Harlan Ellison at the Boston Center for Adult Education, Oct. 30-31
by Timothy J. Wood

     Harlan Ellison's first live appearance in Boston in many years, sponsored by the Boston
Center for Adult Education, was like an hallucinatory journey into Ellison Wonderland: intense, a
bit jarring, and wholly satisfying.
     Ellison was relaxed and chatty before the Friday night lecture, wandering the isles of the
Arlington Street Church like he owned the place, greeting friends warmly, hawking his books and
tapes and otherwise being his usual charming self.  When things got rolling, he was alternatively
funny, obstreperous, pedantic, and angry, telling story after story in a seemingly free-association
lecture that actually bore a not so subtle message that was pure Ellison.
     "Strange things happen when I lecture," he warned.
     Clearly, he was charged up, the reason being one of the running jokes of the night:
Ellison's abrupt departure that morning from a live radio program hosted by a Brahmin former
gubernatorial candidate who made the mistake of uttering the two words the writer rues the most  
     Ellison's impression of Christopher Lydon, whose NPR program "The Connection" is
broadcast from WBUR at Boston University, drew guffaws from the knowing audience of about
200.  Lydon's people had been after Ellison to do the show for more than a month.  He resisted,
finding the phone calls "offensive in the extreme," especially after the woman calling admitted she
knew nothing about him or his work.  His unwillingness to be on the program was "a concept so
far beyond their ken they couldn't handle it."
     "There's nothing worse than arrogant stupidity; arrogance you can tolerate, idiocy you can
get around, outsmart, but both together are inscrutable," he said.
     Finally, Ellison gave in, mostly as a favor to the Boston Center for Adult Education, which
had been trying to get its guest speakers on the program without success.  With the program
keyed to Halloween, Lydon asked Ellison some typically inane questions, such as what scared
him.  "Getting beat up by skinheads and left for dead," he told the host.  "Nothing I could write is
more scary."
     Then Lydon dropped the big one, speaking the words he had been warned not to speak,
asking Ellison what it was like to be a science fiction writer.
     "I'm up and out of here," Ellison said, and then made good on his statement while Lydon
and his people gaped in arrogant disbelief.
     "So I come to you fresh filled with bile," he said to the lecture audience.
     He promised to do three things during the two-hour-plus lecture: reveal the secret of
success, explain "the eye of the writer," and cure Jamie Jaffe, the BCAE's assistant director, of
Jewish guilt.  He also took questions, gave his sport jacket away, pontificated, jousted with a sign
language interpreter with whom he shared the stage, and at one point climbed to the top of the
137-year-old church's ornate carved wood pulpit and announced, "I warn you, if you go after
Moby Dick, you won't come back!"
     After reading "Prince Myshkin, And Hold The Relish," a story, he said, that was written to
be read out loud, he waxed philosophical about Hollywood and James Cameron's ego, which he
claimed is "currently in storage in Indian until they find room for it" in La-La Land.  
     One of the secrets of success, he said, is being able to read people, which he does
"constantly" and accurately.  He told about walking into a college classroom a number of years
ago, beginning a talk and suddenly turning around to face a young woman in a white dress.  He
asked her why she was upset with him; she had no idea what he was talking about. She was going
to be trouble, he told the teacher who'd brought him in.  The next morning, he learned the woman
had gone to the dean and announced that Ellison was a communist and the Anti-Christ.
     After telling how, at age 10, he'd been thrown out of Sunday School for heresy, Ellison
recounted the second most embarrassing moment of his life (the first was too embarrassing).  It
happened when he was in the Army, covering a Christmas visit to Appalachia for the base
newspaper.  When the helicopter he was in hit an air pocket and suddenly dropped 2,000 feet, he
"lost his lunch," right on a priest seated across from him.  "It was as if it was spring loaded.  He
was covered from chin to waist.  And I'd had a good lunch. I hit him so hard it drove him back."
     It was so cold the vomit froze and began to flake. When Ellison went to apologize, he
spewed again.  "I was fine. There wasn't a speck on me."
     Ellison also spent time discussing a recent Writers Guild of America study on agism in
television, which found that producers won't hire anyone over the age of 29.  He rued the current
culture that caters to youth, saying that "youth and strength can always be beaten by age and
wiliness."   Despite his age   64   he still works in the medium, revealing that he has been
called as "story doctor" on 25 to 30 movies, some of which would be recognized if he wasn't
contractually obligated not to reveal the titles.  "I'm hired as a secret agent.  Clearly I'm a pain in
the ass; they hire me because nothing else works."
     He urged audience members to absorb everything they can and stay away from Star Trek
adaptations and John Grisham novels.  He never really got around to revealing the secret of
success, or explaining the eye of the writer, but he did cure Jamie Jaffe of her Jewish guilt.  
     And he did reveal the secret to driving family members crazy: take as much abuse and pain
as they can dish out.  "It will drive them crazy.  And they will never bust our chops again."
     He received a standing ovation.
     The following morning, however, during a writing seminar at the BCAE, Ellison did reveal
what makes a successful writer: "There's no fucking secret," he said.  "It's work.  It's talent and
work."