Ten recommended Andrew Ferguson essays on R. A. Lafferty, with a 107-entry index, links to related criticism, and comparisons with Arrive at Easterwine.

They were sliding down Green River in the slanting darkness, and they found it pleasant. Earth has a beauty even for the Pucas—at night, with the dog-elm and the crooked-neck cedar trees giving their smell to the setting and leaning out over the water, with the moon coming up over the shaggy little river, and the night cicadas talking—it is especially beautiful when seen through green eyes. — The Reefs of Earth, 142. A friend and I were recently discussing The Reefs of Earth,

THE PIECES Archipelago Chapter 1, “In a Southern City,” introduces Finnegan (John A. Solli) and Vincent J. Stranahan during a WWII furlough in Sydney (February 1943). Finnegan's thoughts reveal his sense of fractured identity ("he doubted that he would ever find a place in it") and hint at his archetypal nature ("Adam," "Dionysus"). In Sydney, they encounter key figures: Hans G. Schultz, Marie Monaghan, Loy Larkin, Margaret Murphy, Tom Shire, Freddy Castle, and the strikingly

IX. Later Timelines / Non-Linear Events This section follows events outside the post-World War II chronology of Section V, drawing on Archipelago and the later temporal displacements and voyages in More Than Melchisedech. These include Duffey's early, formative "lost" period; Finnegan's increasingly isolated later travels and possible deaths or returns to life; the Argo journeys, set in a world featuring the revived and skeletal Duffey; and the separate realities found in the

VI. Galveston & Joining the Brunhilde (The Devil Is Dead Opening) This section covers the opening events of The Devil Is Dead, focusing on Finnegan's initial encounter with Saxon Seaworthy and Anastasia Demetriades in Galveston, establishing the core mystery and setting the stage for the Brunhilde voyage. Initial Encounter & Amnesia: The novel opens with Finnegan (amnesiac/hungover) meeting Saxon X. Seaworthy in Galveston, sitting on a sidewalk near a graveyard [D:9–11, D:215

IV. World War II Era & Immediate Aftermath (Approx. 1941 - Early 1946) This section follows the "Dirty Five" through World War II, primarily in the Pacific Theater: their shared and separate experiences, the events that shape their relationships, and their discharge before the post-war reunion. Archipelago is the primary source for this period. A. Military Enlistment Henry Salvatore: Joins the US Army on his 21st birthday, December 8, 1941 [A:122, A:124]. Hans Schultz: Enlist

III. The Past This section catalogues specific historical periods, events, and figures that characters within the Argo Legend claim knowledge of, participate in via non-linear time, or which form the specific historical backdrop distinct from the foundational Mythic Past. These interactions demonstrate the characters' deep entanglement with, and reinterpretation of, established human history, or from within the Legend, the truth of history relative to Prime. A. Ancient Times.

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

“But who are you really?” Mary Virginia asked. “Who are you in legend? Who are you in myth?” “So far as I know I have never been in either of those things, pretty Mary Virginia,” she said. “Should I have been?” “Of course you should have been,” Hans Schultz explained to her. “Nobody can be in life who has not been in legend and myth first. That is a requirement of being born.” —“Anamnesis,” United Mythologies Press A guide to the Argo Legend in eight parts, with diagrams, boo

II. Character Types and Cosmological Entities ​​​​​A. External Archetypes Lafferty does not treat archetypes as psychological products. They do not arise from inner mental states or from individual subconscious activity. Instead, in his fiction, they appear as external forces—ontologically real, active, and hard to avoid —though characters may shift between roles or embody multiple archetypes. Characters are buffeted by their basic presence and strong influence. The members o

Making sense of the Argo Legend can be hard going. Its unconventional structure, shifting genres, fluid timelines, connections to the Coscuin Chronicles, and metaphysical oddities will confuse first-time readers. It bleeds into everything Lafferty writes. The Legend is like one of its great images: the always simmering crock that Melchisedech Duffey sets up inside the Pelican Press [A:132–134]. Everything goes into it. So, what are these notes for? They are a rough-around-the

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

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

This interactive map links to my work on the angstrom stories. It shows how Lafferty drew on E. I. Watkin’s The Bow in the Clouds (1932) to shape the sequence before departing from Watkin’s scheme. Watkin uses colors to explain his Bonaventurist account of knowledge and experience; Lafferty builds stories around them, sometimes following Watkin, often arguing with him. Lafferty later transmuted this material when he turned to In a Green Tree. In composing The Men Who Knew Eve

Not long ago, someone I respect asked how to use the blog: what to read, where to begin. Look, I don’t know. This hobby thing now has more than 500 posts, plus other resources, totaling about 700,000 words. It took me a while to learn how to write about Lafferty. Part of that meant dropping academic cant and giving up the urge to write pretty, two habits that annoyed me in other people’s writing. To cover all the territory, the prose would need to be piston-like because Laffe

Two opposite points on the rim of a rolling wheel cannot both be on the top at once: this is taken as an almost reasonable postulate. But they could both be on top at once if one of them were suppressed by Amnesia. —Matthew Woodbine Junior, in The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeny The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeny is difficult to discuss, even for those of us who know how magical it is. The difficulty lies in how much Lafferty packs into it. That informational

“I came ashore, swimming and wading through turbulent water. It was early morning. The shore was muddy with engendering mud, and full of promise. It was the year 1923, and I was a young man of no more than a quarter of a century of physical years. I went up that muddy shore and entered into the green and burgeoning years of my life. If I remember to do it, I can come back to that same shore, and to that same year, and have another sixty green and burgeoning years to my life.

I’ve needed to update the concepts section of this blog for a while, and I’ve made a first pass that better reflects my current understanding of how Lafferty works. I'll be working on this in the next few weeks. At some point, I want to work what I take to be Lafferty’s own critical language into it. Until then, here are his own key concepts, as I can isolate them at this point:

And there is a sort of unreality-compounded in it, and that simply will not do in a mystery story, and every story at the heart of it is a mystery story. Real things and persons can do things in a real world, and real things and persons can do things in an unreal world: but unreal things and persons can't do things in an unreal world. There is no way that an illusion (and every story is an illusion) can be maintained without clarity in either its setting or its movement. Smal