INTRODUCTION
Gerald Kersh has been nearly forgotten longer than most writers will ever be remembered, but his work endures, hardier than lichen, the only living thing that actually seems to extract nourishment from stone. Kersh was the kind of writer beloved by other writers, who are always amazed that the rest of the world hasn’t caught onto him. With this reprint, that may change. You’re reading this through the valiant efforts of Valancourt Books. I first read Kersh thanks to another persistent champion of his work, Harlan Ellison.
Harlan and I had a brief correspondence, back in the days before the Internet, when finding something as simple as the source of a quotation, or even what a Nash Rambler looked like, became an archaeological adventure worthy of Indiana Jones. Searching through libraries, requesting inter-library loans, digging through periodical catalogs, scanning Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, re-reading entire texts to find a reference, and yes, writing letters to famous writers, in the hope that they could answer your question and relieve you of the madness consuming you.
The quote was:
“. . . there are men whom one hates until a certain moment when one sees, through a chink in their armour, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment.”
It had been quoted by Harlan Ellison in one of his Kyben stories; I had found nearly all of his books, and scoured them to find the source, to no avail. So despite Mr. Ellison’s pleas to fans not to write him and take time away from his writing, I rolled a sheet in the old typewriter and sent it off. You see, I wanted to collect some Kersh, and back then even the collection Harlan had edited, Nightshade and Damnations, had been out of print for over a decade.
As a student, collecting and finding rare old books was quite the luxury; there was no eBay or AbeBooks, with bargains to be had. Instead there were Book Finders, people who made a living or a side job hunting books for you, and charging fifty ’80s-era bucks for the service. I couldn’t spend my hard-earned ramen money on the wrong book, so I fired off a missive to one of my literary heroes, and got back a letter that has since taken on a life of its own and had its fifteen minutes of fame on the Internet, been enshrined in Letters of Note and shared on FlavorWire as “a great literary burn” or some such, when in actuality, Mr. Ellison had been kind enough to give me the answer that I’d sought and also take time to share his admiration for Gerald Kersh’s unheralded talents.
The quote comes from the story “Busto is a Ghost, Too Mean to Give Us a Fright,” which you can read in Nightshade and Damnations, which has thankfully been reprinted by Valancourt and collects some of Kersh’s best stories. The quote showcases Kersh’s innate humanity, his ability to paint a full-fleshed character’s DNA, what makes them who they are, in just a few beautifully crafted words.
Nailed down, and in torment. Behind the angry mask lies a Prometheus, waiting for the carrion bird to take his liver. Those lines have haunted me ever since reading them, and bring a spark of empathy when dealing with people who lash out at everyone around them. It doesn’t forgive all their trespasses, but it reminds me that they too, are human, despite all behavior to the contrary.
So I don’t regret writing Harlan one bit; I still have the letter, and cherish it. My only regret is that his response sufficiently cowed me into not writing him again, to say thank you. I thanked him online, and after the letter was shared on Letters of Note, we had another brief correspondence, and he did remember it. That led to my being asked to write this introduction, and it’s quite fitting that this book was chosen, as it contains another of Kersh’s greatest characterizations, one where he captures the impossible, the face that fades into a crowd, the everyman who is the crowd:
He was something less than nondescript – he was blurred, without identity, like a smudged fingerprint. His suit was of some dim shade between brown and grey. His shirt had grey-blue stripes, his tie was patterned with dots like confetti trodden into the dust, and his oddment of limp brownish moustache resembled a cigarette-butt, disintegrating shred by shred in a tea-saucer.
You’ll read that again in the opening pages of Clock Without Hands, itself a master class in character, the dark needs of the human heart, the fickle nature of journalism and our own interest in the lives of others, bullies and murder trials, and so much more. Kersh can do more with a story than many can with a novel; with this novella, he does more than others do with a series (and with his masterpiece Fowlers End, he packs more humanity than many lauded writers have done in their entire life’s work).
His economy of words, his rich but not florid prose, and always, his deep and empathic observation of human nature, have been a great influence to me and many writers before and after. Look into the blank face of a Clock Without Hands, and see for yourself. If he is new to you, I envy you the experience of reading Gerald Kersh for the first time.
Thomas Pluck
December 2014
Thomas Pluck is the author of the World War II action thriller Blade of Dishonor, Steel Heart: 10 Tales of Crime and Suspense, and the editor of the anthology Protectors: Stories to Benefit PROTECT. He hosts Noir at the Bar in Manhattan, and his work has appeared in The Utne Reader, PANK Magazine, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Needle, Crimespree, and numerous anthologies, including the upcoming Dark City Lights, edited by Lawrence Block. You can find him online at www.thomaspluck.com and on Twitter as @thomaspluck.