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And he was in no hurry to leave. There was time
Harlan Ellison has died. The two most immediately proper ways to celebrate his life would seem to be (a) writing a life-changing story (b) getting into a screaming grudgematch. I didn't sleep enough for the former and I got off Facebook precisely to avoid the latter this afternoon. He was important to me.
I never met him. In high school, I scoured used book stores for the works of three writers: Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon, and Harlan Ellison. In hindsight I can tell that I was studying them, who had all made careers of short stories when I was expected even as a teenager to be trying to write novels; at the time I just knew that I loved their language, the precision-detailed pulp poetry that sometimes flew way over the top and I didn't care, because no one else (I had not yet discovered Angela Carter and I was a few years off Tanith Lee) was writing like the way that words piled together in my head. Bradbury for autumn, Sturgeon for the Other, Ellison for pedal-to-the-medal audacity. I watched Babylon 5 (1994–98) in those years and liked to see him credited as conceptual consultant, sometimes as a cameo telepath or an annoying AI. He had the importance of a touchstone, a kind of talisman. Sometimes a cautionary example. Always words.
He was a complicated and divisive person; the stories about him seem to stack pretty cleanly between compassion and harm and his writing could be the same. I read his fiction, his essays, his film criticism, his introductions; they were always for better or worse distinctively him. Some of his stories lost their power for me with the years. Some of them never did. Everyone is talking about Deathbird Stories (1975), but I discovered him with Angry Candy (1988) and "Paladin of the Lost Hour," which he was one hundred percent wrong was done a disservice in the revived 1985 Twilight Zone by the casting of Danny Kaye. Look, there's the grudgematch. I concede only that Hume Cronyn would have been pretty sweet. It's a story about kindness, forgiveness, responsibility, and loss; it may have been wiser than the man who wrote it, but that is often the case with art. I was not surprised to read the news of his death this afternoon, but I am sorry. That is the last of my first teachers gone out of the world.
Gaspar smiled his own certain smile. "No, it's eleven."
—Harlan Ellison, "Paladin of the Lost Hour"
I never met him. In high school, I scoured used book stores for the works of three writers: Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon, and Harlan Ellison. In hindsight I can tell that I was studying them, who had all made careers of short stories when I was expected even as a teenager to be trying to write novels; at the time I just knew that I loved their language, the precision-detailed pulp poetry that sometimes flew way over the top and I didn't care, because no one else (I had not yet discovered Angela Carter and I was a few years off Tanith Lee) was writing like the way that words piled together in my head. Bradbury for autumn, Sturgeon for the Other, Ellison for pedal-to-the-medal audacity. I watched Babylon 5 (1994–98) in those years and liked to see him credited as conceptual consultant, sometimes as a cameo telepath or an annoying AI. He had the importance of a touchstone, a kind of talisman. Sometimes a cautionary example. Always words.
He was a complicated and divisive person; the stories about him seem to stack pretty cleanly between compassion and harm and his writing could be the same. I read his fiction, his essays, his film criticism, his introductions; they were always for better or worse distinctively him. Some of his stories lost their power for me with the years. Some of them never did. Everyone is talking about Deathbird Stories (1975), but I discovered him with Angry Candy (1988) and "Paladin of the Lost Hour," which he was one hundred percent wrong was done a disservice in the revived 1985 Twilight Zone by the casting of Danny Kaye. Look, there's the grudgematch. I concede only that Hume Cronyn would have been pretty sweet. It's a story about kindness, forgiveness, responsibility, and loss; it may have been wiser than the man who wrote it, but that is often the case with art. I was not surprised to read the news of his death this afternoon, but I am sorry. That is the last of my first teachers gone out of the world.
Gaspar smiled his own certain smile. "No, it's eleven."
—Harlan Ellison, "Paladin of the Lost Hour"
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It does feel like being part of a lineage. I don't imagine Ellison knew. That's the thing about being a writer: you don't choose your descendants. But they fan out in all directions, and they change what you taught them.
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She posted this afternoon that she'd heard the news and that she was going dark for a while. I think that is fair.
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I believe he wanted either Hume Cronyn, Burgess Meredith, or Jack Gilford, and got Danny Kaye. I agree that any of them would have been nice and I still like Kaye.
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OMG YES. There was plenty of Bradbury, and some Ellison, but for a while Sturgeon was the very devil to find. I still really cherish the paperback copy I have of Theodore Sturgeon is Alive and Well because it has To the Easel and Back in it and oh man, that story. Like I said elsewhere, he and Tiptree and Le Guin and Dick were my intro to scifi (also Wilhelm and Russ, but Ellison led me to them). I used to read the Dangerous Visions books over and over, like they were puzzles with secret keys.
Deathbird was important to me -- Strange Wine actually was moreso -- but I remember reading Angry Candy while I was sitting in a terrible hospital waiting room while my husband had an angioplasty that went on for hours, and IIRC in the intro he talked about his heart attack, and not to be slushy, but it was like he was right there in the room with me, actually keeping me company. Which was important because I didn't have anyone else. No family, and there was actually NOBODY ELSE in the waiting room, or at the desk, or the hallway. It was totally out of time. It was just me and Ellison and a giant unguarded terrible Chihuly sculpture in that waiting room, and if I hadn't had Ellison I might have gone after the Chihuly out of sheer mad anxiety.
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That is an excellent remembrance.
(I thought the collection with the heart attack intro was Slippage, but he might have had more than one heart attack.)
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I want to remember that when he wanted to, he had empathy to spare.
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I saw someone on Facebook who said something to the effect that they were thankful for the stories and sad for the man who could not always live up to them. That seemed fair.
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That sentence simply breaks my heart.
But you will teach writers yet unborn.
*hugs*
Nine
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Thank you.
*hugs*
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You might like this, one of the co-written stories from "Partners in Wonder," I think. Roger Zelazny is the named co-author, but in a sense, so is Pablo Neruda.
http://you-books.com/book/H-Ellison/Come-to-Me-Not-in-Winters-White
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I think it may not be possible to draw a distinction between them, which is what a lot of people seem to be wrestling with. When I was disappointed by his behavior, it was at a distance. Other people got both versions up close and personal, or got just the one but witnessed the other, and I don't think there's any way to deal with that kind of dissonance but acknowledge it. I wish he had been better at being a social conscience without punching down. I'm not sure it's that difficult.
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That would be the cautionary part.