R. A. Lafferty

[cauldronbrewer]

R. A. Laffery is one of my favorite authors. I doubt he’s for all tastes, and sometimes his stories fall flat; at his best, however, he’s brilliant, darkly funny, and totally bonkers.

Lafferty is typically categorized as a science fiction writer or sometimes simply as a teller of tall tales, but in the late 1970s some of the top horror anthologists discovered him:

The Man with the Aura (1976, The Year’s Best Horror: Series IV, ed. Gerald W. Page)
Oh Tell Me Will It Freeze Tonight (1976, Frights, ed. Kirby McCauley)
Fog in My Throat (1976, Superhorror, ed. Ramsey Campbell)
Splinters (1978, Shadows, ed. Charles Grant)
Berryhill (1979, Whispers II, ed. Stuart David Schiff)
The Funny Face Murders (1980, New Terrors 2, ed. Ramsey Campbell)

Among these, the best place to start for Lafferty beginners may be “Berryhill,” the tale of the three Berryman siblings, “who were not born, never married, and, apparently, did not die.” Nehemias, Habacuc, and Sophronia dine but once a year, and when they do, they dine on a stranger. Then one Friday evening, nine year old Jimmy Ware, one half of the Lost Creek Bobcats, decides to visit their house at Berryhill.

In addition to these stories, horror fans might be interested in some of the earlier tales included in various Lafferty collections. The following stories include horrific material or horror tropes (often radically reworked):

Frog on the Mountain (Nine Hundred Grandmothers)
Snuffles (Nine Hundred Grandmothers)
Once on Aranea (Strange Doings)
The Man with the Speckled Eyes (Strange Doings)
The Transcendent Tigers (Strange Doings)
Ride a Tin Can (Strange Doings)
Dream (Strange Doings)
This Grand Carcass (Does Anyone Else Have Something Further to Add?)
Sky (Ringing Changes)

[junkmonkey]

His story, The Six Fingers of Time www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31663, gave me the utter willies when I was about ten. One of the stories that got me into SF.

[cauldronbrewer]

I remember reading "This Grand Carcass," a clever s.f. quasi-vampire story--at around the same age. My mother had a copy of Donald Wollheim and Terry Carr's World's Best Science Fiction: 1969. It's probably still my favorite Lafferty story.

[danielottojackp]

Ah, that is so weird. Just last night, on a lark, I researched all the Lafferty stories I could find that were featured in horror anthologies and magazines. It's a very interesting element of an author (also my very favourite!) who is mostly known for his humour and comedy and mind-bending sense of wonder and magic - though most everyone knows his laughs are often grotesque, so it shouldn't be too surprising. I was rounding these up so I can eventually do some posts on 'Lafferty and Horror' for my R. A. Lafferty blog:

antsofgodarequeerfish.blogspot.co.uk/

I'll add to your list that three more stories of his - 'The Ultimate Creature', 'The Man Who Never Was', and 'Cliffs That Laughed' - were each included in a different issue of The Magazine of Horror in the late 1960s. Also, his story 'Ghost in the Corn Crib' was included in the anthology The Haunt of Horror (Marvel Comics, 1973).

I still haven't managed to collect 'Oh Tell Me Will It Freeze Tonight' or 'Ghost in the Corn Crib'. Almost all the rest I've read and they are almost all Lafferty faves for me. (I have 'Berryhill' in Lafferty's short story collection Iron Tears, but haven't read it yet.)

I'll also add some to your list of his stories with horror elements but not included in horror anthologies:

'The Hole on the Corner'
'Name of the Snake'
(Nine Hundred Grandmothers)

'Camels and Dromedaries, Clem'
'Dream'
(Strange Doings)

'Thieving Bear Planet'
'Selenium Ghosts of the Eighteen Seventies'
'Gray Ghost: A Reminiscence'
(Iron Tears; 'Selenium Ghosts' and 'Thieving Bear' are also collected in Terry Carr's Universe anthologies, volumes 8 and 12 respectively.)

'Endangered Species' (Galaxy May 1974)

'The Three Shadows of the Wolf' (Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction March 1975) - Lafferty's only story of lycanthropy that I know of! Here's his characteristic take on shapeshifting:

antsofgodarequeerfish.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/laffertian-transmogrification.html

Also, here's another characteristic sample from the story 'Selenium Ghosts of the Eighteen Seventies' mentioned above (this time the Laffertian take on the haunted castle motif):

antsofgodarequeerfish.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/happy-halloween-from-r-lafferty.html

Thanks for spreading the word about Laff!

[danielottojackp]

Oh, sorry, I see you included 'Dream' in your original list.

[cauldronbrewer]

Thanks for the additions! I'd forgotten that some of Lafferty's stories appeared in The Magazine of Horror (though I'd thought about including "The Ultimate Creature" on my list).

I recently started reading Terry Carr's The Year's Finest Fantasy Vol. 2, which includes "Selenium Ghosts of the Eighteen Seventies," so I should get to that one soon.

I've never come across "The Man Who Never Was," "Ghost in the Corn Crib," "Thieving Bear Planet," "Gray Ghost," "Endangered Species," or "The Three Shadows of the Wolf." The last of those sounds particularly intriguing.

Your blog is a font of Lafferty lore. I look forward to reading your analyses of Lafferty's horror stories.

[danielottojackp]

Ha, for a second there I read your next to last sentence as saying 'front' instead of 'font'! One of the guys who regularly comments on the blog is the world's first Lafferty scholar, having done MA and PhD work on him, and he says 'Selenium Ghosts' is one of Lafferty's own personal favourites of what he wrote. It's Lafferty in really, really weird mode. Difficult, but a great one.

I also meant to mention that many, perhaps most, of Lafferty's novels also contain strong strains of horror, macabre, grotesque, etc. that would be of interest to horror fans. Certainly that is true of the following:

Past Master (1968) - There's an amazing scene of a strange group of people very gorily killing a giant 'devil fish'; a stomach-churning scene of millions of rats taking over parts of a city; etc.

The Reefs of Earth (1968) - Starts out with a group of children telling each other creepy weird ghost stories - the rest of the novel proceeds to describe how they, being aliens themselves, try to physically murder all the humans on Earth - kind of a twisted Mark Twain feel to the book.

Fourth Mansions (1969) - A variety of paranormal activity and some moments of bloody violence and a whole metaphysical theme of people having various archetypal monsters inside themselves.

Not to Mention Camels (1976) Lafferty novels are generally harder to 'follow' than his short stories, but Camels is even stranger than the average Lafferty novel - a bit of an expositional brain melter about multiple selves in multiple worlds. Still, I loved it and it has elements of horror with gore, macabre, grotesque and an evil but charismatic main character.

Lafferty has a lot of passages in both his novels and short stories that can be excerpted so that they work as little standalone microfiction pieces. Here's a creepy little tale of the strange and grotesque from his late novel East of Laughter:

antsofgodarequeerfish.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/rough-account-of-group-of-twelve-3.html

[Johnlprobert]

I've read very little Lafferty, but The Funny Face Murders is hilarious and very weird

[danielottojackp]

So glad to hear you like 'The Funny Face Murders' as I only recently obtained and read that one and loved it instantly - now one of my faves by Laff. Yeah, very weird - a lot of things going on at once - but so potenly fantastic and dark-funny too. I wondered what others would make of it.

You should definitely check out more when you can!

[ramseycampbell]

I remember Virginia Kidd (Lafferty's agent) sent me four tales for consideration for New Terrors, and that was the one that grabbed me. I do wonder what he made of my describing it in the story note as resembling Chesterton without the theological reassurance - I later found out he was profoundly Catholic.

[cauldronbrewer]

Apr 28, 2012 13:34:25 GMT danielottojackp said:

One of the guys who regularly comments on the blog is the world's first Lafferty scholar, having done MA and PhD work on him, and he says 'Selenium Ghosts' is one of Lafferty's own personal favourites of what he wrote. It's Lafferty in really, really weird mode. Difficult, but a great one.

I read "Selenium Ghosts" yesterday and loved it. I dug not only the central premise (a fictional history of 1870s-era selenium-based television programs) but also the unusual structure (a story told by describing a series of thirteen television programs) and the multiple layers of "ghosts" (the metaphorical ghosts of the television images as well as a more traditional form of ghost).

[danielottojackp]

Ha, Ramsey, I actually did take issue with your intro when I read it (though more due to the fact that I didn't find Man Who Was Thursday particularly 'theologically reassuring') - but in a certain sense it's a rather apt comment about the way Laff's Catholicism played out in his art.

But regardless, you anthologised the guy - that makes you a hero! (Thanks!)

'cauldronbrewer', so glad you liked 'Selenium'! You've summed it up well.

I was reminded today of another Lafferty story that easily could have been included in one of these horror anthologies or mags. It's called 'Endangered Species' and it was published in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine, May 1974. It's one of my faves by him. It's yet another of his typically Laffertian takes on haunted houses and ghosts. Here's a sample:

antsofgodarequeerfish.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/monstrous-noise-like-that-could-be.html

[cauldronbrewer]

Apr 29, 2012 6:13:30 GMT ramseycampbell said:

I remember Virginia Kidd (Lafferty's agent) sent me four tales for consideration for New Terrors, and that was the one that grabbed me. I do wonder what he made of my describing it in the story note as resembling Chesterton without the theological reassurance - I later found out he was profoundly Catholic.

I just read "Fog in My Throat" in The Far Reaches of Fear (a.k.a. Superhorror) and was interested to see references in the story notes to both Virginia Kidd and Lafferty's Catholicism. There's nothing reassuring about this one, which may be the darkest Lafferty tale I've ever read.

[danielottojackp]

Oh, I'm pretty sure he's got some others that are that dark. But whether lacking 'reassurance' or, conversely, holding out a tentative thread of hope, or anything else, Lafferty's stories generally tend to end quite open-ended in one respect or another - and that's all part of his artistic and philosophical strategy, I think. There's a ton of dialectic in his work. I mean, you can tell he wants to 'side with the angels', but he knows the reader must make her own choice and Lafferty only wants to facilitate that. Nor is he gonna spoon feed us any syrupy serum - he's more likely to leave us with a shot in the arm!

[cauldronbrewer]

Maybe there's something reassuring in there . . . but then all I can think about is the poor rats, hamsters, and guinea pigs playing their harps and building their pyramids in the hope that their human gods will spare them oblivion--only to die with their faces contorted in terror.