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The Devil Is Dead Trilogy #1
Archipelago
Book 1 of the Devil Dead trilogy
This tells of an astonishing band of adventurers seeking the Devil himself. It is a tale of demons and changelings, monsters and mermaids--and of how it is not always serious to die, the first time it happens.
now also includes the short story 'Anamnesis', a crucial element of the wedding between Teresa Piccone and Vincent Stranahan
This tells of an astonishing band of adventurers seeking the Devil himself. It is a tale of demons and changelings, monsters and mermaids--and of how it is not always serious to die, the first time it happens.
now also includes the short story 'Anamnesis', a crucial element of the wedding between Teresa Piccone and Vincent Stranahan
- GenresFantasyScience Fiction
283 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1979
111 people want to read
About the author
R.A. Lafferty
541 books312 followersRaphael Aloysius Lafferty, published under the name R.A. Lafferty, was an American science fiction and fantasy writer known for his original use of language, metaphor, and narrative structure, as well as for his etymological wit. He also wrote a set of four autobiographical novels, a history book, and a number of novels that could be loosely called historical fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 22, 2016
Raphael Aloysius Lafferty exploded into my consciousness in the late 1970s with a book called _Apocalypses_, which contained two short novels, both of which were absurd and wonderful. In "Where Have You Been, Sandaliotis?" a large subcontinent appears out of nowhere and the World's Greatest Detective has to figure out why. "The Three Apocalypses of Enniscorthy Sweeney" is a story in which our world is an alternate history, which makes it an alternate history but its history is somehow realer than ours, except that it is utterly absurd.
There is a world in which R.A. Lafferty's books were all published as intended and kept in print. This is not, alas, that world, though it might perhaps in time become that world; who can say?
This particular book, _Archpelago_, has never had a mass publication, and copies are expensive and hard to come by; it is perhaps best that I not describe how I happened to come by my copy, save to say hat I broke no obvious laws in doing so.
It is a riot and a romp, a mystery and a tragedy, and a puzzle box of the finest manufacture. Perhaps when I read more - for this is the first volume of a trilogy, whose name is also the name of the second book, _The Devil Is Dead_ - I will understand more. I hope so, and I also hope not.
It is the story, or part of the story, of an archipelago of people: a pentipelago, to use a term used by one or more of the characters in the book: five islands together but separate (for they are islands). They are first introduced as the Dirty Five, soldiers in World War II, but their lives run far beyond it in both directions, and indeed resonate throughout history, myth, and legend. They are Hans and Henry, Vincent and Casey, and especially Finnegan, and they are the clashing rocks on which they themselves are broken, as are many other characters, for this is a part of the voyage of the _Argo_, though in the twentieth century. But it isn't a metaphor like Joyce's _Ulysses_, no one-to-one correspondences here.
They are all of them many people from myth and legend: Finnegan being most obviously Finn McCool, Jason, and Ulysses, as well as a monster of not-entirely-human blood. These names are not only implied by the text but given in a list in Chapter Two, because Lafferty gives us keys to his puzzle box, knowing that we will still be frustrated trying to open it. How do the keys fit into the slots? Are they even the right keys? Who knows?
It is a novel by courtesy, not so much plotted as splattered, a glorious mess of character and incident and style flung against a canvas of nothingness and everythingness, which are somehow the same thing.
The Dirty Five scatter across the country, and in Finnegan's case occsaionally beyond it, and gather together at least once in St. Louis for Vincent's wedding, a gathering which happens at least twice in different ways. In the end much is revealed but more is not.
Did I mention that the book is funny? It is funny. It is witty, urbane, and satirical, and almost devoid of punning. Nothing is perfect.
Lafferty's Roman Catholicism plays a heavy part in the book, as it should, but it's very hard to say just what part it plays. This is one thing that the two sequels may, or may not, manage to make at least a little clearer. I have them, and I will read them, but not right away: I want to digest this one a little further first.
There is a world in which R.A. Lafferty's books were all published as intended and kept in print. This is not, alas, that world, though it might perhaps in time become that world; who can say?
This particular book, _Archpelago_, has never had a mass publication, and copies are expensive and hard to come by; it is perhaps best that I not describe how I happened to come by my copy, save to say hat I broke no obvious laws in doing so.
It is a riot and a romp, a mystery and a tragedy, and a puzzle box of the finest manufacture. Perhaps when I read more - for this is the first volume of a trilogy, whose name is also the name of the second book, _The Devil Is Dead_ - I will understand more. I hope so, and I also hope not.
It is the story, or part of the story, of an archipelago of people: a pentipelago, to use a term used by one or more of the characters in the book: five islands together but separate (for they are islands). They are first introduced as the Dirty Five, soldiers in World War II, but their lives run far beyond it in both directions, and indeed resonate throughout history, myth, and legend. They are Hans and Henry, Vincent and Casey, and especially Finnegan, and they are the clashing rocks on which they themselves are broken, as are many other characters, for this is a part of the voyage of the _Argo_, though in the twentieth century. But it isn't a metaphor like Joyce's _Ulysses_, no one-to-one correspondences here.
They are all of them many people from myth and legend: Finnegan being most obviously Finn McCool, Jason, and Ulysses, as well as a monster of not-entirely-human blood. These names are not only implied by the text but given in a list in Chapter Two, because Lafferty gives us keys to his puzzle box, knowing that we will still be frustrated trying to open it. How do the keys fit into the slots? Are they even the right keys? Who knows?
It is a novel by courtesy, not so much plotted as splattered, a glorious mess of character and incident and style flung against a canvas of nothingness and everythingness, which are somehow the same thing.
The Dirty Five scatter across the country, and in Finnegan's case occsaionally beyond it, and gather together at least once in St. Louis for Vincent's wedding, a gathering which happens at least twice in different ways. In the end much is revealed but more is not.
Did I mention that the book is funny? It is funny. It is witty, urbane, and satirical, and almost devoid of punning. Nothing is perfect.
Lafferty's Roman Catholicism plays a heavy part in the book, as it should, but it's very hard to say just what part it plays. This is one thing that the two sequels may, or may not, manage to make at least a little clearer. I have them, and I will read them, but not right away: I want to digest this one a little further first.
July 22, 2019
A ... perplexing book, fascinating in large part. A prequel of sorts to Lafferty's The Devil is Dead, which introduces the reader to a quasi-mythical universe where people live multiple overlapping lives. This is a different, simultaneously-lived life of Devil's hero Finnegan. He lives this life at the same time as the other one. He and the "Dirty Five" -- his war buddies from the Pacific front in WWII. It's set mainly in the seedier side of post-WWII Middle American/Southern cities.
As with Devil, it has a dreamlike, surrealist quality to it. People and events shift in time and nothing is concrete. Some characters are aware of these strange shifts and unrealities, but nobody ever looks at them head on. Lafferty does not either. The story is modeled in some sense on Jason and the Argonauts, with characters and occasional events corresponding to that myth. But it is not just a model, the characters also are Jason, Orpheus, Finn McCool, etc. "Reincarnated" is probably the wrong word. The lives of the heroes, monsters, and characters of myth seem to be literally simultaneous--lived and experienced in the present and the past, much to the confusion of Finnegan.
I think in another sense Archipelago is getting at the ways in which people experience reality. Memory does shift. People experience events and other people as different stories and characters. Every person is a multitude and a mess. Finnegan experiences this physically and is consequentially a extra messy mess.
And ultimately Lafferty is a top notch storyteller. So it's just a pleasure to read all the little vignettes.
There are a couple of problems with this book. First, there is quite a bit of poetry. Lafferty's is an excellent prose stylist, but his poetry is really very bad. Painful to read. Second, Lafferty has a weird chip on his shoulder about the liberal establishment or something. There are a few sections of this book that read like rambling nonsense from a conspiracy-minded far-right blog. The sort of thing that complains about "coastal elites" and believes that every humanities department is composed of effete liberals who hate the common man and only want to associate with the "right" sort of people. Lafferty's certainly entitled to be conservative, but compared to what he's grappling with in other parts of the novel these sections are just trite and boring.
Otherwise though an interesting read.
As with Devil, it has a dreamlike, surrealist quality to it. People and events shift in time and nothing is concrete. Some characters are aware of these strange shifts and unrealities, but nobody ever looks at them head on. Lafferty does not either. The story is modeled in some sense on Jason and the Argonauts, with characters and occasional events corresponding to that myth. But it is not just a model, the characters also are Jason, Orpheus, Finn McCool, etc. "Reincarnated" is probably the wrong word. The lives of the heroes, monsters, and characters of myth seem to be literally simultaneous--lived and experienced in the present and the past, much to the confusion of Finnegan.
I think in another sense Archipelago is getting at the ways in which people experience reality. Memory does shift. People experience events and other people as different stories and characters. Every person is a multitude and a mess. Finnegan experiences this physically and is consequentially a extra messy mess.
And ultimately Lafferty is a top notch storyteller. So it's just a pleasure to read all the little vignettes.
There are a couple of problems with this book. First, there is quite a bit of poetry. Lafferty's is an excellent prose stylist, but his poetry is really very bad. Painful to read. Second, Lafferty has a weird chip on his shoulder about the liberal establishment or something. There are a few sections of this book that read like rambling nonsense from a conspiracy-minded far-right blog. The sort of thing that complains about "coastal elites" and believes that every humanities department is composed of effete liberals who hate the common man and only want to associate with the "right" sort of people. Lafferty's certainly entitled to be conservative, but compared to what he's grappling with in other parts of the novel these sections are just trite and boring.
Otherwise though an interesting read.
June 29, 2023
Didn't realise I hadn't marked this as read. Won't properly review it here, but I'll say that I certainly understand how some Lafferty fans rate it as his best novel, or one of the best, or the best in the Argo Mythos (which includes the subsequent novels The Devil is Dead and More Than Melchisedech). I think it has some of Lafferty's very greatest passages, genuinely up there with usual suspects of canonical 'greatness', such as, say, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, or William Faulkner (to name some modernists that almost surprisingly resonate with aspects of this novel). Of course, the novel's weirder elements are often of a different sort of weirdness than such authors - more akin to the postmodern Calvinos and Pynchons of the world perhaps (with resonances of writers who are almost 'outsider artists' like Amos Tutuola).
However, I find that long passages, even chapters, do very little. Especially disappointing among these are the theological chats and debates (or mere references to debates that are obscure to the average reader). Lafferty is usually someone who makes theological wranglings come very much alive in devouring technicolour (e.g. Arrive At Easterwine, Fourth Mansions, Past Master, 'Boomer Flats', 'Days of Grass, Days of Straw', 'Old Foot Forgot', etc.). So while some passages in Archipelago coruscate like few others in Lafferty's body of work, the novel's flat segments make it an uneven work overall to me. Which is why, at least for now, I can't quite rate it five stars or as one of his best. That said, it is an incredible work, genuinely full of Laffertian gold and I look very forward to giving it a re-read.
However, I find that long passages, even chapters, do very little. Especially disappointing among these are the theological chats and debates (or mere references to debates that are obscure to the average reader). Lafferty is usually someone who makes theological wranglings come very much alive in devouring technicolour (e.g. Arrive At Easterwine, Fourth Mansions, Past Master, 'Boomer Flats', 'Days of Grass, Days of Straw', 'Old Foot Forgot', etc.). So while some passages in Archipelago coruscate like few others in Lafferty's body of work, the novel's flat segments make it an uneven work overall to me. Which is why, at least for now, I can't quite rate it five stars or as one of his best. That said, it is an incredible work, genuinely full of Laffertian gold and I look very forward to giving it a re-read.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews