The Aspern Papers and Other Stories Book

Though others may have more sanguine ideas about Venice, my first visceral response when I think of the city is one of creepiness. I guess this is informed by my viewing the Nicolas Roeg direction of the Daphne du Maurier story "Don't Look Now" over thirty years ago. A subsequent reading of the story itself didn't dispel that impression of course, though it cleared up some of the confusion rendered by the flawed copy of the film projected on the movie screen. Many years later I read The Comfort of Strangers and though the setting is unnamed, the Venetian creepiness factor is even more chilling due to its relative realism. Even here, in the title novella, serene walks to the Piazza and sunlit gondola rides cannot trump the dark sala in a cavernous house inhabited by an ancient woman.

All four of the stories deal with a writer and his relationship to his public, usually represented in one individual. The prose of each is not dense, certainly not as dense as we think of when we think of Henry James. If anything, the prefaces he wrote for later editions of these works, included in this slim volume, are much more dense, and ambiguous enough to make your eyes glaze over. But the stories themselves are rather straightforward, and humorous too, believe it or not.