An Edge in My Voice

by Harlan Ellison

  Bringing me to observations of the pragmatic realities of having a readership like some of you out there. (No, not you, kiddo, and not you, sweetie, you’re okay; this is only intended for the escapees from the chipmunk factory.)

  As an artist who (in the words of Dame Margot Fonteyn) doesn’t take himself very seriously but takes the work very very seriously, I spend most of my waking hours writing stories and books and movies that I hope will have some lasting import, work that I slave over and put most of my daily energy into. Posterity stuff, know what I mean? The real goods. The forms I use and the styles I adopt are changing; approach is malleable, it mutates. I seek to produce a variety of textures and velocities, densities and rhythms of movement. I wish to sink no roots but rather to displace air, to create a sense of something abundant and prodigious having passed.

  Imagine my consternation when I go out in the world—dressed even as you, I pass among my people, unseen and unheard yet I see and hear and remember—five bucks to the first reader who spots the cinematic source of that line—and meet my readers.

  Jeezus, it is to chill the blood.

  The word weird ennobles some of you.

  Look: I realize a lot of you have problems…it has not escaped my notice that many of you have French Fried your brains sitting in front of the Sony…life is tough, I got that, honest to God I got that…the specter of Reagan and fighting for Dat Ole Debbil Crude in Iran or Kuwait or South Philly rises up in the night to make us whoopee our Hydroxes…few of us will come through the sexual revolution unscarred, if not emotionally then certainly with herpes simplex…your father is going through menopause, your mother did a weekend seminar in est and she’s driving you buggy with psychobabble, your sister wants to be a Clayton chassis dynamometer technician and your brother hangs around the meat rack…the new Heinlein ain’t terrific and the new Bester is an old short story pumped full of air and when the hell is Poul Anderson going to get back on track and is Spinrad becoming a crypto-reactionary and how much more of this obscure twaddle by Ellison can we stomach…I know it’s tough, folks, and we have about as much chance of bolting down our sanity as the ghost of Django Reinhardt trapped at a Billy Idol recording session…but WHY ARE YOU SO GODDAM WEIRD!?!

  Honest to Skippy, I’m not saying this to rile you. Believe me, in my squishy little heart of hearts I have nothing but respect and admiration and unquenchable love for every last screwloosed one of you. Even the one who calls from New York three times a day and then hangs up without saying anything. Even the one who sends me drawings in magic marker that I couldn’t tell top from bottom if she didn’t sign them with a signature that dwarfs the art. Even the one who writes me long poems in Esperanto, which I don’t understand, without return postage. Even the one who teaches college in Pennsylvania and spends his off-hours making up the most incredible lies about my private life, based on old vaudeville routines. Even the one who named her firstborn after me. Even the one who found out I’ve been looking for a Dell Book (not a Big Little Book, but a similar species published by Dell in the ’40s titled FLASH GORDON AND THE EMPEROR OF MONGO for about ten years and can’t get my hands on one), who sends me hand-drawn pictures of Flash performing hideous obscenities on Dale Arden. Even the one who sends me religious tracts that assure me I’m going to Hell. Even the one who wants to buy my used Jockey shorts. Even the one who shows up at every autograph party in the Southern California area to ask me why I hate Barbra Streisand’s voice. Even the one who swears I knocked her up last year even though I had the vasectomy five years ago. Even the one with the bird calls; the one with the right blue eye and the left green eye; the one who wants to pay me to let her read tarot cards over me; the one with a voice that could stun a police dog; the one who asks me why I don’t stop the draft registration…the one…the one…the one who…I stagger, I falter, I fall in the traces…

  I love you all. May Yog-Sothoth hit me with a bolt of lightning in the pancreas if I’m not strictly wild about the whole slobbering warbling pack of you.

  Nonetheless, it is a bit disconcerting to get out there and meet all of you. And when some of you come to visit, unannounced and imprudently, sure I have the doorknobs cauterized. But does that dismay me. Not on your autographed Luke Skywalker hologram. Steadfast, thass me.

  But just to make it a little easier for those of us you seem to consider great gurus, here are some tips of etiquette. How to talk to a writer. Things not to say. (I glean these tips after consultation with others of my genus who have begun to twitch prematurely: Frank Herbert, Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, Bob Heinlein, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Ambrose Bierce, George R. R. Martin, Ursula K. Le Guin, Bob Silverberg and Stephen Donaldson. Jack Vance still refuses to speak to me because I voted against Goldwater.)

  First Tip: Never say to a writer, “You know, I’ve looked in every bookstore in the state of Washington, and I can’t find one single copy of any title you’ve written. Do you know they’re not distributing your stuff, huh, did you know that?”

  Yes, you insensitive lump of yak dung, I know it. And so does every other writer. We are as closely aware of where and how our books sell as you are of how much cash you have in your funny little change-purse. It is a constant anguish with which we suffer. There are something like 500-700 new paperback titles issued every month. Take your average paperback “spinner” rack in, say, a 7-Eleven. It has, what, forty, fifty pockets? Say fifty pockets. That means only fifty titles get full cover display. Anything behind that facing book is a lost book. And so if a writer is lucky s/he will get full-face display in one of those pockets above knee-level where the few remaining members of the reading public can see it…for about seven days. Then comes the new batch of titles, the writer’s book is pushed to the back, and ten days later it’s gone off the rack entirely.

  Which means that unless one has written something of classic stature such as THE SECAUCUS NEW JERSEY FAT DOCTORS’ DIET or JACKIE O’S SECRET SEX LIFE or a smash bestseller such as the latest plastic offering from Judith Krantz, Sidney Sheldon, Harold Robbins, Rod McKuen, Richard Brautigan or one of those pseudonymous lady writers with three names who prate endlessly of throbbing bosoms and bold highwaymen, you are in the toilet within two weeks. Even a brick as thick as the fan who tells a writer his / her books can’t be found, should know that this means distribution kills all of us, no matter how well-known or unknown, no matter how talented or inept, no matter how beautifully-packaged or uglified. And we spend several hours each week on the phone to our publishers, demanding information or explanation—why ain’t the books out there?

  So don’t do that to us. If you want to indicate your love for what we write, then lie to us: Tell us you were in the B. Dalton or the Waldenbooks flagship store and they had three huge stacks of our current title, right there beside the cash register at point-of-sale, and people were kicking shins to get at the copies before stock ran out.

  On the other hand, if you want to annoy us, go ahead and tell us we can’t be found anywhere. However, having been warned, and knowing that you’re doing it to bug us, the shins likely to be kicked are thine own.

  Second Tip: Don’t intrude your personal needs or problems into the lives of writers whose work you admire. That means, when you write a letter, don’t babble on for three pages about how you simply adore every word we’ve written and how you’re our biggest fan (my biggest fan weighs four hundred plus pounds; the only thing that beats him is the Goodyear Blimp); don’t waste your time and ours telling us how we’ve changed your life; don’t preamble a simple request with a tearjerking story of how you can’t get an A in your CompLit course if we don’t answer the 77 essay questions you’ve posed in the accompanying questionnaire; don’t ask us to read your stories, novels, screenplays, poems, essays, reviews, interviews or idle ruminations for comment; don’t send us baked goods by fourth class, they’re always maggot-ridden by the time the Snail Mail gets the crap to us; don’t ask us to help you get into publishing, writing, the movies or the plumbing indust
ry; and for god’s sake don’t ask us to reply even though you know we’re up to our tushes in work but any kind of hello how are you will suffice. (If we answered all the dumb mail we get, we’d never be able to write the stories you liked in the first place that made us worthy of your notice).

  In short, keep it short and simple, and try to do for yourself all the things you want us to do. Self-reliance will give you regular bowel movements. Most of us have neither the time nor the facilities nor the inclination to save your lives, remove you from the clutches of your rotten parents who do not understand why you spend all your time making models of Darth Vader and Close Encounters motherships, give you summer jobs working in our offices, forward your illiterate manuscripts to agents or publishers who would think we were nuts if we bothered them with amateur efforts, meet you for a cup of coffee or a quick roll in the hay, or sign autographed photos which we’re supposed to provide. And for God’s sake stop asking us where you can buy our books. That’s why the Sentient Universe created bookstores, newsstands, and a reference work called BOOKS IN PRINT.

  Third Tip: Brush your teeth.

  Oh, come on, now, don’t get all guppy-faced on me. None of the other writers will tell you this; they’re too polite. Most sf writers are destitute, and they don’t want to offend their readers. With me it’s a different matter; I’m loaded, so I can tell you the truth.

  And the truth is that some of you who come up to us at conventions, lectures, lunchrooms where we’re trying to eat a nice chopped liver on corn rye w/Dr. Brown’s Cream Soda, autograph parties, etcetera…well, some of you smell like the butcher’s mallet after a hard day bashing in horses’ brains.

  I realize it’s bourgeois to suggest that maybe there are a few body odors, such as those produced by dropped-dead bacteria or as a result of eating human flesh, that might be less than salutary. I appreciate your need to remain “natural” by avoiding underarm deodorant, Bounce in your wash, aftershave lotion, Dr. Scholl’s foot fungus powder, Handi-Wipes for your baby bottom and suchlike…natural is naturally best…particularly if you’re eating Pringles, McDonald Toadburgers, Diet Pepsi and chemically-augmented yogurt. Nonetheless, I would be less than candid were I not to confess that when some of you lurch up and stick your gaping pudding-troughs at us, all rotted fangs and green ichor, it fwankwy make me wanna womit.

  Fourth Tip: Stop reading our personal lives into our stories. Hate to shock your nervous system, but the Artist is not the Art. Just because Ted Sturgeon once wrote a story about homosexual aliens does not mean he is necessarily gay or alien. Just because Bob Bloch—one of the gentlest men who ever lived—wrote PSYCHO is no touchstone to a perception that he is secretly a deranged mass-murderer.

  Just because I write stories filled with senseless violence, incredible brutality, endless debasement of human beings and twisted, diseased, horrific concepts of sexual atrocities does not mean I gave to the March of Dimes last Christmas. On the other hand, it might.

  The point is, kiddo chums, we are interpreters of reality; not recorders of same. Journalists do that. We simply take bits and pieces from here and there and reorder them. That means we deal with the basic materials of the human condition, and that which looks interesting to us gets into the stories. Writers are also, as Mario Vargas Llosa has said, exorcists of their own demons. So some of us is in there. But it ain’t one-for-one. Trust me.

  And on that uplifting note, I’ll take my leave this time, reassuring you (as I whistle down the walk) that this has been something of a preamble to the column-after-next, which will be my sixth installment. Because, as promised, every sixth column will be responses to as many of the warm, wonderful, intelligent postcards you’ve sent as I can stomach, er, as I have room for.

  Just to keep us in touch. Usually, I wouldn’t touch some of you with a leper’s claw. But then, I’m seldom invited back to the same house for dinner, so who’s to say.

  Interim memo

  In this column I suggested readers write to me for a copy of an Asimov essay on anti-intellectualism and ignorance that had appeared in Newsweek. It was one of my public service gestures in aid of the commonweal. Hundreds of readers wrote me for the piece, and like a good guy I sent them along. The date of expiration has passed on that offer. Also on the Ovaltine Little Orphan Annie Shake-Up Mug. And the End of the World Life-After-Death Placemat and Bidet Set. Don’t write me for none of that there product, folks. (And that goes for the twit who never gets the word. Would one of you please slap him across the back of the head and wake him?) Go look up the proper issue of Newsweek, or go buy one of Isaac’s essay collections that includes that piece. Or ask Jimmy Swaggart or Jerry Falwell for a copy. They’ve got anti-intellectualism and ignorance down pat.

  INSTALLMENT 5: 8 SEPTEMBER 80

  PUBLISHED 9 DECEMBER 80 FUTURE LIFE #24 COVER-DATED FEBRUARY 81

  Every now and then, when I’m confronted with one of the seemingly endless manifestations of obscurantism and institutionalized superstition that pass for “common knowledge” in our ever-increasingly complex world, I grow despondent and find myself thinking unworthy thoughts about the wad that we call the Human Race.

  I find myself shrugging and saying (inwardly), well, hell, we’ve had our shot, now let the cockroaches take a whack at it. God knows they’ve been around a lot longer than we have. So what if they haven’t produced the orthopterous version of Hamlet, or invented the aerosol spray; neither did the saurians and they maintained occupancy for 130,000,000 years, give or take a wild weekend. Maybe, like the dolphins, cockroach art and society function on levels non-interpretable by our limited human minds.

  The word limited persists in these reflections when I lay out the cards of contemplation and consider how many people believe in irrationalities like alien spaceships that kidnap Georgia rednecks just to tell them Jesus Saves; that fluoridation of city drinking water is a Communist plot to pollute our precious bodily fluids, that skyscrapers “sway” in the wind as much as eight feet, that Shakespeare’s 16th century rival, Anthony Munday, wrote THE BOOKE OF SIR THOMAS MORE rather than The Bard; that great and original art can be created while the artist is doped out of his brain on Quaalude; that Ernest Angley, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart or any of the other members of television’s God Squad can cure cancer or even a hangnail through Divine Intervention; that jogging for anyone over the age of thirty-five will produce any systemic health benefit except a tragic and painful osteomyelitis; that the actors on the soaps are actually real and living those lives of endless sturm und drang; that Atlantis still exists in a sub-oceanic cul-de-sac waiting to be discovered; that est or Self-Realization or Scientology or any of its whacky clones can do anything more for you than separate you from large sums of money; that Nobel prize-winning physicist William Bradford Shockley’s naive and simplistic (but nonetheless mischievous and racist) theory of dysgenics, “proving” blacks are inferior to whites, is any less wrongheaded and damaging to the human spirit than Anita Bryant’s contention that all Jews are doomed to Hell from birth; or that Marilyn Monroe was murdered as part of the assassination conspiracy that punched JFK’s ticket.

  Photo: Dan Tooker

  To this admittedly inadequate catalogue, by no means even the apex of the pinnacle of the tip of the iceberg of fallacious codswallop proffered or swallowed whole hookline&sinkered by a distressingly geocentric human race, can be added to your own freighting of favorite misconceptions and irrationalities. I urge you to make a list of your ten favorites and send them along on a postcard, no letters, postcards only…and I’ll put them together some time soon so we can share each other’s craziness.

  What brings all of this to mind right now are two stretches of writing that have come under my gaze, and a snippet of television news footage I caught the other night.

  The writings are: first, a splendid book titled ASTROLOGY DISPROVED by Lawrence E. Jerome; and second, two entries by the indefatigably logical Dr. Asimov.

  Of the former, I cannot say enough. Jerome is listed a
s an engineer and science writer who has done extensive research in astrology, but such usually thin credentials don’t bother me one whit as regards this extraordinarily sensible and powerful weapon in the ongoing war against the forces seeking to keep us stupid. Why? Because Jerome is the co-author of the “Objections to Astrology” statement signed by 192 leading scientists whose credentials are unassailable. The statement, included at the end of the volume as an appendix, contains signatures by 19 Nobel Prize winners, among which are those of Sir Francis Crick, Konrad Lorenz, Linus Pauling, Harold C. Urey and Sir Peter Medawar. And the statement says, in part:

  “Scientists in a variety of fields have become concerned about the increased acceptance of astrology in many parts of the world. We, the undersigned—astronomers, astrophysicists, and scientists in other fields—wish to caution the public against the unquestioning acceptance of the predictions and advice given privately and publicly by astrologers. Those who wish to believe in astrology should realize that there is no scientific foundation for its tenets.” (The italics are mine.)

  I won’t quote the entirety of this wonderful, responsible document, but will merely add this part…

  “Why do people believe in astrology? In these uncertain times many long for the comfort of having guidance in making decisions. They would like to believe in a destiny predetermined by astral forces beyond their control. However, we must all face the world, and we must realize that our futures lie in ourselves, and not in the stars.

  “One would imagine, in this day of widespread enlightenment and education, that it would be unnecessary to debunk beliefs based on magic and superstition…. This can only contribute to the growth of irrationalism and obscurantism.”