THE NUTMEG POINT DISTRICT MAIL
the Avram Davidson electronic newsletter
Vol. IV No. 4-5
November 1999-January 2000
ISSN 1089-764X
Henry Wessells, Editor.
Cooper Wessells, Honorary Secretary.
Published bimonthly by whim and fancy for the Avram Davidson
Society. Contents copyright 2000 The Nutmeg Point District Mail
and assigned to individual contributors. All rights reserved.
All correspondence to:
TEMPORARY CULTURE
Post Office Box 43072, Upper Montclair, NJ 07043-0072
Electronym: wessells@aol.com
Use this electronym for requests to be added to or dropped
from the mailing list.
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AVRAM DAVIDSON IN BRITISH HONDURAS:
Memories of "AD" as American Author Abroad
by Hugh Leddy
I met Avram in San Francisco the year after he bought
my first sale to Fantasy & Science Fiction. I worked on the
Examiner
at
the time, and we first met in the reporters' bar around the corner at 3rd
and Mission. He was a welcome change from everything I was used to . .
. drab streets, hurrying pedestrians, angry traffic. Even though
he'd come from the East after leaving his job as the editor of F&SF,
he brought with him an air of the exotic, of farflung places and spice-laden
voyages sailed from uncharted lands.
It was his conversation, you see.
With a few well chosen words he could transport
you completely out of the Twentieth Century and back to other places and
times. As Richard A. Lupoff put it, in a comment on AD in The Investigations
of Avram Davidson:
"With a mere handful of syllables he could
transport a reader to
the deck of an ancient sailing vessel as it plied the waves of the
sun-dappled Mediterranean, to a musty and mysterious little shop
in a shadowy byway of Victorian London, to the Spartan
executive offices or the clattering production line of a modern
corporation. [...] Avram Davidson transcended the usual
boundaries of categories, and simply told Avram Davidson stories."
And he told amusing stories besides.
As it happened, my first wife, Chris, and I, and
Grania and Avram all lived in separate residences in the Haight Ashbury
and used to get together for story conferences. My daughter, Justine, attended
the alternative school where Grania taught and was a playmate of Avram
and Grania's son, Ethan.
(That was the year Justine announced she wanted to be Jewish because
Ethan at Hannukah got a present every day for eight whole days,
and not just one at Christmas!)
Avram was an undisputed genius when it came to writing
luminous prose and doing deft characterization. His plotting skills sometimes
deserted him when he was plotting out a novel. Hence the story sessions
-- and though he didn't follow any suggestion I ever made, it was still
fun to see him discard all our ideas and put together some line that was
better in response. Oh, yes -- I also found myself, on picking up one of
Avram's latest stories, depicted as a character in the story.
My alternate persona appeared in F&SF
as "Hue" and was described as someone with the "burning eyes of a fanatic."
I thought it was funny, even faintly flattering. When I asked, he explained
he'd put umlauts over the vowels in that story's cast, but the printer
had dropped all of them. I stalked about Grant Avenue in North Beach practicing
my burning fanatical look for months after that. Hardly anyone who knew
me at that time ever noticed. Chris, who was (and is) the scientist in
our motley crew, came up with the one memorable suggestion I still think
should have been used somewhere: Plot situation is the usual alternate
universe switch, and somehow the central character has to find out he isn't
in his old universe; how does he do it? Well, if he knows his basic math
and remembers the value of "e" in natural logarithms, he will find he is
someplace where that basic value is different. Which, since it is the natural
number sequence of our universe, means wherever he is, he ain't
here!
Avram understood the idea but rejected it as too
complicated for his average reader to pick up on. I liked it because it
was elegant and simple, at least as an idea. Getting it across that way
might present some hurdles.
My next encounter with Avram didn't come until I
went down to British Honduras (now Belize) on a visit. He and Dr. Alan
Nourse had formed Nourse-Davidson Associates and were doing business at
No. 7 Gabourel Lane in Belize (the city) as the Bay of Honduras Trading
Co. Avram was the soul of hospitality and loaned my daughter and myself
extra rooms at No. 7 to stay while we looked around. I had some half-baked
ideas of forming a small business of my own, but basically I was looking
for a quiet place to write.
British Honduras at that time was the right place
to do it. Food and shelter were ridiculously cheap. (Later, up in Corazol
District which is Spanish-speaking and Mayan, I rented a little nipa palm
hut for ten dollars a month with three meals a day thrown in -- and was
told by those who knew that I was being outrageously overcharged because
I was a "rich American".)
Belize was and still is, I suspect, a very curious
place.
My first take on it was coming across on the bus
from Merida and entering the border through the customs gate. In the midst
of the thick Central American "bush" (which means jungle!), one is confronted
by veddy British accents diluted at times by an Anglo-Creole twist and
one finds oneself scrutinized because you are standing under the serene
but imposing portrait of Her Royal Majesty Elizabeth II.
What a start. For so tiny a country, roughly a hundred
and fifty miles long by at most eighty miles wide, it is gigantic
inside.
. . . Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice.
This is not an illusion, but a direct result of
time-distance traveled ratios.
Getting down to Placencia from Belize via "de ferry"
took as long as it would take me to fly today from San Francisco to Alaska,
with the stop at Stann Creek taking the place of the half-hour to forty
minute layover in Vancouver.
All in all, it is NOT a place to be in a hurry!
This relaxes some. Others, the anxious type A personalities,
can find it extraordinarily frustrating.
And the history of how it came to be an outpost
of Empire is doubly fascinating, since this very staid and starchy little
place was founded by English buccaneers and runaway Negro slaves who combined
forces to defeat a Mexican armada sent down to clean them out once and
for all --
It all happened at the last battle of St. George's
Cay in 1798. And it must qualify as the wildest naval engagement ever.
Since Belize has the world's second largest barrier reef, the deep hulled
frigates and men o' war sent by the governor of Yucatan, Arturo O'Neil,
could not come in to make effective use of their cannons. Therefore the
three thousand marines placed on the flotilla manned long boats and, with
muskets strapped to their backs, proceeded to row for shore.
Not a single boat ever got there.
Instead they were met by the shallow drafted, nimble
boats of the privateers who were lighter gunned but quite capable of blowing
rowboats to smithereens. One of the most mobile elements were the flat
rafts poled by escaped Blacks. Mounted with a light brass cannon, the raft
driven by strong men pushing against the shallow bottom with long poles
would get within range and -- BOOM! -- one less longboat.
The escaped slaves had no love for their former
overseers. And they were fighting, not for revenge, but for freedom itself.
They had been promised full citizenship for joining in the fight against
the Spaniards. The only condition of course was that they and the buccaneers
had to win!
They did . . . And the defeat was so overwhelming
that no more military expeditions were ever sent again.
Since then, Belize has always had a tradition of
democratic government under colonial British rule. The question was, could
she survive as a very small independent nation?
With the foresight science fiction authors are famous
for, both Nourse and Avram saw that what the new, emerging and eventually
fully independent nation would need was a reliable transport system. They
started out on a path that eventually would provide it. They purchased
a fleet of well boats. Twenty foot, single masted sloops with no deck and
most often no motors, either. They were used everywhere along the
coast and on the cayes (small coral islands) to bring in breadfruit and
coconuts and bananas and mangoes to market at Belize. And they made good
fishing boats as well.
The sloops were freed from their dependency on favorable
winds when they were equipped with props and gas-powered marine engines
by the new company's port engineer, an American drifter who owned his own
sailboat, a bedroll and a dog. His name was Stringfellow.
The idea was the boats would bring in produce on
a regular basis, more cheaply perhaps and certainly far more reliably than
the individual fishermen and farmers who operated on a very-much hit-or-miss,
this week maybe, Mon, but next week oh, for sure! schedule.
The port captain was Captain Johnson, a local ship's
master. And believe me, he knew his business!
Belize (the country now) has, as I said, the world's
second largest barrier reef. Out past it, the coast line shelves off steeply
enough to justify the "Honduras" in the former colony's name. It is Spanish
and means "the depths." Inside the barrier reef, it was another matter
-- average depth is twelve feet. And it is a cookie cutter route of a pattern
that changes with the weather; every storm brings silt down on the rivers;
wave action eats new channels and the only people that really understand
local navigation are those who've done it all their lives.
Nobody I saw relied on navigational maps, they steered
correctly because they knew the waters like the backs of their hands. And
most didn't use gas because it was far too expensive. Anyone who
sailed regularly considered maps worse than useless because the waters
hadn't been properly charted in decades. All of which may give the
reader some idea of what Nourse-Davidson Associates was up against.
To add another complicating factor, the local populace was scared silly
of becoming independent -- with good reason. Guatemala was next door and
was making anticipatory salivating noises. It had a huge military machine
that needed exercise, and Guatemala, landlocked on the Caribbean side,
hankered for a new eastern shoreline.
Now of course the situation has changed radically
for the better. Guatemala has plenty enough troubles internally to pay
any attention to little Belize. The British reassured everyone they would
still pay close attention to the welfare of their old colony, and would
if needed send in troops. Purely as a military exercise, don't you know.
And the biggest shot in the arm has been the new
growth of eco-tours, where tourists pay handsomely to forego all the standard
conveniences so they can be close to nature.
In sum, the two entrepreneurs were quite correct
in their future estimate of what Belize would become. They just were slightly
off on their calendars. (Another thing science fiction writers have become
famous for.) Instead of three to eight years, it has taken about
thirty-plus years to prove
they were right.
The company went into local sand hauling for cement
makers with their converted boats, operating reliably on gas-driven engines.
It looked at last like they were going to turn a
profit --
Until a young woman named Joy made her appearance.
Avram had more than a passing interest in her. But Stringfellow managed
to get her off alone with a short cruise on his boat. When they returned,
Stringfellow announced he was no longer the company's port engineer, and
he and the
young woman named Joy were planning to go off and do some serious
traveling
together!
Nobody else at that time was even semiskilled at
keeping Bay of Honduras fleet's marine engines running. It proved insurmountable,
not because it was itself so serious (someone qualified could have been
found and hired eventually) but because it was the final straw in a long
dismal string of disappointments.
It was selfish of Stringfellow to disappear when
he was so badly needed. But then, I recalled Capt. Johnson had warned me
privately in an outburst of what I mistook at the time as personal animosity,
but most certainly was not, when he said:
"Stringfellow, now, don't you trust him, you be
careful alongside dot man, Mistah Hugh -- He be waitin' to humbug people.
Dat Stringfellow, he be sly!"
Oh, yes . . . The punch line to this story?
The next time I saw the name "Stringfellow" it was
as one of the names of the Boss in the Wall -- who is always depicted as
sly.
As Grania Davidson said recently to me, "This is
a terrific bit of literary archaeology!"
The impact of Avram's experiences on his writing
is obvious in the Limekiller series. But also, before I left No. 7 Gabourel
Lane, he showed me a new manuscript he'd worked on during the course of
his last business trip up to the States. (I have always thought he wanted
desperately by then to forget the unfamiliar weight of business cares and
concentrate on something he really knew how to do well -- in other words,
he wanted to get back full time into writing.)
What I read was utterly and wildly unlike anything
any other writer or writers was/were doing back then. The first chapter
was all he wanted to show me. In it, an improbably named character, Vergil,
was dodging manticores who lurked in the catacombs under Rome. He was on
an urgent mission, and it was imperative he not be observed -- hence the
need to travel underground to a place where he was urgently needed!
I was immediately hooked, of course.
So, perhaps for us, his readers, Avram's misfortunes
with Bay of Honduras Trading Co. were fortunate in the long run after all.
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PUBLISHING NEWS
Grania Davis reports:
Marco Polo and the Sleeping Beauty by AD
and GD is now
available as a Palm Pilot electronic book from www.peanutpress.com.
Boss in the Wall by AD and GD was selected
for Best New
Horror 10, edited by Stephen Jones, to be published in the UK
and US.
"The Hills Behind Hollywood High" by AD and GD,
was selected for the
Mammoth Book of Seriously Comic Fantasy, edited by Mike Ashley,
to be published in the UK and US.
"Bumberboom" and "Basilisk" will be published online
by Alexandria
Digital Literature at www.alexlit.com.
"The Ikon of Elijah" will be published by Hayakawa
in Japan.
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AVRAM PANEL AT WORLD FANTASY CONVENTION
Friends, scholars and fans of Avram gathered for
a lively hour of discussion and reflection on Sunday 7 November 1999 under
the auspices of the 25th World Fantasy Convention. Michael Kandel, the
witty and urbane translator and editor, was moderator of a panel that included
Jacob Weisman, publisher of Tachyon Publications; critic Gregory Feeley;
Henry Wessells; and biographer Eileen Gunn as a welcome write-in addition
to the panel. Grania and Steve Davis were among the audience. With a quorum
of board members of the Avram Davidson Society on hand, the panel was officially
designated the third meeting of the society, the largest to date.
Michael Kandel introduced two useful metaphors for
considering Avram's writings: Krazy Kat and jazz, both of which employ
frequent variations on stock elements or well-known idioms; Kandel also
noted the importance of Davidson's Jewishness in viewing his work, a theme
that was touched upon by Eileen Gunn in her remarks and by Fred Lerner
in the audience. The panel discussion covered aspects of Davidson's life
and published writings, and also included remarks on the major unpublished
items: The Scarlet Fig, the third Vergil novel; and Dragons in
the Trees.
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AVRAM DAVIDSON SOCIETY MEETING IN APRIL 2000
Mark your calendars for the fourth meeting of the
Avram Davidson
Society, tentatively scheduled for Friday 21 April 2000 in New York
City. A new Society publication is planned for the luncheon.
Further details will be announced in the March District
Mail.
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
A short, previously unknown Vergil Magus piece has
come to light.
Mike Berro reports purchasing the six-page typescript of "THE NINE
ROSES OF ROME" by Avram Davidson, dated "nov 14/88" at auction.
This item, which begins in lore and legend and then relates what may
be
described as a Roman shaggy dog story, is of particular interest because
of its references to Vergil's friend Quint, who figures so prominently
in
"Vergil and the Dukos." Also of note are the discussions of the types
and
natures of fire, themes that resonate with the two published Vergil
novels.
Your editor has recently acquired a copy of Incest
Street, a scarce and
previously unrecorded work of erotica written by Avram Davidson under
the pseudonym Carlton G. Miller. Clifford Scheiner, the specialist
bookseller
who located it after several months search, indicated that few of his
colleagues had even heard of Incest Street. Grania Davis acknowledged
Davidson's authorship, remarking, "Avram was no prude. Like many other
science fiction authors at the time, he wrote this piece of erotica
because he
needed to pay the rent."
The title page reads:
INCEST STREET
by
CARLTON G. MILLER
All characters and situations
in this story are fictitious
A NARCISSUS NOVEL
The title page verso indicates: Copyright 1970 by Publisher's
Export
Co., Inc., 6055 Fairmont Ave., San Diego, Calif. 92120. Paperback,
with spine marked PEC 2.25 Incest Street by Carlton Miller N-187.
176pp.
A brief epigram from Dwight D. Eisenhower opens
the novel; one other
passage may be quoted here:
If Mae had not discovered a crack in the left hind leg of her
writing table at eight o'clock that Saturday morning; if Jacky at
eight-fifteen had not decided to take up the hem of her
brown-and-yellow hopsacking skirt; if Anne Tomlins had not
come to the conclusion about half-past eight that she had to get
the hell out of the house; if Jeremy had not wanted a glass of
orange juice at nine, then the whole history of the world would
have been different. (52)
Your editor will leave it to some other Davidson scholar
to catalogue
the variations on a theme that this novel presents in the course of
its pages.
-- Henry Wessells
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The URL of the Avram Davidson Website is: http://www.avramdavidson.org/
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With the next issue, to be published in March, The Nutmeg Point
District Mail will resume regular bimonthly frequency. Your
editor
invites contributions on any topic pertaining to the life and work
of
Avram Davidson.
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