Avram as Writer-in-Residence at W&M was charming to all of the faculty who
chose to get to know him -- which means few. His creative writing students
found him an oddity, and most of them weren't prospects for the Bohemian
life-style despite being aspiring to write fiction while working in banking, law,
or the State Dept. I think Wallace Stevens was more their role model than
Avram, with his scruffiness and flea-biten dog. The one disciple he had
was a fascinating Vietnam vet who found him much more his psychic pal than
could be expected of the younger, less worldly -- let alone
unexposed-to-grisly-reality -- students. Glen found Avram's interweaving of
reality and sci-fi permutations of reality recognizable and therapeutic.
Affable and always generous of his talking time in cozy domestic
circumstances, Avram with dog was a fixture of conversational interest to
four or five faculty during his stay. Smart as hell, with a head and
stomach stuffed full of arcane bits of info--both real and imagined, I
suspect -- he was seemed a scruffy teddy-bear, sort of a lovable grandpa with
weird stories to tell. A great relief from academic tedium until the hour
wore on and one became increasingly aware time and again what a closed
physical and psychic system he was. One was always anxious to leave him
when the visit started to become depressing, and one had to fight off that
disgusting and disturbing emotion of pity. This would happen when one
realized that he lived in an unreal world that didn't seem to need anything
from the outside. The hermit life didn't seem admirable, possibly because
one couldn't see his host of admirers reading in their own nooks and crannies
in the English-speaking world. If one could have seen them in a vision, I
think Avram would have been perceived differently by those who saw him only
as I did, as a solitary recluse with his well-cared for inseparable companion,
his pup. I used to come away with my mind supplanting its memory of
Avram and pup with that of St. Jerome in his cell with pet lion and
wondering whether lions had fleas?
Robert Maccubbin (English Department, College of William & Mary)
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Query
Do you (or anybody on your list) know the origin of the poem that
Davidson cited in his introduction to Poul Anderson's "No truce with
Kings" in F&SF. I am quoting from memory here
"... The king, the party, the revolution
Tyranny has many names, freedom needs but one."
-- Richard Friedman
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Adventures in Unhistory at Auction
A presentation copy of Adventures in Unhistory (Owlswick, 1993),
one of 26 lettered copies signed by Davidson shortly before his death,
sold at auction on ebay for $406 on 20 February 2003, to Barry R. Levin
Science Fiction & Fantasy Literature of Santa Monica, California. The
lettered state of the book was noted in Chalker & Owings but unreported by
Other Davidson Bibliographers (who can make no excuse whatsoever for
having overlooked that citation).
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3501222145
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Press Clips
Nova Express, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Summer 2002) features Bruce Gillespie's
interesting and thoughtful "Alpha and Omega: The Short Stories of Avram
Davidson, First to Last" (pp. 25-28), which was noted in its initial Australian
apazine appearance. ($5.00, Nova Express, P.O. Box 27231, Austin, TX
78755-2231, or from Chris Drumm Books, cdrummbks@aol.com).
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The Avram Davidson Website
"The net which caught the siren mermaid does catch us all. It is Indra's
Net, a net of almost infinite dimensions, and where any two cords of it
come together, there come together a line of time and a line of space,
until every moment in time and every point in space are connected.
"And each connection, it is said, shines and glitters like a jewel."
(from "The Prevalence of Mermaids")
In its current stage of evolution, << www.avramdavidson.org >>, the Avram
Davidson Website has drawn more than 12,000 visitors during the past year.
The website does not aspire to the omnipresence of Indra's Net ; it serves a
useful purpose . . . and that is all its compiler asks.
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Crawling the web
Two interesting presentations of Davidson manuscript material on Mike Berro's website :
http://netserver.massmedia.com/~mikeb/booktour/the_odd_old_bird.htm
http://netserver.massmedia.com/~mikeb/booktour/the_nine_roses_of_rome.htm
And one very curious "quantum pulp" private eye tale in a back issue of the web
'zine Tension alludes to the scribbling profession of the chief character in one
of Davidson's novels :
Communist Crocodiles Ate My Wife by William Clark
http://www.mesh5.com/tension/summer97/page1.htm
"All he had to do was sit down at the mill and grind out out ten pieces at $400
each. Or twenty at $200 each. Or some combination or permutation thereof. He had
the editorial okays. He knew the style and craft, the market. Love-starved Arabs
Raped Me Often. Communist Crocodiles Raped My Wife. Man-Eaters of the
Malayan Peninsula. Man-Hating Women Pirates of Polynesia. Woman-Eating
Arabs of the Crocodile Coast... He had written such pieces a hundred times
before... [for the] editors of the Magazines ... [he] contemptuously named to
himself as Brute, Rut, and Gonad. ..."
from Avram Davidson, Masters of the Maze
Clark's story is a witty pastiche of Chandler and quantum physics notions
with some unusual illustrations.
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PUBLICATIONS OF THE AVRAM DAVIDSON SOCIETY
The Last Wizard with A Letter of Explanation.
Publications of the Avram Davidson Society, number one.
Size: 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches, xii pages. Second printing, May 1999.
Single copies, $10.00 (postpaid).
El Vilvoy de las Islas.
Publications of the Avram Davidson Society, number two.
Size: 6 x 9 inches, viii + 32 pages. June 2000.
Issue of 100 copies in paper wrappers : single copies, $13.00 (postpaid).
To order, send a cheque in U.S. funds, payable to Henry Wessells, to :
P.O. Box 43072, Upper Montclair, NJ 07043-0072, USA
Orders by e-mail to wessells@aol.com will be held until payment is received.
Trade discount available.
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In the next issue:
DISORIENTATION & UNDERSTANDING :
Walking, Labyrinths, and Place in the Writings of Avram Davidson
Issue Date : 8 May 2003
The editor of The Nutmeg Point District Mail invites contributions on any
topic pertaining to the life and work of Avram Davidson.
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