"And they threw her down, and the wall was sprinkled with her blood, and the horses trod upon her." 2 Kings 9:33
"But one of the soldiers with a spear opened his side, and immediately there came out blood and water." John 19:34
"The bloodsmell is wrong, and it's too clotted." "Or Little Ducks Each Day" (1975)
Last week, one of my favorite actors, Gene Hackman, died. One of his finest performances was as Little Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992), which culminates in a spectacularly bloody climax. Eastwood’s William Munny takes revenge on Little Bill, leading to an unforgettable verbal exchange as Little Bill, lying on the floor with Munny’s gun trained on him, protests:
Little Bill Daggett: "I don't deserve this . . . to die like this. I was building a house."
Will Munny: "Deserve's got nothin' to do with it."
This scene imprinted itself on me as a kid—its fatalism, its horror. And this week, it brought me back to Lafferty, whose fiction overflows with blood, but never without meaning. Variations of the word blood appear more than five hundred times in his short fiction alone.
Lafferty’s readers have linked this obsession to Catholic martyrdom and the suffering of the saints in hagiography and visual art, Lafferty's wartime experiences, and the the cartoonish violence of his “high hilarity.” All of that must be part of the picture.
Years ago, Daniel Otto Petersen described Lafferty’s narratives as “metaphysical slashers.” The term is insightful, though perhaps too much emphasis has been placed on the slasher aspect rather than the metaphysical. Both matter.
How did Lafferty understand the metaphysical aspect of his slashers? He likely understood it through the Catholic theological concept of merited and unmerited suffering, which he heightens into spectacle.
Unlike a conventional slasher, where violence is an end in itself, a metaphysical slasher subordinates spectacle to a deeper metaphysical commitment to make a commentary on reality.
Merited suffering has nothing to do with what one “deserves.” The crucifixion teaches that suffering is inevitable; the question is whether suffering participates in Christ’s redemptive sacrifice, which is a central part of Lafferty's sacramental poesis.
When one suffers with Christ, suffering is merited, being redeemed through His merits.
When one suffers apart from Him, suffering remains unmerited—unredeemed.
Lafferty doesn’t preach, but his work often makes it clear when suffering is merited under grace and when it isn’t. This is one reason Not to Mention Camels (1974) bothers so many readers. Perhaps there with more intensity than anywhere else, Lafferty forces the reader to confront both extremes of suffering. He compels them to look directly in the eye of the issue, as in this passage from the novel:
"[Pilgrim Dusmano] stuffed in the big male body and sent it, sloshing in its own juice, to its reduction. Then the big female body went in. And then the little male body. And then the little—well, what was it, anyhow? Pilgrim was damned if he knew the sex of that smallest creature, and he was damned if he cared. The meat of it was still hot, and perhaps it was still making defiant sounds in its severed gullet. Was it taken by death then, or merely by a purple pout? Pilgrim stuffed it into the machine. But a moment later, as Pilgrim glanced at the final stage of the disposal, he saw that one hate-shot, child-sized eye was riding the remaining effluvium of the people-grinder. There was no doubt that the eye was conscious and that it was glaring at Pilgrim with bottomless hatred. That child could yet make trouble.
Pilgrim Dusmano turned his back on it all and forgot it."
Many readers would prefer to do the same.
In unmerited suffering, blood signifies divine justice—punishment rightfully earned through sin.
"The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth to me from the earth." Genesis 4:10
"The mountains shall melt away with their blood." Isaiah 34:3
Conversely, merited suffering represents sacrifice and redemption, epitomized by Christ’s own innocent yet willingly spilled blood. Abel’s innocent blood foreshadows Christ, whose sacrifice elevates human suffering. As Pope John Paul II writes:
"In bringing about the Redemption through suffering, Christ has also raised human suffering to the level of the Redemption. Thus each man, in his suffering, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ." Salvifici Doloris (1984)
From the Passover lamb’s blood marking the doorposts (Exod. 12:13) to Christ’s pierced side pouring out "blood and water" (John 19:34), blood is an instrument of mercy, healing, and salvation. It transforms the slasher into comedy. To repurpose Lafferty's words in "World Abounding" (1971):
The comedy of Horror, perhaps, showed a little stronger than it had recently on the face and form of Fairbridge, but it was still only one of that complex of deep comedies. Fairbridge had a very stark and terrible intuition now. He had a horrifying premonition of the real substance of those twin Comedies of World Ending and of Love Transcending. But even horror is a subject of comedy on World Abounding, and it is supposed to have that jagged edge to it.
Lafferty’s violence takes part in this Blood Logic, in which spilled blood always means something—justice or mercy, punishment or redemption—but never mere spectacle. In his world, blood always speaks. In Lafferty, we repeatedly find Jezebel’s blood splattered upon the wall (2 Kings 9:33) and the blood spattered on the cross.
One can enjoy a metaphysical slasher as just a slasher, but those who recognize the deeper structure will smell the blood in the air—the sign of meaning beyond violence. Following Lafferty, let's call this the bloodsmell—the lingering scent of vengeance, justice, mercy, punishment, and the metaphysical realities of suffering.
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