I’ve needed to update the concepts section of this blog for a while, and I’ve made a first pass to better reflect my current understanding of how Lafferty works. I'll be working on this in the next few weeks. At some point, I want to work into it what I take to be Lafferty’s own critical language. Until then, here are his own key concepts, as I can isolate them at this point:

ALEX Yes, I've known him a long time, Mary. I knew him when he was a boy named John Salt. And before he was a Faith Man he was a Pitch Man. He brought the pentecostal touch even to peddling potato peelers. He came very near to calling down the fire of Heaven on those who would not buy. He left a lot of house-wives shaken up, with that little peeler in their hand, and the dazed look in the eye. Before that I knew him as a boy. There are legends about him even from his boyhood,

“Mr. Hamadryad” is a wonderfully weird Lafferty story. It follows a traveling coconut salesman who has three encounters with an eccentric cosmologist whose explanations of ancient monuments lead to a disturbing account of the world’s past and future. Meeting in Dongola, Oklahoma City, and Easter Island, the two figures discuss fallen races, faith that moves mountains, and, a topic that Lafferty explored quite a few times, the approaching replacement of our muddled human world