8.F.G.S.- Part Two
rba...@hotmail.com
long, I suppose-- maybe someone will get around to it yet.
'Meeting Mr. Millar'- by you-know-who
Aickman's general rule in the Fontana series was not to showcase any author
more than once. He himself of course is the only exception, and back in the
intro to # 5 he observes that someone wrote to the publishers after # 3:' How
dare Mr. Aickman have the effrontry to include himself among the writers of
great ghost stories?' or words to that effect. He therefore omitted himself
from # 4, and Fontana received all these disappointed letters from readers
who wanted him back ! So he threw his James Brown cape back off for # 5 and
stayed dealt in for nos. 7 and 8. I find that pretty amusing, and I say more
power to him. Only an idiot would protest his inclusion. These are not August
Derleth anthologies.
ANYWAY, 'Mr. Millar' is rather unusual in its being told from the point of
view of a young man who lives in the attic of some property apparently zoned
commercial, who is not only an editor of pornographic novels, but is also
having an affair with the married woman in the basement ! There's a new theme
for David Hartwell: 'The Architecture of Adultery.' Into this picture of
confused bliss comes the accounting firm of Stallabrass, Hoskins, and Cramp,
and their CEO, Mr. Millar, and...well, you know Aickman doesn't synopsize for
beans, so I won't waste my breath.
In Mr. Millar is created a most curious phenomenon: the 'anti-personality.'
He seems almost to absorb human interest the way a black hole absorbs all
light and matter. Aickman plays on this natural distancing by having his
narrator (whose name careful reading reveals to be 'Roy' of all things)
experience him almost totally by proxy-- through floors, walls, rumors,
removed accounts, and nocturnal visitors. As usual, it isn't so much scary as
it is disquieting. I like disquieting. Reminds me of my own life.
'The Gorgon's Head'- Gertrude Bacon
Gertrude sidesteps several potential problems for herself in the presentation
of this one; her device of having us get the story third-hand from Captain
Brander (who is a notorious liar) as he relates it to her on a sea voyage
enables her not only to write most of it in fairly simple monologue and to
leave out the usual verities, but also to conveniently dispense with a real
ending ! The Captain is called away just in time, before the necessity of
follow-up explanations.
That's no tragedy, however, as he manages to cover the important details.
Another plus, as it turns out, is that we're dealing with just the head and
not the whole Gorgon, which is historically correct at least. A nice touch
also is that people turned to stone are not merely petrified in place like
awkward statues, but are actually turned into shapeless rocks, instant
menhirs as it were.
I have to wonder though why this story is in an averred 'great ghost stories'
collection. Is Aickman suffering from author famine after eight books of them
only being used once each? If he's played all his classic author trumps,
couldn't he be moving at this point into Alex Hamilton territory (in which
his own stories would not be out of place) and give us the kind of 'modern'
(for then) tale of ghostly unease that Hamilton quarried so successfully in
his 1968 anthology SPLINTERS? Where's Richard Nettell, Joan Aiken, Daphne Du
Maurier, William Trevor? Someone else would have done better, I think, in
place of this inoffensive but rather lightweight contender.
'The Tree'- Joyce Marsh
In Kiplingesque fashion Mother India again intrudes upon the English
sensibility with the dire effects of a half-understood wish that engenders a
folkloric miracle/curse. Reita Oxley is the Indian-born wife of a sickly
Englishman, who wishes the vitality of an old oak tree to pass into her
husband, and his infirmity to be transferred to the tree.
It is regrettable for the characters of weird fiction (and delightful for its
readers, as we well know) that so many of them are all too willing to enter
into such monkey's paw bargains (Monkey's Paw Bargains, incidentally, is a
shop which I intend to open soon, selling things like: books printed in such
small type that they make one go blind, 'stop smoking' gum that causes
cancer, soap which cleanses away protective bacteria, warm blankets for the
bed that prove to be highly flammable, and, of course, Viagra, a monkey's paw
bargain if ever there was one...)
Marsh sets a dreamy, introspective tone in the narrative, then lays on the
horror in grand style. We view with Reita the situation as it moves by turns
from optimistic to foreboding to surreal, and finally to devastating.
Sympathy is left at the gate; the undeserving participants are buried beneath
the onrush of awful events. Belief in the ancient gods and customs bears a
dreadful sticker price.
(But in MY store, everyone here in alt.books.ghost-fiction gets 10 % off !!
This will naturally ensure that you will spend the money you save on
something you'll regret.)
rbadac
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