Feast of Laughter: An Appreciation of R. A. Lafferty Volume 2: March 2015 Published by the Ktistec Press All works in this volume © 2015 to their respective creators, all rights reserved, unless otherwise stated. Cover painting: © 2015 Lissanne Lake Back cover photograph: © 2015 Keith Purtell ISBN-13: 978-0692397466 ISBN-10: 0692397469 feastoflaughter.org East of Laughter: An Appreciation of R. A. Lafferty on Facebook The Toast If you love R. A. Lafferty’s wondrous and transpossible stories, you’ve come to that love by unmarked roads. You’ve made your own way into one of the densest and most crazily jigsawed mythworlds ever created—a body of work that nobody will ever see all the way into, and no two will ever see the same way. You’ve helped dig out a labyrinth, and it’s a joyous thing, but the labyrinth is more than the digging. This volume is dedicated to the observation that the fog of obscurity is ever so slowly lifting from Lafferty’s world, and every year it’s a little easier to find your way in. It’s dedicated to all the raw colts—the old ones and young—who are coming to these works for the first time. A matrix is the very opposite of a graveyard. Arrive at Easterwine This volume is also dedicated to yon champions of Lafferty’s literary heritage, the Locus Science Fiction Foundation, who we dearly love and will love even more after they decree the appearance of Lafferty stories at Ye Olde Feast of Laughter. Can you hear us, folks at Locus? Can you bring us into focus? We have written often, sirs, even so with no answers. Introduction How is this possible? About five months ago, a group of Lafferty fans on Facebook decided to create a fanzine devoted to R. A. Lafferty. We put the first issue together in a month and published it on Amazon and free online. We had no idea what we were doing, yet out of the sheer de- votion and ebullience of everyone involved, it grew into something magnificent. Somewhere during that first hectic month we all agreed that this should be a twice-yearly production, published every year on Lafferty’s birthday, November 7, and on the day he died, March 18. This is the second Feast of Laughter, March 18, 2015. In the first issue, we threw everything in, holding nothing back to use for the second issue. Yet somehow, this issue is bigger, with more thought- ful writing, more professional writing, and more of just about ev- erything from the first issue. It also strikes a better balance between new writing and unearthed and reprinted content. This issue brings us an essay by Michael Swanwick and How- ard Waldrop’s attempt at writing a Lafferty story. It also brings us an exploration into international Lafferty fandom in the Netherlands, Japan, and Russia. “Nat!”, the creator of the internet’s first Lafferty site, The Lafferty Devotional Page, joins us for an interview. We also hear from two of Lafferty’s former publishers, Greg Ketter of Cor- roboree Press and Dan Knight of United Mythologies Press. Tom Jackson gives us an interview with Lafferty himself. We have anoth- er amazing original cover by Lissanne Lake. We even have a newly uncovered photograph of Lafferty in his personal library gracing our cover, courtesy of Keith Purtell and the Oklahoma Science Fic- tion Writers. As with the first issue, all of this was given generously, joyfully, jubilantly in celebration of R. A. Lafferty. His writing in- spires that. And this is how it is all possible: many of us who wrote for the first Feast of Laughter wrote new pieces. Many other Lafferty fans, especially in the “East of Laughter” group on Facebook, reached out to contribute. Even more importantly, many people reached out to other fans, either to request new pieces or to ask permission to reprint a gem of Lafferty scholarship from ages past. You too can join this joyful chaos. Have you always loved Lafferty’s writing and wanted a venue in which to talk about it? Do you know of some hidden gem of Lafferty commentary that needs to be brought back into the light? Have you personally known anyone who has writ- ten such gems—such as John J. Reilly, author of the great review of The Flame is Green, or the author of the review of Past Master that examines the history of the difference between Catholic and secu- lar views of Utopia? Reach out to these writers and us at editor@ feastoflaughter.org. Jump in with both feet and all ten fingers and share our enthusiasm for preserving Lafferty’s place in the world of science fiction, American letters and literature in general. Man, don’t hang back! The crossing-over is always one of the shining things, and it never grows old. The crossing itself is worth almost everything. And then it’s to arrive at the second greatest adventure of them all, and you don’t even have to die to achieve it. There are one billion oysters that are yours for the opening, and every one of them is a world. Pick one! R.A. Lafferty, “Company in the Wings” (Heart of Stone, Dear and Other Stories, 1983) We plan to add a “Letters to the Editor” section in all future issues. Please contribute! Send your questions and comments to let- [email protected]. We may try to arrange future issues around specific themes, like Lafferty and the Mind of Man, God in SF and Literature, and Cosmogony. As with the first two issues, this will depend on the contributions we receive. There is no specific theme for this issue, except Lafferty schol- arship and appreciation. There is something in his writing that calls for scholarship and deep study. He works with ideas that force us to examine our history, our theology, our language, and our place in the universe. His stories seem to open the door into a new, bigger way of seeing the world, and he invites us in to look around. It is up to us to use our eyes, and more than just our eyes, to truly see what’s inside. It’s like the invitation by e e cummings: listen: there’s a hell of a good universe next door; let’s go K.C. / 2015 Contents of the Table Inventions Bright and New: Original Essays Working With Ray: My Experiences with R.A. Lafferty by Greg Ketter 10 Ray’s Recycling Rewards Program by John Owen 15 Valery’s Really Eyes and the Parade of Creatures by Daniel Otto Jack Petersen 21 “This Was More Than a Spectacle, More Than an Illusion, It was a Communicating Instrument”: R. A. Lafferty and Hans Urs von Balthasar on the Relational Form of Being by Gregorio Montejo 52 Through a Glass Darkly by Craig May 74 Exploring Themes From Catholic Theology in Two Short Stories by R. A. Lafferty by John Ellison 82 Late Light by Rich Persaud 93 Lafferty’s Monkey by Clinton Reid Claussen 95 Lafferty: An Appreciation by Patrick May 100 Question: Why? Excuse: Because Monsters by Rich Persaud 104 All the People: International Fandom Seven-Story Dream on Terschelling by Peter Sijbenga 116 The Lafferty Centennial In Japan by Kenji Matsuzaki 119 Continued on Next Book by 7 Japanese Laffertians 124 Russia Discovers R. A. Lafferty by Sergei Sobolev and Yakov Varganov 130 Those Who Know Everything: Interviews An Interview with Nat! by Kevin Cheek 137 Oh, Whatta Ya Do When The Well Runs Dry: Reprinted Essays Despair and the Duck Lady by Michael Swanwick 142 R. A. Lafferty—the secret sci-fi genius more than ready for a comeback by David Barnett 147 Twice Beheaded: R. A. Lafferty’s Thomas More by Anne Lake Prescott 154 Excerpt from a Thesis by John Ellison 164 A Richness of Endings by Dan Knight 180 Introduction to More than Melchisedech by Robert Whitaker Sirignano 189 On Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas by Andrew Ferguson 202 You’re On The Right Track, Kid: Reviews R. A. Lafferty Spins a Yarn by Keith Purtell 205 Strange Doings by Stephen R. Case 207 Oklahoma Gothic by Martin Heavisides 210 Arrive at Easterwine—a Brief Review by Kevin Cheek 219 Task Force Fifty-Eight and a Half by Heywood Reynolds 221 Iron Tears by Darrell Schweitzer 224 Iron Tears by Don Webb 226 The Emperor’s Shoestrings: Works Inspired by R. A. Lafferty Land of the Great Horses by Peter Sijbenga 229 The Honking Worm and the Gorilla Cheetah by Bill Rogers 231 The Waltz Macabre by Logan Giannini 234 Fourteenth Chambers by Noah Wareness 237 A Fisherman’s Tune by Daniel Otto Jack Petersen 239 What I Wrote for Andronicus by Stephen R. Case 247 Willow Beeman by Howard Waldrop and Steven Utley 260 Primary Education: Lafferties An Interview with R. A. Lafferty by Tom Jackson 271 Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas by R. A. Lafferty 280 Feast of Laughter: Issue 2 Working With Ray: My Experiences with R. A. Lafferty By Greg Ketter R. A. Lafferty is unquestionably one of the most unusual and recog- nizable voices in American fiction. He has generally been called a science fiction writer and published mostly in genre magazines and by genre publishers, but, in truth, he is nearly without category. He sometimes used the tropes and conventions of science fiction, he wrote stories with ghosts (not the type you would consider spooky as in regular supernatural fiction), he wrote fantasy but without fairies, elves or magic swords.