Monday, June 13, 2016

Drunken Reveries

I'm currently rereading both Fourth Mansions and Arrive at Easterwine. While they are arguably tighter novels than The Devil is Dead and Archipelago, it strikes me that they have in common a narrative that is interrupted at times by reflection and reverie. 

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the longish excerpt from Archipelago that Daniel posted on his blog. In this example, the narrative starts in Hans' drunken reverie and switches to the real world seamlessly, without losing any of the feeling of idle daydream. He starts thinking about Marie's eyes and imagining the stories she would tell in her half of the conversation, and then she arrives and the conversation continues with Marie actually participating. However, at no point does the the conversation lose that kind of loose, tangential feeling of a drunken reverie. 

The experience of reading The Devil is Dead has always struck me as awakening from just such a reverie. The individual scenes are striking, but it is very hard to remember how the book fits together. It has a very dream-like narrative, especially when you consider the prescience Finnegan has about the two lives and two faces of Papadiabolous. And of course, the book is peppered with drunken stories told by the characters. 

The narrative in Arrive at Easterwine exists on many levels of metaphor, and several times dispenses completely with straightforward narration of the supposed real world. I think the most pronounced example is the recurrent meditation on the Balbo family crest and its thrice-painted center emblem, El Brusco (the sudden or brusk one), La Brusca (the burning bush or passion or love), and Labrusca (the spring wine or Easter wine). Again, this narrative is in the form of a thought running into a tangential thought running into a deep analysis of an imagined detail. It is a recurrent daydream through the narrative that deeply informs and prefigures the story at each turn. 

Even Fourth Mansions which is a pretty tightly written action narrative (for Lafferty) takes time to digress into the qualities of the different animals, the reasons for various impressions, and hallucinatory sequences that have more in common with dream logic than waking logic. For sheer reverie there was the rambling examination of Freddy's memories about the poor neighborhood of Tulsa and why he was afraid when he was there. Elements of that kept cropping up later on in the story, like the references to Leo Joe Larker having raised a boy from the dead when he was no more than ten years old. For sheer hallucinatory interludes there were the scene where Freddy was trying to reach Biddy via brain weave, and she was distracted on subterranean beaches while wild dogs tore her apart, and the multiple metaphorical scenes of the final battle between Arouet Manion and James Bauer. 

A reviewer once said "One awakens from reading a Lafferty book as from a dream." I think that is particularly apt. His novels make more sense when you allow them to follow their own logic, and read along almost in a dream-like state or drunken reverie of your own in parallel. The result is that the individual images and impressions are striking and powerfully remembered, but the plot works directly on the subconscious, leaving very little conscious trace. 

Friday, May 27, 2016

Revisiting the Bookshelf

Forgive me. I know I shouldn't brag, but I still feel the need to share my--for lack of a better description--long-winded verbal "shelfie:" I've been a bit aquisitive since I first posted about My Lafferty Bookshelf in 2013. My collection now consists of:

  • The Reefs of Earth (1968) (2 reads)
  • Space Chantey (1968) (3 reads)
  • Past Master (1968) (4 reads)
  • Fourth Mansions (1969) (multiple copies, so I can force them into people's hands) (~7 reads)
  • Nine Hundred Grandmothers (1970) (Collection) (uncounted multiple reads)
  • The Devil is Dead (1971) (1 extra copy to force into people's hands) (4 reads)
  • Strange Doings (1971) (Collection) (uncounted multiple reads)
  • The Flame is Green (1971) (2 reads)
  • Arrive at Easterwine (1971) (multiple copies, so I can force them into people's hands) (5 reads)
  • The Fall of Rome (1971) (2 reads)
  • Okla Hannali (1972) (4 reads)
  • Does Anyone Else Have Something Further to Add? (1974) (Collection) (uncounted multiple reads)
  • Not to Mention Camels (1976) (0.2 reads)
  • Funnyfingers and Cabrito (1976) (Collection) (Chapbook) (1 read)
  • Apocalypses (1977) (2 reads)
  • Archipelago (1979) (1 read)
  • Aurelia (1982) (0.25 reads)
  • Annals of Klepsis (1983) (1 read)
  • Golden Gate And Other Stories (1983) (Collection) (uncounted multiple reads)
  • Through Elegant Eyes (1983) (Collection) (1 read)
  • Laughing Kelly and Other Verses (Poetry) (1983) (Chapbook) (1 read)
  • Heart of Stone, Dear and Other Stories (1983) (Collection) (Chapbook) (1 read)
  • Snake in His Bosom and Other Stories (1983) (Collection) (Chapbook) (1 read)
  • Half a Sky (1984) (2 reads)
  • Ringing Changes (1984) (Collection) (uncounted multiple reads)
  • It's Down the Slippery Cellar Stairs (Nonfiction) (1984) (Chapbook) (1 read)
  • The Man Who Made Models and Other Stories (1984) (Collection) (Chapbook) (1 read)
  • Slippery and Other Stories (1985) (Collection) (Chapbook) (1 read)
  • My Heart Leaps Up - Chapters 1 & 2 (1986) (Chapbook) (1 read)
  • My Heart Leaps Up - Chapters 3 & 4 (1987) (Chapbook) (1 read)
  • My Heart Leaps Up - Chapters 5 & 6 (1987) (Chapbook) (1 read)
  • My Heart Leaps Up - Chapters 7 & 8 (1987) (Chapbook) (1 read)
  • My Heart Leaps Up - Chapters 9 & 10 (1987) (Chapbook) (1 read)
  • Serpent's Egg (1987) (Morrigan Press (UK) edition) (1 read)
  • East of Laughter (1988) (Morrigan Press (UK) edition) (0.5 reads)
  • The Early Lafferty (1988) (Chapbook) (1 read)
  • The Back Door of History (1988) (Chapbook) (1 read)
  • True Believers (Nonfiction) (1989) (Chapbook) (1 read)
  • How Many Miles to Babylon (1989) (Chapbook) (1 read)
  • Episodes of the Argo (1990) (0.66 read)
  • Lafferty in Orbit (1991) (1 read)
  • Mischief Malicious (And Murder Most Strange) (1991) (Chapbook) (0.25 read)
  • Grasshoppers & Wild Honey - Chapters 1 & 2 (1992) (Chapbook) (not read yet)
  • Iron Tears (1992) (2 reads)
  • Dotty (1990) (0.5 reads)
  • Tales of Chicago (1992) (1 read)
  • Sindbad: The 13th Voyage (1999) (2 reads)
  • The Man Who Made Models (2014) (#1 of The Collected Short Fiction of R. A. Lafferty) (1 read)
  • Feast of Laughter Issue 1 (2014) (Lafferty fanzine - by the Ktistec Press --including ME!) (uncounted multiple reads)
  • The Man With the Aura (2015) (#2 of The Collected Short Fiction of R. A. Lafferty) (1 read)
  • Feast of Laughter Issue 2 (2015) (Lafferty fanzine - by the Ktistec Press --including ME!) (uncounted multiple reads)
  • Feast of Laughter Issue 3 (2015) (Lafferty fanzine - by the Ktistec Press --including ME!) (uncounted multiple reads)
  • The Man Underneath (2016) (#3 of The Collected Short Fiction of R. A. Lafferty) (1 read)
  • The R.A. Lafferty Fantastic MEGAPACK® (2016) (Collection) (0.12 reads)

That’s 51 books and chapbooks if you don't count the three volumes of Feast of Laughter. I finally have both published Coscuin books. I have more of the Argo mythos, but only one part of More than Melchisedech (one of the joys of Tales of Chicago was discovering the wonderful R. Ward Shipman illustrations--arrgh, I want to find Tales of Midnight and Argo).

That being said, the primary joy of collecting these is reading them, not just owning. My copies go back and forth to work and on vacations with me for bus rides and odd quiet moments. Of course, I still haven't finished reading all of it. I'm currently halfway through Dotty, I have yet to get through Not to Mention Camels. I haven't actually finished Aurelia yet. There are also a few stories in some of the collections that I've skipped here and there. In time, I imagine I'll read through it all, and re-read, and re-read, and keep discovering new things!

One notable exception to the reading-over-owning rule is the three Centipede Press volumes. They are so beautifully bound and published that just holding them in my hands is an aesthetic experience. They are a joy to see on the bookshelf--almost as much as they are a joy to read! I also get a kick out of seeing Feast of Laughter up on the bookshelf with all the other greats! 

There are still few hard or impossible to find Lafferty books I would love to track down (and be able to afford): The Devil is Dead Trilogy:
  • More than Melchisedech
    • Tales of Midnight (1992)
    • Argo (1992)

Chapbooks

  • Four Stories (1983)
  • Strange Skies (Poetry) (1988)
  • The Elliptical Grave (1989) (Novella)
  • The Early Lafferty II (1990)
  • Horns on Their Heads (1976)
  • Promontory Goats (1988)
  • Anamnesis (1992)
  • Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas (2007) (Single story - reprinting of Gutenberg text)
  • The Six Fingers of Time (2010) (Single story - reprinting of Gutenberg text)
  • Cranky Old Man from Tulsa (Nonfiction) (1990)

And I'd love more than many things (almost more than coffee itself) to read some of the unpublished Lafferty:
  • Esteban
  • First and Last Island
  • Sardinian Summer
  • The rest of In a Green Tree
  • Loup Garou
  • And of course many others

My Bookshelf:














 



 
 



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