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From: @RUTGERS.ARPA:donn@utah-cs
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: ELLISON / DEATHBIRD / QUESTION (help) 
Message-ID: <543@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 7-Feb-85 06:47:39 EST
Article-I.D.: topaz.543
Posted: Thu Feb  7 06:47:39 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 9-Feb-85 05:48:06 EST
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From: donn@utah-cs (Donn Seeley)

	From Andrew R. Scholnick (idmi-cc!andrew):

	One of my all time favorite science fiction works was the
	DEATHBIRD by Harlan "the little monster" Ellison.  ...  My only
	problem with it was the 'dedication' at the end ...  I can't
	figure it out.  ...  Anyone out there know what I'm talking
	about and have an answer? ...



For me the dedication explained the whole story.  If it wasn't for the
dedication the story wouldn't have had the impact it did on me; I shed
a few tears the first time I read it, and a few more re-reading it just
now...  You'll never understand without going to the source: I suggest
A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT for the snake's point of
view, and NO. 44, THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER for the human's.  I've just
recently been reading MARK TWAIN'S MYSTERIOUS STRANGER MANUSCRIPTS
(edited from the Mark Twain Papers at Berkeley by William Gibson) and
if you're lucky enough to track this volume down in a library
somewhere, you'll have an amazing time.  Ellison's 'The Deathbird' is a
very nice story, but for me it simply doesn't compare to STRANGER...
If you ever wonder what made Twain the way he was, I suggest you read
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN, a document that is surprisingly
entertaining and surprisingly touching as well.

As long as I'm here, I though I might share a fragment from the Papers
that is included in STRANGER MANUSCRIPTS.  In ragged manuscript form it
reads a bit like verse, so I'll present it as a kind of 'found poetry':

	The rain continued to beat softly on the panes,
	& the wind to sigh & wail about the eaves.
	In the room there was no sound;
	both of us remained buried in thought.
	After a long time I roused myself
	& took up the thread where it had been
	broken off:

		'My perhaps over-warm eulogy
		of the character of my race,
		& my praise of its noble struggle
		against heavy odds toward higher
		& ever higher
		moral & spiritual summits,

		'have not won from you even
		the slender kindness of a comment.'

	The Prince of Darkness answered gravely --

		'Is not silence a comment?'

	I had invited that thrust,
	& was ashamed.

A Twain fan,

Donn Seeley    University of Utah CS Dept    donn@utah-cs.arpa
40 46' 6"N 111 50' 34"W    (801) 581-5668    decvax!utah-cs!donn