Harlan Ellison played a helpful role in this complicated tale. http://www.laweekly.com/2007-1...eath-of-jesse-james/

quote:

Originally posted by Doug Spaulding:
...I thought it was because of the congestive heart failure!...

Possibly so, but I don't recall him publicly mentioning such a particular diagnosis.

quote:

Originally posted by philnic:
Possibly so, but I don't recall him publicly mentioning such a particular diagnosis.

Nor do I.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Doug Spaulding,

quote:

Originally posted by Doug Spaulding:

quote:

Originally posted by philnic:
Possibly so, but I don't recall him publicly mentioning such a particular diagnosis.

Nor do I.

Here's an excerpt from a Salon article in which HE says that the reports of his demise have been greatly exaggerated:

Mark Barsotti: At the MadCon SF convention in 2010 you famously told the audience, "I'm dying." Since then you've won another Nebula, "Bugf#ck: The Useless Wit & Wisdom of Harlan Ellison" was published, "Phoenix Without Ashes" hit the New York Times best-seller list, two collections of your early pulp stories came out last fall, and D.C. Comics just published "7 Against Chaos." How much are you enjoying what you've call the "third act" of your career?

Harlan Ellison: As Mark Twain said, "Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated." How it came to be, that I announced that I was dying was that three years ago I was quite ill. Didn't know what it was and since I had a quadruple bypass about fourteen years ago and a stent about eight years ago, I've been remarkably free of illness, with the exception of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Around the time of MadCon, I began to feel terribly depressed, very, very low, the worst, the lowest point in my life. I was scheduled to go into Cedars-Sinai and was bedridden. I called John Manzo at MadCon and said, "I'm not gonna make it but, if you put a microphone on the stage I will answer all questions from my hospital bed. Just put up a big sign: 'Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain.'" And they put up a big poster and an ad saying, "Harlan Ellison's Last Big Con," so if anybody wanted their money back, they could say, "Ellison conned us," and I'd take the rap. About three days before (the con), John took a red-eye and appeared at the end of my bed with 200 copies of the "Harlan Ellison: Unrepentant Harlequin" book, and I was lying on my back signing them, for a day.

Then my adrenalin kicked in and I went to the convention, but it was a nightmare. I went blind in one eye, I actually attacked two people, and just prior to going I got a call from an interviewer in Madison, who said, "I hear you're not coming, what's going on, what are you sick with?" And he kept after me and wouldn't stop harassing me until finally, in frustration, the nasty side of my nature, which you know is there, Mark, kicked in and I said, "What part of 'I'm dying here' don't you get, you asshole?" And he of course ran with that as the headline.

Because it had gone viral in the interim I had to address it. So I, quote, "famously said I was dying." Well, (afterwards) things went from bad to worse. There were several hospitals, things got about as bad as they could possibly get, short of being plowed under with a backhoe. I drifted into the embrace of the Wizard of Oz, a neuropharmacologist who figured out I had clinical depression. And they put me on drugs, after a life of abstinence in which I do not drink, do not use dope, and I have now become someone who is Big Pharma's...

MB: Poster-boy?

HE: ...response to the W.C. Fields question, "Ain't there a sucker born every minute?"


http://www.salon.com/2013/08/2...a_great_ironic_joke/