8 May 2013
ISSN 1089-764X
Published irregularly by whim and fancy for the Avram Davidson Society.
Contents copyright 2012 The Nutmeg Point District Mail and assigned
to individual contributors. All rights reserved.
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. Back issues are archived at the Avram Davidson Website,
URL : http://www.avramdavidson.org
PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THE ORIGINATING ADDRESS
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IN MEMORIAM : AVRAM DAVIDSON (1923-1993)
Today's version of the Avram Davidson Society luncheon was the best
ever, with
new members and old friends braving a spring downpour to
meet at the new iteration
of Zen Palate Union Square (earlier
gatherings
had been in the restaurant when the dining room overlooked
the square).
Guests included Maria Dahvana Headley, Gregory Feeley,
Michael
Swanwick, and the director of the M. C. Porter Endowment for
the Arts.
This was the fifteen anniversary of the establishment of
the society to
" support critical and biographical research and other
activities contributing
to greater awareness of Davidson's writings and
his place in the history of
American literature and the fantasy and
science fiction genres".
Gregory Feeley recalled his first Nebula Convention, where he met
Davidson and where Davidson was the announcer of the short fiction
award — the year no award was given (1971). He also told of a visit to
Bremerton, where Davidson lived during his last years: the country of
manufacture of the rental car was queried before Davidson would accept
a ride. Michael Swanwick reminded the gathering just why this mattered:
Avram
Davidson reminded his friends and correspondents that it was not
his choice
to remember the Holocaust every day. Swanwick also said,
I
never met Davidson but I got him a job, when my faculty advisor Dr.
D.C.
Jenkins proposed bringing a science fiction writer to William & Mary
writer in residence program but wanted to get a "quality" writer. It
was
Dr. Jenkins who also published the first chapbook of Davidson's
work, Polly Charms, The Sleeping Woman (1977).
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THE WAILING OF THE GAULISH DEAD
The Wailing of the Gaulish Dead was published today, to mark the
twentieth anniversary of Davidson's death. All in attendance today
signed a presentation copy for Grania Davis. The essay, an Adventure
in
Unhistory, was composed late in 1981 but not published during
Davidson's lifetime. It is not known whether the original typescript
survives; the source for this edition, a photocopy, was sent to your
correspondent in 1999 by Iain Odlin, son of R.W. Odlin (patron of the
1993 Owlswick edition of Adventures in Unhistory).
Details of the book,
the fourth in the series of publications of the
Avram Davidson Society,
can be found at
http://avramdavidson.org/Wailing.html
The publisher thanks the subscribers for their support. Copies will be
mailed to subscribers beginning tomorrow.
Other Davidsonian topics of discussion included a notable passage in
Peregrine: Primus and the appearance of "Or all the Seas with
Oysters"
in the newly anthology Unnatural Creatures, edited by Neil Gaiman and
Maria Dahvana Headley (Harper, 2013).
The society's Paris correspondent was, alas, unable to join us.
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This is an abbreviated newsletter intended chiefly
to alert readers to
The Wailing of the Gaulish Dead.
There are plans for an Avram Davidson panel at Readercon
(12-14 July
2013) and a full report will appear in the next issue.
Grania Davis reports that a collection of stories, Tree of Life, Book of
Death, The Treasures of Grania Davis, is forthcoming this summer
from
Surinam Turtle Press.
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