Remembering The Broadsheet

 

It was the middle Eighties (I can remember that without looking, because I ran an obituary of Frank Herbert, 1986) and I was in the last sputtering remnants of my experiment with college. I decided I would try my hand at what was known as a ‘fanzine’ at the time, a self-produced, typed, xeroxed, and stapled magazine, the distant ancestor of many a modern blog. I called it The Broadsheet of Imaginative Literature. Broadsheet after the 17^th Century format, long pages with fewer leaves than a full-blown newspaper, to give it that olde sound; Imaginative Literature because Fantasy (which I was far more interested in) at the time inevitably took most people’s mind to Sexual Fantasy (via Fantasy Island; thanks a lot, Mr. Roarke). Also, Imaginative Literature covered Science Fiction and Horror as well.

My contributions were mainly articles; I remember one being about Ten Fantasy Books for Autumn, tales I felt as most suitable for the season. There were contributions of stories and poetry by my brother John, my friend Alan Peschke, Yen’s friend Wiley Reeves, and Yen’s then-girlfriend Kathy Moore.  I don’t remember ever producing any creative writing myself (maybe a poem or two, I can’t quite recall); I was content to be the editor of it all. I would type everything up in double columns on my old black Brother typewriter (an unnecessarily onerous task, as it didn’t print that way naturally; but I thought it looked cooler) and grab copied line illustrations from medieval works, Pauline Baines, Howard Pyle, and Fritz Eichenberg. Then I’d paste it all together and run off a few copies, at least enough for the contributors. I don’t think I ever made more than five copies an issue; at a nickel a page it was about what my finances could bear.

For a very short time there was a half-assed club associated with The Broadsheet: called The Inn Mates, meant to indicate eccentricity (inmates of the asylum) and companionship (mates who met at the inn). It met only one time, a rather token gathering hosted at Wylie Reeve’s house. I fear I was too reserved a character to lead such a club with any amount of spirit. It soon fizzled out. Somewhere there is a photograph memorializing the occasion.

Well. All the spare copies of The Broadsheet (including the master copies) are tucked away in the Files somewhere, sad little stillborn memories taken out now and then, found almost by accident while looking for other things, to be gazed at wistfully as a reminder of when we were all young and alive.