Monday, February 27, 2012

'One of his eyes is a laser and the other an x-ray'

'R. A. Lafferty is the result of the ecstatic union of a power shovel and a moonbeam.  One of his eyes is a laser and the other an x-ray, and he has a little silver anvil on which, warmed by laughter, he shapes logic to his own ends.  For breakfast he eats pomposity, for lunch he nibbles on the improbable, and he dines on fixed ideas (yours and mine) which he finds about him in great abundance.  He disjoints and broils them.  He has educated every school he ever attended and left when they wouldn't learn.  He got his outside, by talking to people like you.  Nobody knows where he really came from.

'As for his stories:  some time ago I wrote in The New York Times that some day the taxonomists, those tireless obsessives who put labels on everything, will have to categorize literature as Westerns, fantasies, romances, lafferties, science fiction, mysteries...'

-Theodore Sturgeon, introducing Lafferty's story 'Quiz Ship Loose' in Chrysalis Volume 2 (1978)


No comments:

'It was all strong talk with the horns and hooves still on it.'
(R. A. Lafferty, The Devil is Dead)