 Harlan Ellison |
If one of the unarguable criteria for literary greatness is
recognition, consider this: In all of the history of literature,
there are only five fictional creations known to every man, woman, and
child on the planet. The urchin in Irkutsk may never have heard of
Hamlet, the peon in Pernambuco may not know who Raskolnikov is; the
widow in Jakarta may stare blankly at the mention of Don Quixote or
Micawber or Jay Gatsby. But every man, woman, and child on the planet
knows Mickey Mouse, Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Robin Hood... and
Superman.
He is more than the fanciful daydream of two Cleveland schoolboys. He is the 20th-century archetype of mankind at its finest. He is courage and humanity, steadfastness and decency, responsibility and ethic. He is our universal longing for perfection, for wisdom and power used in the service of the human race. Of all the literary creations of American fiction, Superman, after all these years, born of a "dispensable, disreputable" genre, is the only one that seems certain to get Posterity's nod. And that is because, simply put, he is our highest aspirations in human form. - Harlan Ellison |