Iron Tongue of Midnight
Skylarking and Venus-Noga
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Skylarking and Venus-Noga
A section through the world of R. A. Lafferty’s
Iron Tongue of Midnight
, from the sky down to the bedrock
Skylarking: “a form of travel and exploration and experiencing of distant realms, within or without, by vehicles or processes
that were at least partly subjective” (chap. 3).
Fabric
“even the clouds are
made out of fabric”
(chap. 7)
Brick
“These are the bricks
they build it with.”
(chap. 1)
Stone
“for reality is
singular” (chap. 8)
Mortar: the Scenarists,
“more a bonding
mortar than a brick or
block” (chap. 1)
Ornate Squares
“squarish and solid buildings” of “seven
designated colors only”; a course for each family:
Shatwell
Ragland
Arcade
Ender
Grafton
Wigmore
Boland
Hot Tongues
“Hot Tongue Tabernacles,” “all
spirit and fire,” “falling down
continually”
Unassigneds
bricks “more straw than clay”
Baronial Poor
“the Montage Mansions and the
Conspicuous Castellations”
Green Gangers
“psycho-shanties or skylark-lurkers”
Report of Riot Number 9,704,692: “they
were not dogs: they were the Living
Copper Dragons of Venus-Noga”
† Desdemonia Harper, “dead back in the
shabby street of a Lunacy Compound”
Pan-Tribal Hall
The Midnight Bell hangs here; its iron
tongue needs half an hour “swinging
through its course” (chap. 9). Asked
about “the creative segregation of
deficient groups,” the Hall’s computer
answers, “Oh, leave a vent, however
crup. / Be careful you don’t brick it
up.” (chap. 1)
East Meadowold Park
midsummer night: “One line of fires went all the
way from East Meadowold Park to Pan-Tribal
Hall downtown.” (chap. 9)
The ground line is “Sanity’s bare working level”
(“Exhortium”). The novel ends “to a barely, barely,
barely workable level of sanity.”
Ornate Squares: “their
prized examples of the
finest skylarking”
Scenarists “had really invented it, and they hung pieces
of it like clouds in almost every scenario they did”
Hot Tongues “built skies and
skylarks at will”
Wallenda World
Kolimar claims a home under “the lavender sky of
Wallenda World.” “Skylarking was the way he had come
to this world.” Jonah is a projection “forward in time,”
and Peter is one “outward in space.” For all three, “the
present time and the present place was one of the Islands
in the Sky” (chap. 3).
Mars
Callisto
Unassigneds “could skylark
hardly at all”; their set scenes
are “never quite as real, for the
Unassigneds, as they might
wish” (chap. 3)
$
Baronial Poor “could
afford to buy
competent skylarking”
The Golden Guys of Galus go
up “that afternoon,” and the
whole skylark takes “about nine
minutes.” The Gangers say they
brought back the Venus rocks,
“Encyclopedic Rocks,” which
were “found in a Green Ganger
Street-scene Compound.”
“with the Planet Woomagoo shining brightly among them”
Leo
Virgo
Libra
Woomagoo
“An Impression of Clouds, crumbling cliffs, ruins of castles, dragon keeps, and fortresses”
For Hearts that are to Desire.
Venery in Three Parts
Things of Venus
Things of Hunting
Things of Flesh-Love
† “Fat-Face was dead
there on Venus-Noga.”
“separate persons all along”
Bang and his look-alike, “tremendous concussion in middle air”
Venus-Noga
one of “nine consensus faces,” “the most simplistic, the most
archetypical, the most legended side of Venus”
“Venus is the First Fantasy
World”
“a closer-to-the-sun,
Venus-type planet as
companion to every
Woomagoo planet”
“Copper and Green are the
colors of the light and of the
world of Noga.”
the scene from Strindberg’s
The Dream Play
that the
Unassigneds set in chapters 1
and 3, with Woomagoo in
place of Jupiter
Skylark
Joe Roundelay takes the Skylark as a
type of the expert arts: “The Skylark
is poetic perfection on the wing.”
He rejects it: “down (plummetingly
down) with the Skylark!” (chap. 3)
He asks instead for “a lark that can
sky-stumble and falter and fall and
recover herself only after a
prat-whack on the grass”
(chap. 3).
midnight
Meadow Larks
sky-rocks: “They are only
subjective rocks” (chap. 9)
midnight, midsummer eve:
“the angel of the lightning
descended and the storm
broke open” (chap. 1)
Horses
great pluvial
Dogs
frost giants
Camels
wet rot
Rat
big sultriness
Crickets
big lightning
Meadow
Larks
long summers
Sun’s signs, with Simon Antioch’s ages (chap. 3)
The change to Meadow Larks was due at noon, when “the sun
is still in crickets” (chap. 3). It came at midnight: “It’s twelve
hours late, or we were twelve hours wrong, but it happened”
(chap. 9).
Vale of Faillium
in the Knockmealdown Mountains of Ireland (chap. 7)
A Green Ganger patrol is hired for “Murder by Skylark”: “It
had been high afternoon when the skylarkers enskied. Now it
was coming on midsummer sundown in a more northern and
later latitude.”
“came down irregularly to within two
meters of the ground, and could come no
further”
“You can come down if you compose your
minds a little.”
Matteo Mattutine, “which is to say Matthew
Morning”: “This is the Lord’s own reality.”
“My mind will not work right. I cannot move it.”
“Your hands will work right. Bring it here.”
Cheapwine carries the stone of six stone, and its pieces
repair the abutment of the little bridge.
Before the skylarkers leave: “It is hard to break out of
unreality without words,” the old man said.
“The rocks of life are in that vale” (Patrick J. Shatwell
the Sixth, chap. 9)
Key
fabric: Venus-Noga, and the pieces of skylarking held in the City
brick: the City; each group has its own kind of brick
stone: the bedrock, which comes to the surface in the Vale of Faillium
skylarking thread: outward in copper, return in green
faltering thread
arrival from elsewhere
barrier the thread cannot pass
rock falling from the sky; dashed outline where the text calls it
subjective
Larks
Skylark
the type of the expert arts, which the Unassigneds reject (chap. 3)
skylarking
travel to distant realms “within or without”; the Green Gangers are the most skilled at it
and the Unassigneds the least (chaps. 3, 7)
meadowlarking
“boy-and-girl meadowlarking” among the Unassigneds, set in “Ice Cream Parlor scenes,
Lilac Time scenes” (chap. 3)
Meadow Larks
the sun’s next sign, due at noon and entered at midnight (chaps. 3, 9); “‘Larks singing at
midnight’ is one of the signs” of “the upper crossing” (chap. 9)
Laws of Skylarking in Chapter 7
Law of Intellectual Constancy
“The normal portion of intellectuality has to go somewhere”; daydreaming “may be an open-ended conduit,” and
“Daydreams can give directly onto physical skylarking.”
Stranaham’s Limited Law of Angular Momentum
“If it is not transferred into something else soon, then it will be transferred into an explosion.” In chapter 1 a vessel
named “The Angular Velocity of Psychic Accumulation” breaks at midnight (chap. 1).
“Fantasy with Fangs”
“Fangs it is supposed to have, not molars or horse-teeth.”
Contingent realities
“Skylarkers were able to erect contingent realities to satisfy all conditions they might encounter.”
Front and Back
The text gives two accounts of the afternoon’s skylark. On Venus-Noga the Golden Guys fight copper dragons, and Fat-Face Cass
dies there. In the guard’s report the dragons are dogs and their consorts are girls; of the two dead, the report places Desdemonia
Harper in the compound street and Fat-Face Cass, on an informer’s word, on Venus-Noga. The plate sets the report beneath the
cloth and joins the two deaths with a dotted line.
Quotations from
Iron Tongue of Midnight
, annotated edition with source notes; chapter numbers in parentheses.
Obverse and Reverse
Paired accounts in R. A. Lafferty’s
Iron Tongue of Midnight
, set out as double-headed playing cards
“Imagine a great company of gamesters, hard and fast gentrymen, sitting down to play high-table poker. And imagine them rising up again, after a session of heroic length and magnitude and money-kiting, each one of
them with the absolute conviction that he had won mightily at the game, or at least that he had come out of it considerably ahead. That was the case of it.” (
Poor Barons’ Action Handbook
, chap. 5)
Each card takes one group, person, or place that the novel presents in two ways and gives one account to each half. The plate on skylarking
shows Venus-Noga and the riot report in full.
Groups
Upper half, the group as it sees itself; lower half, as the others see it. “Each group, according to its own aspect, according to its own world, believes that itself is the sane group and that all the others are the locked-up insane groups” (Savant Ben, chap. 8).
Persons
Upper and lower halves are the two states the text gives each person.
Places and World
Upper half, the obverse; lower half, the reverse.
OS
OS
Ornate Squares
Ornate Squares
as it sees itself
“We, of course, are in charge of the world” (Patrick
J. Shatwell the Seventh, chap. 9)
their dogma: “it had been given into their hands to
control that reality” (chap. 4)
as the others see it
“We called these large madhouse areas that housed
the majority of these people the ‘Squares’”
(
Handbook
, chap. 5)
“the Ornate Squares are as squirrely as any other
bunch in the world” (Shatwell the Sixth, chap. 9)
HT
HT
Hot Tongues
Hot Tongues
as it sees itself
“We are the Spirit, and we transcend all things of the
flesh.” (chap. 2)
“We do not remind ourselves nearly often enough
that we are gods.” (Ransley Jubilee, chap. 2)
as the others see it
“they are not allowed to leave their common cells,
ever” (Dominic Arcade, chap. 2)
“We have them corked up like Genii in their
bottles.” (August Boland, chap. 4)
UA
UA
Unassigneds
Unassigneds
as it sees itself
the “‘Nation Between’ and the ‘Nation without
Boundaries’” (chap. 1)
standing at the “crossroads of one million
sign-posts” (chap. 1)
as the others see it
“They cannot even find their own cells, so they are
allowed to go to any unnumbered cells, hence their
name ‘The Unassigneds’.” (
Handbook
, chap. 5)
“Their fierceness, when rarely it is displayed, is a toy
fierceness.” (Keepers’ Manual, chap. 1)
BP
BP
Baronial Poor
Baronial Poor
as it sees itself
“the Sane Guild of the Free Buccaneers” (
Handbook
,
chap. 5)
“We are only Nature’s own noblemen, the Robber
Barons.” (
Handbook
, chap. 5)
as the others see it
the Ornate mythology: “that we, The Buccaneers,
the Baronial Poor, are ourselves inmates of minimal
security madhouses of which they, the Squares, are
the keepers” (chap. 5)
Savant Ben: “worlds where the money of the
Baronial Poor is toy money” (chap. 8)
GG
GG
Green Gangers
Green Gangers
as it sees itself
“the Royal Skylarkers of Warumoka” (chap. 7)
“We are not retarded or depraved. We are
where-it’s-at.” (Jennie Graveyard, chap. 8)
as the others see it
“Report of Riot Number 9,704,692 in the Green
Ganger Compounds” (chap. 7)
“a grubby gang that never gets beyond a radius of
three blocks” (
Venus Rock Journal Weekly
, chap. 7)
Sc
Sc
Scenarists
Scenarists
as it sees itself
“We are creating the continuity of the world”
(Rondelay Silbermann, chap. 6)
“The world is concocted to the prescriptions that we
write here.” (Harry Halfstopper, chap. 1)
as the others see it
“It is the back of the tapestry. It is all knots and
tangles and loose ends of yarn and cording.”
(Rose-Revel Charcot, chap. 6)
“You only have false faces painted on the backs of
your heads.” (Bluebird Epperson, chap. 6)
SB
SB
Scottsdale and Bang
Scottsdale and Bang
Scottsdale Boland
“Death before Dishonor” (chap. 1); he makes the
same demand of several groups, as of the Hot
Tongues: “Hot Tongues, Hot Tongues, talk to me!”
(chap. 2; also chaps. 1, 6, 7)
the Wrong Prophet: “it was Scottsdale Boland who
killed the only one who was really killed last night”
(chap. 9)
Lemuel Bang
“in Romany he is the Devil” (chap. 8). Chapters 1–5
each end on a feature of the figure behind the
groups (crine, iron tongue, cleft feet, encompassing
hands, swallowing eyes); in chapter 8 Bang claims
them all.
“You must know by now that you two are the same
person.” (Catherine Mazda, chap. 8)
P7
P7
Shatwell the Seventh
Shatwell the Seventh
alive
“I raised you from the dead a few moments ago”
(Cletus Shatwell, chap. 4)
“I resurrected you imperfectly. There is still an
alternative death on you.” (chap. 4)
dead
“I have just killed Patrick Shatwell the Seventh, that
square of squares, with a dart” (Hugh Talisman,
chap. 2)
the double vision: “Shatwell killed with an iron dart
of gigantic size” (chap. 4)
7†
7†
Seven Firstborn
Seven Firstborn
murdered last night
“The Egyptian Plague Murders”: one firstborn in
each of seven Ornate families, at midnight (chap. 1)
never born, or killed long before
“You had no firstborn son named Adrian.”
(Shatwell the Sixth, chap. 9)
“only pale memorials of the real slayings”
(Craftsman Gabriel, chap. 8)
“I killed them somewhere between twelve and
twenty years ago.” (an elderly man, chap. 9)
P6
P6
Shatwell the Sixth
Shatwell the Sixth
dead
“Be he alive or be he dead,” (his epitaph, chap. 1)
“He was called the deep-freeze patriarch.” (chap. 1)
alive
“Here in his home he is the head,” (chap. 1)
“I may be the only sane one in the family.” (chap. 9)
Pe
Pe
Peter
Peter
unborn
“It is the case of the homunculi that they have not
been born.” (Ransley Jubilee, chap. 2)
his masters call the homunculi “motile vegetables”
(chap. 2)
pedigreed
“Peter had lately become the natural son of
Catharine Mazda of the Baronials.” (chap. 8)
“I am a pedigreed person now” (chap. 9)
Ko
Ko
Kolimar
Kolimar
paranoia
“Because nothing that the boy giant said when he
lectured was true.” (chap. 3)
“I fly lies as other boys and girls fly kites” (chap. 3)
“about a billionth the size of you folks” (chap. 3)
metanoia
“The name of the true is the ‘metanoia’, and the
name of the corresponding false thing is the
‘paranoia’.” (chap. 3)
Jonah: “he is a billion times the size of us” (chap. 3)
“a phenomenal sickness called ‘repentance’ which he
caught on that world” (Attachment)
Repent!
VF
VF
Vale of Faillium
Vale of Faillium
obverse
“They would have to find a retreat so closed off that
they could be ghostly leaders there” (chap. 7)
reverse
“the most closed-off prison in the world” (chap. 7)
“They were the same three hundred, and the
troublesome leaders were the same.” (chap. 7)
VN
VN
Venus-Noga
Venus-Noga
on Venus-Noga
The Golden Guys fight copper dragons. “Fat-Face
was dead there on Venus-Noga.” (chap. 7)
in the compound
“they were not dogs: they were the Living Copper
Dragons of Venus-Noga” (riot report, chap. 7)
“Desdemonia was dead back in the shabby street of a
Lunacy Compound” (chap. 7)
W
W
World
World
Prime World
Savant Ben bets “On the flesh-reality of the world.
On the incarnational reality.” (chap. 8)
Woomagoo
“Was it Prime World, as most thought, or was it
only Woomagoo, or a Woomagoo-type world?”
(chap. 1)
“Quite a few of us are here in the same room
together, but we aren’t all on the same world
together.” (Savant Ben, chap. 8)
Inside and Outside Views
The first Constitutional Congress of the Ornate majority names both views: “There are two possible views of these segregated and nearly contained
problems: the view from inside of them, and the view from outside of them.” In a passage left out of the Constitution but initialed by its leaders, the
inside view is “free and supported and provisioned Cultural Enclaves”; the outside view, “Monkey Islands Types Freedom-Simulated Zoos or Insane
Asylums” (chap. 4).
The
Handbook
describes the same arrangement from the Baronial side: “Imagine a rearranged world in which each group believes itself to be free and
advantaged, and all the other groups to be gentled into a series of madhouses and locked up there” (chap. 5).
Shatwell the Sixth denies that any one group is the sane one: “If the plate is broken into pieces, then all the pieces of it are broken” (chap. 9).
Kolimar says of his lies: “All my things are counterfeits, but only a true thing can be counterfeited” (chap. 3). In chapter 9 the crowd repents, and
Jonah, asked what they are repenting of, answers, “Of their insanity, I think.” The Attachment reports that Kolimar has caught “repentance.”
Quotations from
Iron Tongue of Midnight
, annotated edition with source notes; chapter numbers in parentheses.
Handbook
: the
Poor Barons’ Action Handbook
quoted in chapter 5.