Here are two passages from Lafferty on what it means to be called civilized. The first passage, from The Fall of Rome, contrasts Gothic workmanship with Roman prestige; the second, from Okla Hannali, contrasts Choctaw life with stereotypes of primitivism. To score Lafferty’s music, I've used a technique developed by Richard Lanham. Repeated expressions occupy the same column, and indentation shows the relations among clauses. This arrangement directs attention to how the argu

There are the Kings: Godigisel and Respendial and Uldin the Hun. The ministers, the heresiarchs, the great ladies were all parts of the big picture. Sometimes the picture of the passion and death of the Empire will be the face of the crucified Christ: but often there will emerge the most fulfilled, the most shatteringly profound image ever, the laughing Christ of Creophylus. — The Fall of Rome The meaning of the references came clear with the examination of reproductions of c

Why have I been kept ignorant of a main thing in the popular arts that has been going on for several years at least? Asterix the Gaul has apparently had several of these adventures before. Everybody in France has known about him. Everybody of any moment in the world has known about him. And I was left out. As a quick follow-up to the post on silent slapstick and Lafferty, here is something on The Adventures of Asterix, which Lafferty reviewed in 1970. The comic was created in

John Logie Baird demonstrating a Nipkow disk in 1927 It is worth preserving as a remnant of that early era when there were giants on the earth. And, if it is preserved, someday someone will gaze into the old kerosene-powered receiver and cry out in astonishment in the words of the Greatest Bard: "—what poet-race shot such Cyclopean arches at the stars?" Whoever you are, and whenever or whereever you read this first story in the book, it will be best story you will r

Harry Langdon (1884-1944) Whenever someone thinks of Lafferty and silent movies, the story that comes to mind first is "Selenium Ghosts of the Eighteen Seventies," one of his stone-cold masterpieces. He graded it himself in September 1978, reporting to a correspondent "a fair story in Orbit 20, a fair story in Shadows (Doubleday, edited by Charles L. Grant), and a very good story ('Selenium Ghosts of the Eighteen Seventies') in Terry Carr's Universe Eight." If that story is L

James Gurney prelim for the cover of Annals of Klepsis "I suppose that I believe in another sort of a surreality or super-reality, but it would have to be on a wider basis than the encounters of Myself and me." Lafferty was notorious for not caring much about how he dressed, a detail frequently noted in convention reports and personal memories. I’ve often wondered if his general lack of interest in his book covers and illustrations was connected to this. In an interview, he s

Today, an Argo Atlas, to be combined with a Coscuin Atlas at some point. As I put it together, I thought it would be fun to mention some connections between Finnegan and Dana Coscuin, too. Readers who come to The Devil is Dead without having read the Coscuin Chronicles meet a character named Angela Cosquin in chapter seventeen. She is a Basse-Terre barmaid with an odd last name, and the reader learns that her father drew treasure maps for confidence men. Nothing in the novel

Well, why did not the men of Kyklopolis get together in great numbers with many boats and torches and weapons and hunt out and kill this Grendel? Should such a peril be allowed to live? But this is to ignore who Grendel really was, to forget of what race he was the last surviving member. For Grendel, who had once been completely human, was of the race of Cain. Moreover, Grendel was not only the descendant but also the murderer of the murderous Cain. He had disregarded the Mar

“Seven-Day Terror” is one of those Lafferty stories that everyone seems to enjoy. It first appeared in the March 1962 issue of Worlds of If and belongs to Lafferty’s early series about the precocious and cheerfully dangerous Willoughby children. This time, nine-year-old Clarence constructs a “disappearer” from a beer can and two pieces of red cardboard. His experiment wreaks havoc on cats, fire hydrants, automobiles, houses, and finally a grocer. Now for some extreme Lafferty

In Germany, Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, published in 1929, was plainly a post-novel in a postfictional form. But the structured world did not end everywhere at quite the same time. In the United States there was a brilliant “last hurrah” of novels for several decades after the fictional form had disappeared in Europe, and Cozzen’s By Love Possessed, published in 1957, might still be considered as a valid fictional work. That special form of fiction, the Short S

MINDWEBS was a weekly half-hour radio series created by Michael Hanson and Steve Gordon for WHA/WERN, Wisconsin Public Radio in Madison. Instead of conventional radio plays, listeners heard readings of science-fiction and fantasy stories, usually performed by Hanson and accompanied by music, sound effects, and a handful of other voices. The series began in 1975 and continued into the 1980s. Although the Lafferty letters I have read never mention it, MINDWEBS adapted his “Hand

Works resource updated. I have turned it into the research tool I wish had existed when I began reading Lafferty. It brings together a large body of information in a searchable catalogue. You can browse Lafferty’s works, publication appearances, completion dates, reviews, variants, translations, links to cover art and full issue scans, and references to archival holdings at the University of Tulsa and the University of Iowa, from which manuscript scans may be ordered. The pro

There is an old canard that twins are less fertile than singletons. This probably has its source from the fertility difficulty that the heifer co-twin of a bull calf is likely to encounter. —Alan F. Guttmacher, Pregnancy and Birth, 270. canard, n. “A false or unfounded report or story,” especially “a fabricated report”; from the French, literally “duck.” And still there were the flaming ducks, all of them capons, stenchy and outrageous, thudding, thudding, thudding to earth d

Torcon II, the 31st World Science Fiction Convention, was held in Toronto over the Labor Day weekend of 1973, opening, as it happens, fifty-three years ago today. It was there that Lafferty won his only Hugo Award for "Eurema's Dam," in a tie with Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth's posthumous collaboration "The Meeting." It was the first tie in that category's history. Lafferty always expressed embarrassment over winning the Hugo for a story that he didn’t consider to be one

Sketch of the exhumed Little Hugh by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm (1791) 684 O yonge Hugh of Lyncoln, slayn also   Oh young Hugh of Lincoln, slain also 685 With cursed Jewes, as it is notable,   By cursed Jews, as it is well known, 686 For it is but a litel while ago,   For it is but a little while ago, 687 Preye eek for us, we synful folk unstable,   Pray also for us, we sinful folk unstable, 688 That of his mercy God so merciable   That of his mercy God so merciful 689 On us his

There is rollicking good-humor all through every Scripture. Samson, the riddletelling judge and strong man, is full of high spirits even when going down to Gaza and to his death. David is full of fun when he invents the story of his victory over Goliath and sings it to his own harp music. Goliath was not that big, nor David that small; and moreover Goliath was killed by another warrior, Elhanan. But a story-teller can always fictionize accounts. There is a lot of fun in Balaa