tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5904298510069073946.post2068409794409993424..comments2024-01-21T11:22:28.211-08:00Comments on The Ants Of God Are Queer Fish: Thoughts on Lafferty's East of Laughter, Part 2 of 2Daniel Otto Jack Petersenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278782665152906956noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5904298510069073946.post-26988731118228672882011-09-12T07:15:23.175-07:002011-09-12T07:15:23.175-07:00Thank you very much for the encouraging feedback, ...Thank you very much for the encouraging feedback, Andrew. I wasn't necessarily expecting anyone to read all of or engage with my longwindedness here - I just needed to get my thoughts organised and put it all out there. So glad to have received such thoughtful comment so soon.<br /><br />Excellent question about Atrox's murder, I hadn't thought of that. I have a feeling that's rather hugely significant to everything I'm saying here. And I think it feeds into your questions about 'forgery' since Atrox calls himself Denis Lollardy's sort of creative spirit of forgery by which he is able to create what he does. And Atrox has to die for Denis to eventually take over the role of Head Scribbling Giant. And the character who kills him is the explicitly named Judas of the Group of Twelve. Hm.<br /><br />(Gene Wolfe's afterword seems to consider that Judas character to be the central 'villain' of the novel, the antithesis of Lafferty's own worldview and stance, which would be significant in relation to all this as well.)<br /><br />But yes, hearing of a master forger in both Sandaliotis and East of Laughter has alerted me also to the obvious significance Lafferty places on this idea and has got me thinking too. You may be onto something with the simulacrum.<br /><br />Earning reality is certainly a central theme here - in fact, it seems there's an out and out challenge that we wise up and do so. However, I would hasten to add that implicitly in this novel and more explicitly in other places (e.g. Aurelia), Lafferty would have us see this isn't something we do on our own without any 'outside help'. The Sussex Wraiths certainly show that there are clearly wrong and usurping ways to try to earn one's reality - that only end in laughably absurd grotesquery. The authentic replacement giants on the other hand are *chosen* and *invited* by their predecessors. Furthermore, the whole group was only made aware of their potential unreality by Atrox's book about tests to see if one is dreaming. They keep receiving revelations, invitations, and empowerings along the way to help them 'earn' their reality. They certainly must choose to respond and step into these graces that are offered them, but I think Lafferty would say that without someone more real than them giving them a helping hand, they would have no real chance of becoming real. And so with us.<br /><br />(I hope to say more about the, as you rightly say, *startling* 'Story of Little Briar Rose' at a later date. It's a gem.)Daniel Otto Jack Petersenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07278782665152906956noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5904298510069073946.post-14555172299408662712011-09-11T23:49:12.588-07:002011-09-11T23:49:12.588-07:00Bravo! Very nicely done, pulling in a number of st...Bravo! Very nicely done, pulling in a number of strands that had stuck out to me in previous readings but I hadn't connected (not least the absolutely central parallel to that Fall of Rome passage). What do we make of the murder of Atrox himself in the Sky Palace, on the top of that staircase?<br /><br />Also, I'm left wondering as always about the idea of "forgery" in Lafferty's works--both here and in Sandaliotis, and elsewhere obviously, forgery appears not only as art form but potentially art form greater than any original could be. And that's even assuming the original to have existed at some point, in any other sense than mental or imaginary—almost as if Lafferty is taking up and redeeming the idea of the "simulacrum", which Baudrillard has taught us to be so suspicious of.<br /><br />This certainly extends to the characters themselves—they do not touch reality because they are print, they are ink and paper: Lafferty never loses sight of his creatures as beings existing as text. But then he will so often show this and have that textual world subsume our own, as for instance the Argo Legend (esp. the crowning story "Anamnesis") or more compactly the startling "Story of Little Briar Rose" included in the East of Laughter volume.<br /><br />If we ask with his characters, how do we know we're real?, the answer seems to be: we are real if we earn it.Andrewnoreply@blogger.com