Book #20 of 2020: The Unsettled Dust by Robert Aickman

How have I not read Mr. Aickman before? Perhaps I have, when I used to chug down enormous volumes of collected ghost or horror fiction anthologies as a teen. He must have been in one of those omnibus volumes featuring Machen, Poe, Lord Dunsany, and M.R. James...

The quality of the writing is superb. The characters are deftly and subtly realized, and the settings painted with an astute attention to detail. Aickman understood that horror and occult fiction work best when everything is as real and regular and normal as possible, until that moment when it isn't. He also understood that the moment when things go askew should be quiet and unsettling in startlingly insignificant ways. The creep of his fictions develops slowly over a few dozen pages until an absolutely delicious effect is achieved. Often the climax is as much a puzzle as a fright, a bewildering haunt or murky resolution. Where Lovecraft would have the narrator swoon into forgetfulness upon witnessing some cosmic monster, Aickman has the narrator return unsettled to the office on the morning train.

These tales rank with the best--and by the best of course I mean M.R. James and Henry James, whose ghost fictions are of an undeniable literary craftsmanship. I'd throw Shirley Jackson in there as well, but her stories build subtly and then tend toward a garish or nightmarish or wickedly funny reveal. Aickman and the two Jameses are more subtle. Aickmans's narrators are reminiscent of M.R. James' artsy intellectuals and his settings are the same country villages and dark moors, but with modern John Cheever twists and turns. I loved this volume, and will read more!

Book 19 of 2018

The Night Ocean: A Novel

When we were living in Baltimore and going to karaoke with a group of regulars a new guy joined us often. He was one of these young 30-ish guys who sport a carefully manicured beard, and who have a beard maintenance kit always to hand with a comb and some lotion to comb into the beard when too much beer or gin and tonic has frothed it up. He also had an aggressively maintained mustachio which curved elvishly up into spirals at each end of his upper lip. He couldn’t sing a lick, but was an enthusiastic singer nonetheless. In between singing, we drank and talked about shit. It’s what one does with karaoke buddies.

One night he pronounced Cthulhu incorrectly while discussing a meme, and I pointed it out and corrected his pronunciation, and he responded “I play Dungeons and Dragons, I think I know how to correctly say Cthulhu.” After I got over my initial shock that D & D had become a thing again (hipsters—is there nothing they won’t mine from the past and resuscitate with gusto?), I took up the challenge.

“Have you read Lovecraft?” I responded. He replied in the negative. “Well it’s interesting that you would know how to pronounce Cthulhu when you’ve never read Lovecraft. I have read EVERYTHING, and own the Arkham House four-volume Collected Works in hardback. My Honors English high school literature paper was a Jungian analysis of Lovecraft’s “Through the Gates of the Silver Key,” and I was turned on to L. Sprague de Camp’s bio of HPL by my English teacher that year. I have perused many of his letters and have even endured his Vogon-quality poetry about mushrooms from Yuggoth. I read S.T. Joshi’s biography, Stephen King’s musings on HPL in Danse Macabre, and even read Michel Houellebecq’s acid little philosophical tome about Lovecraft’s worldview in the original French. I have a blog whose title is a Lovecraft pun. In many texts both scholarly and otherwise I have read how Lovecraft pronounced Cthulhu, so I’m pretty sure I know how to pronounce it, and I’m positive you do not.”

It’s a truism in life that know-it-alls are assholes. This guy was a know-it-all without any backup for his know-it-all-ism. I’m a know-it-all who brings out the heavy (and nerdy) artillery when needed.

When I was a teenager reading Lovecraft nobody in my circles knew who the fuck he was. Until Mrs. Hardin, my 12^th grade English teacher, I don’t think I met anyone who had even heard of him, let alone read him. And now Lovecraft permeates our culture. Every time I see the latest Hollywood schlock there are HPL references, subtle or not. TV shows like Stranger Things are Lovecraft light. All the comic book films owe substantial debts to HPL. Political memes with Cthulu, T-shirts, mugs, plush toys—he’s everywhere. People who have never read Lovecraft and who would need a dictionary to get through the first two pages of “The Outsider” or “The Music of Eric Zahn” know about Cthulhu.

Many writers have been obsessions in my lifetime. Some of those obsessions re-wired my brain and came to permeate my day-to-day life. Lovecraft was the first to really do that for me, even though I only read him for a few years and stopped reading him by the time I was no longer a teen. His stories are for the most part awful—even the best ones are at best dis-satisfying. Trying to go back and re-read them is pointless; I can never slog through more than a few pages. But there was something about that alternate reality, and that cold archaic worldview…and those entities beyond time and space! For a formative time of my life, he set a standard, and though he was quickly replaced by Dostoevski and then Henry James and then others...he was a key figure in my youth and remains vitally important to me.

The Night Ocean is about HPL specifically, but more generally about stories and writers permeating one’s existence, saturating one’s being. It is an extended nerdgasm, not just for weird fiction fans, but for sci-fi geeks, political wonks, fans of archaeology, for beats and hippies. It’s also a reminder about how far we’ve come as a society in terms of acceptance of alternate lifestyles and tendencies.

Let me just run through some of the characters: Isaac Asimov, William S. Burroughs, Robert Barlow, Frederick Pohl, Hart Crane, Roy Cohn, Whitaker Chambers, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo. Houellebecq is included but is thinly disguised.

This novel is a well-imagined forgery about well-imagined forgeries about a weird Luddite racist throwback whose peculiar imaginings have tentacled their way down through the last century and a half, and whose distasteful personal beliefs and philosophy can teach Americans a lot about ourselves to this day. The Night Ocean was not what I expected, but it was a hoot. I learned some things about Lovecraft i did not know!

And, gleefully, the correct pronunciation of Cthulhu is explained herein.

Books 7 and 8 of 2018

Volume 2 is just as satisfying as Volume 1--of course this fantasy/sci-fi series fits the mold of all the fantasy sci-fi series I've read. Essun has powers she half-understands (think Thomas Covenant or Frodo or Paul Atreides) and must take what she can from teachers who either want to control her her kill her or mislead or manipulate her. She is a member of a mutant class of humans who are despised despite having skills necessary to humanity's survival.

The Earth suffers continuous geological upheavals because its moon has been cast into a long elliptical orbit. Earth is pissed about this loss, and tries repeatedly to destroy humans as a result--apparently in the distant past the moon was cast away by the reckless use of magic/science, and Essun and her allies are trying to figure it out.

But her daughter Nassun might be the kwisatz hederach of Earth...will she become the God Empress of Dune (I mean Earth) and restore the moon, or will the Earth succeed in wiping out all humans except for the monstrous stone eaters?

I look forward to finding out in volume 3.




Clever, funny, and charming short stories in intermediate French. They follow a classic Twilight Zone model, with surprise twists sometimes involving supernatural elements. Would be useful for a French 3 class or above if you are a teacher, or a good way to rebuild long lost French literacy skills. About 13 years ago I was reading de Beauvoir and Sartre and Leiris in the original French...now I'm back to rebuilding again, and this was an engaging place to start!