Hiroshi Inoue recently completed a Japanese translation of More Than Melchisedech (unpublished) and published this truly excellent commentary in a Japanese fanzine. The English translation below restores Lafferty’s original wording wherever Inoue quotes the novel. I agree with most of his argument, including his account of how the novels relate to the short stories. He lays it out with exceptional clarity.

“Molasses is a little like amber,” Diogenes said. “It flows so slowly that sometimes it seems to be solid. Creatures can be imprisoned in it and apparently be held motionless in it. They must deceive themselves as to their own time scale, for if they do not deceive themselves they will be dead . . . . Things can not have been going on for the orthodox time at the orthodox pace.” — "Out of the Molasses Trap" “There are no duplications in the Pristine World, and there are no no

No, I can’t recommend any good Irish myths or legends in translation. I have a copy of the John Strachan STORIES FROM THE TAIN which I have been meaning to translate for some years now, but it’s too damned difficult. It does have a glossary, but that covers only the unusual words. I have to go to my Dineen’s Irish-English dictionary a dozen times a page and it usually will not have the word, it being of modern Irish and the Tain being old Irish. But I have adapted several of

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

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

Jackson Square, New Orleans Refrain: Great day! Great day, the righteous marching; Great day! God’s going to build up Zion’s walls! Great day! Great day, the righteous marching; Great day! God’s going to build up Zion’s walls! 1 Chariot rode on the mountain top, God’s going to build up Zion’s walls! My God spoke and the chariot did stop,* God’s goin’ to build up Zion’s walls! [Refrain] 2 This is the day of jubilee, God’s going to build up Zion’s walls! The Lord has set His

Once I was crossing the Neva in a boat with my friend A., with whom, before this and later, I had many conversations on the subjects touched on in this book. We had been talking, but approaching the fortress we both fell silent, looking at the walls and probably thinking more or less the same thoughts. “There are factory chimneys too!” said A. And indeed from behind the fortress there rose brick chimneys with smoke-blackened tops. And suddenly, as he said it, I had an incredi

Casey's verses are all doggerel . . . His musical compositions hide a greatness, but they hide it well. His drawings are all comic, but only a few of them are meant to be. Let us consider the drawings on the opposite page: (For technical reasons, there is no drawing on the opposite page, but Schrade's description will suffice.) This supposed itself to be a drawing of Hell, but it is a second-hand drawing of a second-hand Hell. We believe that, in most respects, it is authenti

V. Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine. R. Et lux perpetua luceat eis. Fidelium animae, per misericordiam Dei, requiescant in pace. Amen. "Promontory Goats" is a Lafferty piece that I don’t know what to do with. It is one of Lafferty's most ambitious and theologically serious works, and it is funny, weird, dark, hopeful, slippery, offensive, and Origenist in ways that puzzle me. It is also one of the Lafferty stories that is just impossible to summarize. If one looks at Laffer

My working theory is that the best chronological anchor for The Devil Is Dead is Lafferty’s statement that “the Brunhilde sailed on November 7, a Friday morning.” Lafferty is usually vague about the year. Here he even says that “the year is uncertain.” Yet he does something unusual: he gives the day of the week, thereby creating several calendrical locks. November 7 was Lafferty’s birthday, which makes the specificity suggestive. Within the plausible postwar range, November 7

Finnegan had the barrel of the rifle in his hands. Then he had Saxon Seaworthy in his hands, far underwater in a turmoil. Saxon did not die easily or willingly. To lull the grip he went limp as though already gone. Then, thirty seconds later, he erupted with violent writhing so as to break away. It was not easy to throttle a man with so sinewy a neck that was also protected by the pherea, the throat protuberances of an old satyr: and to choke off the air of a man already unde

“He is fifty-three years, seven months, and nine days old. His calculated worth is three hundred and twenty-two thousand dollars (my own calculation but a close one); you are his heir, Clinton. He is, moreover, highly insured withsuch a multiplicity of policies that it is almost impossible to tabulate them, or even to be sure that I know about the mall. He is unsound of heart, liver, lung, kidney, and stomach; has high blood pressure, ulcers, and Evan's Disease; in short, he

This post is a first attempt to chart Melchisedech Duffey’s peculiar sexual life and aspects of antisemitism in More Than Melchisedech, situating them within the blog’s broader exploration of neglected sides of Lafferty's fiction. It confines itself to presenting textual evidence, without advancing interpretation beyond highlighting the link between Melchisedech Duffey’s sexuality and antisemitic tropes in the Argo legend. In the novel, Duffey is blackmailed for pedophilia by

Today, something interesting, although it falls into a niche within a niche within a niche. In other posts, I have written about how Lafferty uses E. I. Watkin’s 1932 work The Bow in the Clouds: An Essay Towards the Integration of Experience to create Barnaby Sheen stories. What I tried to do is go deeper than just observing that Lafferty color-coded stories by theme because the more interesting thought is how and why he did this. If you haven't read any of that, Watkin’s boo

"Aeon is the measure of the duration of non-material creatures or substances, as time is that of material creatures or substances. Thomas writes, ‘Although the aeon is instantaneously whole, it differs from eternity in being able to exist with before and after.’ There is one aeon for every immaterial individual and for every immaterial relationship. Some aeons apply only to the non-material aspects of individuals and relationships. A person who is partly material and partly i

As he opens the second canto of Paradiso, Dante warns his readers that only those prepared for the mysteries ahead should continue the journey. He likens his ascent through the heavens to a voyage into uncharted seas, far beyond the safe, familiar shores of ordinary understanding: "O you who are within your little bark, / eager to listen, following behind / my ship that, singing, crosses to deep seas, / turn back to see your shores again: / do notattempt to sail the seas I sa