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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.
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 1
