"I look at you and I ask whether I can ever enter into an alien mind and think as it thinks."

I finished Reefs of Earth earlier in the week. It is delightful from first to last. Ostensibly, it's about a group of aliens, mostly children, and their murderous adventures through Earth's backwoods. It is that. It is best described as a ROMP and as such, the focus on children is wildly appropriate.

Reefs uses its alien misanthropes (that word isn't quite correct) as a lens through which Lafferty can present the alienness of humanity in all of its strangeness. We see our petty sins and sour seriousness contrasted with rambunctious life. Earth-sickness may not be the contagion of Original Sin but it is something that kills the high spirit. Earth's Gravity inevitably tends to kill Pucan Levity.

"I ask the same question," Henry said. "From my viewpoint, I'm the man, you're the alien. How weird are the ways of Earth! Or as it is written, 'Can anything good come from Earth?'"

Some quick thoughts:
- It's mentioned briefly that Willy McGilly and others are Pucas. I wonder if Pucas are mentioned elsewhere in Lafferty stories.
- I admit to loving the gleeful violence. "We got to start killing people," Charles said. "We can't keep leaving everybody to last."
- I'd love it if people started calling me Pandemonium John.
- "Pirates are perhaps the greatest invention of Earth people"
- One drinking reference merits a closer look but I can't find it now.
- Catherine de Medici

I should have written something sooner after finishing. I've been on vacation with my family and details of the novel are already slipping. I was reading for the joy of it and didn't dog-ear more than one page (the tobacco reference I posted) or mark or write down favorite quotes. I console myself with the thought of many future re-reads.

I've also read at least half a dozen new-to-me Lafferty stories in the past few weeks. I probably won't give them their proper posts anytime soon. I do want to mention, though, that I followed Kevin's advice and have read a few stories out loud to my children. The three I've read are "The Hole on the Corner," "Narrow Valley," and "Nine Hundred Grandmothers." It's been a fun experience watching their smiles and giggles. They groan because they are frustrated by the lack of tidy conclusions in these stories. But they are happy groans of longing, little signals that they've tasted something satisfying and wish to dwell in those moments longer instead of being shunted back to the ordinary of bedtime.

"That had also been the case with the Puca."

  "It was in this big room that the dead people would gather and sit and talk when they were tired of lying in one position. They cracked old bones to get the marrow, and they drank corn beer. It didn't take much eating and drinking to keep them up, since they were no longer fleshed. They didn't eat much, but they sure did smoke a lot. It is not generally known, but dead people used tobacco for centuries before live people stumbled onto it. That had also been the case with the Puca. The smoke all came out through a hole in the side of the mound, and that caused the fog or haze.
  The children learned the interior of the mound. They could have hidden there from all pursuit, but they couldn't have taken their rafts there. They dug all over the flanks of the mound, and came out with bones of animals and people. They dug out two prime skulls which they set up on the prows of their rafts.
  The children formed enduring friendships with many of the old Indians in the middle of Misu Mound. They learned a lot about Earth people from them, how they are in their essence, what are the real things that are hidden under the daily exterior, and how it was in the old days. And they learned the right way to cure tobacco and to make pipes and how really to smoke up a storm."

"He dismembers so that we may all re-member."

"Lafferty’s workings are always grotesque; like the Laestrygonians, he delights in bloody slaughter, whether of his own characters or of the conventions of his genre. But his destruction is also always in the context of carnivalized creation—whether as writer, bard, or pseudo-ursine, he dismembers so that we may all re-member." -Andrew Ferguson

(I'm finally reading his dissertation; love his reading of Space Chantey on pages 39-48)

"Reality, raw murderous reality broke into her contrived world."

What to make of Chapter Six of Space Chantey?

In chapter six, "raw murderous reality" breaks into Lafferty's contrived world. A horrible realism presents itself in the "gang-shag" of Aeaea, the "brutish murder of a concept and a person." It is sad and horrible and quite frightening. In the context of a long whopper of a tall tale, what does it mean that this is the place that Lafferty invokes reality? When all of the men (and woman) have so thoroughly become animals that there is no humanity left in them. I don't want to make too much of this, but it's there to reckon with. Things get very serious for a moment.

"But now the murder howl had gone over the space-ways, and they were all outlaws to be hunted. And decent people would no more give them haven."

Further, it's obvious throughout the chapter that Lafferty is tearing down a philosophy, "total subjectivity," but I don't have the training to put a name on it or to know who Lafferty is poking fun at. I'm afraid that I often confuse Contingency with Accidence and I never have been able to fit any Primary Essence into Quiddity. My eyes glaze over as I babble on.

The carnal reality of the animals is a pointed contrast to the "thinking makes it so" subjectivity of the witch. Material reality cannot be wished away. And the way in which this message comes across is brutally direct. And as horrific as things get, Lafferty still got a deep chuckle out of me at "Aeaea, whichever is you, the voice in the air, or the bloody thing on the ground, there is a flaw in your philosophy. You really are dead, you know."

Philosopher friends, I'd love to hear from you about this chapter.

"You show signs of levity, and that is the one thing not permitted here. This place is for serious persons only."

"The mere questioner has knocked his head against the limits of human thought; and cracked it."

"So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear."

"Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly."

"Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial."

I could keep quoting Chesterton all day long. Lafferty is thoroughly Chestertonian.

Space Chantey is frivolous through and through in the best sense. It is, as Kevin has pointed out, deeply silly. I suppose that I have to quibble a bit, then, with Kevin's father's distinction between "frivolously silly" and "deeply silly" (though this is a minor quibble since I completely grant the point being made.)

"Under the sun," Space Chantey is about as frivolous as things get, completely unnecessary, a new and useless thing with no practical purpose about it, a tall tale stretched to its limits, a perfect joyous creation. As such, it gets to the "fundamental thing" in man. As such, it is one of the things that will last.

Lewis: "Dance and game [and Lafferty novels] are frivolous, unimportant down here; for ‘down here’ is not their natural place. Here, they are a moment’s rest from the life we were placed here to live.

But in this world everything is upside down. That which, if it could be prolonged here, would be a truancy, is likest that which in a better country is the End of ends. Joy is the serious business of Heaven."

This story of a space-faring adventurer reminds us and demonstrates for us what it means to be in love with a full life, to live recklessly with no fear of death, to live exaggeratedly, with confidence that being clubbed by giants and eaten by cannibals are only preludes to greater deaths. With the Great Road-Storm, we have now opened our dull eye, "And the eye came alive and gave a really joyous wink." "We go again!"

Like Chesterton's angels, Lafferty's heroes soar because they take themselves lightly. They "show signs of levity." The chapter in which Roadstrum and his crew escape the hell planet is remarkable for its brevity and lack of action. No stunning feats of derring-do are needed. No epic action. No. Rather, our heroes laugh their way out of hell, they mock hell for its littleness and lack. "Man-a-bleeding, but they broke out of that place! You say it can't be done, but they did it. Their expectations had been too high, and no second-rate Hell could hold them."

Now, I'm going to go poking around the Internet to see what has been written about Space Chantey. I'd like to believe that someone out there has done a thorough job of comparing the book with its inspiration, The Odyssey. It's been 20 years since I read The Odyssey. I remember enough of it to catch many of the echos and allusions in the structure and acts of Space Chantey, but I probably also missed a lot of fun little details.

"My brain reels," moaned Homer the man. "Reality melts away."

I've been thinking a lot more about Jim's comment on a FB post. I still don't have any (good) answers. But, very slow days at work tend to find me in a rambling mood.

All of the below was plunked out on my iPhone throughout the day. It started as a short FB comment and kept growing and growing so I'm posting it here instead.

Jim wrote: "Which I suppose leads me to ask, why the sudden interest, and proliferation of blogs?  What set it off?"

A story we all know-- The rise of the Internet provided many fans of once obscure things with the unprecedented ability to share their fannishness with other fanny fans beyond their immediate spatial limitations. The more obscure and/or forgotten the thing, the more likely that some little tiny corner of the Internet would rise up to remember it.

I'm not sure how long the Lafferty devotional page has been up. I don't know when the greatsfandf page went up. Daniel's blog has been up since 2009. It's interesting to hear about a Japanese fan page. Andrew's Tumblr and Kevin's blog both started in 2013. I think that both grew out of conversations that had started in the comments sections of Daniel's blog. Andrew's Tumblr surely also serves as a public sounding board for his academic purposes.

There are scattered Lafferty references across the Internet from before the past few years. Most notably, Neil Gaiman has consistently sung Lafferty's praises. Gaiman was also influential when a bunch of Avram Davidson projects were released in the Nineties/Aughts. Davidson's presence has faded a bit again, but there was a period of time when he was very much back on the radar.

Gaiman from 2001:
"I'm pleased that Avram Davidson is, in death, gaining a measure of the respect he did
not have in life. I wonder if Lafferty (87, Alzheimer's-senile now, in an old people's
home in Tulsa) will be recognised as a genius once his death is announced. (I did
the entry on Lafferty in the Encyclopedia of Fantasy, which ended by pointing out
that the only person in the body of SF Lafferty could be compared to was Avram
Davidson.) I suspect that he won't be, not unless someone who is in exactly the
right place culturally introduces a collection of Lafferty stories designed for the
mainstream, much as The Avram Davidson Treasury helped define Avram and
what he did, and used a number of major authors to do so. And it probably won't
happen. But one can hope. (Does it matter if he's respected? Not a bit. Does it matter
if he's read? Damn right it does: no-one else did the things that Lafferty did in
prose-and-occasionally-poetry, although Flann O'Brian came close.)"

The Lafferty rights went up for sale in 2011 and the announcement that Locus had bought the rights came in 2012, I think. That sale and then the Centipede announcement made Lafferty visible and talked about in a way that he hadn't been prior.

Bud Webster's recent article also certainly helped raise visibility.

Then, more directly to this current little bubble of proliferation, David creating the FB group was a big move in online Lafferty conversation. Many who aren't the type to blog are on FB and enjoy more casual online interactions. It's much easier to see notifications on a site that you're already going to than it is to go to a Lafferty-specific message board like the ones on the Devotional page and elsewhere. I've got a love/hate relationship with FB, but I adore FB groups for their ease of use and the notifications. Their huge downside is that searching through archives is nearly impossible. Regardless of pros and cons of FB, seeing new Lafferty posts on FB every day, or at least a few times a week, it starts to feel like Lafferty is back and more popular than ever. The Facebook catered content bubble effect. Never mind that there are only a handful of us really seeing these things.

I also confess that I like the FB group just as a place to meet like-minded fans. I have no local friends who care about sf. I have no Science Fictioneers Clubhouse to hang out at. When I joined the group, I'd read enough Lafferty to know that I'd have more in common with this group of SF fans than I would with fans in groups dedicated to [insert random Baen author here]. I've enjoyed the off-topic conversations as much as the on-topic ones (and I have to watch myself from getting too far off-topic.)

I started this blog because I like being part of conversations about things I like. Who doesn't? I'm reading more science fiction this year than I have in a long time. I'm slowly discovering Lafferty. I find myself liking Lafferty more and more with each new (to me) story. It was nice to find an active group of fans at the same time. What could be better? Finding others interested in reading and discussing the same books at the same time gets harder and harder the further away I get from any academic context.

I started commenting on the FB group and realized that I'd like to have more room to write longer responses occasionally and also to have something more of a permanent record for myself. I've been blogging for a long time. First, a personal blog. Most recently, five years of a film blog. That was a great experience. Writing, even the poor stuff I do, helps to clarify my muddled thoughts and helps with recall.

In the past, I've thought about starting a blog devoted to a single author. My neglected never-properly-even-started Sturgeon blog from 2011 is here: http://sturgeonly.blogspot.com (it's got one post that was posted there accidentally; I left it up because it amused me.) I've also got a blog devoted to contemporary short sf that never launched. Last year, I started a Goodreads group devoted to Clifford Simak.

So, this is just normal behavior for me.

I'm not so sure if it's a sign that other Lafferty blogs will pop up. Maybe my participation signals the death of this trend.

I'm also not sure if this small number of blogs or my single addition to them could count as a "proliferation," but may it become so. Proliferate!

Besides "proliferation" being suspect, I think that "sudden" may be imprecise.

It seems sudden, maybe, but credit where it is due. Many Lafferty fans have kept interest in the stories alive for several decades now, not letting the broader sf community forget about Lafferty.

Interest and talk have been at a low simmer for many years. The aroma wafted through the rest of the big house just as many of us were at our hungriest. Now, the soup is ready. Suddenly, the invitation to eat and enjoy has gone out far and wide, even to those of us who never set foot in the kitchen (or, if we did, wrinkled our noses and left in a rude huff.)

Scoundrel that I am, having no part in the preparation, I have now boldly arrived at the feast. Miracle of miracles, the hosts are yet gracious. And somehow there is more of this rich soup than any of us could slurp down in a hundred thousand years.

And the fellowship is lovely, maybe best of all when we're all fighting (it hasn't happened yet but surely it should, no?) And the drink is heady stuff and there seems no end of it.

And there's Soft-Talk Susie in the corner whispering in Kevin's ear as they both slurp up something other than soup. And David and Daniel practicing pentecost, tongues of fire glossing Laffertisms in Japanese while Kenji laughs on. And which one of the Bills is that over there in the space pirate garb? How could it be both of them? There's Mark arm-wrestling Sour John. Wait, what is Jim doing there with that expensive book? Is that Gregorio at that other table explaining the 'minimal decency rule' to Gary all over again? How many times now? And that must be Lissanne on the stairs sketching all the rest. How is she working at all with that man in her lap? Could that be? No, he's dead and dead is dead except when it isn't. Dang, this soup is good. And the company grand.

And though this raucous gathering may never know an end, this blog post is in desperate need of one.

Blessed be this rum.

End.

He had a finely tuned soul, but it had a wide range.

I should know better than to read anyone else's words before I plunk out my own.

After reading "One at a Time," I trawled the Internet for reviews and found Andrew's fantastic post, beating me to everything that I would have written.

The following bit from the story is worth repeating, though, so here it is:

---

“I thought your stories were getting a little too tall, McSkee. But if you’re no more than forty years old, then your stories do not make sense.”

“Never said they did, John. You put unnatural conditions on a tale.”

---

It's hard not to read this as Lafferty speaking through McSkee, defending his own fiction against the objections that he must have received. This story and others are deliberate acts of busting apart all of the "unnatural conditions" (theory, three act structure, whatever) that we accumulate and bring to each story. We expect things to be just so and we are upset when they are not. This dismantling of expectations, I think, is what folks mean when they speak or write about Lafferty being "his own genre." Approaching him via genre (any genre) tropes is destined to fail. For all I know, I owned Orbit 4 in the mid-90s. I think I did. I don't remember this story, but I can easily imagine my younger self reading it and dismissing it as nonsense, perhaps stupid fun, but not something that belongs in an sf anthology. I don't think I would have liked it.

I probably fancied myself as having a finely tuned soul. Unfortunately, with no range at all.