An Edge in My Voice

by Harlan Ellison

  As for John Simon, my admiration for him is unbounded, if for no other reason than that he uses the language superlatively and he has critical standards that he refuses to compromise. But Joanne Gutreimen (who consistently sends in thought-provoking postcards) said Simon was a beast because he sometimes attacks the physical appearance of actors and actresses. She noted in particular Simon’s now famous trashing of Liza Minnelli, a dead-on evisceration of that lady with which I concurred wholeheartedly. She singled Simon out as a practitioner of that sort of analysis with the denigrative observation that when a critic has to “stoop” to vilification on grounds of appearance that he was being sexist. She opined that Simon would never pillory a male thespian on those grounds. Well, she’s wrong, of course. Simon has often reported on the inappropriate physical appearance of men cast improperly. But further, since actors and actresses are selling their look, as well as their acting ability, it seems perfectly correct to take exception to those who simply don’t convince in the role they’re playing, on grounds of acting ability or appearance.

  And if Ms. Gutreimen thinks John Simon is the only critic who so evaluates, I quote for her—and your—benefit from Richard Schickel in Time for 5 April. Referring to that vile Paul Schrader version of Cat People, Schickel writes:

  “…in the new version, which stars [Nastassia] Kinski, flat of voice, spirit and chest…” and “…the cheerful and lovely Annette O’Toole…”

  If it were not that a major selling point of the film was the promise of seeing Ms. Kinski in the buff, such observations might be gratuitous, but as we were unhappily gifted with more of the lady’s epidermis than most of us needed or wanted, it becomes fair game for comment. By the way, strictly as an esthetic observation, why John Heard in that film would even look twice at Kinski when O’Toole, who is a knockout, was faunching for him, is an act of random illogic impossible to rationalize.

  I stand by my admiration of Simon. Sorry, Ms. Gutreimen.

  That ties up at least some of the unattended minutiae, and next week, unless Uncle Wiggily slips in the gooseberry jam and slides down the coal chute and mucks up the central heating, I will get back to something serious: I will reveal to all of you out there who are simply panting to know about it, the inner workings and Machiavellian maneuvering that we in the know refer to as The Great International Hydrox / Oreo Cookie Conspiracy.

  Don’t miss it. Empires will totter.

  —————LETTERS—————

  The Important Thing?

  Dear Editor:

  In order to explain the ravings of Harlan Ellison on the subject of film remakes one should first consider the effects of nostalgia on this romantic and sensitive man.

  The tendency of critics to sanctify works through which they received their first communion is not new, particularly important works like King Kong and The Thing, in which the critic even believes the genre was first defined. But those of us whose early impressions of sci-fi were not supplied by King Kong, Cat People or The Thing see no such sanctity in these films and can only be dazzled by the broader bandwidth and superior technique of their remakes.

  Mr. Ellison also cut loose with a barrage of vitriol for John Carpenter, not only for daring to violate the sacred preserve of his beloved film The Thing, but for conceiving of a space monster whose dining habits turned his stomach.

  Someone should explain to Mr. Ellison that extra-terrestrial life forms may not conform to his romantic notions of appearance and behavior. Everyone would, of course, like for the first extra-terrestrial to be cuddly, but we shouldn’t berate filmmakers whose speculative visions disappoint us.

  The notions of extra-terrestrials regarding Earthlings as just so much protein is not new. There are many life forms here on Earth which kill their prey in a horrible and painful manner. Harlan Ellison himself belongs to a life form which kills other creatures in a grotesque fashion.

  Just what was it that put off Mr. Ellison? Was it the autopsy scene? Hasn’t Harlan Ellison ever cleaned a fish? Was it the doctor getting his arms bitten off? Hasn’t Harlan Ellison ever seen an animal in a trap? In spite of its ugliness, the “thing” is biologically far more interesting than James Arness in a rubber suit ever was.

  The Thing is an important film because it has culled the phonies and old fogeys, like Harlan Ellison, from sci-fi fandom. John Carpenter and the creator of his special effects are manning the border stations of science fiction art and they are telling us that the days of the actor in a rubber suit are over.

  —Hal Taylor,

  Los Angeles

  PLO Not Driven

  Dear Editor:

  Mr. Harlan Ellison [July 23-29] demonstrates with fine articulate lateness the liberal’s dilemma in the Middle East. Perhaps you’ll allow me to comment on one aspect of propaganda, which is another word for lies, currently prevalent in the U.S.

  Being British and Gentile, nonetheless I find myself puzzled by a lack of history or perhaps willful ignorance concerning Israel. The general line of anti-Israel thinking repeatedly contends that the Palestinians were “driven” from their homeland.

  The facts are that in 1948 the Palestinian Arabs were urged, by the outgoing British government and the new Israelis jointly, to remain and live peaceably side by side with the Jews. Evidently such a gesture was partly a political discretion, and also perhaps attributable to the magnanimity so often extended by the Jews in general, even in the face of threat. At the time, Mr. Levi, the Mayor of Haifa, made an impassioned speech to the Arab Council to use their influence in encouraging the Palestinians to stay. However, out of 60,000 Arabs in Haifa, only about 6,000 remained, the Arab governments maintaining that they wished to clear the way for a massive assault on Israel by the Arab armies. That being the case, it should be realized that the Arab nations had ample funds to re-house the Palestinians had they so desired.

  However, the tragic, and intended, result was that the refugees were forced by their own brother-peoples to remain festering in transient camps on Israel’s borders as a political and practical weapon. In a further ironic tragedy, Lebanon—part of the Biblical Land of Canaan and historically precious to Jew and Arab alike—is today decimated by war due to Israel’s mounting frustration and consequent desire to crush once and for all the incessant murderous attacks on her people by the PLO.

  There are on both sides, as Mr. Ellison forcefully tells, equal moral arguments. It appears, however, that anti-Israel feeling in America is often fostered by those who, deliberately or otherwise, remain steadfastly unaware of the historical realities.

  —Drummond Riddell

  Hollywood

  Interim memo

  Column speaks for itself. But the letters following the column are interesting. Jon Douglas West surfaces again, in response to a previous letter from one of my readers. Also, a “Lucy McNulty” opens her mouth, praising the hell out of Mr. West for his efforts against the Ellisonian AntiChrist. The really interesting part of all this is that comparison of the letters showed they were typed on the same machine. So either “Lucy McNulty” was “Jon Douglas West” in drag, or it was Mr. West’s girl friend. Different signature, but that doesn’t mean much. Anyone as determined as “West” to hide his true identity wouldn’t have much difficulty asking a friend to sign a bogus name. Nothing from the private eye I’d hired to locate this guy. Which got the man upset. He’s never been stymied before, swore he’d find out who this clown was, and I just smiled. This was fun fun fun underneath the California sun.

  Letters reprinted with permission from the L.A. Weekly

  INSTALLMENT 38: 8 AUGUST 82

  The Great Hydrox / Oreo Cookie Conspiracy

  Here in this dank sub-basement, with the flickering light of the single candle casting its wan glow across our conspiratorial faces, I can now reveal to you the insidious particulars of the Great Hydrox / Oreo Cookie Conspiracy. I know you’ll forgive me the melodramatic circumstances of this, our first cell meeting. They are ruthless, as I’ll outline in a mom
ent, and were They aware that we’ve gathered here like this, as an underground effort to expose Them, our chances of surviving the day would be no better than that of an unsplit infinitive in a Judith Krantz novel, a kindly thought toward women in a Brian De Palma movie, a can of pork scrapple at a Chassidic rabbinical student picnic, a sentence sans the word “man” in the mouths of Cheech and Chong. Oh, how I do go on.

  I hope you all came here by devious routes, confided in no one either your purpose or your destination, and that even in the absence of a blood-oath you are prepared to take on vast, merciless and inimical forces. I would not involve you, common citizens unused to guerrilla warfare, had not the situation grown too large for a single Zorro action. Thank you for coming.

  I’ve long been aware that They are using our national dining habits as one more route to the total bastardization of our taste, yet another front on which they wage war against High Art and the Better Things in Life. Why, well may you ask, do They seek to do this to us? Because, I respond with barely any prompting, a nation surfeited with the trivial will never question why Real Art (which Susan Sontag tells us “has the capacity to make us nervous”), which has the quality of asking embarrassing questions and examining the dark corners, is being driven out.

  As bad money drives out good, so, too, does the trivial overwhelm and wash away High Art.

  Sidney Sheldon sells millions of copies and no one reads Borges. The Human League and Soft Cell fly off the racks while Pergolesi and Jean-Michel Jarre languish. The Paper Chase can’t pull the Nielsen numbers but The Dukes of Hazzard gets renewed even without its stars. Wendy’s choke-and-puke becomes standard fare for a generation of kids who cannot get with the taste of clams casino or gnocchi. And anyone who thinks the films of John Landis or John Carpenter are not the highest level of New Art is labeled an old fogey by the jamooks and yipyops who work for Them.

  For the most part it is the inarticulate conspiracy of those who have been stunned by the hammer.

  But They have gone too far, have grown suicidally flagrant when they attempt to bludgeon us into accepting the devolution of superior junk food. As an old fogey revealed to one and all by a communicant to the letter column of the Weekly in the previous number, I remember with pleasure when Hostess Cupcakes were not filled with that glucose glop that looks like elephant cum and tastes like mucilage. I remember when a Clark Bar was made of genuine chocolate and for a nickel you had enough to sustain you through two quarters of a game played on real grass.

  And I knew the difference between Hydrox and Oreo.

  Oh, yes, my fellow conspirators, there is a difference. A big difference. It is the difference all enlightened junkoids perceive in the admonition to keep one’s eye on the doughnut and not on the hole.

  Insofar as Oreos and Hydroces are concerned, keep your taste buds on the cookie and not on the filling.

  Since my youth I have known the thrill of the ebony chocolate cookie. Chilled in the fridge. Snapping fresh and mysterious, a cookie that spoke of dark times before the written word, the wind blowing across the top of the pyramids, savored ’neath the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The Hydrox cookie; the Stabat Mater of junk food, the Duesenberg of packaged dreck, the Lou Gehrig of supermarket flotsam. Shelley would have written odes to the Hydrox. Woollcott would have tossed off a dozen bon mots to its grandeur. Helen would have given Paris the air and the glorious Hydrox would have ensorceled the topless towers of Ilium.

  What we’re talking here is one senfuckingsational taste treat. And—despite last issue’s letter-writer’s belief that my youth was spent chiefly in standing off the raids of Visigoths in some primitive age—the blasphemous Oreo existed even then. Yes, I confess, oh my listeners, I sampled the dreaded Nabisco offering. (One must! How else, then, are we to know good from evil? Even Falwell would be out of a job if we were all flensed of the dark desires.) But one bite was sufficient. I spat it out, washed my mouth with 20 Mule Team Borax, dropped to my knees before the altar of Sunshine Hydrox and swore that lips that touch Oreo would never touch mine. (Okay, okay, no one’s perfect. I’ve made a few exceptions. A guy can’t be entirely celibate.)

  And so, secure in my weakness for this one deadly vice, I have come down through the centuries in late night sugar-shock orgies of Twain, Conrad, Dickens, Borges and a package of cold Hydrox with non-fat milk. Like you, I lie to myself that by drinking non-fat, I will offset the ravages done to my metabolism by the heavenly Hydrox.

  Then, merely by chance, some years ago I began to realize there was A HIDEOUS CONSPIRACY AFOOT! First, I saw the tv ads in which hydrocephalic children were urged to learn how to give the Oreo vileness a half-twist so the cookie could be removed without sullying the corpse-white adhesive inside. No, no, I railed, keep your eye on the cookie and not on that bird doo-doo! But They had already glommed onto the weakness of the young. (Sure, you assholes, protect kids from sex, but urge them on to the pornography of white creme filling!) And as time went on, I saw the horror double and treble itself.

  Oreo came out with Oreo with Double Stuf.

  Twice as much of that loathsome diabetes-inducing spackling compound. Farther and farther away from the point of the treat they were being led. Look, I urge you, my friends, look at the ingredient lists on comparable packages of Hydrox and Oreo. By law the ingredient with the greatest percentage of content must be listed first. On the Sunshine Hydrox package the first ingredient is Enriched Flour. Ah, the sweetness of the words! But, hark, look at the Nabisco Oreo package. Do you see that word, first on the list? The five terrible letters that spell out s-u-g-a-r?!

  It costs nothing to make ivory glop. The more of it you can con people into thinking they want, the less quality you have to put into the cookie, which is the raison d’être of the chocolate sandwich cookie.

  Consider the Oreo cookie. Mealy. Chocolate only in the same way that an H-bomb blast-effect is a suntan. Mendacious, meretricious, monstrously mouth-clotting…it is anti-cookie, the baked good personification of the AntiChrist.

  But They are determined to have their way with your ability to perceive quality. If They can convince you that shit is caviar, then dog droppings and parakeet poo-poo will be sold in six-paks. And in pursuit of their nefarious conspiracy they have intimidated grocery stores, job lot buyers, food suppliers and even Mom&Pop deli owners. Make the acid test: go to a Ralphs, go to a Hughes, go to a Gelson’s (don’t go to a Safeway, they tried to break the grape boycott). Look down the rows of packaged cookies. There, endless flotillas of Oreos. Oreos in the 1 lb. 4 oz. package. Oreos in the 15 oz. package. Oreos with enough vile white sugar creme filling to give Cthulhu a diabetic spasm. Oreos with Double Stuf. A veritable Sargasso of poisonous Oreos. And where are the Hydroces? Look…Look everywhere. Perhaps, if the grocer is a brave fellow, you’ll find one teeny section of Hydrox, no doubt smuggled in during the dead of night when the vigilant bands of dark-hooded Oreo thugs aren’t watching.

  You think I jest, oh my faithful? But no! There was one small grocery in the poorest section of this city, a section where the most redolent cuts of meat were fobbed off on the citizenry, where neon lights had not yet been introduced, where the Hydrox cookies could still be found. I used to slip out past midnight, garbed all in black, and make my secret hegira to that grocery. And there I could purchase Hydrox without fear of the roaming press gangs of Oreo pistoleros coshing me over the head and selling me onto a slave boat bound for Garden Grove.

  Last week, when I went for my Hydrox supply, I found that grocery burned to the ground, the owner and his family vanished. Then I knew the time had come to take a stand against the Oreo Conspiracy. They had gone too far.

  I call on you, those gathered here in this sub-basement…to join with me. Take up sling and sickle, pitchfork and arbalest, let us move against the purveyors of Oreo awfulness. Restore to our downtrodden brethren and sistren that simple joy in tasting the sanctified dark chocolate cookie. For only in Hydrox is there salvation! Only in Hydrox will we…

  Wh
at’s that? Didn’t you hear it? There, at the cellar door. It’s…it’s…Them! One of you is a turncoat, one of you is a secret Oreo lover. Oh, God! They’re coming for us!

  They’ll never take me alive!

  I know what they do. They send you to Garden Grove and put you in a cell and for weeks on end they brainwash you, make you eat Ding Dongs and Twinkies and Zweiback! Till an Oreo seems like heaven!

  But they’ll never get me…never…never…!

  …mama…

  —————-LETTERS—————

  More On Ellison / West

  Dear Editor:

  Let me first compliment Mr. Ellison on his skill at evading an issue and suggest that he might try a career in politics. Let me then admonish Mr. Ellison for letting his emotions override his intellect. I am referring to Mr. Ellison’s column in the L.A. Weekly [July 9-15] in which Mr. Ellison gives a juvenile response to one letter written by a Mr. Jon Douglas West. It is my opinion that Mr. Ellison is guilty of a vast oversight in understanding the theme of J. D. West’s letter: that being, the fundamental right of all people to Freedom of Speech.

  Freedom of Press implies the freedom of any person or group of persons to publish and distribute their viewpoint to the public. It does not allow for libelous name calling. If Mr. West can afford the time and money most lawsuits require, he would surely have a clear cut libel suit against Mr. Ellison.