Pennies

They were beautiful, musty unknowns.

There was a period, just before I left Tulsa, where I frequented antique shops. Mainly, I looked for odd photographs. Most Tulsa shop owners didn’t ask much for old pictures, not like they do here in Florida.

I looked for photos and I looked for odd old books, ones I never intended to read (I didn’t look for R. A. Lafferty novels. I didn’t know they existed.) I found and I brought home many books with cloth bindings and warn edges that carried an air musty dignity that my shiny comic book collection could not and that went well with all the old photographs now populating the walls of my apartment.

Most of these old books were mysteries until you opened them. Along the spine the ink was flaked or faded, the indention smooth.

I wonder if this is why Ray made his own spines, crowding his office with shelf upon shelf of tombs with yellow tape and bold handwritten titles. His eyesight wasn’t the best. We know that.

When they cleared out his office, most of Ray’s books wound up in places where they served no function, mostly due to Ray’s spines. Regardless of their intellectual contents (and their previous owner), school librarians would not keep them on the shelves and bookstores could not move them, not for more than a few coins.

Santuario de Chimayo

Kevin Cheek is a gracious man. He is a technical writer by trade and editor of the Feast of Laughter book series. For volume three, Kevin asked if I would create a non-Lafferty inspired illustration for his article Outside the Cathedral (a self-aware and personal piece about being a non-Catholic who enjoys reading the often Catholic undertones in R. A. Lafferty stories).

El Santuario de Chimayo is an historic church in New Mexico known for good pilgrimage and holy flavored dirt, and is of significant interpersonal and spiritual significance for many, many people. Kevin frames his article around his experience of regularly visiting the church with his family.

Since I've started making art again, everything I have created has been for Feast of Laughter. This was the first illustration in that time that was not for an R. A. Lafferty story. The process of pulling lines in vector drawing is so tedious, it's not something I can do to just while away the time, but Kevin's commission gave me an excuse. It was nice to turn away from stories and silly characters for a bit and stare at a place and try to pull some emotion out of those images.

I should do this more often.

FOL3 - Back Covers

My first duties on Feast of Laughter were as a volunteer, digitally removing dust and patching scratches in what is probably the best photograph of R. A. Lafferty I have seen (taken by Keith Purtell).

For Volume 3, I had the pleasure of designing the back cover using dozens of photos of Lafferty's office door, courtesy of Mr. Warren Brown. The editorial team had wanted either something with the full door or something with a collage of it's components. Eventually, we settled on the image above, which uses both.

Digital collage of Elements from Lafferty's office door by AR Rhodes.

Much of Lafferty’s office (doors, walls, and furnature) was decorated in this manner. He had fully decoupaged his creative domain. I cannot speak for the man, but this is exactly the kind of creative inclination I get when I’m wistfully drunk and especially bored. I shall never show you my guitar case or my poor, poor guitar, for that matter. But will say they are both hopelessly enwrapped in lawless visual trivia.

Feast of Laughter, Vol 3 - Now In Print

R. A. Lafferty was a science fiction writer from Tulsa, recognized by many writers as one of the most original authors of the Twentieth Century. These days he's mostly forgotten.

A handful of fans started a book zine for him in late 2014 and I've been fortunate enough to have fourteen or so illustrations printed in the third volume alongside critical essays, correspondence between Lafferty and Alan Dean Foster, and even a gushing interview with Harlan Ellison.

The books are available Print-on-Demand from Amazon, but a free pdf version can be downloaded from the www.feastoflaughter.org website.

I'm very happy with the production quality of the book, both inside and out. It was a joy working on this volume and with the team of fans who found the time in their full lives to make it.

Recently, author Michael Swanwick had this to say about it on his blog:

"Feast of Laughter has to be one of the most extraordinary fannish feats of recent years. It's a full-length book/zine containing new and reprint essays, appreciations, letters, whatevers pertaining to the man who was easily the most original science fiction writer of the Twentieth Century -- Raphael Aloysius Lafferty.
R. A. Lafferty, "Ray" as his friends called him, was, during his lifetime, recognized as one of the giants of the field. Now, alas, he's close to forgotten.
But not quite! Some of the great man's friends and admirers have been working hard to reignite Lafferty's reputation. This volume of Feast of Laughter is the third collection of Laffertiana and it is a must for all serious Lafferty fans."

I'm beaming.

Laff Libs

Laff Libs by Anthony R. Rhodes

How impishly giddy would it make you to own a book of Mad Libs that both mimicked and illuminated the complexity and style of a couple dozen great authors?

Ghost in the Corn Crib

“And be careful you don’t let go of it till after you’re dead.”
‐ R. A. Lafferty, "Ghost in the Corn Crib"

This particular illustration for RA Lafferty's story Ghost in the Corn Crib had some rough starts for me. After several aborted tries, I ended up using a tiny 1-inch sketch scanned at high resolution and worked out the details in the computer.

It's the first illustration I would not send my grandmother. My mother, always proud to show off my work, raised a few eyebrows with it at her workplace.

But I'll stand by it, as the physics in the picture work the same as they do in the story (intimidating ghost and all).

Lafferty in the Green Room

This illustration, at some point, had text on the wall behind the character that read "Dare to Know Your Heroes." It was to be an exclamatory charge into battle against preconceived expectations, and my answer to the old adage to the opposite.


"Never meet your heroes" is a good warning for avoiding disappointment. But it recommends we hide in our sunny, honeysuckle worlds and that our heroes be larger than life. It is not a path to acceptance or any other real understanding of an individual. We are human, through and through, and even the best of us are good, at best, in spite of ourselves.

Just as I finished the illustration a discussion spilled into the Lafferty Facebook group with some expressing concern that Ray's drunken exploits at conventions would stain, overshadow, or otherwise take away from his literary works.

I understand their concern, but disagree. In fact, with convention tales as eccentric as any of his short stories, I think it only makes reading Lafferty more interesting, endearing, and complex.

Nevertheless, I struck the text from the illustration. Partly because I was still introducing myself to the group. But mostly because the lettering itself started to feel too heavy handed.

That said, please do dare to know your heroes.

Narrow Valley

“I didn’t mean to lie, I forgot about that thing,” Clarence Little‐Saddle said.

‐ R. A. Lafferty, "Narrow Valley"


Perhaps one of R. A. Lafferty's greatest stories, Narrow Valley includes a small interaction where the children find a war bonnet given jokingly to Clarence Little-Saddle by his father after a trip to Japan.

The idea for this illustration came in the half-thought before sleep. In that slurry of sense and low consciousness I nodded, "Yep. That's a keeper."

Seven Day Terror

“You’d better try it on something else. Dishes cost money.”
‐ R. A. Lafferty, "Seven Day Terror"

Illustration of a class IV Disappearer, plucked straight from the hands of the child who crafted it after seven straight days of terror.

Slow Tuesday Night

 

People made up their minds fast, and Ildefonsa had hers made up when she came.

‐ R. A. Lafferty, "Slow Tuesday Night"

My illustration for R.A. Lafferty's Slow Tuesday Night.

Frog on the Mountain

“Papa Garamask,” Chavo chortled in a booming giggle from above, “fear you nothing. I will roll boulders down on Sinek and kill him.”
- R. A. Lafferty, "Frog on the Mountain"

Illustration by Anthony Ryan Rhodes.

Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne

“Oh, no, no!” Valery forbade. “Not again. That way is rump of skunk and madness.”
‐ R. A. Lafferty, "Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne"

 My illustration for Ray's classic time travel tale, Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne.

This might be, at least as far as I am aware, the first attempted visual representation of the Institute for Impure Science. Also referenced here: Tron, Lafferty's door, and of course, rump of skunk and madness.

LAFFCON1

Tomorrow is to be the official press release for LAFFCON1, the first conference dedicated to R.A. Lafferty. Normally I would never jump the gun on something like this. But today I have the liberty of being unwatched, hidden from view, shouting from an abandoned hilltop into an empty valley. So, what the Hell? Might as well.

The website for the event can be found at www.laffcon.org.

There were three rough sketches created for the poster.

The organizers went with option #3. Which was a good choice.
They opted to remove the shadowy figures from the final version to avoid confusion, but here it is as originally intended, purple ghosts and all.

Boomer Flats

They lay down in the red roaring river, and one of the giants set a heavy rock on the breast of every person of them to hold them down.
‐ R. A. Lafferty, "Boomer Flats"

An illustration for R.A. Lafferty's climax to the short story Boomer Flats. Originally intended to accompany a particular essay in Feast of Laughter.

I decided while sketching this out that I would try to draw characters that reoccur in the stories, like the various members of the Institute of Impure Science, as consistently as possible across illustrations.

I don't plan on overtly identifying who is who, but over time I suspect people will be able to put faces to names.

Hole on the Corner

“Shriek, shriek,” said Mama Regina, but her voice was muffled.
‐ R. A. Lafferty, "The Hole on the Corner"

Hands are busy finishing up the fine details of the next Feast of Laughter, the R.A. Lafferty bookzine. To celebrate their hard work and as a belated hurrah for Lafferty's birthday (Nov 7), here is an illustration of Ray's classic short story Hole in the Corner.

This was my second illustration still learning the basics of Inkscape. I remember going to a lot of trouble to get what few details there were of the monstrous Homer into the illustration.

Only after I had finished did I realize I'd made the human legs short.

Thus, the Hoose family is a smaller family.