Slowly it wanders, — pauses, — creeps, — Anon it sparkles, — flashes and leaps; And ever as onward it gleaming goes A light on the Bong-tree stems it throws. And those who watch at that midnight hour From Hall or Terrace, or lofty Tower, Cry, as the wild light passes along, — "The Dong! — the Dong! The wandering Dong through the forest goes! The Dong! the Dong! The Dong with a luminous Nose!" — “The Dong with a Luminous Nose,” Edward Lear (1877) “What about the sex and sorcer

Unlike some other unpublished Lafferty stories, “Whittle Come Back” does not work. Not because it is not a traditional murder mystery, but because it is an incompletely conceived screwball comedy. Lafferty does not seem to know what he wanted to write here. After the story, I will say more about what may have happened. The story centers on Wilton Whittle, the wealthy inventor of Plasto. Whittle is an unemotive man, and he has a habit of leaving his affairs unfinished. Suspec

Imagine a man who declared that he had painted a picture three miles long and a rival artist who announced a few months later that his painting was four miles in length! They were liars, of course, but what magnificent lies! . . . These lies were no less than colossal and supercolossal. Clearly the men were doubly artists: they were both painters and press agents. —John Francis McDermott, The Lost Panoramas of the Mississippi, p. 23 Today I will be tentative: tentative about