186: "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman

Are your school days out of sight?

Welcome back to Sophomore Lit, where we reread your 10th grade reading list. I'm your host, John McCoy, and with me is first-time co-host Daniel Heddendorf. Hello, thank you very much for having me. W Daniel, uh this is my first time talking to you in person. Uh so why don't you introduce yourself to me and to the audience out there? Well, I mean if you've uh met one thirty something autistic white guy, you've met them all really. But, um...

I y my name is not any different from Adam. Like if if you by some miraculous chance actually do recognize my name, you are either a one of my parents. Thank you for listening. Or B, you might be familiar with uh the Little Litton worst first sentence writing competition, on which I have placed twice. You have? Oh my God. Yes.

Uh d forget everything else. That I have a real celebrity on the show now. Oh, you flatterer, you. Unfortunately, um I haven't placed in uh almost a decade now, so I've learned that as I've gotten older I've become apparently less funny. Which is uh not a good sign for the next forty five or so minutes, I imagine. You know, this is off topic, but uh this podcast is entirely off topic anyway.

Uh why don't you explain to the audience what the the little litten uh contest is? Well for one thing, thank you for pronouncing it like that because I've been terrified, I've been mispronouncing it for years, but The uh the Liton worst first sentence writing competition, which is not called that I'm paraphrasing, is uh named after I can't remember his first name, but the Lytton who wrote It was a dark and stormy night, as uh made famous worldwide by one Snoopy.

and a man who I believe I know is Adam something starts with a C and he thought that the better way to do that competition would be to f enforce a hard character limit. So

Your entry in this lit the little lit in competition cannot be more than two hundred characters in length. You can have multiple if you want, but they just can't go past that level. So again, brevity is the soul of wit, and so it allows for, you know, these sort of sharp more witty entries rather than those that are bad but are also so overly long that you'll realize it's bad about a third of the way through and then just scrolled on to the next one.

Well the the the the thing people say about nerd humor is it does go on too long. So

So we'll we'll move on uh from there. Anyone else can uh can Google the Little Litton contest if you want to uh see past winners. Um Uh Daniel is on because I put out a general request for people to suggest uh works for the show and to suggest uh hosts for the show, co hosts and He offered both in this case and I bring this up because the offer still stands to any listener out there who is interested in uh sending me a along uh the their favorite uh book.

or poem or whatever that I haven't done yet. I'm I'm open to anyone who wants to co host. Uh I I don't you don't need to have any experience Or if you have a lot of experience, if you have a if you have a a a hit podcast, then I I certainly won't say no. Maybe you'll get another contest winner. Right. Well, any other any other little Litton contest winners out there, you know, please send me your opening lines.

So this time the uh we are doing your suggestion, which is the uh Harlan Ellison nineteen sixty five short story Repent Harlequin, said the TikTok man. Um, you wanna talk a little bit why why you chose this? Oh boy. All right. Uh well, here goes my integrity. Uh I was not actually familiar with this piece until relatively recently. Uh, for whatever reason, I've been sort of just looking for more things to inspire me. I I feel like when I'm looking for a good

a piece of art or a good w uh medium with which to use my time. Get uh take a shot every time you hear that word during this podcast. Um I've just been looking through lists of quotes because I just want something to kind of hop out at me and you know, oh that looks inspiring or oh I haven't seen that interpretation on that topic or element before. And for some reason why I was looking at a list of quotes about people getting stuck in spiderweb like traps.

And as luck would have it, that happens to a handful of characters in this short story. And when you read the title, Repent Harlequin said the TikTok man, you my little brain synapses sort of go, Okay, that's intriguing enough, let's click on that and I went from there It's short enough that I could read it in maybe forty five minutes and it just stuck with me.

A lot of the elements uh relate to aspects of life and of other media that I enjoy. It's uh work of dystopian f literature, which means it is unfortunately extremely fitting for the here and now. I I wish I had more uh r relevant information, especially in my actual uh sophomore literature days, but

Instead we're just going with the title that I liked to see. Well, I uh for first of all, I I you know, the other the other thing that comes to mind with people getting Cotton spider webs, of course, is no doubt. um uh you know Gwyn Gwyn Stefani famously caught in spider website. Oh, naturally. Um but i you you actually chose a a good a good choice here because I think this is the one Harlan Ellison story that does get taught in high schools. And

The reason for that is you can't really teach other Harlan Ellison stories in high schools. This is sort of the most benign Harlan Ellison story and it is. We're gonna teach you kids how to hate

Uh this was the story that made Harlan Ellison a a name in in science fiction. It was the first story he won a Hugo for. And when I was a kid Uh trying to figure out what to read, you know. I I I I sympathize with your looking into quotes'cause what I did was I would get like anthologies of award winning stories. And I remember I had the anthologies of uh the Hugo winners And one and two were from the

forties and fifties. And there were a few stories in there that that really stuck with me. Um, you know, one of them being F Flowers for Algernon, which became uh, you know, a a a novel later. Uh But by and large I was having a hard time really enjoying uh those those works. And then you get to volume three and suddenly you're in the uh Le Guine era and you're in the Harlan Ellison era. And Ellison

was uh uh a pr practitioner in what was called the new wave of science fiction that came about in the sixties. And what makes it new wave? It it pushed aside concerns about uh actual concerns about the nuts and bolts of technology and it didn't tell stories that were like space operas of brave adventurers going uh and conquering new worlds. It was

socially relevant. It was typically there was some aspect of protest involved. A lot of it came out of people's uh worries about the war, worries not just about the Vietnam War, but about the Cold War and the possibility of uh humans' extinction, uh worries about uh ab about ecological disaster and certainly worries about social and political calamity. And this this story fits into that, I guess. Um Which is to say

I ha I had a a listener tell me just recently that she loves the podcast but she turns off all the episodes that are on science fiction. And I I hope you'll you'll listen to this one, uh dear listener, because Allison isn't really in in some ways he's not really science fiction. You know, he's more like Kurt Vonnegut style science fiction and that there there is something fantastic happening in in a lot of his stories, uh, but they aren't really uh your your

Granddaddy's science fiction. Right, precisely. When I um suggested this episode, I also um was asking if you would be interested in covering Vonnegut's uh Harrison Bergeron, which I reread recently just for curiosity's sake, and the the similarities, especially in thematic tones, are pretty evident.

both are about this one individual who's willing to stand above the rest. Both have um this sort of limitation that's put on people to ensure that they won't be anything other than who the person in the highest power will see. And uh both involve very peculiar means of flight. I sorry

As as artificial intelligence has um arose, people have been saying, you know, oh this is this has gotta be AI. It involves people listing things in threes. And I've been listing th listing things in threes for decades now in my writing, so Just every time I say something like, okay, there it is. I've failed the test again. Allison is a very showy writer. He has uh narrative voices that are silly, scary, um constantly uh

editorializing on what's happening. Um this Short story is very fabular in that it is uh set up like a fable. It has a point. It has it i people take roles because they the theme in some ways requires them to take on these these roles. Uh it points to some of the darker stuff that will come uh in in in later years for from Allison. It's also um For its time it was very experimental. It's definitely not as experimental as Ellison would would get, but um

it it uh it really uh it won a lot of awards when it came out because it it really was uh outside of the genre and and people were very interested in that. And um I know that some people who, you know, gatekeeping has has always been around and there were old school science fiction

uh writers who were like, well where's the science in this? And where's the where's the space exploration? Where's the the aliens? You know, whatever. Um I I think it's it's a very it's a it's a very Charming story for something for for a story that's a about a dystopia. Um am I am I off the mark here?

Well do you do you mean charming in terms of like the tonality of the piece as a whole, or primarily in reference to our both our narrator and uh the main character that we're following? Aaron Powell Oh, both. Uh entirely. I mean the the the the narrative takes some very silly turns. Um this is a story about a uh dystopian future where where

Everyone is regulated by schedules. They the it's it's kind of funny because I've I've read for this podcast uh uh you know Fahrenheit 451, in which we envision a world where people are not allowed to read books. or I've read The Handmaid's Tale in which women are treated as Chattel uh only you know whose only purpose is to bring uh about the next generation. Um, you know, I've read a bunch of different dystopias out there. Uh this one is funny because the dystopia is that Uh in the future

uh time ske schedules are very highly regulated. It's it's not I mean, we can all we can all uh maybe uh get on board with a theme that our time is not our own in in a capitalist society, and that too much of our lives are being uh taken up enriching other people. But specifically what this story is about is about how in the future everyone has to obey exact schedules and exact timetables. And that's the thing

that uh the the the villain of the piece, the Tik Tokman, is there to make sure that everything's running on schedule. And uh it made me wonder if it was uh a personal peeve of Harlan Ellison that he he didn't like being uh kept to other people's schedules. Hm. That that is a good point. And I believe I've if assuming that Wikipedia has not been lying to me

I I wanna say this is the piece that he wrote under a six hour schedule or something like that. Right. So I I wonder if that sort of race against the clock aspect sort of carried over to the piece itself. It's just you know, he he looks over at the clock and another two minutes it passes, Well what have I been doing? I haven't been writing. That's my fault. I'm the problem now. Ja, ich meine...

Sorry, I'm I'm trying to to bring about a point here, but I don't know if it's going to be terribly relevant. And I know that Per your own admission, that's not necessarily a fault in this specific podcast. But No d definitely definitely, you know, uh bring it to whatever point you want w you want. If if if it escapes you for a moment, we can come back and I can even edit. I can even edit so it sounds like you just Add it all in your head ahead of time.

Wow, look at me. So um I I'm a big fan of the uh ace attorney series of video games. The Oh yeah. Oh, okay. Never mind. Don't have to read don't have to introduce them. No, no, yeah. People out there who don't know them, there are Japanese series that are very, very silly about um this uh attorney in this crazy world, uh, that's not like any real court room, but they're

They're sort of mystery novels, they're sort of visual novels. They're they're very funny. Right, thank you. I I forgot I have an audience besides yourself, very briefly. Um have have you personally played The Great Ace Attorney? You know, I have that on my backlog. I you know, it's w i I think I bought it when it was on sale.

And uh I never got around to playing it, so I'll maybe Will you be okay if I tell you about a character in it? You can tell me whatever you want to tell me. I I'm not I don't care. So there is a character he is the Lord Chief Justice of Britain because despite being a game that's initially set in Japan, you you go overseas, you have this sort of exchange student program and you end up in London, you you meet uh Herlock Sholmes. But the Lord Chief Justice is named Male Strongheart.

And he feels like he's very representative of the TikTok man as portrayed in Ellison's piece here. He is He lives in a very literal clock tower. With the the giant hands behind him. And if you're going to, you know, ask him for any information that's relevant to your case or what have you, he will pull out a pocket watch and say, You have exactly two minutes and thirteen seconds with which to make your case.

And if you're like a second before and he will snap his fingers and say Time's up we're moving along now. are an interesting an interesting metaphor. You know, and I th on this podcast we've read um uh the last unicorn, which features a clock that you have to walk through and you th th th where time has stopped. Well there's uh I we also read the the thirteen clocks by uh d uh Thurber.

in which the villain of the piece uh has a castle in which time has literally stopped because uh he doesn't allow it to go forward. Um so The idea of I think there's something interesting about the idea of something mechanical. marking uh marking some force of the universe that we don't always understand. You can give a you can give a quantum physics explanation of what time is, but our experience of time uh i it feels l you know, it it feels like something that

has quantity in some way, but we don't quite understand the way it does. And it's only through the measurements that we give it those shape. I mean there's people who will argue that qu that uh that the clock make time that otherwise if we if you don't care about time there is no time. Well I don't I don't subscribe to that, but I I I I think it's a I think it's a nice thought. Uh in in some extent. Yeah.

It's it's a it's a weird thing to measure because I feel like You can cuse time is By technicality infinite, because even um when the stars go out, as they say, time will presumably continue to progress forward. but it's only measured by the sort of limited scope that we have through our normal human lens, as well as looking backwards. And I feel like that backwards aspect is a big

overhanging element of how specifically in this story time is measured. There's a a point when the Harlequin is finally captured and the TikTok man reads off You know, the amount of time he's wasted. He says he's wasted over sixty three years. And B by the d description given of the Harlequin, despite his wearing a mask, I was not imagining him being

you know, an an older gentleman. I I feel like he has this, you know, this whimsical aspect to him, sort of like a hee hee hee hee look at me that that you would s I I don't know, I mean you can you can be surprised spring chicken, but I I would still imagine him being, you know, this younger, roguish gentleman. And so the the sixty-three years kind of stood out to me because

Is the TikTok man measuring solely his time? Has he managed to accumulate the wasted time of every other person? Did the little minutes just add up and equate the hours, days, weeks, years to in this general sense, can can you measure someone else's wasted time? Right. Well I like your description of uh the Harlequin as sort of a Batman villain.

The Harlequin is a person who is hiding his identity and fighting back, you know, as a as a rebel against the system. And his idea of fighting back is doing things like dropping tons of uh of uh jelly beans. Right. Jelly beans into uh like a a a a a factory space, into the the slidewalks. So he gums up the work.

Everyone's eating jelly beans, everyone's wondering where the hell he got these jelly beans from, how he managed it Jelly beans Millions and billions of purples and yellows and greens and licorice and grape and raspberry and mint and round and smooth and crunchy outside. Soft mealy inside, and sugary and bouncing, jouncing, tumbling, clering, clattering, skittering fell.

Heads and shoulders and hard hats and carapaces of the Timkin workers, tinkling on the slidewalk, and bouncing away and rolling about underfoot and Sky on their way down with all the colors of joy and childhood and holidays, coming down in a steady rain, a solid Torrent of color Entering a universe of sanity. and metronomic order with quite mad cuckoo newness. Jelly beans. They never explain how he's able to c carry off these

crazy stunts of his, but his stunts are all very showy, very silly. And then he gets on a a megaphone and he talks to people and says, like, why are you Why are you letting someone else determine your life? Why are you why are you letting someone else do your schedule? Why not do the things that you want to do? And and in that way it's also very fabular because the the

conflicts here are very broad. They're not there's there's there's no explanation about how this future dystopia or organizes itself and how it's possible to uh to clamp down on on everyone. The only thing that we're told is that the TikTok man has the ability to take time away from people.

So when they when someone has been found guilty of wasting time, they have that time removed from their lifespan, which I feel like that's an also another very strange thing to me, because surely one's lifespan doesn't exist as a concrete number out there. I I feel like that has kind of been solved in the world that's provided. Like this this is the wor world in

twenty three something. So maybe they have cured diseases, maybe they have, you know, perfected means of transportation. Again, everyone takes the the slidewalk, the the moving um sidewalks as they are. Like the the existence of these sort of flying machines as uh the the Harlequin himself pilots one of them. Like it it feels like those are sort of outliers, these kind of not necessarily accident proof things, but means of ensuring that

things will just go according to schedule. Because I if everything does go according to schedule, if there is no nuance, then In some whether or not you consider it a good thing, you've been able to that one's time, one's lifespan will probably be a solid eighty or eighty two or however many years. The only person who's immune to that is undoubtedly those who are the highest up, probably the TikTok man who uh through some other scientific means uh again which the story uh

elects not to discuss with us. He's probably just Eating time like so many jelly beans. I feel like I've uh tried to explain away a whimsical situation. I feel like I'm over analysing green eggs and ham over here. You're not wrong to do that. I that's that's I think key to understanding some of the tone of this story.

the problems with bureaucracy and the way that uh bureaucracy can crush people by making them conform to be tools of production. If if if your life is entirely uh judged on the value you bring to the economy, um then uh you know, you've got this kind of pr a problem. Now Ellison is not interested in this being a specific uh analysis of of capitalism so much as he's interested in expressing something emotional, you know, and and and he's doing it in in a very kind of silly way, but it's also

it it it it's also got a bite to it. You know, there there's there's a point where um in the book where he says, um Um... And by the simple scientific expedient, utilizing a scientific process held dearly secret by the TikTokmen's office, The system was maintained. It was the only expedient thing to do. It was, after all, patriotic. The schedules had to be met. After all, there was a war on. But wasn't there always?

Um, which to me sounds very much like uh nineteen eighty four, uh the Orwell's like, you know, we were we we've always been at war with Eurasia or whatever, you know, th that idea that that's one of the ways that governments can control the populace is by Uh creating these these conflicts out there. But he's he's n he's not going for he he later in the the story he'd actually he explicitly mentions Orwell's

nineteen eighty four, when he describes the tortures that the uh TikTok man has to undergo when uh sorry, yeah, the the Harlequin has to undergo when he's he's captured. Um There's there's a lot of um there's a lot of very clever uh uh illusions in in Ellis' work. I mean he starts this with a quote from uh from uh Thoreau. The one thing that was funny was I was reading this through and I I kept he keeps using the phrase, so it goes, which I always associate with um Slaughterhouse Five.

Uh uh but then I realized this was written before Slaughterhouse Five was published. So I w then I kinda wonder, was Vonnegut cribbing that from uh Alison? Well perhaps it's it's only in just one or two paragraphs. No one'll notice if I just uh grab a little guy here, turn it into my own.

It's um it's interesting that you mention that because I I found myself almost frustrated by the fact that um nineteen eighty four was mentioned just point blank as a reference point to the tribulations that the Harlequin endures because Like everything else, as we've discussed, has this fantastic nature. Um everything has Like there when I was trying to look up words that I was unfamiliar with, I ended up uh looking up nonsense terms that were just um part of the universe itself because like

I my initial thought was, Well, I haven't heard that one on Taskmaster before, but I guess I haven't seen every episode. So When it goes down to this very end part, and the best that he can do is say it was like something out of this already existing book. I I couldn't tell whether it was supposed to be

A a nod to again a a story from so far back in the past that no one had even remembered it. But Perhaps someone did or if it was just again someone fighting a six hour deadline and thinking it was love. This. It was like this. Go, go, go. Well, I think that one of the the the little tricks that he plays in this. uh a couple times is there's a sudden compression of time. You know, he he spends he spends a lot of time in the scene and then suddenly

he shoots it all to hell. Like there's this you you talk about him making up words and he does. He makes up words like he's Dr. Seuss. and there's a section where they talk about him about the uh TikTok man's uh efforts to catch the Harlequin. Ellison describes all of the different techniques that the TikTok man and his uh his organization are using to try and catch him. And there's this long paragraph that just Yeah. They use dogs, they use They used cardioplate crossing.

They use teepers, they use bribery, they used stipe They used intimidation, they used torment, they used torture, they used finks, they used cops, they used search and seizure. It goes on for a long time. I'm not gonna i do the whole thing, but it's it's you're gonna skip Raoul Mitgong? Right, right. I yeah, yeah, they use Raoul Mitgong. I wonder if that's somebody that that Ellison knew that he just like threw in as uh

As a joke. But then but then the next par the next paragraph is one sentence. And what the hell? They caught him. You know, it's it's this it's this complete uh you know, if if if humor is the uh con confounding of expectations, that's a big con uh expectation being confounded there because we're we've been told that the Harlequin is this

mythical uh outsized figure who's able to run Robin Hood like around the uh the uh government and no, he's he's just a guy. He gets caught. he lives with his partner like everyone else and he's one one of my favorite things about him is his a apologetic nature. When he's speaking with his partner, uh named rather consistently Pretty Alice, And she, you know, talks about oh, you you always apologize all the time. What's let me get the exact phrasing here.

Yeah. You know, Alice noted, you speak with a great deal of inflection. I'm sorry, said the Harlequin humbly. No need to be sorry. You're always saying I'm sorry. You have such massive guilt, Everett. It's really very sad. I'm sorry, he repeated, then pursed his lips so the dimples appeared momentarily.

Yeah, I didn't want it to say that at all. It just and he he does it again later when he um captures those government officials in their own web traps. He's he he laughs and then he's just v immediately very apologetic. And I think that Maybe again I'm doing a bit of over analysis here. But I think part of the reason that he's apologizing is because he perceives it as

A waste of time. It's something that's taking away like one or two seconds, but it's still when it's for someone he respects, when it's for someone who they're giving their time to him, he doesn't want them to waste it. Yeah, I think I think that's true. I also think that part of what's going on here is the effect of when someone takes on a uh a mythical personality.

like V, the mysterious V in V for Vendetta, or the dread pirate Roberts from uh The Princess Bride. There's this idea that y when you take on these larger than life uh personas, you're able to be

this force in the world that you aren't able to be uh as an as an individual. And the part of the the the point at the end of this is that um even though the Harlequin is ultimately captured and tortured and forced to renounce his ways and to go back into society and become a good little cog in the machine. things have changed at the end of this. There's there's this is seen as like incremental change. And we have once again the very uh uh

arch voice of the the narrator, you know, saying that you have to break a few eggs in every revolution. And the a the implication is these things happen by degrees. Uh and i it may seem like a it it may be a um defeat in the case of the individual life of the Harlequin, but it is ch pushing pushing the the the dial a little bit

Further one direction for all of society. Um Which I guess, you know, you you mentioned at the beginning of this that that this is these kinds of dystopian stories have a uh a cer a strong relevance in our modern world, and I think that that's something to always kind of keep in mind as people struggle uh with all the things we struggle with is that every good thing you do creates a world in which good things are possible.

So that's my that's my Sartre for you. There we go. I I I don't have too much to say uh about this other than there was uh Back in when I was a a kid. I was really big into radio drama. And unlike today when there's a million and one uh podcasts out there that are doing radio drama. There was very little uh active production of radio drama uh after television took over.

Uh it like radio drama sort of died off in the 60s, and there were just a few people keeping the art alive. And one of the people who was, was a uh director named Yuri Rozovsky, who had a production theater company called the National Radio Theater of Chicago. And he his production company in Uh the early Um, I think it was earlier like the early nineties, uh, did a uh a series called 2000X, which ran on NPR.

uh back when NPR didn't only do news and it was adaptations of of science fiction stories and one of them it was it was it was actually uh hosted by Harlan Ellison and one of the uh Episodes was an adaptation of Repent Harlequin, says said the TikTok man. And it's an interesting adaptation because it actually enlarges the story. You know, the story in in some ways is is too too small to fill up much space in a in a drama. So they there's a lot of

stuff added to it. And um I I I believe with with Ellison's input and certainly his blessings because he he played the narrator in this adaptation and in that the Harlequin was played by Robin Williams. Oh that is the best casting possible. Well you can you can find this online if you want to uh it's it I think it's it's on on uh

YouTube video. It's it's it's worth looking up. Um it's it's it's interesting to see, you know, because uh like I said, they there weren't a lot of there weren't a lot of um radio dramas being done at the time. So this was kind of a prestige thing that they did. There was also a really good adaptation of a Robert Heinlein story called By His Bootstraps, which starred Richard Dreyfus, so that's also worth looking up.

There is one thing that I once again another reference that I wasn't quite getting that I had to look up. And this is this is a very no thing. This is just sort of something that I just Kind of laughed at a little bit, but in the beginning they discuss how the antics of the Harlequin only affect the topmost and bottom most aspects of society. Like if you're right in the middle it really doesn't matter, but

for those who are at the bottom, as you say, he's a Robin Hood figure, someone who is meant to be idolized and at the very top it's public enemy number one. And so Uh one of the similes that Ellison uses is at the top where like socially attuned shipwreck Kellys. And I was unfamiliar with the name Shipwreck Kelly, and so I had to look it up. And I believe it's um referring to a a mast sitter or something along those lines, someone whose occupation was to just ensure that

They knew when people were coming and informed people as needed. But it turns out that Shipwreck Heli is also the name of an American football player. And so I was just imagining this kind of Very precarious post with this Lumbering quarterback uh teetering at the top of it just being like I think you see someone he's over there. It reminds me also that at the end when Uh the the Harlequin is shipped off for reprogramming. They say they sent him to Coventry.

And that's a British expression that means t to ostracize someone. I'm sure that there there's a story behind that that I'm not aware of, but I I I know the phrase, but it's s it's it's another sort of like just silly little thing that's put in there for people who Who get it? Who get it, exactly. It funnily enough, um the Wikipedia page actually has send off to Coventry as its own separate article. Oh really? Yeah, so let me let me just click on that.

So it's an idiom used in England meaning to deliberately ostracize someone. The origins of this phrase are unknown, although it is quite probable that events in Coventry in the English Civil War in the sixteen forties play a part. Uh you can probably browse that page for yourself here. I I feel like we've been doing enough of uh reading someone else's words for one episode. Well, you know, everything's a remix.

Harlan Ellison is a is a is an interesting character. He he was apparently an extremely difficult man. I know that he was litigious as all get out. Um he's he certainly had a famous uh beef with the producers of Star Trek because he thought that they completely butchered his script. for the City on the edge of forever. Um and and and I know that he was just constantly getting into the

to l lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit. He was also a um he was also really involved in the civil rights movement and he was also uh really involved in uh issues of gender equity in the seventies. So he's he's one of these complicated figures. I I um you know, I don't you can't always uh write someone off because of uh their personality. Um but

uh you know I I I can understand why some people wouldn't wouldn't read him. He's also uh he's also known as a something of a shock ri writer. He's most famous short story, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is basically a horror story. Um and and very brutal. Uh so if if that's what you think of when you think of Harlan Ellison, you know, you might give this a try because like I say, it's it's it's pretty gentle.

Mm-hmm. And uh for those who are still a little scared of that last piece, I will share with you a sage piece of advice. I have no mouth and I must scream can be sung to the tune of the Flitzka from List's Hungarian Rhapsody No. Two. And that just gets rid of anything entirely Thanks again to guest host, Daniel Heddendor. If you have an idea for a book, story, or

Or anything else to cover on a future episode. Or if you'd like to be a guest host or have a suggestion for a guest host, or if you just want to say hi, you can write me at sophomore.literature at gmail. You can also keep up with what I'm doing at my blog on johnmaccoy dot org where I discuss all kinds of things, not just this podcast. Subscribe and you'll get new posts by email. Sophomore Lit has a t shirt. Available at the incomparable store on the Cotton.

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