Avram Davidson - The Avram Davidson Treasury - a tribute collection

(Tugs forelock. Exit, pursued by a

Your Seruant to Command,

Avram

Eddy dear;

I mean, of course, Mr. Ferman Sir. Or is it now Squire Ferman, with you off in the moors and crags of Cornwall Connecticut. Sounds very Jamaica Inn, Daphne Du Maurieresque. I can see you on wild and stormy nights, muffled to your purple ears in your cloak and shawl, going out on the rocky headlands with False Lights to decoy the Fall River Line vessels, or even the Late After-Theater Special of the New York, New Haven, and Hartburn, onto the Rocks. And the angry rocks they gored her sides/Like the horns of an angry bull. Zounds they don’t indite Poerty like that anymore. I mean,

I don’t have to tell you, ethn ethic pride, all very well, enthic? ethnic, there, THAT wasn’t hard, was it deary? Noooo. Now you can ahve a piece of treacle. Where was I. I mean, my grandfather was a was a, well, acttually, no, he WAS n ’t a Big Rabbi In The Old Country, he drove a laundry wagon in Yonkers, N.Y., but what Imeantosayis: “Over the rocks and the foaming brine/They burned the wreck of the Palatine “—can ALAN GUINZBURG write poetry like that? No. Fair is fair.

Zippetty-ping. Kerriage Return. Automatic. Whheee! After all Ed I have known you a very long time, that time your old girl friend, the one you hired to read Manuscripts, you remember? Nuf sed. And I know you have only my own welfare at heart. Right? Right. So you wouldn’t be angry when I explain that Igot the idea, whilst triping on my new tripewriter, that if I carried out your nifty keen suggestions for the rewrite of my BELINDA BEESWAX story, that would drolly enough convert it into a Crime Story, as well as F and SF. Just for the fun of it, then, I couldn’t resist sharyimg or even sharing, my amusement at this droll conceit with Santiago

Ap Popkin, the editor over at QUENTIN QUEELEY’s MYSTERY MUSEUM. But evidentially I wasn’t as clear in my explanations as I should have been. Fingers just ran away with themselves, laughing and giggling over their shoulders (well, knuckles. be pedantic), down the pike. ANYhow, Caligula Fitz-Bumpkin somehow misunderstood. He is not, I mean we must simply Face these things, and Seneca Mac Zipnick is just NOT/very bright. He, do you know what simpleton did? this will hand yez a real alugh, *Ed: Guy sent a check. Thought I was offering the story to him. Boob. A doltish fellowe, Constantine O’Kaplan. But, well, Ed, put yourself in my position. Could I embarass the boy? Bring a blush to those downy cheeks? Nohohohoho.

Well Ed it’s just one of those things that we have to face as we go through life: and the fact that QQMM happens to pay four or is it five times what F&SF pays, has got simply nothing to do with it. Avile canard, and that’s that. However, I have not forgotten that advance the time I was in Debtors Prison. And I will,

I will, promise you now NOW, I” 1 sit down at my merry chuckling Selectra Six-Ten, and write you a real sockadaol sok?dolager of a Science Fiction story. VISCIOUS TERRESTRIAL BIPED xxxxxxxxxxxxxxXXXXXXXXXXX ZZZZZZZzzzznnngfhfghhhBZZZ blurtle blep ha ha, well, perhaps not quite along those lines. Zo. So

“Forgiven”?

Thine ever so

Avram

Dear Ed:

Well, you mehk me sheahme, mahn, the way you have forgiven me for that peculiar contretemps anent BELINDA BEESWAX’s going to the QUENTIN QUEELEY’s MYSTERY MUSEUM people instead. That yuck, Gerardo A

*or “laugh”, as some have it. — Ibid.

Klutskas. Anyway, I have really been sticking to my last, tappetty-tapp. “Tap”. ZW.W.W.W.EEPPP! Cling. It’s a veritable psychodrama of Semi-Outer Space. XXXXXXXXXnnnnnggggg llullrp prurp plup ZZZZBBGGGgnn INTELLIGENT NONCHITINOUS BIPED ATTEND ATTEND ATTEND ATTEND haha it’s always fun and games with this new Selectra Six-Ten, clicketty-cluch, hmble-hmble hmble-hmble. Just you should drip by you the mouth, so enclosed is a couple pp of the first draft. draught. drocht Spell it can’t, not for sour owl stools, but leave us remember the circumstances under which it grew to maturity. More to be piddled than centered. You like, huh? Huh? Huh. Thass whut I thought. XXXxxZZZZzzzzxxxxngngngn clurkle cluhnkle NOCHITINOUS BIFRU BIFURCATE ATTEND ATTEND ATTEND.

Agreat line, hey? Arrests you with its like remorseless sweep, doesn’t it? Well well, back to the saline cavern

Love and kisses,

Avram

Dear ED:

See, I knew you would enjoy LOADSTAR EXPRESS.

Even the first draft gripped you like ursus somethingorothera, didn’t it? Yes. True, it was rather rough. Amorphous, as you might say. But I was going to take care of that anyway. Yesyes I had that rough spot, pp 3-to-4 well in mind.

I admit that I hsdn’t a hadn’t exactly planned to do it the way you tentatively suggest. But. Since you do. It would be as well that way as any other.

Blush, chuckle. Not exactly what one would formerly have considered for the pp of a family, or even a Family Magazine. Tempura o mores, what? However. WHY N T? XXXXXxxxx-ZZZZZzzzz bgbgbgbngngngn bluggabluggablugga TATATA TA TA AT ATT AT ATTEND ATTEND ATTEND TERRESTRIOUS BIFURCATE NONCHERIDERMATIC XXXNN FASCIST AGGRESSIVE BIPED goddam Must quit reading alla them student Undrground Wellhung Classified Revolt Papers. To work work WORK toil

“With fingers weary and worn, with eyelids heavy and red/ Awoman sat in unwomanly rags, mumbling a crust of bread. ’ ’ Can Laurence Ferlinghetti write lines like that? Can Richard Gumbeiner? It is to laugh. Anon, sir, anon. We Never Forget. Advances advanced to us in our hour od Need, earned eternal gratichude. clicketty-clunck.

Industrously, Avram

Dear Edward:

WowWowWOW! WOW-WOW/WOWW’.!gotcha at alst)) Ignore. Confused by Joy. BUNNYBOY. BUNNYBOY, hippetty goddam HOP, B*U*N*N*N*Y*B*O*Y* M*A*G*A*Z*I*N*E*. You got that? Educational & Literary Compendium? With the big tzitzkas? Tha-hats the one. Bunnyboy Magazine has bumped a burse of bold, gumped a gurse of XXXXXXX xHa xHa xHa bgnbgn of gold, dumped a purse of gold in my lap. I kid y ou not.

NOT NOT. “Not.” He adumbrated hilarriously. EXPLOITIVE DIOXIDIFEROUS BIPEDS ah cummon now, cumMON. Shhest, I hardly know what to say, and this Selectra Six-Ten, elecrtified wit and terror, never but never a case of The DULL LINE LABOURS, AND THE WHEEL TURNS SLOW, goes faster than my MIND, my mind is BLOWN, out through both ears, walls all plastered with brain tissue.

Carriage return. When in doubt. Carstairs Macanley, formerly of Midland Review, to which I sold, years ago — but you don’t want to hear about that, anyway he is now and has been for some time past Fiction Editor of Bunnyboy. So whilst making with the clicketty-clack and addressing the MS of LOADSTAR EXPRESS, I H happened to be thinking of him, and just for kicks, you know, Ed, I mean, YOU. Know me. Ed. Just abig, overgrown kid. So just for k.i.c.k.s., I absentmindedly addressed it to him. Laughed like a son of a gun’ when I found out what I’d done. And had already stamped the manila! “Well …” (I figured) “I’ll send it to good old Ed at F&SF soons as Carstairs Macanley returns it. Just to let him see what I’m doing these days.

Ed, you have never wished me nothing but good, Ed, from the very first day we met, Ed, and I know that the last thing on your pure, sweet mind, i would be that I return the money to Bunyboy, and, besides, I am almost 100 % sure it’s already in type: and we could hardly expect them to yank it. You’re a pro yourself, Ed. But don’t think for aminute, Eddy, that I’ve got abig head and/or have forgotten that advance you so, well, tenderly is really the only — And, Ed, any time you’re out on the West Coast, just any time at all, night or day, give me a ring, and we’ll go out for dinner somewhere. “A Hot bird and a cold bottle”, eh Ed? Hows that b grabg bgrarg XXXxx TREACHEROUS BgN BgN bGN TERCH XXXXXzzZZZ bgn bgn bgn TREACHEROUS AMBULATORY TERRESTRIAL AGGRESSIVE BIPED ATTEND ATTNEDNA Attn bgna bgn cluck.