Saturday, November 5, 2011

'There is nobody, there has never been anybody, who writes like Lafferty' - Theodore Sturgeon introduces R. A. Lafferty

It's an easy thing to sit down and slosh sweet sugar to coat everything that comes out of the box the editor sends you; do that once, however, and the reader, having found one single cascara in his candy, isn't going to bite another piece of it nor buy another box... Okay: no candy. Let me first say honestly and freely which stories pushed my joy-button, and a little of why...


The two Lafferty stories, like virtually all Lafferty stories, sting and tickle at the same time. There is nobody, there has never been anybody, who writes like Lafferty. Under the puckishness, the color-bursts, the wild, weird and wonderful characterizations, the tumble and sparkle of language, is an undercoat of sharp and serious observation - observation of human motivations, of human institutions (universities, for example, or rituals which have lost their reason-for-being) so that, like Gulliver's Travels, almost all of Lafferty can be read as enchanting entertainments, or as sharply-etched political cartoonery, or as analogs of a superbly thought-out philosophy concerning human nature and human conduct. In other words, you get out of Lafferty, as out of Swift, whatever you're equipped to bring in.





-Theodore Sturgeon, referring to Lafferty's stories 'Bright Flightways' and 'The Man Who Walked Through Cracks' in Chrysalis 3 (1978), edited by Roy Torgeson

2 comments:

Kevin said...

Where are all the comments? Of course, I have nothing intelligent to add beyond emphatic agreement with the subject line.

Daniel Otto Jack Petersen said...

Yeah, Kevin, I was just delighted to find yet another of the more 'serious' or 'literary' SF writers singling out Lafferty as totally unique. His comment that Laff's stories 'tickle and sting at the same time' is a useful epithet. Also his mention of an 'undercoat of sharp and serious observation' beneath 'the puckishness, the color-bursts, the wild, weird and wonderful characterizations, the tumble and sparkle of language' is particularly apt as well. Furthermore, Jay has commented on this blog that he connects Lafferty strongly to Swift and you see Sturgeon backing that view here. And his observation that Laff has a 'superbly thought-out philosophy concerning human nature and human conduct' is a welcome acknowledgment too. The paragraph is a good little find I think.

'It was all strong talk with the horns and hooves still on it.'
(R. A. Lafferty, The Devil is Dead)