R. A. Lafferty
“There was a writer from Tulsa, Oklahoma (he died in 2002), who was, for a little while in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the best short story writer in the world. His name was R. A. Lafferty, and his stories were unclassifiable and odd and inimitable -- you knew you were reading a Lafferty story within a sentence”
~Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things
Bio:
- Raphael Aloysius Lafferty
- Born November 7th, 1941
- Enlisted in the US army and served in WWII
- Lived most of his life in Tulsa, OK
- Began writing in the 60s
- EE until 1970
- Retired from writing in 1984
- Died after two strokes in 2002
Writing:
- 32 novels
- Over 200 short stories
- Mostly science fiction and fantasy
- Drew a lot from traditional story telling practices
o Irish and Native American folk lore
o Fond of “tall tales”
- Not easy to define his writing style
o Plot is often secondary
Hurrah for Lafferty! (And hurrah for Gaiman bigging up Lafferty all the time!)
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