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The Glass Teat: Essays of Opinion on the Subject of Television
Criticizes the lack of creativity in television programs and describes the author's experiences as a writer for television
319 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
About the author
Harlan Ellison
1,009 books2,490 followersHarlan Jay Ellison was a prolific American writer of short stories, novellas, teleplays, essays, and criticism.
His literary and television work has received many awards. He wrote for the original series of both The Outer Limits and Star Trek as well as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour; edited the multiple-award-winning short story anthology series Dangerous Visions; and served as creative consultant/writer to the science fiction TV series The New Twilight Zone and Babylon 5.
Several of his short fiction pieces have been made into movies, such as the classic "The Boy and His Dog".
[email protected]
His literary and television work has received many awards. He wrote for the original series of both The Outer Limits and Star Trek as well as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour; edited the multiple-award-winning short story anthology series Dangerous Visions; and served as creative consultant/writer to the science fiction TV series The New Twilight Zone and Babylon 5.
Several of his short fiction pieces have been made into movies, such as the classic "The Boy and His Dog".
[email protected]
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 66 reviews
March 21, 2024
As the saying goes: the more things change, the more they stay the same. This is illustrated brilliantly in "The Glass Teat", a book of essays by the late Harlan Ellison, published in 1970. Most, if not all of these essays appeared in column form in the Los Angeles Free Press in the late-60s.
While dated, Ellison's criticism, commentary, and complaints about television will probably resonate just as much today as it did when he first published them, long before cable, the Internet, Hulu, Netflix, etc. The TV shows are different, but the problems are essentially the same.
Ellison is often scathing and cut-throat in his excoriation of TV shows and the evening news. His criticism tends to go back to the same problem: TV provides a white-washed and completely bullshit portrayal of real life. Even the news tends to give a one-sided viewpoint. (Keep in mind: Ellison was writing these essays during the height of the Vietnam War.)
Fast forward fifty years: these same complaints can be made for most of the shit on our TV screens today.
Don't be scared off by the dated material. You don't have to have a pre-existing knowledge of TV shows like Mod Squad, Hawaii Five-O, or Adam 12. I'd be surprised if most people still remember those.
It's Ellison's humor, intelligence, and compassion that shines through, as always.
While dated, Ellison's criticism, commentary, and complaints about television will probably resonate just as much today as it did when he first published them, long before cable, the Internet, Hulu, Netflix, etc. The TV shows are different, but the problems are essentially the same.
Ellison is often scathing and cut-throat in his excoriation of TV shows and the evening news. His criticism tends to go back to the same problem: TV provides a white-washed and completely bullshit portrayal of real life. Even the news tends to give a one-sided viewpoint. (Keep in mind: Ellison was writing these essays during the height of the Vietnam War.)
Fast forward fifty years: these same complaints can be made for most of the shit on our TV screens today.
Don't be scared off by the dated material. You don't have to have a pre-existing knowledge of TV shows like Mod Squad, Hawaii Five-O, or Adam 12. I'd be surprised if most people still remember those.
It's Ellison's humor, intelligence, and compassion that shines through, as always.
September 21, 2018
The Glass Teat (and the companion volume, inevitably titled The Other Glass Teat) are collections of columns that Ellison wrote for "underground" publications from the late 1960's into the early 1970's. Ostensibly "essays of opinion on the subject of television" as the subtitle puts it, Ellison examined American morals and values and provides a unique history of one of the most traumatic and influential decades of change in history. He also showed us how we could do better, how we could be better, and how we could help make a better world. His message seems to me to be even more important now than it was then; the technology has changed but attitudes still hold true, the politicians are just as self-serving, the religious leaders are just as corrupt, we're bombarded by banal wastes of time endlessly, and on and on. Many of the television shows and films he reviews are long forgotten, but the meaning of his message is still clear. The television screen has been replaced by the smart phone, but that just makes it worse. You know, the names have changed but the song remains the same. His writing is impassioned, at times frenzied, but what it may lack in polish doesn't impact the clarity. These two volumes are my favorite works of non-fiction.
December 5, 2012
Lost my copy years ago and would love to find another. The Glass Teat was a column by Ellison in The L.A. Free Press in the 70s (I think). The collection is an exceptional example of Ellison's essay writing talents; abrasive, insightful and usually controversial. There is a lot of emphasis on screenwriting for TV and the TV business, both about Ellison experiences and his opinion of other writers, producers and shows. I do get the feeling that Ellison must have been hell to work with on a set. Yet, these columns are always entertaining and informative. It helps if you seen or are at least familiar with the TV series he discusses as most are now relics of the times. However the collection remains a good example of one of the best essayists in the later 20th century.
August 22, 2022
Harlan Ellison the fiction writer can be hit or miss, but Harlan Ellison the essayist is always entertaining and thought provoking. His 1970 cult classic collection of LA Free Press columns is now back in print (as an audiobook). It has in fact rarely been out of print for any length of time. It is ostensibly a collection of television criticism, but in reality so much more.
Nothing is off limits here… politics, love, art, war, music, economics, and the daily grind of writing for Hollywood suits.
The names of the shows he talks about have faded into obscurity, but his observations on the boob tube as an artistic and cultural wasteland remained relevant for over 40 years. Maybe they are still relevant today, although I believe the landscape has improved due to streaming platforms that give producers unprecedented levels of funding and freedom.
Highlights of this book include:
A lot of attention in the early essays focuses on news coverage of the Chicago riots of '68. It's weird today to hear a liberal complain about the entrenched conservative bias of the news. Ellison's brand of progressive politics did not break along traditional Republican/Democrat lines, and he takes on all forms of established authority. One thing I noticed: The words hippie, yippie, and squares all seem to have had precise meanings and nuances that are lost on me half a century later. (This whole topic also reminds me I have yet to watch Aaron Sorkin's film The Trial of the Chicago 7.)
Ellison delivers a raving review of the tv pilot Those Were the Days, then he eviscerates ABC executives for not picking it up. (The show, of course, got reworked for CBS the following year as the now-classic All in the Family).
In his hot take on The Troubles in Ireland, Ellison launches an all-out tirade against organized religion. This essay is a gigantic cop out, in my mind. He takes easy pot shots at worldwide religions, but nary a discouraging word is mentioned about the behavior of atheistic cultures, particularly the Chinese and Russians.
Many essays deal with Ellison's unsuccessful attempts to develop scripts (The Name of the Game starring Robert Stack, Man Without Time). These are inside looks at the machinations of the tv industry at the intersection of money, politics, and ego.
One of Ellison's recurring themes is the lack of originality in programming. An interesting case in point: In the fall of 1969, the three networks aired a whopping 13 shows about widows/widowers raising children. Only three of those are even barely remembered today--The Brady Bunch, My Three Sons, and The Courtship of Eddie's Father.
The author castigates Harold Robbins' The Survivors starring George Hamilton and Lana Turner. Part of his objections stem from the fact he believed, in 1969, that a cultural revolution of disenfranchised groups would soon overthrow the vapid rich. I have never seen the show, but it was clearly the progenitor of the 1980’s prime time soaps. I wonder what Ellison would have written about Dallas, Dynasty, and Falcon Crest?
In one column, Ellison attacks Art Linkletter mere weeks after his daughter Diane fell from a window. (Art blamed this on a bad LSD trip and used her death as the platform to launch an anti-drug campaign with the support of the Nixon administration.) Using a chain of reason fueled more by vitriol than logic, Ellison blames Art (and his older generation) for creating a society full of racial injustice and economic disparity that caused Diane to despair of living and choose to throw herself to her death. He sums up the generational strife of the late 60's with an unforgettable line: "Who is the enemy, Mr. Linkletter? Is it the dreaded Communist menace? Is it the anarchist rabble? Is it the drug-crazed dissenters? No, Mr. Linkletter, it's your own kids."
(Both Ellison's and Art Linkletter's responses seem to be in bad taste when viewed in hindsight. Diane had no drugs in her system at the time of her death, and there is no evidence other than her father's testimony that she ever used LSD. She may have killed herself because she was clinically depressed. Or she may have been murdered by Edward Durston, the last man to see her alive. He is a shadowy figure--he might have been the used-car salesman Edward Dale Durston or the Hollywood writer David Edward Durston. He was implicated in the suspicious death of another women in 1985, it raised questions about the veracity of his testimony to the police about Diane. This case is discussed in detail in John Austin's book More of Hollywood's Unsolved Mysteries.)
Other topics:
• The mind-numbing banality of The Mod Squad, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hawaii Five-O
• Insulting use of token Black characters and/or characters of color who act white on tv
• The annual vacuity of the Rose Bowl parade
• Why Gomer Pyle never goes anywhere near Vietnam
• The dumbing down of America's youth
• The disappointing network broadcast of the Apollo moon landing
• Bad tv remakes of classic films
• Protests against the development of biological and chemical weapons
• In-fighting within the Writers Guild of America
• The phenomenon of student dissent and its false depiction in the popular media
• The My Lai massacre
I listened to the audiobook read by Luis Moreno.
Nothing is off limits here… politics, love, art, war, music, economics, and the daily grind of writing for Hollywood suits.
The names of the shows he talks about have faded into obscurity, but his observations on the boob tube as an artistic and cultural wasteland remained relevant for over 40 years. Maybe they are still relevant today, although I believe the landscape has improved due to streaming platforms that give producers unprecedented levels of funding and freedom.
Highlights of this book include:
A lot of attention in the early essays focuses on news coverage of the Chicago riots of '68. It's weird today to hear a liberal complain about the entrenched conservative bias of the news. Ellison's brand of progressive politics did not break along traditional Republican/Democrat lines, and he takes on all forms of established authority. One thing I noticed: The words hippie, yippie, and squares all seem to have had precise meanings and nuances that are lost on me half a century later. (This whole topic also reminds me I have yet to watch Aaron Sorkin's film The Trial of the Chicago 7.)
Ellison delivers a raving review of the tv pilot Those Were the Days, then he eviscerates ABC executives for not picking it up. (The show, of course, got reworked for CBS the following year as the now-classic All in the Family).
In his hot take on The Troubles in Ireland, Ellison launches an all-out tirade against organized religion. This essay is a gigantic cop out, in my mind. He takes easy pot shots at worldwide religions, but nary a discouraging word is mentioned about the behavior of atheistic cultures, particularly the Chinese and Russians.
Many essays deal with Ellison's unsuccessful attempts to develop scripts (The Name of the Game starring Robert Stack, Man Without Time). These are inside looks at the machinations of the tv industry at the intersection of money, politics, and ego.
One of Ellison's recurring themes is the lack of originality in programming. An interesting case in point: In the fall of 1969, the three networks aired a whopping 13 shows about widows/widowers raising children. Only three of those are even barely remembered today--The Brady Bunch, My Three Sons, and The Courtship of Eddie's Father.
The author castigates Harold Robbins' The Survivors starring George Hamilton and Lana Turner. Part of his objections stem from the fact he believed, in 1969, that a cultural revolution of disenfranchised groups would soon overthrow the vapid rich. I have never seen the show, but it was clearly the progenitor of the 1980’s prime time soaps. I wonder what Ellison would have written about Dallas, Dynasty, and Falcon Crest?
In one column, Ellison attacks Art Linkletter mere weeks after his daughter Diane fell from a window. (Art blamed this on a bad LSD trip and used her death as the platform to launch an anti-drug campaign with the support of the Nixon administration.) Using a chain of reason fueled more by vitriol than logic, Ellison blames Art (and his older generation) for creating a society full of racial injustice and economic disparity that caused Diane to despair of living and choose to throw herself to her death. He sums up the generational strife of the late 60's with an unforgettable line: "Who is the enemy, Mr. Linkletter? Is it the dreaded Communist menace? Is it the anarchist rabble? Is it the drug-crazed dissenters? No, Mr. Linkletter, it's your own kids."
(Both Ellison's and Art Linkletter's responses seem to be in bad taste when viewed in hindsight. Diane had no drugs in her system at the time of her death, and there is no evidence other than her father's testimony that she ever used LSD. She may have killed herself because she was clinically depressed. Or she may have been murdered by Edward Durston, the last man to see her alive. He is a shadowy figure--he might have been the used-car salesman Edward Dale Durston or the Hollywood writer David Edward Durston. He was implicated in the suspicious death of another women in 1985, it raised questions about the veracity of his testimony to the police about Diane. This case is discussed in detail in John Austin's book More of Hollywood's Unsolved Mysteries.)
Other topics:
• The mind-numbing banality of The Mod Squad, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hawaii Five-O
• Insulting use of token Black characters and/or characters of color who act white on tv
• The annual vacuity of the Rose Bowl parade
• Why Gomer Pyle never goes anywhere near Vietnam
• The dumbing down of America's youth
• The disappointing network broadcast of the Apollo moon landing
• Bad tv remakes of classic films
• Protests against the development of biological and chemical weapons
• In-fighting within the Writers Guild of America
• The phenomenon of student dissent and its false depiction in the popular media
• The My Lai massacre
I listened to the audiobook read by Luis Moreno.
March 17, 2019
The more things change, the more they stay the same. 1969. 2019. Some excerpts to make you want to check out this remarkable read from the past and sadly, see, so much of our future. That being said, I do want to note that I am quite aware I am writing this on a website, using the internet, using facebook, all of which probably use me quite as much or more. Yes, irony, my friends...
"...And they tell you how free you are, because you can download Avatar in the palm of your hand while you walk while you tiext while you tweet while you get yo' ass run over in a crosswalk by a 7 Sanitini Bros. moving van. No, schmuck, that ain't freedom."(this from the first chapter, written in 2011, the rest are from Free Press articles in 1969)
"...Yet the demise of the one postulates the rise of another. The show Biz Politician. Reagan is a classic example, of course. In a way, the Kennedys are another. I think the elemest is charisma. If a man can look sincere on the tube, if he can seem to be honest and forthright and courageous, he can sweep an election merely by employing the visual media. In which case, the term, "bad actor: would come to have a new, more ominous meaning. (indeed, Nickie says).
Re Kam Nelson (those who remember 60's tv will remember her, this is so eerily Kardashian): "Miss Nelson represents the deification of banality. She is the vapid, elevated to godhood....for teen-age girls whose larval stage was informed by the Barbie doll, this cocoon stage with Kam Nelson as the role-model can only prepare the emergence into adult hood not as butterflies, but as moths, fit for little better than dull lives of crabgrass, Blue Chip Stamps and quiet desperation."
Re What's It All About, World, a right-wing satirical answer to Laugh-In and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, starring Dean Jones: (after remarking that "Happy Hollywood," a child singer appeared as "a five- or six-year old Shirley Temple surrogate with a face as evil as one of the Borgias and that, by then, the show kept on going "on in this vein for several years"): "the big extravaganze number was a Paean of Praise to Richard Milhous Nixon," an "Ode to the Odious." ..."It might more appropriately be titled The Establishment Strikes Back."
"But let a determined and tv-primed hero step forward whose compulsions drive him toward oppression and repression...and we would have about as much of a chance for survival as a snail in a bucket of salt."
You get the idea...just so many gems, so much foresight. Also predicts the legalization of marijuana, discusses biker thugs defending America by violence, against Jews, African American, LGBTQ's communists, Catholics, Freemasons, hippies and all other species they cannot abide;
and on Dec 3, 1969, when the Writers Guild of America, West took issue with Vice President Spiro Agnew attacking the right of the news and editorial media freely to analyze and criticize statements and policies of the (then) administration, stating that "We are concerned that the President hiself has not repudiated this assault on spoken and written opinion."
Well, my friends, there you have it. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Remember to learn your lessons from history, or you just might live long enough to see it repeated.
"...And they tell you how free you are, because you can download Avatar in the palm of your hand while you walk while you tiext while you tweet while you get yo' ass run over in a crosswalk by a 7 Sanitini Bros. moving van. No, schmuck, that ain't freedom."(this from the first chapter, written in 2011, the rest are from Free Press articles in 1969)
"...Yet the demise of the one postulates the rise of another. The show Biz Politician. Reagan is a classic example, of course. In a way, the Kennedys are another. I think the elemest is charisma. If a man can look sincere on the tube, if he can seem to be honest and forthright and courageous, he can sweep an election merely by employing the visual media. In which case, the term, "bad actor: would come to have a new, more ominous meaning. (indeed, Nickie says).
Re Kam Nelson (those who remember 60's tv will remember her, this is so eerily Kardashian): "Miss Nelson represents the deification of banality. She is the vapid, elevated to godhood....for teen-age girls whose larval stage was informed by the Barbie doll, this cocoon stage with Kam Nelson as the role-model can only prepare the emergence into adult hood not as butterflies, but as moths, fit for little better than dull lives of crabgrass, Blue Chip Stamps and quiet desperation."
Re What's It All About, World, a right-wing satirical answer to Laugh-In and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, starring Dean Jones: (after remarking that "Happy Hollywood," a child singer appeared as "a five- or six-year old Shirley Temple surrogate with a face as evil as one of the Borgias and that, by then, the show kept on going "on in this vein for several years"): "the big extravaganze number was a Paean of Praise to Richard Milhous Nixon," an "Ode to the Odious." ..."It might more appropriately be titled The Establishment Strikes Back."
"But let a determined and tv-primed hero step forward whose compulsions drive him toward oppression and repression...and we would have about as much of a chance for survival as a snail in a bucket of salt."
You get the idea...just so many gems, so much foresight. Also predicts the legalization of marijuana, discusses biker thugs defending America by violence, against Jews, African American, LGBTQ's communists, Catholics, Freemasons, hippies and all other species they cannot abide;
and on Dec 3, 1969, when the Writers Guild of America, West took issue with Vice President Spiro Agnew attacking the right of the news and editorial media freely to analyze and criticize statements and policies of the (then) administration, stating that "We are concerned that the President hiself has not repudiated this assault on spoken and written opinion."
Well, my friends, there you have it. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Remember to learn your lessons from history, or you just might live long enough to see it repeated.
April 15, 2012
I read this book chiefly for its example of contemporary writing style and attitudes in a "free press" publication in the late 1960s. I bought a used copy planning to cherry-pick the essays and ended up reading it straight through. Read in retrospective, it's a fascinating picture of how much some things have changed and how much (depressingly) some others have not. I'm old enough to remember most of the TV shows that Ellison discusses, and in some cases, I wish he'd gone into more detail (he reserves the detail for the stuff he didn't like). For instance, I also loved the show "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir," principally because of star Edward Mulhare; but I'm surprised that Harlan Ellison, of all people, liked it so much. He never really says why!
The essays not only paint a picture of how a certain type of person thought in 1969, but of Ellison himself; there are essays in which he is clearly oblivious to the way he appears and sounds to others around him, and any conflicts he runs into are entirely the fault of the dunderheads he's forced to deal with. Like many self-justified confrontational people, Ellison is not familiar with the notion of "disarm and conquer." But that was typical of the times--except for the fact that Ellison was at least 10 years older than most of the contemporary exemplars of this approach. But at least he wasn't blowing anything up. (At least not *literally.* He did a pretty good job "blowing up" the Writer's Guild and Dayton, Ohio.)
We see where the 1970s and the "P.C." mania have brought us with Ellison's statements about "chicks," sex and casual use of the "n word". Anyone who wrote stuff like that today would be anathematized and probably get death threats. His forecasts of where the future might be leading--either in general assumptions or in a piece he wrote for a magazine speculating about the year 1980--are amusingly, and sometimes sadly, short-sighted. But as such, they're an object lesson about the way we all generalize trends from our own present-moment concerns. Ellison's imagination of 1980, for example, includes a never-ending Vietnam war, Nixon still in office, rationing, and "dissidents" all forced underground and hunted down by law enforcement like resisters in WWII France. He had no idea what really lay just a few years ahead: Watergate, the oil embargo, the Recession, the rise of militant Islamic fundamentalism, the Carter administration and the birth of the 1980s with his Nemesis, then-Governor Reagan, elected to the White House.
This book and its sequel (The Other Glass Teat) are not easy to find, and now I want to read the second book!
The essays not only paint a picture of how a certain type of person thought in 1969, but of Ellison himself; there are essays in which he is clearly oblivious to the way he appears and sounds to others around him, and any conflicts he runs into are entirely the fault of the dunderheads he's forced to deal with. Like many self-justified confrontational people, Ellison is not familiar with the notion of "disarm and conquer." But that was typical of the times--except for the fact that Ellison was at least 10 years older than most of the contemporary exemplars of this approach. But at least he wasn't blowing anything up. (At least not *literally.* He did a pretty good job "blowing up" the Writer's Guild and Dayton, Ohio.)
We see where the 1970s and the "P.C." mania have brought us with Ellison's statements about "chicks," sex and casual use of the "n word". Anyone who wrote stuff like that today would be anathematized and probably get death threats. His forecasts of where the future might be leading--either in general assumptions or in a piece he wrote for a magazine speculating about the year 1980--are amusingly, and sometimes sadly, short-sighted. But as such, they're an object lesson about the way we all generalize trends from our own present-moment concerns. Ellison's imagination of 1980, for example, includes a never-ending Vietnam war, Nixon still in office, rationing, and "dissidents" all forced underground and hunted down by law enforcement like resisters in WWII France. He had no idea what really lay just a few years ahead: Watergate, the oil embargo, the Recession, the rise of militant Islamic fundamentalism, the Carter administration and the birth of the 1980s with his Nemesis, then-Governor Reagan, elected to the White House.
This book and its sequel (The Other Glass Teat) are not easy to find, and now I want to read the second book!
March 19, 2015
This is one of those books I've been waiting years to read (it's pretty hard to find). It's early Ellison in all his fiery liberal glory. Completely unabashed and unrepentant (ok, there are a few, rare moments when he does apologize). The modern reader will need to work to get past all the hip, 60's language but you're rewarded with a singular view of the times. Ostensibly about TV, these columns are really about TV's ability to manipulate and be manipulated. He uses TV as a medium to talk about most all of the social issues of the day. Some of his commentary about figures like Nixon, Agnew, Reagan and various Hollywood types are even more interesting when reminded that much of what we remember them for hadn't yet happened when these columns were written. Such as his take on ABC's refusal to pick up the impressive new Norman Lear series called "Those Were The Days" staring Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton. We now know that year or so after the column was written, the show was picked up by CBS and the rest is literal TV history. On the other hand, there are some odd "misses" when it comes to names. In one column where he talks about his love of Saturday cartoons, he says quite a bit about Spiderman but refers to the main character as "Peter Palmer". In another column, describing his march with Cesar Chavez, he repeatedly mentions how impressed he was with one of Chavez's supporters named "Joe Serda". I'm pretty sure he meant Joe Serna, who later became the first latino mayor of Sacramento. Overall though, Ellison's razor was never sharper.
November 7, 2022
This is a useful time capsule of all the things wrong with America at the time it was written since most of the things that Ellison cites are still wrong with America today: Authoritarian oppression, systematic racism and sexism, the fraud of the American Dream, war and pollution, and a host of other things that would fit neatly on our newsfeeds right now. Ellison comes off as a crank and a radical at the time of his writing, but he would fit right in with the viewpoints expressed today. Of course Ellison is no prescient nor is he laudable or admirable a character. He expresses himself condescendingly and his own racism and sexism is on full display. He seems to be aware of his prejudices, which is a necessary first step, but he does nothing to account for try to correct these facts about himself. The lessons about television are just as important today despite the changes in technology and the methods by which we all suck on the glass teats. Not something I'd recommend for everyone, but if you can stomach his many offensive viewpoints, then there's a lot to be learned here that shows people (not just Ellison, but lots of people) were aware of what was really going on over fifty years ago in this country.
September 5, 2020
This is an excellent collection of articles written by the late Harlan Ellison over 50 years ago, which are still relevant to modern television consumption. These articles chart the myriad underpinning paradigms of many of the programs consumed by American viewers at the time he wrote these articles, but they could just as easily apply to any television in any era. Ellison's impassioned and insightful critiques, in fact, draw their inspiration from Marshall McLuhan's idea that "the medium is the message."
Well worth the read, even if the shows Ellison mentions have long since retreated from the airwaves. The principle remains the same.
Well worth the read, even if the shows Ellison mentions have long since retreated from the airwaves. The principle remains the same.
October 4, 2011
Admittedly, Harlan is right about the corporate media, but the books is still a product of its time, and after 40 years, it hasn't aged well. If you're not old enough to remember the shows Harlan writes about (when he's not busy writing about himself), you'll be lost. Works better as an example of aging writer striving to appear hip, when hip was cool (or whatever the right term is these days).
February 25, 2021
Stephen King in 1981 said that some of the shows were forgotten but the analysis had gotten only more accurate and, hey, still true in 2021. The "Common Man" essays seem the peak but it all rhymes to a weird extent. I wanna see that Thurber sitcom, tho, it sounds dope.
June 12, 2022
A series of newspaper essays on TV written by Harlan Ellison. While a lot of this is somewhat dated (at least in terms of cultural references), it's somewhat surprising how much Ellison had his finger on the pulse of what's wrong with the country, and how little has changed since that time.
June 22, 2008
excellent
January 4, 2010
Wonderful book on the banality of television. VERY dated, but an excellent time capsule.
March 11, 2024
This book I read in a rented room at Churchill College Cambridge. I was working on my dissertation and found it in a book shop in town. Read it until after 3AM. Everything in it existed at the far, fuzzy limits of my memory, as I was around 4 or 5 when most of the articles compiled in it were published. So the many TV shows he mentioned I can just about remember. But it is the context in which those old shows existed that Ellison is so brilliant at evoking. These were basically throw-away opinion pieces he wrote for the Los Angeles Free Press (which seems to have been a Village Voice wannabe). And yet how much better they capture the times than so much of the more "serious" reportage of the day. If my subject was modern history and not the Royal Navy, this would be bread and butter primary source material for describing the zeitgeist of those years.
August 17, 2024
This book completely changed the way I watched tv. It made me expect more from tv. I wish Ellison was still around. I think he would ave loved a lot of the tv today.
One of his funniest reviews as for 'The Partridge Family'. It was 'Mother of God!'
He loved the pilot of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, saying, 'Hello, stick around for a few seasons. We need you.'
His reviews were usually loaded with humour but he took the Nixon/Agnew Whitehouse to task for their censorship of Vietnam War news and ended up on their 'shitlist'.
The guy was fearless.
One of his funniest reviews as for 'The Partridge Family'. It was 'Mother of God!'
He loved the pilot of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, saying, 'Hello, stick around for a few seasons. We need you.'
His reviews were usually loaded with humour but he took the Nixon/Agnew Whitehouse to task for their censorship of Vietnam War news and ended up on their 'shitlist'.
The guy was fearless.
Read
June 4, 2024More commentary than fiction or nonfiction. Phenomenal
August 29, 2024
Even out of date in many cases, it is still a great read. I enjoyed it just as much as when I read it when it was first published.
March 9, 2021
This review originally published in Looking For a Good book. Rated 3.5 of 5
As a teenager I was completely and utterly enthralled with Harlan Ellison and his writing. I've read everything he wrote that i could get my hands on. I met him at book signings and conventions and easily rated him as my favorite author.
Ellison's anger and angst and pomposity was fun, or at least identifiable for the teen me. And over the past few years I've purchased his entire catalog of available works in digital format so that I can read them again. This is perhaps an unusual place to start, this collection of essays since it was his fiction that first attracted me, but in many ways it was my reading The Glass Teat that first got me interested in reviewing. Long before I started this book review blog (which I've been doing for eight years now!) I've been a reviewer of art shows for a local paper, a reviewer of books for West Coast Review of Books magazine, and a reviewer of live theatre for a Los Angeles newspaper, and I can pretty much trace it back to my having read this book.
The Glass Teat is a collection of essays and reviews from Ellison's column of the same name in a Los Angeles newspaper where he reviewed and mostly disparaged the current slate of television shows (current from the late 1960's to mid 1970's mind you).
A few things struck me on this reading.
1) This doesn't stand the test of time too well. The programs he talks about are now fifty years old. Do we really care that in 1968 Ellison thought that:
The two shows that really tell us where it’s at are The Outcasts and Mod Squad. These are the shows that dare to take the enormous risk of utilizing black folk as heroes. These are the shows that win the title hands-down for this being The Year Of The Shuck.
Not only are the shows out of date, but the idioms Ellison uses so frequently are also out of date. Ellison wrote to the people, here and now, of his time. He spoke to them as if he were one of them (he'd take issue with my "as if") but 50 years later, we are not one of 'them' (even if we were back then).
2) I was a little surprised at how often Ellison's supposed television review column devolved into rants. Rants about the television industry were probably in line with the topic of the column. Rants about how he was treated by other industry insiders was marginally in line with the column theme. Rants about politics, "the Man," and 'square' school administrators who don't approve of his language and aggression when visiting high schools seemed a bit outside the parameters of a television review column. But it's Harlan Ellison. He pretty much did whatever he wanted and if he got shut down for not playing by the rules, it would just give him something more to rant about.
3) And my last impression here was noticing just how egotistical Ellison was. It's certainly no secret he thought highly of himself, but it really comes through in these essays where he is wronged and maligned by others who don't recognize him when he's right. It's kind of made me wonder about my younger self - the one who really 'dug' this guy.
Despite my above comments, I generally enjoyed reading this - mostly from a nostalgic point of view. But I really look forward to re-reading Ellison's fiction.
Looking for a good book? The Glass Teat is a collection of mostly television reviews and essays by Harlan Ellison. Those who remember television in the 60's and 70's may find it fun to look back on what one cantankerous writer thought of television programs of the day.
As a teenager I was completely and utterly enthralled with Harlan Ellison and his writing. I've read everything he wrote that i could get my hands on. I met him at book signings and conventions and easily rated him as my favorite author.
Ellison's anger and angst and pomposity was fun, or at least identifiable for the teen me. And over the past few years I've purchased his entire catalog of available works in digital format so that I can read them again. This is perhaps an unusual place to start, this collection of essays since it was his fiction that first attracted me, but in many ways it was my reading The Glass Teat that first got me interested in reviewing. Long before I started this book review blog (which I've been doing for eight years now!) I've been a reviewer of art shows for a local paper, a reviewer of books for West Coast Review of Books magazine, and a reviewer of live theatre for a Los Angeles newspaper, and I can pretty much trace it back to my having read this book.
The Glass Teat is a collection of essays and reviews from Ellison's column of the same name in a Los Angeles newspaper where he reviewed and mostly disparaged the current slate of television shows (current from the late 1960's to mid 1970's mind you).
A few things struck me on this reading.
1) This doesn't stand the test of time too well. The programs he talks about are now fifty years old. Do we really care that in 1968 Ellison thought that:
The two shows that really tell us where it’s at are The Outcasts and Mod Squad. These are the shows that dare to take the enormous risk of utilizing black folk as heroes. These are the shows that win the title hands-down for this being The Year Of The Shuck.
Not only are the shows out of date, but the idioms Ellison uses so frequently are also out of date. Ellison wrote to the people, here and now, of his time. He spoke to them as if he were one of them (he'd take issue with my "as if") but 50 years later, we are not one of 'them' (even if we were back then).
2) I was a little surprised at how often Ellison's supposed television review column devolved into rants. Rants about the television industry were probably in line with the topic of the column. Rants about how he was treated by other industry insiders was marginally in line with the column theme. Rants about politics, "the Man," and 'square' school administrators who don't approve of his language and aggression when visiting high schools seemed a bit outside the parameters of a television review column. But it's Harlan Ellison. He pretty much did whatever he wanted and if he got shut down for not playing by the rules, it would just give him something more to rant about.
3) And my last impression here was noticing just how egotistical Ellison was. It's certainly no secret he thought highly of himself, but it really comes through in these essays where he is wronged and maligned by others who don't recognize him when he's right. It's kind of made me wonder about my younger self - the one who really 'dug' this guy.
Despite my above comments, I generally enjoyed reading this - mostly from a nostalgic point of view. But I really look forward to re-reading Ellison's fiction.
Looking for a good book? The Glass Teat is a collection of mostly television reviews and essays by Harlan Ellison. Those who remember television in the 60's and 70's may find it fun to look back on what one cantankerous writer thought of television programs of the day.
June 12, 2014
A little while ago I had written an article about rediscovering Harlan and of my goal on reading all of his books in published order. Well, in moving forward with this goal I recently read The Glass Teat.
I was looking forward to this book, since it has a great reputation, being well reviewed and received. Also the book contains columns of articles Mr. Ellison wrote in the late sixties for the Los Angeles Free Press and I am a huge fan of Mr. Ellison’s essays.
Now I had heard this book was about television, and I had heard that these columns got the attention of then Vice President Spiro Agnew, who helped limit the popularity of the book and killed the Sequel. This never made sense to me. How does television criticism make you an enemy of the government? Well I have read The Glass Teat and all my questions have been answered.
The Glass Teat is not really about television shows it is really about television as a medium, and how that medium relates to our society at that time. Television is an amazing invention of man. It is a tool which can reflect our society as a whole and in parts, it also can inform society about current news and of our history, but it also can be used to shape or society with ideas and opinions.
Harlan Ellison was commenting on all of this within the pages of The Glass Teat as well has telling you why Family Affair Sucked and why everyone should be tuning into the Smothers Brothers.
Ellison was using these columns as a way of pointing out political climate of our times as they were being broadcast into everyone’s living room. His beliefs are very liberal and his language at times is raw and full of passion. He observes current events of the time, through his television and gives the reader his observation and opinions, right down their throats!
The subject matter ranges from Vietnam, college protest, religion, education, film, tv shows and the Common Man.
As I read the book, I found that it was affecting emotionally. It was making me depressed, sad and very angry! Why? Because as I read I began to realize that we have not changed. Many of the issues that Ellison was writing about has not changed one bit since the late 60s. If fact if anything they have gotten worse. At least in the 60s there were protestors marching in the street demanding change, today everyone is too damn busy looking into their iPhones to care. For example, Ellison touches on news outlets shaping political opinion, today we have FOX news and MSNBC news each with their own political propaganda (However I do believe that FOX has this down to an art). Ellison notes about cover ups of mass killings of Vietnam civilians with Senators at the time saying it’s okay since they are not Americans. Today we have Gitmo and Senators saying it’s okay to torture if they are terrorists. Also Mr. Ellison does a column about a film review of a documentary about the “Common Man”. While reading his column and their opinions on welfare, race, and war I thought “Oh my god, that’s the Tea Party”. It appears that the old adage “those who forget history are doomed to repeat it” hold true, horribly true. It’s been over forty years since these articles were first written, and we as a society we have not evolved have not grown. Yes it saddens me and I am angry.
Many people before me have stated that Harlan Ellison’s book The Glass Teat was an important book when it was first released. I contend that it is even more important today. Yes this book upset me, thank goodness for that.
I was looking forward to this book, since it has a great reputation, being well reviewed and received. Also the book contains columns of articles Mr. Ellison wrote in the late sixties for the Los Angeles Free Press and I am a huge fan of Mr. Ellison’s essays.
Now I had heard this book was about television, and I had heard that these columns got the attention of then Vice President Spiro Agnew, who helped limit the popularity of the book and killed the Sequel. This never made sense to me. How does television criticism make you an enemy of the government? Well I have read The Glass Teat and all my questions have been answered.
The Glass Teat is not really about television shows it is really about television as a medium, and how that medium relates to our society at that time. Television is an amazing invention of man. It is a tool which can reflect our society as a whole and in parts, it also can inform society about current news and of our history, but it also can be used to shape or society with ideas and opinions.
Harlan Ellison was commenting on all of this within the pages of The Glass Teat as well has telling you why Family Affair Sucked and why everyone should be tuning into the Smothers Brothers.
Ellison was using these columns as a way of pointing out political climate of our times as they were being broadcast into everyone’s living room. His beliefs are very liberal and his language at times is raw and full of passion. He observes current events of the time, through his television and gives the reader his observation and opinions, right down their throats!
The subject matter ranges from Vietnam, college protest, religion, education, film, tv shows and the Common Man.
As I read the book, I found that it was affecting emotionally. It was making me depressed, sad and very angry! Why? Because as I read I began to realize that we have not changed. Many of the issues that Ellison was writing about has not changed one bit since the late 60s. If fact if anything they have gotten worse. At least in the 60s there were protestors marching in the street demanding change, today everyone is too damn busy looking into their iPhones to care. For example, Ellison touches on news outlets shaping political opinion, today we have FOX news and MSNBC news each with their own political propaganda (However I do believe that FOX has this down to an art). Ellison notes about cover ups of mass killings of Vietnam civilians with Senators at the time saying it’s okay since they are not Americans. Today we have Gitmo and Senators saying it’s okay to torture if they are terrorists. Also Mr. Ellison does a column about a film review of a documentary about the “Common Man”. While reading his column and their opinions on welfare, race, and war I thought “Oh my god, that’s the Tea Party”. It appears that the old adage “those who forget history are doomed to repeat it” hold true, horribly true. It’s been over forty years since these articles were first written, and we as a society we have not evolved have not grown. Yes it saddens me and I am angry.
Many people before me have stated that Harlan Ellison’s book The Glass Teat was an important book when it was first released. I contend that it is even more important today. Yes this book upset me, thank goodness for that.
January 29, 2013
This is a great book if you're interested in the socio-political climate of the late Sixties through the viewpoint of an intelligent, critical thinking progressive. Thing is I read it because I'm interested in television, and a minority of these collected columns from the Los Angeles Free Press look at TV without 44-year-old activist glasses. (Though history repeats, and I was struck how some of Ellison's smartest, angriest rants--with just a few proper nouns substituted--could've been peeled straight off of my favorite smart, angry blog, Kara Vallow's Teen Sleuth.)
But the few essays that gave me what I was seeking are excellent. It's rare and wonderful to find a writer of that era analyzing popular TV shrewdly and fairly and claiming it to be "as worthwhile an art-form as ballet, the opera, books, movies and painting." Ellison more often than not rips into television creators for dishing out gruel, but he without shame praises what he likes. Ellison doesn't like Mannix and Bonanza, but does like Adam-12 and Mission: Impossible. He hates Blondie and The Debbie Reynolds Show, but thinks Barbara Eden's comedic talents save I Dream of Jeannie. And he'll take George of the Jungle over any of the above. (I should note that I'm of the age that when I was a kid most of the shows Ellison writes about aired in daytime reruns, and I hated them all. I watched the first 30 seconds of Petticoat Junction and Ironside more times than I could count -- the amount of time it took me to get up and change the channel. Though for whatever reason I did like Jeannie and Bewitched.)
That all makes The Glass Teat a fantastic primary-source document of couch-potatoing in 1969. It shines when Ellison reels at the first reports of the My Lai massacre, feels underwhelmed by the moon landing, and most of all when he attends the pilot taping of a sitcom so new and challenging that he feels obligated to write a column daring ABC to put it on the air. The network chickened out, and Norman Lear's Those Were the Days starring Carroll O'Connor needed two more years and a name change before it would get its time slot and make history.
But the few essays that gave me what I was seeking are excellent. It's rare and wonderful to find a writer of that era analyzing popular TV shrewdly and fairly and claiming it to be "as worthwhile an art-form as ballet, the opera, books, movies and painting." Ellison more often than not rips into television creators for dishing out gruel, but he without shame praises what he likes. Ellison doesn't like Mannix and Bonanza, but does like Adam-12 and Mission: Impossible. He hates Blondie and The Debbie Reynolds Show, but thinks Barbara Eden's comedic talents save I Dream of Jeannie. And he'll take George of the Jungle over any of the above. (I should note that I'm of the age that when I was a kid most of the shows Ellison writes about aired in daytime reruns, and I hated them all. I watched the first 30 seconds of Petticoat Junction and Ironside more times than I could count -- the amount of time it took me to get up and change the channel. Though for whatever reason I did like Jeannie and Bewitched.)
That all makes The Glass Teat a fantastic primary-source document of couch-potatoing in 1969. It shines when Ellison reels at the first reports of the My Lai massacre, feels underwhelmed by the moon landing, and most of all when he attends the pilot taping of a sitcom so new and challenging that he feels obligated to write a column daring ABC to put it on the air. The network chickened out, and Norman Lear's Those Were the Days starring Carroll O'Connor needed two more years and a name change before it would get its time slot and make history.
August 19, 2015
Enough to give serious flashbacks to anyone who lived through the tail end of the Sixties in a pissed-off mood, which, as Ellison makes clear, was the only sane response. The first of two volumes collecting the TV column, sci fi/tv writer Ellison wrote for the LA Free Press from late 1968 through 1970, The Glass Teat is fueled by equal parts cynical/realistic humor and righteous anger as the world turned over thoughts/hopes/dreams of real social transformation to...pause for sad music--Spiro Agnew and Tricky Dick. There are times Ellison loses all sense of "balance," though what that meant in context would be difficult to say. He's nauseated by the rise of the ideology apotheosizing the "silent majority," the middle american," the "common Man" (named Time's Man of the Year for 1969). And he's more than nauseated by television's complicity in the dulling down (at best) or flat out lying (cf. the coverage of My Lai) that dominated the age. He chronicles some of the attempts to do better, which led to the symbolic cancellation of the Smothers Brothers show; vituperates (why not?) against the way the tube transmits ideologies of race and gender to the viewers he dismisses as "scuttlefish." He has zero tolerance for anything resembling political correctness, quite a bit less for those who attack "liberals" while putting up with all sorts of right wing bullshit. He's seriously worried about the US embracing fascism.
That's the way it felt.
In some ways, the most sobering part of the immensely entertaining collection is the 2011 preface, which begins: "This is my final communique to you prisoners of war. No more warnings. I'm done with all that. We've lost. I began actively warning you how it was closing in, what the prison would look like, how they would try to fool you with new meanings to old words, how they would convince you that everyone was your enemy, and you were too stupid to know who the Bad Guys were. Told you they'd lie to you, but mostly they'd frighten you...."
Feels like documentary realism to me.....
That's the way it felt.
In some ways, the most sobering part of the immensely entertaining collection is the 2011 preface, which begins: "This is my final communique to you prisoners of war. No more warnings. I'm done with all that. We've lost. I began actively warning you how it was closing in, what the prison would look like, how they would try to fool you with new meanings to old words, how they would convince you that everyone was your enemy, and you were too stupid to know who the Bad Guys were. Told you they'd lie to you, but mostly they'd frighten you...."
Feels like documentary realism to me.....
Read
January 3, 2015This was one of my favorite books as a teenager. I read the entire thing (and its sequel) out loud to myself, some columns more than once. Ellison seemed like the most vital writer I'd ever encountered. 40 years later, it all seems kind of embarrassing, Ellison seems particularly uncool despite his self-regard, his political statements never get below the surface. His accounts of things that happened to him seem untrustworthy--he tends to come off as the One Righteous Individual in most situations. I tend to doubt that Spiro even *noticed* him, much less engaged in a campaign to silence him. Even his apology to the kids he insults in one of the final chapters is structured around their praise for him (which doesn't sound like it was really written by teenagers).
It's fun to read his savaging of the television of the '60s, although the dramatic shows he praises don't really sound any better (nor do the terrible shows sound particularly worse).
His desperate insistence on using his coinage "scuttlefish" for all the television viewers he doesn't respect wears awfully thin after the first couple of instances.
His lengthy takedown of a vapid blonde hostess of a music program seemed obsessive, and hardly worth the time. He doesn't let her go, either; she's referred to several times later.
I suppose the demands of filling a weekly column necessitate a certain amount of hogwash. It's always been tough for freelancers. But at a writer's workshop in high school, one of the instructors told me, after he'd asked who my influences were, "Don't read Harlan. He never re-writes." That's probably not true, but I'd suspect these columns were not exactly labored over.
Still, they're a fascinating glimpse of a time, and of a man navigating his way through it, out of the mainstream, but never quite in the counterculture.
It's fun to read his savaging of the television of the '60s, although the dramatic shows he praises don't really sound any better (nor do the terrible shows sound particularly worse).
His desperate insistence on using his coinage "scuttlefish" for all the television viewers he doesn't respect wears awfully thin after the first couple of instances.
His lengthy takedown of a vapid blonde hostess of a music program seemed obsessive, and hardly worth the time. He doesn't let her go, either; she's referred to several times later.
I suppose the demands of filling a weekly column necessitate a certain amount of hogwash. It's always been tough for freelancers. But at a writer's workshop in high school, one of the instructors told me, after he'd asked who my influences were, "Don't read Harlan. He never re-writes." That's probably not true, but I'd suspect these columns were not exactly labored over.
Still, they're a fascinating glimpse of a time, and of a man navigating his way through it, out of the mainstream, but never quite in the counterculture.
April 1, 2011
“The Glass Teat” started life as a column by Harlan Ellison in the L.A. Free Press, about television and the media. It’s a peek behind the screen that shows not a haggard showman pulling levers, but the slick manipulations of corporations pushing buttons, our buttons.
“The Glass Teat” looks behind the banality of the stories the shows presented and reveals the subliminal messages embedded in the television shows we watch daily and take for granted. Television is far from being the “vast wasteland” of Newton Minow and Ellison reveals the programs for what they are, a palimpsest of hidden ideas and messages meant to influence our views and outlook on life.
Written between 1968 and 1970, the “hip” vernacular the articles are written in seem dated, and the TV shows discussed in the book are all long gone except for reruns or nostalgia stations. But Ellison opens our eyes to how the messages are laced into the shows story line. Was a show like “The Mod Squad” just an appeal to the booming youth market of the late 60’s? Under Ellison’s microscope we’re shown the subliminal message that being a “hippie” some how puts you on the wrong side of the law and the only way to reform yourself is to be an undercover police informant. But Ellison’s approach isn’t that of the dry academic, the articles are very entertaining and a few laugh out funny!
Reading “The Glass Teat” will give you a critical eye towards decoding the subliminal messages in your favorite TV shows and once we discover how to discern those messages we can apply them to the shows and even media we watch today. Anyone who watches TV should read “The Glass Teat,” you’ll never watch TV the same way again, and you’ll be a little suspicious of your TV afterwards.
“The Glass Teat” looks behind the banality of the stories the shows presented and reveals the subliminal messages embedded in the television shows we watch daily and take for granted. Television is far from being the “vast wasteland” of Newton Minow and Ellison reveals the programs for what they are, a palimpsest of hidden ideas and messages meant to influence our views and outlook on life.
Written between 1968 and 1970, the “hip” vernacular the articles are written in seem dated, and the TV shows discussed in the book are all long gone except for reruns or nostalgia stations. But Ellison opens our eyes to how the messages are laced into the shows story line. Was a show like “The Mod Squad” just an appeal to the booming youth market of the late 60’s? Under Ellison’s microscope we’re shown the subliminal message that being a “hippie” some how puts you on the wrong side of the law and the only way to reform yourself is to be an undercover police informant. But Ellison’s approach isn’t that of the dry academic, the articles are very entertaining and a few laugh out funny!
Reading “The Glass Teat” will give you a critical eye towards decoding the subliminal messages in your favorite TV shows and once we discover how to discern those messages we can apply them to the shows and even media we watch today. Anyone who watches TV should read “The Glass Teat,” you’ll never watch TV the same way again, and you’ll be a little suspicious of your TV afterwards.
December 18, 2007
I'd been wanting to read The Glass Teat for some time now & finally got around to making an ILL request for it.
The book is a collection of columns written for The Los Angeles Free Press from October 1968 - January 1970. I'm mildly disappointed. I was hoping Ellison would discuss television programming from the time more specifically; instead he focused more on politics & how The Establishment uses the boob tube to disinform the public. As opinionated as ever, Ellison rails against the Administration, with Agnew in particular receiving the brunt of his venom, as Spiro evidently took it upon himself to deal with/quash the media. As expected, Vietnam and race relations loom large; it would be interesting to compare some of these columns to more "traditional" news coverage of the times.
Ellison does discuss a couple of TV shows - The Smothers Brothers and its pale imitation, Laugh In. He also speaks well of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir; unfortunately, I've never seen it. He also rips into such bland fare as The Mod Squad and various variety shows, most of which I'd never heard of. His columns are far ranging, discussing the state of television in the then-dictatorship of Brazil and his experiences with guest appearances in Dayton Ohio, among other topics.
While I generally enjoy Ellison's work; I still don't like him very much. His protestations to the contrary, he *does* come off as a misogynist; as well as always on the verge of an apoplectic fit. I admire the strength of his convictions, even if I think he's occasionally an ass in the way he expresses them. Recommended to anyone looking for a counter-culture look at the Sixties, with a focus on teevee.
The book is a collection of columns written for The Los Angeles Free Press from October 1968 - January 1970. I'm mildly disappointed. I was hoping Ellison would discuss television programming from the time more specifically; instead he focused more on politics & how The Establishment uses the boob tube to disinform the public. As opinionated as ever, Ellison rails against the Administration, with Agnew in particular receiving the brunt of his venom, as Spiro evidently took it upon himself to deal with/quash the media. As expected, Vietnam and race relations loom large; it would be interesting to compare some of these columns to more "traditional" news coverage of the times.
Ellison does discuss a couple of TV shows - The Smothers Brothers and its pale imitation, Laugh In. He also speaks well of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir; unfortunately, I've never seen it. He also rips into such bland fare as The Mod Squad and various variety shows, most of which I'd never heard of. His columns are far ranging, discussing the state of television in the then-dictatorship of Brazil and his experiences with guest appearances in Dayton Ohio, among other topics.
While I generally enjoy Ellison's work; I still don't like him very much. His protestations to the contrary, he *does* come off as a misogynist; as well as always on the verge of an apoplectic fit. I admire the strength of his convictions, even if I think he's occasionally an ass in the way he expresses them. Recommended to anyone looking for a counter-culture look at the Sixties, with a focus on teevee.
February 1, 2017
A re-read of a collection of polemical TV columns written for an independent newspaper, The Los Angeles Free Press, beginning in 1968. This book contains the first 52 columns up until January 1970. Ellison uses the medium of TV criticism to discuss the ills of contemporary society in the Vietnam War/pre Nixon impeachment era.
For those not familiar with his style, be warned that there is a lot of swearing and words that would these days be completely unacceptable, including derogatory ones about race, although the writer is not using them to be racist: quite the opposite. However, it is rather ironic that while criticising the treatment of e.g. black people in the real world as well as TV, he does bandy around demeaning terms for women such as 'chicks', without seeming to realise these are insulting. As the columns go on, the penny does seem to drop and this does improve.
Also rather ironically, in view of his later views about science fiction (as I've read again recently in a 1990 writing handbook), in these columns he is perfectly happy to be described (among other things) as a science fiction writer and to give talks on the subject.
Some of the material in these columns is so of its time that it would have gone over my head even when I first read this as a teenager, as the TV shows and actors under discussion were long gone. However, there's enough of interest in Ellison's rancour, despair, occasional ray of hope that young people will be the saving of the USA, and the insight this collection gives about Americans of liberal views, despised as "intellectuals" at that period and probably also nowadays, to be worth a read.
For those not familiar with his style, be warned that there is a lot of swearing and words that would these days be completely unacceptable, including derogatory ones about race, although the writer is not using them to be racist: quite the opposite. However, it is rather ironic that while criticising the treatment of e.g. black people in the real world as well as TV, he does bandy around demeaning terms for women such as 'chicks', without seeming to realise these are insulting. As the columns go on, the penny does seem to drop and this does improve.
Also rather ironically, in view of his later views about science fiction (as I've read again recently in a 1990 writing handbook), in these columns he is perfectly happy to be described (among other things) as a science fiction writer and to give talks on the subject.
Some of the material in these columns is so of its time that it would have gone over my head even when I first read this as a teenager, as the TV shows and actors under discussion were long gone. However, there's enough of interest in Ellison's rancour, despair, occasional ray of hope that young people will be the saving of the USA, and the insight this collection gives about Americans of liberal views, despised as "intellectuals" at that period and probably also nowadays, to be worth a read.
Read
June 17, 2022One of the criticisms leveled at Harlan Ellison as the editor of the Dangerous Visions and, especially, Again, Dangerous Visions science fiction anthologies was for his insistence on bookending every story with blathering, pretentious forewords and afterwards, whose wordage often exceeded that of the stories they were supposedly commenting on. Ellison's response to this criticism was something like a triumphant: "Don't like them? Well, then don't read them, neckbeard! Duh!" It was a rich rejoinder from a man who made a second career out of savagely attacking anything he detested. If Ellison taken his own advice, The Glass Teat wouldn't exist. I guess it was okay when he was doing it.
I read through some of the essays in this book near the tail end of my Ellison phase, around the mid to late 1990's. I disliked their tone and was unimpressed by their general level of insight. Most of the shows he criticized undoubtedly deserved the scorn he heaped on them. But they also didn't need anyone's help to swirl down the toilet of obscurity: time alone was sufficient for that. Any ink spent on that endeavor was ink wasted. We all would have been better off if he'd invested the time writing stories, for which--unlike non-fiction--he had talent. As for Ellison's critiques of the medium itself, they were blunted by the fact that he wrote for television for decades--and that furthermore he contributed his own fair share of shit for the screen. (At least I, for one, found Babylon Five unwatchable.)
I read through some of the essays in this book near the tail end of my Ellison phase, around the mid to late 1990's. I disliked their tone and was unimpressed by their general level of insight. Most of the shows he criticized undoubtedly deserved the scorn he heaped on them. But they also didn't need anyone's help to swirl down the toilet of obscurity: time alone was sufficient for that. Any ink spent on that endeavor was ink wasted. We all would have been better off if he'd invested the time writing stories, for which--unlike non-fiction--he had talent. As for Ellison's critiques of the medium itself, they were blunted by the fact that he wrote for television for decades--and that furthermore he contributed his own fair share of shit for the screen. (At least I, for one, found Babylon Five unwatchable.)
February 24, 2010
“There are warnings herein. I hope some of you get their message before it's too late. 'Cause, baby, time is running out.” This collection spans the late sixties, contains 104 of Harlan Ellison's columns written for the Los Angeles Free Press, on the subject of television. The book is described as powerful and uncompromising, and his critiques of certain shows such as What's It all About, World? and The Groovy Show are as withering as they are hilarious. Ellison was a part of History. There are great personal stories here, which include his Imperial Valley march in The Grape Pickers Strike, organized by Cesar Chavez, and his being thrown out of University lecture halls for being too controversial. He adds some praise of TV shows, such as recommending everybody check out The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and My World—And Welcome To It. Firsthand we're shown how stupid the TV business and TV writers can be, and how dangerous, how politicians use the tube like lullaby music. What Ellison nicknamed “The Glass Teat” is shown as a frightful battlefield between the Establishment and everybody else. It may have been published in 1970, and since then there are other, more high-tech entertainments that astonish us, but the book is not exactly irrelevant, now is it? Oh, and one more quote. From the sequel, a book they tried to ban: “Spiro Agnew masturbates with copies of The Reader's Digest.”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 3, 2020
This is an anthology of Ellison's column in the LA Freep, starting about 1968. It got a bit repetitive after a while, but then any column would when reading back to back. That said, three things stuck out:
-How little things change, as far as politics
-How little the voice of progressives and conservatives change, generation to generation
-How much the struggle between the two seems immemorial. Who knew Smothers Brothers were revolutionary? Who knew a white guy calling a spade a Spade in 1969 was going to be "hip?" Who knew that, today still, we'd be talking about the establishment and how anti-gay and anti-women they would be?
I guess that last one is the most depressing. This book (granted, Ellison was super liberal) still shows/paints the establishment as, well, the f*cking establishment.
-How little things change, as far as politics
-How little the voice of progressives and conservatives change, generation to generation
-How much the struggle between the two seems immemorial. Who knew Smothers Brothers were revolutionary? Who knew a white guy calling a spade a Spade in 1969 was going to be "hip?" Who knew that, today still, we'd be talking about the establishment and how anti-gay and anti-women they would be?
I guess that last one is the most depressing. This book (granted, Ellison was super liberal) still shows/paints the establishment as, well, the f*cking establishment.
June 5, 2008
Harlan Ellison is a writer whose style I have always admired. His emotion bleeds from the pages.
This book is a collection of columns he wrote for The Los Angeles Free Press forty years ago. Technically they're all about television, but they are more an historical document that gives the reader an insight into the zeitgeist of America during the Vietnam era.
What's most surprising is how contemporary they seem. You could easily replace Nixon/Agnew with Bush/Cheney.
Also, Ellison's observations observations on the shallowness, racism, sexism and support of the status quo on 'The Glass Teat' still ring true.
Kinda sad when you think about it. Sigh.
This book is a collection of columns he wrote for The Los Angeles Free Press forty years ago. Technically they're all about television, but they are more an historical document that gives the reader an insight into the zeitgeist of America during the Vietnam era.
What's most surprising is how contemporary they seem. You could easily replace Nixon/Agnew with Bush/Cheney.
Also, Ellison's observations observations on the shallowness, racism, sexism and support of the status quo on 'The Glass Teat' still ring true.
Kinda sad when you think about it. Sigh.
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