Neil Gaiman

ralafferty:

This week saw the arrival of a Tulsa event more than thirty years in the making: the visit of Neil Gaiman to the hometown of his long-distance mentor, R.A. Lafferty. While he was there as the guest of the Oklahoma Center for Poets and Writers, the trip was always more of a pilgrimage, a way of paying tribute to the author who read Gaiman’s early writing “and said nice things about it. It gave me hope when things were bleak.”

At both the Tulsa event, and the Chickasha one the night before, Gaiman told the story of himself as a child with the run of the local library, where he found an inexplicably thorough cache of Lafferty material. Stories such as “Primary Education of the Camiroi” and “Narrow Valley” left their mark, building an idea of Tulsa and the wider Oklahoma landscape as a place where anything could happen, and often did. While C.S. Lewis was the first writer who the young Gaiman actually noticed at his work—the brackets of Narnia retaining even today a particular fascination—Lafferty was the first he actually thought of as existing in a space at that time. Upon finding another library book that, however unimaginable today, listed various authors’ home addresses, Gaiman sent off a fan letter to Tulsa—and, months later, got a reply back, the letter having in the meanwhile followed Lafferty from the listed address, long since taken by the highway, through several forwarding stops, and arriving finally at the house that Lafferty called home till his final years, leading to a correspondence that would continue off-and-on for years, and culminate in the inclusion of Lafferty’s poem “When the Music Breaks” in the Now We Are Sick volume edited by Neil with Stephen Jones.

But it took till 2015 for Gaiman to actually make it here—and no wonder, considering the schedules he’s booked to! Despite the packed itinerary, we were able to swing past the sites, barely half a block from each other, centered around the parish church Ray attended every day. The tour also took in McFarlin Library Special Collections, at the University of Tulsa, where almost all of Lafferty’s papers are stored. Though brief, we were able to take in a cross-section of Laffertiana, ranging in time from the novel Antonino Vescovo, only remnant of the author’s abortive 1930s writing, to the early ’90s missives written under the name Audifax O’Hanlon for the Oklahoma Science Fiction Writers’ group newsletter. Other artifacts included “Rangle Dang Kaloof,” Ray’s only appearance in Playboy; an unpublished poem, “Werewolf’s Rite of Passage,” that would have been a natural for Now We Are Sick; and a number of the trophies Lafferty won, including the World Fantasy, the Hugo, and the Elves, Gnomes, and Little Men’s Science Fiction, Chowder, and Marching Society’s Invisible Little Man Award.

From the library, it was over to the impressive Woody Guthrie Center for a reception with Tulsa’s arts folks and literati. (I was particularly glad for the chance to meet Natasha Ball, author of the excellent This Land profile on Ray.) Hosted by OCPW founder Teresa Miller (who earlier had interviewed Gaiman for her TV show, Writing Out Loud), the event recognized Neil as an Ambassador for Tulsa. He was given a key in the shape of Oklahoma, and a spot on the wall of luminaries.

Then one final stop before the night’s reading: the Zarrow Center for Art and Education, in order to see Lafferty’s library door, the fame of which has spread since Natasha’s profile. It is, as Gaiman said at the reading, “very peculiar, and very Lafferty.” Mark and Mary Barcus, the local hosts for the visit, got some superior shots of Neil and the door, which I hope will emerge soon; in the meantime, here’s a snap of him attempting to take in its grandeur.

The reading that night was already set up to be a special one, but very few knew the surprise that was in store. Earlier that day, Neil had the idea to read one of Ray’s stories—and, bar his appearance as Charles Dickens, he’s never read someone else’s story from the stage before. The hunt was on to find both a story of appropriate length (meaning, sadly, that stories like “Narrow Valley” were out) and performability; likewise, one for which a copy was at hand. In the end, Nine Hundred Grandmothers was found, and he opted for “Seven-Day Terror.” It’s one of my own favorites to initiate people with, since it has a lot of Lafferty hallmarks: the gaggle of maddeningly precocious children, the futility of existing power structures, the jokes in equal measure whimsical and bloodthirsty, the “only in Tulsa” vibe, etc. But it’s a hard story to do cold, because there’s a lot of voices in play—and Gaiman nailed it. The audience laughed when they were meant to laugh, and marveled when they were meant to marvel.* 2300 people in the audience at the Tulsa PAC, very few of whom had ever read a Lafferty before that night, got a fantastic introduction to their own native son—and got to be present at the induction of Lafferty into the Oklahoma Writers Hall of Fame, to boot.

It was a magical night, and a reminder of the sense of absolute possibility inherent in Lafferty’s Tulsa. After all, the disappearer at the heart of “Seven-Day Terror” might seem far-fetched, but not all that long ago—back in 2000, let’s say, when Gaiman’s blog was about the only place you’d ever see Lafferty mentioned—it would have seemed just as unlikely that one day Lafferty’s door would be on display for all Tulsa’s arts community to see, or that a multiple-times NYT bestseller would read one of Ray’s stories to a packed house at Tulsa’s swankiest arts venue. Huge thanks to everyone who helped it happen: Teresa and the OCPW; Mark and Mary Barcus** and the Tulsa Arts & Humanities Council; Marc Carlson, Carlos Acosta-Ponce, and crew at McFarlin Special Collections; all of you who came out to the reading; and, of course, Neil Gaiman himself, and the incredible folks who get him where he needs to be. Let’s all do this again soon—maybe it won’t even take three decades till the next time!

* The one part that didn’t land: a joke in which everyone from the mayor to the fire chief to the military are gathered round watching fire hydrants disappear, and someone says it’s a wonder that Tass aren’t there too—Tass being the Soviet news agency—but of course Tass is there, as one of their agents outs himself immediately. It’s one of the few jokes that is timebound in a story otherwise timeless; a pity, since it’s a great Cold War joke that even if there is a Communist on every street corner, he’s just as useless as any other authority in comprehending the antics of one household of kids.

** I also taped a segment the next day on the Barcuses’ radio program, The Innerloopers, to talk all things Lafferty and Tulsa. It’s already aired on Radio ILR but I missed it; hoping to catch and archive it on the repeat.