Why Harlan Ellison? · 1:10am Dec 20th, 2018
Troubled. I am writing this blog because I am troubled.
Why am I troubled? There's no real 'good' reason behind it. Plethora upon a plethora of reasons bug the ever living shit outta me, but no matter which one I choose to dissect, none of them ever appear, or reveal, to be a good enough reason.
The thing that troubles me now, on December the nineteen, at six o' clock, in two-thousand and eighteen, is the death of Harlan Ellison.
Most of you are probably wondering: “Who the fuck is Harlan Ellison?”
To which, I reply, softly: “Allow me to ramble for a while.”
This was a time before I was a writer.
“Yo, B!” I was walking out of the high school when the voice reached me. Catching me, I spun around, catching sight (for whom we will call) Bax. “Yo man. You out? Wanna come over?” Bax came over to my side, throwing his arm over my shoulders. “Got the PS2 set up in the basement. Plus the new Super Best Friends playthrough just dropped.”
“Holy fuck. Really?” I shook my head. I didn't have a life and it sounded like a good way to kill an afternoon. “Fuck that. Yeah. Let's fuckin' go.” So we fuckin' went over to his place. Two story building with a decked out basement—shower, kitchen, two bedrooms: the wet dream of every neckbeard.
I watched Bax play Berserk. I mostly watched, though to be fair, I also mostly talked. Anything and everything. I liked to talk. I liked to talk a lot. I'd only become good at it recently. And... look, there's something ya gotta know about me.
I'm a bit of a dick. I'm a prick and a twig, a nit-wit not worth shit. I'm the lowest of the low while sometimes feeling like the highest of the high. It was an issue I used to have, and in this setting, it would be unfair to say otherwise.
Because, at the time, since I felt like Bax was slightly beneath me, I felt as though I could say anything, and yet, not suddenly become beneath him. It was a weird issue for me to have, one that only makes sense superficially, and I'm glad to be past it.
So, because of this strange dynamic, I was able to talk to Bax about everything. It helped, too, for a writer in the making. Anyway. I've pulled off from the script too much already. Let's get back to the story.
“What the fuck kind of games are those guys playing?” I glanced over at the laptop, seeing some strange, 80's point and click kind of game. Its atmosphere was depressing but alluring at the same time. “Looks hella whack. The game any good?”
“The name's called 'I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.' Pretty dope title, dude.”
I had to nod my head: it was a pretty dope title.
It's ironic that Bax never became a storyteller himself. He's a better one for me—that's for sure. He'd go on telling me stories about the game, about the writer of the game, who wasn't a writer for games at all. The man was called Harlan Ellison, and the name stuck with me.
“He had a professor who was a dick to him,” Bax went on to say as his eyes never left the screen. “You know what Harlan did? Guy said he'd never be a writer, that he had no talent whatsoever, and what does Harlan Ellison do? Knocks the guy out. Then and there. Didn't give a fuck.”
It should be said this is where a divide happens. Either you think this is badass, or you think that Harlan is a prick. I will not fault you for which side you take, and I take them both, though I lean in Harlan Ellison's favor.
There were a few more stories about him, to be sure, but none that I really remembered. I've spent the past hour trying to work this problem out in my head, but whereas thinking fails, prose tends to save me.
So let's give this a whirl, yes?
My first learning of Harlan Ellison was of a mysterious man who'd done many great things.
I didn't know him, never seen his face, but I knew of him. There was something about him, even in, back in 2012 or so, that was alluring. I never actively sought him out, but there he remained, lingering in my subconscious.
And usually, I wouldn't place much importance on borderline nothingness if it all did not touch me somehow profoundly. I wasn't aware of any other writer at the time, other than Mark Twain because of Tom Sawyer, but for whatever reason, Harlan Ellison became in my head my first impression of what a writer was.
He lurked in my mind. Why? I still don't know. But there he was, waiting some nights, demanding a google search and such. Somehow, I hadn't seen his face, still this mystery of man. I'd heard the stories of how talked back to fans—they caused me to dislike him slightly.
But I was still drawn back. I'd found the original story of 'I Have No Mouth' read it, enjoyed it, and wondered to myself: “What the fuck was this guy on about?” Still, he lurked in my head, always in the background.
I don't wanna say I became a writer because of him. But I do wanna say that he played some involvement in it. You see my frustration, right? Of having something that was always there, subtly, but being unable to find the reason why?
Why oh why, even back then, was I so taken to someone I did not know? Why I, at random times over the years, reading about the man, but coming to know nothing of him? He was something I was interested in, but all information of him was obscure, that, or I was still lacking the self-awareness to understand what was presented before me.
This is wherein the mystery lies.
Let us fast-forward a bit, yeah?
The year is now two-thousand and eighteen.
I'm a writer. Or a fan fiction writer. Good or bad; nice or mean: you guys take your pick. I was talking to someone on Number's server about our favorite writers. I'd taken to reading a book or two every week by this point. Classics to contemporaries.
I thought about my favorite writers. The usual list came up: Alexander Dumas, J.D. Salinger, Murakami, yadda yadda yadda. You wanna know the strange part, though? The first name that came up, before the rest that has been listed, was Harlan Ellison himself.
This faceless man for over six or seven years. The one I knew vague stories about, and yet, I'd only read one of his tales. How could someone I not know, not really have read, be my favorite writer of all time? Why was he, despite the rest, the first to jump into my mind and scream his own importance?
'Am I still thinking about him?' I thought to myself. 'Fuck it. Might as well check him out.'
And so I did. I saw his face, which was turned slightly from his typewriter, his eyes tried with a look of an insomniac. A pipe was between his lips. A cap was on his head. In the second I saw him, I felt that he embodied what my ideal image of what a writer would look like.
And then I saw that he had died.
Harlan Ellison had died at age eighty-four.
And that's where my quest to understand the man began.
At Ellison's passing, the first thing I did, really, spent a week reading about his life. A lot of articles about his passing offered plenty of information. How he wrote a beloved Star-Trek episode called 'The City on the Edge of Forever.'
There were the tales on how much he wrote: over a thousand and seven-hundred short stories and essays. He was a voice actor who brought depths to his own work (and many others), which you can hear here.
He wrote scripts and helped with movies. He knew everybody: Robin Williams, Issac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Steve McQueen, Stan Lee—the list would take up a page. He was, in the words of another writer, the most famous least known person.
A fitting description, really.
But you wanna know the real kicker in all this? What draws me still, to this day, back to this man? It's not his stories or his essays, which are well-written—read them for the prose and you will be amazed. There's another reason why I am taken to this man. It dates back to when I first heart about him.
It was the type of personality he possessed.
He fought, endlessly. Ellison showed that you did not have to be in a dark and alone room to write—it could be done anywhere, and writer's block was not a thing. He wrote in the army, in a bathroom stall, balancing a typewriter on his lap. He wrote in bookstores, readers giving him ideas, which he'd write before them, posting the pages—once they were done—onto the wall.
And that's at the heart of my love for Harlan Ellison. He fought and he wrote. He yelled and he screamed. He spoke his mind without remorse, apologized for when he was wrong, and most important of all, was willing to fight to his last breath, and then use it to say he was wrong.
I wrote a blog a while ago stating why we need idols because they embody an aspect we wish to one day embody for ourselves. For me, Harlan Ellison had more than just one. How he spoke his mind, how he told funny stories, how he wrote stories at the drop of a dime, and how, no matter what, he was loyal and honest to his friend.
And now, reaching the end of this blog, I see now that I was a fool. Even with all the words I have written, I am still unable to understand why I appeal so much to this writer. He is for me the writer I hope to be, but no matter how hard I try, I cannot state all the reasons why.
There is an understanding between us that is without words. I keep racking my head for an answer. I've read through so many of his stories and essays, and it pains me to say, that he still feels like he's alive. I can hear his voice, like it were a conversation, in how much he wrote, and how much he did.
While I'm reading these essays, I am hearing Harlan Ellison. He is still there, not like the passive writers of the past, but he's active, next to me, and we're both drinking coffee. How could someone, so much still here, actually be many feet underground?
I suppose it's a mystery I may never solve. The pieces of the puzzle have been laid here. It is an absurd tale—as is much of my life. Maybe y'all see a connection I don't. Maybe I'm just crazy. Both are probably true.
There's one thing I'd like to end this blog on.
May we say what we think and express what we feel. May we write as much as we can so that our work lives on. May we fight and argue, when there is a battle to be had, because nothing gives us more energy, or causes us to feel such passion.
Here's to you, Harlan Ellison.
2018 just had to give us one more kick in the nuts.
I'm slightly confused. I'm sure passed June or July. Am I being an idiot and not getting this blog?
Perhaps why he still lingers is that as you said he's a role model to look up to.
You have become a good author in your own right with many featured stories. You stand on the shoulders of giants. Harlan being the giant.
4983247
He did. I'm only writing about him now.
Maybe it's necessary not to fully understand why we get drawn to these people. Like a magic show: if you learn all the workings, it kills the "magic." But I'm just guessing. Also now that I think of it, I never found a writer that affected me this much. I think I end up being more attached to the stories and their worlds than the creators themselves, heartless as that is. Maybe you're more interested in people to begin with than I am.