The Glass Teat, Harlan Ellison. Ace Books (1983 reprint). Cover art by Barclay Shaw. 319 pages.
The Other Glass Teat, Harlan Ellison. Ace Books (1983). Cover art by Barclay Shaw. 397 pages.
Part of an ostensible review of the sitcom Happy Days; from Ellison’s column published on 3 July 1970 and reprinted in The Other Glass Teat:
One begins to realize that our national middle-class hunger to return to two decades of Depression, world war, Prohibition, Racism Unadmitted, Covert Fascination with Sex, Deadly Innocence, Isolationism, Provincialism, and Deprivation Remembered as Good Old Days has become a cultural sickness.
The past has always been a rich source for fun and profit. Nostalgia is a good thing. It keeps us from forgetting our roots. Readers of this column know I trip down Memory Lane myself frequently. But it is clearly evident that when an entire nation refuses to accept the responsibilities of its own future, when it seeks release in a morbid fascination with its past, and when it elevates the dusty dead days of the past to a pinnacle position of Olympian grandeur … we are in serious trouble.
Biblioklept 