........
How can a structure of fiction limn reality more clearly than reality does? Ah, well, that's the magic in it, you see...
R.A. Lafferty could explain it to you, and probably has. Raphael Aloysius Lafferty has thought more, said more, and written down more intricate thoughts than anyone else in SF -- possibly than anyone else in SF ever, past or future -- and his career alone would serve to terminally blur all the nice distinctions between sorts of literature and of genres within those sorts. There is no question but that the man is an SF writer -- all that he does all day, apparently, is to speculate, although the front of his mind may at times rest -- and equally no question that you could go mad attempting to define what kind of SF he writes.
Well, scholars, your task has been made even more piquant, and certainly no easier, by the appearance of Four Stories, one of the most chapped chap-books it has ever been my pleasure to behold.
Available at $2.00 postpaid from Chris Drumm, P.O. Box 445, Polk City, IA 50226, these are four stories copyright 1983 by Lafferty and hitherto unpublished. "The Last Astronomer" is relatively straightforward; it's about the life and the last day of High Rider Charles-Wain, the last astronomer to survive the shattering discoveries that the universe is really quite small, interstellar distances are ludicrously short, and that Terrestrial "astronomy fiction" has long been the favorite humorous reading matter on Mars.
"In the Turpentine Trees," however, begins to take on matters of some weight. It raises the questions of how a person might go about becoming God, how often it might have been done, and why it's not done more often. Furthermore, it provides answers.
"Bird-Master" either is or is not a recasting of certain American Indian legends, reflecting another interest of Lafferty's. Or rather reflecting that aspect of Lafferty's one interest, which is everything. It's fine, and besides being risible is haunting. The story which is in some ways the slightest of the four, but will be discussed more often because it has an easily encapsulated idea, is "Faith Sufficient," about a fake faith-healer who exposes faith-healing fakes, but at a crucial moment depends on the intervention of a mouse who can move mountains. (Say that line aloud three times quickly, and you will do to your tongue what Lafferty does to the mind.)
There you are. You can't do a study of Lafferty without being conversant with this material; I would judge that "In the Turpentine Trees," at least in some ways crosses beyond the borders of what commercial SF media finds publishable, and so is an indispensible benchmark of just how much craziness we will indulge, and of what kind. So send Drumm the $2.00. I don't know how he got hold of this material, but I'm sure it's legit. Also available is his R.A. Lafferty Checklist, at $1.25: 32 pages, with notes.
The pages, if other Drumm publications are any criterion, are covered with very small type, achieved by photo-reducing typewritten copy. It comes out 16 characters to the inch -- 25% smaller than elite. Four Stories has over 37 pages, each page 4 1/2" x 7', with very tight margins. The whole thing looks like something produced in a basement on 8 1/2" x 11" paper ingeniously folded, sewn (literally), and then trimmed by tearing the edges against a steel rule. The checklists -- there are four others -- are equally marvelous to behold. (The Hal Clement @ 50c, is eight pages on cardstock; the Mack Reynolds and Thomas M. Disch, at $1.00 each, are 24 pages; the Algis Budrys, at 75c, is 16 pages and even includes my crime fiction, plus running corrections of errata.) All this apparently began with book dealer Drumm's publication of a catalog ($1.00, refundable with purchase) and has since gotten out of hand.
It seems somehow inevitable that the Laffertys of this world find the Drumms and the Drumms find the Budryses. But if we didn't have Lafferty to prepare our minds for that realization -- and if Lafferty didn't have SF preparing the ground for him -- we wouldn't be equipped to understand that inevitability.
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
Death to Everyone, or, 3 Suggestions for Masters Theses, or, "Any action in which I am prepared to lose my life resembles war."
"Electric circuitry has overthrown the regime of "time" and "space" and pours upon us instantly and continuously the concerns of all other men."
-Marshall McLuhan
"It’s a border-town tale, a narrative of liminal spaces: the estranging distance between the relative safety of the town and the folkloric weirdness of the countryside, and beyond that the line of the border itself—possibly the Rio Grande between Del Rio, Texas, and Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, if a real rather than idealized geography is in view. But it also exists within the liminal space between realism and fantasy: almost as if, at this early stage, Lafferty has to establish where that line might be, before he can charge directly across it."
-Andrew Ferguson, on "Cabrito"
"Pope Pius II wrote frankly in his "History of Frederick III": "States cannot alter their borders except by war." Several years ago Prime Minister Kekkonen of Finland met with Khrushchev and tried to ask him if little Karelia (the border province between Finland and Russia, lost in 1939) which was sorely missed by the Finns, might not be returned to Finland. Khrushchev who liked Kekkonen very much (Kekkonen visited him in Crimea every year) smiled and answered: "Mr. Kekkonen, you ought to know from history that the borders between states can only be changed by war." People in the world today don't like to hear this, but I think that both the Renaissance Pope and the last Russian Czar are right."
-Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, from Planetary Service
I have just finished The Medium is the Massage by McLuhan/Fiore. I am currently several chapters into ERH's Planetary Service. I am always thinking of Lafferty. Specifically, right now, I am halfway through Archipelago.
Planetary Service is about a future of peace, of what it means to live in a world post-war, and how borders can ever be challenged and changed without war.
ERH does give honor to borders, to their historic importance, but it is also clear that he is ready for their abolition.
"This contradiction lies across my entire generation: we were all soldiers for the borders of our countries, and we were all already burned by the insight that many borders would have to fall. And these are the words about borders which Peguy left us before his death: "And must I, to rescue from eternal flames the bodies of the damned who despair in torment, give up my own body unto the eternal fire, then, God, throw me into these eternal flames: and need I, to save from the torment those souls damned to stay forever distant, and who despair in their estrangement from You, let my own soul stay estranged, then let my own soul move into the eternal distance, for we can only save our souls together." Here you have one of God's heroes who will not leave any borders standing, not even the borders of hell. And everyone should first pause, considering Peguy's battle, and this contradiction. Only then shall we become serious."
Thesis #1. Lafferty's work exists on borders and boundaries, often charging directly across them.
----------------------
Archipelago is Lafferty's most explicit war novel. Yet, somewhere along the writing process he forgot to include the war in the novel. I remember reading that Lafferty acknowledged this somewhere. I don't remember where.
This afternoon, I listened to this podcast: http://www.artofmanliness.com/2016/02/23/podcast-178-c-s-lewis-j-r-r-tolkien-and-the-inklings-mastermind-group/
Philip and Carol Zaleski wrote a book about the Inklings. Listening to them in this podcast, I didn't learn anything that I didn't already know. BUT! I did take pause when they mentioned that Tolkien and Lewis and all of the other writers in the Inklings were War writers even though they are not often categorized as such. Again, nothing new. But it made me realize that not enough attention is given to Lafferty as a war writer.
Most of the Inklings were WWI vets. Lafferty was a WWII vet. ERH and others make the point that this entire period of world civil war was all a continuation of the same. Both WWI and WWII vets had to deal with many of the same struggles. A new world ensued.
Unfortunately, most of us engaged in any sort of lit crit (pro or armchair) don't know a thing at all about risking our lives for anything. Most of us do not know the sort of heightened fellowship and camaraderie of men at war.
"The disappearance of war threatens us with the loss of the ability to distinguish between play and seriousness. Let us admit openly: war is the prime example of deadly earnestness, absolute earnestness. Any action in which I am prepared to lose my life resembles war." -ERH
Thesis #2. Lafferty is a war writer. Losing life is just the beginning.
----------------------
Thesis #3. Chaos occurs when we little devils abolish God's word.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I wrote all of the above a month or so ago. I never did return and shape it into anything more cohesive or convincing. Scratches and sketches. I present it here just the same. Blah.
I'm not sure exactly where I was going with the last one. I think maybe that I was grasping at instances in which Lafferty touches on ACTIVE world-building and that world-destruction is just as real an activity. Maybe.
Yesterday, I started reading E.M. Cioran's The Trouble With Being Born.
Cioran: "Unmaking, decreating, is the only task man may take upon himself, if he aspires, as everything suggests, to distinguish himself from the Creator."
Yesterday evening, a friend killed himself. And sure enough, I along with him am shattered, unmade.
So it goes.
"We'd just as soon drink whiskey tonight, and beer tomorrow," said Finnegan.
"It’s a border-town tale, a narrative of liminal spaces: the estranging distance between the relative safety of the town and the folkloric weirdness of the countryside, and beyond that the line of the border itself—possibly the Rio Grande between Del Rio, Texas, and Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, if a real rather than idealized geography is in view. But it also exists within the liminal space between realism and fantasy: almost as if, at this early stage, Lafferty has to establish where that line might be, before he can charge directly across it."
-Andrew Ferguson, on "Cabrito"
"Pope Pius II wrote frankly in his "History of Frederick III": "States cannot alter their borders except by war." Several years ago Prime Minister Kekkonen of Finland met with Khrushchev and tried to ask him if little Karelia (the border province between Finland and Russia, lost in 1939) which was sorely missed by the Finns, might not be returned to Finland. Khrushchev who liked Kekkonen very much (Kekkonen visited him in Crimea every year) smiled and answered: "Mr. Kekkonen, you ought to know from history that the borders between states can only be changed by war." People in the world today don't like to hear this, but I think that both the Renaissance Pope and the last Russian Czar are right."
-Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, from Planetary Service
I have just finished The Medium is the Massage by McLuhan/Fiore. I am currently several chapters into ERH's Planetary Service. I am always thinking of Lafferty. Specifically, right now, I am halfway through Archipelago.
Planetary Service is about a future of peace, of what it means to live in a world post-war, and how borders can ever be challenged and changed without war.
ERH does give honor to borders, to their historic importance, but it is also clear that he is ready for their abolition.
"This contradiction lies across my entire generation: we were all soldiers for the borders of our countries, and we were all already burned by the insight that many borders would have to fall. And these are the words about borders which Peguy left us before his death: "And must I, to rescue from eternal flames the bodies of the damned who despair in torment, give up my own body unto the eternal fire, then, God, throw me into these eternal flames: and need I, to save from the torment those souls damned to stay forever distant, and who despair in their estrangement from You, let my own soul stay estranged, then let my own soul move into the eternal distance, for we can only save our souls together." Here you have one of God's heroes who will not leave any borders standing, not even the borders of hell. And everyone should first pause, considering Peguy's battle, and this contradiction. Only then shall we become serious."
Thesis #1. Lafferty's work exists on borders and boundaries, often charging directly across them.
----------------------
Archipelago is Lafferty's most explicit war novel. Yet, somewhere along the writing process he forgot to include the war in the novel. I remember reading that Lafferty acknowledged this somewhere. I don't remember where.
This afternoon, I listened to this podcast: http://www.artofmanliness.com/2016/02/23/podcast-178-c-s-lewis-j-r-r-tolkien-and-the-inklings-mastermind-group/
Philip and Carol Zaleski wrote a book about the Inklings. Listening to them in this podcast, I didn't learn anything that I didn't already know. BUT! I did take pause when they mentioned that Tolkien and Lewis and all of the other writers in the Inklings were War writers even though they are not often categorized as such. Again, nothing new. But it made me realize that not enough attention is given to Lafferty as a war writer.
Most of the Inklings were WWI vets. Lafferty was a WWII vet. ERH and others make the point that this entire period of world civil war was all a continuation of the same. Both WWI and WWII vets had to deal with many of the same struggles. A new world ensued.
Unfortunately, most of us engaged in any sort of lit crit (pro or armchair) don't know a thing at all about risking our lives for anything. Most of us do not know the sort of heightened fellowship and camaraderie of men at war.
"The disappearance of war threatens us with the loss of the ability to distinguish between play and seriousness. Let us admit openly: war is the prime example of deadly earnestness, absolute earnestness. Any action in which I am prepared to lose my life resembles war." -ERH
Thesis #2. Lafferty is a war writer. Losing life is just the beginning.
----------------------
"World and soul join one another, that is they must join in order to provide meaning. For the world is meaningless. The world would just be uncreated chaos were it not for those who stood up with their lives to provide meaning; every time anew it would become an uncreated chaos in which speech decayed and every border became insurmountable. Chaos does not precede God's creation. No, chaos occurs when we little devils abolish God's word." -ERH
Thesis #3. Chaos occurs when we little devils abolish God's word.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I wrote all of the above a month or so ago. I never did return and shape it into anything more cohesive or convincing. Scratches and sketches. I present it here just the same. Blah.
I'm not sure exactly where I was going with the last one. I think maybe that I was grasping at instances in which Lafferty touches on ACTIVE world-building and that world-destruction is just as real an activity. Maybe.
Yesterday, I started reading E.M. Cioran's The Trouble With Being Born.
Cioran: "Unmaking, decreating, is the only task man may take upon himself, if he aspires, as everything suggests, to distinguish himself from the Creator."
Yesterday evening, a friend killed himself. And sure enough, I along with him am shattered, unmade.
So it goes.
"We'd just as soon drink whiskey tonight, and beer tomorrow," said Finnegan.
Saturday, March 12, 2016
Finnegan had a bottle.
Doubtless, it is unnatural to be drunk. But then in a real sense it is unnatural to be human. Doubtless, the intemperate workman wastes his tissues in drinking; but no one knows how much the sober workman wastes his tissues by working. No one knows how much the wealthy philanthropist wastes his tissues by talking; or, in much rarer conditions, by thinking. All the human things are more dangerous than anything that affects the beasts—sex, poetry, property, religion. The real case against drunkenness is not that it calls up the beast, but that it calls up the Devil. It does not call up the beast, and if it did it would not matter much, as a rule; the beast is a harmless and rather amiable creature, as anybody can see by watching cattle. There is nothing bestial about intoxication; and certainly there is nothing intoxicating or even particularly lively about beasts. Man is always something worse or something better than an animal; and a mere argument from animal perfection never touches him at all. Thus, in sex no animal is either chivalrous or obscene. And thus no animal ever invented anything so bad as drunkenness—or so good as drink.
....
For in so far as drinking is really a sin it is not because drinking is wild, but because drinking is tame; not in so far as it is anarchy, but in so far as it is slavery. Probably the worst way to drink is to drink medicinally. Certainly the safest way to drink is to drink carelessly; that is, without caring much for anything, and especially not caring for the drink.
-From Wine When It Is Red
“You are such a nice boy, it's a shame you are always crocked,” Elena said. “Have you had troubles? Do you love one who is unattainable? Are you frustrated in the expression of your talents? Did one you loved greatly die tragically and young? Are you disillusioned by the perfidies of the governments and shapers? Are you dangerously fallen from grace? Are you look for a Paraiso? Have you neglected one and are ashamed? Are you in chemical unbalance? For these reasons you drink?”
“Nueve y uno,” Finnegan said. “Nine yesses and a no. I drink because it is good to drink, and I drink excessively because I have an evil streak.”
“Can't you stop?”
“Anyone can stop at any time. It is as easy as hacking off your hand or plucking out your eye, the matter of a moment. It is better to be maimed than to burn: but it IS a maiming; being weak, I hesitate.”
-From Archipelago
Bless, O Lord, this creature beer, that Thou hast been pleased to bring forth from the sweetness of the grain: that it might be a salutary remedy for the human race: and grant by the invocation of Thy holy name, that, whosoever drinks of it may obtain health of body and a sure safeguard for the soul. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
-From the Rituale Romanum
Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, thou art very great....
He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth; And wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart.
-From Psalm 104
The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children.
-From the Gospel According to St. Matthew
Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.
-From the Epistle to the Ephesians
Thus ends, in unavoidable inadequacy, the attempt to utter the unutterable things. These are my ultimate attitudes towards life; the soils for the seeds of doctrine. These in some dark way I thought before I could write, and felt before I could think: that we may proceed more easily afterwards, I will roughly recapitulate them now. I felt in my bones; first, that this world does not explain itself. It may be a miracle with a supernatural explanation; it may be a conjuring trick, with a natural explanation. But the explanation of the conjuring trick, if it is to satisfy me, will have to be better than the natural explanations I have heard. The thing is magic, true or false. Second, I came to feel as if magic must have a meaning, and meaning must have some one to mean it. There was something personal in the world, as in a work of art; whatever it meant it meant violently. Third, I thought this purpose beautiful in its old design, in spite of its defects, such as dragons. Fourth, that the proper form of thanks to it is some form of humility and restraint: we should thank God for beer and Burgundy by not drinking too much of them. We owed, also, an obedience to whatever made us. And last, and strangest, there had come into my mind a vague and vast impression that in some way all good was a remnant to be stored and held sacred out of some primordial ruin. Man had saved his good as Crusoe saved his goods: he had saved them from a wreck. All this I felt and the age gave me no encouragement to feel it. And all this time I had not even thought of Christian theology.
-From Orthodoxy
DARE TO KNOW YOUR HEROES: http://arr-illustrator.blogspot.com/2015/12/lafferty-in-green-room.html
Lafferty's relationship to alcohol requires an entire book or at least a long essay for Feast of Laughter. Maybe I'll get around to that some day. A close reading of the Argo Cycle is a good place to start to get a full appreciation for Lafferty's multi-faceted love for strong drink. Like Finnegan, like Lafferty, maybe like Chesterton (see here: http://www.catholichousehold.com/chestertons-lack-temperance-block-canonization/), and like so many others, I also have an evil streak. And so, if today I write a blog post and sip my cup of coffee to him rather than raise my glass, I hope he'll forgive me and understand as he splashes around in St. Brigid's heavenly lake of beer.
(buy a print of this image here: https://www.trinitystores.com/store/art-image/st-brigids-lake-beer)
....
For in so far as drinking is really a sin it is not because drinking is wild, but because drinking is tame; not in so far as it is anarchy, but in so far as it is slavery. Probably the worst way to drink is to drink medicinally. Certainly the safest way to drink is to drink carelessly; that is, without caring much for anything, and especially not caring for the drink.
-From Wine When It Is Red
“You are such a nice boy, it's a shame you are always crocked,” Elena said. “Have you had troubles? Do you love one who is unattainable? Are you frustrated in the expression of your talents? Did one you loved greatly die tragically and young? Are you disillusioned by the perfidies of the governments and shapers? Are you dangerously fallen from grace? Are you look for a Paraiso? Have you neglected one and are ashamed? Are you in chemical unbalance? For these reasons you drink?”
“Nueve y uno,” Finnegan said. “Nine yesses and a no. I drink because it is good to drink, and I drink excessively because I have an evil streak.”
“Can't you stop?”
“Anyone can stop at any time. It is as easy as hacking off your hand or plucking out your eye, the matter of a moment. It is better to be maimed than to burn: but it IS a maiming; being weak, I hesitate.”
-From Archipelago
Bless, O Lord, this creature beer, that Thou hast been pleased to bring forth from the sweetness of the grain: that it might be a salutary remedy for the human race: and grant by the invocation of Thy holy name, that, whosoever drinks of it may obtain health of body and a sure safeguard for the soul. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
-From the Rituale Romanum
Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, thou art very great....
He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth; And wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart.
-From Psalm 104
The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children.
-From the Gospel According to St. Matthew
Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.
-From the Epistle to the Ephesians
Thus ends, in unavoidable inadequacy, the attempt to utter the unutterable things. These are my ultimate attitudes towards life; the soils for the seeds of doctrine. These in some dark way I thought before I could write, and felt before I could think: that we may proceed more easily afterwards, I will roughly recapitulate them now. I felt in my bones; first, that this world does not explain itself. It may be a miracle with a supernatural explanation; it may be a conjuring trick, with a natural explanation. But the explanation of the conjuring trick, if it is to satisfy me, will have to be better than the natural explanations I have heard. The thing is magic, true or false. Second, I came to feel as if magic must have a meaning, and meaning must have some one to mean it. There was something personal in the world, as in a work of art; whatever it meant it meant violently. Third, I thought this purpose beautiful in its old design, in spite of its defects, such as dragons. Fourth, that the proper form of thanks to it is some form of humility and restraint: we should thank God for beer and Burgundy by not drinking too much of them. We owed, also, an obedience to whatever made us. And last, and strangest, there had come into my mind a vague and vast impression that in some way all good was a remnant to be stored and held sacred out of some primordial ruin. Man had saved his good as Crusoe saved his goods: he had saved them from a wreck. All this I felt and the age gave me no encouragement to feel it. And all this time I had not even thought of Christian theology.
-From Orthodoxy
DARE TO KNOW YOUR HEROES: http://arr-illustrator.blogspot.com/2015/12/lafferty-in-green-room.html
Lafferty's relationship to alcohol requires an entire book or at least a long essay for Feast of Laughter. Maybe I'll get around to that some day. A close reading of the Argo Cycle is a good place to start to get a full appreciation for Lafferty's multi-faceted love for strong drink. Like Finnegan, like Lafferty, maybe like Chesterton (see here: http://www.catholichousehold.com/chestertons-lack-temperance-block-canonization/), and like so many others, I also have an evil streak. And so, if today I write a blog post and sip my cup of coffee to him rather than raise my glass, I hope he'll forgive me and understand as he splashes around in St. Brigid's heavenly lake of beer.
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
"They gave the Ghostly Thing release"
In this wonderful world, co-incidents happen often.
On the morning of February 7th, 2016, I began to read Archipelago.
Allowing for the logic of time zones and time travel, it is quite likely that I began my early morning reading at the same moment that DOJP posted his other-side-of-the-world-morning blog post, Reading the Argo Cycle - part 1. Whether or not this exact simultaneity occurred, I was more than pleased to find my own thoughts on the opening chapter echoed almost immediately in Daniel's post, as if the cavernous blogoshpere had shouted back my own words before I had shouted them out at all. Not only that, but that the infamous Indiana-Scots Goblin in the netted cave had once again shaped my unvoiced words into a finer shape and sound than I could have done.
So why bother to begin shouting at all when the suddenly pre-existent echo has already done the better job?
I don't know. Probably, because the DOJP-aspect is only one counterpart in one variant account of the Lafferty Fan Man.
Enough.
What do I have to add to the conversation?
Beginnings. My most recent (recent? ha!) blog post and the brief essay that I wrote for FoL2 both attempt to recklessly (I leave the rigor for others) probe into Lafferty's attempts at (non-)endings and how his narrative strategies point past endings toward new beginnings, perhaps as a simulation of "eternal" adventure.
Daniel is right (of course he is!) that the first section of Chapter 1 of Archipelago explicitly calls attention to beginnings. "All this begins," the story begins. "In the same hour at which the world was made" at the same time as "in these latter days." Only a moment between being "in the Garden" and being "in the middle of the World." "A man and a woman" vs. "two guys in a bar." I'm sure that any readers here have already read Daniel's post. If not, go do so.
"The two versions cannot be reconciled, and I worry about it," Finnegan said.
Here is where I think that I can add to Daniel's post. Daniel, in his enthusiasm for this opening has neglected the pre-opening that has come before the opening. The novel does not begin "In a Southern City." It begins (or is preceded by) a poem. The placement of this particular poem in this particular place is surely no accident. I haven't read more than the first chapter of the book yet, but I dare say that the themes of this seemingly silly poem will resurface repeatedly in the novel. Maybe. The poem at least shapes our expectations of what is to come.
Here's the poem in its entirety. I've taken this from the not-to-be-named edition of the novel. I'd love for any of you with Manuscript editions to compare and contrast and let me know if this is all correct; I do wonder at some of the irregularities- I suspect that they are Laffertisms, but can't be sure).
Of fossils from the recent past
Out of gigantothereous strata
Across a triple-decade vast,
Observe the bones! Regard the data!
Oh dear than the Mastodont!
They lie in ash of fading ember
While sexton-beetles eat and hunt
Lest flesh remain that might remember.
A surging gallimauferie
Of broken reeds upon a charger,
And something of serenity,
And something yet a little larger.
They knew the evoluting crock,
They knew a taller star than Vega,
A firster Peter for a rock,
Not yet so empty an Omega.
They gave the Ghostly Thing release
From pink-eyed heretics who bound it.
They sought the ancient Golden Fleece
And, what is better yet, they found it.
Before ‘Triumphant’ grew a taint,
Before (in catch-words and kerygmies)
Falsetto Chorus raised its plaint,
They never knew the race of pygmies;
Nor guessed the Situation Bit,
Nor found the Lord so dull a lover,
Nor used the love-as-catch-word kit
A multitude of sins to cover.
And some are dead, and some are done,
Or (fallen to heroics fever)
Still oddly seek the All-in-One
And some are better folks than you are.
—R. A. Lafferty
In this microcosmic "prehistory" of the novel, we immediately have a tension between the long-ago and the present, summed up nicely as "Of fossils from the recent past," perhaps a reflection on Lafferty's own sense of out-of-placeness and out-of-timeness, that what is most immediately present to him are the events of a personally present past that the world has long since moved on from.
The first two stanzas present this notion of the bringing present of a forgotten world/time. (Observe the bones!) The third stanza re-introduces these forgotten fossils as a "surging gallimauferie/Of broken reeds upon a charger," which is a lovely image.
This surging stew of broken reeds has known the "evoluting crock," which is likely simultaneously a dig at certain evolutionary theories at the same time that it concretely presents the pre-historic pot in which these characters have been cooked up.
The rest of the poem rousingly presents these "reeds" as living large lives, as those Argonauts (a crew of broken reed heroes if ever there was one) who have sought the Golden Fleece and, better yet, found it. Whatever else, this poem is important for first introducing this Argonautic theme. I may be wrong, but I suspect that it is important that Lafferty connects the "Ghostly Thing" (which I read, maybe wrongly, as a reference to the work of the Holy Spirit) to the Golden Fleece. And as the poem nears its end, there is an implicit eschatology in Lafferty's protology.
"Before 'Triumphant' grew a taint" is a rallying cry for all to finish well, triumphantly (in basso profundo chorus) following a giant wild lover, whether dead or done or fallen to heroics fever.
*Side note: I've been thinking a lot lately about Lafferty's Romances and the way that sexuality (broadly speaking) is exhibited in and between his male and female characters. The explicit Fleece/Argo/Jason connection makes me wonder if we'll get a Medea character at any time in this book. In the Argonautica, Medea is key to obtaining the Golden Fleece. Will it be so here? As the story transitions from this high-falutin' legend-alludin' to something more mundane (moving "episodically to the events of the war buddies leaving the war and returning home, and then their lives back in the States," as Daniel puts it), will there even be a recognizable Fleece moment? Am I making too much of this Argo connection and/or straining for 1:1 correspondences while Lafferty is playing much looser? Eh, we'll see. I'm still going to be on the lookout for Medea(s).
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
ALL THE ENDINGS, or THERE AREN'T ANY ENDINGS
I finished The Annals of Klepsis last night.
Here's an excerpt from the last chapter:
------
The Tarshish storyteller was there with us on the top of the mountain.
"Story-man, what is a good ending for the present story?" Titus asked him.
"I get most of my stories from my dreams, and from old legends. I have dreamed, many times and oft, everything here exactly as it has been happening. I dream it up to the point where the slave-mathematician is struck by lightning, and then my dream will stall and go no further. I only hope that the world won't stall and go no further forever. The old legends on it are pretty much the same. The endings of them are very weak and contrived. I just don't know how this episode is going to end."
-----
Now, I wouldn't ever say that Lafferty's novel endings are "weak and contrived." They are, however, always startlingly unsatisfying and abrupt. Instead of giving closure, they announce that dangerously new beginnings have arrived.
This morning, I was reminded of Chapter 6 of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy's The Fruit of Lips. The chapter is titled "End Begets Beginning." In this entire work, Rosenstock-Huessy argues that the Gospel writers were aware of one another's work, that the Gospels were written in the canonical order in which they have been received, and that there is a very real unity amid the diversity. At the beginning of Chapter 6, Rosenstock-Huessy argues that the end of each Gospel feeds into the beginning of the next.
-----
"Do they give evidence of mutual dependence beyond the "material" used? Yes, they do. They beget each other. Every Gospel begins exactly at the point to which the previous Gospel has progressed on its tortuous path. The last word of the one is the overture and sets the tone for the next......
If this is so, then the Gospels continue each other, each beginning to think and to speak where the previous evangelist had ended, and turning his final word into the opening of a new drama."
-----
Anyhow, I got to thinking again that this is true of all great literature. Certainly, the rest of the Bible has this kind of character. Often, it's more general. Reading one book is enriched by reading another and on and on until you're back to reading the first and understanding it all the better and realizing what you've missed. So there's this rich intertextuality. But it's also common for the biblical books to end on a note of pointing toward something that will happen NEXT.
Genesis ends pointing to the Exodus:
"And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die: and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land unto the land which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence. So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt."
Exodus ends with the glory of the LORD filling the tabernacle and Israel on the move:
"Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter into the tent of the congregation, because the cloud abode thereon, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And when the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the children of Israel went onward in all their journeys: But if the cloud were not taken up, then they journeyed not till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys."
And so on. I think that most of the books in the Bible do this in some way or another. Very often, even within books, there is an end which begets a new beginning.
Also, many of the biblical books end abruptly, in some way concluding its own story, but always pointing beyond itself.
The very last book of the bible, in its own way, is an extreme example of this. It does not end with the Return of the King and the "conclusion" of the story. It ends with a plea for the Return of the King and a promise of this coming. But it is still essentially open-ended. It's not quite a To Be Continued; it is most definitely an announcement of a New Heaven and New Earth because the old has passed away. That is a biblical pattern and it's one that I think that Lafferty either consciously or unconsciously adopts. I suspect the former.
I don't know if I'm up to the task, but what I'd like to eventually do is synthesize Lafferty's world destruction/renewals with Rosenstock-Huessy's insights on time and speech and James Jordan's biblical theology. The three are already in conversation in my head, but it's all intuitive grasping. I need to buckle down eventually and start taking notes on each.
http://ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Bible_Authoritative.htm
Here's an excerpt from the last chapter:
------
The Tarshish storyteller was there with us on the top of the mountain.
"Story-man, what is a good ending for the present story?" Titus asked him.
"I get most of my stories from my dreams, and from old legends. I have dreamed, many times and oft, everything here exactly as it has been happening. I dream it up to the point where the slave-mathematician is struck by lightning, and then my dream will stall and go no further. I only hope that the world won't stall and go no further forever. The old legends on it are pretty much the same. The endings of them are very weak and contrived. I just don't know how this episode is going to end."
-----
Now, I wouldn't ever say that Lafferty's novel endings are "weak and contrived." They are, however, always startlingly unsatisfying and abrupt. Instead of giving closure, they announce that dangerously new beginnings have arrived.
This morning, I was reminded of Chapter 6 of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy's The Fruit of Lips. The chapter is titled "End Begets Beginning." In this entire work, Rosenstock-Huessy argues that the Gospel writers were aware of one another's work, that the Gospels were written in the canonical order in which they have been received, and that there is a very real unity amid the diversity. At the beginning of Chapter 6, Rosenstock-Huessy argues that the end of each Gospel feeds into the beginning of the next.
-----
"Do they give evidence of mutual dependence beyond the "material" used? Yes, they do. They beget each other. Every Gospel begins exactly at the point to which the previous Gospel has progressed on its tortuous path. The last word of the one is the overture and sets the tone for the next......
If this is so, then the Gospels continue each other, each beginning to think and to speak where the previous evangelist had ended, and turning his final word into the opening of a new drama."
-----
Anyhow, I got to thinking again that this is true of all great literature. Certainly, the rest of the Bible has this kind of character. Often, it's more general. Reading one book is enriched by reading another and on and on until you're back to reading the first and understanding it all the better and realizing what you've missed. So there's this rich intertextuality. But it's also common for the biblical books to end on a note of pointing toward something that will happen NEXT.
Genesis ends pointing to the Exodus:
"And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die: and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land unto the land which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence. So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt."
Exodus ends with the glory of the LORD filling the tabernacle and Israel on the move:
"Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter into the tent of the congregation, because the cloud abode thereon, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And when the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the children of Israel went onward in all their journeys: But if the cloud were not taken up, then they journeyed not till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys."
And so on. I think that most of the books in the Bible do this in some way or another. Very often, even within books, there is an end which begets a new beginning.
Also, many of the biblical books end abruptly, in some way concluding its own story, but always pointing beyond itself.
The very last book of the bible, in its own way, is an extreme example of this. It does not end with the Return of the King and the "conclusion" of the story. It ends with a plea for the Return of the King and a promise of this coming. But it is still essentially open-ended. It's not quite a To Be Continued; it is most definitely an announcement of a New Heaven and New Earth because the old has passed away. That is a biblical pattern and it's one that I think that Lafferty either consciously or unconsciously adopts. I suspect the former.
I don't know if I'm up to the task, but what I'd like to eventually do is synthesize Lafferty's world destruction/renewals with Rosenstock-Huessy's insights on time and speech and James Jordan's biblical theology. The three are already in conversation in my head, but it's all intuitive grasping. I need to buckle down eventually and start taking notes on each.
Finally, while writing the above little bit and thinking about how Lafferty's non-endings relate to Biblical non-endings, I remembered N.T. Wright's 5-act play analogy. There's a similarity (and dissimilarity) between the way in which Wright describes the Bible's pushing toward reader-participants finishing the "play" and the way that Lafferty's work pushes reader-participants into finishing the "play." I think that these parallels become a bit clearer as well with a preterist understanding of the importance of the 70ad destruction of Jerusalem being a real (NOT a literary metaphor, as ERH would say, despite its beings poetic) destruction of a world, marking the end of an entire cosmos (see any treatment of temple as cosmos) as a new world becomes fully birthed IN the death of the old.
Wright:
There are various ways in which stories might be thought to possess authority. Sometimes a story is told so that the actions of its characters may be imitated. It was because they had that impression that some early Fathers, embarrassed by the possibilities inherent in reading the Old Testament that way, insisted upon allegorical exegesis. More subtly, a story can be told with a view to creating a generalized ethos which may then be perpetuated this way or that. The problem with such models, popular in fact though they are within Christian reading of scripture, is that they are far too vague: they constitute a hermeneutical grab-bag or lucky dip. Rather, I suggest that stories in general, and certainly the biblical story, has a shape and a goal that must be observed and to which appropriate response must be made.
But what might this appropriate response look like? Let me offer you a possible model, which is not in fact simply an illustration but actually corresponds, as I shall argue, to some important features of the biblical story, which (as I have been suggesting) is that which God has given to his people as the means of his exercising his authority. Suppose there exists a Shakespeare play whose fifth act had been lost. The first four acts provide, let us suppose, such a wealth of characterization, such a crescendo of excitement within the plot, that it is generally agreed that the play ought to be staged. Nevertheless, it is felt inappropriate actually to write a fifth act once and for all: it would freeze the play into one form, and commit Shakespeare as it were to being prospectively responsible for work not in fact his own. Better, it might be felt, to give the key parts to highly trained, sensitive and experienced Shakespearian actors, who would immerse themselves in the first four acts, and in the language and culture of Shakespeare and his time, and who would then be told to work out a fifth act for themselves.
Consider the result. The first four acts, existing as they did, would be the undoubted ‘authority’ for the task in hand. That is, anyone could properly object to the new improvisation on the grounds that this or that character was now behaving inconsistently, or that this or that sub-plot or theme, adumbrated earlier, had not reached its proper resolution. This ‘authority’ of the first four acts would not consist in an implicit command that the actors should repeat the earlier pans of the play over and over again. It would consist in the fact of an as yet unfinished drama, which contained its own impetus, its own forward movement, which demanded to be concluded in the proper manner but which required of the actors a responsible entering in to the story as it stood, in order first to understand how the threads could appropriately be drawn together, and then to put that understanding into effect by speaking and acting with both innovation and consistency.
This model could and perhaps should be adapted further; it offers in fact quite a range of possibilities. Among the detailed moves available within this model, which I shall explore and pursue elsewhere, is the possibility of seeing the five acts as follows: (1) Creation; (2) Fall; (3) Israel; (4) Jesus. The New Testament would then form the first scene in the fifth act, giving hints as well (Rom 8; 1 Car 15; parts of the Apocalypse) of how the play is supposed to end. The church would then live under the ‘authority’ of the extant story, being required to offer something between an improvisation and an actual performance of the final act. Appeal could always be made to the inconsistency of what was being offered with a major theme or characterization in the earlier material. Such an appeal—and such an offering!—would of course require sensitivity of a high order to the whole nature of the story and to the ways in which it would be (of course) inappropriate simply to repeat verbatim passages from earlier sections. Such sensitivity (cashing out the model in terms of church life) is precisely what one would have expected to be required; did we ever imagine that the application of biblical authority ought to be something that could be done by a well-programmed computer?
Andrew F.:
"Lafferty is always seeking, through his fiction, to reach out and find those who will join him in creating and sustaining new worlds. Most of his books reach their peaks not in moments of intense action, but in moments of extreme connectivity, with two or more people coming into sudden rapport, a mutual understanding strong enough to resonate throughout the multiplicity of worlds. Thus in Archipelagothe climax comes not at the end—and how could it? As Lafferty notes in his essay, there aren’t any endings—but instead at the St. Louis Conclave, with nearly all of his characters gathered together and drawing sparks off one another."
[Sorry for any wonky formatting errors. I started this on my laptop this morning and finished it in my phone. And the usual apologies for the general rambling incoherence.]
Friday, June 12, 2015
'the musics'
Excerpts from Lafferty's review of the anthology Some Things Dark and Dangerous:
"All are suspense stories, wonder stories; all are mystery stories, in a sense, though none is a conventional detective story and certainly none is a formula story. Three of them might be called Science Fiction (at the name of which all honest hearts must leap with pleasure!); all are pretty much Blood and Thunder (“as simple as the thunger of Heaven and the blood of men” as Chesterton once defended the type).
At this point, from the covert enemies of the Lively Arts, there come two automatic protests, and we must answer them.
Is there any real importance in producing another collection of old stories even if it is ‘good material sunk out of sight’?
Is there any importance at all (while the eschatological things are standing up tall and crying for attention) to be found in the inferior and trivial art form of the suspense story, a surrogate or life-escapist device?
(Really, it is no more life-escapist than are any other cultural accretions since the breechclout and the fist-axe; and it retains more of the clout and the axe than do most other forms.)
The first answer is that there may be importance in collections of old and valid fact and fiction. No great book has ever come about in any other way than this. It was the mechanism of Scripture, of all the Epics, of the Arabian Nights, of the works of the Bard and of the Comedist who produced no more than superior collections of old material. Not that this is a great book, but it would be a great book if it stood alone of its kind. And the Iliad would not be a great book if it stood with a dozen others of like sort.
The second answer is that there may be intrinsic importance in the suspense story. The whole life affair is a suspense story, and this cannot be said about any other sort of literature. And it can itself be eschatological."
-----
"And the suspense story has had noble practitioners. A writing acquaintance (an unbeliever) once gave me the opinion that God the Father, on the basis of some hundred striking narrations in both Testaments, would have to be classed as one of the three greatest masters of the suspense story. And I have it on peculiar authority that He enjoys these things Himself, and that there is much in literature that He does not enjoy.
God the Father, however, is not represented directly in this collection."
-----
"If man is the only creature who laughs (this may be argued; poltergeist and several animals snigger and chortle; likely all the higher creatures laugh; certainly the Creator does), man is not the only creature who experiences suspense. All the animals, all the creatures experience it. It is the necessary tension, and without it the limbs would be unstrung.
But it may be that man is the only creature who has experienced changes (two changes) in the nature of Suspense. One was at the time of the Fall (those of other orientation may call it the Hiatus or the Amnesia or they may call it nothing at all, but they must recognize that something happened then). At the time of the Fall, man went into a state of Suspended Animation. Or perhaps it was a state of Animated Suspense. It must have been a frighteningly powerful state from the disguised memories we still carry of it. Certain animals and persons and intermediate spirits are in that case yet."
-----
"The second change in the nature of Suspense was at the time of the Redemption (those of other orientation may call it the End of an Era or the Anamnesis, but they must recognize that something happened then). The suspense was not abolished; perhaps it was sanctified. Some of the dread was removed, but the bow itself was not unstrung. The tension was likely increased, but tension in grace became more possible. Suspense is now a requirement of the pleasure principle, of the victory principle, of the high comedy of being. And it will be a requirement of the Vision, which will not be static. It is a necessity to the feeling of immediacy, to the constant newness of outlook and experience. It is at the heart (the courage) of things.
Suspense is not the same thing as uncertainty, not the same as apprehension, not the same as doubt, not quite the same thing as danger, certainly not the same as fear.
Might bold claims, those! Can one stand and produce on the subject? No, I cannot, and probably you cannot produce for any powerful interest of your own. But in this collection, and others like it, there are fleeting pieces of something important, and they must be caught on the fly. We lack the right words for all these things (Suspense is not the right word), and we lack the means of tying them together. The Lively Arts, the Lively Sciences, the Lively Eschatologies, the Lively Congresses of every sort are all of one thing which the Greeks called simply ‘the musics’ and for which we lack any correct word."
Sunday, June 7, 2015
DOWN WITH THE DEAD MEN
There's a part of Chapter 10 of The Devil is Dead that is one of my favorite passages in all of the Lafferty that I've read so far. I've written in the past, here and on FB, about how much I love Lafferty's joyous deaths, his raucous goodtime violence. One of my favorite theologians has commented on pacifism that its chief problem is that it misplaces the antithesis, replacing a struggle between Righteous (Seed of the Woman) and Unrighteous (Seed of the Serpent) with a struggle between Righteous (Peaceniks) and Unrighteous (Warmongers). In the former story, the Righteous community enjoys headcrushing and has a limp from all the wrestling it does. In the latter story, headcrushing and wrestling are always forms of oppression and inherently evil. Lafferty was no pacifist.
Needless to say, Lafferty's violence is a full-bodied Ancient violence, lusty and good. But that's not to say that all violence and all death in Lafferty's worlds is always a positive good. There IS a violence and a death that is a sundering of created good. Even a proper recognition that this type of death and violence is impermanent and a less full instance of reality, an unfinished business as it were, is not enough to ease the hearts of those who experience such a thing.
----------------------------------------------------
A lady took Finnegan to a near house. There he saw Anastasia his dead sister. She still had the smile of a happy pixie and her eyes were only half closed. They had put her on a sofa there. She had been shot once only. She had been wet.
"She fell off the breakwater when she was shot," someone said. "She was dead when we pulled her out."
An orthodox priest was there. "I gave her the last rites," he said. "Then I wondered if she had become a Roman. She had a Roman rosary. Do you know?"
"No. She was not a Roman. I gave her the rosary," Finnegan said.
This was all too matter-of-fact.
"You had better go and hide," the priest told him. "They plan to find you and kill you also. You and the big man they are looking for. It is dangerous for you to be down here."
The priest told Finnegan several other things that he did not quite understand with his insufficient Greek.
Finnegan slipped away with Manuel up the hill. Finn had all this time carried a gin bottle in his hand, the same that he had taken up on the mountain as a sovereign against premonitions. He had carried it through the rough climb down the mountain, through the alley off the street of the dead men, into the house where his sister was dead, and up onto the mountain again.
"I must be depraved," he said.
But he didn't throw it away.
--------------------------------------------------------
All of Chapter 10 is remarkable (as is the whole novel) and I recommend that you read or re-read it.
A friend died a few weeks ago, suddenly, unexpectedly. I didn't see her face at or after her death but I imagine it like this: "She still had the smile of a happy pixie and her eyes were only half closed."
-----------------------------------------------------------
Apologies to anyone who was following along with my Klepsis project. I won't be finishing my Klepsis "live-tweeting" and I probably won't post about it here again until I've finished the whole thing.
Needless to say, Lafferty's violence is a full-bodied Ancient violence, lusty and good. But that's not to say that all violence and all death in Lafferty's worlds is always a positive good. There IS a violence and a death that is a sundering of created good. Even a proper recognition that this type of death and violence is impermanent and a less full instance of reality, an unfinished business as it were, is not enough to ease the hearts of those who experience such a thing.
----------------------------------------------------
A lady took Finnegan to a near house. There he saw Anastasia his dead sister. She still had the smile of a happy pixie and her eyes were only half closed. They had put her on a sofa there. She had been shot once only. She had been wet.
"She fell off the breakwater when she was shot," someone said. "She was dead when we pulled her out."
An orthodox priest was there. "I gave her the last rites," he said. "Then I wondered if she had become a Roman. She had a Roman rosary. Do you know?"
"No. She was not a Roman. I gave her the rosary," Finnegan said.
This was all too matter-of-fact.
"You had better go and hide," the priest told him. "They plan to find you and kill you also. You and the big man they are looking for. It is dangerous for you to be down here."
The priest told Finnegan several other things that he did not quite understand with his insufficient Greek.
Finnegan slipped away with Manuel up the hill. Finn had all this time carried a gin bottle in his hand, the same that he had taken up on the mountain as a sovereign against premonitions. He had carried it through the rough climb down the mountain, through the alley off the street of the dead men, into the house where his sister was dead, and up onto the mountain again.
"I must be depraved," he said.
But he didn't throw it away.
--------------------------------------------------------
All of Chapter 10 is remarkable (as is the whole novel) and I recommend that you read or re-read it.
A friend died a few weeks ago, suddenly, unexpectedly. I didn't see her face at or after her death but I imagine it like this: "She still had the smile of a happy pixie and her eyes were only half closed."
-----------------------------------------------------------
Apologies to anyone who was following along with my Klepsis project. I won't be finishing my Klepsis "live-tweeting" and I probably won't post about it here again until I've finished the whole thing.
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