I have gone in the opposite direction. As a young man I absorbed everything he wrote, I was a member of his record club and had a MASSIVE collection of virtually every book he had ever written. Then, the magic went away. I donated my Ellison collection to my alma mater. I haven't paid much attention to Ellison for over twenty years. I bought this collection and aside from a few stories was terrifically underwhelmed. The same metaphors and hyperbole occur again and again. I'm most fond of "Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes" and "The Death Birrd Stories" Everything else sort of washes together. He did write some of the greatest SF and fantasy stories of the Twentieth Century. He also wrote a lot of dreck! As to Ellison the man? All you need to know. He wrote a script for "The Flying Nun" ONLY because he wanted to meet and bang Sally Field! So much for his claims of being an enlightened feminist.
Check out our interview with Nat Segaloff, author of A Lit Fuse: The Provocative Life of Harlan Ellison, here: th-cam.com/video/9LFxuiEYCys/w-d-xo.html
I have gone in the opposite direction. As a young man I absorbed everything he wrote, I was a member of his record club and had a MASSIVE collection of virtually every book he had ever written. Then, the magic went away. I donated my Ellison collection to my alma mater. I haven't paid much attention to Ellison for over twenty years. I bought this collection and aside from a few stories was terrifically underwhelmed. The same metaphors and hyperbole occur again and again. I'm most fond of "Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes" and "The Death Birrd Stories" Everything else sort of washes together. He did write some of the greatest SF and fantasy stories of the Twentieth Century. He also wrote a lot of dreck! As to Ellison the man? All you need to know. He wrote a script for "The Flying Nun" ONLY because he wanted to meet and bang Sally Field! So much for his claims of being an enlightened feminist.
Check out our interview with Nat Segaloff, author of A Lit Fuse: The Provocative Life of Harlan Ellison, here: th-cam.com/video/9LFxuiEYCys/w-d-xo.html