"Harlan Ellison - Love ain,t nothing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

In fact, some years ago, when I was writing the introductions to the stories in an anthology I
edited called DANGEROUS VISIONS, I found myself writing these words about myself and Theodore
Sturgeon:
"It became clear to Sturgeon and myself that I knew virtually nothing about love but was totally
familiar with hate, while Ted knew almost nothing about hate, yet was completely conversant with
love in all its manifestations."
That was in 1966. Ten years ago. I've revised my estimates of both Ted's and my understandings of
hate and love. It's been an interesting ten years for both of us, and if I were to take the toll
today I'd have to admit grudgingly that I've had some of the parameters of the equation of love
drilled into me by experts. And so now, ten years later, I set down these first few tentative
thoughts about the subject, offering as credentials the stories in this collection.
I can tell you many things love is not. Telling you what it is comes much harder to me. When one
feels like a novice, it becomes an act of arrogance to pontificate. Much of what I think changes
from day to day. And I suppose by the accepted standards of success, I'm a poor spokesman. It
seems the more experience I get, the less sure I become about anything where love is concerned.
(I'm not talking about my three marriages and divorces. That's another thing, and peculiarly, it
has less to do with my caution about this subject than more "informal" relationships.)
Lori and I were talking about this several weeks ago, and with what I take to be the normal
curiosityof anyone merging his or her life with someone else's, she asked me how many women I'd
been with. For a few days I wouldn't answer her. I wasn't hiding anything, I just didn't think
she'd care to hear the real answer. Finally, I told her. "I tried to count up, one time about six
years ago," I said. "And I used snapshots and correspondence and phone lists I found lying around
in old files and desk drawers, and I had to stop when it got over three hundred. I suppose I've
been to bed with maybe five hundred different women."
She didn't say anything for a long while, but I could see she was shocked. When I'd tried to take
the tally half a dozen years ago, I'd been shocked, too.
I realize there will be guys out there who'll read that figure--five hundred--which I think is
pretty accurate, and they'll react in one of several different ways. There will be assholes who'll
think that's pretty terrific. There will be amateur Freudians who'll think it's sick. There will


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be professional sympathizers who'll feel sorry for me. There will be guys who can't get laid
who'll think I'm lying, trying to trumpet some kind of bogus swashbuckler image.
Each view has some validity going for it.
But mostly, since I went through all those days and nights and people, since I was there (or as
much of me as I had control of was there), I subscribe to the view that I was looking for
something very hard, perhaps with uncommon desperation. I think I understand the psychological
reasons I was on that endless hunt, and I submit there was less of deviation, perversion or
obsession than of loneliness and a determination to find answers. I'm constantly perplexed at the
dichotomous position of people who laud a student's seeking everywhere to find the answers to
life, or creativity, or the existence of God, or the direction of the student's career ... who
cluck their tongues and badrap the same attempts to discover the answers to interpersonal
relationships by those who seek in every area that presents itself. If the true purpose of living
a fulfilled life is in establishing meaningful liaisons with people, if it's part of that
fulfillment to seek and find and give and accept love, then why should the search be looked on
with such moral disapproval?
Perhaps I'm advocating profligacy, but I don't think so. Discovering the nature of love is