Tag: Weird Fiction

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Counter Esperanto Podcast Presents: An Attempted Conversation About Robert Aickman Episode 4

Welcome to the fourth episode of our “Attempted Conversations about Robert Aickman” series. This time around, we were quite fortunate to be able to speak to author, songwriter, book collector and publisher, R.B. Russell. Ray has published several novels, novellas and collections of short stories, is the author of Robert Aickman: A Biography, and along with Rosalie Parker, runs the award winning Tartarus Press, which is a godsend to those of us who enjoy beautifully crafted editions of strange books.

When I asked him if there was an aspect or work of Robert Aickman’s that he felt was underappreciated, he immediately responded with Aickman’s late novel, Go Back at Once which wasn’t published in his lifetime. 

Aickman himself said in one of his letters to Kirby McCauley that Go Back at Once is a deeply odd novel, even for him. Throughout its course, there’s very little that one could describe as “supernatural,” but there’s something of the transcendently weird, especially in the novel’s back half. The first portion of the book, however, feels like a send-up, if not a pastiche of what would now be termed a “Young Adult” novel: a story about two young women making their start in the world, and finding the world lacking. Then, they are whisked away to a strange land, which plays out a bit like a  “fish-out-of-water” story like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz.

Russell couldn’t have chosen a more apt work to discuss, especially as his biographer. The work is steeped in all of Aickman’s interests and predilections, from his devotion to the primacy of Art over all things, to his troubling and complex fascination with Fascism, and, as always, his facility to imbue the ordinary world with a deep sense of unease and the uncanny. This is heady stuff indeed!

Twin Peaks and David Lynch fans will also want to listen, because Russell is a big fan, and he has some very astute observations to make as to the spiritual (if not aesthetic) linkages between the two artists.

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Counter Esperanto Podcast Presents: An Attempted Conversation About Robert Aickman Episode 2

In this, our second Attempted Conversation about Robert Aickman, we have brought in a formidable duo as guests to grapple with two Robert Aickman stories: “Ringing the Changes,” and “No Stronger Than a Flower.” Hilary and Indigo of the Full Blossom of the Evening Podcast, who are newcomers to the Capital-S Strange world of Robert Aickman, bring their talents of intertextual analysis to bear on two very different (yet tantalizingly resonant) stories of marital tension.

Like your “Humble Hosts,” Hilary and Indigo fell quickly in love with Aickman’s world of “The Strange,” because, as fans of David Lynch, it was easy to do so: while both artists could hardly be further apart aesthetically, they are both committed to the power of mystery, and the understanding that the line that divides the concrete world and the world of the unconscious, is both porous and slippery.

While we believe that Aickman’s stories are uncommonly resistant to the detrimental effects of spoilers, you can find one of them for free online at this link:

Ringing the Changes by Robert Aickman Free Online

And the other can be found cheaply in the Faber & Faber collection The Unsettled Dust. If, like us, you love Aickman’s work enough to spring for something fancy, Tartarus Press has the complete short fiction of Robert Aickman in beautifully crafted hardcover editions of Aickman’s collections under their original titles. Here is a link to one of his best titles, Sub Rosa. Links to the other titles are also on this page:

Robert Aickman on Tartarus Press

A big thanks to all of you who have stuck with us over the years. Here’s to many more!

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Counter Esperanto Podcast Presents: An Attempted Conversation About Robert Aickman Episode 1

Greetings listeners!

We are pleased to bring you the first episode in a series about one of our favorite writers, Robert Aickman. As longtime listeners of Counter Esperanto know, we are something of a hybrid podcast: we began as a Twin Peaks podcast which filtered that series, and other David Lynch projects through weird stories, folklore, and history. In that process, we have often featured authors such as Thomas Ligotti, Franz Kafka, and of course H.P. Lovecraft.

It is Robert Aickman, though, that we feel deserves special attention. As we will discuss in this inaugural episode, those who have loved the mystery of Lynch’s films, especially the late films, and especially Twin Peaks: The Return, will find much that resonates with Robert Aickman’s brand of “the strange.”

To get a sense of what this author is all about, read one of his most anthologized stories, “The Hospice,” right here.

Robert Fordyce Aickman, born June 27, 1914, was in his time chiefly known, and now chiefly remembered, for two things. First would be his work as co-founder of the Inland Waterways Association, which was instrumental in the rejuvenation of the British canal system, which, by the mid 20th century, had long fallen into disrepair.

The second would be for his career as a writer of what he called “strange stories.” While he wrote all his life, Aickman was something of a late-bloomer, publishing most of his work after the age of 40. Still, he must have felt that being an author was in his blood. His maternal grandfather was Richard Marsh, a contemporary of Bram Stoker whose macabre and spooky novel The Beetle initially outsold Dracula upon release.

Aickman was a believer in ghosts and the supernatural, and as a young man participated in ‘ghost hunting’ investigations, which included excursions to the Borley Rectory, which was infamous as one of the most haunted buildings in England.

When he began writing stories in earnest, Aickman had become editor of the Fontana Book of Ghost Stories, generally including one of his own recent tales in the mix.

Robert Aickman wrote 48 “Strange Stories,” In addition to a handful of novels and novellas. While not great in number, Aickman’s stories stand alone not only in their economy and effectiveness of characterization, but also in their ability to submerge the reader into the feeling of a real dream, or nightmare. These are subtle stories which, while they aren’t necessarily to everyone’s taste, they have nonetheless gained new life, an “Aickmannessance,” if you will, thanks to the wide availability of Faber & Faber’s reprints, the masterful and astute readings by actor Reece Shearsmith, available on Audible, and of course deluxe volumes of his stories under their original titles published by Tartarus Press, run by authors R.B Russell, and Rosalie Parker. Russell also wrote a fantastic biography of Aickman, also available by Tartarus.

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Ep. No. 44 Twin Peaks: The Return Rewatch Wrap-up

2022 was something of an experiment for Karl and Jubel, and we believe it was a resounding success. We’ve always talked about wanting to incorporate more interviews into the mix, so we did five consecutive interview episodes exploring Twin Peaks: The Return. We want to extend our heartfelt thanks to John Thorne, Rob King, John Bernardy, Lindsay Stamhuis, and Adam Stewart for their generosity, patience, and insights.

To paraphrase some version of Dale Cooper towards the end of the series, “we hope to see each and every one of them again.”

This episode is something of a wrap-up on the rewatch and discussions of the past year, and it’s particularly tangent heavy. For example, we bring up the topic of Hauntology, which we explored a bit with Adam, and then we drifted off to other things. This is due in part to the fact that while we had questions written down that we wanted to ask each other, we decided in the moment that a loose discussion would be more fun, and yield some unexpected results.

The other reason was that Jubel was in the midst of a really gnarly head cold, so keeping himself on track was an exercise in futility. Our hope is that the magic of editing has at least made the conversation listenable!

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Counter Esperanto Podcast: Tangents About Twin Peaks: The Return Part 4

This is the next in our series of revisits of Twin Peaks: The Return. This time we are happy today to have with us author, teacher, and co-host of The Bicks Podcast (Formerly Bickering Peaks), Lindsay Stamhuis. We begin by covering Parts 13-16, but we branch out and talk about the series as a whole.

Lindsay, Karl and Jubel cover a great deal of ground in this one. Since this sequence of Parts carries the bulk of the tragic and perplexing arc (or is it tragic?) of Audrey Horne, we thought it fitting to bring Lindsay on at this point, since she has written about Audrey several times on the 25 Years Later Site, and our hosts are excited to delve into that particular corner of strangeness.

In Part 16, we finally see the return of our Cooper! Or is he “our Cooper”? Who is it that wakes up in that hospital bed, and how much of him remains? We get into one of the central themes of The Return, which is essentially a deconstruction of the hero myth itself. For all his charm, competence, and heroism, Special Agent Dale Cooper is a complex figure, and true to much in David Lynch, there is a dark side squirming under the surface.

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