Everybody Has Somebody in Heaven: Essential Jewish Tales of the Spirit

Seven years after his death yet another collection from Avram Davidson, compiled through the agencies of the indefatigueable Grania Davis. And like the last collection "The Investigations of Avram Davidson" this is a collection that expands our understanding of who Avram Davidson was and what he could accomplish as a writer.The first section of the book is pieces that Davidson contributed to Jewish journals like "Jewish Life" and "Commentary" in the early and mid-50s before he began publishing in "F & SF" and "Ellery Queen". What they reveal is an Avram Davidson little shown in the fiction. Davidson had fought in World War II and then had spent the early 50s living in the newly formed state of Israel. Davidson's contributions to "Jewish Life" and "Commentary" are probably more directly autobiographical than any of his other writings. In general, they are not stories but detailed vignettes of his experiences in a New York where Judaism was in conflict with assimilationist impulses and of his time in Israel and the Mediterranean, which reveal not only that Davidson was always a skilful writer with an attentive eye but also the extent of his commitment to his faith. In an afterword/bibliography Eileen Gunn says that Davidson abandoned a novel based on his experiences - judging from these short pieces Davidson could probably have written the Israeli equivalent of John Hershey's "Hiroshima". The writing is clear and the emphasis is on the diversity of people who make up life in this emergent world, creating a sense of hope, strangeness, and of present that is already flowing into the past.The middle section is a forum of Avram' s friends (Peter Beagle, Barry Malzberg) writing about their sense of him as a religious person.The third section consists of Davidson's writings from later in his career that feature a strongly expressed Jewish or religious theme. Aside from a story from "The Adventures of Doctor Esterhazy" most of these are uncollected and many of them are previously unpublished, including two sections from an unfinished novel and one from an unpublished story-cycle. These are as good as one expects from Davidson, with his eye for detail, his erudition, his unique and peculiar narrative structures and always that that singular voice of his. Alongside his early pieces the reader can appreciate the developments in Davidson's sensibility and how he developed as a writer;from the external experiences of the man to the self-supporting full richness of his mind.