The Drink Tank 277 (2011).pdf

The Drink Tank Issue 277 - Mike Glicksohn

I never met Mike Glicksohn.

I start too many of these memorial is-

sues with that sort of phrase. Growing up when

I did, I missed a lot of the early legends, and folks

like Bruce Pelz I only brushed up against once or

twice. I never met Mike Glicksohn, which is a sad

thing as everything I’ve heard about the guy has

made me jealous of those who knew him well.

I may not have ever met him, but I sure

do know Energumen. It’s one of the greatest

zines ever put out, a Best Fanzine Hugo winner,

and the source for many of the articles from

the legendary Susan Wood, then Susan Wood

Glicksohn. That was where I ﬁrst encountered

her stuff and to this day I’ve never seen anyone

who rivals her on sheer force of writing.

I recognised Mike’s writing mostly from

LoCs that showed up all over the place. I read

that Gary Farber said that he was, after Har-

ry Warner, the second most important LoCer

of all-time, and while I have a couple of other

names in mind for that honor, I wouldn’t argue

that he was one of the true greats. I never got

one from him, which is sad. I just came to the

party too late.

This issue is dedicated to Mike Glicksohn,

whose passing this last week has been noted by

a great many people in every form. It’s an easy

indicator of how beloved someone is by how

many people comment on their passing in on-

line forums, Jay came across the notice of Mike’s

passing and gave me a call.

“Chris, Mike Glicksohn died.” was how

he opened the call. “Did you know him?”

Whenever a Big Name Fan passes away,

Jay or SaBean will call and ask if I knew them. I

had heard on Facebook earlier, but I didn’t admit

that. Jay knew how much I enjoyed Energumen,

that’s why I nearly forced them on him, but he

was shocked that I had never met him.

“When we were around fandom, I think

everyone knew him.” He said.

They probably did.

“You know, he sounds a little like you,

Chris.”

I was slightly taken aback. I’ve been

compared, often unfavorably, to Forry and Walt

Dougherty, quite often to James Bacon, but

Glicksohn was a new one.

Maybe it’s the beard.

“He said that he didn’t care if he agreed

with whoever was writing or not, as long as it

was good. That sounds exactly like you, dude.”

The exact quote, “If it’s interesting and

well-written, I’ll publish it, whether I agree with

the viewpoint or not.” is from the ﬁrst issue of

Energumen and it pretty much exactly says that

I’ve always thought about my zines, especially

The Drink Tank. It’s not only my zine, it’s the zine

of everyone who takes part. As Mike says in is-

sue 7 of Energumen, “Energumen is a Genzine,

after all, and not a personal zine.”

I see what Jay was thinking.

This issue features a number of views of

Mike Glicksohn, and every one of them makes

me feel like I missed out.

I wanna thank Murray Moore for gather-

ing a lot of this material, Lorena Haldeman, Joel

Zakem and Jeff Beeler for the photos .

Cover Photo Courtesy Jeff Beeler

photo courtesy Jeff Beeler

An old rival – who later became a

friend – has died. I’d only just got over the

surprise of other deaths among my acquain-

tances over the last year or so. First there

was Phyllis Gotlieb. Then, over New Year’s

an artist I corresponded with died unex-

pectedly of a heart condition brought on

by adult-onset diabetes. It would seem that

I’ve arrived at the age when I must begin

worrying, “who’s next?”

I’m not going to pretend my words

are really about Mike, or inspired by and en-

during friendship. Truth be known, we had

a bumpy relationship that eventually mel-

lowed into a cordial one, but we were never

great friends. We held mutual respect.

When I was a fresh new face in SF

fandom, there was already a Big Name Fan

in Toronto. His name was Mike Glicksohn,

and he wore leathers, grew a bushy beard

my present Parkdale apartment and look down

on the small one-bedroom ﬂat that the two fan-

nish legends shared in 1973. For me, the past is

something I can visit any time, in some ways.

In those early days, Mike was something

like a distant stepfather to my generation of

Toronto fans. Though his inﬂuence on how we

perceived fandom was undeniable, we didn’t see

very much of him at the club, and didn’t include

him in many of our social events. Not invari-

ably so, however. I recall an evening at Victoria

Vayne’s ﬁrst apartment, a semi-swank one-bed-

room near High Park. It may have been the

same night that Bob Wilson cooked “Chinese

Enchiladas.” We – that is, I – decided it would

be funny to offer Mike the end of a bottle of

vodka after we had doctored it. Needless to say,

with a dose of pectin in it, the vodka didn’t pour

well. It had also been coloured with food

dye to resemble lime Jell-O. (Anyone who

calls himself a fanhistorian will know why

we chose lime Jell-O.)

On another occasion, Victoria of-

fered Mike a ride in her car. It was only a

Volkswagen Beetle, and there were as many

as eight of us who had to be seated. Two

went in the front with Victoria, the second

passenger in the lap of the ﬁrst. Four sat in

the back seat, passengers ﬁve and six in the

laps of four and ﬁve. But where were we to

put Glicksohn? I don’t know who came up

with the solution, but it was genius. It was

not always noticed, but Mike was a short

man. I suppose the hat and beard made him

seem larger. But, under the circumstances,

we noticed that Mike did not physically take

up very much room. With sufﬁcient contor-

tion, he might just ﬁt into the luggage space

and rode a motorcycle. He also published a fan-

zine called Energumen that was highly regarded

by other fans. I’ve told the story many times...

how I saw a copy passing from hand to hand

at my ﬁrst club meeting, but it magically twisted

aside at the last moment so I never once got

more than a glimpse of white covers and blue

pages. Although I missed out on the opportunity

to claim Energumen was the ﬁrst fanzine I ever

saw, Mike did give me my ﬁrst look at a mimeo-

graph machine. It was the Suami Press, the very

same mimeo with which he and Susan Wood

published Energumen with. He even allowed me

to touch the handle of it.

That was way back when. I was living in

Parkdale for the second time, and so did Mike

and Susan. In fact, I can stand on the balcony of

behind the back seats... and he did. He had to

be scrunched up a lot, but he took it like a good

sport.

Aside from a love of fandom, Mike and

I didn’t really have much in common. Mike

watched American baseball. I watched cartoons.

Mike read Steven King. I read Roman history.

Mike played poker. I built model cars. He drank

whiskey and I drank Kahlua. It wasn’t long be-

fore my instinct to emulate Mike had turned into

rivalry instead.

I just didn’t seem to be able to get along

with Mike’s crowd, either. They were not much

like the circle of misﬁts and oddballs that I gravi-

tated toward, and I never felt I was much wel-

comed among the elite of Midwest fandom. There

is some irony in this – many of the whackos I felt

most comfortable with in the ‘70s are people

who seem plainly maladjusted and misanthropic

to me today. I have long since parted company

with some of them. On the other hand, some

of the Midwest elite seem like perfectly reason-

able people to me now. To borrow from an old

joke about fathers and sons, it’s amazing how in-

teresting fandom has grown to be in only thirty

years.

Happily, that competitive phase of our

relationship only lasted a few years. Eventually

we realized that we moved in very different cir-

cles in fandom, so there was no reason to feel

as though we were in competition. I even recall

the exact moment we came to this resolution of

our discord.

It was at a convention – what better oc-

casion? According to a newly surfaced witness,

it was a World Fantasy Convention that was held

in Ottawa in 1984. In those days, Mike drank

quite heavily, and I bumped into him after he had

taken on a load. (At least that’s how I remember

it. Possibly I confuse other occasions when he

was loaded with this one.) He never passed a

certain point of inebriation in my presence, and

was perfectly lucid when we fell into conversa-

For a number of years, he was celebrated as

fandom’s Number One letter hack, ﬁlling a void

just as Harry Warner Jr. was cutting back. Even

as it seemed as though I was ﬁnally getting into

my stride in fanac, and could approach him on

even terms, Mike was concentrating more on

his friends and home. He even cut back on the

number of conventions he attended, saving mon-

ey to pay down on a house.

... Edited by Michael Glicksohn who

stubbornly insists on doing all the

work for it himself...

tion. I’ll never forget the gist of

what he said. “I respect you. You

aren’t at all like me, but I respect

that. I’m really good with people

and get along with almost every-

one. You aren’t, but you know

all sorts of stuff I was never in-

terested in, and can do lots of

things.”

I’ve thought about that

ever since. Probably making too

much of it, too, but in a way that’s

been a driving force in my fanac

ever since. If I can’t be liked, at

least I can be useful.

Ironically, by the time we

were on better terms, Mike was

beginning to reduce the amount

of time he spent on his fanac. I

suppose he felt he had achieved

most of his goals by then. Mike

had been the GoH of the 1975

Australian Worldcon, and he

had won a Hugo for his fanzine.

After Mike and Susan Wood broke up, he

moved to a ﬂat over a solidly-built 1940s-style

bungalow north of High Park. I had left Parkdale

myself, and was living in Willowdale, in the north

end of the city. But Mike’s new place was quite

near Victoria Vayne’s apartment. I spent quite a

lot of time with the mimeo there, so Victoria and

I would drop in on Mike occasionally. At the

time, Victoria and I were publishing DNQ and

Mike was producing Xenium.

A few more years passed. Victoria had

gaﬁated, and Mike had moved to a similar home

not too far from the previous ﬂat – but this time

he was buying, not renting. He also seemed

to cut back a great deal in his letter hacking at

about the same time. His interests were shifting,

no doubt, from fandom to friends he made at

home, outside fandom. That is not to say he cut

himself off from his old connections.

For a number of years, Mike and Mike

Harper ran a joint birthday bash that was in-

formally called “MikeCon.” It was held over a

weekend, and brought fans from

most places in the Midwest... and

probably farther. As I said, it was a

daunting walk, even for my more

robust physical condition at the

time, but some years I would set

one foot in front of another until

I was there. Invariably I chose to

make the pilgrimage only once in

the weekend, though other fans

I knew came two or even three

evenings. The food was good. I

knew some of the people. I saw

Mike just enough for the year to

feel satisﬁed.

Regarding the lion in his

den was an interesting experi-

ence. This was how I got to know

that Mike was a huge Steven King

fan – to the point of having al-

most every ﬁrst edition, and as

many of them signed as possible.

He was not really a bookaholic,

though. The two-story house

was not stuffed with books, as

some fans’ homes would be, nor

the walls covered ﬂoor to ceiling

Mike’s love of whiskey, though, was evi-

dent everywhere. The wooden ledges that ran

around the living and dining rooms displayed

empty bottles of the many kinds of ﬁne-quality

liquor that Mike had imbibed over the years.

After a few more years, though, it seemed

that I recognized fewer and fewer of the partici-

pants at MikeCon. I assumed the unfamiliar fac-

es were new friends of Mike, but whoever they

were they didn’t seem to be members of the

fandom known to me. The last year I attended,

I arrived late . Barbecued pig

– not pork, pig – had been on

the menu, but had been most-

ly consumed hours earlier. I

looked at the cold, crusted-

over parts of pig in their alu-

minum trays... and the ﬂies. It

seemed to sum up how much

appeal the event had left for

me. I often regretted it, but

it was the last time I attended

MikeCon.

By then, I had reduced

the amount of time I spent on

SF fandom as well. Not that I

had meant to, but SF fandom

by the late ‘80s seemed to

offer me little – only more

frustration than was good for

my blood pressure. Instead,

I wandered for about twenty

years in the wilderness of

furry fandom. While this was

absorbing and satisﬁed many

immediate needs – such as

supplementing my income – I

never entirely abandoned my

with bookshelves. You could actually tell what

colour the walls were in most rooms. Only his

den, where he kept his typer and King collection,

were anything like the idea of what a fan’s domi-

cile ought to be like. More to my surprise was

what I didn’t see. I had always assumed Mike to

be a math enthusiast. Why would he be a math

teacher otherwise? But I found no books on

the subject anywhere. This remains a mystery

to me.

old contacts. I continued to receive a respect-

able number of zines in the mail. Then, around

2005, I began to retrace my steps back to SF

fandom, and again began contributing heavily to

fanzines – oddly enough, less as an artist than as

a fanwriter.

By that time, Mike had retired from

his career of teaching high school math. I saw

him from time to time at local parties, such as

the annual fan bashes held by Robert Sawyer.

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