Raymond Elmo's Reviews > Fourth Mansions

I used to binge anthologies without paying attention to author names. Later I preferred novels, where author mattered more. After reading 'Fourth Mansions', I was able to close eyes and identify which short stories were Lafferty's, even the ones read years before. His voice is simply that unique. Easy to follow, yet always over the top and around the bend. Hilarious, with humor serving as the delivery system for sly philosophic/spiritual points.

Lafferty's short stories built his fame, and maintain it now. His books... well, they carry the same weird, fantastical qualities. But what works in a short story does not always carry to book length. Lafferty's best-regarded novels are 'Past Master' and 'Apocalypses'. Other works like 'The Devil is Dead' and 'Annals of Klepsis'... only devotees speak of them. Or know of them. And we treasure our tattered paperback copies.

But there is one book where the qualities of Lafferty's short stories explodes; and yet it remains in dust and oblivion: 'Fourth Mansions'. Not to alarm you; but when I read it, I went slightly mad. Why hadn't my English teachers TOLD me people could write like this? A tale told off the top of the head and tip of the tongue, and yet revealing a complex mythology behind ordinary reality; an everyman hero tilting against a mad conspiracy to keep the world exactly as it is; with a crowd of characters more real and interesting than the dreary denizens of classic literature.

Readers who overdose on Vonnegut, Dick or Douglas Adams can sometimes feel that all reality begins tasting pointless, is nihilistic farce. Lafferty is as mad as any at the fantasycon tea party; but in his stories there remains an affirmation of secret meaning and open joy in daily existence. His stories don't make you tired of life. They make you remember how amazing it is.

"Fourth Mansions" holds a theme close to Lafferty's heart: that there is a nihilistic fatalism that leads souls and civilizations to circle in futility. That fatalism battles the noble call to master our own inner mythologies, and circle upwards to something better.

Which is NOT a theme the 21st century can allow to be shelved in dust.