I don't have words for how exciting this is. The author of this blog is Andrew Ferguson. He is the first person to write a scholarly paper on Lafferty and he is due to be Lafferty's first biographer relatively soon. (The biography to be published within a few years from now, I believe.) I know first hand from reading his academic works on Lafferty and from email correspondence and from his contributions to the discussions on this fan-blog that there is no living person who knows as much gritty, juicy, exciting detail about Lafferty's life and bibliography than this dedicated young scholar. He is also the foremost interpreter of Lafferty, performing highly sophisticated academic pyrotechnics in his scholarly papers on Lafferty. They will make your head spin with their intellectual rigour and utterly delight you with the insight and enlightenment they bring to a reading of Lafferty's hyper-exotic and ultra-inimitable fiction.
I'm sorry I've kept you so long with my paltry recommendation! Go forth from here and read the REAL Lafferty blog...
Continued on Next Rock...
[it's the same link twice - for emphasis!]
Raphael Aloysius Lafferty (1914-2002)
9 comments:
You're too kind, Daniel!
Ideally, people will read this blog, and mine, and the dozens of others that will undoubtedly spring up as Ray's work starts rolling off the presses once again. His first century was great, but the second one should be a real humdinger...
It's funny, my very first post for this blog (November 26, 2009) was titled 'Laffertian Bloggers Unite!' and it consisted simply of this: 'Why is there not an entire alternate blogosphere dedicated to this man and his work?!?! Let this be a start...'
About 3 and half years later, there are finally a few of us to 'unite', ha! I'm very happy to be any part of it. Here's to Lafferty in the 21st century!!
So where is the first biannual Lafferty convention going to be? Could Tulsa accommodate that huge of a crowd at one time?
'that huge of a crowd' - heh heh.
Well, I have gained a little weight...
OK, reading "The Effigy Histories" yesterday: First I e-mailed y'all my impression that Lafferty might have been poking a little fun at himself. Then it struck me: Karl Effigy is exactly the model of a modern political pundit! He sounded reasonable, or at least convincing, but his facts were all wrong. Was Lafferty, with his trademark eerie insight, accurately predicting the punditocracy?
I would love to have an event in Tulsa but my sense is that it won't work out anytime soon--the formerly annual Conestoga convention hasn't been held the last few years and probably won't be in the future, and it's not the easiest destination to get a bunch of people together.
However I am relatively certain there will be some Lafferty events as part of the 2014 Worldcon in London; those of you able to consider that may want to begin making plans: http://www.loncon3.org/
ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, this is VERY good news for my side of the world!!! (And it's not during university semester either.) How soon will we be able to find out if Laff events are on the bill do you think, Andrew?
I'm sure there will be Lafferty stuff on there. Locus is always at Worldcon, and they have a clear interest in making sure the Lafferty centennial is marked, so it would greatly surprise me if we couldn't pull something together.
Also: those in the US/Canada or who otherwise can't make it to London in summer 2014, consider marking your calendar for the World Fantasy Convention in Arlington VA (DC suburb) in November 2014. Pretty sure most of the stuff will be reprised there; I'll certainly try to get something on the docket there since it's only a short drive away.
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