This Literati Life

This Tuesday, one day after driving up to NYC for the joint Tachyon Publications and Temporary Culture reception at James Cummins, Bookseller, I was back in the Big Apple for A Tribute to Avram Davidson, part of the NYRSF Readings Series at the South Street Seaport Museum. Was it worth the ensuant day's exhaustion? Well, up above is Tom Disch in full raconteur mode at the pub afterwards, with Jim Freund (who runs the series as well as hosting the Hour of Wolf show at WBAI) suitably entranced.

So, yeah, I'd say so.

The evening began with readings from Avram's brilliant short fiction by Wendy Walker, Tom La Farge, and myself. Then there was a panel about Davidson himself, with Disch talking about how he inherited Davidson's rental place in Mexico and one hideous afternoon in Avram Davidson's final decline, pushing the great man about the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a wheelchair with Davidson sternly disapproving of everything he saw. "It's rather like being able to say, Yes I knew King Lear -- in his later years."

But, oh, the happy sound of Tom Disch snorting with laughter at the price of each book, when Wendy Walker read from "And Don't Forget the One Red Rose"! A fine and lovely evening.

Below (rather scattered about, because I still haven't got the hang of the photo posting function): Tom La Farge, Ariel Hameon taking a snap from the audience, Wendy Walker, and primary instigator and founder of the Avram Davidson Society, Henry Wessells.