"Harlan Ellison - Stalking the Nightmare" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

infuriating (see “The Hour That Stretches” or “!!!The!!Teddy!Crazy!!Show!!!” in this volume, or the classic short
story “Croatoan,” where Harlan managed to accomplish the mind-numbing feat of simultaneously pissing off the
right-to-lifers and the women’s liberationists) and always entertaining... but don’t confuse these things with the man;
do not assume that the work is the man. And ask yourself this: why in Christ’s name would you want to make any
assumption about the man on the basis of his work?
I for one am sick unto death with the cult of personality in America--with the assumption that I should eat
Famous Amos cookies because the dude is black and the dude is cool, that I should buy an Andy Warhol print
because People magazine says he only owns two shirts and two pairs of shoes, that I should go to this movie
because Us says the director has given up cocaine or that one because Rona Barrett says the director has recently
taken it up. I am sick of being told to buy books because their writers are great cocksmen or heroic gays or because
Norman Mailer got them sprung from jail.
It doesn’t last, friends and neighbors.
The cult of celebrity is cogitative shit running through the bowel of the intellect.
For whatever it’s worth, Harlan Ellison is a great man: a fast friend, a supportive critic, a ferocious enemy of
the false and the foolish, maniacally funny, perhaps insecure (I’m not sure what to make of a man who doesn’t smoke
or drink and who still has such crazed acid indigestion), but above all else, brave and true. If I knew I was going to be
in a strange city without all the magical gris-gris of the late 20th century--Amex Card, MasterCard, Visa Card, Blue
Cross card, driver’s license, Avis Wizard Number, Social Security number--and if I further knew I was going to have a
severe myocardial infarction, and if I could pick one person in all the world to be with me at the moment I felt the
hacksaw blade run down my left arm and the sledgehammer hit me on the left tit, that person would be Harlan Ellison.
Not my wife, not my agent, not my editor, my accountant, my lawyer. It would be Harlan, because if anyone would see
to it that I was going to have a fighting chance, it would be Harlan. Harlan would go running through hospital
corridors with my body in his arms, commandeering stretchers, I. C. support units, O. R. s, and of course, World
Famous Cardiologists. And if some admitting nurse happened to ask him about my Blue Cross/Blue Shield number,
Harlan would probably bite his or her head off with a single chomp.
And do you know what?
It doesn’t matter a damn.
Because time flies, friends. Tempus just keeps fugit-ing right along. And as 1982 becomes 1992 becomes 2022
becomes 2222, no one is going to care that Ellison once wrote stories in bookshop windows, or drove an old Camaro
with cheerful, adroit, scary, leadfooted abandon, or that Stephen King (“Who’s that, Tonto?” “Me don’t know for
sure, Kemo sabe. but him write just like Harlan Ellison”) once nominated him The Man I Would Most Like to Have
With Me in a Strange City When My Ventricles Go on Holiday. Because by 2222, the people reading fiction (always
assuming there are any people left in 2222, ha-ha) aren’t going to have a hope of taking dinner with Harlan, or shooting
a rack of eight-ball with him, or listening to him hold forth on the subject of why Ronald Reagan would be a better
President if he I) lit a firecracker 2) put the firecracker between his teeth, and 3) jammed his head up his ass. By 2222,
Harlan will have put on his boogie shoes and shuffled off to whatever Something or Nothing awaits us beyond this
Vale of Quarter Pounders.
If the cult of celebrity sucks (and take your Uncle Stevie’s word for it; it does indeed suck that fabled Hairy
Bird), it sucks because it’s as disposable as a Handi-Wipe or a Glad Bag or the latest record by the latest Group of the
Moment. Andy Warhol ushered in the celebrity era by proclaiming that, in the future, everyone would be famous for
fifteen minutes. But fifteen minutes isn’t a very long time; while any number of you guys and gals out there may have
read the science fiction of H. G. Wells or the mysteries of Wilkie Collins, how many of you have read such big
bestsellers of thirty plus years ago as LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN. FOREVER AMBER. or PEYTON PLACE?
You don’t make it over the long haul on the basis of your personality. Fifteen years after the funny guys and
the dynamic guys and the spellbinders croak, nobody remembers who the fuck they were.
Luckily, Harlan Ellison has got it both ways--but don’t concern yourself with the personality. Instead, dig
into the collection which follows. There’s something better, more lasting, and much more important than personality
going on here: you’ve got a good, informed writer working well over a span of years, learning, spinning tales, laying in
the needle, doing handstands and splits and pratfalls... entertaining you goddammit! Everything else put aside, is
anything better than that? I don’t think so. And so I’ll just close by saying it for you: