"I'll See It Done and Then I'll Die" (1975/1984)

perfect (adj.) — early 15c., classical correction of Middle English parfit “flawless, ideal” (c. 1300), also “complete, full, finished, lacking in no way” (late 14c.), from Old French parfit “finished, completed, ready” (11c.), from Latin perfectus “completed, excellent, accomplished, exquisite,” past participle of perficere “accomplish, finish, complete,” from per “completely” + combining form of facere “to make, to do” (from PIE root dhe- “to set, put”). — Online Etymology Dictionary

“Since certain persons, knowing nothing about perfection, have presumed to speak follies concerning the state of perfection, our purpose is to treat of perfection: what it is to be perfect; how perfection is acquired; what is the state of perfection; and what befits those who take up this state.” — St. Thomas Aquinas, On the Perfection of the Spiritual Life (De perfectione vitae spiritualis), "Prologue"

If asked to come up with a list of five words most important for understanding Lafferty, I would, without hesitation, include the word perfect. In an interview, Lafferty drew attention to its etymological meaning of completeness. It is a normative concept that held both metaphysical and aesthetic significance for him, as can be seen in how he uses it in both his nonfiction and his fiction. “I’ll See It Done and Then I’ll Die” is the story in which he takes his interest in the idea of perfection in its fullest sense and builds a plot around it.

Gifford Hazelman is a member of an elite group calling themselves the Pragmatic Perfectionists. He makes it his life's mission to reform his friend, the Rambo Touchstone. Gifford wears a gold "1-1-1" pin the way some people carry a Triple Sigma card: he wants everyone to know he is one in a million. It’s why he is so bothered by Rambo's perceived flaws. He is particularly bothered by Rambo's apartment, an amazing clutter with over ten thousand pictures pasted on every surface, which we know Lafferty did to doors, bookcases, bookends, and so forth. He is annoyed by Rambo’s habit of wearing white socks with black shoes. He is especially annoyed at Rambo’s relationship with Georgia McGown. Gifford dismisses her as being of small-tradesman stock. Gifford has undertaken Rambo's reformation and intends to devote his life to it. He says, "When you are perfected, then my life will be complete."

The most difficult of Rambo's faults is his belief in seven death-fetishes. This is a set of seven conditions that must all be met before he can die. They include completely covering his room with pictures, reading the final page of a book called The Nutmeg Man, a spider's web in his apartment reaching the corner, his favorite baseball team winning the Dixie Series, and achieving a score of 99,999 in his favorite game, Crack-a-Stack. The last two are ending the relationship with Georgia and seeing the sand run out of an hourglass. While Rambo admits the idea is completely foolish, he seems committed to his death fetishes. He says, "They will all be fulfilled at just about the same time. Then I'll die."

The story reaches its climax late one night when Rambo phones Gifford, saying, "I feel a near certainty that I'm going to die in a few minutes." Gifford arrives, ready to disprove the fetishism. Rambo explains that nearly all the conditions have been met in a single evening: the last picture is up, the web is complete, the baseball team has won, he scored 99,999, and he has, supposedly, quarreled irrevocably with Georgia. To force a blown crisis, Gifford finds the newly acquired hourglass, turns it over, and says, "In three minutes you will die. Or will be cured of your fetishes and delusions."

As the last grains of sand fall, Rambo reveals it was all a joke. "I never had any fetishes, Gifford," he says. "I just had fun." Gifford says that his own life's purpose is fulfilled. "And my life becomes complete," he cries. Then he dies on the spot. Georgia comes from the next room. It turns out that the breakup was a ruse. Georgia and Rambo just had a bet on whether Gifford's obsessive, idea-ridden nature would prove fatal. "I win," she laughs. The body is disposed of in a bathtub. Georgia and Rambo resume their game of five-handed Crack-a-Stack. Lafferty writes that it "teaches flexibility of mind and easy adjustment to events."

It should be clear how the entire story turns on the modern sense of perfect and the original Latin sense as being finished or complete. Gifford Hazelman and his Pragmatic Perfection group are the Moderns in the story, people who have lost the meaning of the word. Their idea of perfection is an elitist, superficial standard based on taste, prescriptivist grammar (Gifford hates splitting infinitives), and social pretense. Gifford’s disgust at Rambo’s “imperfections,” his cluttered apartment, his white socks, and his relationship with the “common” Georgia McGown, is narrow. The 1-1-1 is an object lesson on 2 Corinthians 10:12: "For we dare not number ourselves, or compare ourselves, with some who commend themselves. For in measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, they are not wise." The ideal is artificial, unlike the completeness of mature natural kinds, actualized spirits, or, by analogy, significant works of art.

So Lafferty gives us an entire story about an equivocation on a word he cared about. Gifford repeats his life’s mission several times: “When you are perfected, then my life will be complete.” He is being figurative, just saying that he will be happy when Rambo is up to snuff comparatively. But Lafferty’s story holds him accountable for misusing such an important word and concept—something Gifford realizes as he dies: “‘Complete’ has two slightly different meanings. I meant the other one.” Lafferty writes in "Once On Aranea" (1972) that all deaths are ironic. Gifford's is especially so.

This isn’t a well-known Lafferty story, and isn’t great, but it has its place in the canon as a reminder. In narrative form, it demonstrates how deeply serious Lafferty was about this perfection–completeness business, even when treated lightly.

The two ways of thinking about perfection in Lafferty can be seen by comparing “I’ll See It Done and Then I’ll Die” to its complete treatment in Aurelia (1982). Gifford and his group believe they have already glimpsed the full arc of their personhood.

He and his group believed that they were "one in a million" persons who had achieved Pragmatic Perfection. In this city of eight million persons there were eight persons who had achieved Pragmatic Perfection.

This is far from the Thomistic perfection of the totalizing but open-ended arc in Aurelia’s homily during the Second Prandium, my favorite of Lafferty's many formulations of the idea:

“A living and bodied person is a sort of arc of a circle, or perhaps of a parabola. If we continue the lines of that arc out beyond the body and the person, we come to a larger existence or a completion of the arc . . . Our own life and world are too small to contain our whole personhood. Well, is there any way that the circle or parabola of our persons can be completed? Of course there is. That is what I talk to you about four times a day. The reason that we are all so funny-looking, the reason that our institutions and our worlds are so funny-looking, is that this isn't all of any of them. There is more of each of us somewhere else. There is more of everything of ours somewhere else.”

I'll See It Done and Then I'll Die Notes.pdf

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