Confusion as Immersion in R.A. Lafferty

I have waited far longer between posts than I had initially intended, and I blame my lapse entirely on Harrison Otis. Harrison, in what could only be described as a cruel trick, requested that I analyze one or more of the works of R.A. Lafferty, and that has led me to the discovery that it is very difficult to undertake a phenomenological analysis of R.A. Lafferty’s works. However, when confused, the most profitable question to ask is often: why am I confused? Such proved to be the case in this instance.

The specific story that has been stumping me is Lafferty’s perplexing, unique, and brilliant “Nine Hundred Grandmothers,” and I believe that the reason I have found it so difficult to analyze is twofold. Firstly, my modus operandi is generally to apply my personal theory of phenomenological mimesis—the core idea being that stories and novels feel real to us because we receive them in ways that resemble the ways we receive extra-textual phenomena (i.e. reading about a stoplight in a good novel can feel more like seeing a stoplight in real life than reading about a stoplight in a manual of stoplight operation). Anyway, here’s my point. This theory comes up short with “Nine Hundred Grandmothers” because Lafferty is not writing realism at all. He is not interested in making the world of his story feel like the world of our everyday experience, not at least in most respects. The second point is closely related to this: I was confused by “Nine Hundred Grandmothers” because R.A. Lafferty (the crafty old devil) intended for me to be exactly that.

Confusion in this story is a feature—not a bug.

Furthermore, although confusion might have impeded the kind of phenomenological immersion that I usually analyze, Lafferty uses it to facilitate a different and equally effective kind of immersion—one that suits his own particular ends in “Nine Hundred Grandmothers.”

The first paragraph of the story brilliantly introduces our central character and begins plunging us into an alien (in every sense) world.

Ceran Swicegood was a promising young Special Aspects Man. But, like all Special Aspects, he had one irritating habit. He was forever asking the questions: How Did It All Begin?

What do I learn here? Our protagonist is named Ceran Swicegood. Clear enough. He is a “Special Aspects Man”—this is less clear but as the story continues to unfold I eventually develop a somewhat vague but definitely comprehensible impression of basically what this entails (discovering new stuff in space, studying the cultural significance of that stuff, and ideally adding to its profitability for whatever nebulous entity is behind this operation). And most importantly I learn the defining obsession of Ceran—he is always asking: “How did it all begin?”

Ceran, in short, is 1) being plunged into a completely unfamiliar world and 2) constantly seeking answers about that world; this is the foundation upon which Lafferty turns my confusion into immersion. Consider, for example, the diatribe of Manbreaker wherein he asks Ceran: “Have you been able to find out anything about the living dolls, for instance?” It was at this point that my confusion began to escalate. What living dolls? Whose living dolls? I have heard no mention of these things previously, and I am puzzled, intrigued, and alarmed in equal measure (I really don’t like living dolls). And, crucially, Ceran Swicegood likewise is feeling those very same emotions (with the exception of the alarm, since he does not share my phobia of dolls).

The living dolls seem a part of something much deeper," Ceran said. "There's a whole complex of things to be unraveled. The key may be the statement of the Proavitoi that they do not die."

It is my confusion that allows me to begin to be immersed in the point-of-view of Ceran Swicegood, despite the intentional lack of any realistic fabric to this story. I bring Ceran to life by imputing to him my ignorance, my befuddlement, and my craving for answers.[1] As I animate Ceran with these aspects of my own subjectivity, I enter into his perspectival lens and am drawn deeper into the nebulous fabric of Lafferty’s fascinatingly strange world.

This subjective closeness between Ceran and myself is part of what makes the dazzlingly odd climax of the story pop. Ceran infiltrates into a Proavitoi home and learns that the Proavitio, indeed, do not die. Instead, they simply become smaller and smaller and sleepier and sleepier with the result that every Proavitoi home sits atop basements, stories deep, filled to the brim with grandmothers and grandfathers of decreasing size and increasing antiquity. This means, of course, that if Ceran can find the oldest grandmother he might also be able to find the answer to his driving question: how did it all begin? As Ceran descends further and further, the elders continue to evade his questions, and the more they fail to answer Ceran’s question the more desperate for an answer both he and I become.

"Tell me," he pleaded in agony. "All my life I've tried to find out how it began, how anything began. And you know!"

"We know. Oh, it was so funny how it began. So joke! So fool, so clown, so grotesque thing! Nobody could guess, nobody could believe."

"Tell me! Tell me!" Ceran was ashen and hysterical.

"No, no, you are no child of mine," chortled the ultimate grandmother. "Is too joke a joke to tell a stranger. We could not insult a stranger to tell so funny, so unbelieve. Strangers can die. Shall I have it on conscience that a stranger died laughing?"

"Tell me! Insult me! Let me die laughing!" But Ceran nearly died crying from the frustration that ate him up as a million bee-sized things laughed and hooted and giggled:

"Oh, it was so funny the way it began!"

They never do tell. They laugh and laugh, and the great secret is never revealed, much to the chagrin of both Ceran and myself.

Ceran responds to this disappointment by changing his name to Blaze Bolt and, apparently, erecting himself as a tyrant of some sort over a “sweet sea island.” I am told little about this future fate of Ceran, but I am told enough to be prompted to ask myself: how will I respond to this disappointment? I shared with Ceran in his confusion and curiosity and frustration—will I likewise share with him in his giving up? How will I choose to live in a life the beginnings of which are obscure to me? Confusion, in fact, is not only a central feature of this story—it is a central feature of life. And it is that feature of life that Lafferty has foregrounded here, exaggerating it to the exclusion of most other “realistic” aspects. A lack of understanding is not necessarily a flaw in this story, and perhaps we might find that a lack of understanding is not necessarily a flaw in the stories of our own lives either.

[1] The way that readers in reading transform characters from words on a page to pseudo-subjectivities in their minds is perhaps best described by Jean-Paul Sartre in “Why Write?”: “On the one hand, the literary object has no other substance than the reader’s subjectivity; Raskolnikov’s waiting is my waiting which I lend him. Without this impatience of the reader he would remain only a collection of signs. His hatred of the police magistrate who questions him is my hatred which has been solicited and wheedled out of me by signs, and the police magistrate himself would not exist without the hatred I have for him via Raskolnikov. That is what animates him, it is his very flesh” (41). Note: My confession here that Sartre’s particular work “Why Write?” is rather brilliant should not be taken as an indication that Sartre himself was not a worm, which he was.