Harry Langdon (1884-1944) Whenever someone thinks of Lafferty and silent movies, the story that comes to mind first is "Selenium Ghosts of the Eighteen Seventies," one of his stone-cold masterpieces. He graded it himself in September 1978, reporting to a correspondent "a fair story in Orbit 20, a fair story in Shadows (Doubleday, edited by Charles L. Grant), and a very good story ('Selenium Ghosts of the Eighteen Seventies') in Terry Carr's Universe Eight." If that story is L

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

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) was one of Lafferty’s favorite poets. At one point, he wrote to Sheryl Smith about his experience translating him, saying, "I didn't know you translated Heine. So did I when I was a young person. So did Henry James when he was young, and Maurice Baring, and Lord Acton. Heine avoids the hoppety-hop himself, but most of his translators fall into it. I did." Heine’s “The Grenadiers” (written c. 1816) is a lyric about loyalty, honor, and the pull of nat

"No, my books don't stay in print very long, and so they are hard to find. All books go out of print quickly unless they are pretty solid sellers. My only books that get reissued are Past Master, Nine Hundred Grandmothers, and The Reefs of Earth. I've had sixteen novels published and over two hundred short stories, but you'd be lucky to find even one item of mine just walking into a book store." Short note on something fun. Charles Scribner’s Sons published Lafferty’s Does An

“But on the third hand, and often to the exasperation of critics, the writer usually knows what is wrong or right with a story better than a critic does.” — Letter The drowsy stillness of the afternoon was shattered by what sounded to his strained senses like G. K. Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin. — P. G. Wodehouse To start a fight with someone who loves Chesterton, say that Chesterton was an alcoholic. Though it is in poor taste to mention, one of the qualities Lafferty

A short post on something I’m trying to think through. One of my categories for understanding Lafferty is the oceanic, that place where the underworld of all humanity comes together, his version of the Jungian collective unconscious. Lafferty was remarkably open to radical soteriology, something I am still trying to understand, though it makes sense for someone so interested in the history of the world. He was intensely interested in the history of peoples, yet he was also, a

Today, theistic evolution and an unexpected connection to Lafferty's unpolished “Claudius and Charles.” By the time I was growing up, most Catholics had made their peace with theistic evolution, an ongoing attempt to bring Christian theology into harmony with the modern synthesis. That effort is not new, and it long predates Darwin. Early Church Fathers like St. Augustine of Hippo spoke of rationes seminales, or “seminal reasons.” He believed that God had placed hidden potent

For months, I have wanted to write about some remarks Lafferty made to Robert Sirignano concerning the Devil. They’re plainly important for understanding the nature of antagonistic forces in his fiction. I started thinking about them again when I happened to read Harlan Ellison’s short story “Grail” (1981). It’s a fun, straightforward moral fable, written by someone who doesn’t believe in real devils. So we get a devil like this: It slouched and dragged its arms behind a

In thinking about Lafferty's denial of the Jewish Holocaust, one of the more curious items in the Tulsa archive is a letter sent to Lafferty by a founding member of the Remnant of Israel. At the time Lafferty received the letter, the small Jewish group was based in central Kentucky. It opens a window onto an interesting corner of religious life: the world of Jewish converts to Catholicism. The Catholic Church has long described itself as Israel or the Israel of God. Yet it’s