The Avram Davidson Treasury | |||||||||||||
edited by Robert Silverberg and Grania Davis | |||||||||||||
Tor Books, 447 pages | |||||||||||||
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A review by Rich Horton
This collection is organized as a retrospective, with the selections
placed in order of first appearance. This is, I think, an excellent
choice for any collection of this magnitude. It allows the
interested reader to try to track evolutions in the writer's style
and thematic concerns over time. (I would suggest, perhaps, that
the older Davidson was more prone to explorations of esoterica
than the younger, and less often openly angry. Throughout his
career, he was ready with the comic touch, even in the midst of
a darker context. His style was always special, but perhaps grew
more involved as he grew older.)
Another feature of this collection is the introductions by many
of Davidson's friends -- mostly fellow authors and editors, but
also his son and his bibliographer, Henry Wessels. This represents
a significant chunk of "value added": they include some personal
reminiscences, some analyses of the work, and some elegiac
passages. I'll add that the book is nicely and elegantly put
together, and that editors Robert Silverberg and Grania Davis
(as well as Tor in-house editor Teresa Nielsen Hayden) deserve
thanks and applause for working to bring us this book.
But, of course, there is no Avram Davidson Treasury without
the stories Avram Davidson wrote, and 38 are assembled
here. And, the stories are the only real reason to buy and exult
in this book. I'm a big Davidson fan: make no mistake. I come to
this review not at all objective, and having reading all but a
few of the stories already, many of them several times. At least
one, "The Sources of the Nile," is firmly on my personal list of
the best SF stories of all time.
So, highlights? As mentioned, "The Sources of the Nile" is an
all-time favorite of mine, a mordantly funny (indeed very funny)
story of a young writer who stumbles across a family that
anticipates future fashion trends. This proves of great interest
to the advertising industry, and the writer chases after the
secret. But he's not the only person who could make use of such
information. It's tightly plotted, always logical, and perfectly
resolved (the first two features not being very high on Davidson's
list of strengths). It's also full of gorgeous telling details of
character and setting, as well as the odd Davidsonian bit of
thematically-pointed esoteric knowledge. And, as Gregory Feeley's
introduction points out, it has a sound moral core.
"Manatee Gal Won't You Come Out Tonight?" was the first of the
Jack Limekiller tales, and "Polly Charms the Sleeping Woman"
the first of the Dr. Eszterhazy tales. Each serves as the
representative in this anthology for its respective series, and
each is wonderful in its own right as well as a great introduction to
the characters and settings (both important) of both sets of
stories. The Limekiller stories are often called "Magic Realism."
I don't want to try to define that term but it does give a small
sense of their flavor. "Manatee Gal ..." introduces Jack Limekiller,
expatriate Canadian, owner of the boat Sacarissa, and his
adopted home of British Hidalgo (i.e. British Honduras, or
Belize). Jack gets entwined with a mystery concerning manatees,
the old African tribes called Mantee or Mandingo, a lost colony
in the British Hidalgo bush, and plenty more. The mystery is
satisfactory and nicely resolved, but the joy of the story is the
detail of the Caribbean setting, and such points as the nicely
recorded voices of the various characters. "Polly Charms ..." is set
in a Ruritanian sort of locale: the Triune Monarchy of
Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania. Again, there is a mystery: a young
woman who has been sleeping for decades, without
growing older, is put on display. The "unquestionably great and justly famous
Engelbert Eszterhazy, Doctor of Jurisprudence, Doctor of Medicine,
Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of Literature, Doctor of Science,
et sic cetera" is urged to investigate, perhaps because
fraud is suspected, but the story comes to a sadder, more moving,
conclusion than would result from any bald explanation of the
facts. Once again, the finely rendered details of life in the
Triune Monarchy provide a major portion of the pleasure of the story.
I had read, I said, the great majority of these stories, but a
few were new to me. "The Affair at Lahore Cantonment" is one of
Davidson's mysteries (he was a regular contributor to mystery
magazines). This story won the Edgar Award, but has apparently not
been reprinted until now. I've been reading a lot of Kipling
lately, and it occurs to me that Davidson is definitely like
Kipling in many important ways (although not politically, except perhaps
for disliking Germans! Ray Bradbury makes this point briefly
in an afterword, as well). "The Affair ..." is, in fact, based on
a certain famous Kipling poem, and as such is perhaps too obvious
an example. However, it shows how Davidson shares with Kipling the
ability to use a frame story subtly to the advantage of the main
story, the love of planting subtle clues in places you don't
expect (little details which seem interesting when introduced and are
vital later in the story), and, of course, the beautiful use of
characters' voices, especially the ear for accents.
Another story new to me was the rather recent "The Slovo Stove." This
is a great story, telling of a man returning to his hometown after
many years, and encountering a family of immigrants. The plot,
about a wonderful device (the title stove) brought over from the
old country, echoes "The Sources of the Nile" in some ways. But thematically, and more importantly, the story carefully, and mostly
in the background, recapitulates the process of assimilation of
immigrants into the dominant culture of the new land. Again, it's
very moving, and very funny too. And, it seems to me, deeply true.
Davidson was at the same time an instantly recognizable writer,
with an eccentric and lovable prose style, and a writer of great
range. He could do straight comedy, quirky horror, mystery, social
criticism, pure fantasy, mainstream, and at least relatively hard
SF. (OK, pretty squishy, but real SF for all that.) He's shown in
all these phases in this anthology (and of course, many stories
combine several of the above features). So read "Author, Author"
for comedy, "Dagon" for eerie horror, "The Necessity of His
Condition" for bitter social commentary, and "Now Let Us Sleep" for
SF (and also bitter social commentary).
There is not space to list the remainder of the delightful stories
herein contained, such as ""Hark! Was That the Squeal of an Angry
Thoat?" with its loving portrayal of Greenwich Village;
"Yellow Rome; or, Vergil and the Vestal Virgin", a tempting
beginning to the third Vergil novel; and the truly creepy SF
horror story, "The House the Blakeneys Built." Suffice it to say
that this collection is big enough, and varied enough, to whet
the appetite of any reader whose ear can be tuned to catch the
strains of Davidson's voice. And even this large collection
inevitably leaves out many fine stories (the other Eszterhazy
and Limekiller stories, "The Lord of Central Park," and many more),
to say nothing of his engaging collection of essays,
Adventures in Unhistory, in which he discusses at length
many obscure legends and their possible bases in fact. So buy
it and read it, and very likely you will find yourself searching
out the out-of-print and small press books which house the rest
of his work (for now). Very likely too you will be hoping
with the rest of us Davidson lovers for a few more treasures
to be dug from his papers, like the recent novella
The Boss in the Wall, or perhaps the third Vergil novel.
Rich Horton is an eclectic reader in and out of the SF and fantasy genres. He's been reading SF since before the Golden Age (that is, since before he was 13). Born in Naperville, IL, he lives and works (as a Software Engineer for the proverbial Major Aerospace Company) in St. Louis area and is a regular contributor to Tangent. Stop by his website at http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton. |
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