Davy

Rating:
Summary: Tom Jones in the far future
Review: Davy deals with the maturation of a randy young man in a post-holocaust world where technology is just beginning to stir, and religion and petty governments restrict freedom. Davy becomes central to a renaissance of the human spirit and technology, while learning the ways of love and the world. As is typical for Pangborn, the emphasis here is on character and moral questions, rather than scientific gadgets or convoluted plots. A quiet book, it is told from the viewpoint of a much older Davy remembering his youth, with extremely well drawn and highly engaging characterizations, a fair dose of both humor and pathos, and excellent points being made along the way about the nature of humans, societies and governments. There is a strong sub-text running throughout this work of the dangers of religious and sexual intolerance, and why humanity seems to consistently embrace these attitudes.

Some have aptly drawn parallels between this book and Tom Jones and Huck Finn, and it matches those classic works for emotional power and thematic depth. Truly one of the best that SF has to offer.

Rating:
Summary: Wild and hearbreaking, yet hopeful
Review: Davy is a coming-of-age story about a run-away indentured servant boy. This is fantasy at its best, as it mixes elements of the ordinary (with a strong taste of Huck Finn in there) with a view of post-Apocalyptic New England, salted with philosophy and wisdom well worth thinking about 35 years after it's first publication. I had to hunt this one down, but it was well worth the hunt. The prose verges on poetry at times, and some the material is downright quoatable, as in:

"How truly is man the master of his own course?
The unknown drives us. We could not know we were to lose the war in Nuin. How should I have known I would find and covet the golden horn? But within my small range of knowledge and understanding, driven by chance but still human, still brainy and passionate and stubborn and no more of a coward than my brothers, it's for me to say where I go.
Let others think for you and you throw away your opportunity of possessing your own life even within that limited range. You're then no longer a man but an ox in human shape, who doesn't understand that he might break the fence if he had the will. Early in our years together Nickie [the wife of the speaker, Davy] said to me: `Learn to love me by possessing thine own self, Davy, as I try to learn how to possess my own - I think there's no other way.'
As men and not oxen, I suppose we are men with a candle in the dark. Close in the light with walls of certainty or authority, and it may seem brighter - look, friends, that's a reflection from prison walls, your light is no larger. I'll carry mine through the open night in my own hand."

From "Davy" by Edgar Pangborn

Rating:
Summary: Ribald Reminiscing
Review: Four centuries after the nuclear holocaust the United States are no longer united. What exists now are separate feudal countries who sporadically wage war against one another. Ruled by the ascetic doctrines of the Holy Murcan Church, society is deprived of technology, held in thrall by ignorance and fear. The holocaust still claims its victims with the high incidence of genetic mutations ("mues"), which must be killed on sight. The lack of hygiene and decent medical care also makes people susceptible to disease.

Red-headed Davy was born into this world and describes his life over the years, growing up as an ill-educated orphan, forced by the welfare system to work as a bond servant, until he runs away at 14, spending the next few years travelling with an assortment of wandering minstrels. Davy writes his account from an island in the Azores. He's one of a group of exiles who dared to question the teachings of the Church. Despite the improvement in his education, Davy's spirited writing is still riddled with slang.

Davy's world is so convincingly backward there were times when I forgot this book was set in the future. Another story people may be interested in is John Wyndham's novel "The Chrysalids" (1955). There are certain similarities between that book and "Davy". Like "Davy", "The Chrysalids" takes place in a post-holocaust world centuries hence, where life is strictly governed by the Church and mutants are treated as the spawn of the devil. The story is set around eastern Canada, not that far from the places mentioned in "Davy". Even the narrator's name is similar. (His name is David.) Although the character is not so preoccupied with sex and has less adventures than Davy, "The Chrysalids" is my personal preference; a book I read when I was 14. A lot of school kids hate it.

Overall, "Davy" is a light, easy read. I bought my copy second-hand, a 1976 edition, printed the year Edgar Pangborn died.

Rating:
Summary: 40 YEARS ON...
Review: I first read this remarkable novel when I was 14 - about the age Davy was at the start of the book. It was 1964, and I was heavily into science fiction - it offered a loner full of teenage angst an escape from the everyday world. I made some amazing literary discoveries - most of them accidental, but some of the works I flipped over back then still ring true today. DAVY is one of those works.

The story is classified as science fiction mainly, I suppose, by virtue of the fact that it takes place in the future, after a brief (but devastating) nuclear war - a theme touched on by a great many works of the Cold War era. Beyond that, it could easily fit into the broader genre of literary fiction - it's well-written and imaginative enough to appeal to a wider spectrum of readers. The sci-fi label is enough to put some people off, and that's a shame - there's a lot of great literature that's filed there, and a lot of folks are missing out as a result.

Pangborn fashioned a very believable world in which Davy and his friends (and foes) could dwell - and he peopled it with characters that are easy to accept as well. Science and learning have fallen by the wayside in this setting - the once-mighty USA has crumbled into a number of smaller nations and city-states, most of them operating under what they term as democracy. They're a far cry from it. The Holy Murcan Church is very powerful, and exerts a lot of control over both sacred and secular matters - the governments, such as they are, bow to its will generally without much grumbling. Books have been banned as evil, leading as they did to sin and destruction in the Old Times (pre-war). The Days of Confusion followed, during which the Church arose from the ashes with the rest of the survivors, and consolidated its power.

Davy is a bondservant - born to a prostitute and left in a Church-run orphanage to grow up, he runs away from his job at an inn after losing his childhood (or finding his manhood, take your pick) with the innkeeper's daughter. The book recounts a number of his adventures - he travels alone in the wilderness for a while, falls in with a small group of other outcasts, joins up with Rumly's Ramblers (a sort of post-apocalyptic American version of gypsies) for a bit, journeys to Old City in Nuin where he meets the love of his life, falls into a place in the government with her (her uncle is a progressive regent), fights in an uprising, and goes into exile. He writes his story from that vantage point, looking back over a period of twenty years or so.

Along the way, Pangborn manages very deftly to make quite a few astute comments about the state of things in the world as it exists today, by way of `looking back' at them from Davy's perspective. He does so with a serious eye, but also with a large dose of humor - he's not afraid in the least of poking the world in the gut and then giving it a good Dutch rub on the head as it bends over, something it could mightily use now and again.

A lot of the place names that are used can be easily linked to current ones - `Murcan' is probably meant to be a bastardization of `American', `Nuin' is `New England', `Moha' relates to `Mohawk', &c. Others, like `Conicut', `Vairmant' and `Penn' are more obvious. It's also hilarious the way history has been twisted over the time of the Days of Confusion - with no books to keep it alive, many, many events are tied up together and confused, and these confusions themselves make for very wry and astute observations by both the author and his rough but lovable narrator.

It's a shame this book is out of print - it's one that should be made available again, a classic not only of the sci-fi genre, but of 60s literature. It should be on the shelf right alongside Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s astonishing A CANTICLE FOR LIEBOWITZ. DAVY is a dark vision of a `possible future' - one that we could all stand to learn a bit from in order to prevent it.

Rating:
Summary: 40 YEARS ON...
Review: I first read this remarkable novel when I was 14 - about the age Davy was at the start of the book. It was 1964, and I was heavily into science fiction - it offered a loner full of teenage angst an escape from the everyday world. I made some amazing literary discoveries - most of them accidental, but some of the works I flipped over back then still ring true today. DAVY is one of those works.

The story is classified as science fiction mainly, I suppose, by virtue of the fact that it takes place in the future, after a brief (but devastating) nuclear war - a theme touched on by a great many works of the Cold War era. Beyond that, it could easily fit into the broader genre of literary fiction - it's well-written and imaginative enough to appeal to a wider spectrum of readers. The sci-fi label is enough to put some people off, and that's a shame - there's a lot of great literature that's filed there, and a lot of folks are missing out as a result.

Pangborn fashioned a very believable world in which Davy and his friends (and foes) could dwell - and he peopled it with characters that are easy to accept as well. Science and learning have fallen by the wayside in this setting - the once-mighty USA has crumbled into a number of smaller nations and city-states, most of them operating under what they term as democracy. They're a far cry from it. The Holy Murcan Church is very powerful, and exerts a lot of control over both sacred and secular matters - the governments, such as they are, bow to its will generally without much grumbling. Books have been banned as evil, leading as they did to sin and destruction in the Old Times (pre-war). The Days of Confusion followed, during which the Church arose from the ashes with the rest of the survivors, and consolidated its power.

Davy is a bondservant - born to a prostitute and left in a Church-run orphanage to grow up, he runs away from his job at an inn after losing his childhood (or finding his manhood, take your pick) with the innkeeper's daughter. The book recounts a number of his adventures - he travels alone in the wilderness for a while, falls in with a small group of other outcasts, joins up with Rumly's Ramblers (a sort of post-apocalyptic American version of gypsies) for a bit, journeys to Old City in Nuin where he meets the love of his life, falls into a place in the government with her (her uncle is a progressive regent), fights in an uprising, and goes into exile. He writes his story from that vantage point, looking back over a period of twenty years or so.

Along the way, Pangborn manages very deftly to make quite a few astute comments about the state of things in the world as it exists today, by way of 'looking back' at them from Davy's perspective. He does so with a serious eye, but also with a large dose of humor - he's not afraid in the least of poking the world in the gut and then giving it a good Dutch rub on the head as it bends over, something it could mightily use now and again.

A lot of the place names that are used can be easily linked to current ones - 'Murcan' is probably meant to be a bastardization of 'American', 'Nuin' is 'New England', 'Moha' relates to 'Mohawk', &c. Others, like 'Conicut', 'Vairmant' and 'Penn' are more obvious. It's also hilarious the way history has been twisted over the time of the Days of Confusion - with no books to keep it alive, many, many events are tied up together and confused, and these confusions themselves make for very wry and astute observations by both the author and his rough but lovable narrator.

It's a shame this book is out of print - it's one that should be made available again, a classic not only of the sci-fi genre, but of 60s literature. It should be on the shelf right alongside Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s astonishing A CANTICLE FOR LIEBOWITZ. DAVY is a dark vision of a 'possible future' - one that we could all stand to learn a bit from in order to prevent it.

Rating:
Summary: Edgar Pangborn's Greatest Achievement
Review: In the pages of DAVY, the wonderful writer Edgar Pangborn created a world that he also made use of in the novels THE JUDGEMENT OF EVE and THE COMPANY OF GLORY and in numerous short stories. In those tales, a world-wide war and plague has decimated humanity and thrown the world back into a new dark age. Taking place within the limited confines of what had been the northeastern U.S., DAVY tells the story (in the leading character's own words with additional comments by his lover and his best friend) of his growth from birth to middle age under the questionable sanctions of "the Holy Murcan Church," a completely American (American/Murcan...get it?) outgrowth of the type of fundamentalist religious movements that are found in every contemporary country.

Containing elements of the same wonder found in HUCKLEBERRY FINN, TOM JONES, and THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, DAVY's finely-rendered characters, peoetic writing, and sense of time and place make for a novel well worth reading and re-reading. In the 36 years since its first publication, it has lost none of its timeliness.

The fact that such a wonderful book is not currently in print should be a matter of shame to St. Martin's Press, the original publishers of Edgar Pangborn's masterpiece. The fact that the works of Edgar Pangborn (who died in 1976) are not universally revered shames us all.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful story
Review: Many seasons has the earth gone through since the days of my early youth, but this book stirred inside me the memories:
walking next to Davy I was young again, I loved, I made promises I knew I
would not keep, the world is again such a beautiful
and fascinating thing to discover. I found myself again
dreaming of distant lands...

This is one of the best post-holocaust novels I have
ever read (the other is "A canticle for Leibowitz").
Somehow as time goes by,I like this novel more and more.

Rating:
Summary: Essential, Poignant and Ahead of its Time
Review: Read the other reviews first ... the favorables seem mostly true to me. I'd like to add that this gem, which suffers only from a seeming naivete was not, as I thought, written by a young man in his 20's, but a mature man of 55 born in 1909. Which is a fairly incredible feat, given the jump in consciousness and change in values that came *after* Davy's publication in the late 1960's.

Rating:
Summary: Best Book I Ever Read
Review: This is one of the two best books I have ever read, and I read a lot. (The other is "Liberating the Gospels", by John Shelby Spong.) This book defies easy pigeonholing. It is a coming-of-age story. It is a kakotopia. It is ugly. It is beautiful. It is unforgettable. For background, read Pangborn's "Still I Persist in Wondering."

Rating:
Summary: Robert Heinlein, Spider Robinson, & Gardner Dozois all agree
Review: This, along with A MIRROR FOR OBSERVERS, are the 2nd & 3rd volumes of the Complete Edgar Pangborn to be released by Old Earth Books. The books are quality editions: sewn signatures, acid free paper, real cloth on the boards. The books will last longer than you! Pangborn's signature is stamped in gold on the front board too.

DAVY features a full cover cover by Michael Kaluta.

If you've read the earlier comments, then you know the story.

Here's what others have said:

"I was delighted all the way through." - - Robert Heinlein

"Somewhere in Writer's Heaven, Edgar Pangborn and Mark Twain are conversing as equals, and this book is one of the principle reasons why. Davy is a kind of Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn for a new age that fortunately has not come to pass, so far: the age of postnuclear apocalypse which a whole generation was once certain was inevitable, the only possible future-and which a new generation seems equally certain is impossible, even though all those missiles are still out there, and U-235 still fuses when bid. Pangborn rose to the artistic and spiritual challenge of finding hope even in holocaust, and spent most of his writing life examining those aspects of humanity and human nature which even thermonuclear fire might find difficult to extinguish. This novel is his masterpiece, one of the great works of science fiction. Over the past thirty years since I discovered it, I have often found myself having conversations with more than one of its characters, and I commend them all to you with warm pleasure." - - Spider Robinson

"DAVY is one of the very best books of its time, vivid, engrossing, sexy, funny, clear-eyed about human folly and yet deeply compassionate, a masterpiece that belongs on the exclusive short list of the three or four best After-The-Holocaust novels--and which may well be the best of them
all." - - Gardner Dozois

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