(urth) Robert Aickman, The Model

[Tony Ellis]

I'm a huge Robert Aickman fan, and definitely recommend him as of
interest to Wolfe readers.

As John Barach says, he's a writer who implies things rather than
saying them outright. Often very strange and unsettling things - a lot
of his stories are anthologised as 'horror'. This makes The Model
atypical, as far as I can recall, as I remember it as more dreamlike
than actually unpleasant. But it's years since I read it.

A crucial distinction between the two writers is that generally
Wolfe's mysteries *seem* solvable, even if none of us can agree on the
solution. Whereas a lot of Aickman's stories very deliberately *don't
add up*. You think you can see where it's heading, you're picking up
on all the clues, then something outright surreal happens and suddenly
it's over.

For that reason I would suggest 'Mute' as one of Wolfe's more
Aickman-like stories. Maybe it has an explanation that I just didn't
pick up on, but for me its mystery was the essence of the story.

I wouldn't have thought Aickman's writing could translate at all to
cinema, but Jeremy Dyson and Mark Gatiss made an enjoyable stab at it
in their short film version of The Cicerones, which for a long time
was very hard to get hold of but I'm delighted to say you can now
watch here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZefDTNt2u4