Can the past ever be saved?  Is the attempt a signal of folly or, perhaps worse, of an overarching ego?  Robert Aickman, in his first volume of autobiography, titled The Attempted Rescue, vividly answers the former question with an invigorating (for those in the know, Aickman's melancholia is a veritable narcotic) yes, and in this reader's opinion, a resounding no to the latter.

Not that Aickman doesn't come across snobbish or whiny at times, but for those small intrusions, most of this slim volume is filled with treasures for those more familiar with his collection of strange stories, for which he is most well-known.

About half way through the book, I began to see parallels between Aickman's memories of childhood and early adult life with another piece of art that captures the same feel of wonder, oddity, and sadness, notably Ingmar Bergman's Fannie & Alexander.  Reading The Attempted Rescue is very similar to that scene in Bergman's movie when childhood comes alive for a little boy in a large, cavernous house, at night.  Things move of their own when they shouldn't.  Aickman's descriptions of his bemused, off-center father; his sickly mother; a strange pair of aunt and uncle; his moments of terror confronting headless, straw-bodied dummies or of uppity about-to-charge bulls, are written with the wisdom of an adult but with the immediacy of the child he was.  If anything, these memories were still engraved in the man. As Aickman enters adulthood, his loneliness, his problems with women, his alienation from all that society wrought after 1914 and the First World War, are heart-breaking to read.

All in all, The Attempted Rescue is a fabulous summary of the early life of a sad man who wrote strange, yet oddly compassionate stories.  There is much compassion herein, despite the gloom.
 
 

Rich Romeo
(July 26, 2001)