Harlan
Ellison has, well...a bit of reputation.
Which
is rather like saying the moon is a bit cold, Mercury is a tad hot,
and the sky is a little tall. Yet even heaven-and divine hyperbole
barely hints at the depth and breadth of Mr. Ellison's character, for
it is a subject about which whole books might be written, BIG books,
especially if you were to try to compose a well-rounded account of
it. A hundred producers, a thousand writers, and more than one
studio executive would each have something different to say about the
big H-E, and while I couldn't guarantee all of it would be honest, I
can certainly assure you it would be colorful. A man who's spent the
better part of five decades speaking his mind is bound to have made
enemies; a man who's spent the better part of five decades speaking
his mind and writing so goddamn well along
the way has, I have little doubt, earned the respect of those
enemies. And, oh yeah, he's picked up a die-hard fan or two, Yours
Truly among them.
Mr.
Ellison is an old man now. He writes still and he still writes well.
And while he has for a long while now been called a curmudgeon (and
every variant thereof, see 'grouch', 'sourpuss', or the adjective
form 'crotchety', 'grumpy', 'cranky', and 'sour'), it's important to
remember that Mr. Ellison was and still is a man who believes in
fairness and justice, courage and principles, in standing up for
what's right, doing the good thing when the good thing might get you
killed, and in never backing down. Hell, he even believes in love.
More than four decades ago Harlan was a contributor to the Los
Angeles Free Press, an alternative newspaper with a bit of leftist
slant, which was a dangerous thing to have in Nixon's America. In
the little fiefdom of space allotted to him each week he wrote about
love and justice and courage, and he did it with his characteristic
wit and vitriol jammed into lightspeed overdrive, setting the page
afire with his serrated prose. Hell of thing to say about a column
about television, huh? The Glass Teat is
the first of two collections of writings from Ellison's tenure at the
L.A. Freep. The omnibus form, and its companion volume The
Other Glass Teat, have been
available in print only sporadically since their original
publications many years apart.
The
reason Ellison's Teats have
been so hard to come by is a tale in and of itself, one Mr. Ellison
details in no fewer than three forwards
to the new edition presently available. I won't spoil all the
scurrilous details, but suffice to say our man Harlan's polemics in
the pages of the Press
caught the attention of the Nixon White House, and in particular Mr.
Nixon's Brylcreemed Nazi-cum-attack dog Spiro Agnew, a man as close
to a real-life Bradbury-ian fireman as
ever this country has seen. Seems ol' Aggy didn't take kindly to Mr.
Ellison's tone on a multitude of topics, the tipping point being what
the VP at the time saw as a personal attack on him, part of a larger,
more sinister plot to subvert the country's leadership and incite
anarchy from coast to coast. Agnew (the author contends) launched a
private little war against Ellison, blackballing his work from the
shelves of major booksellers and imposing massive pressure on his
publisher and editors to bring him to heel and, when Ellison refused
to capitulate, to shun him entirely. The Other Glass Teat
was blocked from widespread
distribution for years, while the first Glass Teat was
returned from retailers one unopened box at a time, smeared as
'dangerous' literature by the administration's propaganda machine.
Ellison spent years doing what he does best: fighting back with every
ounce of will in his diminutive frame. It was years before the first
volume saw the light of day sans complications,
and wasn't until the early 80's that an unmolested version of The
Other Glass Teat returned to
print.
For
all our problems now, it is hard for most of us who weren't
there at the time to imagine an America where such a thing could
happen. It still shocks, the idea that such blatant, naked censorship could ever be tolerated
by a free society, much less that the leaders elected to protect
that society could commit such atrocious perfidy against the first
amendment. But that is exactly
the sort of thing Ellison writes about in these columns: the culture
of fear and paranoia that ruled those hairy times, the disparity of
education (and opinion) between the coasts and middle America, the
hypocrisy of the talking heads in Washington, the gross inequities of
a country still mired in hateful racism and open class warfare, the
shifting definition of 'patriotism', the intrusion of religion and
nebulous morality in matters of public policy, and, through it all,
how the still-emerging medium of television acted as a mirror
reflecting every aspect of the vast, complex, polymorphic American
culture. Anyone who's ever listened to parents or older siblings
talk about the lunacy of the sixties will understand a little better
after reading The Glass Teat why
those times were considered at once so hopeful and yet so dark,
so thrilling, terrifying, unprecedented and always, always
so confusing.
The
Glass Teat is a snapshot of a
wildly different age that is so very much like ours; two years of the most
tumultuous decade in U.S. history dipped in amber and preserved for
future generations, warts and all. Ellison didn't just watch it
happen; he lived it: he raged during the Chicago riots, he cried as
the body count climbed in Vietnam, he marched for the rights of
migrant workers in California, he shook his head in utter disgust at
the downward spiral of minorities being treated like burdens by an
uncaring state, and for a man simplistically branded a
'science-fiction writer' he had a decidedly mixed opinion about the
moon landing, too. He wrote about it all, reacting as only someone
who was there watching history happen could react: truthfully. He
was only in his thirties at the time, a lad from Ohio moved to
Hollywood to write fer th' talkin' pitchers, yet to read his words
from week to week is to watch a man grow older before your very eyes
– older, more weary, more wary, and yet, trite as it sounds,
more hopeful. For Ellison never loses his capacity to find little
islands candid joy in his oceans of acid, nor does he forget the
beautiful things from his experience, strewn there amongst the
heartache and worry like pearls hidden in jagged clamshells. It is
what makes the collection a well-rounded chronicle and not just a
collection of bitter screeds.
Ah,
I'm forgetting the bit about TV, aren't I? Yes, The Glass
Teat is all about TV, or 'tv' in
lower-case as Ellison insists (that and 'god' never receive proper
noun status from him). From early October 1968 to late November 1969
(first collection) Ellison plied the airwaves, critiquing new and
established shows including sitcoms, dramas, news programs, specials,
and variety hours. Fair warning for the younger readers: there's a
considerable generation gap here. You won't recognize half the shows
Ellison cites, and even your knowledge of the ones that still live in
the annals of pop culture might be thready. They were current at the
time of course, but as now so then, there were countless shows there one night and suddenly gone again, mentioned once then
dispersed into the mists of broadcast obscurity. Would you expect a
present day critic to pay homage to Drive or
Freaky Links? Never
heard of 'em? Exactly. But with Ellison as your guide you'll get a
crash course in late 60's 101 and come away with a better
understanding of the boob tube milieu of the day. For example, I'd
always heard of the
Smothers Brothers and their Comedy Hour, but I had no idea it caused
such a headache at the White House; seems the show was flagged
countless times for inciting dissent, promoting fringe notions,
encouraging counter-culture, empowering the damn longhairs and
joshing the conservative base, who never took kindly to being joshed.
And here I thought they'd been a couple of wholesome folk heroes
with never a bad vibe for anyone.
Ellison
never flinches, but he also never misses a chance to play fair. He
calls out the news media for sensationalizing campus unrest (and
ignoring the source of the youthful angst), but also praises daring
investigative pieces for blowing the lid off U.S. chemical warfare
and the My Lai massacre; he lambastes dramas and comedies that employ
grotesque stereotypes of blacks and Hispanics even as he takes care
to cite the bold, well-written shows that dare to depict America as
it is, not America as Nixon wanted it to be; and he savages the old
men who write women as giggling, pointy-breasted caricatures, then
singles out those actresses from a new generation of empowered
performers who have real substance. Occasionally he even acts the
oracle, predicting the success of new, untested shows that we know
now would go on to become television legend, such as 'All in the
Family'.
Ellison
is an angry man; no one would deny that, least of all him. In The
Glass Teat he does nothing less than invite each and every one of
us to be angry with him, to fight city hall, to join him in the
vanguard as he rages at the dying of the light, and most importantly
to ask questions. Nixon is dead and Agnew is manning the back door
in Hell, but the spirit of Ellison's fury is as relevant and
undiminished today as it was when the ribbon on his typewriter was
still warm. The Glass Teat is a living document, a
Philosopher's Stone that applies to every generation of America, a
stiff drink and a seat belt for the turbulence ahead.
And
damn, can that man write.
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