman.) I just wanted to take this moment to publicly say thank you to Tartarus for doing this. I can't imagine that they're getting rich off of it. The books are pricey, but so beautifully designed, bound, and printed that I expect the profit margin is really not all that high. Over the years, I've bought most of the collections that contained multiple stories I didn't already own, and they're among the most beautiful books on my shelves. I seldom resist walking past them without touching them. ...

Today is Robert Aickman's 98th birthday, and in honor of that, here are some thoughts on my favorite Aickman story, "The Stains". I've been meaning to write about Aickman's work, and this story in particular, for a long time, but I have found it difficult to muster the courage to write about works that are so mysterious, so ineffable, so richly strange and deeply affecting. I think it is no coincidence that I have had the same struggle with the work of Franz Kafka, who is absolutely central to my reading life, and yet I have never written at much length about him at all. Aickman is not as great a writer as Kafka, but that's no insult; Aickman's talent and vision were narrower, his oeuvre less ragged. Nonetheless, there is an affinity of effect (and affect), partly, I suspect, because both writers were masters of writing from repressed obsessions, and both found unique, personal forms of fiction with which to encase those obsessions. "The Stains...

Jeff Ford is looking for recommendations of ghost stories : My students are presently writing ghost stories. I want to make a list of 10 of the greatest ghost stories for them to check out. What I'm looking for is your absolute favorite one (short story) -- what you believe to be the best ghost story ever written. If you have a suggestion, please post it. No need to mention "The Turn of the Screw" by James -- that's already on the list. For my very favorite, I'm torn between "The Return of Imray" by Kipling and "The Hell Screen" by Akutagawa. I chimed in with various folks recommending the work of Robert Aickman , a writer I had encountered some years back when I first got a copy of The Dark Descent , but I wasn't a sophisticated enough reader yet to understand his tales, so thought they were pointless and boring. Returning to him this past year, I suddenly discovered he was much more fascinating than I had noticed before, and I dug t...

My latest Strange Horizons column has been posted: " Blasted Horrors ". Subjects this time around: horror fiction, libraries & children, Stephen King, Sarah Kane's Blasted , Robert Aickman. (For my previous thoughts on Kane, see this post .) I thought about dedicating this column to Rick Bowes, who went to see Blasted with me in New York this past fall. It's not the sort of play you can invite just anybody to go see with you. Rick was a good sport about it. Then he reported me to the police. I'll also note that yes, as of right now there is a problem of verb number and agreement in the second sentence. Entirely my fault. I'm terrible with even simple arithmetic. Among the wonders of online publication, though, is that such things can be fixed...

One thing I love about blogs is seeing people discover books that have become so much a part of my own life that I develop the sense that everybody else on Earth has also read them, and so there's no need for me to talk about them, because we all know these are great books, right? It's nice to be reminded that this is a fantasy -- nice to see people suddenly fall in love with books I've known for a little while already. The great and glorious Anne Fernald just posted a list of some books she's read lately with joy and happiness, and the two books on the list that I've read are ones I recommend without reservation: Tropical Fish by Doreen Baingana and Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys. I first heard about Tropical Fish when I was in Kenya for the SLS/Kwani conference and Doreen Baingana was part of a panel discussion; I found her captivating. Later, a Ugandan friend (who also told me about FEMRITE ) exhorted me to read the book. I did. I exhort you to do th...