And the humanly inhabited universe--that's us!

Some very preliminary thoughts on Annals of Klepsis, "focusing" on the preface before Canto 1 and the Table of Contents.

1. The preface by Karl Sayon (a parody of Carl Sagan, yes?) starts with talk of a Tertiary Focus.

It's unknown what the first and second are.

I didn't know anything about the Latin etymology of "focus" so I looked it up.
Focus - "point of convergence" from Latin focus "hearth, fireplace" (also, figuratively, "home, family")
"http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=focus
So, that's probably a rabbit trail; I don't know yet.

2. The Doomsday Equation: "The humanly inhabited universe, with its four Suns and seventeen planets, is an unstable closed system of human orientation and precarious balance, a kinetic three-dimensional ellipse in form, with its third focus always approaching extinction. As with any similar unstable premise-system, the entire construct must follow its third focus into extinction."

Lafferty's entire universe is anthropocentric, "of human orientation" and (therefore?) of precarious balance.

Can any Lafferty fans name the seventeen planets? Have they all been named? I can think of Astrobe, Camiroi, Kentauron Mikron, and Gaea-Earth. I riffled through Sindbad and found the name of Dahae. Then there's Klepsis, of course.

The mention of the "ellipse" gives further context to the "tertiary focus" line. I'm a math dope, so maybe someone can give more details, but an ellipse has two foci, right? So a third focus would unbalance the thing? Or does this have to do with the three-dimensionality of the ellipse? And it's a kinetic ellipse, chasing its third focus. Again, I don't know if this is wonkiness or if there is some math speculation going on here that I don't catch.

3. I'm still fuzzy on what the Third Focus is, but this Preface really is just a tease and set-up, so that's to be expected. "The third focus of the humanly inhabited universe has been determined to be both a point and a person on the Planet Klepsis." Again with the person-centeredness. One-third of the foci maintaining the ellipse of the known universe is a person.

4. More details are given about this person who is the third focus.
Location - surface of Klepsis
Code Name - Horeshoe Nail
Age - more than two hundred years
Condition - "He cannot be allowed to awake, and he cannot be allowed to die."

5. The Table of Contents. I could speculate on the titles, but that wouldn't do much good. What interests me about the ToC and what I want to bring up is that Lafferty has structured the story by Cantos instead of Chapters. Why is this? When I think of Cantos, I immediately think of Dante and his Comedy, but I'm not sure that there are any strong Dante references going on. There are many other poems that use Cantos, but I think that what is important is that it is a literary structuring device of Italian origin and that Canto is related to song. Annals of Klepsis is the Italian song epic about the Irish pirate planet! It is the Aloysius and the Lafferty joyously dancing around one another. And speaking of Aloysius, the back cover says that he'll be making an appearance!

I'm reading the book slowly. The plan right now is to read a chapter a week, then re-read the chapter and "live-tweet" it during slow moments during the week. This is pretty much what I did with Sindbad and that worked out well since it is still probably my favorite Laff novel. https://twitter.com/KlepsisAnnals

Who invented Wotto metal: Otto Wotto or Joe Spade?

"Then the great inventor Otto Wotto invented Wotto metal. With wotto metal used as the matrix of a computer, any circuit or any million circuits could go anywhere desired. The circuits would create their own pathways, strings of single molecules; and they would uncreate them again when there was no data crying to be transported over those particular paths. Wotto Metal pretty much took the lid off of what computers could do. They could do just about anything."
-Serpent's Egg

"I'm Joe Spade--about as intellectual a guy as you'll find all day. I invented Wotto and Voxo and a bunch of other stuff that nobody can get along without anymore."
"I compute it and build it at the same time--out of Wotto-metal naturally."
"And that bushy-tailed machine just sparkled--like everything does that is made out of Wotto-metal."
-"Hog-Belly Honey"

"What we eat out of your ships and your stores are the most nourishing and sophisticated things you have brought, wotto metal, data gelatin, electronic reta, codified memories and processes."
-"Thieving Bear Planet"

A few possible answers to the question of who invented Wotto metal....

1) Joe Spade is lying. Otto Wotto invented Wotto metal.

2) Joe Spade is telling the truth. All that he claims is that he invented "Wotto" which could be taken to mean that he invented Otto Wotto who went on to invent Wotto metal. Thus, the two accounts are reconciled.

3) Both Otto Wotto and Joe Spade worked collaborated on the invention of Wotto metal.

4) There is no such thing as Wotto metal. No one invented it.

5) I like saying Wotto.

And what does he say of himself?

"Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A Being darkly wise, and rudely great."
"The glory, jest and riddle of the world."
-Alexander Pope, from An Essay on Man: Epistle II

"Wit that can creep, and Pride that licks the dust."
-Alexander Pope, from An Epistle to Arbuthnot

"Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man;
A mighty maze! but not without a plan;"
-Alexander Pope, from An Essay on Man: Epistle I

"Man, Homo Sapiens, the most widespread, numerous, and reputedly the most intelligent of the primates."
-???

"Question 48: What is Man!"
"Man is a creature composed of body and soul,
And made in the image and likeness of God."
                                      Baltimore Catechism

"There shone one woman, and none but she."
-Algernon Charles Swinburne, from The Triumph of Time

"The heart of man is evil from his youth."
-Genesis 8:21

"Woman clothed in the sun."
-Revelation 12:1

"We are fearfully and wonderfully made."
-Psalms 139:14

"The torrent of a woman's will."
-Anonymous, from a pillar in Canterbury

"The Mind of Man, my haunt, and the main region of my song."
-William Wordsworth, from The Recluse

"Hail, fellow, well met,
All dirty and wet."
-Jonathan Swift, from My Lady's Lamentation And Complaint Against The Dean

"Man is nature's sole mistake."
-W.S. Gilbert, from Princess Ida, or Castle Adamant

"Man in his hasty days."
-Robert Bridges, from I Love all Beauteous Things

"Man is an embodied paradox, a bundle of contradictions."
-Charles Caleb Colton, from Lacon, or Many Things in Few Words; Addressed to Those Who Think

"Says he, 'I am a handsome man,
But I'm a gay deceiver."
-George Colman the Younger, from Love Laughs at Locksmiths
(hear it sung by The Kingston Trio)

"The Legend of Good Women."
-Geoffrey Chaucer

"An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be."
-Ambrose Bierce, from The Devil's Dictionary

"Art thou a man of purple cheer?
A rosy man right plump to see?"
-William Wordsworth, from A Poet's Epitaph

"And thus, from the bad use of free will, there originated the whole train of evil, which, with its concatenation of miseries, conveys the human race from its depraved origin, from its corrupt root, on to the destruction of the second death."
"Of the fall of the first man, in whom nature was created good--"
-Augustine, from The City of God

"Of Man's first disobedience and the Fall--"
-John Milton, from Paradise Lost

"If he is an angel, then he is a fallen angel. If he is an animal, then he is a risen animal. Doctor Faustus attained power over the Devil by learning his secret name: 'Mephistopheles'. Come, and I will whisper to you the secret name of Man and you can attain power over him. The secret name of man is 'Ambiguity'."
-Lafferty?

"Well, the things that human people have said about human people are not at all conclusive. It seems that man, being inside man, cannot get a good look at man."
-Lafferty

But could such a world work?

It's a great moment when one finishes a Lafferty novel and finds that DOJP has already done all of the difficult work of writing intelligently about the novel. There's not much that I can add to his excellent review of Serpent's Egg. 

Everyone should:

-Read Serpent's Egg.

http://www.coldtonnage.com/?CLSN_3127=142919383531275d8719bee9505881b0&keyword=Serpent%27s+egg&searchby=title&page=shop%2Fbrowse&fsb=1&Search=Search

-Read Daniel's essay.

http://antsofgodarequeerfish.blogspot.com/2014/03/serpents-egg-1987-that-wonderful-that.html

If you've done those two important things and you're still hanging around here, well, I guess I owe you some original content. I'll try to add a little to what Daniel has written. Here are a few quickly sketched out points from my reading of the novel that aren't directly addressed by Daniel.

1. The title is surely a reference to Julius Caesar.

Brutus:

It must be by his death, and for my part

I know no personal cause to spurn at him

But for the general. He would be crowned.

How that might change his nature, there’s the question.

It is the bright day that brings forth the adder

And that craves wary walking. Crown him that,

And then I grant we put a sting in him

That at his will he may do danger with.

Th' abuse of greatness is when it disjoins

Remorse from power. And, to speak truth of Caesar,

I have not known when his affections swayed

More than his reason. But ’tis a common proof

That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder,

Whereto the climber upward turns his face.

But when he once attains the upmost round,

He then unto the ladder turns his back,

Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees

By which he did ascend. So Caesar may.

Then, lest he may, prevent. And since the quarrel

Will bear no color for the thing he is,

Fashion it thus: that what he is, augmented,

Would run to these and these extremities.

And therefore think him as a serpent’s egg—

Which, hatched, would as his kind grow mischievous—

And kill him in the shell.

2. Daniel does a great job of situating the plot and themes of Serpent's Egg among Lafferty's other works. I find it surprising, though, that he didn't mention Reefs of Earth. Maybe he hadn't read it yet at the time he read Serpent's Egg? The connection between the two novels (and to stories like "Seven Day Terror" and "Among the Hairy Earthmen" and "Primary Education of the Camiroi" and so many more) is that children are the protagonists. I'm not willing to put in the work right now, but I'm sure that there are many fruitful ways to compare/contrast the mischievous Puca children and the interspecies "royal" Mega-children. There is certainly a shared love of pirates. Lafferty's use of children in his fiction is screaming for a full-length treatment.

3. I'm going to hunt down the sources for the quotes that open Chapter Four. Besides interacting with his own other fiction as Daniel pointed out, it is clear that Lafferty is always doing more than navel-gazing. The beginning of Chapter Four is the clearest evidence of this as Lafferty lets several sources speak for themselves though he doesn't explicitly give his sources.

4. I want to re-read Daniel's FoL2 essay. It'd be wonderful to see Daniel re-visit Serpent's Egg and discuss what is being done with the literalization of animal imagery. Somewhat related, I did off-handedly mention on FB that I think that this novel is in some ways an answer to Wells's Island of Dr. Moreau.

5. Related to #2 above, Lafferty's plotting in Serpent's Egg is strongly reminiscent of little kid comic book/strip logic. There's a fluidity of logic that always makes sense in its context, but is highly ridiculous the moment it is divorced from its context. This is the way that little kids tell stories and also the way that the best early comics are constructed. In Serpent's Egg, this is seen in the way that Inneal constructs realities around her and it is seen in the way that all of the children talk to each other. It's also seen in the action. There's one spot where the assassins are coming after the children (as the children are putting on a circus as children do) and we're told that the assassins can't hurt the children because they don't have the proper weapons. They need to return to their lair to fetch the python-gun and angel-gun, etc. I wish I had been taking notes because this sort of thing is found throughout the novel. There were so many times where I'd slowly re-read a paragraph or two and block it out as a comic strip in my head. My hands won't translate those mind's pics properly, but I may take a stab at a Serpent's Egg strip. I started thinking that maybe I could find a talented collaborator to do the art for me.

That's all I've got for now, rambled out during slow moments this morning.

When I get a bigger chunk of time and actually have the text in front of me, I'll try to follow through with the promise of #3 above and maybe also post some examples illustrating #5.

Lafferty's Anterotica: "I myself am the fat turtle."

Continuing my Sunday evening "Lafferty and a drink" sessions....

"And a maiden doesn't look much like dew on crazy-weed in the morning, Magdalen," Robert Derby said, "but we recognize these identities."

I read "Continued on Next Rock" this afternoon. I didn't have anything fermented in the house to drink besides some sauerkraut. The thought of a sauerkraut shake didn't appeal to me. So, since it was yet early afternoon, my kind eldest daughter put on a pot of coffee for me. Cheap stuff, Wegmans Columbian, drip brewed with well water from the tap. A splash of raw farm milk freshly squeezed from a friend's fresh cow, more cream to it than you'd find in any processed moo juice. For a "sweetener", I paired the coffee with a pipeful of McClelland's VBC (vanilla black cavendish), a mild aromatic tobacco with a pleasant room note.

Relaxed, I was able to enter into a fever dream of a story. Only briefly did I wish that I had been better prepared with cheap whiskey at hand.

This was my first time reading "Next Rock" and, despite its popularity and frequent mentions, I didn't really know what it was about and didn't know what to expect. For some reason, I had gotten the mistaken notion that "rock" was slang for planet. So, I was surprised. For the first few pages, I thought that we were being given a quirky twist on a straight archaeological dig story. I kept waiting for the sf punch. And it never does quite come, at least not in the way I expected. Instead, we get Midwest mythopoeia, a mash-up of Creek and Greek mythos. If only someone would come up with a word starting in Buffalo and ending with punk that could work as a convenient shorthand to describe this type of story!

The heart of the story is etched in stone. It's the part that convinced me to love the story (and I was rather "meh" toward the story until the first rock is read). I read and re-read the poem and then read it aloud to my wife. And, as is often the case with Lafferty, this reading aloud, giving breath to the words, made the story alive, vibrant and real and really funny.

It was especially fun to read to my wife because she is a fan of a Billy Collins poem that doesn't do anything for me. It sends her into giggle fits.

The text: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/litany/

And Collins reading it: http://youtu.be/56Iq3PbSWZY

Lafferty and Collins are having fun in a similar way in their respective works, though Lafferty's is the more rambunctious, the funnier, and possibly the superiorly poetic. Anyhow, it's another bit of fun artistic overlap, an instance of Lafferty in asynchronous conversation with the poets who came before him and the poets who would come after, including one poet who is widely respected at both the critical and popular level (a rare feat these days)! I say we ask Billy Collins to submit something to FoL3! "Eros and Anteros: Lafferty's Masterful Demonstration of Anterotic Imagery In Amateur Poetics" ;-)

Retelling the Parsifal legend...

In a previous post, I asked, "What is Lafferty adopting and adapting and making new in Fourth Mansions? Is it a mashup of 50s sf esp with Arthurian defenders with a literalized metaphor of spiritual ascent?"

I latched onto the Arthurian angle, but mostly I'm aware of it as filtered down through Williams and Blaylock and Powers and others. It looks like my instinct was right. Well, tonight I've found at least one person who agrees; I've spent the past few weeks sorting through (and getting rid of many) boxes of sf paperbacks and dipped into Nebula Award Stories Six this evening, finding a wonderful essay on the year's nominated novels and stories.

Thomas D. Clareson:

Like Russ and Silverberg, R.A. Lafferty employs the idea of penetrating another’s mind in Fourth Mansions. In this instance a group indulges in “mind-weaving”--the amplifying and projecting of psychic power. They wish to induce a new human evolution, to cause their own mutation into supermen, so that man can attain a higher spiritual level. The old motif of alternate, co-existent worlds is introduced. But these merely give Lafferty a point of departure as he weaves a tapestry of symbolism that draws finally more upon myth than upon science to dramatize the eternal struggle between good and evil. The core of the story retells the Parsifal legend, that of the fool--the innocent one--who resists temptation, gains wisdom through suffering, and thus may assume guardianship of the Grail. Lafferty creates four groups: the mind-weavers misuse their science (their leader is a biologist); a group, long-lived if not immortal, evokes the sense of demons who intrude evilly into the affairs of men; a nascent dictator, protesting that he works for the good of man, would reduce them to automata if successful; and a preternatural Christian brotherhood plays the part of the Knights of the Grail. Lafferty employs an elaborate system of animal imagery to identify the groups and evokes a general feeling for medieval myth in particular. Withdraw any part of the tapestry and the work collapses. He has achieved a richly textured fantasy.

I now add Parsifal/Percival and the grail stories to the long list of works that Lafferty recycles for his own purposes. I'm eagerly anticipating the fruitful discussions that will occur when the scholars of various fields (ancient lit, medieval lit, geology, zoology, brewology, etc...) finally discover Lafferty and decide that they MUST submit essays to Feast of Laughter (or any of the other twelve Lafferty journals that exist in the future).

One story starts and within that story another story starts and within that story...

This video is an excellent introduction to the 1001 Nights. Watch it!



The idea of "never-ending stories" and Willingham's suggestion of plundering "found treasure" should send a shiver of gleeful recognition up every Lafferty fan's neck.

"If you haven't read the Arabian Nights yet, how lucky are you." -Bill Willingham

I remember Kevin writing something similar to me upon learning that I was about to read many Lafferty stories for the first time! It could be paraphrased to:

"If you haven't read Lafferty yet, how lucky are you." - Kevin Cheek

(Thanks to Daniel for encouraging me to think more about Sindbad and why it is my favorite Lafferty novel so far and why I think it's so important. And, yes, it all does connect with my thoughts about how Lafferty fits into re-mix culture; see the video's discussion of the Eddie Murphy film Trading Places as an adaptation of a Nights story!! There is even a brief praise of fart jokes in the video and their place in humbling and humanizing. I don't know if I'll have anything ready for FoL2, but I will continue to think about it all and maybe, maybe have something halfway decent ready for FoL3.)