People who knew Harlan knew he was far from being an asshole or a jerk (though he could be prickly and pugnacious). The number of people online who are telling stories of his generosity and kindness are far greater than those few showing times when he was being a jerk.
I dealt with him once, and it was ultimately a battle as to who could be more gracious. Harlan won, forgoing the extra payment for an article I was offering him.
Harlan was opinionated and brusque. Given an audience, he would say or do things to get applause, which could be problematic. He was willing to sue people who stole his ideas (and usually won, so it was hardly frivolous). He certainly wasn’t a saint.
But everyone who knew him has plenty of stories about how he did good things for them even when he didn’t have to.
He was a product of his environment. I know innumerable New Yorkers from that generation who are big-hearted people but also irrepressible ball-breakers. You have to have a thick skin to live in that world.
Ellison was a tremendous writer and I was a big fan. I’ve also heard enough stories to believe he could be both compassionate and gracious. And yes, an uncompromising asshole at times.
But as far as I am concerned the dude was undeniably sexist. Not in a he-man-women-haters way, but in a more insecure, sex obsessed, sometimes judgemental thirteen year-old sort of way. He wrote what was IMHO a pretty revealing essay once about a former “girlfriend” who repeatedly manipulated and stole from him. It was interesting in that it exposed both how really easy it was for a pretty girl to take advantage of him and a bit of his emotional worldview( love as a finite resource that can get used up ). But also displayed a petty vindictive streak when he ended the piece with a nude picture of his emotional tormentor, supposedly as a warning to others. Now she was probably a pretty lousy human being, but his way of bitterly lashing back struck me even at the time as juvenile as hell.
Another one I can recall off the top of my head was in a review of Gremilns 2( which he despised, fair enough ). I distinctly remember him dissing Phoebe Cates as an actress who had been nude in every film he had ever seen her in. Aside from likely being untrue( she wasn’t in that one, for example ), it was a shitty sort of thing to say which shouldn’t have any bearing on her as an actor.
Those kind of nuggets are scattered throughout his writing. What he did to Connie Willis was just flat-out assholish( and yeah, assault ). Did that make him a shitty human being overall? Dunno about that - he was seemingly a complex guy. But that aspect of his personality was definitely shitty.
OK I’m seriously not trying to hijack this thread. Maybe we’re differing on terminology here. What he did to Connie Willis may have been battery - but unless I’m mistaken in my legal understanding, breasts are not sexual organs, they may be secondary sexual characteristics but they’re not sexual organs.
More and more around the Western world, at least, it seems to be understood that breasts aren’t sexual parts - Facebook’s censorship notwithstanding (remember the “free the nipple” campaign?) How is a woman’s breast actually different from a man’s breast (or I guess the polite thing to say is ‘male-bodied person’ - not entirely clear on the gender distinctions and I’m not intending to ‘misgender’ anyone, I’m not talking about gender, I am talking about physical sex.) As in, defined by the organs of the body. How is a chest different?
If someone grabs me by the shoulder forcibly, I can have them properly charged with battery if I feel it’s justified as a move of physical intimidation - absolutely under the law. But I couldn’t charge this person with sexual assault. Not unless the grabbing of the shoulder was part of a nonconsensual sexual encounter.
Right? I’m not saying what Harlan did was in any way socially proper, and again, it’s something I’d never do, not even as a ‘joke’ or ‘prank’ as he did. And it definitely transgresses a social boundary that’s tied up with personal space (and remember that different cultures have different ettiquite about this stuff.)
I’m sorry, if there are cultures around the world (and there are) where it’s acceptable for women to be topless in public, and the men in that culture don’t take it as an automatic invitation to sexually assault or even just ogle the women, which they don’t, in such cultures - then I can’t logically call that part of the body ‘sexual’ and I can’t call an unauthorized touching of it “sexual assault.” Again, I could classify it as battery - which is an equally serious crime under the law - and which Willis would have been under her rights to press charges for, had she been so inclined.
That is not cool, and you’re correct in calling it juvenile.
If Connie Willis was uncomfortable with what he did, and he did it to knowingly make her uncomfortable, then what he did was wrong, full stop. I’m just stoned and getting tangled up in my words here - I don’t mean to excuse the guy’s behavior.
But it’s not like he’s Bill Cosby. Memorials of Cosby’s passing will rightfully be inundated with reminders of his deeply negative legacy as a human being despite having been adored by fans - just like Joe Paterno.
I guess the way I’d break it down is, if someone’s more newsworthy for bad things they did than good things they did at the time that they die, it’s appropriate to bring up stuff like what that guy brought up on what was just a memorial post on Ellison’s passing - a photo of him with a black ‘mourning’ border and a few sentences about his important influence as a writer. Why throw that out there when a lot of people are going to deeply sad at his passing?
For the sake of the victims of his sexual assault who deserve acknowledgement too.
Because part of his legacy, along with having written some great science fiction, is that he sexually assaulted Connie Willis and then denied it, despite the fact that there are photos and videos. And he sexually assaulted other women. He could be kind and generous according to writers I admire and trust, even though I never saw it personally, but he could also be an abusive, abrasive dick. And he sexually assaulted women. It’s a part of who he was.
And your deranged, crackpot theory that a women’s breasts are just lumps of meat and there’s no sexual component and therefore it’s not sexual assault, is too stupid to address.
Reading this thread is like reading the rationalizations of someone with an abusive father. “Harlan was mean, and vindictive, and abusive, and at best, curmudgeonly, but he once looked at me not entirely unkindly, and didn’t sue me.” But you let him get away with it because sometimes he agrees with you, and you see him as someone who “speaks truth to Power”. But that wasn’t always what it was. Sometimes he just pissed on Power’s car tires. Sometimes he was the kid who spit in the punchbowl just to get a reaction.
And Hugo Awards not withstanding, not everything he wrote was good. As noted, the original CotEoF sucked, and come on, do you really think The Deathbird was good?
That pile of garbage, strike that, he’s that brownish oily liquid that seeps out from piles of garbage left to stew on a NYC sidewalk in mid August sexually assaulted my mom in an elevator during the National Book Convention in Washington DC.
Has anyone ever been more full of themselves, go watch is video review of Saving Mr. Banks sometime and see how long you last be fore walking away in disgust.
Everything you’re saying is simply bizarre. Please stop.
I know people - male and female - that Harlan took into his home and gave a place to write or work. They have never once made any accusations about his behavior. I was also in Anaheim at the Hugo ceremonies with him grabbing Connie. He did not get away with it. Everybody was angry and they let him know it.
How do you balance an entire life of a million incidents lived out in public along with just as many private interactions? I’ve been thinking and thinking about it and I can’t come to any answers. I know enough about history to realize that every single famous person whose life we have in detail contains some aspect that would horrify people today. Do we just write off all of humanity?
Giving them a blanket excuse is also not an option, though. So some balance must be found.
But how?
My very limited knowledge of the million things Harlan did pushes me toward applauding the huge amounts of good he did while acknowledging his faults. None of that has anything to do with my appraisal or enjoyment of his writing. (And certainly not his tv writing, the least and lowest of his work.) But that’s me and what I know. You may know a different balance. If so, damn him all you want. I think he’d expect that.
Do you- or did Ellison- live in a culture where female breasts are not sexualized? It would be great if that were the case here, but it’s not. There are places where everyone is naked, and no one bats an eye, but they also don’t run around grabbing breasts. The idea that US culture should stop fetishising breasts is a great one- no woman would ever have to worry about breast feeding her baby in public! But we aren’t there yet, and Ellison intended it to be quite different than grabbing a shoulder.
Agree. As Exapno pointed out, the Willis incident was just on incident. Harlan went over the line while trying to joke and there’s no excuse for that.
But that’s just one incident. Would you want to be judged only by the worst thing you’ve ever done?
Harlan was a great writer and people who knew him – not just those who read about his antics (often exaggerated) – think of him very fondly. As I said, he was extremely nice the one time I interacted with him.
