Edited by Robert Silverberg and Grania Davis
(TOR $26.95 pp 447 1998)
After the volumes collecting the works of Philip K. Dick and Theodore Sturgeon comes this big anthology (the cover calls it "the definitive collection", though it is not complete) of stories by Avram Davidson. He had been a writer for the Jewish papers in the early 1950s, but moved into SF and fantasy with his story "My boy friend's name is Jello" in THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION in 1954. He obviously called on Jewish traditions for some of his inspiration, because his second published story was "The Golem" four years later. Very few of his stories are science fictional, but to him fantasy did not mean princesses, wizards and magic. In Davidson's world fantasy meant a very sideways edge to the reality that he, or you or I, knew. In "The Goobers" (1965) a orphan boy is dominated by his grandfather and threatened that The Goobers will take him away if he disobeys the old man's abusive demands; and then in one paragraph The Goobers appear, consider the boy and shock the old man. Then they go away. In his last sentence the boy says he faced out his grandfather for two years and then ran away. It is the Huck Finn story, but seen differently.
Davidson travelled about the Americas. He lived in Mexico, and his stories reflected it. Later he lived in Belize, and used it as the setting of "Manatee Gal, Won't You Come Out Tonight", in which a spirit of the hunted manatees may have hunted the hunter, but with a uncertainty that shows he knew the literary methods of the magical realists.
Equally, Davidson knew the problems of the immigrants who had arrived in his own country. The last story from the 1950's, "The Woman Who Thought She Could Read" deals with an immigrant woman who can read the future for her neighbours, and the misery it causes. "The Slovo Stove" from 1985 deals again with immigrants being encouraged by thoughtless notions of citizenship to give up their energy-saving ethnic tools, but made miserable to become Americans.
Like another fantasy author, Jack Vance, Davidson was a contributor of short stories to ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE (and both actually ghosted Ellery Queen novels). "The Affair at Lahore Cantonment" won an Edgar in 1961 for best short story. It tells the story behind Kipling's ballad of the hanging of Danny Deever. "Revolver" in 1962, shows how misery ultimately ends by re-inforcing itself in the ghetto, and "Crazy Old Lady" in 1976 shows how the ghetto had been allowed to degenerate further. Both are incredibly good, and according to Davidson's son suggested to Davidson by the conditions in which he was living at the end of his life.
Each author who introduces a story seems to ask why Davidson was not given the recognition he deserved. I can't answer, but I can't help feeling that Davidson's handling of The Goobers, only shows how someone like Stephen King skipped a few of the lessons he could have learned by reading the stories collected here.