"Aeon is the measure of the duration of non-material creatures or substances, as time is that of material creatures or substances. Thomas...

Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) Mimesis 1 (Prefiguration): Mimesis 1 is the pre-narrative, lived understanding of human action, encompassing...

William Blake, The Red Dragon and the Woman Wrapped in the Sun, c. 1805 My last post looked at Lafferty's aesthetics and theology in...

As he opens the second canto of Paradiso , Dante warns his readers that only those prepared for the mysteries ahead should continue the...

“The Forty-Seventh Island” is one of Lafferty’s weaker stories. It isn’t short on invention; what it lacks is the theotropic dissonance...

Forza [force] and froda [fraud] being the two essential elements of sin, it follows that they must be the two cardinal virtues of human...

Several million evolvate computers, computers who said that they were the only true born-again humans, accompanied the pilgrimage or tour...

Lafferty had a soft spot for Neanderthals and every kind of ape-man. My favorite instance of this appears at the end of Arrive at...

The question then arises, what poverty is required by the practice of this counsel or, in other words, what poverty suffices for the...

Picking up on yesterday’s post and the theme of Gnosticism, I want to look its presence in Lafferty’s work a little further. Lafferty...

Stanley Elkin once said that he did shtick upon shtick until he got carpentry. In the same vein, there’s a maneuver so core to Lafferty’s...

Today, I want to think about the metaphysics of time in "Selenium Ghosts." Before turning to that issue, let’s take stock of some of what...

I’ve been closely reading "Selenium Ghosts of the Eighteenth Century." In the coming days, I’ll make several posts about it and post my...

From a reproduction of the wonderful Hereford Mappa Mundi (ca. 1300 AD). The inscription on Sardinia: Sardinia Grece Sandaliotes dicta a...

A while back, I shared some thoughts on East of Laughter  in response to a discussion about certain obiter dicta  on pornography in an...

While thinking about Past Master  (1968), I returned to Lafferty’s short story "Condillac’s Statue or Wrens in His Head." It offers...

Rock Candy Patent Drawing, 1881 There are quite a few reasons for thinking about Lafferty not as a science fiction writer but as a writer...

Lafferty’s description and visual imagery are as idiosyncratic as every other aspect of the man's work. Today, I want to consider a trick...

Wallpaper Design by William Morris (1834-1896) “So long as a man was graceful in every circumstance, so long as he had the inspiring...

"And they threw her down, and the wall was sprinkled with her blood, and the horses trod upon her." 2 Kings 9:33 "But one of the...