Chapter 123
And though I know you won' t, I would be remiss if I did not suggest that at this holiest of holiday times, whether it be Christmas or Channukah, that you light one extra candle this year. For Norman Mayer, a sad and driven mad old man who cared enough to take a few too many steps in our behalf.
Maybe that should be two candles. One for him, and one for us. Because as Norman Mayer knew, we are in terrible danger.
The Streets,Installment 1 (19 July 1990) Finally figured out what' s Wrong With America.
It' s not only that we suffer from the worst case of cultural amnesia since the eradication of the Cherokee Nation was deified in history texts as Manifest Destiny. It' s not just that we' ve aspirated our own endless hype about how John Wayne we are, how Jack Armstrong we are, as j.a.pan kicks our fundament economically, intellectually, imaginatively. Nor is it simply that we' ve gorged ourselves on the Forbidden Twinkie from the Tree of GimmeGimme in the Garden of Greeden.
One could shudder, I suppose, when confronted by a stat from the National a.s.sessment of Educational Progress that shows 70% of 8000 17-year-old students queried didn' t know what the h.e.l.l the Magna Carta was- but according to a survey taken by the National Science Foundation, between 64-65% of the 2000 respondents believed lasers work by focusing sound waves and that the earliest human beings lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. (Ah, but don' t tremble! According to a recent Gallup Youth Survey, at least 95% of the representative national cross- section interviewed believed in the existence of angels, ESP, Bigfoot, ghosts, the Loch Ness Monster, and the efficacy of astrology in predicting the solutions to daily problems. Now don' t that make you breathe easier?) Sure, it' s easy to take the line of accepted wisdom that says we' re a nation of know-nothings, with a national average of intelligence on the level of something that makes its home in a petri dish. Yeah, we could go along with all those fuzzy-minded intellectuals who tell us that continued exposure to slasher films and the laissez-faire floating ethics of Michael Milken, Pete Rose, and Marion Barry has unraveled the fabric of our ethics to the point where news of the homeless makes us yawn. We could buy into that kneejerk liberal codswallop, sure we could.
But that isn' t what lies at the core of our National Malaise.
The answer lies not in Was.h.i.+ngton D.C. or Sacramento, cannot be codified in the canyons of Wall Street or the underground missile silos near Denver, escapes explanation at the Harvard Business School and in the halls of CBS where decisions are made about the national character. What' s wrong with us is Yorba Linda.
Now, I know this is going to go down smooth, like a demita.s.se of warm hair and Drano, but Yorba Linda is this nothing sort of burg about twenty-five miles northeast of Disneyland, appropriately enough, where pop. 30,000 is currently experiencing the galvanic twitch of a frog-leg with a live wire in it. On July 19th, Yorba Linda got itself finally on the map as something other than a running joke about being so dead that for a hot time you gotta go portage to Fullerton on a wild Sat.u.r.day night.
On July 19th, Yorba Linda dedicated the $21 million Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library & Birthplace, on the same day that Pete Rose got sentenced in Cincinnati; and if you squint your eyes very hard and masticate about six pages of Th.o.r.eau' s On Man and Nature you can discern a dismaying connection. For on that splendiferous day of 50,000 red white & blue helium balloons and " peace doves" let fly, a hero went down to disgrace, and a lying, treacherous paranoid was feted as having " repaired his image."
Hundreds of acres and a 52,000 square foot library (filled with Xerox copies of papers Nixon already sold for big bucks) have been dedicated to the greater glory of the man who said (in the Was.h.i.+ngton Star-News, 9 November 1972), " The average American is just like the child in the family."
And everyone makes a big who-struck-John about how the money to build this Parthenon of the Putrescent came not from the taxpayers, but from the pockets of private citizens, most of whom rode Nixon' s gravy train to financial fecundity. Yes, indeed, the 21-mil was raised by Maurice Stans, and who should be surprised? For, if we recall correctly, and we do, Maurice Hubert Stans was d.i.c.k Nixon' s Secretary of Commerce from '69 till '72, at which point he became Finance Chairman for The Committee to Re-Elect the President (meanspiritedly referred to as CREEP). And though he managed to get through the Watergate minefield reasonably intact, he' s the upstanding citizen who was indicted for conspiracy to suppress a federal investigation of Nixon' s chum Robert Vesco; he' s the fund-raising whiz who, in March of '75, was convicted in Was.h.i.+ngton Federal Court of five counts of violating campaign fundraising laws. Yessir, Maury Stans is a name beloved in Yorba Linda these days and nights.
Because they are days and nights filled with the tinkle of tourist coins. San Clemente- which had a chance to be the situs of the Nixon Memorial Apologia Atrium- must be kicking itself these days. They opted for slow growth and being able to look in a mirror without seeing the Swamp Thing. But think of all that lost revenue: hotel and motel business, conventions, trinket shops and souvenir doodads, guided tours, four- color pamphlets explaining how Nixon " opened" China.
Just think how much Yorba Lindoids will derive from this paroxysm of self-delusion and grotesque rhetoric, as 25,000 braindamaged visitors to the opening ceremony queue up to buy videotape knockoffs of the Checkers Speech at $39.95 per ca.s.sette. Think what a future lies just beyond that rough-hewn little hut where d.i.c.k was born! They can expand. They can build out and up!
The Milhous Theme Park, featuring the trickle-down water-slide; the House of Fiscal Mirrors in which civil rights and patriotism get their reflections warped beyond recognition; the Pirates of the Pentagon ride, featuring Agnew, Haldeman, Haig and Westmoreland; the Pat Buchanan forelock-tugging pavilion; the Kissinger Small World attraction, in which the endlessly repeated themesong turns nasty gang kids into brainwashed consumers. Pin the tail on the Ellsberg, throw a pie at a clever lookalike of Helen Gahagan Douglas, shoot a peacenik at the Tet Offensive shooting gallery. It' s Yorba Linda, America! Home of the Library extolling the ability of one man to make an entire nation ashamed of itself.
And then they can erect ancillary attractions, just as Anaheim has done. The Charles Manson Waxworks and Chamber of Slaughter. The Benedict Arnold Hall of Shame. The Wounded Knee Frontier Village. And perhaps later, maybe, a life-size replica of Babi Yar, as part of the Josef Stalin Spa and Fat Farm.
You know what' s wrong with America?
It' s not that we' re stupid, or that we forget the past, or that we have all the sophistication of a turnip-truck hayseed playing 3-card monte on a streetcorner.
The trouble with America is that we don' t hold a grudge long enough.
Xenogenesis The front door of my home is beautiful beyond the describing Created for me many years ago by two fine sculptors, Mabel and Milon Hutchinson, whose work equals in style and gorgeousness the finest woodworking of Louise Nevelson, it is a construct of " found" woodblocks and a.s.sorted other pieces. Mabel is quite, quite old now, but she still lives, tended by some of her most loving students, in Capistrano Beach, California. Milon died in 1977, leaving Mabel alone after fifty years of love. He was seventy- two when he pa.s.sed over. I admired and loved them both, and the beauty they brought to my life and my home never dims.
One Friday night in 1979, I appeared on a radio show well known in Los Angeles: Hour 25, hosted by Mike Hodel. It' s a science fiction program that covers film and television as well as print media, and on that evening in 1979 I gave my opinion of the first Star Trek movie, which I had seen the night before. It didn' t deserve much kindness, that film, and I was not very kind in my remarks. [Those of you who have read the introduction to my 1988 collection of stories, ANGRY CANDY, know that Mike Hodel died in May of 1986, little more than two years after I delivered this essay as the Guest of Honor speech at the 37th annual West Coast Science Fantasy Conference (" Westercon 37") in Portland, Oregon, 1 July 1984. He had recently celebrated his fifteenth consecutive year as host of Hour 25. As he lay dying in Cedars- Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Mike asked me to take over the show, to keep it going even though he wasn' t there to continue at the controls. We had co-hosted the show on 14 March 1986, just before he went into the hospital, and on 4 April I became the host, renaming the show Mike Hodel' s Hour 25. I stayed at the task for sixty installments, every Friday night through 19 June 1987. At the end of my run the show was pa.s.sed into the capable hands of my pal, J. Michael straczynski, creator of Babylon 5 and Rising Stars; and Joe kept the show alive as its host for five years, every Friday night, 10- 12:00 midnight in Los Angeles, on KPFK-FM, 90.7 on the dial. Thereafter, a series of hosts came and went, the show steadily losing its audience and relevance. Mike Hodel lives on in memory. I was informed by the shows current producer late in September of 2000, that Hour 25 had been cancelled after more than 35 years.]
After the show, and after Mike and I had gone for our usual pie, coffee and chat at DuPar' s, I came home around one o' clock. It was dark in the entrance way to my home, and I unlocked the beautiful door Mabel and Milon had made for me, entered the house, and closed the door. I went to bed.
Next day was a Sat.u.r.day, and unusual for my secretary to come in, but she had something to finish, and when she showed up at ten o' clock, she said, " What happened to the front door?"
With a soft, nasty, melting feeling in my chest, I went to the front door and opened it.
In the night, probably while I was still at the radio station, someone had thrown several dozen eggs on that work of art. It took many days to clean off the mess, from the hundreds of surfaces and interst.i.tial crevices. I could not concentrate on writing while the door was wounded. I picked and scoured and worked at it with toothbrushes and polish till the day grew dark. Finally, it came as clean as I could get it, but the egg had dried overnight and today the door remains discolored in some places, scored in others where my cleaning marred the surfaces.
Every time I unlock my front door, I hope that if Mabel comes to visit, it will be at night. For her, in the last years of her life, the art that she and Milon produced is solitary balm for her loss. I could not bear to see her expression if she were to see the ravages done to that important bit of her past. I think of the pithecanthropoid fan who slung those eggs, and I also hope I never find out which one it was.
My friend James Blish died in 1975.
Here is an extract from a letter I wrote to M. John Harrison- Mike Harrison, the brilliant English author of the Viriconium novels- on July 31st of that year: --.
Dear Mike: By now, of course, you know Jim pa.s.sed away. I was planning to fly to England to see him. I' d been meaning to do it for almost a year but the usual nonsense work-load and deadlines and personal bulls.h.i.+t prevented the journey. I' d decided I was coming early in August, but when I wrote Jim and Judy, and then followed it up with a phone call earlier this month,
I' d dedicated a new book to him. I sent him a copy of the dedication page. He wrote me back about two weeks ago...maybe the last thing he ever did write...I don' t know...and he was so d.a.m.ned tough, so b.l.o.o.d.y Jim, as he' d always been, saying he was feeling better and he was delighted I was, at last, coming to visit; that I should stay on a long while and we' d catch up on the past few years during which we hadn' t seen or communicated with each other too much. He was thrilled with the dedication to SHATTERDAY and he not only signed my personal copy of AGAIN, DANGEROUS VISIONS that I' d packed up and sent, but he' d been thoughtful enough to get it signed by Josephine Saxton- there on a weekend visit- thereby saving me another transatlantic s.h.i.+pping. Even at the last, in pain, and having difficulty writing, he' d been capable of one more act of friends.h.i.+p and concern: something that had always been his hallmark.
But now he' s gone. And I missed the final appointment. The long and endlessly fascinating conversation Jim Blish held with the world is ended, and I miss him terribly.
Mike replied, and like so many others that dark Autumn, he wanted to share his sorrow at Jim' s death. I wrote him in response on August 12th: --.
Thanks for the note. I appreciate your words. (How odd: Judy Blish actually sustains the loss, and here are we, getting strokes on the pa.s.sing of Jim. What miserable little creatures we are, wallowing in other people' s sorrow just to enable us to tolerate our pain.) I' d thought I had it all contained, and today Judy' s letter came and she said, " Jim loved you. He always said so," and I fell apart again. I' m not a sentimental type, G.o.d knows, but there is some part of me that feels an inconsolable loss at the going of that dear man who taught me so much. Christ, it' s awful.
Within three weeks of my sending that letter to Mike Harrison, I received from New York the most recent (at that time) of a series of hate letters from an unsigned correspondent who had been poisoning my mailbox with his vicious notes for almost two years. His note read, in part: --.
I understand James Blish died. You know he was a publicity flack for the tobacco industry for many years and I understand he died of cancer of the throat. That' s real poetic justice, don' t you think? One more of you phonies down, pretty soon it will be your turn.
For years I did not know who was behind those letters sans name or address, except that they were all postmarked out of New York City and they were obviously from someone who was very familiar with science fiction and fandom, someone who knew what I was doing on a continuing basis, and someone who probably subscribed to Locus.
For years I saved all the letters, in a file labeled " Mr. X." Then one day in late 1983, it chanced that a piece of mail addressed to The Harlan Ellison Record Collection was shown to me by the then-Director of The Collection, Sh.e.l.ley Levinson. I forget now why she showed me that note, as I seldom see correspondence sent to that arm of The Kilimanjaro Corporation. But when I began reading the letter, I could not see the words, I could see only the typewriter face that suddenly I recognized from protracted and intense scrutiny of Mr. X' s vile communiques. Peculiarities of some of the letters as they' d been typed seemed familiar. I rushed upstairs to my office and pulled the file. Yes, the " t" had a broken cross-bar; the " q" had a loop filled with gunk that reproduced solid black; the " r" on the machine had settled, appearing slightly below the level of all the other letters.
I checked the members.h.i.+p roster of The Collection and found that Mr. X- whose ident.i.ty had been sedulously disguised for ten years- was Norman Epstein, who lived at 110 East 36th Street in New York, New York 10016. His phone number was (212) 679-8092. He had been one of the earliest members of The Collection, and had received every newsletter issued by The Collection. Records of purchases showed he had bought first editions of my books at inflated prices.
I called him. Late one night. Very late one night.
" Mr. Epstein?"
A sleepy, querulous " Yes?"
" This is Harlan Ellison, Mr. Epstein."
A worried, startled " Oh..."
" For a long time now you' ve been having fun with me, haven' t you, Mr. Epstein?"
A slow, reluctant " I guess so."
" Well, that was because you knew where I was, and who I am; but now I know who you are, and where you are. Now I start having some fun with you, Mr. Epstein. And as nasty as your sense of humor is, mine is plain downright ugly. I' m a winner, Norman, and nothing is beneath me to make the other guy lose. You' re the other guy, Norman. You' ll be hearing from me. Not immediately, but soon. Soon, Norman. I look forward to it."
He began babbling, trying to tell me it was all a gag, that he meant no harm. But I had the dozens and dozens of his wretched little notes in front of me, the ones that defamed Phil Farmer and Damon Knight and other of my friends. I was easily able to dip down into the well of memory and bring back the anxiety and frustration I' d felt each day one of those unmarked envelopes appeared in the mail. The fury of not being able to respond! His cowardly anonymity! I hung up on him. I never learned his motivation for spending so much time and nastiness hara.s.sing me.
Norman Epstein has changed his phone number.
He' s done it several times.
Do you have any idea how easy it is to ferret out a new, unlisted number, particularly if you represent yourself to Nynex, the New York Telephone Company, as Detective-Lieutenant Hemphill of the Los Angeles Police Department?
When I sat down to write this article on June 6th, 1984, I had not heard from Norman Epstein for the many months since I' d spoken to him, very late that night. As I finished typing the preceding paragraph, the mail arrived. I went downstairs and brought it in. Atop the stack, a mere five minutes ago (as I sat writing this paragraph), was a postcard- without return address, postmarked New York-that read as follows: --.
Harlan, I liked " Stalking the Nightmare" very much. Keep writing.
- Best wishes, Norman Epstein With charming familiarity, he has signed it " Norman."Have you ever noticed how few people in this life know what' s good for them?Soon, Norman. I look forward to it.
In biology there is a phenomenon known as xenogenesis. It is a pathological state in which the child does not resemble the parent. You may remember a fairly grisly 1975 film by my pal Larry Cohen t.i.tled It' s Alive! in which a fanged and taloned baby gnaws its way out of its mother' s womb and slaughters the attending nurses and gynecologist in the delivery room and then leaps straight up through a skylight, smashes out, and for the duration of the film crawls in and out of the frame ripping people' s throats. Its natural father is a CPA or something similar. Most CPA' s do not, other than symbolically, have fangs and talons. Xenogenesis.
In the subculture of science fiction literature and its umbilically attached aficionados, we have the manifestation of a symbiotic relations.h.i.+p in which the behavior of the children, that is, the fans, does not resemble the n.o.ble ideals set forth in the writings and p.r.o.nouncements of the parents, the writers. For all its apocalyptic doomsaying, its frequent pointing with alarm, its gardyloos of caution, the literature of imagination has ever and always promoted an ethic of good manners and kindness via its viewpoint characters. The ones we are asked to relate to, in sf and fantasy, the ones we are urged to see as the Good Folks, are usually the ones who say excuse me and thank you ma' am.
The most efficient narrative shorthand to explain why a particular character is the one struck by cosmic lightning or masticated by some nameless Lovecraftian horror is to paint that character as rude, insensitive, paralogical or slovenly.
Through this free-floating auctorial trope, the canon has promulgated as salutary an image of mannerliness, rect.i.tude and humanism. The smart alecks, slugs, slimeworts and snipers of the universe in these fables unfailingly reap a terrible comeuppance.
That is the att.i.tude of the parents, for the most part.
Yet the children of this ongoing education, the fans who incorporate the canon as a significant part of their world-view, frequently demonstrate a cruelty that would, in the fiction, bring them a reward of Job-like awfulness.
One demur, herewith offered, but doomed to be ignored or misinterpreted: not all fans are malevolent. Let me repeat: there are many wonderful fans. Kindness, courtesy and self-sacrifice are as frequent, as common, among fans as flowers in the spring. In more than thirty years of linkage with sf and its fandom, I have made friends whose decency and support have made life (infinitely) more tenable. Casual generosities and life-saving a.s.sistance have ever been available to me, not only from those I know well, but through the good offices of readers I' ve never met, random acquaintances at conventions, pa.s.sersby who saw an opportunity for largesse and leaped at the chance to be of aid. What I say here will, please note, exclude all the Good Guys. They know who they are. I' ll say it a third time, and hope the message gets through: I speak here not of all fans!
The ones who will produce static at this essay are the ones whose consciences chew on them. The ones who will pillory the messenger serve their own secret agenda. They feel guilty, so they will try to behead the messenger. Nonetheless, what we deal with in this tract are the ones known to us all...the rude, the vicious, the stunned and the insensitive. And they don' t know who they are, because the very meanspiritedness and playground bully cruelty that marks them also poisons them with an arrogance that prevents their perceiving how vile they are to the rest of us, how embarra.s.sing they are to the preponderance of decent and gracious men and women who make up the literary support-group we call fandom.
What you will confront in these pages is the colony of grubs that has already driven too many writers and artists from the company of the rest of us; the maggots whose random and irrational gaffes have compelled those we come to conventions to meet, to say, " No more. I can' t face another weekend with those creeps!" (Or haven' t you wondered why you never see Stephen King at conventions these days?) They are the result of xenogenesis. They are the ones who yell Jump! at the d.a.m.ned soul on the ledge. They are the meaning of arrested adolescence. They are the canker on your rose, the worm in your apple. And the rest of you, the fans and readers, have to stand the gaff for their leprous behavior. And here is the litany.
One fan who was invited into my home stole more than two thousand dollars worth of rare comic books during a period of more than six months of friendly visits. Another fan walked off with the virtually irreplaceable Shasta Press books that bear Hannes Bok covers, all of them in mint condition, all of them bearing my bookplates. Yet another fan I caught as she walked out the front door of my house, with the first three issues of Unknown in her tote bag. And there was one who pocketed as memento of his visit, a collectible pinback b.u.t.ton from the old Kellogg' s Pep cereal series of comic book characters, Annie' s dog, Sandy. Another relieved me of the worry of winding a wrist.w.a.tch sent to me by an executive of the Bulova company; an instrument produced in the number of two: one I owned, the other belonging to Winston Churchill. Another took a leisurely riffle through my files in the dead of night while the rest of the household was asleep, and got away with a series of original letters from the author of THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, B. Traven, as well as the carbons of my letters to him in Mexico. And still another managed to cop- one by one, under his s.h.i.+rt- several dozen first editions that I' d bought new in the mid-fifties, when I' d been a fan myself, and had started collecting, paying for the books by saving lunch money. At the Kansas City Worldcon a number of years ago, a fan who still comes to conventions showed up at a party in my room and stole the only Virgil Finlay artwork I' ve ever been able to find for a reasonable purchase price.
These are not isolated instances of theft so casually performed that the question of morality never occurs to the footpad. If you want to hear other such tales, speak to any kind hearted writer, whose home has been robbed by a young fan he' s been kind enough to show through his collection. Or speak to Lydia Marano of the Dangerous Visions Bookstore in Sherman Oaks, California, or Sherry Gottlieb of A Change of Hobbit in Santa Monica, or any dealer or bookstore owner at any convention you ever attend.
I didn' t know Slans had such taking ways.
A fan from the Seattle area pulled the subscription coupons from more than fifty magazines ranging from Good Housekeeping to Hustler, typed in my name and address, and signed me up for subscriptions. Have you ever tried to get Time magazine to stop sending you its journal, and billing you endlessly? Have you ever received twelve dunning letters from bill collection agencies for goods you never requested, all in one day? Have you ever considered how much time and money you expend calling computerized subscription services in Colorado, trying to get them to trace where bogus subscription coupons came from?
And the ugliness of that fan' s nature reveals itself in an additional little twist put on the scam. Each subscription was made in the name of another science fiction professional...Isaac Asimov or Stephen King or...well, here, take a look at this bogus gift subscription returned to me by the National Review fulfillment department:
Thus, each stone bruises at least two of us. Casual, sidebar wickedness; and the creep thinks it' s cute. The subscription was sent to an approximation of my address, to " Helen Arlison." Yeah...cute.
But the prank went further: the fan also ordered a raft of expensive art items from The Franklin Mint, signed me up for the Columbia Tape Club, for whole series of porcelain figurines and vases from the Collectors' Society, for alb.u.ms of country and western golden oldies, for junk mail addressed to pet shops, for catalogues of clothing, women' s lingerie, computer supplies, yachting equipment, farm implements. In one week I received six Slim Whitman alb.u.ms. In the s.p.a.ce of one year I had to hire an a.s.sistant at considerable cost just to handle the cornucopial flow of magazines, catalogues, unordered product, retail credit demands and time-wasting problems this single fan visited on me.
I am not alone in suffering thus. This has happened to almost every writer I' ve queried. They have asked me not to use their names. Monkey-see, monkey-do: they' re afraid a few of you might not yet have had this perverted behavior occur to you, that once you learn of it, you' ll do it to them. They' re afraid of you; what does that tell you?
And each company that received my name sold the name and the address to a dozen other mail order companies whose unsolicited junk mail jammed my mailbox every day. I came to dread the arrival of the postal truck.
There was the fool who signed me up for every book club in America, from the Literary Guild to the Time-Life Library of World War II. We had stacks of unordered books to return every day for six months. Consider the packing, the trips to the post office. Consider what happens to one' s writing schedule!
There was the jerk who registered me for lonely hearts clubs, organizations that supply the names of Oriental women who want to become American brides, computer dating firms, pen pal a.s.sociations, p.o.r.n photo outfits that run ads that say, " Hi, I' m Rhonda, and if you' d like to see candid, full-front shots of me and my friend Roxanne, doing what we like to do best, just send us fifteen dollars and your special wants; we' ll do the rest."
There was the monster who anonymously called the police when I was living in New York in 1960, and told them I had an apartment filled with drugs and weapons, and on a quiet day recorded in my book MEMOS FROM PURGATORY, I was arrested and taken off to the Manhattan holding tanks called the Tombs, and though there wasn' t so much as a NoDoz tablet in my apartment, I was arraigned and had to go before the Grand Jury.
Amusing. All terribly amusing. Each little high school prank a giggle. And how many hours spent cleaning up these unnecessary contretemps might have been spent producing more stories? How many hours wasted, how many books lost, unwritten? Now multiply what has happened to me, the hours lost, by the number of writers who' ve had this kind of c.r.a.p pulled on them, too. A writer has only talent, a finite amount of visceral material, and a little time...never enough time. Amusing.
They are cowardly little sc.u.m, these brain-damage cases who demean honest fans by calling themselves aficionados of the literature of imagination. They spread the gossip behind your back, they make the snide remarks as they zip past you in the convention halls, they put no return address on the vile letters, they make up false names when they write the hate letters to the magazines that run your stories, they use the telephone. For them, courage and rational behavior are alien concepts only to be read about in slambang s.p.a.ce operas. Such concepts do not impinge upon their miserable lives in the real world.
This essay came into being one evening at a reception given for John Brunner during one of his visits to Los Angeles. At that gathering, I found myself sitting at a kitchen table with Robert Bloch, Philip Jose Farmer and the late Kris Neville. We were discussing what had happened to me the night before.
I had only recently, at that time, begun living with a woman I' d met in Boston. She had come out to L.A. to stay with me, and we had gone to see the Woody Allen film Stardust Memories. In one scene of the movie, Woody, playing himself in the role of a world-famous comedy director, attends one of those film weekends held all-too-frequently at resort hotels in the Poconos. He is swamped by pushy, impertinent, gauche and sycophantic fans of his work, They chivvy and hara.s.s him; and at one point a woman stridently demands he autograph her hand, When he refuses she gets insulting.
I leaned over to whisper to my new friend from Boston, " That' s my life you' re looking at."
She laughed at me, and later, when we had left the theater, she accused me of unjustified self-importance and advised me that even though she was from Boston, she hadn' t fallen off the turnip truck the day before. I smiled and said no more.
Two nights later, on the Friday before the reception for John Brunner, I had to speak at a fund-raising event for imprisoned writers in Latin American nations, sponsored by P.E.N., the international journalism society, and as we sat in the front row waiting for the event to begin, a stout woman behind us gave a hoot, clamped a paw on my shoulder, and demanded, " Are you Harlan Ellison?"
I turned with fear, saw this behemoth apparition, and acknowledged reluctantly that I was, indeed, that doomed soul. My new friend from Boston also turned, her eyes wide, as the woman proclaimed, with the rustic charm of a farmhand calling in the hogs, " I' ve read everything you' ve ever written! I love your stuff! Here, sign my breast!" And she wrenched aside her ruffled top to expose a mammary the size and richness of Latvia. My lady friend stared with horror, then looked at me and blurted, " Jeeeeeezus, you weren' t kidding, were you?"
I was discussing this not-uncommon event with Kris and Phil and Bob, at John' s reception, and in fun we began telling each other of the horror scenes we' d gone through with fans.
Kris Neville regaled us with a story of pyramiding impositions by a young male fan who had come to pay homage, culminating in his taking up residence on Kris and Lil' s front lawn until they were forced to call the juvenile authorities.
Bob' s most bizarre fan story involved the receipt, one day in the mail, of a birthday card from an unknown enthusiast who had attached to the felicitation, a green gemstone. Bob tossed the card, with rock attached, into a junk drawer. Years later, when the drawer' s contents were sent to one of the university archives that preserve the papers of famous writers, Bob received a call from the curator who advised him that they' d had the stone appraised, and it was valued at seven thousand dollars.
On the day I sat down to write this essay, June 6th, 1984, apart from the Epstein postcard mentioned earlier, and hundreds of other items of postal wonderfulness, I received a letter from one Leroy Jones of Philadelphia. His request was not unlike hundreds of similar missives I receive in a year. It was as follows, and I quote directly from the scrawled note before me: --.
Dear Mr. Ellison- I collect quotes of authors (sic) works. Could you please pen a few dozen quotes from your work on the enclosed cards. I' m only 16 so have not read too much on you. I' m not sure I' d like all you write but I know you have done a movie The Oscar and I saw that. I need some quotes.
-Thanks, Leroy.