Simon Strantzas: The Book I Would Like To Be Buried With…
In the first of what hopefully become a regular series, I’ve asked genre authors about the book that has influenced them more than any, the book they’d like to take with them to their grave… first up is Canadian author and tundra-spook Simon Strantzas:
“The book I would like to be buried with is such an obvious selection for me that it hardly seems worth the effort to explain. Anyone familiar with my writing might guess the answer, but for those in the dark I suspect I’d most like to be buried with The Collected Strange Stories of Robert Aickman. Aickman didn’t write a lot of fiction over his lifetime, but what he did write continues to fascinate and befuddle those of us who enjoy his work. He dealt with dreamscapes, with symbols and metaphors, and while many of his tales lack a clear explanation for what exactly has occurred in them, they are often like the best of our dreams – at times illogical, yet always adhering to their own internal logic.
Reading Aickman one can’t help but feel that it’s the reader, not the author, who is at fault if things aren’t clear – the tales make sense, one can feel that they do, even if how remains frustratingly elusive. To study these ciphers, to tease out their true meanings, would take eternity, and I suspect, trapped in that coffin beneath the ground, I’d have nothing more to do than put my mind to it once and for all. Imagine: to be the only corpse in the yard who understood Aickman… I wager I’d be the belle of the undead ball that year.”
The first two volume edition of The Collected Strange Stories of Robert Aickman was published by Tartarus Press and Durtro Press in 1999 and is now out of print, but available through several specialist dealers.
More informaton about Robert Aickman can be found at Wikipedia.
◊◊◊
About Simon Strantzas:
Simon Strantzas is the author of the critically-acclaimed Cold To The Touch (Tartarus Press, 2009), a collection of thirteen tales of the strange and supernatural. His first collection, Beneath The Surface (Humdrumming, 2008) was called “possibly the most important debut short story collection in the genre [in years]. . .” by multiple award-winning editor Stephen Jones. Strantzas’s stories have appeared or are due soon in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Cemetery Dance, Postscripts, and elsewhere. In 2009, his work was nominated for the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction. Current projects include a third collection of short fiction, a novella, and a short novel. He also hopes to one day catch up on a voluminous amount of reading.
He has lived in Toronto, Canada, for his entire life and has no plans on leaving for sunnier climes.
Comments
Tell me what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!
Social web
