Keeping Count

When I started reading Lafferty’s novels carefully, I relied heavily on whatever overviews and blog posts I could find. Reflecting on these sources has brought to mind a broader issue in Lafferty fandom: the relative lack of concern for accuracy when discussing his work or caring about detail. From the Sherlockians to the Pynchonians, fandoms devoted to intricate literary canons tend to care intensely about their details, so this is a little surprising.

Unlike the flourishing community around Gene Wolfe, where careful reading and precise interpretation are the norm and debate is welcome, Lafferty’s readership is small enough that discussions often take a more casual approach—sometimes, to a fault. The prevailing attitude seems to be, “We’re among the few paying attention, so let’s not get too caught up in details.”

This isn’t to say that Lafferty’s readers are inattentive. They are very smart and care about his work intensely. It is just that there is an unspoken understanding that enthusiasm takes precedence over anything that might resemble intellectual discussion. This is partly because what many readers enjoy in Lafferty represents only a small fraction of what he offers.

One of the very best blogs that discuss Lafferty’s novels has an overview of Past Master. It is a great place to start wrestling with Lafferty. It is enthusiastic. But it does exhibit the kind of thing I’m writing about. Its author says that Thomas More in the novel has his mind invaded by seven snakes, implanted there to have him speak his words by Pottscamp. The phrasing isn’t mine.

There are a few problems here. For instance, it isn’t Pottscamp; it’s Skybol. Boggle, Skybol, and Swampers are retrogressor devils, not extrapolators like Holygee, Gandy, and Pottscamp. They have a different role in the manipulation of Astrobe, so this entire dimension of the novel gets scrambled. But set that aside. It isn’t just incorrect; it obscures the novel.

Here’s Lafferty:

“Wilderness Wolves you be," Thomas said. "You howl higher than the ear on a bleaker moor than any on this world. All, the nine of you, extrapolate, damn it! Retrogress! Rechabitize! Nine of you, and are your extensions not the nine snakes nesting in my mind?”

Nine snakes. Not seven. Does this matter? Maybe not if you’re just along for the ride. If you want to understand Past Master, keeping count matters. It isn’t just a numerical slip; it alters the novel’s architecture.

The Programmed Killers move in groups of nine. The real masters of Astrobe are the nine Programmed Persons. Evita says that nine out of ten people request termination before a natural death. Some people hear her voice as a nine-stringed lyre. The Irish monks’ return journey in the coracle after discovering Astrobe took ninety-nine days. Those monks? There were nineteen of them. Foreman has the innocence of a ninety-nine-year-old serpent. Foreman also says he will plant the mustard seed at exactly nine o’clock in the morning and expects a new world to grow from it. There are five hundred and ninety-nine emperors’ skulls in Goslar. The “Free Year” on Astrobe happens every twenty-nine years. Thomas More is a nine-day king. And so forth.

Insisting on noticing nine snakes and not seven snakes in a novel as wild as Past Master might sound like the height of pedantry—but Lafferty is an architect, not a rambler. He looks like a rambler, but he's sly. And the nine-snake pattern is anything but subtle. His patterns mean something, and if we shrug them off, we miss the shape of his art. If we don’t catch the snakes, we don’t catch other ideas and connections.

I don’t know how many Lafferty readers privately care about this kind of thing. I suspect it’s more than we think.

If we take Lafferty’s work seriously, we have to get these details right. Factual distortion, even when unintentional, limits our discussion of his work. It shoves him into the ‘teller of tall tales’ box, reducing him to America’s weird O. Henry. I wonder how many readers of Past Master miss these patterns without ever realizing what they’ve lost.

I know I make mistakes too, and I try to hold myself to the same standard. If you notice an error in my work, just let me know at mumbrumber101@gmail.com, and I will fix it tout de suite. My goal isn’t just to appreciate Lafferty; it’s to understand his work as precisely as possible, help others in his fandom do the same, and learn from those who take a similar approach.