HARLAN ELLISON ON THE SUBJECT OF INTELLIGENCE ============================================= 20 August 1996 Typed by hand on this imperial Olympia. This is Harlan speaking for himself sans electronic intermediary. HARLAN'S INTELLIGENCE OR LACK THEREOF: Rick advises we that yet another cosmos-shattering topic on Usenet is my "intelligence." He wasn't more specific than that save to mention that he and the ever-gorgeous Lawrence Watt-Evans maintain I'm as smart as anyone they know, despite my frequent protestations to the Contrary. So, not being privy to the mass conversation, I have no idea what form the polemic has taken. Is it suggested that I lack intelligence? Or that I lack intelligence in specific areas? Or that I am less intelligent than some others named in the Chat? Or that I demonstrate an unusual degree of intelligence? Damned if I know which is what, but I'll fuel the imbroglio with some actual true stuff, what your doctor would call data." (Kids, don't try this at home.) When I was at East High in Cleveland, back in 1952, I was subjected to a battery of IQ tests, alleged to be as "up to the moment" as was known in those pre-cybernetic days. For why? Because, in that year I won a National Scholastic Writing award in the Regional competition. I won in the short story division. So, because I would soon be applying for college, and because the East High administration labored under the delusion that I might be proper fodder for Yale or Harvard or somesuch Valhalla for the Goyim, they made me take a bunch of IQ tests. (An aside. When my Dad died in 1949, and my mother and I tore up roots and moved back to Cleveland from Painesville, where I'd spent ex pre-teen years and my post-adolescence, it was at the near-poverty level that we subsisted, I had to work. My mother worked in the B'nai B'rith thrift shop. We lived in a not-ratty-but-also-not-too-elegant "residential hotel" called the Sovereign, on 105th Street, down near Superior and St. Clair, where the streetcar treaks ran out to 5 Points and my Uncle Moe's dental office. But that's another story, for another time Remind we to tell you, some day. (The point of all this is that I was not going to any goddam Yale or Harvard. I was a poor Jewish kid, and my marks had gone all to hell with the death of my Dad and the ensuing cloud that fell over my rambunctious nature. I was destined for only one college, if any at all: Ohio State. Because I was a resident of the state I could attend OSU without having to pay tuition. everything else, I worked to pay for, or my poor Mom had to scrimp and save to pay for. I don't want to give the false impresssion that I was some sort of 100 Neediest Cases student, or that my existence was something Horatio Alger would write about-- nor even something Dickens would write about -- nor even Frank Norris would write about--but it WAS tough sledding, as we used to say in those pre-cybernetic days.) So they gave me all the tests. Now, it's more than forty years since that memory was current activity, so you'll forgive we if I can't be more specific than this: If I recall correctly, I took the Stanford-Binet test, the Wechsler-Bellevue test, the Minnesota Multiphasic, something or other with the name Princeton in it, and maybe another one, not recoverable to memory this close to Closing Time. You'll have to trust as on that bit of minutiae. Apparently, I scored very high. (Disclaimer: yeah, yeah, I know...I know...IQ tests only tell you how well you score on IQ tests, and very little else. I have no problem with that old homily...nor do I make any vast and grandiose claims for my intelligence. I am reporting, as best I recall, the outcome of testing in 1952. Take it or leave it.) I remember the figure 215 on one of those tests. I've been told such a number is unlikely, if not impossible; and I won't press the recollection. I may be misremembering entirely. But this much I do remember: ay mother was ecstatic. The word genius was bandied. I went "duh" and burbled on about my business. All this is in aid of the deponent stating as follovs: I know I'm not a dummy, and I know I'm frightfully quick and clever most of the time. Mathematics are beyond me, for any number of reasons I need not go into here, but philosophy and geology and logic and english are like mother's milk. I am not a speed reader, but what I read I retain. I have one skill that I take inordinate, some might say overweening, pride in: I am a killer at spatial relationships, You need a sofa moved out through a narrow aperture, call me. I can take one look and tell you precisely which way to turn and loft it. This is probably why, apart from my love of fine art, I have a stylish sense of design for my books. I've worked with many artists -- and loads more since starting Dream Corridor -- and this design sense slops over into my sereenplay writing. I write very directorial scripts (which pisses off the auteurs who call themselves Directors) and I employ this perception of space and form to everything in my life. I make great improbable linkages, that become odd stories -- alligators in NYC sewers/ the lost Roanoke colony / the anguish of abortion / the Labyrinth--and we get my story "Croatoan." I like to think that I think creatively and originally. If that's intelligence, then I've got my share. If the acid test is something else, well, you'd have to run me through the gauntlet to make an evaluation. Either way, deponent states as follows: I make no claims for my brilliance, real or mythic. I do the best I can. Often, I make the sort of silly mistake in thinking that a bumpkin would make; and I'm embarrassed. I know a hundred people right off the bat, without thinking on it too hard, who outthink me in every way. Nader, Naismith, Tom Disch, Gloria Allred, Joanna Ross, Vonda, my own wife Susan... The list is cornucopial. On the other hand, there are men and women who are touted to me as being Hot Picks in the intellect sweepstakes and when I actually meet them, when we're not "on" and performing for hoi polloi, I discover many of them ain't as sharp as I an. That keeps we going. So, with that said, I urge y'all to come to some sort of consensus opinion of my level of smart (and ignore the fact that I've been asked to lecture to Mensa chapters from time to time) and get the word back to we, as to where I list in the Great Roster. I sure as hell hope it's somewhere north of Gregory Feeler, who writes and speaks as if he thought he fell straight down from Olympus, and whose fecal matter don't stink.