Thursday, 24 October 2024

“Hauntings from the mist Letters by a ‘ghost story’ writer whose fictions transcend genre” by Reece Shearsmith (TLS; En)

An excellent new article* in the TLS about Aickman (the link as usual in the first comment) and what is Aickmanesque exactly:
It is certainly one of the recurring criticisms of Aickman, even after a Faber reissue in 2014 to mark his centenary, that his “strange stories”, as he liked to call them, remain too vague, too bloodless and wryly devoid of easy answers, to reach a large audience. An “Aickmanesque” story envelops the reader like a mist, leaving uncertain clues and contradictory rationales. Aickman knew it himself. “It is a queer story”, he wrote of one (without revealing its title). “Not likely to be understood at all.” This is a sentiment he repeats time and again throughout a new selection of his letters to Kirby McCauley, his literary agent in the US. ©
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* Silly me: of course, the author, Reece Shearsmith, is one of the League of Gentlemen legends

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