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Davy
 
by Edgar Pangborn — Copyright 1964
Review by D. D. Shade — June 18, 1998
It has been said that hindsight is 20/20. If we could see the
future as clearly as we can view the mistakes of the past, our world would
be a spectacular place. If only one person had this gift, he or she could
rule the world. We have no way of knowing why Edgar Pangborn chooses to
have Davy tell his story in retrospect. In reality we would receive a
highly biased account of the events. Fiction saves the day by allowing
Davy to recount his story in an honest, straight forward manner nearly
free of bias. In fact, Davy is aware that his own thoughts and perceptions
could bias his tale and he warns the reader several times. Because fiction
grants Davy true hindsight, he is able to make some interesting commentary
on the past and future.
Although a post-apocalyptic novel, Davy also follows the formula
of many successful fantasy novels. Davy is a coming of age story set in a
post-atomic holocaust American Northeast. When we first meet Davy he is a
bondservant. The tale of his journey from slave to counselor of Kings is
told in an undisguised Huckleberry Finn manner and is only part of the
adventure. There are also the tales of his change from boy to man and from
an ignorant, superstitious serf to a self-educated, critical thinker. It
is this 'critical thinker' who narrates most of Davy's biography in the
form of a book he is writing to other possible survivors. However, one
cannot escape the feeling that Davy is undoubtedly speaking to us as well.
Take, for example, the following passage:
" . . . if you exist you have only guesswork to tell you what's happened
to my part of the world since the period we call the Years of Confusion. I
think there must have been a similar period for you--my guesswork. Your
nations were stricken by the same abortive idiotic nuclear war and
probably by the same plagues. Your culture showed the same symptoms of a
possible moral collapse, the same basic weariness of over-stimulation, the
same decline of education and rise of illiteracy, above all the same
dithering refusal to let ethics catch up with science. After the plagues,
your people may not have turned against the very memory of their
civilization in the sort of religious frenzy as ours apparently did,
determined like spoiled brats to bring down in the wreckage every bit of
good along with the bad. They may not have, but I suspect they did. The
best aspects of what some of us now call the "Golden Age" were clearly
incomprehensible to the multitudes who lived then: they demanded of the
age of reason that it give them more and more gimmicks or be damned to it.
And they kept their religions alive as substitutes for thought, ready and
eager to take over the moment reason should perish. I can't suppose you
did much better on your side of the world . . ."
Davy's 'guesswork' is a prediction of what will occur should we be so
foolish as to allow the annihilation of civilization. Pangborn's Davy is
filled with ribald humor, huckleberian adventure, deep introspective
thought, critical commentary on the time setting of the book and its past
(our day), picturesque descriptions and colorful characters, and a
satirical look at the Holy Murcan Church (the most powerful organization
to rise from the dust and the one responsible for the repression of
learning in Davy's time). There is story here to make you laugh, ponder,
and move you to action.
Davy was nominated for a Nebula Award in 1964, nominated for a
Hugo Award in 1965, and included in Locus Magazine's All Time Best Science
Fiction Novels in 1987. Critics tell us (Clute & Nicholls, Pringle) that
Davy is Edgar Pangborn's best work. I have the advantage of not being able
to argue with them because I both enjoyed Davy immensely and have read no
other works by Edgar Pangborn (however, for interested persons, A Mirror
for Observers is also well praised). The problem with much of Pangborn's
other works, we are told, is that his writing had a tendency to be
bombastic. Davy is considered to contain the least rhetorical writing of
all his works although it receives criticism for unrealistic portrayal of
women. It is Peter S. Beagle's opinion, author of the forward in my copy
of Davy, that all of Pangborn's women tend to be either skinny-hearted and
bloodless, admirable, sweet-natured whores, or idealized flops like
Nickie--the love of Davy's life. Who would dare to argue with someone of
Beagle's stature? I can only say that I found the female characters in
Davy to fit well into the pseudo-medieval culture our society slides into
250 years from now. I further found Nickie to be an easy 20th century
transplant. Dress her in jeans, a T-shirt that says "Save the Whales,"
drop her in the middle of San Francisco, and Nickie would find her way
with intelligence and humor.
Davy is a lost book. It is out of print. One can try out of print
searches on Amazon.com or Bordors.com. I've had lots of luck with them. To
my way of thinking, the most satisfying way to find a copy of Davy will be
searching those dusty, old used paperback bookstores. You'll end up
squatting to read titles till your butt falls asleep or wearing holes in
the knees of your jeans crawling because the "P" section is on the floor.
And when you are finished you will feel like Indiana Jones--as if you
crawled deep in the earth and found something of great value. Either way,
you'll not regret getting to know Davy.
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Comments from Readers
May I suggest Bibliofind as a good place to find Lost Books? A blurb
from their site reads:
"Six million old, used and rare books listed by more than two thousand
booksellers from around the world make Bibliofind the largest and
probably the most interesting bookselling site on the World Wide Web.
Yahoo! Internet Life, the online magazine of the Web's most widely-used
search engine, placed Bibliofind at the top of its list of "Favorite
Sites of 1997" - the only booksellingsite on that list."
I am not in any way associated with Bibliofind, but I am an extremely
satisfied customer. I find that they are much quicker and cheaper than
Amazon.com when you are looking for out-of-print books. A search for
"Davy", by Pangborn, returned a list of about 20 copies, ranging from $2
to $250 (for a first edition). Don't get me wrong, I like searching
used bookstores as well, but when I have to have a certain book,
Bibliofind is the first place I turn: www.bibliofind.com
-- Diane J. Donaldson
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