It’s the words. Well, perhaps the unplowed depths. But to start, it’s the words.
Fourth Mansions is my favorite novel by my favorite author, and yet it’s been over ten years since my last reread. I finally pulled it off the shelf, and if I recall correctly, it will make my second reread review (of a novel, at least) since I started blogging, with both being apocalyptic tales by R.A. Lafferty.
The plot of Fourth Mansions is as simple as the symbolic details are intricate. Heavily inspired by Interior Castle, Saint Teresa of Ávila’s mystical contemplation of the journey of the soul (which I have not read), Fourth Mansions follows an Everyman protagonist through a world in which the collective soul of humanity must escape the apocalypse threatened by the snakes and toads (and perhaps the unfledged falcons) if it would ascend to the fifth mansion. In less metaphorical terms, it’s the tale of an enterprising young reporter “who had very good eyes but simple brains” investigating a conspiracy in which he suspects deathless ancient Egyptian functionaries of a plot to wrest control of the American government. The path of the investigation twists through encounters with no less than three secret societies of supernatural monsters and a nascent fourth that supplies the provocative first chapter title: “I Think I will Dismember the World with my Hands.” But for all the twisting, it’s a structurally straightforward tale of a man being pulled this way and that by powerful forces with designs on reshaping the world in their own image. But the meaning? One could spend years unpacking the depths of metaphor. And there are also, of course, the words.
Any review of a Lafferty tale at some point turns into an attempt to describe Lafferty’s style, and this will be no exception. It’s not a style one often finds in speculative prose, and for all of Lafferty’s mystical influences or association with New Wave sci-fi, his style comes off more as a descendent of oral storytelling than anything else. His characters are archetypes and don’t speak or think like ordinary people, making preternaturally insightful or foolish decisions like the denizens of tall tales. There’s a casual acceptance of impossibility that tempts one to group him with the magical realists, but the tone is not quite right. Lafferty spins laughing apocalypses and shaggy dog stories, serious in their depths but often absurd at their surface (in Fourth Mansions, for instance, there’s at least one plot-relevant bilingual pun). It won’t work for every reader, but for me, the words themselves were a laughing luxury from the opening pages, with clever one-liners and silly juxtapositions that made me grin slashed through with some remarkably incisive comments that I still remembered from my previous read more than ten years ago.
Let’s explain with example. Of the former:
“One hundred and nineteen long knocks and one short” was the code between the friends, but Freddy never had to knock that many times.
If they can kill you, I can kill you worse.
I’ll come either on bat-wings or by commercial flight.
They were Loras who was alien, Croll who was patrick, and O’Mara who was Irish.
And of the latter
And this rich-kid air still clung to Jim. A large part of his aura, of his psychic power, was built out of the group remembrance of such things. Well, what is any person’s influence built out of if not trivial but clinging things?
The facts that one has always known were sometimes not really known as late as yesterday.
I could go on, but if you go in for this sort of thing, you should simply read the book and discover the rest for yourself. Suffice to say that I was thoroughly hooked on the words even before I had an inkling of the thematic depth, even despite characterization and plot that are far from my usual preference.
But let’s next turn to the themes, as they are the other—perhaps the biggest—selling point of the novel. The four supernatural monsters each take on the appearance of humanity, though they’re just as often called by the name of their animal symbol, which in turn represent intellectual or political movements. Representatives of all four make speeches, but none are author mouthpieces. Perhaps the clearest theme is the warning against the shrinking or flattening of the world, coming through most strongly in the disdainful portrait of the atheistic intellectuals who seek to perfect humanity by advancing a learned monoculture that entirely dispenses with any hint of spiritual depth. And yet more than one intellectual is cast in a sympathetic light, serving as friend and support to the main character who is the representation of humanity.
The starry-eyed young Fascists and the cranky Conservatives, on the other hand, come from humbler origins and make more likable characters, for all that they remain wrongheaded. They lay societal problems at the feet of the new-money elite in a way that’s both plausible and sympathetic, and they see themselves as doing the Lord’s work in pushing back. But both are inclined to recreate the hubris of the intellectuals in a theistic framework, viewing themselves as the best arbiters of justice, humbly willing to step in to correct God’s mistakes. The author may sympathize with their states of mind, but Fourth Mansions isn’t out to convince anyone that the world would be better if only the conservatives were in charge. On the contrary, it’s a novel that feels just as timely read in a time of right-authoritarians as it did in a time of center-left intellectuals.
For a book with so much to say about political movements, it’s not a book that locates either the hope or doom of humanity in correct politics. But neither does it individualize the problems, promising a better future if only each person would look to their own spiritual development. Humanity ascends as a whole or tears themselves apart with panic and backbiting. The lead may be just one man, but he serves much more as a stand-in for humanity writ-large than as an individual looking to his own growth.
Unsurprisingly, it also has plenty to say about monsters, but not in the way genre readers may expect. At one point, a literal demon joins one of the groups, and it’s barely worth remarking (similarly, there’s at least one extraterrestrial, and none of those who notice seem to care much). Instead, the monsters are as much spiritual metaphor as creative agents—and make no mistake, they are genuine agents acting on the plot of Fourth Mansions. They are the messy depths of humanity, pushing the soul of society toward good or ill, or most often a bit of both. One may be able to tell which impulses the author finds most sympathetic, but the narrative ultimately seems less concerned with which monsters are best than it does with whether humanity can reckon with its monsters at all, harnessing the positive impulses and redirecting or transforming the negative.
I’m quite certain that I’ve barely scratched the surface of the themes and symbols here (I haven’t even mentioned fountains, which appear literally, figuratively, and in at least two character names). It’s impossible to cover all the symbols, and I’m sure there are plenty that simply went over my head—especially given my unfamiliarity with Catholic mysticism.
But it is possible to not understand the symbols and still have a wonderful time with Fourth Mansions. As I said at the outset, the words are an utter delight, even if the philosophy is opaque. The surface plot may be a bit of a zany one that sends the lead from impossibility to impossibility, but it can still entertain well enough. And there are those themes. Even if they’re not always clear, it’s fascinating to plumb their depths. Fourth Mansions is an absolute joy to read. I shouldn’t let myself go over a decade between rereads again.
Recommended if you like: Lafferty’s style, overgrown tall tales, musings on human nature.
Can I use it for Bingo? It’s hard mode for Hidden Gem. It also includes Impossible Places, a Down With the System plot, and Gods and Pantheons.
Overall rating: 20 of Tar Vol’s 20. Five stars on Goodreads.