09 Misc Laff: Oddments

Future readers are lucky that so much of Lafferty’s writing process survives, though there are many frustrating dead ends. One wishes more had made it through. A good example of a dead end is the short typed fragment of a story with the great title “The Eight Minds of Doctor Caper.” From what remains, one can see that it was going to be an investigative story in which a character named Zetor Million goes to meet the reclusive and erudite Doctor Caper. The mysterious Caper now lives in a bubble on the asteroid Meretix 5. With a name like Meretrix, one expects big surprises. What makes the fragment especially notable is that it appears to be the first time Lafferty used the phrase “man who knows everything,” for Doctor Caper is one of the men who knew everything. Lafferty even gives it a title. Caper is a pangnostes. Did that become Barnaby, George, Harry, and Cris?

Another interesting fragment is "Good Creatures, But So Slow." Apparently, it would have been a sequel to “Slow Tuesday Night,” a political satire. We have the same setup as in "Slow Tuesday Night," Humanity lives at a hyper-accelerated pace following the removal of the "Abebaios Block." This time, however, societal speed allows citizens to spontaneously organize and conclude a national election within two days. That results in Josh Crackman winning a brief one-week term as president. Shortly after his election, Crackman runs a lottery to appoint individuals of mediocre intelligence to the tedious ambassadorial post of Braduporia. He wants to save society's top-tier minds for more important tasks. At the same time, Brad Uppercrust and Portia Bradley, who have been married for only half an hour in "Slow Tuesday Night" fashion, realize that their names complement the destination. Lucky for them, they have the exact average intelligence for the job. They go to the president and volunteer. Crackman grants them the position on the spot in order to save himself three minutes of administrative time. That is all that survives.

Some of the fragments in the archive are drafts and pieces absorbed into other works. Such is "The Shape of the Shapeless, Oh!", the draft that became Lafferty's reflection on the multiple endings of the Argo cycle. It is the place where calls his canon a ghost story: "The name of it is 'A GHOST STORY.' This title refers to the only thing I've ever learned about all persons: all of them are split. The split-off half is a ghost. But no one can ever know for sure which half it is."

Because Lafferty worked with parallel realities in his characters, there are strange and delightful fragments in which people we know from his fiction show up in odd places and situations. Seven Talents is an example of this. It seems to have been a novel, though only Chapter One survives. Its protagonists arevArt Slick and Jim Book of “In Our Block” and “Rainy Day in Halicarnsus.” This time, the two men are space adventurers on San Barnabas Asteroid, where they are held captive by Il Nano, the dwarfish prime minister of a ruling aristocracy composed of former carnival performers with strange paranormal abilities. Slick and Boomer have gone to San Barnabas investigate disruptions affecting the Jovian moons. The chapter opens with a lethal card-cutting game run by Il Nano, who uses his superhuman tactile sensitivity to manipulate the deck. Art Slick, however, has a way to get himself and Boomer out of the jam. In this version of the character, Slick’s special talent is “slickness.” He can nullify the laws of friction, disarm the palace guards, and unlock doors by forcing them to slide against themselves. Lafferty writes a great scene in which everything goes slick. This version of Art Slick’s talent was later reused as the slippery idea for the TMWKE story “Slippery.”

Then there is the intriguing “Reach Out, Reach Out!” Who knows where Lafferty was taking the story, but philosophically, it is the kind of thing he did in the 1970s that I really like. It explores the solipsistic extremes of absolute human entitlement by imagining a scenario in which supreme arrogance and passive desire reshape external reality to serve a self-appointed elite. It is a Lafferty in one of his blistering moods, demonstrating how people given power and "something for nothing" will often turn their cunning against the benefactor providing it.

It starts in the back room of Shelby’s Southern Bar and Restaurant, an exclusive area known as the Olympic Club. That can hardly be accidental, because the figures in the story are like modern Olympian gods in miniature. I would go further: I think they are the Olympian gods. Spacious King is the Zeus-like leader. Mary Sultana is the regal Hera. Duke Widefields is an empire-shuffling Poseidon. Marquis Jones is a ruthless Hades. Johnny Caesar is the conquering Ares. Diana Mobley is the moon-goddess Artemis. Kirol Commoner is the trap-forging Hephaestus. Ace Baron is the trickster-traveler Hermes. Countess Vera Vickers and Dorothy Duchess are goddesses of luxury and status, like Aphrodite and Athena. Mona Mullens is the hearth-tending Hestia. The alien bartender, Hiram Gratuity, is the wine-pouring outsider Dionysus. At least, that is how I would parse them.

So this big group of over-the-top people spends their days relaxing, drinking, and receiving small, temporary cubes placed in their palms, which seems to me to be Lafferty's stand-in for ambrosia. The bartender facilitating this is Hiram Gratuity. Gratuity is an alien investigator who acts as a "Genie" for people who believe they are entitled to "Something for Nothing." Having taken over the bar’s operations three days before, Hiram caters to a select clientele of the twelve.

Despite never leaving the bar or speaking with anyone, the patrons find incredible luck and instantly gain great control over the outside world. The ousted manager, Jack Scoop, fills us in on the bizarre, remote nature of their power:

Through this device, we enter Lafferty's imaginative 1970s space, where contradictions inhabit reality. Though Ace Baron's consciousness stays in the bar, he is able to pilot his physical car through dangerous freeway traffic while fast asleep. Diana Mobley rises to the top of her field, becomes famous, and businessmen stage hostile takeovers and demand money simply by thinking commands. Like Olympians, they throw the world into chaos. The Central Bourse is overtaken by a rush of trades and sudden, unexplained construction projects.

This is where the story opens into a plot that doesn’t survive, or that wasn’t written. To add more imperial-minded people, Hiram advertises unlimited wealth and power to those who expect it. There are 100 applicants, and he selects 4 new members for the club. But there is tension between the bartender and his original patrons/gods, as some club members are secretly planning a trap. Some think the four new additions are Hiram’s creations, meant to counter this trap and balance out the ambitious group. And that is where it ends.