Official LaffCon2 Schedule

June 10th, 2017. LaffCon2. 

9am-10am Arrival & Registration

10am-10:45am: Cookies & Eyes: Character and Plot Development in Fourth Mansions Through Repeated Memes

Featuring Kevin Cheek

Lafferty: “Lately, however, he had been learning to see with other sorts of eyes, with Harvester eyes, with patrick eyes, with falcon eyes, with toad eyes. A man misses so much if he uses only one set of eyes.”

11am-11:45am: Dwelling Places, Fountains, and Serpents: Teresa of Avila in Fourth Mansions

Featuring Gregorio Montejo

Lafferty: “For there are all these obstacles for us to meet and there is also the danger of serpents.”

(Yes, I know this is a Teresa quote, but Lafferty owns it.)

12pm-1pm: Lunch Break -- FREE LUNCH!!!

Lafferty: “The members were eating a hard-times lunch of bloody giant bread and flamed duck.”

1pm-1:45pm: Documenting Lafferty

Featuring Andrew Mass

“The accounts are entrancing, intriguing, adventurous, romantic, and largely fictional.”

2pm-2:45pm: Interpreting Lafferty Visually

Featuring Lissanne Lake, Gregorio Montejo, Anthony Ryan Rhodes, & Yakov Varganov

Lafferty: “Ah, well, what is art, seedling or otherwise?”

3pm-3:45pm: Translation & Reception of Lafferty Outside the States

Featuring Gregorio Montejo, Tairiku Ronin, & Yakov Varganov

Lafferty: “Nutty as a peach tree orchard boar.”

4pm-Closing: Planet-fall: Thieving Bear Planet, Pani Planet, and Our Planet.

Featuring Kevin Cheek, Darrell Schweitzer, and Everyone (open discussion)

Lafferty: “And yet the experience of planet-fall is a daily thing, one that never grows stale.”

Apologies and Announcements:There Is Such Thing As a Free Lunch.

Hello.

First, please forgive me. The Fourth Mansions reading group was a bust. This is entirely my fault. I had too much going on in too many areas, and this was the easiest thing to drop. Mea culpa. I do hope that some of you benefited from the outlines of the first 3 chapters. At the very least, I hope that they spurred you on to read the novel for yourself. I'll take credit for anyone re-reading the novel right now because they've been waiting for Post 4 of the book club! So many great things in Chapter 4. I haven't entirely abandoned this project, but it's done for now. If you're on Facebook and need a Lafferty fix, you should seriously consider reading along with Harold Bakker's weekend reading group. 98 Lafferty stories have been read over the past 98 weekends. It's an easy and painless way to get your recommended weekly Lafferty dose.

Second, on a much more positive note, LaffCon2 is looking really good. The booklet is almost done and ready to go to print. The really exciting thing about the booklet is that it contains three excellent essays on Fourth Mansions, each one better than anything I've written about the novel so far on this website. So you all definitely have some Fourth Mansions related reading goodness to look forward to. The schedule is finalized. The panelists are mostly confirmed. I will post the full schedule in a couple of days. Promise.

Finally, and this is important, lunch is on us, courtesy of the Friends of the Library - Lawrence Branch. Last year, we had pizza and beverages. I expect some of the same this year. So unless your diet does not allow for this for whatever reason, we've got you covered. Stick around during the lunch hour and get to know your fellow Lafferty fans. You won't regret it.