Except for brief remarks by the lightly Russian-accented Michael (the vendor at Pinks), and the harsh jive of the, shall we say, non-Caucasian procurer of female flesh at the far end of the counter, Ellison adopts a breathless New York verbal style. You would probably have to look far to find more words packed into 11 minutes and 5 seconds. In fact, once the twitchoid fellow in the Borsalino begins his recitation, Ellison clocks at 265 words per minute -- more than 4 per second, and we're not talking monosyllables but "miscegenation," "forevermore" and "overwhelming," to say nothing of "Conshohocken," "Sudetenland" and "Federal Aeronautics Administration." He even blows a full 2 seconds on a deep sigh after Orange Blossom buys it on the kukri.
This one's a peach! A hilarious romp that I, like many fans, heard before it appeared in print, in Angry Candy. I couldn't imagine it being half as pleasurable to read silently to oneself.
One hopes that someday, an editor will discover the correct way to spell “post the banns,” which appears (ironically enough, alongside the phrase “whatever the hell that means” in the mouth of the twitchoid fellow) as “post the bands” in the 1988 Houghton Mifflin first edition hardcover of Angry Candy, the 1988 New American Library/Plume trade paper, and even the 2001 Morpheus limited, signed, boxed, and numbered 50th anniversary edition of The Essential Ellison. The U.S. seems to be running low on both good editors and good Catholics.
This was issued as a bonus cassette with "Jeffty" for members of the Harlan Ellison Recording Collection.
Note: This version of “Prince Myshkin” is not the same as the one that appears on the 2001 collection, “The Voice From the Edge: Midnight in the Sunken Cathedral,” which was a later recording. Ellison has said he prefers his earlier recording, which is what you will get if you order it directly from the Harlan Ellison Recording Collection.
