To Tulsa and Back

Monster movies, philosophy, religion, classical art, puns, horror stories, linguistics, science fiction—how does he account for this quirky range of interests? Lafferty said, “I’m kind of a quirky guy.” And here we are . . . at the lake. Swan Lake is so beloved by the City of Tulsa, the water was drained out of it. The old lake was extensively renovated—dug deeper, reshaped, landscaped.When the land was refilled, the lake’s caretakers anchored wooden duck decoys in the water to encourage the return of the waterfowl. One of the attractions of Swan Lake is for people to throw bread to the lake’s population of swans, geese and ducks.What Lafferty likes to do is watch people throwing bits of bread to the duck decoys, unable to tell the difference.He is an Irishman with a story to tell; he couldn’t be happier. “I heard a mother tell her children, ‘Don’t worry,’” Lafferty said. “‘I think maybe that duck will eat when we’re gone.’” — Ron Wolfe Interview with Lafferty

Back in Houston after a quick trip to Tulsa, where I had a great time meeting Lafferty people.

I knew that Antonino Vescovo, Lafferty’s 1930s novel, was at Tulsa, but it had been misarchived and was not showing up in Tulsa’s system. When I inquired eight months ago, they said they did not have a record of it. A few weeks ago, it occurred to me where it might be, and, sure enough, it was there, misfiled. Had I been mistaken, it would have been a very disappointing trip. Antonino Vescovo is important because it precedes Lafferty’s long period of not writing fiction. I had Tulsa correct the manuscript record, which is now findable here for anyone who wants to research it. (In adding the title yesterday, the friendly grad student on deck misspelled it "Antonio," but maybe that makes the manuscript feel at home. There are quite a few of these errors in the archive.)

Maybe a few preliminary thoughts about it. It’s a biographical novel focusing on the early life of a future bishop in Renaissance Florence. It starts with a legendary prophecy about the city's greatness, then moves to Antoninus's childhood. He is a pious and intellectually gifted boy. We learn about his ascetic practices, immersion in Latin and theology, and his interactions. One of the most memorable of these is his artistic peer, Casimirro. A large part of the book centers on philosophical and theological debates among young monks and novices at a monastery in Fiesole. Lafferty covers the nature of faith, doubt, and cosmic infinity. There is a rich folk culture (street ballads, palmistry, and the like) alongside the structured life of the Dominican Order. So it’s Lafferty’s take on the life of a scholar-saint in a vibrant, often humorous, intellectual landscape of medieval Italy, with a lot of playfulness in it.

There is also an interesting character, the Monk Abraham. He is a novice in the monastery. Lafferty writes that he was born a Jew and joined the order because of its unparalleled opportunities for study. At one point, in a discussion about the assumptions that make jokes funny, Abraham brings up the stereotype that "Jews talk funny and like money.” Then he refutes the stereotype.  He points out that he speaks well and doesn't have "a penny in the world." This episode connects to other incidents that hint at Lafferty’s early thoughts about Jews, inviting further exploration.

Other incidents are also interesting for understanding Lafferty’s early ideas about Jews. One example. An old scholar shares an absurd story about how the Jewish custom of stoning scarlet ladies to death was adopted by a town in Spain. This town had no stones within twenty miles, so they had to be imported. After the executions, Jewish push-cart peddlers would gather the stones up and sell them back to the citizens at a high price for the next execution. When one of the Jewish peddlers asked the townspeople why they didn't just hang the women instead, they said it was because they had no trees. A lot of Lafferty's voice is already here.

What else about the archive this time?

There were a bunch of niggling questions that I had that I was able to work out answers to. For instance, I had suspected that “You Can’t Go Back” began as a Men Who Knew Everything story, but it turns out to be more interesting than that. The key connection is between Zoe Archikos in TMWKE (“The All-At-Once-Man,” the story that both begins the sequence and stands apart from both it and the Green Tree characters) and the major figure Helen Penandrew, née Anastasis, in the Green Tree materials. She is the Helen of “You Can’t Go Back,” so the story concerns the later version of the Green Tree characters, but it is so fantastical that it fits more naturally with the high-concept TMWKE sequence. My theory is that it was simply easier to change the characters’ names. The original manuscript uses the Green Tree characters, which means that “You Can’t Go Back” would make a wonderful pendant to that major Lafferty work. That changes its significance: rather than being a story of relatively minor interest, it is a piece about the My Heart Leaps Up period in the characters' lives and the Flatland period, something much more interesting. You can easily work out who Barney, Basil/George, and the others are.

Tedious, though easy, was compiling the information necessary for a nearly complete timeline of what was composed when, so that one can have a clear snapshot of what Lafferty was writing and when. It will be useful for anyone tracking thematic and formal development in Lafferty's fiction. Expect a resource on that soon.

Finally, I visited Swan Lake, near Lafferty’s home, where he used to walk. The wildlife was lovely, with turtles and many waterfowl, but the decoy ducks were gone. The fountain was back, as I had read. But there was also an unlovely modern sign admonishing kids not to feed the birds.