Parallel Lives – Davidson and Kersh
Reading Avram Davidson’s posthumously published novel Beer, Beer, Beer I was struck by how his mastery of voices echoed that of another of my favourite writers – Gerald Kersh. A quick google brought up a number of other parallels.
Both writers were Jewish and used that background in some of their writing. Both served in World War II and also used that. Both grew up in areas with high immigrant populations which informed their characters – especially in speech patterns. Both wrote across the Science Fiction, Fantasy, Crime and Horror genres often using pen names. Both faced challenges later in life because their writing fell out of fashion.
There are, of course, also differences. Kersh was born in Teddington in London while Davidson was born in Yonkers, New York. Davidson (younger by 11 years) served as a Navy medic in the Pacific while Kersh was in the Coldstream Guards and later the Army Film Unit in Europe.
Davidson won a number of genre awards for Fantasy and SF and Crime fiction while Kersh’s success was commercial. Both excelled at short fiction in particular, although they also both wrote brilliant novels. Kersh’s fame peaked at the end of the 50s while Davidson’s commercial success peaked in the 60s. Both have a hard core of fans who try and keep their legacy alive – more successfully in the case of Davidson than of Kersh.
The other thing that links them both is the ready availability of outlets for their shorter work which would have helped their early careers as well as encouraging the range of genres they wrote in. From the 40s to the early 70s was a flourishing time for magazines – both generic and genre. This meant there were outlets hungry to fill the latest issue and less afraid to take stories that stretched style and subject.
Kersh had a wide range of jobs in his youth from cinema manager, bodyguard and debt collector to all in wrestler. All of these found their way into his books alongside the characters he encountered while sitting in Soho cafe’s scribbling out stories on napkins before touting them round the newspapers, magazines and periodical publishers in Fleet Street. Some of his most acclaimed stories – featuring self proclaimed master thief Carmody – use this as a framing device. Carmody tells stories after cadging a coffee and filling his pockets with packets of sugar – behaviour at odds with his tales of fantastic heists.
While his fame took off after the noir classic Night and the City, many fans consider the late realistic novels Fowler’s End and the Angel and the Cuckoo better books. Both feature a startling range of characters – each with their own distinct voice – in a cross section of low life London. The plots are minimal – it is the people and their stories who make the books.
Davidson was also a master of character and voice as well as language. He also concentrated on character rather than plot, especially in his later novels and single character collections. His stories are allusive rather than straightforward and what other writers would have as the plot often takes place offstage. Again, the stories and people are often informed by his life – growing up in Yonkers, his time in the army, and his perpitatetic lifestyle in Mexico and Belize.
And finally, both were masters of realistic dialogue that gave you the feel of a person from what they said and how they said it.
In Fowler’s End the first meeting of the hero with the amoral cinema owner Sam Yudenow has this fragment of conversation from his boss:
“A little palace I made of it. I want you should veneer it with venerance – like…like…like a covered wagon miv Indians in the milderness. Bing, bash, bosh – Idills, it’s my idill.”
The irony being the cinema is as down at heel as most of its customers.
In Beer. Beer, Beer Davidson performs similar miracles with even the smallest characters. An unnamed citizen complains to an equally unnamed city official:
“He come around. He come around with this bunch of hunks and he says now, he says, like he says, ‘We got too many godahm complaints thats rats is breeding in the backa dthis warehiuse, and besides, its a hazard to navigation or sumppin’. An I says, I says, I says ‘Say don’t tell me what ta do on my own propitty you hunky son of a bitch.’ “
Davidson is fortunate that his friends, family and fans have fought to keep his books alive and in print and the Avram Davidson Universe podcasts and All the Seas with Oysters press have been very active in that. A new collection of 100 uncollected stories for what would be his 100th birthday is out later this year.
Kersh has not been as fortunate but a number of his novels have come back into print and will well reward seeking them out.
