'against-the-grain stories; songs-of-rebellion stories even... restructuring and rebirthing myths' - Lafferty's Introduction to Ringing Changes

The following is the introduction found at the beginning of the 1984 Ace collection of Lafferty's short fiction Ringing Changes.  As far as I am aware, it is the only introduction that Lafferty himself wrote to one of his collections.  It's a rare treasure.  It gives some indication of what he hoped many of his stories were doing at the larger scale (rebellion and rebirth) and many witty little insights into individual tales.  He seems to me to be having quite a bit of fun in this introduction.  He is wryly sardonic as always, fun-loving and warm as always, penetrating and insightful as always, cranky and cracked as always, joyously energetic and raucous as always, and delightfully weird and whimsical as always.  I think this little piece of non-fiction by Lafferty, about his own work, is a treasure that deserves to be more widely known about and read and considered when interpreting and enjoying Lafferty's strange brew.  (All ellipses and emphases are in the original.)

INTRODUCTION

by

R. A. Lafferty

Most of these stories were written in the years 1968-1974.  They are of various sorts, but several of them are against-the-grain stories; songs-of-rebellion stories even, though their singing may be a little bit cracked and croaky.  This is because the world was unpatterned and unstructured during those years, and intolerably narrowed and shriveled.  (They conquered us so easily!)  We were a mesmerized world, and we were lost on a day when there wasn't even a battle scheduled.  So several of these pieces are restructuring and rebirthing myths, and there is a touch of groaning and travail in them.

But most of them are no such things.  The stories are these:

"Parthen."  The aliens had landed!...The world rang with cracked melody and everyone was in love with life....Never had the girls been so pretty....I believe that our minds are now on a higher plane....And every one of those men died happy.  That's what made it so nice.

"Old Foot Forgot."  One does whatever one can for "the oneness that is greater than self."...They say "Pray for the happy obliteration."...But somewhere there is a person who revolts and cries, "I would rather burn in a hell forever than suffer happy obliteration.  I'll burn if it be me that burns."

"Dorg."  Rain dances are good; fertility dances are good; so is prayer and chanting.  But there is nothing like ritual drawing and painting on cave walls to keep the world well fed.  What did you think was keeping the world so fertile and burgeoning these days?

"Days of Grass, Days of Straw."  Without the special days that are not in the regular count it just wouldn't be worthwhile.  We need them, we need them, and some of the champions will have to wrestle with the principalities and powers to get them.

"Brain Fever Season."  The seasons have returned in their appointed strengths.  Now we can live again.  Now we can be seasonable fools again.

"And Read the Flesh Between the Lines."  We'll not allow ourselves to be narrowed down forever in a straited world.  We'll explode and regain our real spaciousness.  We'll explode, we'll explode!

"Old Halloween on the Guna Slopes."  O ghostly night, O antic night, when we were ourselves young and ghostly.

"The Ungodly Mice of Doctor Drakos."  Maybe life is no more than globs of gas plasma, green and faintly translucent.  But how is it possible to grow hairs on globs of gas?  This is a sympathetic story about the only animals that everybody loves, mice.

"The Wooly World of Barnaby Sheen."  Barnaby's world was about a cubic meter in volume and it weighed 4,500 pounds.  It had a good selection of rocks, and it developed weather and lively inferior fauna.  Then it got a little bit out of hand.  This tale contains the saddest lament in all literature:  "My house is on fire, my shirt is on fire, and my houseboy has fleas.  What worse can happen?"

"Rivers of Damascus."  There are several way so of looking at any past event in history.  The para-archaeological probe, with a little dowsing added to it, may not be the ideal way, but it can sure cut through theat polarized data of what is sometimes called "conventional history."

"Among the Hairy Earthmen."  This was the "Long Afternoon" that lasted two and a half centuries, possibly the most puzzling two and a half centuries in the history of our world.

"In Outraged Stone."  This is the stubborn refusal to accept that there is no transcendence, that there is no ultimate reality.  

When they try to tell you that you are only an artifact in a collection, that you are not alive, that you have never been alive, that is the time to get mad.

"And Name My Name."  Is it possible that our true identity has been taken away from all of us, that we are only an apish shambles now?

"Why is our identity stolen from us.  Why are we robbed of it?" we ask.

"You aren't robbed of it.  You threw it away," we are told.

"Sky."  Yes, you can pick and choose from among the various realities, selecting the best and most eventful of them and then selecting from the still more rarefied best.  You can do this for quite a while, so long as you are not spooked by things that are the wrong color of white, so long as you are able to refinance your bill with the piper, so long as you have hollow bones and a hollow heart.

"For All Poor Folks at Picketwire."  It wasn't a bad place at all compared to some others.  Consider that you can have a workshop in total vacuum, that it is dust free and without gravity, that it is spared the effect of every magnetized cloud, of every voltage differential, of every solar wind.  And it's beyond the influence of time and temperature and hard radiation and "all beautiful beams."  Nuggets of gold and orichalcum!  What a place to work!  Even the main disadvantage of it can be turned to an advantage, sort of, sort of.

"Oh Whatta You Do When the Well Runs Dry?"  On November 7, 1999, the well ran dry.  This was the well of Wit and Idea.  It was the Well of the World.

Ah, but there was a way to get more water out of the well.  There were shabby people who still had plenty of shabby water, and they were willing to share it.  But it was stronger water than any of the people had met before.  It was raunchy water, it was vile water.  And the wit and ideas that came from the well now were raunchy also.

There's a twist to the tale of course, but it doesn't make the condition any less raunchy.

"And Some in Velvet Gowns."  Well, if you got all the skin burned off you by space winds, maybe you'd cover yourself with gaudy clothing too.  This is a "the-aliens-are-in-town-and-they're-taking-us-over" story.  But most of them weren't really wearing velvet gowns.  They just had their torsos painted to look like that.

"The Doggone Highly Scientific Door."  If you turned into a dog, would you be the first person or the last person to know it?  And if you turned into a dog interiorly but still kept your human appearance, who would know it first?  If there is an electronic device that can discern between dogs and people, where will it draw the line?

These questions are important since a lot of people are turning into dogs lately.

"Interurban Queen."  This is a "what-if" story.  What if the gasoline-powered internal-combustion "automobile" had not been outlawed early in its career?  What would the effect on manners and mores have been if the automobile, the "selfishness symbol," had been allowed to compete with such communal symbols as the Interurban Electric Trolley Cars?

"Been a Long Long Time."  We will not give a commentary or résumé of this story.  Should we begin to do so, you'd say "Oh, that's old, I know that one," and you'd be wrong.

These stories are intended to be entertainments, even the several of them that leak a little blood out of them.  They are amusements.

Be entertained then, be amused!  And the superior among you will even be delighted in several places.

(Dutch edition: Days of Grass, Days of Straw)

Related on this blog:  Oh rise again and fight some more, dead people! (A Memoir by R. A. Lafferty)

A Travelogue of the Laffertian Landscape, part 4: Never was the World Outlook so bright, and never had the girls been so pretty

I didn’t actually own a collection of short stories by Lafferty until several years into reading him. I simply looked for one Lafferty story at a time in s.f. mags and multi-author anthologies of the 70s/80s at second hand bookshops (reminiscent of the title to his story ‘One At A Time’!). I’d buy dirt cheap 70s anthologies that looked interesting, especially if edited by someone I respected, like Brian Aldiss. That’s how I came across the story ‘Parthen’ in Best SF: 1973, edited by Aldiss and Harry Harrison.

This story (built on the momentum of having read the previously discussed ‘And Walk Now Gently Through the Fire’ [see part 3]) did the trick of hooking me completely. A particular part toward the beginning had me laughing uncontrollably, reading one line again and again, each time erupting afresh in giggles and guffaws—tears in eyes, hand slapping thigh—the works. I’ll get to that in a moment. First, the story begins thusly:


'Never had the springtime been so wonderful. Never had business been so good. Never was the World Outlook so bright. And never had the girls been so pretty.'


Lafferty had a real knack for a cracking opening paragraph to a story. Indeed, the story that follows often cannot live up to its gem of an opening. But this story definitely does. In fact, reading through this story afresh I find it is one of his (perhaps somewhat rare) ‘perfectly’ written stories. The prose just does not falter, right through to the end. It is confident and lyrical; the writing produces an exquisitely taut chord that rings true when plucked (read). It may not be one of his very deepest (though it undoubtedly has depth), but it is one of his most finely crafted in my opinion.

(But always remember, whatever encomiums I employ to describe Lafferty, you must ever be prepared for him to live up to the glowing praise in the queerest way when you actually read him for yourself. I’m firmly convinced he was a great writer, but he was a weird writer! A fact which, for people with tastes like mine, only adds to the esteem we heap on him.)

I still didn’t yet realise how characteristic these few opening lines of ‘Parthen’ were of Lafferty’s wry, consistently anti-utopian satire. And that he usually employed ridicule in such magnanimous-yet-cranky terms—that is, he harangued humanely. That’s why so many people love him irrespective of whether they agree with his ethical, religious, or political framework.

I don’t know how he pulls it off, but these opening lines (especially if seen within his wider work) drip with sarcasm and a certain deep cynicism and yet they evince what seems to be Lafferty’s genuine zest for life, even at its worst. It is not life itself or even certain persons or groups of people, but rather the philosophical (and hence, ethical) thinning of the zest that he objects to crankily (he called himself the ‘cranky old man from Tulsa’). But as I say, so many readers who might even be ideologically on the receiving end of his withering criticism find themselves warming to him because of his affirmation of being human and of life, even when facing a darkness, even when accusing you in particular of supporting a structure that creates that darkness. This is his genius. This is what people of all stripes love him for. The story continues:


'It is true that it was the chilliest spring in decades—sharp, bitter, and eternally foggy—and that the sinuses of Roy Ronsard were in open revolt. It is admitted that bankruptcies were setting records, those of individuals and firms as well as those of nations. It is a fact that the aliens had landed (though their group was not identified) and had published their Declaration that one half of mankind was hereby obsoleted and the other half would be retained as servants. The omens and portents were black, but the spirits of men were the brightest and happiest ever.

'To repeat, never had the girls been so pretty! There was no one who could take exception to that.

'Roy Ronsard himself faced it in a most happy frame of mind. A Higher Set of Values will do wonders toward erasing such mundane everyday irritations.'


The ostensibly light humour, the fun-having sarcasm and lampooning of ‘new moralities’, the effortless and unobtrusive introduction into the narrative of a well-worn s.f. trope (‘the aliens had landed’) all combine to create simple, pleasurable entertainment… and no one really suspects (or is only marginally wary of) the bite beneath the ink! And Lafferty just goes on light-footedly satirizing and, indeed, simply joking around:


'There is much to be said in favor of cold, vicious springtimes. They represent weather at its most vital. There is something to be said for exploding sinuses. They indicate, at least, that a man has something in his head. And, if a man is going to be a bankrupt, then let him be a happy bankrupt.

'When the girls are as pretty as all that, the rest does not matter.


Lafferty also had a knack for odd description of odd things and would go into great detail unexpectedly, frequently thereby disclosing his considerable (in the main arcane) erudition. We have been informed that the girls are unusually and perhaps even unbelievably pretty and many an author might leave it at that. But Lafferty’s next line is ‘Let us make you understand just how pretty Eva was!’ And Eva is the first in a rapid succession of lovely women he sketches. And what you would expect to come next? What kind of description in what kind of terms? No one would do it like Lafferty does:


'She was a golden girl with hair like honey. Her eyes were blue—or they were green—or they were violet or gold and they held a twinkle that melted a man. The legs of the creature were like Greek poetry and the motion of her hips was something that went out of the world with the old sail ships. Her breastwork had a Gothic upsweep—her neck was passion incarnate and her shoulders were of a glory past describing. In her whole person she was a study of celestial curvatures.

'Should you never have heard her voice, the meaning of music has been denied you. Have you not enjoyed her laughter? Then your life remains unrealized.


Let me pause and suggest the following exercise to you: some day, once you’ve read and enjoyed Lafferty for a while, try typing out a paragraph you always found humorous. What an effect it has! I grinned as I began. The grin widened into a (probably frightening-looking) smile. Little involuntary giggles began erupting. By the time I was done I was quietly but firmly belly-laughing, shoulders gently convulsing. I had to savour a few of the lines again, then laughed yet louder, sighed. No doubt there was a twinkle in my eye that if my wife or one of my children had entered the room and observed, they would have queried: ‘What mischief have you been up to?’ What a gift to write like that! (C. S. Lewis has wonderful moments where he achieves this and G. K. Chesterton many more.)

Even given that the grandiosity of this praise is necessary to the plot, what a wonderful way to describe the beauty of a woman! A quality I appreciate in Lafferty (and I’m not sure how many others would appreciate this) is that he did not describe graphic sexual scenes (unlike, say, his Catholic contemporary Gene Wolfe), though he by no means shrank from the subject on a number of levels – married, illicit, fulfilling, or unfulfilling. Elsewhere in this connection, Lafferty remarked:


‘Well, well, was there a seduction scene then? Enjoy or abhor such things according to your inclination, as the sage says, but it is contemptible to seek such vicariously.’


(From his novel The Devil Is Dead. He seemed consistently to disdain and subvert society’s appetite for pornography – see, for example, his story ‘Brain Fever Season’ – collected in Ringing Changes.)

As ‘Parthen’ shows, male-female relationships and gender inter-perceptions were often a central feature of Lafferty’s stories. Nor did he shrink from the sensual as I think the above passage shows. Indeed, here is deep respect and true awe in describing a woman’s physical dimensions. And this thus comes across as so original! Every s.f. writer in the 60s/70s experimental New Wave movement was busy gettin sexy and sexually liberated and Lafferty was diverse from them in this area as in so many others. Though he demurred from joining in the sex lib ethos, it’s clear he was no prude and his work regularly celebrated and explored the joys and perils of human sexuality.

And of course not only does this passage have beauty, but also mirth, even joy! Lafferty continues:


‘It is possible that exaggeration has crept into this account? No. That is not possible. All this fits in with the cold appraisal of men like Sam Pinta, Cyril Colbert, Willy Whitecastle, George Goshen, Roy Ronsard himself—and that of a hundred men who had gazed on her in amazement and delight since she came to town. All these men are of sound judgment in this field. And actually she was prettier than they admitted.

‘Too, Eva Ellery was but one of many. There was Jeannie who brought a sort of pleasant insanity to all who met her. Roberta who was a scarlet dream. Helen—high voltage sunshine. Margaret—the divine clown. And it was high adventure just to meet Hildegarde. A man could go blind from looking at her.’


I don’t know why, but I must have read this story over again half a dozen times in as many weeks and would seriously have tears in my eyes by the time I came to ‘the divine clown’ every time! I suppose different bits of Lafferty tickle different people in different ways, but this one just grabbed my funny bone and wouldn’t let go until I was aching every time. Indeed, people often refer to the happiness and joy they feel from reading him, no matter how dark or bloody certain aspects may be.

And Lafferty gives us this joyful pleasure always with a sting in the tail. The wives are understandably not taking it well that their men are all besotted with these new über-women. The protagonist Roy Ronsard says to his wife:


‘“Have you noticed how many really beautiful women there are in town lately, Peggy?”

‘“Roy, I hope those aliens get every damned cucumber out of that patch! The monsters are bound to grab all the pretty women first. I hope they’re a bunch of sadist alligators and do everything that the law disallows to those doll babies.”

‘“Peggy, I believe that the aliens (and we are told that they are already among us) will be a little more sophisticated than popular ideas anticipate.”

‘ “I hope they’re a bunch of Jack the Rippers. I believe I could go for Jack today. He’d certainly be a healthy contrast to what presently obtains.”’


This thought that ‘Jack the Ripper’ would be better than the current lack of ‘manliness’ provides a snapshot of a lot of what Lafferty had to say in his work. His was a (imaginatively) violent reaction to the reductionism(s) of his (and our own?) times – reductionisms that pretended, ironically, to be on a ‘higher plane’ of values. The effects of these values play out this way in the story before us:


‘How could a man not ascend to the higher plane when such wonderful and awesome creatures as these abounded? But the damage was done when the men carried this higher plane business home to their comparatively colorless wives. The men were no longer the ever-loving husbands that they should have been. The most intimate relations ceased to take place. If continued long this could have an effect on the statistics.’


I won’t give away rest of this enjoyable (quite short) story. The light touch continues throughout both in terms of humour as well as social criticism and perhaps this story gives little hint of the sublimities Lafferty can reach. But it is one of my favourites and I think a fine and gentle introduction to the man’s oeuvre.

Next I shall mention a flurry of stories that I came along subsequently with much pleasure and with increasing interest in his critiques of theories of origins among other themes.