I love to sail the ocean quaint, I love the waves that rush-o. I love to paint with sightless paint, I love to whack my brush-o. "Ballad...

First, a table that lays out the plot of Space Chantey (1968), then some thoughts about Lafferty's Lay . When Gospel-trumpeter, surrounded With long-eared rout, to battle sounded, And pulpit, drum ecclesiastic, Was beat with fist, instead of a stick; Then did Sir Knight abandon dwelling, And out he rode a-colonelling. That's Hudibras , Samuel Butler’s scathing seventeenth-century takedown of Cromwell's England. But they sound a lot like Lafferty. T

“It was like an old Puca comedy: one person falls into the quicksand, drags another in after him, then a third, then a fourth—until they...