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.)

In fact, I hate to go at all.

From "Snuffles":

It was a game, but it couldn't last long. Phelan whimpered and tried to climb the rock wall at the blind end of his pocket. Margie cajoled and told Snuffles how good friends they had always been, and wouldn't he let her go? Billy Cross filled his pipe and lit it and sat down to wait it out.

Phelan went first, and he died like a craven. But no one, not sure how he himself might die, should hold that overly against a man.

Snuffles thundered in, cut him down in the middle of a scream, and rushed back to his commanding spot in the middle of the weapons center.

Margie spread out her hands and began to cry, softly, not really in terror, when he attacked. The pseudo-bear broke her neck, but with a blow that was almost gentle in comparison with the others, and he scurried again to center.

And Billy Cross puffed on his pipe. “I hate to go like this, Snuff, old boy. In fact, I hate to go at all. If I made a mistake to die for, it was in being such a pleasant, trusting fellow. I wonder if you ever noticed, Snuff, what a fine, upstanding fellow I really am?”

And that was the last thing Billy Cross ever said, for the big animal struck him dead with one tearing blow. And the smoke still drifted in the air from Billy's pipe.

The Collected Short Stories Volume 1

[cross-posted on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/710510630]

Each of the stories in Centipede's first volume is a gem worthy of finer inspection. Giving star ratings is a fool's task, but here goes...

***** Love, Love, Love - Personal Favorites Going in the Tiny Desert Island Anthology

"The Hole on the Corner"

**** Great Stories - Going in the Larger More Spacious Luxury Desert Island Bookshelf Anthology

"The Man Who Made Models"

"The Six Fingers of Time"

"Frog on the Mountain"

"Narrow Valley"

"Days of Grass, Days of Straw"

"Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne"

"Rivers of Damascus"

*** Good Stories - worth further inspection on the mainland; better than the large majority of lesser stories in the world

"Square and Above Board"

"Jack Bang's Eyes"

"All But the Words"

"The Ungodly Mice of Doctor Drakos"

"Condillac's Statue or Wrens in His Head"

"About a Secret Crocodile"

"The Ninety-Ninth Cubicle"

"Parthen"

"The Skinny People of Leptophlebo Street"

** Average Stories, nothing of note - none of those here

* Bad Stories - nope, not a one of 'em to be found.

Or how can someone enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then indeed he may plunder his house.

I just deleted a looooong "ramblier"-than-usual post. The length was mostly padding. I am attempting a kindness in cutting it down.

Here's the very short version: Freddy Foley is a pirate!

Here's the moderately short version:

While reflecting on the FB conversation with Kevin and Gregorio from last night, I started thinking about names this morning.

Freddy is a diminutive version of Alfred or Frederick.

The name Alfred is a Germanic name of Old English origin, composed of the elements ælf "elf" and ræd "counsel".

Frederick is a masculine given name meaning "peaceful ruler." It is the English form of the German name Friedrich. Its meaning is derived from the Germanic word elements frid, or peace, and ric, meaning "ruler" or "power."

Lafferty lays out what he's doing with the discussion of the Patricks/patricians. Right from the beginning, we have a guy named "Little Peaceful Ruler Elf Friend" Foley. Freddy is like a Patrick, except that he's a Freddy instead.

I knew the Fred meaning because I have a friend named Fred. That was easy enough.

I had to go looking for the Foley meaning. My experience with the word had to do with sound recording and catheters, neither of which seemed at all relevant.

I quickly found this gem of knowledge:

"The name is derived from the original modern Irish Ó Foghlú and older Irish Ó Foghladha, meaning "plunderer".... In Old English, the language of Anglo-Saxons, the name Foley has a loose meaning of "pirate" or "marauder"." 

So, Freddy Foley is the Little Peaceful Ruler Plunderer.

And all of that led me to the title of this post. I started thinking of Fourth Mansions as an extended riff on "The Parable of the Strong Man."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_strong_man

Based on the FB conversation and this names discovery, I suspect that the latter half of the novel will involve some peaceful plundering and a transfer of ruling authority.

Dammit, fat man, I will ask questions and I won't hide.....I'm not stupid. That's only the permanent impression I leave.

I've read the first four chapters of Fourth Mansions. It surprised me by feeling the most instantly familiar of all of his novels so far.

I should probably wait until I'm done with the novel instead of rambling and speculating. But here's a particularly unpolished ramble just the same.

The Harvesting/Brainweaving reminded me of the esp circles in Bester's Demolished Man and of Simak's recurrent theme of psychic development as the next stage in human evolution/development. I can't think of more specifics off the top of my head, but this was one prominent thread of the Campbell era. Surely, Lafferty is in some way responding to this, no, even if it's not primarily what he's up to? Yea? Nay?

Beyond the psi premise is the secret society of jolly defenders of the world. This immediately makes me think of Blaylock especially and also Powers, both of which often use such groups or recurring mythological characters operating under the radar of everyday recognition and happy to be behind the scenes. This idea of folks involved in secret realities is at least traceable back to Charles Williams and his supernatural thrillers with ordinary characters getting swept up into archetypes and arcane activities. And it probably goes back further to Arthurian myths and further back yet. What large part of this am I ignorant of?

I'm just thinking aloud, throwing this out there in the hopes of engaging someone (is blogging a step toward brainweaving?)

Past Master is a mashup of political thriller and utopia and Renaissance farce/morality tale.

Space Chantey is a mashup of the Odyssey and Space Opera.

Reefs of Earth is a mashup of Twain-like boyish Americana, tall tale, and alien invasion.

The Devil is Dead is a mashup of sailor story, Irish bender, and Neanderthal race relations.

Sindbad is a mashup of The Arabian Nights and pawn shop electronics and spy thriller.

So, it's part of Lafferty's style to adopt and adapt and make new. He anticipated remix culture. Because all of Western Culture was remix culture before it was flattened and stifled and silenced. The samples beneath his tracks are always present, always audible, yet the result is never that we fault Lafferty for stealing from Western Culture. Our ears are opened to hear the reverberations of all of Lafferty's gloriously mashed-up musical project working its way back in time, seeding itself in Western Culture as Western Culture, picking up the everlasting refrain of life and death and new life. Every seed Lafferty has sown shall die, into the past and into the future. Then life and stories will be possible again. Odysseus might make his way home if he can remember the tune to the Lay of Roadstrum. Arab caliphs yet await the stories from Chicago that will restore their kingdoms. 

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? And/Or something else that I'm missing?

"I forget a lot of the people, and mix the others up before you get around to them again," said Doll.

For all of his truth-stretching and reality-bending, Lafferty writes as one with authority. A reader may either submit or rebel. There is no question of any reader ever subjugating the text. It is too wild, too free, and always too wildly and freely in control of itself. It controls you.

Often immoderate in its reckless refusal to plot straight, drunk on its own stories within stories, The Devil is Dead is a heady book.

I, the poor reader, don't pretend to understand what just happened. Even if Lafferty does more or less tie everything up in the end and put a bow on it.

I don't understand. But I submit. 

Because there is the fragrance of something bright and true under the shambling doubling uncertainties. Finnegan is a character estranged from himself. And in his estrangement we might recognize a share of something in ourselves, a yearning for wholeness. And there are glimpses of potential wholenesses in the communion of characters that happens frequently in the second half of the book (and not so infrequently in the first.)

This is not a review. I rarely do reviews. This is an almost-immediate post-read ramble. A small raving attempt at grasping this book from one possible angle.

"a joyous death to you all!"

All the Stories

ISFDB lumps all short fiction into the same list. All I've done here is take the ISFDB data (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?36) and reproduce it with the stories sorted into the three standard short fiction categories of Short, Novelette, and Novella. I'd be interested to see word counts for the novels. I don't think that many of them are much longer than long novellas.

191 Shorts

The Wagons (1959)

The Ugly Sea (1960)

Saturday You Die (1960)

Adam Had Three Brothers (1960)

Day of the Glacier (1960)

Other Side of the Moon (1960)

Long Teeth (1960)

Beautiful Dreamer (1960)

McGonigal's Worm (1960)

Try to Remember (1960)

The Polite People of Pudibundia (1961)

In the Garden (1961)

All the People (1961)

The Weirdest World (1961)

Aloys (1961)

Rainbird (1961)

Seven-Day Terror (1962)

Dream (1962) also appeared as:

Variant Title: Dreamworld (1962)

Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas (1962)

The Transcendent Tigers (1964)

Name of the Snake (1964)

What's the Name of That Town? (1964)

Mad Man (1964)

Pig in a Pokey (1964)

The Man with the Speckled Eyes (1964)

Slow Tuesday Night (1965)

Guesting Time (1965)

In Our Block (1965)

Hog-Belly Honey (1965)

Nine Hundred Grandmothers (1966)

Golden Trabant (1966)

Among the Hairy Earthmen (1966)

Narrow Valley (1966)

Primary Education of the Camiroi (1966) also appeared as:

Variant Title: The Primary Education of the Camiroi (1966)

The Man Who Never Was (1967)

The Hole on the Corner (1967)

Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne (1967)

Ginny Wrapped in the Sun (1967)

Land of the Great Horses (1967)

Camels and Dromedaries, Clem (1967)

Polity and Custom of the Camiroi (1967)

The Ultimate Creature (1967)

One at a Time (1968)

Maybe Jones and the City (1968)

How They Gave It Back (1968)

McGruder's Marvels (1968)

This Grand Carcass (1968) also appeared as:

Variant Title: This Grand Carcass Yet (1968)

Cliffs That Laughed (1969)

Configuration of the North Shore (1969)

Entire and Perfect Chrysolite (1970)

Hands of the Man (1970)

Ride a Tin Can (1970)

Old Foot Forgot (1970)

About a Secret Crocodile (1970)

The Cliff Climbers (1970)

Condillac's Statue, or Wrens in His Head (1970)

Interurban Queen (1970)

All Pieces of a River Shore (1970)

Been a Long, Long Time (1970)

Sky (1971)

Nor Limestone Islands (1971)

When All the Lands Pour Out Again (1971)

Groaning Hinges of the World (1971)

The Man Underneath (1971)

Enfant Terrible (1971)

All But the Words (1971)

Boomer Flats (1971)

Bubbles When They Burst (1971)

Eurema's Dam (1972)

Once on Aranea (1972)

A Special Condition in Summit City (1972)

Rang Dang Kaloof (1972)

Dorg (1972)

In Outraged Stone (1973)

The Ungodly Mice of Doctor Drakos (1973)

The Wooly World of Barnaby Sheen (1973)

Four Sides of Infinity (1973)

Barnaby's Clock (1973)

Symposium (1973)

The Two-Headed Lion of Cris Benedetti (1973)

The Hellaceous Rocket of Harry O'Donovan (1973)

Rogue Raft (1973)

Parthen (1973)

Ghost in the Corn Crib (1973)

The World as Will and Wallpaper (1973)

Seven Story Dream (1973)

Days of Grass, Days of Straw (1973)

By the Seashore (1973)

And Name My Name (1974)

The Most Forgetable Story in the World (1974)

The Man with the Aura (1974) also appeared as:

Variant Title: Tom O'Shanty's Aura (1974)

And Mad Undancing Bears (1974)

And Read the Flesh Between the Lines (1974)

Royal Licorice (1974)

Endangered Species (1974)

For All Poor Folks at Picketwire (1975)

Great Day in the Morning (1975)

Old Halloweens on the Guna Slopes (1975)

The Skinny People of Leptophlebo Street (1975)

Fog in My Throat (1976)

Cabrito (1976)

Horns on Their Heads (1976)

Funnyfingers (1976)

Love Affair With Ten Thousand Springs (1976)

The Hand with One Hundred Fingers (1976)

Oh Tell Me Will It Freeze Tonight (1976)

Assault on Fat Mountain (1976)

Puddle on the Floor (1976)

Berryhill (1976)

Oh, Those Trepidatious Eyes! (1977)

Brain Fever Season (1977)

Thou Whited Wall (1977)

Fall of Pebble-Stones (1977)

Bequest of Wings (1978)

Bright Coins in Never-Ending Stream (1978)

Splinters (1978)

Bright Flightways (1978)

Oh Tell Me It Will Freeze Tonight (1979)

Rainy Day in Halicarnasses (1979)

Almost Perfect (1980)

Phoenic' (1980) also appeared as:

Variant Title: Phoenic (1980)

Lord Torpedo, Lord Gyroscope (1980)

And All the Skies Are Full of Fish (1980)

The Only Tune That He Could Play (1980)

Crocodile (1980)

New People (1981)

In Deepest Glass (1981)

You Can't Go Back (1981)

Golden Gate (1982)

Six Leagues From Lop (1982)

Great Tom Fool or The Conundrum of the Calais Customhouse Coffers (1982)

Thieving Bear Planet (1982)

Square and Above Board (1982)

Ifrit (1982)

Calamities of the Last Pauper (1982) also appeared as:

Variant Title: Calamities of Last Pauper (1982)

One-Eyed Mocking-Bird (1982)

Marsilia V (1982)

Make Sure the Eyes Are Big Enough (1982)

Tongues of the Matagorda (1982)

This Boding Itch (1982)

Company in the Wings (1983)

What Big Tears the Dinosaur's (1983)

Unique Adventure Gone (1983)

Snake in His Bosom (1983)

Posterior Analytics (1983)

Pleasures and Palaces (1983)

Jack Bang's Eyes (1983)

Haruspex (1983)

Heart of Stone, Dear (1983)

The End of Outward (1983)

And You Did Not Wail (1983)

Bird-Master (1983)

Faith Sufficient (1983)

In the Turpentine Trees (1983)

The Last Astronomer (1983)

Pine Castle (1983)

Two For Four Ninety-Five (1984)

Of Laughter and the Love of Friends (1984)

The Effigy Histories (1984)

I'll See It Done and Then I'll Die (1984)

The Ninety-Ninth Cubicle (1984) also appeared as:

Variant Title: 99th Cubicle (1984)

And Some in Velvet Gowns (1984)

The Doggone Highly Scientific Door (1984)

Oh Whatta You Do When the Well Runs Dry? (1984)

The Man Who Made Models (1984)

John Salt (1985)

All Hollow Though You Be (1985)

Ewe Lamb (1985)

Slippery (1985)

Magazine Section (1985)

Junkyard Thoughts (1986)

Inventions Bright and New (1986)

Something Rich and Strange (1986)

Along the San Pennatus Fault (1986)

Gray Ghost: A Reminiscence (1987)

The Story of Little Briar-Rose, A Scholarly Study (1988)

Task Force Fifty-Eight and One Half (1988)

Rain Mountain (1988)

Rainy Day in Halicarnassus (1988)

Promontory Goats (1988)

Le Hot Sport (1988)

The Man Who Lost His Magic (1989)

Holy Woman (1990)

Maleficent Morning (1990)

Apocryphal Passage of the Last Night of Count Finnegan On Galveston Island (1990)

The Casey Machine (1990)

Buckets Full of Brains (1991)

Anamnesis (1992)

I Don't Care Who Keeps the Cows (1994)

Goldfish (1996)

There'll Always Be Another Me (2003)

33 Novelettes

Through Other Eyes (1960)

The Six Fingers of Time (1960)

Snuffles (1960)

The Pani Planet (1965)

The All-At-Once Man (1970)

Frog on the Mountain (1970)

Continued on Next Rock (1970)

Encased in Ancient Rind (1971) also appeared as:

Variant Title: Incased in Ancient Rind (1971)

Ishmael Into the Barrens (1971)

World Abounding (1971)

And Walk Now Gently Through the Fire (1972)

Scorner's Seat (1973)

Mud Violet (1973)

Flaming Ducks and Giant Bread (1974)

Mr. Hamadryad (1974)

Animal Fair (1974)

Rivers of Damascus (1974)

Or Little Ducks Each Day (1975)

Heart Grow Fonder (1975)

Three Shadows of the Wolf (1975)

Smoe and the Implicit Clay (1976)

Selenium Ghosts of the Eighteen Seventies (1978)

Quiz Ship Loose (1978)

The Man Who Walked Through Cracks (1978)

St. Poleander's Eve (1979)

The Funny Face Murders (1980)

The Forty-Seventh Island (1980)

Bank and Shoal of Time (1981)

Flaming-Arrow (1985)

Episodes of the Argo (1990)

Hound Dog's Ear (1991)

Happening in Chosky Bottoms (1995)

The Emperor's Shoestrings (1997)

1 Novella

From the Thunder Colt's Mouth (1975)