Harlan Ellison: No Doors, No Windows

Thy servant’s servant,

So the point of this digression is to plead with you not to write to me unless you want to give me money. And since that eliminates 99% of you, all that remains is for me to express my gratitude for your wanting to write me, even if it was only to tell me what a bastard I am. But we’ll get along much better if we keep the communication a telepathic one. You just shoot the good vibes in my direction, I’ll pick up on them, it’ll spur me to more and better stories, and we’ll both come out happier and more productive. Please!

(God, I’m scatterbrained here. I keep going off into every little byway of thought that presents itself. Like one of my lectures. Very free-form. But let me wrench myself back to the topic of fear and lay that letter on you.)

I’m having it set by the typographer exactly as I received it. Hold it! Another digression, but to the point. I recently had a bum experience with a dude who sent me a letter in response to the dedication of one of my books. The book was dedicated to the memory of the Kent State students who were slaughtered, and one day a few months after the book first came out, in flew this letter, informing me those college students were Commies and they deserved to be shot. Well, last year I did another book; in the introduction to that one I reprinted the dedication from the first book and the guy’s letter. It wasn’t a nut-case letter, despite the content; it was well-written, grammatical, perfectly coherent; I said so in the introduction, but went on to comment how sad such brutal beliefs, in these perilous times, made me feel. Well, the tone of the letter was a mild one — the guy said he just wanted to straighten me out on how the world was really run — and it seemed to me to be one of those probably misguided but at least honest communiqués. Imagine my feelings of revulsion when, six months after publication of the book containing the letter, my publisher and my agent received a terse communication from this wonderful, patriotic American chap who “only wanted to straighten me out,” demanding “substantial remuneration” for the use of his letter. Apparently, he wasn’t quite as selfless and dedicated to his beliefs as the innocent letter seemed. He was clearly another one of those whiplash cases trying to make a few bucks from a nuisance suit. Well, at least, that’s how it looked to me; it also looked that way to my publisher, my agent, and my attorneys, who sent him a long, detailed legal brief explaining why he had no claim and could forget the whole attempt at the grab.

I mention this here, before running another unsolicited letter, just to let the author of the missive following know that he has no claim, either. Notably, because it’s an anonymous letter, and because I suppose I agree with it.

But, anyhow, on the subject of fear, here’s another face of the monster. I reproduce it in the form I received it, without grammatical corrections. It’s disturbing, to say the least.

Mr. Ellison,

I plead guilty. I’m the one …

… removing the drunk from the emergency room to late. The eighteen year old girl has died while the doctor was preoccupied with the drunk. I’m listening to the nurses deciding how to fake the report on the girl who should not have died. The explaining to the mother is mine.

… picking up drunks at midnight in frount of the bar full of onlookers shouting and screaming protest. I left a drunk here once before and he ended up a crippled vegestable when these kind folks robbed him. So I pick up the drunks and take them (not to jail?) home.

… finding the kid swearing to commit suicide and take him to the hospital. The one who talks to him when the psychiatrist tells him to go to hell. I’m the one finding him the next day, a block away, face up, dead.

… wondering what the hell is wrong when I pick up a kid speeding thru the hospital zone to late. Something went wrong. Did the pedestrian know that she was carried six blocks on the boy’s frount fender before she slid under the wheels? Why blame the kid? He didn’t buy the car or set up the law.

… bastard who was trying to give a kid an even break when I caught him running from a mobile home with the goods. The idea wavered when the owner stumbled out with a busted head.

… fool trying to tarn kids over to their parents. I call and talk to some kid’s little sister saying mommy isn’t home and, oh, by the way, mommy wants to know what Jonny did. So the kid goes to jail to lose his rights, his scholarship, and his future career.

… motherfucker buying the coke for the scared kid who threw piss on me from a can. I let him go becuase no parents show.

… idiot who fought on off-duty cop to save derelict with a lip from a belting.

… whose a State police officer that is just like every city and federal officer across the United States. Just a guy trying to protect people from themselves.

… who wants to stop working in this lousy business but can not. I can not let some trigger-happy cop take my badge. I can’t let people kill the loser when he is down. I can’t let you kill because of hate, carelessness or indifference. I’ll die one day protecting the losers you and the Society of Man hate so much because I’m a loser too. If there is anything lower than Black, it’s Blue.

… who personally likes your writing about reality. In your stories I don’t escape reality, but see an end to this senselessness. Either good or bad wins in your story and with the end I’m satisfied because I’m so tired of the war. But I’m one who’ll never agree that all

cops are bad, and one who’ll probably die by your hand or others like them either physically or spiritually in the street.

Whew! Occasionally, gentle readers, the mail gets heavy in here. The letter from the nurse I quoted in PAINGOD [Pyramid V3646]. The suicide note from the woman who said one of my stories kept her going a few weeks longer than she would have hung on otherwise. The unsigned letter from the Viet Nam vet who confessed to all the people he’d shot up in free-fire zones. The crazed postcard from the Fundamentalist loonie who vowed he’d kill me because I was obviously the antichrist. My patriotic whiplash correspondent with the scoop on Kent State. And now this one.

Listen, friend, if you’re out there, and you’ve picked up this book, let me tell you I neither hate nor fear you. Even swathed in Blue, m’man, you come across filled with pain and concern. I would like to meet you some day. But only when you’re off-duty, when you’re not packing heat.

I know damned well there are cops like you. I’ve met a few; and they always wind up like Serpico, brokenhearted or bust-headed. Because police these days aren’t like police when I was a kid in Painesville, Ohio, in the Forties. Friend of mine, a lieutenant of homicide, got a trifle bombed one night, sitting around rapping with me, and he let slip one of the most scary things I’ve ever heard. He said, “Harlan, it used to be, when a cop said ‘them or us’ he meant us were the good people, the cops and the decent citizens and the responsible business community, anybody on the side of Law and Order, the way it used to be in those Frank Capra films. Them meant bank robbers, homicidal maniacs, rapists, guys who torched their own stores for the insurance, murderers, all the kooks. Things’ve changed so much, these days when we say ‘them or us’ we mean anybody with a badge is us … all the rest of you are them. ”

There are lines written by Maxwell Anderson in the Kurt Weill musical tragedy version of Alan Paton’s book CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY — the stage production is, of course, LOST IN THE STARS — in which the chorus sings of the condition of fear that existed (and exists) in South Africa, the fear of the whites for the blacks, the fear of the blacks for the whites, and the lines are, ‘It is fear! It is fear! It is fear! It is fear! / Who can enjoy the lovely land, / The seventy years, / The sun that pours down on the earth, / When there is fear in the heart? … Yes, we fear them. / For they are many and we are few! … Yes, we fear them, / Though we are many and they are few! … Men are not safe in the streets, / Not safe in their houses. / There are brutal murders, robberies. / Tonight again a man lies dead. / Yes, it is fear. / Fear of the few for the many, / Fear of the many for the few.”