Harlan Ellison died this week. If you’re visiting this page because I’m a writer, then hopefully I don’t have to tell you who Harlan Ellison was. But, just in case, Google him. You’ll see a wealth of obituaries that will inform you that Harlan Ellison wrote over 1800 stories in his lifetime, that he won pretty much every award a writer could earn (some of them multiple times), that we wrote the most famous episode of the original Star Trek (“The City on the Edge of Forever”), and a thesaurus’s worth of synonyms for the word, “angry”.
A few of those write-ups will even include that he was a prominent voice in the New Wave science fiction movement, a group of writers that blended experimental techniques with a strong emphasis on stories that dealt with the civil rights movement. You might read that Harlan Ellison burned with passion over civil rights, that he marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma and visited inmates in prison. You may find a mention or two that he acted as a mentor to other ground-breaking writers, such as Octavia Butler. He was the proto-SJW. Note: I mean that as a compliment.
But what you won’t find in these official articles is what a huge, god-damn influence he was to many writers and the writing craft, and just how difficult he made it to reconcile that fact during the last decade of his life.
I can only share with you my personal experience, but I promise you, up until a few years ago, it was not unique. I discovered Harlan Ellison during my last few months of college. During this time I was taking creative writing and theater classes on the sly, trying to dodge the reality that college would be ending soon and I had no desire to go on to grad school in psychology. While visiting home one weekend I watched an episode of Sci-Fi Buzz during which this older guy came on for a segment called “Harlan Ellison’s Watching”. I paused. “Harlan Ellison? Where had I heard that name before? Oh, yeah! He’s mentioned in The Dark Knight Returns and his name is in the credits for The Terminator.” Intrigued, I kept watching. Of course the guy on the TV was Harlan himself and he proceeded to rant about how writers don’t provoke thought anymore. I don’t remember the exact quotes, but it was something along the lines of:
Harlan impersonating a typical person: “Harlan Ellison? Pffftt! All he does is write to provoke a reaction!”
Harlan’s response: “Well, duh! That’s what writers are supposed to do!”
Later that afternoon I went to Borders (RIP) to try and locate some Harlan Ellison for myself. I wanted to see if his stuff was as provocative as he boasted it was. I picked up Deathbird Stories, a collection of short stories. When I got it home I cracked it open and saw the following:
CAVEAT LECTOR
It is suggested that the reader try not read this book on one sitting. The emotional content of these stories, taken without break, may be extremely upsetting. This note is intended most sincerely, and not as hyperbole. GO AT YOUR OWN RISK.
HARLAN ELLISON
I blinked. What was this, the King in Yellow or something? I started reading the first story, “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs”.
Ooof. The end of that story drove into me like a Bowie knife. I did not read the rest of the collection that night, for what was contained between those covers was a collection of gut punches that shook me up. But a fan was born. I began collecting his works wherever I could. Not just his fiction, but his non-fiction, too. Through his writing, my perception of the world and myself shifted. Reading his fiction made me want to be a better writer. Reading his non-fiction made me want to be a better person.
I would not have become a feminist had Harlan Ellison not challenged aspects of the patriarchy. I would not have grown outside my upper-middle class staunch conservative upbringing had Harlan Ellison not written about the lives of those on the opposite side of the spectrum from me.
There were other aspects of his character that served as inspiration for me. As a jew growing up in Painesville, Ohio, his family was frequently the target of bigots and the KKK. He was kicked out of Ohio State and once had a writing professor tell him his work was garbage and he would amount to nothing. Yet, he persisted. He never let anyone else define what he was capable of.
Back when I was just starting to write beyond a hobby level, submitting stories and networking, it was not uncommon for people to ask me who my influences were. “Harlan Ellison” was always the first one I mentioned. More often than not, people responded in kind.
Of course, I’m painting all of this so far in a very rosy way. I’m no biographer, so let me just say that the flip side of Ellison’s personality is that he was incredibly contentious, to put it in a succinct way. Or, you could say he was a dick, to be even more succinct.
At WorldCon in 2006, while Connie Willis was speaking as the Guest of Honor at the Hugo Awards, Ellison interrupted her by acting like a breast-feeding baby, during which he groped her breast. This is not gossip. There are YouTube videos of the incident. He admitted to it, but insisted that it was meant to be a joke between friends and apologized. Sort of. His behavior and the fallout that happened in its wake were not pretty nor inspiring.
And it wouldn’t be the last time he acted in a way that seemed to me to go against the man I thought he was. In 2013, following the SFWA sexism scandal, he sided with Dave Truesdale, who felt SFWA was becoming too PC. That’s a pretty far jump from marching to Selma with Dr. King.
I found the love I once had for Ellison and his writing becoming clouded by my feelings for his more recent behavior. I didn’t want to discuss him anymore with my friends and fellow writers. I could not separate the art from the artist. I stopped reading him. In my mind, the man who had once been my hero was dead. Someone with his name, voice, and face was still kicking around, but it wasn’t the same.
Now, in 2018, the man himself has passed away at the age of 84. As I write this, I struggle with whether or not I should remember his writing. Should we separate the art from the artist? On a technical level, there is so much that writers can learn from reading Ellison. If you separate his words from his actions, you can see strong arguments for civil rights, for feminism, and for just being a responsible human being. Yet in our current climate of social media, if you’re not 100% in agreement with someone that means you are 100% their enemy. At least, to the loudest voices that happen to be driving the conversation. We no longer believe in nuance.
I believe that I am a better person today in part because I read Harlan Ellison during a very formative part of my life. I also believe that we would not have the diversity in writing we have today had it not been for people like Ellison championing different voices during the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. Yet, I am told that I must reject this. That everything Ellison did is overshadowed by a few of his actions late in his life. To be sure, the shit he pulled in 2006 is repugnant. I thought I came to grips with this years ago, but the feelings I’ve felt this past week tell me otherwise.