"Harlan Ellison - Partners in Wonder" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

not again.
I think I speak for my collaborators when I say that we hope this book lightens your burdens,
brings an occasional smile to your lips, puts a twinkle in your eyes, a shiver down your spine, an idea or
two in your heads, and when you close the book finally, you will feel that our time тАУ and yours тАУ was not
illspent.
For all of them, I say, thank you for dropping in on our little session, and for myself I say, thank
you for letting me coat-tail your talents; thank you gentlemen, one and all.

HARLAN ELLISON
Los Angeles
 Robert Sheckley and Harlan Ellison

I SEE A MAN SITTING ON
A CHAIR,
AND THE CHAIR IS
BITING HIS LEG
INTRODUCTION

What better to lure you into these unholy partnerships than a righteous tumble down a rabbit hole?
Sheckley for openers. Alone, by himself, unaided, he is certainly deranged. In company with your humble
ellisonian guide, he runs thoroughly amuck.
He came out to visit me in H*O*L*L*Y*W*O*O*D on some nefarious fiddlefoot journey тАУ one
of the many wanderings that constitute SheckтАЩs only discernible vice тАУ and one late afternoon we wound up
in my Camaro, whipping and skinning across MulhollandтАЩs snake, the rear seat filled with a gaggle of teen-
aged gigglers I was ferrying somewhere for some now-forgotten reason.
It was impossible to talk to them; even Mary, my close friend in WomenтАЩs Lib, would not object
to my calling these girls, girls: not women. They were just тАУ God forgive me тАУ pretty meat. And I had to
take them somewhere, so I was doing it, and Sheck was in the front bucket next to me, and to pass the time,
we started rapping a story plot. Not seriously, you understand, just one of those lunatic conversations into
which one falls with Bob as a matter of course: if we could sweep the beach clean with brooms, how many
years would it take; if trolley cars had wings, would elephants have overhead runners; is Amelia Earhart
living in sin in Guatemala with Ambrose Bierce and Judge Crater; why do women put the toilet paper in the
wall roller backward; if you could shrink people down to the size of walnuts, could youтАЩ solve the
population explosion by building and stocking a city the size of New York in Disneyland, right?
None of the conversations ever mean a damn thing. They are just crazy raps between Sheck and
whomever he happens to have snagged.
But this time, for some inexplicable reason, by the time we had driven all the way across
Mulholland, down Laurel Canyon, and were emerging on Sunset Boulevard, we had worked out a fairly
complex, thoroughly mad story line.
тАЬTell me, Bob,тАЭ I said, from behind the wheel, in my best W. C. Fields voice, тАЬwhat do you see as
a title for this masterpiece?тАЭ
тАЬI see a man sitting on a chair, and the chair is biting his leg,тАЭ he replied, thinking himself too cute
for words.
тАЬThen thatтАЩll be the title,тАЭ I said, calling his bluff. And it was. And it is.
No one was more shocked than Sheck. For no matter how crazy a writer gets, there is always
another writer just a little crazier.
After performing various hideous obscenities on the nubile persons of the backseat gigglers, I
dropped the young ladies off, joined Bob in a hearty lunch at the Old World, and we dashed back to my
house in the hills to start the story.
Sheck began the writing. His first assault runs from the opening sentence to the description of the