The AVRAM DAVIDSON Website

EPHEMERA & DIGRESSIONS

In his writings, Avram Davidson pursued many peculiar ideas, legends and notions in what seem to be digressions from the "story" he might have been writing. These digressions are, of course, why many of us keep reading him with great interest. Adventures in Unhistory collects many of the non-fiction pieces on these topics.
This section includes interesting excerpts, fragments, citations and oddities related in some (often tenuous) fashion to Avram's work. Selected articles from The Nutmeg Point District Mail have also been indexed here.
See also the Gallery section of the website (still under construction) for Davidsoniana, bibliographic images, and other curiosities.

Contents :

To propose additional material for this evolving section, send to: wessells@aol.com
    Or send copies of the material by mail to:

    H. Wessells
    Temporary Culture
    P.O. Box 43072
    Upper Montclair, NJ 07043-0072.

Avram Davidson on H.P. Lovecraft

    Surprise: despite the above polemic, Davidson made several significant allusions to H.P. Lovecraft, in "Kindly hold Out Your Right Finger," one of the Adventures in Autobiography; and in such stories as "Something Rich and Strange" (where computer programming assistance from Miskatonic University helps track down the elusive mermaid), "The Redward Edward Papers," and "Death of A Damned Good Man," where his narrator muses, somewhat coy, about the authorship of the famed Lovecrafty couplet :
        That is not dead which can eternal lie
        And after strange eons, even Death may die


Aaron Burr

    Aaron Burr (1756-1836), the third vice president of the United States of America, shot and killed his long-time political rival Alexander Hamilton in a duel on the banks of the Hudson in July 1804. That much is fact.
    Burr appears in Avram's writings as "that scoundrelly American prime minister-president" in the alternate history tale, "O Brave Old World!"
    What is less widely known is that Aaron Burr signed the Constitution of the United States of America. At least he did in Michael Kurland's novel The Whenabouts of Burr (New York : DAW Books, 1975), a light-hearted time-travel adventure featuring Amerigo Vespucci, private eye, a special operative from the Bureau of Weights and Measures, a jovial tavern-keeping Benjamin Franklin, and a rather megalomaniacal Alexander Hamilton.
    Avram Davidson contributed a draft of the first chapter (in the Texas A&M University Sterling C. Evans Library Special Collections), in which a retired historian notices the signature of Aaron Burr on his daily visit to ogle the Constitution. The shadowy investigatory powers of the Bureau of Weights and Measures are also outlined. The novel travels through time and ideas at a brisk pace, with some hilarious historical jokes and some nebulous science. A pleasant read.

Avram Davidson in the land of Rus

Authorized Russian translation of Marco Polo and the Sleeping Beauty

Marco Polo and the Sleeping Beauty, by Avram Davidson and Grania Davis
St. Petersburg: Azbooka, 1997
Translation by Dmitri Starkov
Print run of this edition was 30,000 copies

Unauthorized Russian language editions of books by Avram Davidson

1. Feniks i Zerkalo. Roman i noveli
as by Eyv Davidson
St. Petersburg: Severo-Zapad, 1993.  ISBN 5-8352-0189-3
Omnibus edition of novel The Phoenix and the Mirror and collection Strange Seas and Shores; with illustrations by S. Lemekhov

Contents:   H. Wessells comments: The front panel illustration of the dust jacket has a very peculiar burning Red Man in the center ground, the somber faces of Vergil and Laura in the right foreground, and a dim cyclops in the left background. The illustration on the back panel, for "The Ogre" is a wintry Alpine scene, with the huge, shaggy and fanged ogre holding a club in the left hand, clutching a small child to its breast with the right. The endpaper illustration is an intriguing scene of Laura and the Cyclops in the ruins. There are a number of illustrations throughout the text. In the latter half of the book, however, these do not always appear in relation to the text: an illustration of the Red Man and Cornelia in flames appears in the middle of "The Sources of the Nile."
    There are however (even?) footnotes!     The copyright page has a very brief biographical note on Avram, some puffery about this book being the first translation of Avram Davidson into Russian, and lots of Copyright notices, none relating to Avram Davidson. . . .
    The book is printed on cheap paper and bound in a generic brown phony leather, but overall a nice volume, even for a pirate (unauthorized) edition, AND ON THE COLOPHON PAGE IT STATES : print run 200,000 ex. -- 200,000 copies! (!! or perhaps even !!!!!!!!!). See images of the dustjacket, endpapers, and colophon.
 
2. Rork!
by Avraam Davidson
Perm: Aleteya, 1993
Translated by D. Arsenyev
Novel was published in an anthology of the same title along with translations of The Tower of Zanid by L. Sprague de Camp and Witch World by André Norton

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