This cassette is different from most of the other recordings here, because Ellison does not read prepared material but rather chats informally, as if he were visiting you in your own living room. That the recording quality is not very good only adds to its charm.
Ellison talks about the milieu of writers, editors, and publishers connected with pulp magazines such as "Guilty," "Trapped," "Tightrope," and "Amazing Stories" when he was a struggling writer in New York City, circa 1955-1957. Some of the tales will be familiar to people who own copies of The Harlan Ellison Hornbook: his half day of employment at Capitol Records, the hideous murder story he titled "Only Death Can Stop It," and the time Great American Publishing almost took him for $36 and he stole a typewriter as compensation. In connection with the latter event, he says, "I was never ripped off because I was always meaner than anybody I was dealing with. Being deranged, I was always prepared to burn their offices down."
There are a few delightful voices here: a mousy Caspar Milquetoast for the man seated next to him at Capitol, the slightly different mousiness for editor W.W."Bill" Scott, and a terrifically nasal receptionist that doesn't really sound like a "pneumatic blonde" he says he encountered at Great American.
His off-the-cuff rendering of the lesson of his half day at Capitol is classic Ellison:
"If you let yourself be gulled into believing that someone will take care of you, that there is a better life tomorrow, that there is some kind of pie in the sky when you die (whether it comes from the military-industrial complex, or multinational corporations, or the pension paycheck and the old railroad watch, or a husband who will provide for you, or a wife who will provide for you, or mommy and daddy), inevitably you will get screwed over. Inevitably you will wind up being somebody else's handservant. You must maintain your individuality, your freedom, at all costs . . . in the face of decorum, in the face of kindness. Because it is your survival. And no one will look after your survival but you."
