Short Story Review # 2: The Wooly World of Barnaby Sheen (1973)

Rating:  3/5

This has always been a minor favourite of mine.  I like other stories from this cycle (most of them collected in Through Elegant Eyes: Stories of Austro and the Men Who Know Everything) far better, but each one is crucial to the whole that they together build, and this one in particular is just fun to me.  It does get a little deeper with each reading.  It is overtly theological in theme, especially as regards creations and creators, but, as with Lafferty's similarly themed story 'Snuffles' (1960), it is rather baffling as to its theological point.  Yet fascinating.  This one feels quite light and playful though, just touching on the themes, getting you thinking in that direction, rather than fully immersing you in theological ruminations.  It is consequently not the masterwork that 'Snuffles' clearly is.  In addition to the theology, this is one of many stories that exhibit Lafferty's absolute delight in geology.  Indeed, Barnaby expresses that it is only to study some geological issues that he has created this two-ton, cubic meter chunk of world.  Laff paints a nice little picture of this odd creation with its periscopic microscopes protruding from its transparent dome.  The ghostly figure of Mary Mondo hovering over that little world issuing her various Latin fiats was more suggestive to me this time, adding some weight.  But it seems to me essentially a humorous little prank story, an entertaining diversion.  (It also pairs nicely with its companion story in this cycle, a yarn with very similar theme and tone:  'The Ungodly Mice of Doctor Drakos'.)

Interestingly, despite its title and premise, this story didn't strike me as being about 'world-building' all that much, which is generally the mega-/meta-theme of Lafferty's entire body of work.  I didn't really get the sense of being invited to participate in building new worlds that you often get from Lafferty.  We do, however, get the bang, the explosion, that so many stories in this cycle, and elsewhere, do include.  Indeed, it seems more about minor world-destruction than creation, but again in a merely playful way and not leading to 'new worlds from old'.  But I'm probably missing something.

* Discussion of 'The Wooly World of Barnaby Sheen' on Facebook

* Comments for 'The Wooly World of Barnaby Sheen' on ralafferty.org

(From Interior Art by Joe Staton for Through Elegant Eyes)

Lafferty news (that’s right, NEWS!) – Reminiscent of a Future

All great smells […] have a reminiscent element, but with this it is reminiscent of a future.  There is a pleasurable mustiness here, that’s sure, but it isn’t of a past time:  it’s of a future time, long waiting, and now beginning to unfold suddenly.

-R. A. Lafferty, ‘World Abounding’ (1971)

There is indeed a whiff of something approaching in the air.  Lafferty’s breakthrough into a larger audience has been ‘long waiting’ and seems as if indeed it may be about to ‘unfold suddenly’ in this the centenary year of his birth.  Neil Gaiman has been talking about him a lot in podcasts recently, so much so that Lafferty’s name made it into a Wall Street Journal blog alongside Flann O’Brien.  Just scant weeks after this brief article appeared, another more lengthy news piece was featured in The Guardian this past week devoted exclusively to Lafferty, citing again Neil Gaiman and also ‘our own’ (as I like to think of him) Lafferty scholar, Andrew Ferguson.  This Guardian article is currently being repeatedly tweeted on Twitter and no doubt other social media networks.  The article comes out in conjunction with the Lafferty panel  (hosted by Ferguson and featuring Michael Swanwick) that was held last week at the London WorldCon. 

In my own Lafferty news, I recently started an RALaffertyTweets account on Twitter that has garnered 80 followers in just a few weeks (seems a lot for such an obscure writer).  I started it because I have been officially approved to write my dissertation this year on Lafferty (more on that in the next blog post), but it has come in handy as this article on Lafferty has broken.  

All in all, it seems like exciting and auspicious times for all things Lafferty.  The following from Lafferty’s story ‘The Wooly World of Barnaby Sheen’ (1973) comes to mind:

“Get ready for it, kids, don’t miss it!” Mary Mondo chirped so clearly as to be heard by every ear in the room. “This is going to be good.”

But, of course, Mary Mondo is a ghost and most of the time the people around her only slightly hear her, if at all.  One can’t help but feel that this potential breakthrough for Lafferty’s work is profoundly promising, but also precarious.  This moment of wider recognition for Lafferty feels a bit like the uncertain cliff-hanger endings to so many of his tales (e.g. ‘Frog On the Mountain’, ‘The Configuration of the North Shore’, Annals of Klepsis, Serpent’s Egg).  But I’ll gladly take the expectant stance of the ending of his seminal 1968 novel Past Master:

Remember it?  Then it happened?

Be quiet.  We wait.

[…]

Well, does it happen? Does the reaction become the birthing? What does it look like?

Will we see it now, in face and rump, the new-born world?

Be quiet. We hope.

(artwork for Past Master by Leo and Diane Dillon)

The Oklahoma Troll

'Lafferty?  Lafferty?  He's that Oklahoma troll who's been bamboozling us for years with his indescribable and impossible stories.  (Who but Lafferty would write a story whose main characters are a ghost, a sawdust-filled doll, and an Australopithecus?)  His work has been published all over the lot, though he's best known outside the science-fiction world for his powerful novel of the American Indians, Okla Hannali. An issue of New Dimensions wouldn't be complete without him.'

-Robert Silverberg, intro blurb to Lafferty's story 'Animal Fair' in New Dimensions IV (1974)