Love Ain't Nothing but Sex Misspelled

Rating:
Summary: A collection of some of Ellison's most personal stories.
Review: Harlan Ellison is so prolific and multi-faceted a writer that it's hard to pin him down as belonging to any one genre; in fact he actively resists such catergorizations and refers to his work not as science-fiction but as "speculative fiction", a more encompassing term. For those who think of Ellison mainly as a sci-fi writer, _Love Ain't Nothing But Sex Misspelled_ will show you a different part of his range. The stories (16 of them in my copy, but he dropped and added others in various editions) have a more directly autobiographical and intimate feeling to them than many of his more "speculative" works. From the sprawling 20-page introduction (as of the second edition) onward, the reader is taken on an emotional trip that will leave you changed (and probably wanting a cigarette). In his own words from the 2nd edition introduction: "These are all stories peripherally concerned with love, and they are included here because this book was, and remains, one of my personal favorites. And each tale to be told reflects another part of my fumbling attempts to understand the mystery of love. These stories have helped change my opinion of myself where human knowledge is concerned. They total up to almost 140,000 words of groping in the dark to find the answer... Here's hoping they shed a little light." They do.

Rating:
Summary: Great introduction. Not so great stories
Review: This book has possibly the greatest introduction of all Harlan Ellison books. This is why this man is one of the best essayists of our time. In stumbling through his personal life he tries to relate what little he knows about love all the while admitting that he doesn't really know anything. It is something that I read whenever I am feeling insecure about my own personal love life. It worked when I was overwhelmingly anti-social and it works now when I am mixed up and confused about recent breakups.

However, the stories in this book tend towards the melodramatic and depressing. There's one about an old Jewish woman who confronts a neo-Nazi and gets killed. There's another one about a girl who has to get an illegal abortion and dies. There's also one about a producer that convinces an old Hollywood starlet to come back to movies only to discover that she's not a very good actress and all her sex appeal only worked in the context of the classics.

That last one - "The Return of Miss Ankle Strap" - I believe has a tragic beauty, but the problem with all these stories is that they are all tragic. Harlan Ellison is not a man known for light comedy (one of his most uplifting stories is entitled Paingod and has the same basic theme of Job which most people miss because they never read the book of Job) but this book is too depressing.

So buy it for the essay alone. It's worth it for that. And if you read the rest of the book, read it slowly. Else you'll be reading Sylvia Plath to cheer yourself up.