What things a man or a world believes or disbelieves will permeate every corner and shadow and detail of life and style, will give a shape to every person and personifact and plant of that world. They will form or they will disorder, they will open or close. A world that believes in open things is at least fertile to every sort of adventure or disaster. A world that believes in a closed way will shrivel and raven and sputter out in frosty cruelty. — Audifax O’Hanlon ("Ishmael

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

Q. 1383. Are the souls in Purgatory sure of their salvation? A. The souls in Purgatory are sure of their salvation, and they will enter heaven as soon as they are completely purified and made worthy to enjoy that presence of God . . . Q. 1384. Do we know what souls are in Purgatory, and how long they have to remain there? A. We do not know what souls are in Purgatory nor how long they have to remain there; — Baltimore Catechism, 1885 “But there has never been a day like

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 the diff

The main character in “Snake in His Bosom” is Emil Fuerst, who owns a world-renowned security firm (“Safety Fuerst”). Lafferty’s story has three characters. It can be enjoyed literally as a story about a life-or-death game with betrayal: so, first, the plot, told straight. On the day of the story, Fuerst is playing what he calls a Hunter-and-the-Hunted game with a master burglar known as Gatto. It is a duel meant to test his security system and Gatto’s cunning. The setting is

Okeene Rattlesnake Round Up, Okeene, Oklahoma Vivian was in with a loud rustle, and her footsteps like music as she started up the stair (the tone of her footfall at a frequency of 265, just above middle C, compounded with a vagrant, two harmonics, and a mute). Few men could so analyze their wives' footsteps. Everything about her was in tune, and she hummed the "Dreamer"as she ascended. May God us keep From Single vision & Newton’s sleep! — William Blake, Letter to Thomas But

You may tell that German College that their honor comes too late, But they must not waste repentance on the grizzly savant's fate. Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night. — Sarah Williams, “The Old Astronomer to His Pupil” “Tell me when I'm dead,” High Rider mumbled. The girl hammered the two stalks into his eyes. Bam! Bam! “You're dead now,” she said. “This part is fun. Stars for th

I refrain from writing "The End" here. It must not end. — "The Day After the World Ended" “C’mon, Justin,” came an ankle-high voice from a small lady, with the red-thread or fairy mark on her throat and with a Jewel-Bird egg in her navel. “These illuminated people get mighty murderous if you don't use their brand of light. They'll kill you. Let's go to the thirteenth. C’mon.” Today I want to look at Lafferty’s “The Emperor’s Shoestrings,” a fun story that doesn’t get much att

Some wonderful person is selling this "Hadmade Realistic Silcone Mask, Mr Hamadryad, Halloween Mask" on Etsy. It will only cost you $729.98 https://www.etsy.com/listing/547013835/handmade-realistic-silicone-mask-mr I do not deny in the least that the rational nature will always keep its free will, but I declare that the power and effectiveness of Christ's cross and of his death, which he took upon himself toward the end of the aeons, are so great as to be enough to set right

But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water. John 19:34 “Your name is ape,” the man said, smiling in his pain. There are elements of sourness in Lafferty that surface in his eschatological thinking, and I haven’t worked out how to understand them. “And Name My Name” is bleak and beautiful. It denounces humanity. A figure who is certainly Christ—still bearing the wound from Longinus’ spear from which water and blood flowe

“I began to see that there was an element of humor in that dubious transaction that I had made so many years ago, and that part of the joke was on me.” In September of 1976, Lafferty finished “Bright Coins in Never-Ending Flow,” a short story about a man named Matthew Quoin who may or may not have made a deal with the devil. I’ve been thinking about it because of the role the U.S. penny plays in Quoin’s life. The story builds up to the consequences for Quoin after the penny c

This was the outrageous prediction: ‘Eleven-year-old Caspar Lampiste didn’t seem very much worried when I told him that he had only one day to live, that he would be killed by an automobile then. “What kind of automobile?” he laughed. “Shouldn’t I get to pick what kind of automobile I want to be killed with?” “It will be a foreign car named Le Hot Sport,” your faithful reporter, I, George Hegedusis, told him.’ “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow!” young Caspar sang out.” And the son Casp

And once more it was like a high dive that Leo was afraid to take, like a leap across an abyss — but he must get it off to however unlikely a goal was left him. So he achieved separation. Then Fang struck and broke the body of Cuthbert in half, and there was no life left in it at all. — "Goldfish" “His brain is now emitting impulses in the delta pattern... Lisman is sending, he's probing, he's getting ready for a leap. He's gauging the footholds and handholds on the other sid

Lunel, France “ . . . the Coming (the First and Second comings are non-sequential aspects of the same event and are neither first nor second) . . . Part of the difficulty seems to involve the difference between time and eternity . . . the trouble with time is that it is so temporary. In eternity there is no time element. There is no beginning or end, and the trouble with interpreting it is that simultaneously it will have been ended . . .” — Lafferty, Letter to Robert Sirigna

“Old Foot Forgot” is, like much of Lafferty’s work, a funny, strange, and poignant philosophical tale disguised as science fiction. Unlike yesterday’s “The Rod and the Ring,” however, it is highly approachable. It wrestles with a longing for personal identity after death, and with those who insist that the longing is misguided. In the West, this is Heraclitus instructing us that we dissolve into the cosmic Logos; Parmenides insisting that distinctions are illusions and only B

“But my sin was this, that I looked for pleasure, beauty, and truth not in Him but in myself and His other creatures, and the search led me instead to pain, confusion, and error.”— St. Augustine, Confessions Hark, hark! The dogs do bark. The beggars are coming to town. Some in rags, and some in jags, and some in velvet gowns. “And Some In Velvet Gowns” is exospheric, as high-concept as Lafferty gets. But its height comes from somewhere. That can be misleading, though, because

“I am ancient Og who rode the ridgepole of the ark all through the deluge, and who held the umbrella over the ark.”— Not to Mention Camels (1976) [Noah] was a Magician even as I am. Is that scrap of a tale in the folk tales you've examined?” — "The Man Who Lost His Magic" “Og, the giant, was a descendent of one of the fallen angels. He lived for many, many years. At the time of the flood, he came to Noah and asked him to admit him into the ark. One look at his gigantic statu

Yesterday I received my copy of The Man Who Lost His Magic. It’s every bit as attractive as you’d expect, and in terms of color and cover design, it may be my favorite volume so far. I began with Gary K. Wolfe’s introduction. It’s lively, and Wolfe makes the smart choice to quote Lafferty often, a decision that always works. The frequent quoting leaves less room for deep analysis, but it gives the intro energy and helps with a difficult assignment: pulling together random sla

But for to speke of vertuous beautee, Thanne was she oon the faireste under sonne; For povreliche yfostred up was she— No likerous lust was thurgh hir herte yronne. Wel ofter of the welle than of the tonne She drank, and for she wolde vertu plese, She knew wel labour, but noon ydel ese. "The Clerk's Tale" Somehow Griselda had remained one of the really good-lookers. "For All Good Folks at Picketwire" Picking up from “Dorg,” I want to look at Lafferty's “For All Poor Folks At