The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Read online

  This book was compiled and released by The Books of Sand and is licensed for distribution under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0). This means that it can be shared freely, but not for commercial purposes or without attribution. (Seriously, don't try to sell it on Amazon or slap your name on ‘Nine Hundred Grandmothers’. People will notice.) For more free original e-books, visit The Books of Sand at https://sites.google.com/site/thebooksofsand/

  The beautiful cover art you were admiring was done by the talented Abigail Larson. To see more of her work, visit http://abigaillarson.deviantart.com/

  The Man Who Talled Tales contains every short story published by R. A. Lafferty, from ‘The Wagons’ in 1959 to ‘There'll Always Be Another Me’ in 2003. Where multiple versions of the same story exist, the editor has opted to include their most recent iterations.

  “There was a writer from Tulsa, Oklahoma (he died in 2002), who was, for a little while in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the best short story writer in the world. His name was R. A. Lafferty…”

  — Neil Gaiman

  “You get such a sense of joy and boundless imagination in every sentence – even if the story doesn't totally cohere, you feel like it's about something.”

  — Bill Hader

  “Just about everything Lafferty writes is fun, is witty, is entertaining and playful. But it is not easy, for it is a mingling of allegory with myth, and of both with something more…”

  — Gene Wolfe

  “If there were no Lafferty, we would lack the imagination to invent him.”

  — Michael Swanwick

  “The tavernkeepers weep while we rejoice: Lafferty's stories are full of a warm, Bacchic glow, recollected in sobriety — euphoria, comradeship, nostalgia, and the ever-renewed belief that something wonderful may happen.”

  — Damon Knight

  “Why it took the world so long to gather up Lafferty's glorious short stories will probably remain one of the great unsolved mysteries. Nonetheless, we can rejoice that someone has finally done it, and we can settle back to appreciating the special magic proffered by the madman Lafferty.”

  — Harlan Ellison

  “Lafferty has the power which sets fire behind your eyeballs. There is warmth, illumination, and a certain joy attendant upon the experience. He's good.”

  — Roger Zelazny

  Table of Contents (chronological)

  Go to Table of Contents (alphabetical)

  Go to Table of Contents (by collection)

  Introduction

  § 1957-1962 §

  Cabrito

  Ghost in the Corn Crib

  Adam Had Three Brothers

  The Ugly Sea

  Aloys

  Seven-Day Terror

  Other Side of the Moon

  Day of the Glacier

  Girl of the Month

  Panic Flight

  Golden Gate

  Through Other Eyes

  The Weirdest World

  The Wagons

  The Cliff Climbers

  Holy Woman

  Rain Mountain

  Long Teeth

  Saturday You Die

  Try to Remember

  Almost Perfect

  Enfant Terrible

  McGonigal's Worm

  The Polite People of Pudibundia

  The Six Fingers of Time

  Goldfish

  In the Garden

  Snuffles

  Rainbird

  All the People

  Beautiful Dreamer

  Maleficent Morning

  Dream

  Phoenic

  Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas

  Task Force Fifty-Eight and a Half

  The Transcendent Tigers

  All But the Words

  Seven Story Dream

  Among the Hairy Earthmen

  Name of the Snake

  Parthen

  § 1963-1967 §

  The Pani Planet

  Mad Man

  What's the Name of That Town?

  A Special Condition in Summit City

  Pig in a Pokey

  The Primary Education of the Camiroi

  The Man with the Speckled Eyes

  Nine Hundred Grandmothers

  • Memoir (Nine Hundred Grandmothers)

  Hog-Belly Honey

  Bubbles When They Burst

  The Man Who Never Was

  Slow Tuesday Night

  Guesting Time

  Land of the Great Horses

  • Afterword (Land of the Great Horses)

  Once on Aranea

  In Our Block

  Golden Trabant

  Crocodile

  Maybe Jones and the City

  Hands of the Man

  How They Gave It Back

  The Hole on the Corner

  Been a Long Long Time

  One At a Time

  Narrow Valley

  Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne

  Polity and Custom of the Camiroi

  Cliffs That Laughed

  The Ultimate Creature

  Ginny Wrapped in the Sun

  Rogue Raft

  Camels and Dromedaries, Clem

  The Man Underneath

  Configuration of the North Shore

  Eurema's Dam

  Frog on the Mountain

  § 1968-1971 §

  The Man with the Aura

  McGruder's Marvels

  Condillac's Statue

  This Grand Carcass Yet

  Entire and Perfect Chrysolite

  Old Foot Forgot

  Interurban Queen

  Symposium

  Groaning Hinges of the World

  Continued on Next Rock

  • How I Wrote “Continued On Next Rock”

  Ride a Tin Can

  Ishmael Into the Barrens

  All Pieces of a River Shore

  Sky

  When All the Lands Pour Out Again

  About a Secret Crocodile

  • Memoir (About A Secret Crocodile)

  The All-At-Once Man

  Dorg

  World Abounding

  Quiz Ship Loose

  Mud Violet

  Boomer Flats

  Nor Limestone Islands

  The Most Forgettable Story in the World

  Apocryphal Passage of the Last Night of Count Finnegan On Galveston Island

  Company in the Wings

  Horns on Their Heads

  In Outraged Stone

  Rang Dang Kaloof

  And Walk Now Gently Through the Fire

  Scorner's Seat

  § 1972-1974 §

  And Name My Name

  Incased in Ancient Rind

  Days of Grass, Days of Straw

  Barnaby's Clock

  The World as Will and Wallpaper

  And Read the Flesh Between the Lines

  And Mad Undancing Bears

  Animal Fair

  The Ungodly Mice of Doctor Drakos

  The Two-Headed Lion of Cris Benedetti

  The Hellaceous Rocket of Harry O'Donovan

  The Wooly World of Barnaby Sheen

  Berryhill

  St. Poleander's Eve

  Funnyfingers

  Endangered Species

  Royal Licorice

  Great Day in the Morning

  By the Seashore

  Flaming Ducks and Giant Bread

  Rivers of Damascus

  Mr. Hamadryad

  Or Little Ducks Each Day

  Heart Grow Fonder

  Assault on Fat Mountain

&nb
sp; Smoe and the Implicit Clay

  Hound Dog's Ear

  For All Poor Folks at Picketwire

  From the Thunder Colt's Mouth

  Three Shadows of the Wolf

  Old Halloweens On The Guna Slopes

  The Skinny People of Leptophlebo Street

  The Man Who Walked Through Cracks

  The Doggone Highly Scientific Door

  Oh Tell Me Will It Freeze Tonight

  The Emperor's Shoestrings

  Brain Fever Season

  The Hand with One Hundred Fingers

  Fog in My Throat

  What Big Tears the Dinosaur's

  And Some in Velvet Gowns

  Oh Whatta You Do When the Well Runs Dry?

  Puddle on the Floor

  Thou Whited Wall

  Fall of Pebble-Stones

  And All the Skies Are Full of Fish

  Pleasures and Palaces

  Haruspex

  And You Did Not Wail

  § 1975-1979 §

  Oh, Those Trepidatious Eyes!

  Marsilia V

  Bequest of Wings

  Bright Flightways

  Love Affair With Ten Thousand Springs

  Selenium Ghosts of the Eighteen Seventies

  The Funny Face Murders

  The Only Tune That He Could Play

  Jack Bang's Eyes

  Lord Torpedo, Lord Gyroscope

  Slippery

  Splinters

  Bright Coins in Never-Ending Stream

  I Don't Care Who Keeps the Cows

  The Casey Machine

  The Forty-Seventh Island

  Happening in Chosky Bottoms

  Snake in His Bosom

  Rainy Day in Halicarnassus

  Make Sure the Eyes Are Big Enough

  Tongues of the Matagorda

  Bank and Shoal of Time

  Unique Adventure Gone

  Great Tom Fool

  The Last Astronomer

  Pine Castle

  One-Eyed Mocking-Bird

  This Boding Itch

  Posterior Analytics

  The End of Outward

  New People

  § 1980-1984 §

  Thieving Bear Planet

  Heart of Stone, Dear

  Six Leagues From Lop

  In Deepest Glass

  All Hollow Though You Be

  Ifrit

  Buckets Full of Brains

  There'll Always Be Another Me

  Square and Above Board

  You Can't Go Back

  Calamities of the Last Pauper

  Faith Sufficient

  In the Turpentine Trees

  Bird-Master

  Flaming-Arrow

  Junkyard Thoughts

  Inventions Bright and New

  The Man Who Made Models

  I'll See It Done and Then I'll Die

  The Effigy Histories

  John Salt

  Of Laughter and the Love of Friends

  Two For Four Ninety-Five

  Ewe Lamb

  The 99th Cubicle

  Le Hot Sport

  Magazine Section

  § 1985-1993 §

  The Story of Little Briar-Rose, A Scholarly Study

  Along the San Pennatus Fault

  Something Rich and Strange

  How Many Miles to Babylon?

  Gray Ghost: A Reminiscence

  Oh Happy Double-Jointed Tongues!

  Promontory Goats

  Episodes of the Argo

  The Man Who Lost His Magic

  Anamnesis

  * * *

  Introduction

  An introduction is meant to help the reader make sense of an author, and this is an introduction to the collected stories of R.A. Lafferty. You can see the problem. Strange thing to put to paper, but that's the truth of it. I cannot presume to improve on the praise already lavished upon him; suffice it to say he is inimitable, ineffable, a born story-teller, a brilliant liar, and the single purest deposit of pure blarney ever mined from American soil. He loved liars and con-men but he loved stories more, and this became critically important as he continued writing: because over here is what a story is, and over here is what a con is, and he wanted to be damned sure people could tell the difference.

  So many of Lafferty's cautionary characters are con-men, by which I mean confidence-men — men who inspire undue confidence in the story they're telling. They sidle up to you, perfectly charming, perfectly respectable. They tell you most people are not clever enough to understand what they're about to say. They may even tell you it's a secret, just to pique your interest. Once it's piqued, that's when they work the grift: the Opening Hook, the Fashionable Theme, the Glistening Metaphor; they keep at it till they have you. They get inside your head just long enough to build a scarecrow of epiphany and sell it to you, leaving just before you realize it's flimsy and cold and not even real straw.

  That is most fiction. It is something that could be true, but isn't. A Lafferty story is different. It is something that should be true, but isn't. There is a difference.

  Making Sense, now that's a con. Oldest con there is. We need sense to figure out the world — specifically, we need story-sense. It's a need that runs deep, beneath the Freudian subconscious, beneath the Jungian unconscious, and it's mostly been for the good. (An evolutionary psychologist will look at that result and sell you a very clever and sensible theory as to why for a dollar, or a half-dozen for five. They'll even look and sound respectable while doing it, as you would expect.) Narrative thinking is a mental shortcut, an organic method of organization, and we wouldn't have made it far without it. But like all shortcuts it's vulnerable to hijackers and flim-flammers and folks who are just plain lost. Freud makes sense. So do creation myths. So does eugenics.

  Read Lafferty's stories: he knows the cons for crutches and safety nets, and has politely declined them. Don't buy it? Making Sense too general? Well then, take Show-Don't-Tell. This is a new con, relatively speaking, though for sheer dazzle it's up there with old stalwarts like the Tragic Flaw and the Deus Ex Machina. All new writers are taught to work the Show-Don't-Tell con hard, and why not? Simply tell a person a story — lie to them honestly — and the story is a thing outside them, something they can hold in their hand, turn this way and that, hoot and holler over its flaws and flatness. Ah, but crack the door just a hair, show them only a few sights and sounds and furtive little movements, and their story-sense builds a story out of those details, a story planted in their minds and watered with their ego. It's almost like being told the truth. We don't like to think we can't trust the stories we tell ourselves; and anyway, it's very hard to pull something out of your own head, to hold it in your hand, turn it this way and that, looking for flaws.

  A Lafferty story is almost always told-not-shown. His characters are ridiculous larger-than-life personalities who say exactly what they are doing and why, stumbling through other-wheres and never-weres in prose that is abuzz with puns and paradoxes and enough said-bookisms to… but that is the point. He's telling you a story minus the sly, aiming to please something deeper than the unconscious, deeper even than story-sense, trying to tickle something so fundamental you don't even know it's there until it giggles. You'd not call his stories deconstructions — that's just more sense-pap — but more a stripping, an undressing, a decrutching, an honesting. They do not make sense but oh do they fascinate, and that is what makes them true.

  Of course, now that I've shared with you this penetrating insight, this great secret (did I mention it was a secret? Well it is, one of the oldest), you can read his stories with open eyes, their bones laid bare, their meanings plain and within easy grasp.

  What, why are you giving me that look? I swear, I'm telling you the truth.

  Honest.

  A Note On the Text: As fans no doubt know, presuming to copy-edit the work of Raphael Aloysius Lafferty is a fool's errand — the first man to try is probably still at it. More perhaps than any other writer, Lafferty reveled i
n slang and neologism and idiosyncrasy. Therefore, with the exception of obvious typographical errors (‘whenevre’ for ‘whenever’, etc.), all texts presented here are faithful reproductions of their source manuscripts.

  We'd also like to thank James Williamson for his assistance with proofreading Eurema's Dam.

  To make this e-book as user-friendly as possible, we have provided three different tables of contents. The chronological ToC is for those who wish to graze; the alphabetical for those who know exactly the story they want to read; and the collections for those who wish to browse a specific book like Nine Hundred Grandmothers because Neil Gaiman said it was the best one (he's right).

  The Man Who Talled Tales contains every short story R.A. Lafferty published, some 224 stories in all (and a few others besides). Each has been rigorously proofed and formatted for easy reading. We compiled this ebook because we believe R.A. Lafferty was brilliant, inimitable, and deserves above all to be read, not entombed in moldy paperbacks or overpriced limited edition shelf-candy. It is our hope that you will read him, that you will enjoy him, and that you'll pass him on to your friends.

  Cabrito

  The Taberna was only as big as a cracker box, but it had full wall mirrors on each end which made it look three times as large. The seven stools had (not in order of importance) the Norwegian, the Irishman, a Little Brown Man, a Big Brown Man, two lesser persons, and Anita. Anita on this evening was not being spoken to by any of the other patrons of the bar; it was as though she were not there. The Norwegian, in the apparent world, was known as Airman Lundquist, and was stationed at the Air Base across the river. He had been a sergeant and Air Man for twenty years; and now, purged of wife and family, was happy in a border town with a twenty-four hour pass every third day. The Norwegian, in the real world, was a wild Viking with a keen sense of humor and adventure, and no other sense of any kind whatsoever.

  These seven people drank slow cool drinks and talked easily, for they were all good friends.

  With the mirror images, it was as though twenty-one people were seated there in three only slightly separated groups; and Airman Lundquist was prominent in each group. An odd thing (hardly worth mentioning) is that, though the images of the other six persons followed them in detail, those of Airman Lundquist did not do so exactly. There were (though none at first noticed it) three Airman Lundquists, each telling a different story and drinking a different drink. The story of one was a happening at Bougaineville long ago in those happier days of the great southern war; and the story of another was of a wife in Minnesota who was separated from him, as she was damned if she'd live down here, and he was damned if he'd live up there anymore; and the third one was talking about Elena who had a date with him that night but hadn't shown up. He said he was glad she hadn't showed as he always had more fun on the nights she didn't. And one of the Airmen Lundquists was drinking a Carta Blanca, and one a Gin Fizz, and one a muddy looking rum drink that was cousin to Cuba Libre. But except for these little things Lundquist and his two images were very similar as mirror images always are.