The Best of Gerald Kersh

Preface

GERALD KERSH tells stories. Good and bad, long and short, neat, dramatic, bizarre, perverse, scientific, supernatural, historical, they have been flowing out almost without pause for the last twenty years. They range from full-length novels, such as the recent Fowler’s End or the celebrated novel-documentary They Die with their Boots Clean, to little jokes of some fifteen hundred words. In between, there are short ‘novels’ of perhaps 30,000 words, long short stories of 10,000 or 12,000, and a great many short stories of what one might call classical length (4,000 to 8,000). All of them, from the novels proper to the little jokes, have three things in common: they are vigorous, they are inventive (sometimes to a point near lunacy), and they can be read with the greatest of ease.

First of all, then, Kersh’s vigour. This is particularly in evidence when he is describing circumstances of squalor ‘Busto is a Ghost …’ His phrasing, when he comes, for example, to describe a sleasy lodging house and its verminous inhabitants, has a near-Falstaffian richness which he never quite achieves at any other time. Which is not to say that he ever becomes flaccid. He may be careless, he may overplay his hand, he may be downright embarrassing; but he is never floppy. And indeed he could not afford to be: for Kersh’s people, whether squalid or not, are always on the go; cheating, drinking, cruising, fornicating, making money or spending their immortal souls, they live in a world where it is always necessary, for good or ill, to act; and if they – or their creator – lost their vigour for one moment, then they would surely die.

As for Kersh’s invention, this ranges from the ingenious devising of trick endings (The Sympathetic Souse) to the skilful presentation of phenomena. Occasional and brief excursions into Science Fiction (Men Without Bones) confront one with tiny yet cosmic horrors, at first sight of no importance in the scheme of things, but disquieting for days in their concentrated malevolence. With ghosts, again, he has a canny knack of persuasian (Carnival on the Downs). But it is with material and familiar freaks (human or otherwise) that he is at his best (The Crewel Needle, The Queen of Pig Island); for these are ready to hand and need not be created afresh, so that all the force of Kersh’s invention is set free simply in order to manipulate them, to organise them to the most cruel advantage and to bring them to the most unlooked-for end.

And if, thirdly, you doubt me when I say Kersh is easy to read, then I shall merely invite you to examine this selection of his work. It is made up of what I myself consider to be the best of all his short stories published between 1939 and 1960. I have included one ‘little novel’ of some 22,000 words (Clock Without Hands) and three stories of just over 10,000 words. But if Kersh is a good stayer, he is nevertheless better over the shorter distances: most of the stories in this book are between 4,000 and 8,000 words, and it is in these, I think, that he is to be found at his most vigorous, Rabelaisian, readable, inventive and bizarre.