The Beginning Shape of LaffCon3

Greetings, fellow Lafferty fans & friends.

There have been rumblings and rumors of actual LaffCon planning happening behind the scenes. 

LaffCon3 is definitely happening. June 9th, 2018.

Right now, here is what is on the table, all of which is still being discussed, none of which is final:

 --A panel on Not to Mention Camels. It is unfortunate that this book is out-of-print and expensive on the secondhand market. If you act soon you may be able to snag one of the dozen or so copies that are available at the usual online sellers for around $25-$35.

A few of us like this one a lot and believe that it is worth arguing for and arguing over. There have also been strong hints that our favorite friendly LaffCon artists will be bringing NEW Not to Mention Camels related artwork.

In a critical review of the novel (for Delap's), the wonderful Michael Bishop wrote,
"...I can easily envision a literary cult devoted to the Lafferty persona, one distant day in the future, placing Not to Mention Camels at the heart of its author's oeuvre."

I don't think we're quite a cult (we do need to develop more ceremonies and honorifics) and I wouldn't argue that Camels is at the heart of its author's oeuvre (there's a good argument that that honor belongs to the Argo Cycle), but I do confess that Bishop was pretty close to prophetic when he wrote that in the mid-70s! :-)



--At least one panel on Okla Hannali, which has in its favor the simple fact that it is the only Lafferty novel in print in the U.S. at this time. (As far as I know, the only other in-print Lafferty novels available anywhere in the world right now are the Japanese volumes; there is a Gollancz omnibus coming in June 2018 in the UK and there is work being done by Locus on U.S. releases, but nothing yet).

This is the only Lafferty novel that I know for a fact has been taught at the university level, in Oklahoma History courses. It is regarded by many as an unjustly neglected masterpiece of American Fiction. Lafferty himself considered it a contribution to the Great American Novel.

In his must-read essay, "The Strange Case of Raphael Aloysius Lafferty," the always wonderful Michael Swanwick evaluated Okla Hannali:
"Often Lafferty has been too imaginative for his own commercial good, shedding wild ideas and strange whimsies with such abandon that many readers simply couldn't keep up. But in Okla Hannali the need to stay true to the historical facts and to the character of the Choctaw people results in a straightforward narrative in which the tragedies are irreversible, the joys undeniable, and the fate of virtually all the characters, minor as well as major, truly matters to the reader. For plot alone, this is one great book. As history, it's a revelation."

Terry Bisson wrote:
"I believe his day is yet to come; that like Melville, Lafferty will be “discovered,” and his Okla Hannali will take its rightful place as one of the three or four truly great 20th century American novels. But that’s for others to decide."

I highly recommend that you buy a copy of the book from the Choctaw Store. "The Choctaw Store is owned and operated by the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma" and they approve of Lafferty's novel enough that they sell it in their store. I can't think of a higher compliment to a work of historical fiction.



--A complementary panel on "Lafferty's American Indian Stories"

Bisson wrote that "There’s a wise (or at least watchful) Indian in almost every tale."

That's an overstatement, but it still feels right.

I'd love to have someone present on the panel who actually knows what he/she is talking about in regards to midwest tribal cultures/histories, the shape of these cultures and their stories, and how Lafferty interacts with these in positive (and maybe negative?) ways. If anyone is qualified and interested, please do contact me.



--More Andrew Mass documentary footage? I hope so.



--Maybe a more general panel on Lafferty's "philosophy of history" and/or his "historical imagination" or some such. They're even harder to find than anything mentioned above, but maybe a panel on Alaric or the Coscuin books would also work well.



--We are also interested in just about anything Lafferty related that anyone is willing to bring to us. Consider this a "Call for Papers." If you've ever wanted to dig deep into anything related to Lafferty and share your findings in front of a room full of hardcore Lafferty nerds, this is your chance.



--We're open to other ideas. Please comment or send along your suggestions via email.

Belated LaffCon2 Gratitude

(Photo by Yakov Varganov. See more of Yakov's photos of the day here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.1327845240601842&type=1)

It's been nearly two months since LaffCon2. Yikes. Two months. The party was so good that it has taken two months to recover before I could even attempt to give an account of the day. Let's stick with that excuse.

So, just how was the party? Once again, it was marvelous. Thank you to all of you who came out and talked Lafferty all day long. Another year and another day of running around, I regret that I didn't get to talk to all of you, but I was always glad to see lively conversations happening in every corner during every break.

Thank you to Rob Bee and the Mercer County Library for hosting us. Rob does the work behind the scenes that makes this event possible, both before and during the con. Thank you to the Friends of the Library- Lawrence Branch for another free lunch. It is a great boon to be able to stay on site for lunch and continue conversations.

Thank you to Kevin Cheek for his love and enthusiasm for Fourth Mansions. His talk which started the day set a tone of serious engagement with the text coupled with good humor and true sense of wonder. This is how we should read Lafferty, on our own and with each other, with careful attention and a holy chuckle.

Thank you to Gregorio Montejo for sharing from his deep wells (yes, a bit of a pun there) of knowledge and wisdom. Gregorio has drunk deeply (continuing this fountain bit here) from a past most of us have either forgotten, forsaken, or never known, a previous world, different from our own, perhaps much more robust, a world in which Lafferty swam freely.

Thank you to Tairiku Ronin, Yakov Varganov, and (again) Gregorio Montejo for broadening our perspective on Lafferty fandom. The "Lafferty Tribe" may be a small one, but it is a truly international one, with diverse members from diverse cultures in diverse lands.

Thank you to Anthony Ryan Rhodes, Lissanne Lake, and Yakov Varganov for speaking about their own art and the art of others. It has been an ongoing joy for all of us to appreciate and benefit from their seemingly endless generosity and largeness of hearts in their work of illustrating Lafferty and their willingness to freely share their work with the rest of us.

Thank you to Darrell Schweitzer, Samuel Tomaino, and Kevin Cheek (he opened the day--might as well close it too!) for leading us in a discussion of a couple of Lafferty's best "planet-fall" stories. This was a fun and loose ramble on the stories and a perfect way to wind down at the end of the day.

Thank you to ALL OF YOU for being there and sharing in the day's activities. Attendance was down this year from last year, but the room still felt full, especially in the afternoon (you stragglers need to step up your game and get in earlier). The core group that was there last year was also there this year (we had more curious strangers from the library last year than this year, I think, but we also lost the presence of a few further out-of-towners who couldn't make it this year for various legitimate reasons). It was unspeakably satisfying to see the same faces again, to see the material evidence that we are indeed a real community, joined together in a common cause, a common joy, and committed to the act of doing this thing over and over and over again!  

Speaking of doing it again, we have a date set for LaffCon3: June 9th, 2018. See you then.

(For those of you who couldn't make it to LaffCon2, there is no way for us now to make the day's lively camaraderie available to you. The best poor substitute that we can achieve is to at least have the LaffCon2 booklet available via Amazon--hopefully fully live in a couple of days--- https://www.amazon.com/dp/0998536415/.)

LAFFCON3 - Planning begins

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Planning is in progress for the third iteration of the one and only conference dedicated to the life and works of author R. A. Lafferty.

Official LaffCon2 Schedule

June 10th, 2017. LaffCon2. 

9am-10am Arrival & Registration

10am-10:45am: Cookies & Eyes: Character and Plot Development in Fourth Mansions Through Repeated Memes

Featuring Kevin Cheek

Lafferty: “Lately, however, he had been learning to see with other sorts of eyes, with Harvester eyes, with patrick eyes, with falcon eyes, with toad eyes. A man misses so much if he uses only one set of eyes.”

11am-11:45am: Dwelling Places, Fountains, and Serpents: Teresa of Avila in Fourth Mansions

Featuring Gregorio Montejo

Lafferty: “For there are all these obstacles for us to meet and there is also the danger of serpents.”

(Yes, I know this is a Teresa quote, but Lafferty owns it.)

12pm-1pm: Lunch Break -- FREE LUNCH!!!

Lafferty: “The members were eating a hard-times lunch of bloody giant bread and flamed duck.”

1pm-1:45pm: Documenting Lafferty

Featuring Andrew Mass

“The accounts are entrancing, intriguing, adventurous, romantic, and largely fictional.”

2pm-2:45pm: Interpreting Lafferty Visually

Featuring Lissanne Lake, Gregorio Montejo, Anthony Ryan Rhodes, & Yakov Varganov

Lafferty: “Ah, well, what is art, seedling or otherwise?”

3pm-3:45pm: Translation & Reception of Lafferty Outside the States

Featuring Gregorio Montejo, Tairiku Ronin, & Yakov Varganov

Lafferty: “Nutty as a peach tree orchard boar.”

4pm-Closing: Planet-fall: Thieving Bear Planet, Pani Planet, and Our Planet.

Featuring Kevin Cheek, Darrell Schweitzer, and Everyone (open discussion)

Lafferty: “And yet the experience of planet-fall is a daily thing, one that never grows stale.”

Apologies and Announcements:There Is Such Thing As a Free Lunch.

Hello.

First, please forgive me. The Fourth Mansions reading group was a bust. This is entirely my fault. I had too much going on in too many areas, and this was the easiest thing to drop. Mea culpa. I do hope that some of you benefited from the outlines of the first 3 chapters. At the very least, I hope that they spurred you on to read the novel for yourself. I'll take credit for anyone re-reading the novel right now because they've been waiting for Post 4 of the book club! So many great things in Chapter 4. I haven't entirely abandoned this project, but it's done for now. If you're on Facebook and need a Lafferty fix, you should seriously consider reading along with Harold Bakker's weekend reading group. 98 Lafferty stories have been read over the past 98 weekends. It's an easy and painless way to get your recommended weekly Lafferty dose.

Second, on a much more positive note, LaffCon2 is looking really good. The booklet is almost done and ready to go to print. The really exciting thing about the booklet is that it contains three excellent essays on Fourth Mansions, each one better than anything I've written about the novel so far on this website. So you all definitely have some Fourth Mansions related reading goodness to look forward to. The schedule is finalized. The panelists are mostly confirmed. I will post the full schedule in a couple of days. Promise.

Finally, and this is important, lunch is on us, courtesy of the Friends of the Library - Lawrence Branch. Last year, we had pizza and beverages. I expect some of the same this year. So unless your diet does not allow for this for whatever reason, we've got you covered. Stick around during the lunch hour and get to know your fellow Lafferty fans. You won't regret it.

GIFTS, POWERS, LIVES, WORLDS, SECRETS (Fourth Mansions Chapter 3)

Here's a basic outline of the chapter, focusing on shifts in setting:

0. Epigraph - Don't drop it!
1. "A section of town that he had always been a little frightened of."
    History/Biography, Psychic Geography, Larkers
2. "The house of the address was a tipsy four-storied frame building"
    Interloper and Interrogators
3. "The return way is open even when the senders are unaware."
    Brain-weave interlude
4. "DAMNED DOOR NOT LOCKED. COME IN."
    Bertigrew Bagley
5. "through dark streets...into the night door of his own newspaper building."

0. Chapter 3 opens with a Michael Fountain quote from something called the Second Trefoil Lectures. Michael Fountain is still a mysterious character at this point and nothing in Chapter 3 will give us any more information about him.

This quote lays out one of the major ideas of the novel, that "our group soul" is ready to advance: "We come to the verge, to the mansions of the fourth height, in a moving moment of dizzy expectation and extreme danger, up under a new Heaven with a new Earth in our hands."

Later, Bagley will reflect that "There've been a hundred points where mankind was frustrated from real clarification and grace."

One of the questions of the novel is whether or not this point will be another point of frustration.


1. After the breeziness of all of the dialogue in Chapter 2, we get a hard stop. Suddenly, the present action stops and we are given an extended peek into Freddy Foley's childhood. This childhood is concretely expressed through physical aspects of environment. We are given a brief tour of one part of Freddy's psychic geography and a look at a series of items and people that populate that geography.

If one of the themes of the book is Freddy growing up and finding his face, then this little bit of Chapter 3 provides a picture of Freddy as child. He was/is a fearful boy in a very rough part of town. There is hell to avoid. There is the gift of life, all unearned and unasked for. There are railroad tracks connecting this part of town to the possibility of elsewhere.

And there are the Larkers.


2a. Freddy follows his note to a house for a meeting. Before the meeting, he comes across Leo Joe Larker.

Leo Joe Larker is a fascinating character and I think important. I can't quite figure him out. He does return later in the novel in an important role. I'm not quite sure what to do with his shifting racial identity and shifting appearance. I have suspicions, but I'm not sure that I can put it all together. Maybe at the end of this re-read, I'll have it all figured out. Maybe.

Some info:

"Leo Joe.....who was the oldest of the Larkers and four years older than Freddy....said, moveover, that they could work magic, and that he himself had raised a man from the dead."

Leo Joe says:
"I'm an interloper."
"I'm putting in first claim on you."
"I have an override on all threats to you."

I think that we have to take Leo Joe at his word. He is an interloper. He interlopes. Lafferty uses the word 'interloper' again later in the chapter in a pejorative sense, but here I think he means it as a positive description.

There is a hint later in the chapter that Leo Joe is possibly a part of the extended complex network of the Congregation of Patricks, which consists of "Exarchs, Crolls, Autocrats, Larkers, Aloysii, Patriarchs, and so on up to the Emperor himself."

(Here's an aside not about Leo Joe. It's said by Bagley that the office of emperor has been vacant for more than a thousand years. Any guesses on who was the last emperor?)

2b. "He pulled up a chair and sat down at the table with the three men."

This section is pretty straightforward. Some thugs try to intimidate Freddy and threaten to replace him. The section accomplishes the purpose of establishing that there is a real threat to Freddy's life and that there are real people actively covering up some business of people being replaced by other people.


3. As Freddy leaves this meeting, he gets brain signals from Miguel, a character that we've yet only seen in these veiled brain-weave moments. This section does give us a clear description of the openness of the brain-weave, that Freddy is receiving information that he wasn't meant to be receiving.

"The authors of the brain-weave believe that they have transmitted somehow through polarized one-way glass; but it is two-way. The return way is open even when the senders are unaware, and all those who have been touched by the weave are themselves somehow in touch, even when the weavers or Harvesters are asleep."

There's also a bit here about Letitia Bauer and deformed monkey babies, a "rambling-in-waste-places delirium."


4. Bertigrew Bagley.

One gets the sense that Lafferty loved Bagley. There's certainly a lot of Lafferty in Bagley.

On Overlark and the "old crippling persuasion" and the cost of challenging it.
"Once you get your hands onto the thing you will learn a little of its nature. You'll feel the rot of it, the leprosy that will not be stamped out. And you'll see that its face is always respectability. But if you follow up to the end you will not be respectable yourself."

"I do not see everything in black or white. I see most things in the four or five central colors or forces. In the middle, of course, is that malodorous worm whom we call common man. He is mud-colored. And around him are the four sorts of creatures who assail him while they claim to love him, but mine is the only sort that actually loves him."

"Foley, a supreme word of contempt is 'flatlander.' Somehow there is the belief that people in the Dark Ages believed that the world was flat. They didn't. But it is the contemptuous ones of today who have made a really flat world that is the sad answer to everything. What is wrong with the world and why is it not worth living in? It's flat, that's what."



It is in this section of the chapter that Bagley gives us a breakdown of the parties involved in the growing conflict.

"Of the four sorts of creatures that surround the Castle are the Pythons, the Toads, the Badgers, and the Unfledged Falcons."

"Some of it's from the beautiful things of a lady named Teresa Cepeda, born a little after Columbus died. He only discovered continents; she discovered the Castle itself."

Malodorous Worms - Freddy Foley, the commonality of mankind
"You are one of the malodorous worms, Foley, the commonality of mankind, the simplicity. Me, I'm a badger."

Pythons - Jim Bauer and the Harvesters
"the brain-weavers, the Harvesters, they belong to the pythons....pythons are prophetic."

Toads - Carmody Overlark and the other revenants.
"The revenants are the toads." "The returners really do have the jewel, and it may be the jewel of knowledge."

Badgers - Bertigrew Bagley and the Congregation of Patricks
"the badgers... Ours is the real; but even if I should tell you all about it you would regard us as a network of lodges or curious societies or comical conventions. Can you not see that it is your apparent government and world that is these things? Foley, there are alternate worlds going on all the time, depending only on the vision. There is a double reflection. I do not accept yours, and sure would not accept mine. But I say that mine is alive and that its more favorable time-track may still be selected." "Have you heard of Christendom still living?"

Unfledged Falcons - Miguel and "probably a hundred such movements starting right now"
"The unfledged falcon appears more reptilian than the reptiles. But sometimes it grows, it is fledged, it flies. At its best, to me, it is only mediocre: it was the Crusades; it was the Ottonian Empire (an interloper); it is the firm but doltish authority. At its worst it is the fascist thing." "A young man has been torched with this fever....His name comes to me as Miguel."


5. The chapter ends with a chase scene, Freddy running back into town and safety, avoiding the pursuit of men following him with presumed murderous intent.

"Freddy might be a simpleton but he was an agile simpleton. They did not have him that night."

"But somebody was after Freddy Foley and they weren't kidding."

THAT UNPLOWED FACE WAS GETTING FAINT PLOW-MARKS NOW (Fourth Mansions Chapter 2)

Chapter 2 should come as a relief to anyone troubled by Chapter 1. There is plenty of exposition and much of the murkiness of Chapter 1's brain-weave clears up as affected characters converse with one another. Chapter 2 is a direct continuation of Chapter 1.

All the events of Chapter 2 occur "later that night."

 Here is the basic structure:
 1) Freddy and Biddy
-At the Scatterbrain Lounge
-At Michael Fountain's Apartment
-After Fountain's Apartment
2) Freddy and Selim -At the City Museum

Also, structurally, the most important thing to note is that this chapter is (almost) entirely a wall of dialogue. The plot is propelled through the conversations of the characters. It's a verbal feast and makes me yearn for a great radio play adaptation of the play produced by Jim Freund and Stefan Rudnicki. Then again, if the novel ever got adapted into a television show, I can see Episode 2 (adapting Chapter 2) accomplished in one virtuoso tracking shot, following "action" from bar to street to apartment to street to museum.

Conversation #1 - Freddy and Biddy at the bar transitioning to Freddy and Biddy on their way to Fountain's.
Conversation #2 - Freddy and Biddy speak with Michael Fountain.
Conversation #3 - Freddy and Biddy post-Fountain.
Conversation #4 - Freddy and Selim at the City Museum.

So, what do we learn from these conversations?

-Freddy "had the notion that perhaps Carmody Overlark... was the same man as Khar-ibn-Mod, a Mameluke diplomat who served an Egyptian Caliph some [500] years back."
-Carmody Overlark "..changed his name...From Charles to Carmody, and just about two years ago." He has a reputation, possibly "inserted back in time a little," as "an intellectual, a legend, an amateur of all the arts, and a patron." His face is "probably Moravian." He "suffers from asthma--these last two years."

-Michael Fountain's nephew was most definitely killed by the brain weave. Micheal Fountain himself slipped the brain weave "almost completely." He does not know who they did find and change, "But it was somebody whose mind has touched mine, who was in a certain accord with me, a young man's mind, and I do not know whose." [Attentive readers will remember the name Miguel Fuentes from last chapter though the relationship is still a mystery.]

-Goal of the Harvesters?
Fountain: "You will attempt mutation on yourselves, or perhaps it will be mutilation. It will not work."
Biddy: "It will work! We've seen the castle on top of the hill. We'll climb that hill, we'll be the first people ever to climb it. We'll be the first super-people, the first people able to grasp the vision. And we'll lead the rest of humanity up to it." .... "Despise us, loathe us! We'll show you. We'll redeem you all. We'll make the breakthrough to intellectualized, celestialized, chthonized, socialized, paranaturalized, cosmosized, one-other-word-that-I-forgot." (yes, Lafferty is having fun here!)
Freddy: "my own girl has turned into one of the snakes."

Finally, Freddy pretty much lays out every bit of the plot thus far to his friend Selim:
Selim: "Is it the live things or the dead things that are bothering you tonight, Freddy?"
Freddy: "It's those things that won't make up their mind which they are. See, there are these brain folks that Biddy runs around with, three Shes out of Haggard and three Borgia types out of Baron Corvo. They mix up this brain stuff and put it out in psychic jolts. It knocked me to my knees the first time they used it on me. Tonight they tried it on Michael Fountain. He slipped them, but it killed his nephew and bit into someone else. Now they're raising up something that would be better dead, and they've put me onto a man who ought to be dead."
And a little later, Freddy: "You get plugged into their brain-weave and you stay plugged in. They plug into someone else, and you're connected too. And sometimes now I'm connected with [Fuentes] when they're not."

(If you're still confused by the novel, read that a few times. It should clear everything up. Once you've read it a few times, have fun looking up Shes out of Haggard and Borgia types out of Baron Corvo.)

Finally, Freddy learns a little more at the museum. "The life-mask is that of a civil servant who served under Akhnaton, the heretic king of Egypt.... lived around 1350 B.C., or around 900 B.C., if you follow the timetable of Velikovsky." The name of the mask? - "Kir-ha-Mod.... transliterated as Kar-Ha-Mod."
Freddy: "It's the same face three times, it's the same name three times."

The chapter ends with Freddy finding an address in his pocket. Freddy resolves to go to the address while hearing some Mexican-Spanish talk ("cooking up something big") in his head.

-----

Some few other things....

-Scatterbrain Lounge is a great name for a bar.
-Hugh Hamtree gets my favorite laugh out loud lines in the novel with his helpful suggestion that the guy might have gotten froze in a block of ice. I love the idea of a bartender listening to Freddy and Biddy's crazy conversation and attempting to make a helpful suggestion.
-With all of the dialogue, the few spots of non-dialogue commentary stick out all the more. For example, see this post's title.

YOU ARE ALREADY SNAKE-BIT (Fourth Mansions Chapter 1)

How does one begin to tackle Fourth Mansions? My best advice is to read through it as fast as you can, then return and read through it slowly a few more times. Or, if you're following our weekly schedule and don't want to read ahead, I suggest hanging around in a chapter, dwelling there, getting a feel for it, re-reading the chapter at least once or twice during the week.

What do we get in Chapter 1?

Here's the basic structure:

1) Prologue

2) Intro to Freddy

3) Intro to the Harvesters
      -Harvesters Gathered
      -Brain-weave in action

Prologue

The chapter starts with a quote from Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle, setting up the action:

"For there are all these obstacles for us to meet and there is also the danger of serpents."

So, in the rest of the novel, let's at least be expecting some obstacles and serpents.

Following this quote is what I'm calling the Prologue, a marvelous bit of writing that instantly hooks the reader even as it disorients and disarms.

The style of this prologue, in its earthy urgency and in that it directly addresses the reader, is different than what follows. It also connects to and sets up what is to follow. In this prologue, we read of "entwined seven-tentacled lightning," "seven-colored writing in the darkness," and "seven murderous thunder-snakes striking in seven directions." Besides this multiplication of sevens, we get the continuation of the "danger of serpents" theme that Teresa has set us up for. We are "snake-bit" and we feel the "snake-death."

The word "seven" is repeated twelve more times in the relatively short space of Chapter 1, always connected to the Harvesters and to brain-weaving. ("It is a seven-bladed sword; it is no joke.")

Intro to Freddy

Ah, but before we are introduced to the Harvesters, we are introduced to Freddy Foley, "a young man who had very good eyes but simple brains."

We first encounter young Freddy arguing with his supervisor, Tankersly. The entire scene reads like a classic 30s screwball comedy script. I imagine William Powell playing a screen version of Freddy Foley.

In a tight exchange of dialogue, we learn that Foley is a newspaper reporter, that he has been chasing an unlikely story that Carmody Overlark, Special Assistant to the Secretary of State, is the same man as a Khar-ibn-Mod who lived 500 years ago, that Foley has been intimidated and injured chasing the story, and that there are also low-grade seismic disturbances happening locally. Written out like this, the plot seems serious, building toward adventure and confrontation, but again, on the page, it reads screwball.

"Ah, why don't you take off the rest of the day and get drunk, Foley?"
"I did that Monday on your advice. I'd still rather have followed up that case."
"Well, it was better than having you go off quarter-cocked on the Knoll story. That would really have gotten us laughed out of town. And this thing now, drop it! No more Carmody stuff. No more stuff of men who live for centuries or who live more than once. Try one more bender for my sake now, and I hope to see you tomorrow morning, red-eyed and trembling, with your, ah, sanity restored, and ready for work. Get out of here now."
"Yes sir," Freddy Foley said, and he got out.

It's worth noting that Foley is a young man. It's subtle, but there are many instances of this youth theme through the chapter. The head of the Harvesters is described as young-looking and another of their number is explicitly called young, while yet another is described as "nineteen years old and had been nineteen for quite a while." The target of the brain-weave described later in the chapter is identified repeatedly (ten times) only as a "young man," and the Harvesters engaged in the brain-weave are described as "young people." All of this youth language may or may not be set against the possibly 500-year-old Carmody Overlark. It is there, I think, to direct the reader toward the open possibilities of youth, that all of these characters are as yet immature and must grow into who they will be.

As all cats (and especially tigers) are loose in their skins, this Freddy Foley was loose in his face. There was room there for far more things than his winking innocence and his easy grin. There was room for multiplex character that Freddy hadn’t developed yet, for expressions he had never used. It was a face unplowed, though momentarily bloodied.

Intro to the Harvesters

"There were seven of the Harvesters. It takes at least seven to make up a brain-weaving, and this was their favorite game. They met in the evenings especially, and often in the daytimes, for they all had a sort of entanglement going about each other. Apart from each other they were powerful in their persons. Together they became critical mass."

The seven Harvesters meet at the mansion of James Bauer and are the source of the "low-grade seismic disturbances, earthquake jolts which were mental but which fooled instruments and men."

David Pringle and many others classify Fourth Mansions as a fantasy text, and maybe it is, but I feel pretty strongly that this brain-weave is a direct descendant of the multitude of esp/psionics stories that Campbell had championed decades earlier. (This type of sf story was not limited to Astounding. One of my favorites of this subgenre is Bester's The Demolished Man, which was serialized in Galaxy.) Fourth Mansions exists in the context of a very clearly defined and even popular science fictional set of ideas, regardless of whether or not we've since discarded those ideas as pseudo-science.

Here is the SFE entry on Psionics: http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/psionics

The Harvesters each get their own brief introduction before they come together in a demonstrated brain-weave. It is in these introductions that Lafferty links each character with a painting style. This close linking of character to a visual style was unpacked by Gregorio Montejo at last year's LaffCon

James Bauer - “This Jim Bauer was in oils, in the splotchy sort of oil-painting that Eakins did do well, that should have been sketchy in result, and wasn’t.”

Bedelia (Biddy) Bencher - “This Bedelia (Biddy) Bencher was a drawing in red chalk by Matisse. She was red-haired and lightly freckled and beautifully bony (the last her own description). She had a lustful mouth and innocent eyes, and was full of green passion. She was nineteen years old and had been nineteen for quite a while.”

Salzy (Ensalzamienta) Silverio - “This Salzy was a bit by Degas, yet he would never have guessed the twisted passion of this dark, gay, unsmiling young woman. “Not twisted,” Salzy once said of her own passion, “it is helical. That sounds better.”

Arouet Manion - “This Arouet Manion was a Reynolds piece. Having a Reynolds face, he appeared more profound than he was. But that maker touched many of his characters with his irony.”

Wing Manion - “Wing Manion reminded one of a fish done by Paul Klee: not in her actual appearance, of course, but in her style. Yet she was good-looking, and Klee never painted a good-looking fish in his life. Those Klee fishes, though, they have passion.”

Hondo Silverio - “This Hondo Silverio could have been by Ingres. ”

Letitia Bauer - “Letitia Bauer was the pale or moon-colored, slim woman whom Burne-Jones had painted several times: as Beggar Main, as Norse Goddess, variously.”

Beyond this linking to painters, Lafferty gives us at least one more descriptive hook which will recur with each character. Each character is distinguished from one another. Each character has their own motivations for participating in the brain-weave. Though all are involved in something dangerous, not all appear to be villainous.

Through the interactions of the group members, the connection of these seven to Freddy Foley is established. He is Biddy Bencher's boyfriend, and he has been chosen as a patsy, a fool used to probe at the powerful Carmody Overlark. And Carmody Overlark, it is revealed, is quite powerful himself, able to brain-weave on his own and able to resist the brain-weave game of these amateurs playing at power for the first time.

After all of the Harvesters are established, the chapter concludes with them attempting to gain psychic influence over a man named Michael Fountain, to pour "fire" into him and use him as Lord of the Harvest. The Harvesters, led by Bauer, intend to sift the entire world, with themselves set up as the lords of power behind the powers-that-be. Not all agree on the how or the why, but each feel the power and allow themselves to be caught up in it.

“The brain-weaving was something that the Harvesters themselves did not understand, though they had developed it deliberately. Now they gathered the power and the goal to themselves, and they projected it. They did not, any of them, understand it completely in their own persons, but they understood it more completely when the seven of them were linked together. Surely they would understand it in near totality when they had linked more and more strong persons to themselves. These seven were all projecting persons and they could feel their own effect welling through.”

This last section is perhaps the most difficult of the chapter. Lafferty skillfully juggles descriptions of the Harvesters in their physical realities with descriptions of the Harvesters in their pyschic realities as they probe at and attempt to control Michael Fountain. It is confusing for the characters and confusing for the reader that these Harvesters end up struggling psychically with a a "bewildered young man" who is perhaps inside of Michael Fountain but distinct from Michael Fountain. This young man is gradually revealed to be separate from Fountain, but somehow related to Fountain.

“The brain-weave was fabricating a new and uncontrollable personage in the name of Michael Fountain, but did he know it? He knew it in fright and agony, and he slipped away from it again and again. He had felt the death of one man caught in it accidentally; he felt the total penetration of another. But were not both of these himself in some way?
The brain-weave had entered, deeply and forever, into a mind under that of Michael Fountain, and yet it was a mind associated with his. Had the brain-weave made a new mind and a new man and named it Michael Fountain?”

When this new man is revealed as Miguel Fuentes at the very end of the chapter, the reader is left unsure of who this man is and what is relationship to Michael Fountain is. Despite this lack of clarity, there is no question about what kind of man this is. The young man has now become a main person in the world. This young man has become a germinating man. This young man has become a timeless man.

- - - - - - - - - -

Questions

Is Fourth Mansions science fiction or fantasy? Or something else?

Lafferty's novels have a reputation for being notoriously difficult to read. Is Chapter 1 difficult?

A New Look for LAFFCON2

We've updated a few things around the website, including the new poster for LAFFCON2 and registration information (registration opens on April 1st, 2017).

Planning is still in the works as far as conference panels and presentations. If you have suggestions or comments based on last year's event or other input for this year, please feel free to leave them in the comments.

Fourth Mansions Reading Club

Leading up to LaffCon2, we've decided to try something new here: a virtual book club.

In honor of Kevin Cheek's efforts to promote Lafferty and in celebration of his LaffCon2 attendance, we've decided to spend some time thinking together about his favorite novel. There will be much other talk at LaffCon2, but we thought that it'd be nice to also have a communal focus on one novel this year in addition to the general talk.

The good news is that we are doing this. It's happening. We're going to do our best to have a conversation about Lafferty's Fourth Mansions. This will include weekly commentary here on this site. Expect spoilers. This is casual commentary and meant as a general guide to any reader who may initially be disoriented by Lafferty's dazzling prose and his slightly unorthodox plotting. My goal for this commentary is to stimulate further thought. I very much desire professionally rigorous academic papers and presentations examining elements of the novel. This casual commentary here is not that. Take it for what it is and join in the conversation.

The bad news is that if you don't already own a copy of Fourth Mansions, your only online option for buying a copy is the secondary market, where prices have exploded in the past few years. Fourth Mansions used to be one of the novels that could be found for fairly inexpensive prices. Now, it's regularly fetching $20+ prices for used paperback versions. Ugh. If you keep an eye out for deals, they are still there to be had, but they are harder to find. Used copies can be found at the usual spots. Amazon. Ebay. AbeBooks. 

There is an e-edition available to you if you live in many markets outside of the US. If you do live in the US, there are inconvenient and not-quite-completely-legal-even-though-you-are-paying ways to get around region restrictions if you desire this e-edition. The Gollancz ebook version is available via Amazon.co.uk: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fourth-Mansions-R-Lafferty-ebook/dp/B01A5TIIJK/

How are we doing this book club thing?

February is the month for obtaining a copy of the novel if you don't already have one.

March, April, and May are for obsessively reading and re-reading the novel.

There are 13 chapters in Fourth Mansions. We'll read (and read and re-read) one chapter a week. Or read the entire novel once each week. Either way, we'll only focus on one chapter a week.

Fourth Mansions reading group posts will begin here on March 7th.

March 7th - Chapter 1
March 14th - Chapter 2
March 21st - Chapter 3
March 28th - Chapter 4
April 4th - Chapter 5
April 11th - Chapter 6
April 18th - Chapter 7
April 25th - Chapter 8.
May 2nd - Chapter 9
May 9th - Chapter 10
May 16th - Chapter 11
May 23rd - Chapter 12
May 30th - Chapter 13

Finally, if you've made it all the way to the end of this post, you are now eligible for our great Fourth Mansions giveaway contest. I have two paperback copies of the novel that I'd love to give away. Here are the rules, all honor system.

1) You must not already own a copy of the novel. Don't be greedy.
2) You must agree to read the novel.
3) You must leave a comment on this post specifically noting that you'd like to win a copy.

This "contest" will run from today, February 4th, through the end of the day next Friday, February 10th. On February 11th, I'll wake up, write down all of the names of those who have left comments, assign a number to each, and then roll a die. Two lucky winners will be contacted and will each be sent a copy of Fourth Mansions. Hooray!

Feel free to share this contest with everyone.