Ellison's wild style, his unfinished sentences, his tumbling, driving pace, his mad, mixed metaphors and symbols and similes have exploded in all sorts of markets—mostly minor: girlie books, record-review columns, mystery and detective pulps, novels, radio and TV and the movies. But he began in and with science fiction; and his latest collection, Paingod, provides a fascinating study of what he was, and what he is becoming. What he is becoming is great. What he is having is a ball. He has now reached a point where the very worst he can become is the most sharply focused image-maker of contemporary homo sap….
Ellison can be excruciatingly bad;… [but to dwell on examples] would be to commit a foolishness, for Ellison is a growing entity. One may recognize that a youth is not yet an adult; one does not, however, blame him for it. Buy Paingod and read it—and of it, especially the "non-introduction" and the rubrics between the stories. Then get hold of more Ellison titles—there are plenty. Watch him grow. Look, when the dazzle of his means fades from your reader's eye, at his ends: what he has to say, what he believes, believes in, and, clearly, is. (p. 690)
Theodore Sturgeon, in National Review (© National Review, Inc., 1966; 150 East 35th St., New York, N.Y. 10016), July 12, 1966.
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