Not long ago, someone I respect asked how to use the blog: what to read, where to begin. Look, I don’t know. This hobby thing now has more than 500 posts, plus other resources, totaling about 700,000 words. It took me a while to learn how to write about Lafferty. Part of that meant dropping academic cant and giving up the urge to write pretty, two habits that annoyed me in other people’s writing. Lafferty is a big place. I’ve approached him through a series of tangent lines t

Anthony Quinn's illustration of Mad King Sweeney Eorann: All the same, I would prefer a hollow tree and Sweeney bare — that sweetest game we used to play — to banqueting with him today. I tell you, Sweeney, if I were given the pick of all in earth and Ireland, I'd rather go with you, live sinless and sup on water and watercress. — Seamus Heaney, Sweeney Astray “I suppose that I had better take up my den in the tree,” Enniscorthy Sweeny had said. “They won’t know how to drive

About Sweeny’s work, those endless and topless mountains of music, and the rivers of words that run like waterfalls out of those mountains, is it really influencing and creating events in the world? Yes it is. And the music is much more powerful than the words in these creations. Alexandr Scriabin (1871–1915) went out in a bad way. A pimple on his upper lip developed into an infected boil. Attempts to lance it failed to stop the infection. There were no effective antibiotics