Nightshade and Damnations

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Nightmares, phantasmagoria, horrors that lurk in the streets of today, the corrupting weaknesses of men; these are the bones and gristle of what this book contains.

The flesh is the talent of Gerald Kersh.

In England, Kersh is a much-revered author. His books are seldom out of print. They honor and respect him. Which is a bit unusual, when one considers that Kersh is an American, and that here in America we barely know his work. In ugly point of fact, his brilliant novels Night and the City and A Long Cool Day in Hell cannot be obtained, and the very best of his works, Fowlers End, has never been reprinted.

It gives one pause. Why should it be so? Almost any hack who can write in something that approximates the English language can get published these days. Lady novelists unfit to carry Kersh’s pencil box sell millions in paperback. Non-novelists who rearrange the facts of contemporary history in narrative form find themselves lionized. Rock singers mislabeled poets scatter the pearls of their illiteracy across the bookstalls and get lotta pieces green paper in return. Then why should it be true that a man who has been captivating audiences with his offbeat and penetrating stories for over a quarter of a century should find it close to impossible to reach a wide American audience . . . ?

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