Henry Wessells, Editor.
Cooper Wessells, Honorary Secretary.
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.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
DAVIDSON COLLECTION FROM PITSPOPANY PRESS
The boundaries of genre were insufficient to contain Avram Davidson's
writings. To his many works in the science fiction and mystery genres
can now be added a substantial volume assembling writings on Jewish
themes.
Everybody Has Somebody in Heaven : Essential Jewish
Tales of the Spirit by Avram Davidson, edited by Jack Dann and
Grania Davidson Davis is forthcoming from Pitspopany Press. The
book will include poems, stories, and essays from Orthodox Jewish
Life and Commentary, published under the A.A. Davidson
byline; a
selection of fantasy tales with Jewish elements; and several previously
unpublished pieces from different points in Davidson's career.
The volume will include a biographical introduction
by Eileen Gunn
and may also include a written Symposium on Avram Davidson and
Jewish Fantasy, led by Jack Dann and Grania Davidson Davis.
Additional participants to date include: Peter Beagle, Carol Carr,
Ethan
Davidson, Lisa Goldstein, Richard Lupoff, Barry Malzberg, and Henry
Wessells. (Readers of The Nutmeg Point District Mail will recall
that
news of some of Davidson's early Jewish publications first appeared
in
Vol. IV, No.2-3.)
A preliminary table of contents follows:
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+
AVRAM DAVIDSON SOCIETY MEETING
The fourth meeting of the Avram Davidson Society will be held on
Friday 28 April 2000 in New York City, in the upstairs restaurant at
Zen Palate, 16th Street and Union Square East at 12:30. All are
welcome to attend the luncheon gathering. R.S.V.P. to the editor
at
wessells@aol.com by Wednesday 26 April.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
AVRAM DAVIDSON AND INTERNET BOOKSELLING
A recent search of internet booksellers offering Davidson material using
the search engine «www.bookfinder.com»
reveals the ease with which
reading copies of most of Davidson's works may be located. There
are
often a hundred or more listings for common books such as Joyleg,
Rork!, and the other mass market paperbacks of the mid 1960s.
Prices
range from the $2.00 to $3.00 that you might pay at a local paperback
bookshop up to signed books priced for collectors. The easiest way
I've found to track periodical appearances is through the database
of
Pandora's Books «www.pandora.ca».
Collectible copies of
scarce books such as Vergil in Averno, the British edition of
Or
All the
Seas with Oysters, or And Don't Forget the One Red Rose are
available, often at premium prices. No one need be without an
(extra)
copy of a favorite Davidson book to give away. Except, perhaps
for
Adventures in Unhistory, which has always been elusive.
-- Henry Wessells
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
FROM THE FILES
"The Engine of Samoset Erastus Hale and One Other, Unknown"
(Amazing, July 1987) is a late Davidson gem concerning a vanished
technology that appears to have been considerably in advance of its
time. With characteristic indirection but uncharacteristic concision,
the
five-and-a-half page story evokes the "irradiodiffusion machine" created
by the late S.E. Hale (and one other) in early 1861, for the purpose
of
"spreading the Gospel of the Peaceable Kingdom, as well as for
mercantile intelligence." In short, it seems to resemble what
we might
call a radio -- complete with a polished maple cabinet with an
embroidered sampler stretched taut across the speaker orifice, as seen
on Olde Time Radio as once was. But the surviving witnesses to the
fire
in which inventor and invention perished have no such vocabulary to
draw upon.
Where R.A. Lafferty's "Selenium Ghosts of the Eighteen
Seventies" is
a baroque narrative of duplicity succeeding treachery, Davidson's short
story seems terse and straightforward at first. There is the
fragmentary
evidence of a legal deposition (which first hints at the actions of
H.
Nickerson), then a reconstructed conversation scene that appears to
show Hale communicating across the aether, or perhaps simply muttering
to himself. It is in the story's final three paragraphs that
Davidson cites
the names Bell and Edison to create the ripples of historical suggestion
that linger in memory, even as he undercuts the narrative that we have
just
read, creating a sudden leap in time to 1883, and pointing to flaws
in the
evidence and the death long ago of all the parties directly connected
with
the curious events. The tale concludes with a Whitmanesque reflection
on
the folly of the Civil War, neatly echoing concerns articulated in
the
opening deposition.
-- Henry Wessells
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
CLASSIC DAVIDSON NOVELS
Joyleg by Avram Davidson and Ward Moore (1962) is the first of
a
dozen classic Davidson novels to be made available in trade paperback
format by Wildside Press « www.wildsidepress.com
» through
print-on-demand technology. Further details will be published
in
future issues of the District Mail.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
The URL of the Avram Davidson Website is: http://www.avramdavidson.org/
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
The next issue will be published in May. The editor of The
Nutmeg
Point District Mail invites contributions on any topic pertaining
to the
life and work of Avram Davidson.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +