Bernard Baruch with JFK The Three Armageddons of Enniscorty Sweeny is so damned slippery. “It is slippery, General, slippery,” Austro said modestly. There will probably never be a consensus about it—how it works, what it does, what it says. The book overloads the mind. It arrests thought. It does so deliberately, aggressively. That is why serious Lafferty readers should think hard about it rather than settle for confusion as an endpoint. Aggressive Lafferty is interesting Laf

By sámi artist Andreas Alariesto (1900-1989) Although the human race must be regarded as a unit intellectually and physically, there have existed and still exist differences which permit a classification into various groups and races. Even the most ancient remains of man, dating from the glacial period in Europe, show differences that justify the acceptance of at least two races. Remains of skeletons that certainly belong to the Quaternary age have been found in France, Germa

Where is Eden PHISON qui circuit omnem terram Hevilath ubi nascitur aurum[which circles all the land of Havilah where gold is born] . . . Layout Cappadocian Highlands and toward Ararat. The east fork of the big bend of the Euphrates was once stolen from the Tigris. — Lafferty, note on the back of Sommerville Map — Island — Treasure: Map Gives 16 S 118° 35' 18" E which is antipodal to 16° N 61° 24' 42" W. Map location would show about 700 miles south of East end of Java and n

First, let it be understood that I am a very prejudiced man. “Prejudiced” means simply working from prejudgments, from previously acquired information. A juryman in a trial case should be free from prejudice as to that case, but I cannot think of another circumstance where prejudice is a disadvantage, though unfortunately the word has a bad name. It is a distinct disadvantage to have to wake up in a new world every day and to learn it all over again. — Luna #67, interview wi

"This is power politics," Julius Brass explained it to James Tyrone. (They still talked together sometimes.) "I don't look like a Jew. I'm tow-haired and light-skinned and pug-nosed and freckle-faced. I'm an Anglo if there ever was one. And since my father changed the name from Messing to Brass we don't even sound Jewish. The kids don't recognize hardly any of us as Jews. But they know the niggers when they see them. And they know the Catholics because they go to the Catholic

“People are easily fooled. But there are tests for reality." — The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeny This will be the last I have to say about Lafferty’s Holocaust denial for a while, unless it becomes directly relevant to an argument about a specific story. I have thought a great deal about what an intellectually serious counterargument to my work on Lafferty and Holocaust denial would require, as any responsible person would. The first and most significant obstacle i

There are few direct personal statements on this blog, although everything here probably reveals something about me. About Lafferty’s Holocaust denial, I want to be on record with maximum clarity. I read Lafferty with a kind of double vision, and I believe two things about him are equally true: R.A. Lafferty was a literary genius of unparalleled imagination and insight. R.A. Lafferty was a crank on aspects of conspiratorial history who embraced a grotesque and evil lie. Criti

“People are easily fooled. But there are tests for reality. If a thing is burned up, then there will be a residue of ashes and gasses. But if there is not such a residue, and the things appears to be unchanged, then it is not acting as if it were burned up.” — The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeny , p. 357 “But if indeed six million Jews were killed (between a third and a half of the Jews in the World, and more Jews than were in the maximum area ever controlled by the G

“People are easily fooled. But there are tests for reality. If a thing is burned up, then there will be a residue of ashes and gasses....

In thinking about Lafferty's denial of the Jewish Holocaust, one of the more curious items in the Tulsa archive is a letter sent to...

"Rita, did you know that the Jews believe that the Jews are a handsome people," Cecelia Ching Brass jibed. "Really. And how odd it is. I...

“Noël! Noël! Noël! Noël! A Catholic tale have I to tell!” — Hilaire Belloc, "Noël! Noël! Noël! Noël! "(1910) "I stand by all that I wrote in the ‘TOLKIEN AS CHRISTIAN’ essay, but I don’t understand why Tolkien acted and wrote as he did. One of my friends has insisted that ‘EVERYTHING that Tolkien wrote was in a sort of cipher.’ Well, I haven’t been able to uncipher it, nor to uncipher the effect he has had on so many people." — Lafferty, Letter to Al Doty, September 4, 1993 “

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