Stalking the Nightmare Read Free

dark thought back in those days—and about us as well as them— well, that was tantamount to treason. It’s a little amazing that Harlan got it into print … unless you know Harlan, of course. And it’s damn fine to have it here, preserved between the boards of one of the admirable Phantasia Press books.
    But I promised not to chew your food for you, didn’t I?
    So I’ll get out of here now. Harlan’s going to come along very soon, grab you by the earlobe, and drag you off to a dozen different worlds. You’re going to be glad you went, I promise you (and you may be a little bit surprised to find you’ve made it back alive).
    Just one final comment, and then I promise to go quietly: there’s no significant correlation between the quality of a writer’s writing and the quality of that same writer’s personality. When I tell you that reading Harlan is overwhelming enough to start me writing like the guy—taking his flavor as my mother said milk takes the flavor of whatever you put it next to in the icebox—I am speaking of ability, not personality.
    Harlan Ellison’s personality is every bit as striking as his prose style, and this makes the man a pleasure to dine with, to visit, or to entertain. But let’s tell the gut-level, bottom-line truth. Most of you reading this are never going to eat a meal with Harlan, visit him in his home, or be visited by him. He gives of himself in a way that is profligate, almost dangerous—as does any writer worth his salt. He’ll tell you the truth in a manner which is sometimes infuriating (see “The Hour That Stretches” or “!!!The!!Teddy! Crazy! IShow!!!” 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