Here are two passages from Lafferty on what it means to be called civilized. The first passage, from The Fall of Rome, contrasts Gothic workmanship with Roman prestige; the second, from Okla Hannali, contrasts Choctaw life with stereotypes of primitivism. To score Lafferty’s music, I've used a technique developed by Richard Lanham. Repeated expressions occupy the same column, and indentation shows the relations among clauses. This arrangement directs attention to how the argu

There are the Kings: Godigisel and Respendial and Uldin the Hun. The ministers, the heresiarchs, the great ladies were all parts of the big picture. Sometimes the picture of the passion and death of the Empire will be the face of the crucified Christ: but often there will emerge the most fulfilled, the most shatteringly profound image ever, the laughing Christ of Creophylus. — The Fall of Rome The meaning of the references came clear with the examination of reproductions of c

“We already had the World of Fact. Oh, the poor, dingy, hopeless, small-minded World of Fact! It didn’t deserve much, but it deserved at least to have its nakedness clothed with metaphor and mythology. The World of Computers is bearable. The old World of Fact was ceasing to be. “Even the Quest for Reality of the talented but diminishing Group of Twelve has now changed (without their knowing it) into the Quest for Acceptable World Metaphor.” East of Laughter buries the lede, s

For the end of the world was long ago, And all we dwell to-day Like children of some second birth, Like a strange people left on earth After a judgment day. For the end of the world was long ago, When the ends of the world waxed free, When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves, And the sun drowned in the sea. — G. K. Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse, Book I But we have divine sanction and assurance that the Church will endure to the end of the world, it is said. No, we