Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) ​​​R. A. Lafferty unequivocally, categorically denied the Jewish Holocaust. This is sad, and inevitably complicates any discussion of his work, though the fact itself is not complicated. I used to be annoyed by Robert Silverberg’s comment that people knew there was great sadness in R.A.L. It was patronizing, and it didn’t make sense, but it is coming into focus for me. The Holocaust materials should be documented in the Tulsa archive in the McFarlin

Because of the trashiness of its origins, there has grown a sort of amnesia over the account of how we became as amazingly smart as we are now, and of how we were even smarter for a while there. This honest account should cut through the amnesia a little bit. "I Don't Care Who Keeps the Cows" There is laughter, and there isn’t supposed to be. "Sex and Sorcery" “I Don’t Care Who Keeps the Cows” rarely draws notice, but it deserves to be read. Not only for its searing grotesque

Charles Proteus Steinmetz (1865-1923) with Albert Einstein and Others. “Of course I'm unwell. Always have been,” Albert said. “What good would I be otherwise? You set the ideal that all should be healthy and well adjusted. No! No! Were we all well adjusted, we would ossify and die. The world is kept healthy only by some of the unhealthy minds lurking in it. The first implement made by man was not a scraper or celt or stone knife. It was a crutch, and it wasn't devised by a h

I am speaking literally about a real happening: the end of the world in which we lived till fairly recent years. The destruction or unstructuring of that world, which is still sometimes referred to as 'Western Civilization' or 'Modern Civilization’, happened suddenly, sometime in the half-century between 1912 and 1962. That world, which was ‘The World’ for a few centuries, is gone. Though it ended quite recently, the amnesia concerning its ending is general. Several historiog

But for to speke of vertuous beautee, Thanne was she oon the faireste under sonne; For povreliche yfostred up was she— No likerous lust...

From Salvador Dali's The Elephants (1948) When a topos has acquired sufficient ornamentation, it is blessed, or it is cursed. If it is blessed, it becomes one of the Holy Lands. If it is cursed, we don’t know what it becomes. The Three Armageddons of Enniscorty Sweeny About that time, the mad cartoonist J. P. Dordogne invented just such an animal in his comic strip. It was a big, comical, rock-eating animal. It struck the popular fancy and humor at once, though it

SEVEN, FIVE, THREE, ONE, SIX, FOUR, TWO: “We can always leave.” Escapement. An odd word in watchmaking. I thought about it last year when my son Henry broke my trusty Hamilton, and I had to have the movements repaired. It wasn’t cheap, so I’ve learned to keep the watch well out of his reach. Imagine blowing up a balloon, then pinching its neck to let the air out in small, precise bursts, timed to the exact moment. That’s escapement. Swiss watchmakers use it to design the p

Martin Crookall has done fun blogging on Lafferty. He is one of the few Lafferty readers who writes about the novels, which makes him a hero in my book. He likes to say that Lafferty has about two hundred fans. If by “fan,” Crookall means someone who enjoys the short stories, or someone who liked Past Master and keeps a fond place for Lafferty in memory, then 200 would be an absurdly low number. But Lafferty fans are an odd lot. Few read his works the way typical fans of a w

“A mood makes a world appear. —Martin Heidegger A passing comment on the Lafferty Facebook group East of Laughter has me thinking about “The 99th Cubicle.” The first time I read it, I filed it away as a minor and heavy-handed bagatelle about sin built on the old hypodermic needle model of media . After re-reading it, I’m not so sure. That uncertainty is the point of this post. If you decide to read—or re-read—the story, be aware that it has variant endings. The original, sh

A Note on This Post I am leaving this post as it stands. When I saw the depth of Lafferty’s views on Jews, I began to see his work differently. The clearest sign is that he omitted the Holocaust from a book he called a complete history of the twentieth century. There are smaller indicators too: the rabbi blessing pork in "Bright Flightways," a story I otherwise admire, or the Zionist in "Forty-Seventh Island.” One could easily trace a trail of such clues. What surprised me m

"Thus, as we maintain, to know a thing’s nature is to know the reason why it is. And this is equally true of things insofar as they are said without qualification to be , as opposed to being said to possess some attribute, such as being equal to two right angles , or greater or less . It is clear, then, that all questions are a search for a middle ." — Aristotle The analysis was getting on his nerves, and this was likely because some of those very fine threads they were reel

Drumm Booklet 19 Lafferty’s “Slippery” is a good example of how Lafferty can be both light-hearted and subtly moralizing. The moralizing here is lightly applied. Roy Mega and Austro develop a friction-destroying mist called “Slippery-Gip,” which unleashes chaos. Austro delights in the way everything slides about uncontrollably, and he plans to blackmail the world by targeting people and their possessions with this hyper-slick substance, derived from super-glycerine. General G

Skeleton of the Tyrannosaurus Rex, in the American Museum of Natural History, from The Outline of History by H.G. Wells, Volume I, published in 1920 My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! — William Wordsworth , “My Heart Leaps Up” “After him! After him!” Bernard Sheen cried out. — My Heart Leaps Up , Chapter 1 “What Big Tears the Dinosaur’s” is one of

David Jones, "Building of the Ark" In his review of The Man Who Never Was , Paul Di Filippo compared “Quiz Ship Loose” to a classic episode of Star Trek: The Original Series and called the instant chute genius. "Quiz Ship Loose" is a very Trekky planetfall story, and the crew’s encounter with the Pelederians will be familiar to anyone who enjoys Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. The aliens’ advanced technology and arrogance recall characters like Trelane or the Metrons, if you are a T

The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise, And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room, And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom, And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee, But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea. — G.K. Chesterton, “Lepanto” Best of all, the Sack of Rome! There was a dozen different games blended into that one. “Among the Hairy Earthmen” is

He ate and drank the precious words, His spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, Nor that his frame was dust. He danced along the dingy days, And this bequest of wings Was but a book. What liberty A loosened spirit brings! - Emily Dickinson Lafferty’s “Bequest of Wings” first appeared in the 1979 anthology Rooms of Paradise , though notes in the Tulsa archive show he completed it on January 23, 1975. The story is thematically elusive, and that elusiveness makes

Aurelia aurita I’ve been thinking about Aurelia , one of my favorite works by Lafferty, even though much of it continues to puzzle me. Today, I want to share a few thoughts on Lafferty’s two Camiroi stories: “The Primary Education of the Camiroi” and “The Polity and Customs of the Camiroi” and the novel. I’ll also explain how I’ve been organizing the Camiroi material in my mind and how I think these pieces fit together. This will be a rushed account, to be sure. Still, my hop

Prompted by a question Chris Merrick asked on East of Laughter , I’ve been cataloguing the changes made when moving Lafferty's short...

And she was into the weave now — pink and pungent — the numinous spook, the cinnamon cookie, the mad anima who had never left off being a...