And All My Idols Are Angels, With the Faces of Cranky Old Men

by George Potter

“The Perfect ghost story is the story of Possession,” he said, “and that is hypnotism from beyond the grace. This is possible since hypnotism is by the will, and the will is immortal. A number of notable men have been possessed, and all of their lives seem to fit a pattern: the inconsequential early years, the hiatus when they stood where Faust stood, and the decision. And then the rise to power and influence and almost universal honor after they have made the deal. But it is not themselves, it is the devils within them that gain these things. They are the possessed men who do much of the running of the world, and theirs is the most frightening story that can be imagined. But those who watch the great men do not know that they are shells inhabited by ghosts.”

 

–  From Archipelago by R.A. Lafferty

 

I seek treasure, and most of the treasures I seek are made of words. I prospect in libraries and flea markets, at yard sales and in old boxes of books that no one wants anymore. Some of those treasures are delights-in-the-finding: stories I have never heard of, never even dreamt existed. Those are wonderful. But the best treasures are the stories I’ve been looking for. Some of them I’ve been looking for since childhood.

Any prospector with sense will admit that not all treasure was created equally. Some treasures are harder to find than others. Some are shinier. The really shiny hard to find treasures are, in my opinion, the best.

And no treasure I seek is as shiny or as hard to find as certain stories by Raphael Aloysius Lafferty.

—

There’s a story told about R.A. Lafferty, who was a devout, very traditional Catholic who never missed Mass, if he could help it. At one point, a young priest took over duties at his Oklahoma church of choice. This fiery young idealist got a mixed reception. Some appreciated his modern ways and casual style. Some complained. He let none of those bother him, and went on with his business.

But there was something he found harder and harder to ignore. As he stood before his congregation, speaking the homily, preaching it from his heart, speaking truth to the world as he saw it, he kept coming across the face of a single old man in that Mass of souls: an old man who smiled sardonically and – every so often – simply shook his head in disagreement.

I can imagine this young priest going to one of his more approving flock and asking about the quiet but impossible to ignore nay-sayer. And I can imagine the response of that member: “Oh, that’s Mr. Lafferty,” he or she probably said, then lowered their voice, ever aware of the demands of propriety. “He writes stories.” A pause. “Weird stories.”

I myself wonder about that young priest. I wonder if he ever approached Mr. Lafferty and attempted to understand. I wonder if that ultimate polite act of denial affected the young idealist at all.

But mostly I wonder if that young man ever took the time to read those weird (oh yes, my friends, very weird) stories and realized (even if only when asleep and dreaming or bowed speaking to his Lord) that he was lucky. That he was one of the rare men of God to be visited by an angel, even if it wore the face of a cranky old man?

—

The first Lafferty story I ever read was “Eurema’s Dam,” in a collection of Hugo Award winning stories, when I was fourteen or so. I’d never heard of the man, so the story was ignored in favor of the more familiar offers ( some of them treasures I’d been seeking in my lifelong quest) until one morning when I was out of anything else to read. It’s a fairly short story. It only took twenty minutes to read, at most, possibly less with my even-then voracious appetite for the Damn Good Stuff. But twenty minutes, I’ve found, is more than enough to change a life. More than enough to blow your whole simple world away and replace it with something so much stranger and scarier and incandescently beautiful.

More than enough to point enigmatically to another great horde of treasure buried in strange and wonderful places.

I won’t describe “Eurema’s Dam,” nor any other Lafferty story. To do so is pointless and very close to an insult. If I can make you curious enough to do a little prospecting of your own, I’ll consider my job done. But if you don’t? Ah well. You only rob yourself of joy and beauty. Your choice.

But I couldn’t ignore it. I simply put on my prospector’s boots and struck out again into the hunting grounds.

—

R.A. Lafferty despised the world he lived in for the most part. He claimed that the real world had ended, perhaps decades before. That the valueless, God-less, hateful and selfish society that had replaced it was a sort of Hell, or perhaps a Purgatory. He seemed more than a little ashamed of still being alive in such a rotten place. He hated post-modernist thought, despised moral relativism. So he insulted it with his stories. He held up his own ideals, deeply religious and value-driven, considered foolish and quaint by the world he despised. But this was an angel, friends, not a man. So his stories didn’t do those things overtly, but on a deep level that you have to be another sort of treasure hunter to find. To read his work you’d never think he despised a thing. Even his antagonists are charming and funny for the most part, just as they are in the real world as they steal and murder and rape and destroy.

His stories are funny, and surreal, and thought-provoking. They use science fiction and fantasy tropes with the skill of a master and the intent of a mentor.
But they never preach. They never lecture. They’re parables; homilies instead of sermons. In fact, they are disguised parables. It takes an intelligent, open mind to discern their true meaning. Lafferty was only interested in speaking to those he considered worth teaching. He didn’t force it. He simply spoke.

And though he hated the world, I think he loved people. I think he saw even the most evil people as souls to pity, stuck here in this value-free world, calling slavery liberty. I think he wanted to at least entertain those people, perhaps make them smile on a bad day.

To press the metaphor, he simply sat in church, smiling. Shaking his head.

—

For years I sought, in the places usual and unusual, the stories of R.A. Lafferty, and found them. “Nine Hundred Grandmothers,” “A Slow Tuesday Night,” “All Pieces of a River’s Shore,” “Continued On Next Rock.” I found his novels: Past Master, Fourth Mansions, The Devil Is Dead, Archipelago. I reveled in them.

But the short work was the real treasure, and – as I aged – I began to see more than the humor and inventive wordplay and poetry of a master writer, more than the mind-blowing concepts and ideas he manipulated like a composer. I began to see that he meant something. That, with no desperation, no compulsion, and a sad sort of infinite patience, he was trying to teach me something. Something important. I was glimpsing the angel beneath the man.

I remember finding the story “The Hole On the Corner,” in a ragged anthology at a yard sale. My yard-saleing was immediately over. It cost a quarter. I handed the lady a dollar, told her to keep the change, thanked her non-understanding self, and retired to the car to read while waiting for my mother and aunt to finish sifting through treasures seen by others as junk. I had a date in other worlds. I had a better drug than any sold from pharmacy or street corner. I had a little nugget of truth and passion and beauty. I probably trembled.

And, unlike so many things in this sometimes awful ugly world (that angels hate with good reason), I was not disappointed in the slightest, even though I’d been hunting for this story for more than a decade. If anything it was even better than I expected. I sat, eyes glued to a musty little grimoire, and flew with an angel as too hot summer sun beat down on me and I ignored it.

—

R.A. Lafferty is little known, even in the small and rarefied world of science fiction and fantasy fandom. He’s a difficult writer, despite all his charm and humor, and plays for keeps. Nothing is simple and nothing is as it seems there, because above all is a lesson. A message. A quiet plea.

He ignores the contemporary great literary dictum of “show, don’t tell.” He tells stories, in a voice so irresistible and strange that you cannot help but listen. He shows nothing, but explains much, and weaves pure joy and pain.

But writers adore and revere him. Writers on opposite poles of political thought, with antagonistic styles and opinions. When authors as diverse as Harlan Ellison, Gene Wolfe, Poul Anderson, Terry Bison, Neil Gaiman, Isaac Asimov, Ursula LeGuin, Roger Zelzany, and Kelly Link praise a fellow toiler you know something’s got to be right. And they don’t seem to just praise him, but almost tremble with fear and love, as if they too are glimpsing the painful beauty below. Glimpsing the angel, singing and unfurling those great wings. Feeling the love and hate and truth spoken so well.

Lafferty wrote only a short time, from 1960-1981. He retired because of a stroke. I sometimes wonder if it actually left him unable to write or if he simply feared his writing would be less afterwards. Did he think the God he worshipped and listened for and filled his stories with was telling him something? None of my business, really, but I wonder. I feel the latter. The message of his work was, I think, too important for him to trust what might be lessened competence. He died in 2002. I didn’t cry. I knew he had been waiting, that great faith finally removing him from a world he didn’t care much at all for.

Thankfully, he was very prolific in those decades. He left much treasure for me to hunt. He’d been an electrical engineer all his life, and a dedicated alcoholic. When he gave up his lifelong career he also gave up the alcohol. He turned to serious writing, he once said, “as a substitute for serious drinking.” Modesty was a virtue to him, remember. In those two decades he basically re-affirmed what science fiction and fantasy writing could be and should be. Some disliked him, and he was far from a fan favorite. But his peers acknowledged his power. He didn’t do without accolades, but seemed to care little for them.

I find it ironic that he was retired by the time I discovered him, since his work has meant so much to me. Beyond the simple joy his work gives, he has been a massive influence on my own writing. I dedicated my story “Monkey” to his memory, and it remains one of my personal favorites of my own stuff. I don’t for a moment think it approaches even his weakest work, but it’s as close as this poor treasure hunter can come, trying to build a beautiful thing for others to find later.  Hoping it means a little something to them. In the end of that story it’s Lafferty, cranky old man’s face gone, angel-pure now in essence, laughing as the foolish mortal creatures once again leave to quest for God, ignorant that God lives right at the center of them – always has and always will.

I don’t know what he’d make of my poor effort, but I have a suspicion:

I think he’s sitting somewhere nice, somewhere beautiful and pleasant, and he’s looking down on me.

And he’s shaking his head at my foolishness.

But he’s smiling.

 

Raphael Aloysius Lafferty

November 7, 1914 – March 18, 2002

“[Once a] French publisher nervously asked whether Lafferty minded being compared to G.K. Chesterton (another Catholic author), and there was a terrifying silence that went on and on. Was the great man hideously offended? Eventually, very slowly, he said: ‘You’re on the right track, kid,’ and wandered away.”

– From an SFX Magazine column by David Langford; Issue #92, June 2002