Adventures in Unhistory

Avram Davidson is a little-known treasure of American literature. The reason for his lack of renown may be that he spent a lot of his writerly energy on genre fiction, or it may be because his style is not quite the thing: it is clear he never read his Strunk & White, or if he did he took their Elements of Style to be an elaborate joke. He manages, in these "conjectures on the factual foundations of several ancient legends," to violate all their rules, guidelines, and dictums, and in so doing to remind us that the plain style is not the only style. He also manages to amaze us with his subject matter: from mermaids to decapitations, mammoths to mandrakes, there's not a page that isn't alive with wit and learning. A gem.