You don’t eat a dog like that all at once.
I haven’t seen the movie, but in the story he states it’s a reference to Albert Payson Terhune, an author of books about boys and dogs. One of the most famous is apparently “Lad, a Dog”. I haven’t read any of them, but I’m guessing Lassie-type books.
That was certainly a mean trick. But the circumstances are a bit more complicated. That incident is part one of this story (but the last part is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read): Ellison Webderland: The 3 Most Important Things in Life
Harlan doesn’t hate women. He does hate stupid people, phonies, and apparently from the story people who value things more than other people.
Good grief. :rolleyes:
Did you read the linked story (it’s the one I was talking about)? His justification for tricking and humiliating that woman was that she asked him to stay off the carpet. That story is enough, but if you read more of his work you see this trend repeating itself. Try and name a few Ellison stories where the female characters aren’t despicable or treated like dirt for no reason. There may be some, but my recollection of them is covered up by the memory of countless stories where women are always sluts, manipulators, emotionally weak, or some combination of the three.
The City on the Edge of Forever…?
She was so good, she had to die. Humanity wasn’t yet ready for her kind of goodness.
And in Demon With a Glass Hand, the woman was most definitely a survivor. Her walking away at the end was a very poingant moment. Not a stupid character, not treated bad simply because she was a Woman.
I can recall several Ellison stories (“Neither Your Jenny Nor Mine,” “Croatoan”) where callous womanizers are cast as despicable villains and ultimately destroyed/humiliated/etc. (Might be Ellison’s sense of guilt showing through – he has quite a reputation in that area.) But even when the womanizers lose, the women rarely win – they usually end up being even more thoroughly destroyed, etc.
Not really Lassie-like stuff, exactly ( more pathos and no annoying little Timmys ) but sometimes verging on it ( superior dog thwarts low-born scoundrel or saves horses from a burning barn ). I was a huge fan of Albert Payson Terhune as a pre-teen and very early teen. Picked up his stuff for a $.50 at the local used bookstore. Very entertaining fiction revolving around dogs and biographies ( slightly fictionalized, one would presume ) of his favorite real-life pets ( he bred collies for a time, starting with the famous Lad ). Here’s a picture of Lad :
The man himself with Lad ( got his own book ), Bobby ( didn’t, but plenty of mentions in various stories ) and Wolf ( non-showable quality apparently - got his own book ) :
To Terhune, even more than Lassie, must go the dubious honour of popularizing collies and starting them on the slide to puppy-milling.
- Tamerlane
Did YOU read that story? She didn’t “ask him to stay off the carpet,” she came insanely unglued about any vague possibility of any human touching that carpet, then proceeded to try to get the poor guy to punch her around preparatory to fucking her–on a first date, yet. This was one insane-in-da-membrane chick he was dealing with, and his final thought on the matter was picturing her mother coming home to find her girl staked out on the floor and yelling “My caaaarpet!”
Now it might not have been the nicest thing to do, but I can’t say I’d have comported myself any better faced with a situation like that. Ellison has one hyperactive imagination and is sensitive to a lot of stuff that most of us are inured to–it’s one of the things I treasure about him as a writer. He points out the weirdnesses and inconsistencies in life that most of us are just trained never to see and expresses them so vividly it’s never again possible to go back to the mindless acceptance one once had. His point in this story is that this girl is so fucked up by her upbringing that she thinks the nap of a carpet all going the right way is more important that humans, and that she is also so messed up she thinks being punched is the equivalent of lovemaking. He just gave her what she really wanted–a big old dose of humiliation. He’s probably right in assuming that her mother will have a greater concern for her property than for her daughter, and he’s right in asserting that this is a fucked up way to think.
Harlan is this puckish “the Emperor has no clothes” kind of guy and trying to hang some tired label like “misogynist” on him has approximately the same impact as the seventh blind man telling us the elephant is soft and mushy. If he’s such a misogynist, why have literally THOUSANDS of women lined up to sleep with him–a geeky 5’3" writer with an intelligence and wit that’s out of ballpark? Are they all just masochists?
Not to mention that attempting to label a writer based on things their characters do in stories is just stupid. In Ellison’s case, you have the advantage of having not only his stories, but his incredibly extensive collections of nonfiction essays on every subject under the sun, and I defy you to read his essays and come to any other conclusion than that he is an intelligent, aware, caring, passionate, involved individual with a really biting wit and absolutely zero compassion for the stupid. The intense dichotomy in tone between his fiction and nonfiction is unparalleled.
In short, if you ever happen to meet Harlan I’d suggest you run the other way like a red ass baboon, because I can confidently predict you will NOT fare well in any interaction with him.
I have read that one. I’ve read a lot of his stuff… Harlan Ellison being one of the few writers I actually read regularly. Try finding me stories where the men aren’t sluts, manipulators, emotionally weak or some combination of the three. Seriously, get over it. He’s a writer. He writes stories.
Just to add to the point made by rowrrbazzle and TamerLane about where the name Albert came from. The young solo played by Johnson was in fact named Vic. Blood just called him Albert to piss him off. Albert never was Vic’s real name.
I had a hilarious (to me) experience with this movie a few years back.
I was at a little get-together thing at the house of an acquaintance and some girl had brought over a few videos, and this was one of them. Apparantly she had rented it because her parents had some kind of joke between them about “A Boy and His Dog” (I don’t even want to know) and she had got the impression that it was some “cheezy b-movie” romp that we’d all get a kick from. I was the only one there who had seen it. I tried to tell them that, while it’s a decent watch, it wasn’t going to be what they (mostly lesbian/bi-curious ani difranco fans) were in the mood for. They wouldn’t listen to me, so I just sat back and waited…
After 15 minutes they decided to watch one of those Ewok adventure movies- it had the ugliest kid I’ve ever seen, but at least no rape, right?
Almost as good as when I saw “The Road Warrior” at a theatre last year, and the girls in front of me didn’t stop hooting and giggling throughout the credits, until the bit where the binoculars focus on the crashed vehicle and the attackers rip the woman’s clothes off. Silence, broken by my charming fiance’s perfectly timed “WOO-HOO.” I just about died laughing! (not about the rape scene of course, just about how perfect a rebuttal it was to all the obnoxious noise previously)
Trust me, I’ve read a lot of Ellison. I used to read about everything of his I could get my hands on, he IS very imaginative and some of his writing is very evocative. I’ve read enough of his writing to see the same patterns and themes coming up over and over again. Ellison draws a lot from his own life and personal feelings and since he’s so prolific, if you read a lot of his stuff it gets repetitive because he hasn’t had enough stuff happen in his life to base hundreds of stories on. We keep revisiting the same old themes, his rejection and anger because of it, his repeated disappointments in relationships (probably because he’s the type who prefers shallow women he can look down on), etc. You can learn a lot about his personality from his books and the various anecdotes told about how he treats those around him, and I’ve learned enough to know I hate the son of a bitch. I’ve known plenty of cocky little bastards just like him, they overcompensate because of their own insecurities and when his obnoxiousness turns people against him, he convinces himself it’s because they are stupid and inferior. Read his essays about his experiences in TV and imagine seeing it from the other side’s point of view, without the Harlan filter on everything, and you can see why he’s so loathed in some circles.
Despite the pleasure I’ve had from reading some of his stories, I’d rather I never contributed to feeding his ego by purchasing his product.
I saw this movie when I was about 7 or 8.
I’ve never really recovered.
It was the hair at the end that really got to me. For some reason I associated it with puberty hair. Never recovered.
Based on his stories, Harlan is clearly an ass. He hates women, but I don’t think he’s all that fond of men either. Hating men also doesn’t justify his clear and obvious misogyny. He has a brilliant writing style, but he himself is not worthy of the gift he’s been given. Far from it.
I agree with Evil Captor- except that I think Ellison’s essays and forewords are what show him to be a jerk. OTTOMH “You don’t know me. I don’t know you” comes to mind. The gist of it was ‘All you fen think I’m an asshole. You’re all morons and why would I care what you think?’ Sure Ellison is inteligent and quick-witted. He’s also a giant asshole.
I’d say he’s an asshole simply for the Last Dangerous Visions debacle. Some people say he doesn’t suffer fools gladly, but from incidents I’ve read from folks who have encountered him, he seems to think a hell of a lot of people are fools. I’d put him down as being a serious misanthrope rather than a misogynist.
FWIW, I have a friend (now a pretty succesful horror and fantasy writer, himself) who attended Clarion back in the early-90s (forget which year, exactly) and attended a class given by Ellison (or graded by HE, whatever). He says that Ellison’s public persona is pretty much an act, and that at different times and occasions one could see him “put on” his “cranky Ellison” mask, his “flirty Ellison” mask, etc., but one-on-one he was pretty cool, a “pot-bellied little Jewish teddy-bear,” in David Gerrold’s words.
Sir Rhosis
He has celebrity appeal – at least within the SF fandom community. And a lot of people – justly or unjustly – consider Don Juanism a form of misogyny. I mean, if he doesn’t hate women, why can’t he form a lasting relationship with one?