Lafferty News (Issue 5)

The biggest Lafferty news of late is that he is finally being published again.  Only e-books for Kindle are available so far, and only in the U.K., but rumour has it that this announcement will be followed by further announcements of physical books, USA releases, and also a brand new Best Of Lafferty. I'm guessing these developments will happen within the year, but that's just a guess.  The electronic 'covers' of the new releases seem like fairly slapped together stock art, and I think they'll tend to be misleading to potential readers.  It seems as if the publishers are just trying to reach out to common denominator SF/Fantasy fans and such folks are likely to be disappointed, or at least confused, when they start to read what's 'under' these covers.  The artwork should reflect the oddity and idiosyncrasy of the product.  These images are certainly indicative of Lafferty's cosmic themes, but you'd never guess from these covers that those cosmic themes are going to be narrated in the folksy, 'outsider art', experimental, oral tall tale sort of way that Lafferty has.  Here's hoping the physical releases will feature something more original and appropriate to each book's content.  You can see the blurbed book descriptions HERE.

Japanese Lafferty fan and scholar, Kenji Matsuzaki, shared on the East of Laughter Lafferty Facebook group the following information:  'According to the LOCUS February issue, "R. A. LAFFERTY’s new collection The Best of R.A. Lafferty sold to Malcolm Edwards at Gollancz, along with classic SF novels Space Chantey, Past Master, and Fourth Mansions; another 18 books were resold to Edwards for e-book publication as part of Gollancz’s SF Gateway intiative, all via Eddie Schneider at JABberwocky Literary Agency in association with John Berlyne at Zeno Agency."'

Next in news is that the long awaited third volume of Lafferty's complete short stories, The Man Underneath, is out from Centipede Press.

Thanks to photos shared by Felipe Guerrero in the Facebook group, I think we can see that this is the most beautiful edition they've made yet.  I'm waiting with baited breath to get my copy (which takes a few months longer to get in the UK).

The story selection is a very good one, but it still has that overly random feel to it that each of the TOCs has had in this series.  It feels as if it's not curated at all, having no sensitivity for how stories might sit side by side with one another or how the experience of reading them straight through the book might be enhanced by some selection of which flows into which.  Oh well.

Finally in Lafferty publishing news, volume 3 of Feast of Laughter: An Appreciation of R. A. Lafferty has hit the streets as well.  It's available on Amazon for a number of countries.  For a list of those, plus a link to the free pdf, see http://www.feastoflaughter.org/.  It's longer than ever and packed with goodness: more reprints of essays on Lafferty from years past, academic and otherwise; new essays, also academic and otherwise; new stories, poems, and artwork; more reflections from Lafferty translators; an interview with Harlan Ellison about Lafferty; letters between Lafferty and Alan Dean Foster (who, incidentally, wrote the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens tie-in novel); a rare and excellent Lafferty non-fiction piece, 'Tell It Funny, Og', and one of my all-time favourite short stories by Lafferty, 'Configuration of the North Shore'.  I once again contributed an essay (on Lafferty and monsters) and a short story.  

Michael Swanwick kindly wrote about our efforts with FoL on his blog:

Feast of Laughter has to be one of the most extraordinary fannish feats of recent years. It's a full-length book/zine containing new and reprint essays, appreciations, letters, whatevers pertaining to the man who was easily the most original science fiction writer of the Twentieth Century --Raphael Aloysius Lafferty. 

R. A. Lafferty, "Ray" as his friends called him, was, during his lifetime, recognized as one of the giants of the field. Now, alas, he's close to forgotten. 

But not quite! Some of the great man's friends and admirers have been working hard to reignite Lafferty's reputation. This volume of Feast of Laughter is the third collection of Laffertiana and it is a must for all serious Lafferty fans.

Feast of Laughter volume 4 is now underway and the content we have so far promises to be just as amazing.  The most exciting feature in the forthcoming volume for me is definitely that we obtained permission and rights to include a never-before-published short story by Lafferty, 'The Rod and the Ring'.  It's a great one too.  There is the usual open call for submissions, but with a special emphasis this time round on what our editor in chief, Kevin Cheek, is calling 'Lightning Essays':  around 300 to 600 words 'About Lafferty's writing, life, legacy, influence, or a personal reminiscence about your experience reading Lafferty'.  Again see http://www.feastoflaughter.org/ for details and where to send your submissions.

Lastly, if you haven't heard, the first ever 'LaffCon' is being held in New Jersey this June. Michael Swanwick also kindly mentioned LaffCon1 in his blog post above, at which he will be the Guest of Honor. I hope to make it myself if I can garner travelling funds from my university.  We shall see.

Note the hilariously clever 'Join us' paragraph at the bottom of the flyer - better image HERE (art by Anthony Ryan Rhodes, wit by John Owen).  

Welp, that's all for now!  Very exciting times for all things Lafferty.

Dissertation is in and Feast of Laughter 2 is out!

The dissertation is handed in.  I didn't get to take the argument as far down its arc as I'd hoped.  I knew the 10,000 word limitation couldn't contain what I wanted to say, but it contained even less than I predicted.  For example, my section on 'Snuffles' was reduced to a paragraph and I didn't get to include a discussion of 'Days of Grass, Days of Straw' at all!  Ai yi yi.  Guess that and some other overflow will be the next chapter in my exploration of the ecomonstrous in Cormac McCarthy and Lafferty.  But working on the section on 'Smoe and the Implicit Clay' was especially exciting and enlightening to me.  It will take much greater detail, tighter argument, and further wrestling with one of Lafferty's most richly layered and bizarre stories, but it felt like I was getting somewhere - especially in happening upon a resonance with a thinker called Alphonso Lingis who has argued for a metaphysics of upthrusting 'faces' in non-human things (a metaphor for the fact that all things are engaged in a task in response to an imperative), which is similar to Lafferty's imagery of faces rising up out of the clay in this tale.  I will upload the paper to my academia.edu site (and provide a link here) when I've received a mark on it and made a few adjustments based on that feedback.  It's only an undergraduate dissertation, but the paucity of academic writing on Lafferty available on the web perhaps justifies sharing it with the public.

Having said that, here's a feast of writing about Lafferty (academic and otherwise) that I've yet again been privileged to make contributions to:  that's right, Volume 2 of Feast of Laughter: An Appreciation of R. A. Lafferty is hot off the press!  This thing is more of a beast of a feast than volume one.  The quantity and quality of the content have only increased (as well as the inner layout and design of the text).  We're so surprised this thing is going from strength to strength - not because we think Lafferty fans aren't enthusiastic and talented, but because we just had no idea how many great people would make great contributions as a pure labour of love (there's no profit garnered from the books at this stage).  There are reports from Laffertians in Japan, UK, Netherlands, Germany, and Russia.  Truly fascinating stuff, trust me.  There are new essays on how Lafferty's fiction works and what it achieves, as well as some more excellent and obscure reprints (including an academic article from a Thomas More journal on Lafferty's Past Master), some in-depth elucidations of Lafferty's barely-read, but by all accounts masterful, Argo Mythos, and reviews of a number of Lafferty's books.  There are a variety of creative approaches in all this as well, from the highly academic to the utterly experimental, each enlightening and enthralling in its own way.  And, in fact, as I've been reading through it, I've been amazed to note that the essays form almost a Laffertian baton race, where each new article picks up certain threads from the others and further elaborates.  A big picture of the ethos and workings of Lafferty's cosmos is starting to emerge, I swear!  There are also creative contributions again:  songs, poems, stories, and art - including, again, Lissanne Lake as cover artist:  her lovely rendering of Lafferty's short story 'Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas'.  That story is also included in this volume, as well as an interview with Lafferty by Tom Jackson.  We also got another professional 'lafferty' (an attempt to write a story in Lafferty's signature style), this time by Howard Waldrop!

I know I haven't reviewed volume 1 yet, as I promised I would, but I will and then I'll review this one as well.  I want to briefly engage each and every piece in each volume, partly for the sake of each contributor getting at least that tiny bit of direct engagement with their work, but also just because each contribution is valuable and fascinating for its part played in the emergence of a Lafferty revival.  And for the record, there are, from time to time, certain interpretations and viewpoints that I strenuously disagree with in these contributions.  So it's not just a back-slapping club but a genuinely diverse and opinionated community.  But I'm profoundly grateful for those views that spark rebuttal in me:  iron sharpens iron and all that.

There's lots of other Lafferty news that I'd like to report on (like the induction of Lafferty into the Oklahoma Writers Hall of Fame and related events).  But it will all have to await another post.

Lafferty News (Issue 3!)

Okay, it’s unfortunate I haven’t been able to keep up with this more regularly because there have been regular, sometimes weekly, developments.  Here’s what I can remember, starting with the newsworthy item most recent and biggest:

• Centipede Press have announced the release of Volume 2 of their Lafferty Library:  The Man with the Aura (introduction by Harlan Ellison).

http://www.centipedepress.com/sf/manwithaura.html

(I gotta say, I like this cover for the second volume a LOT better than the cover for the first.)

Interestingly, they've also announced a second limited run of Volume 1: The Man Who Made Models.  So if you're kicking yourself for not getting it the first time round, you've been granted a second chance:  http://www.centipedepress.com/home.html.

• Feast of Laughter editor, Kevin Cheek, announced the deadline for submissions to Issue 2; an announcement that Andrew Ferguson kindly reblogged with not a little urgency.  

Says Kevin:

Deadlines:

• Expression of Interest: Saturday, January 31, 2015
• Content complete: Friday, February 20, 2015
• Publication: Saturday, March 18, 2015

Contact:

Email editor@feastoflaughter.org with all your ideas, submissions, stories, daydreams of things you'd love to write about R. A. Lafferty, and even requests.

• If you didn’t see Andrew’s photos of the Lafferty piece in This Land, you’ll wanna check those out.  I would love to see Lafferty more and more often in contemporary journalistic print like this.

• Lafferty’s short story ‘What’s the Name of That Town?’ (1964) was mentioned last week on a WNPR news radio program summary:  ‘It's a brilliant story on a number of levels and one of those levels has to do with the impossibility of suppressing historical records.’  (The radio program was about ‘historical deletion’, a theme indeed dear to Lafferty.)

• It was pretty exciting to see Lafferty’s lesser known story ‘Thieving Bear Planet’ included on the Electric Literature website in an article entitled ‘31 Fairly Obscure Literary Monsters’. (It was a Halloween piece, but I didn’t see it until after I’d posted Issue 2 of Lafferty News in November.)  It was also amusing to see that they used a picture of the ‘Ro-Bear Berbils’ from the Thundercats cartoon.  When I saw the Berbils on an episode of the new Thundercats series a few years ago, I was immediately put in mind of the creatures in Lafferty’s ‘Thieving Bear Planet’.  Seems I’m not the only one!

• Andrew Ferguson also announced that his article for the scholarly journal Science Fiction Studies went live in November.  This is only the second ever peer-reviewed academic essay on Lafferty, the last one from 1983.  Andrew’s fascinating article is entitled ‘R.A. Lafferty's Escape from Flatland; or, How to Build a World in Three Easy Steps’ and draws on the work of Paul Ricoeur.  I’ll do a full review of it at a later point.

• Andrew himself made Lafferty news by being included in the ‘Bright Young Collectors’ series in Fine Books Magazine for his extensive Lafferty collection, one to make the rest of us drool and contemplate burglary.  Mr. Ferguson even came out from behind the scholarly curtain to allow a fine photo portrait of his person to go public.

• It’s worth noting that the indefatigible and skilled Rich Persaud is always updating and innovating the ralafferty.org website in a number of ways.  My favourite and most-used aspect of late is that now the title of every single published Lafferty story is listed in chronology of first publication, with the ability for anyone to comment on each story - a function I have availed myself of several times now and urge the rest of you to go and do likewise.  This is a very easy and permanent way for the Lafferty community to really get busy with the joy of discussing his works.  Every type of comment is welcome and appropriate, from simple exclamations of ‘this is one of my faves!’ or ‘I never liked this one’ to more in-depth commentary and analysis.

There is also a page that lists Lafferty’s own favourite stories, at least the ones he mentioned were personal favourites in interviews - with a few quotes from the man himself about this.  Very intriguing.  There’s a page devoted to listing out the books that Lafferty was known to have possessed in his personal library, usually with a comment or two from Lafferty about each book.  This is updated at intervals when new information on the matter is obtained.  And there’s a page with a working timeline of Lafferty’s life.  And there’s more, but you must explore!

• In my own personal Lafferty-related news, I’m happy to report that I’ve received an offer from the University of Glasgow to start a PhD on Lafferty this October.  It will develop the topic of the Honours Dissertation that I’m writing this semester on the ‘ecomonstrous’ aesthetic in Lafferty and Cormac McCarthy.  Now to find some funding!  If any of you know of some Lafferty Studies scholarship that I’ve somehow overlooked, please let me know!  I’m sure they’d be happy to fund the first-ever doctoral thesis on Lafferty, right?

There have also been a number of Lafferty book and story reviews on various blogs in the past few months as well, but I’m going to do a separate blog post on those.  Please let me know of any news I missed!  (I’ll try to do these more frequently so they won’t end up as long and involved as this one.)

Join the Feast!

It is good to have a piece of the deep new knowledge as it births, it is good to see the future lifted out of the future pots.

-R. A. Lafferty, 'Funnyfingers' (1976)

The announcement you've been waiting for:

Feast of Laughter Issue 1 is live on Amazon:

US: http://www.amazon.com/Feast-Laughter-Issue-Kt…/…/0692324100/

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0692324100/

FR: http://www.amazon.fr/gp/aw/d/0692324100/

DE: http://www.amazon.de/gp/aw/d/0692324100/

ES: http://www.amazon.es/gp/aw/d/0692324100/

IT: http://www.amazon.it/gp/aw/d/0692324100/

(It's listed at a limited-time discount price for, I believe, the first month.)

248 pages, which feature 12 essays, 2 poems, 4 pieces of art, 5 short stories, and 1 interview (with John Pelan, editor of the Centipede Press Lafferty Library). One of the short stories is by R. A. Lafferty himself and another is by award-winning author Michael Bishop.  (Cover painting by Lissanne Lake, illustrating a scene in Lafferty's 1973 story 'Days of Grass, Days of Straw'.) 

From the Amazon description: "A labor of love by inspired fans, this magazine celebrates the literature of an original American treasure, R. A. Lafferty. Praised by Neil Gaiman and Gene Wolfe, compared to Borges and Garcia Marquez, Lafferty eludes genres. Sanguine about the availability of his writing, Lafferty fans created this enthusiastic mosaic of conversation, critique, fiction, poetry and art. Now, it's your turn."

As I write this, the magazine/book is rated number 7 on Amazon's Best Sellers in Science Fiction History & Criticism (it was at number 4 for an hour or so!).  

CONTENTS:
The Origin of the Feast by Kevin Cheek
Talking About Talking About Lafferty by Kevin A. Cheek
Laffertography by Rich Persaud
A Few Words About R. A. Lafferty by Eric Walker
If You do not Love Words: The Pleasure of Reading Lafferty by Elaine Cochrane
An Interview with John Pelan by John Owen
Lafferty Deserves a Documentary - a call to action by Andrew Mass
Aloysius Ascending by David Cruces
An Instinct for Friendship by John Owen
To Be Continued? by John Barach
Up Close, and in Particular by Martin Heavisides
Hillary Ardri and Jane Chantal Ardri Illustration by Lydia Petersen
The Epic of Man and His Friends or Slumming It With the Ontic Outcasts or May Our Eyes Be Big Enough To Take In the Nine Hundred Percent Gain in Everything! by Daniel Otto Jack Petersen
Aeviternity: R.A. Lafferty’s Thomistic Philosophy of Time in the Argo Cycle by Gregorio Montejo
Some notes on play, time and Catholic Social Teaching in R.A. Lafferty by John Ellison
O Golden, O Silken, O Mother-Loving World! an original story by Daniel Otto Jack Petersen
The Prybar Spiel by Noah Wareness
The Woman Who Wondered What Onions Think by J Simon
Of Crystalline Labyrinths and the New Creation by Michael Bishop
The Six Fingers of Time - an essay by Andrew Ferguson
The Six Fingers of Time - a review by Kevin A. Cheek
The Six Fingers of Time by R. A. Lafferty

LAFFERTY NEWS! (issue 2)

Man, tons of Lafferty developments have emerged and this post will only be able to highlight some of the larger ones.  The pace and quantity of Lafferty developments seems to warrant me putting out ‘issues’ of this news.  (I’m happy for some other more legitimate site to pick this up and run it.  Let me know if you’re interested.  Anyone can just link to it as well, obviously.)

[UPDATE: this deserves a post of its own - and will get one eventually - but, amidst all the other Lafferty developments over the past several weeks, Rich Persaud created a whole new multi-faceted Lafferty website that is an absolute treasure trove of Lafferty links and commentary and information:  http://www.ralafferty.org/.]

·         Feast of Laughter, issue 1, looks due to come out possibly as soon as the end of this week.  This is a fan-made Lafferty fanzine put together by the Facebook group East of Laughter: An Appreciation of R. A.Lafferty.  I’ve been keeping this one under my hat, wanting to make sure it was going to turn out to be more than a rumour.  As a contributor and proof-reader, I can assure it is thoroughly in the works.  It looks like it will probably end up around 200 pages, available digitally and in print (using Print On Demand technology, so there are no worries of a limited print run – you’ll get a copy if you want it).  The content is stunning, folks.  Seriously.  Not only will the zine reprint Lafferty’s story ‘The Six Fingers of Time’, it will feature an essay on that story by Lafferty biographer, Andrew Ferguson.  Also included are reprints of a few important essays online about Lafferty that can only be found through long and diligent search, and a host of others, first published here, by various fans old and new who bring a wide array of talents and perspectives to the table.  It’s all very intelligent and warm and fun.  It also includes both a reminiscence and a short story (a Lafferty pastiche) by none other than award-winning author Michael Bishop.  There are several more Lafferty-inspired works of fiction as well.  There are a few pieces of fan art included and the cover painting is by none other than Lissanne Lake, who illustrated the collection Lafferty in Orbit (1991) and Lafferty’s novel Sindbad: The 13th Voyage (1999).  Stay tuned for an official release date and link!  (Sorry to sound like a salesman in this ostensible news piece – it’s just that I’m incredibly thrilled about a meaty slice of Lafferty revival like this coming onto the scene.  We contributors make no money from sales.  It’s a total labour of love.  If any actual profit accrues, this will go straight back to the zine to fund future issues and operations.)

 

·         On a recent blog post, Andrew Ferguson has kindly provided a link to an audio recording of the Lafferty panel discussion from Worldcon that took place recently (which included Andrew and Michael Swanwick among the panelists).  Most of what’s said is perfectly discernible and the discussion is choice, with a few bits of historical information about Lafferty and his works that you won’t have heard before.  (I think the link to the audio expires in 30 days.)

·         In recognition of Lafferty’s centenary, Locus magazine’s November issue features a brief bio of Lafferty by Andrew Ferguson and reprints Lafferty’s short story ‘Seven-Day Terror’.

 

 

·         The Oklahoma magazine This Land just put out a new ‘sci-fi’ themed issue that celebrates Lafferty’s centenary with a wonderful article and by reprinting Lafferty’s short story ‘Nine Hundred Grandmothers’.  (The article at the link features a photograph of Lafferty’s incredible office door!  I never knew about the existence of this – it’s like a picture of the inside of Lafferty’s mind.)

·         In Japan, the Hayakawa SF Magazine just released a Lafferty centennial issue that features a number of essays on Lafferty and a load of wonderful artwork that Andrew Ferguson has kindly photographed on his latest blog post.  This artwork adorns the republication of no less than three (translated) Lafferty stories in the magazine:  'St. Poleander's Eve', 'The Only Tune That He Could Play', and 'Cabrito'.  David Cruces (from the East of Laughter Facebook group) also photographed something highly interesting in his copy – a mention of this blog and fellow Lafferty bloggers!

 

 

 

Some blogs here and there (English-language and others) have been popping up with brief reviews or thoughts on Lafferty, but I don’t have time to link to them in this issue of LAFFERTY NEWS!.  I’ll try to do so soon.  One of many things that’s exciting about all of the above is that a number of Lafferty stories just came back into print!  Lafferty, in 2014, is in the magazines again!  In this regard, I note that the English-language publications chose to reprint early (1960s), celebrated, and comparatively 'easy' Lafferty tales, while the Japanese magazine published later (late 70s), lesser known, and 'difficult' (though delightfully weird and wild) Lafferty tales.  Japan has always embraced Lafferty a fair bit more voraciously than English-language countries, and Japanese readers seem to be much more eager to follow Lafferty into his strangest territories. 

 

(Feel free to let me know of any other Lafferty developments you think are newsworthy and I'll try to include them in the next issue.)