Ok, folks, I'm stepping out from behind the blog and showing my face to introduce my forthcoming PhD and the crowdfunding campaign we've launched for it. I share it here because I genuinely think that some Lafferty fans may want to get behind the academic study of his work. I believe that is one more crucial way that awareness and appreciation of Lafferty's art and thought can find traction and permanence in the world. It comes first from readers, then readers enthusing with fellow readers, then popular forums and writings, then academic study - and through that last step the cycle begins again and in an ever widening radius as culture begins to be impacted by both critical and popular engagement with an artist. It's not that neat and tidy, of course, but that's a rough sketch of what I hope will happen and what I do actually believe is already happening as the likes of
Andrew Ferguson do professional theoretical work on Lafferty, and bloggers like me,
Kevin, and
John blog about him, and the
Facebook Lafferty group discusses him, and the folks contributing to
Feast of Laughter write about his work, and so on. It's happening!
'This is beginning, this is happening! Let no least part of it ever forget the primordial tumble that is the beginning!'
-R. A. Lafferty, 'Symposium' (1973)
Neil Gaiman kindly retweeted about the campaign already (see below video) and it's about 23% funded as I write this. A great start for which we're thankful.
So, thanks for taking a look at the video below (don't worry, there are plenty of images too, not just my talking head!), and I hope you'll have a wee gander at the perks on the
Indiegogo site as well. (You can follow the campaign on
Twitter and
Facebook as well.)
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