"Harlan Ellison - Approaching Oblivion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

 No, I said, I didn't.
тАЬWell,тАЭ she said, тАЬI used to be his secretary and I know him very well. Would you like to meet
him?тАЭ

Harlan Ellison lives in the Los Angeles foothills, in a perfectly ordinary-appearing house, in a
quiet suburban neighborhood. The inside of the house is as remarkable as the exterior is mundane; Ellison
himself seems to take a certain pleasure in the unobtrusive outward appearance he presents to the
community.
Inside, the feeling is sensual, almost sybaritic, with a quality of tension that comes from a barely
controlled chaos. There are books everywhere, thousands of books, lining walls, tucked above doorways,
filling closets, threatening to spill out and consume the living space. There are bizarre juxtapositions at
every turn: signed Wunderlich prints, Soleri notebooks, sculpture from Mozambique, psychedelic book art
set side by side in confusing profusion. It takes enormous energy to hold all this together, and Ellison
himself appears to have boundless energy. He moves restlessly, talks non-stop, jumping from books to
television to politics to sex to movies, taking up each new subject with considerable humor and aggressive
enthusiasm.
He is not an easy man. His opinions are strongly held and his feelings strongly felt; he is not
tolerant of compromise where it affects his life and his work. In someone else, this obstinacy might appear
petty or fanatical, but in Harlan it is natural and attractive. It is simply the way he is.
Most strikingly, he is a genuine original, one-of-a-kind, difficult to categorize and unwilling to
make it any easier. He demands to be taken on his own terms, and that aspect of his personality and his
work is, I suspect, what has engaged both his critics and his large and passionately loyal following. He
seems to be a kind of energy focus and no one who brushes against him comes away with an indifferent
response. His advocates are every bit as vehement as his critics. Other writers have readers; Ellison has fans
who will get into fistfights with anyone who says a word against him.
He doesn't write like anybody else. The same paradoxes and odd juxtapositions which appear in
his house and in his casual speech, are present in all of his writing. What emerges is a surprising, eclectic,
almost protean series of visions, often disturbing, always strongly felt.
In the end, these strong feelings drive Hollywood producers crazy but make extraordinary stories.
After a long hiatus, there are eleven here, in top Ellison form-uncompromising, individual, and exactly as
he wants them to be.

Hollywood
29 January 74

Introduction by HARLAN ELLISON

REAPING
THE
WHIRL WIND
If it hadn't been for my getting beaten up daily on the playground of Lathrop Grade School in
Painesville, Ohio-this book would not be what it is. It might be a book with my stories in it, but it wouldn't
be this book, and it wouldn't be as painful a book for me as it is.
You've noticed, of course. Everyone finally realizes it as an inescapable truth. Nothing we do as
adults is wholly based on our adult reactions; it's always-to greater or lesser degree depending on how deep
go our roots to the past-an echo of our childhoods. Your politics are either mirror images of your parents'
politics when you were a kid, or they're rebellions against those politics. Somewhere in the physical
makeup of the love-partners who turn you on are vague shadows of the high school cheerleader or
basketball center who made your little heart go pitty-pat when you were dashing past puberty. If you were
accepted and admired by your teenage peer group, you don't have the same gut-wrenching fears about