A second example would be "What's the Name of that Town?", in which Epikt (note the wonderful Hellenism: Epiktistes means "The Equitable One," a great name for a calculating device that takes all elements (Stoichae) equally) sorts his facts to discover that something must be missing. — Don Webb, “Effective Arcanum” Polemical post. Don Webb gives a lot of power to the unconscious meaning of words. Amusing, given how unselfconsciously wrong that bullshit about Epiktistes is. We

. . . our present ethnoclass (i.e., Western bourgeois) conception of the human, Man, which overrepresents itself as if it were the human itself . . . — Sylvia Wynter, “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom” (2003) This towering strangeness is part of their towering holiness. — Serpent’s Egg (ch. 2, p. 17). A thinking-aloud post about one of the thornier aspects of Serpent’s Egg. Early in the book, Lafferty tells us that in 2035, the year when the book takes

They keep accounts on Prime World; ultimate accounts, I mean. They keep crabbed, careful, fetishistic accounts. Oh, Noah, would I ever have to pay! That world is real, and all others are shadows of it. You say this, but you are afraid to mean it, and you are afraid to acknowledge yourself a citizen of it. But your only alternative is to own yourself to be a reflected and not a real person. 408. When will Christ judge us? Christ will judge us immediately after our death, and o

The four experimental groups were thrown together, on the North Shore of the growing Inneall’s Ocean, at a beautiful place named Heart’s Desire Cove. Inneall’s Ocean was now growing mostly to the South and East. It was capturing the valleys of the Verdigris, Grand, Illinois, Arkansas, and Middle and Lower Mississippi Rivers, and it seemed as if it would fill the whole area that had been filled by the Mid-American Ocean thrice in geological times. Yes, of course Inneall was ma

The first offense was the taking of the forbidden fruit. The second offense (which I believe is more grievous than the first) is the refusing of the bidden fruit. It is even the hacking down of the tree of the fruit. Advanced Lafferty today, and undoubtedly too brief. I’ve been rereading Serpent’s Egg, trying to understand how the Kangaroo connects to Inneall’s ocean, and throughout that novel one fact kept coming up. Once again, Lafferty is thinking about original sin, maybe

G. The Argo & Argonauts (Primordial Aspects) The Argo and its Argonauts represent a complex system operating across multiple realities and timelines. Central is the Ship Argo, a foundational vessel acting with apparent intention [D:21], known under names and descriptions including Navicula Petri [A:44], Abd-Aliah's flagship [M:404], the Brunhilde [D:21; M:404], Land of Behest [M:404], Flying Serpent, Catherine, and Salle du Roi [M:404–405]. Archipelago adds the possible names

There is a great and deep oceanic mind behind all this, a mind shimmering with intelligence and intuition. There is a soul brimming full of adventure and daring. There is intrigue that boggles belief. Most of all there is a personage who is sometimes a leaping and sounding spirit, and sometimes the Foremost Secret is— The Foremost Secret What? Ah, that too, for the moment, is a secret. — Fair Hills of Ocean, Oh! In the Whole Lafferty are the Oceanic novels. I’ve updated the O

So does Hell seem an altogether pleasant place, when it comes with its both hands full of enticements. —Where Have You Been, Sandaliotis? Some interpretations on the blog will seem really out there. I would defend them with confidence, from arguments about being inside a female reproductive system in “Flaming Ducks and Giant Bread” to the reading of “Junkyard Thoughts” as a story about a mental breakdown taking the form of a dissociative episode. However, the interpretation I

Dotty herself was never sentimental, and it would not be decent to get sentimental on her behalf. — Chapter 2, Dotty Having just “reached her majority” at novel’s end, which by Texas law would have meant turning 18 years of age, 18 years into which she has packed several lives’ worth of incident and grief and loss . . . — Andrew Ferguson, on Dotty This afternoon, I revised my Dotty resource and started thinking about the novel’s somewhat murky chronology. Dotty is young at th

A Rat-King The plot has all the unhinged unity of any shipwreck. And there is movement and force and power. Power above all! This is Destruction as pageant and presentation. One has the feeling that something very large will come out of all of this. Yes, like the destruction of the world. — The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeny (p. 352) My second read showed pretty clearly why I remembered merely the premise and little of the plot: there is little plot to remember, in a

The face was skinny and ruddy. The nose was powerful and beaked; not like that of a bird of prey but like that one of the Roman-nosed water birds. The nose was always peeling, as though it were growing out from the inside and flaking off in those strips. That gnarly ant and aphid image with its glistening drop? Really important for understanding 3A. Nuts and bolts or maybe bolts and nuts. The Three Armageddons can melt one’s brain, so it's helpful to have a baseline for under

Give me back the Berlin wall Give me Stalin and St. Paul Give me Christ Or give me Hiroshima Destroy another fetus now We don't like children anyhow I've seen the future, baby It is murder —Leonard Cohen, “The Future” As to your selecting the name “Kirol” that was just to preserve you from a little numerological trap. Advanced Lafferty. The previous Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeny post called the book one of Lafferty’s most Catholic works because the bloodshed of

Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system. —W. V. O. Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951) Even so, something was a little bit wrong with things. Some people said that the days were off by maybe a millionth of a second from what they should be. Other people said that the days were off by several hours. They were off, that’s certain. There was an easy solution, of course, for a mechanically sophisticated

Anthony Quinn's illustration of Mad King Sweeney Eorann: All the same, I would prefer a hollow tree and Sweeney bare — that sweetest game we used to play — to banqueting with him today. I tell you, Sweeney, if I were given the pick of all in earth and Ireland, I'd rather go with you, live sinless and sup on water and watercress. — Seamus Heaney, Sweeney Astray “I suppose that I had better take up my den in the tree,” Enniscorthy Sweeny had said. “They won’t know how to drive

The largest church in my city is that of a Christian sect that will not show the cross. It is built in imitation of a style that requires the cross, and the simple elimination of it would leave an emptiness and discordance. What is done to disguise this gaping omission? There is not permitted to be seen one right angle in the entire building, not one natural congruence of horizontal and vertical line. There are asymmetrical spires all over the place, there are twenty-nine deg

How Dotty’s image of God as “that Old Jew” changes from accusation to providence, and why that change matters to the novel’s antisemitism.

Chesterton’s “The Nightmare,” Oriel Overlark, and the place of Lafferty’s monsters beneath the throne in Fourth Mansions.

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

There is rollicking good-humor all through every Scripture. Samson, the riddle-telling 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 Bala

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