I’ve been thinking about the dynamics of Gnosticism/eschatology and R. A. Lafferty lately, so here’s a quick sketch, more a prompt than a full argument, with a way in. Philip K. Dick and Lafferty share an obsession: the twentieth-century recovery of Gnosticism as the problem of modernity. Hans Jonas is the obvious touchstone; both writers almost certainly knew his work. What interests me is where they split once you ask what “Gnosticism” means under modern conditions. How muc

I began to try to write in about 1959 and went a year or so before my first sale . . . My life has been mostly interior and that interior very shallow. . . I am forever a Catholic, a bachelor, a political independent, a lone badger (lone wolves are a legend, they are always in groups, but even the bachelor badger digs himself a hole and spends most of his time in it). So it stands. There isn't much of a biography. Most of my life I forgot to live. — letter to Damon Knight, Se

Now, the art of rhetoric being available for the enforcing either of truth or falsehood, who will dare to say that truth in the person of its defenders is to take its stand unarmed against falsehood? — Augustine, On Christian Doctrine  ( De doctrina christiana ), Book IV, Chapter 2, §3  There are the ultimate in evil who keep the venom and change the Name of the Snake. Pope Francis had a knack for getting headlines. He once remarked that he would baptize an extraterrestrial w

A Past Master exam for the hardcore Lafferty reader. All gnawing questions I keep going back to. Why does Pottscamp stutter? What is the structural role of the boy with the toy? Who is the false ansel? Why is the Ouden passage dream delayed? What is the relation of Adam to Athens and Jerusalem? Why did Cathead only appear twenty years ago? Who is the stranger at the end of the novel? Who are the time travelers who visited Thomas More before Paul, and why did they do it? What

" . . . whether persistent and inveterate wickedness might be changed, by habit, into a kind of nature, you, reader, must judge, that is, if in any way, both in these seen and temporal ages and in those unseen and eternal ages, that portion will be wholly discordant from that final unity and harmony. In the meantime, however, both in these seen and temporal ages and in those that are unseen and eternal, all those beings are arranged in order, by reason, according to the measu

This is because, in another sense, who [Origen] was and what he achieved have been hidden for the better part of the Christian era behind a false mythology and an even falser historical record. Though, as I say, he towers over the landscape of Christian thought, he has done so invisibly ever since his putative "condemnation" in 553 at the Fifth Ecumenical Council. — David Bentley Hart, Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies  (2020) Advanced Lafferty. I have a theory about why

I have a theory though that a person constantly edits and updates his memories, and that the updated memories are at least as valid as the original memories. As to the original facts, they have no being except in the cloud of memories that shows approximately where they once were. — Letter What did he mean by 'really'? We had been up into reality, up into blue-sky reality almost all day long. Why the grubby question? Following a recent post , I have been thinking about memory

For the end of the world was long ago, And all we dwell to-day Like children of some second birth, Like a strange people left on earth After a judgment day. For the end of the world was long ago, When the ends of the world waxed free, When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves, And the sun drowned in the sea. — G. K. Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse , Book I But we have divine sanction and assurance that the Church will endure to the end of the world, it is said. No, we

Though more than half of mankind does not believe in the ultimates and basics, surely less than five percent of the Science Fiction People have any belief at all in what is real. Science Fiction is, for ninety-five percent of the people who indulge in it, a surrogate “True Belief,” in things from which the truth has been carefully removed. It is a “True Belief” in a false religion, one without dimension. — “True Belivers” (Prose Statement) The city is built To music, therefor

“Dammit, fat man, I will ask questions and I won't hide. Now tell me what the four sorts of creatures are. I'm not stupid. That's only the permanent impression I leave.” “Oh, the four sorts of creatures that surround the Castle are the Pythons, the Toads, the Badgers and the Unfledged Falcons.” “Oh what botching! Unbotch it, Bagley. Where do you get your drivel?” “I have it anciently from my own ancient person and position. And beyond that, there are hints of it in the unguar

If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the

A short post on something I’m trying to think through. One of my categories for understanding Lafferty is the  oceanic , that place where the underworld of all humanity comes together, his version of the Jungian collective unconscious. Lafferty was remarkably open to radical soteriology, something I am still trying to understand, though it makes sense for someone so interested in the history of the world. He was intensely interested in the history of peoples, yet he was also

But all the clocks in the city    Began to whirr and chime: ‘O let not Time deceive you,    You cannot conquer Time. — W. H. Auden, “As I Walked Out One Evening” Often, and now more often, Vincent felt that he was touching the fingers of the secret. And always, when he came near it, it had a little bit of the smell of the Pit. “The Six Fingers of Time” is a prenucleation Lafferty fantasy that already bears on questions at the center of his imaginative project: how to think t

Thinking again about Monego's essay , which I mentioned a few days ago, and it occurred to me that one probable source for the Harvesters in Fourth Mansions  is Theodore Sturgeon’s More Than Human  (1953), a landmark work of mid-century science fiction. This must have occurred to others, though I haven't seen it discussed. Sturgeon’s novum reimagines evolution acting on the communal mind through Homo Gestalt , a multi-person organism formed by marginalized individuals who lea

Yes, I believe that there will be a coming of Christ, an actual physical appearance, comprising the eternal incarnation, redemption, and resurrection. So did Christ believe this and repeated it many times. It is to be believed literally, down to every jot and tittle of every letter. Those who have had visions of the Coming (the First and Second coming are non-sequential aspects of the same event and are neither first nor second), those who have had apparently authentic vision

“On the Joys and Trials” is an unpublished speech Lafferty prepared in March 1982 for the Oklahoma Library Association Conference. It was to be delivered on April 23 of that year. The typescript, preserved at the University of Tulsa, shows his working method. He wrote, typed the text, and destroyed the scaffolding. The pages have a handful of handwritten corrections, running word counts in the margins, and a cover sheet noting the occasion. But it is special. It is the ful

Recovery (which includes return and renewal of health) is a re-gaining—regaining of a clear view. I do not say ‘seeing things as they are’ and involve myself with the philosophers, though I might venture to say ‘seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them’—as things apart from ourselves. — J. R. R. Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories Lafferty disliked Tolkien’s work. Even so, Tolkien is useful for thinking about the Lafferty stories that center on recovery. In “When All the Lan

Short post. Quickly sketched thoughts. Gregorio Montejo (I assume) has posted an essay on Fourth Mansions . It is worth reading. Vastly stronger than his first one. I’m unconvinced that the Alumbrados serve as direct source material for the novel, though I wish they did; even so, the direction he points to by using them is sound. I may well change my mind if I find any evidence that convinces me. Part of the reluctance is that the Pythons need to be integrated into the Four

“Are we still dangling on the thread, or has the thread been broken even before the official act (soon to be proposed) to break it ? The Ancient Instruction was to go to All Nations. But we are not the Nations. We are something different. The Promise was that the Transcendent Thing would endure till the End of the World. But we are not the World. We are quite a different world, and no promise was ever given to us.” “Nine snakes in my head! I won’t!" Thomas shouted. "It is not

In such a context . . . the values of being are replaced by those of having. The only goal which counts is the pursuit of one's own material well-being. The so-called "quality of life" is interpreted primarily or exclusively as economic efficiency, inordinate consumerism, physical beauty and pleasure, to the neglect of the more profound dimensions . . . of existence. . . . Within this same cultural climate . . . interpersonal relations are seriously impoverished. The first to