RARA-AVIS: Re: Gerald Kersh

From: Richard Moore ( moorich2@aol.com)
Date: 31 Jan 2005


--- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Max Gilbert" <jmaxgilbert@y...> wrote:
>
> --- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Michael Robison
> <miker_zspider@y...> wrote:
> > ****************
> > I thought his PRELUDE TO A CERTAIN MIDNIGHT was pretty
> > darned bleak, too. It's about the search for the
> > murderer of a young girl. It wasn't bad except for
> > the occasional divergences.
> >
> > miker
> >
> I read PRELUDE TO A CERTAIN MIDNIGHT a few years back and it
> certainly qualified as bleak, but I remember at least some of the
> cast of characters were likable, whereas with NIGHT & THE CITY
> everyone you're introduced to (in the first half of the book at
> least) is either reprehensible or pathetic and the main character,
> Harry Fabian is a pimp and blackmailer who is thoroughly dishonest
> with himself as well as everyone he meets--being stuck in his head
> can be pretty disturbing. I definitely recommend the book.
>
> Max

Ah, Gerald Kersh! Kersh was one of the writers a used book store clerk (and later store owner) steered my teenage self to more than forty years ago. I owe everything to that fellow who helped me out of rural Georgia and a terrible school system. Subdividing "everything" I would rank Kersh reasonably up there on the individual author hit parade.

I wish Paul Duncan was still on this list. Duncan, author of NOIR FICTION, DARK HIGHWAYS (Pocket Essentials 2000) among other works, is the premier Kersh expert and I can't wait to read the biography upon which he has labored for some years. As an aside, I emailed Duncan a few months ago about Kersh. One of my passions is boxing and I had picked up an old boxing magazine from the 1950s with an article about "the old Mongoose" Archie Moore, who was light heavyweight champion circa 1952-1962. The article had a picture that showed Archie on the top of steps leading from his home in San Diego, California to the beach. Each step was named and labeled for sportswriters who had helped him along the way. One of the steps was labeled "Gerald Kersh" and when I wrote Duncan he was glad to explain that Kersh had written an Esquire article about Moore.

NIGHT AND THE CITY is an excellent novel and I my recommendation to that of Max. Let me quote from Paul Duncan on the book: "NIGHT AND THE CITY (1938) is a novel of disgust. Of all Kersh's novels, it is the one where you most feel the fetid stink of the city, and the worthless lives of the people in it. As one reviwer put it, 'this novel of the London underworld has something of the realism of a Hogarth picture and the satire of a Swift. Pimps, prostitutes, panderers, petty crooks and odd characters move about in low joints and night clubs, fleecing and being fleeced by each other.'"

I agree and don't believe either of the film versions (Richard Widmark or Robert Duvall) did it complete justice.

PRELUDE TO A CERTAIN MIDNIGHT (1947) is a very fine novel but provokes a strong reaction among those who expect good to always triumph.

Back to NIGHT AND THE CITY for a moment: Kersh brought back Harry Fabian in the novel THE SONG OF THE FLEA (Doubleday 1948). It has been too many decades for me to give a reasoned review of this novel. I only remember that I did not care for it and especially thought the use of Harry Fabian was ill-advised.

Under the same caution of years-passed, I recall fondly the long
(22,000 words) story by Kersh "Clock Without Hands" as one of likely interest to Rara list members. You can find the story in one of the most common Kersh U.S. collections MEN WITHOUT BONES (Paperback Library 1962). I don't have a bibliography handy but am not confident that this long story was in the U.K. collection also called MEN WITHOUT BONES. The story is also in the rather common British collection THE BEST OF GERALD KERSH (Heinemann 1960). While I can't check this at present, I believe that Kersh's use of the title "Clock Without Hands" predates its use by my fellow Georgian Carson McCullers.

Richard Moore

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