"Harlan Ellison - Paingod & Other Delusions" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

the other eleven months sopping up watery chicken soup with brown bread in a Salvation Army kitchen; the Easter
Bunny was only Welsh Rarebit mispronounced; “good women” exist in their idyllic state mostly in weak novels by
Irving Wallace, John O’Hara, Fannie Hurst and Leon Urine (my misspell, not the typesetter’s); Marilyn Monroe,
Camus and JFK got cut off in their prime, and the eggsucking monsters who buried those three Civil Rights workers
twenty-one feet down are running loose; and the sense of wonder has been relegated to buying old comic books and
catching The Shadow on Sunday radio, trying to find out where that innocence of childhood or nature went.
So there is no introduction. It has made this book incredibly belated in appearing already. Seven times I tried
to start an introduction to it, while Don Bensen (an incredibly patient, longsuffering, extremely fine editor) was
stunned by the hammers of deadlines, publishers, schedules and irresponsible authors. And seven times I came to
ass-grinding halts.
The first few times it was a compendium of bitter, cynical comment on writing for the science fiction field.
Then there was a lighthearted rollicking essay on Life In Our Times, but by the time I had hit the thirty-six ball-less
wonders who watched Catherine Genovese get knifed to death in New York, my rollick was a bit strained. So I
attempted a more serious assaying of the contemporary scene. It touched on such matters as the afternoon I was
called a Communist by the bag-boy in the Thriftimart because I objected to the Goldwater pamphlets at point-of-sale;
the impertinence and nosiness of credit checks for job applications or credit cards; the shocking bastardization of
news media and lack of responsibility thereof; the fetish for style and luxury, not safety, in new cars....
Oh, I went the route. And when I was done, it took three close friends to keep me from dashing into the
bathroom and opening an important vein with the new beep-beep Krona edge.
So I tried a sixth attempt. A personal statement about how crummy it was writing for television, and seeing
your best work masticated and grab-assed and garbaged-out by no-talents afraid of their shadows. But that was only a
repeat of a speech I made at the World SF Convention last Labor Day, and my attorney warned me if I put it into print
(instead of playing it via tape at parties), I’d be sued for roughly eleven million beans. So there was a seventh attempt,
in which I commented sagely on the stories in this book.
But let’s face it, friends, this book simply ain’t gonna change the course of Western Civilization, and Orville
Prescott is too busy simpering over Updike to find time for a paperback novelist, so what the hell.
So there is no introduction to this book. There are some pretty fair science fiction and fantasy stories here,
and one or two I particularly like because they say something more than The Mutants Is Coming; if Bensen can
wangle the space away from Pyramid’s advertising department to cut the latest notification of a Taylor Caldwell or
Louis Nizer offering, there may or may not be a photo of me on the back of the book (should you happen to be the sort
of good-looking broad who digs writing to weary authors, but need to know they aren’t hunchbacked lepers before
committing yourself); there is a nice cover; and a fair-traded price.
More than that you can’t expect. After all, Golding doesn’t introduce his books. Bellow doesn’t introduce his
books. Ike Asimov has proved his virility enough for all us science fiction writers. And Ayn Rand is better at karate
than all of us. So forgive the omission this time. I’ll catch you next time around.
You wouldn’t have liked an introduction, anyway.
I tend to pomposity in them.

Harlan Ellison
Hollywood, 1965
Late in March of 1965, I was compelled to join twenty-five thousand others, from all corners of the United States,
who marched on the then-bastion of bigotry, the then-capitol of corruption, Montgomery, Alabama (though South
Boston now holds undisputed title to the designation, Montgomery is still no flowerbed of racial sanity) (but the
myth of the “liberal” North sure got the hell shot out of it by the Southies from Irish-redneck Boston).
I was part of the human floodtide they called a “freedom march” that was trying to tell Governor George
Wallace that Alabama was not an island, that it was part of the civilized universe, that though we came from New
York and California and Illinois and South Dakota we were not “outside agitators,” we were fellow human beings
who shared the same granfalloon called “Americans,” and we were seeking dignity and civil rights for a people
shamefully bludgeoned and mistreated for over two centuries. It was a walk through the country of the blind. I’ve
written about it at length elsewhere.