Short Stories

Heart Grow Fonder
—R. A. Lafferty


  •   · Excerpt    
      "“Our new neighbor on the west is a creep,” Simon Radert said sourly, “and what this neighborhood doesn't need is another creep.”
      “No, you're the creep in residence,” said his sly wife Norah. “Can't stand the competition, can you? But Simon, he doesn't look like a creep to me. He sure doesn't creep around. He bounces around on his heels, and he's as open as a Dutch door in a Payne County wind. His name is Swag, and does he ever have a swagger! I wish you were like him. And that wife of his, Buxom Jean (that's really her name), wow, I wish I were like her. They sure seem to have a lot of fun at their house.”
      “Let's swap houses, then, if that's the way you want it.”"  —R. A. Lafferty
       · Commentary
      “Lafferty does not disappoint; “Heart Grow Fonder” is fun and entertaining and is all about temptation and the evils of deceitfulness, marital infidelity, thievery, and trying to be something (and someone) you are not.”
        —MPorcius, Future Corruption (2015)



Copyright & Licensing: If you submit a comment, you agree to license the original text of your comment as CC-BY-4.0, allowing others to share and adapt your comment for any purpose, even commercially, as long as attribution is given and changes are indicated. Please see the full license.

Literary criticism of Lafferty has been sparse, and valuable essays remain out of print due to unclear license or estate status. The CC-BY license provides an option for Lafferty scholars to republish and critique your writing, and enables Lafferty archivists to migrate comments to new platforms and media.