O.K. I make an exeptional double post and give this one a last shot. One more day of possible extra attention.(As I agree with the writer of this fragment) In praise of; given by a pusillanimous person.

Raphael Aloysius "Ray" Lafferty, the self-described "cranky old man from Tulsa, Oklahoma," is a genius: I state that flatly. He is one of the eminent English-language writers of, at the very least, the twentieth century--yet he remains little known, little read, and much misunderstood and underappreciated. Indeed, much of his oeuvre exists only in very limited print runs of cheap paper chapbooks.

As the thoughtful will deduce, the problem is that Lafferty is not an easy writer. That problem is exacerbated by the fact that under superficial consideration he looks easy; were he as obviously complex as, for example, James Joyce (and, of course, were he not "just" an SF&F author), readers and critics would likely have made some effort to look beneath the hood to see what was what; but because his works can, by the careless, be taken for ordinary stuff, his complexities--of both language and meaning--end up dismissed as just nonsensically bad ordinary writing. As a thirsty drinker expecting the taste of a soda pop might well spit out in disgust a mouthful of vintage brut champagne, so might an SF reader expecting typical SF reject vintage Lafferty.


Last edited by BranShea; 04/09/2008 2:12 PM.