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Glen GoodKnight
Nov. 6th, 2010 12:02 pmdied on Wednesday, aged 69 I think. He was the founder of The Mythopoeic Society, for many years its President, and for even longer the editor of its journal Mythlore.
I hardly know how to step back and describe Glen: his presence was so pervasive in my life and that of everyone to whom the Mythopoeic Society was important, even to those who didn't know him well personally. He founded the Society in 1967 with a clear vision of what he wanted this organization to be. That vision is perhaps best described in negatives, but his view was positive in nature: these negatives are the side tracks he didn't want us to ramble off on and get stuck in a ditch with. It wasn't just a Tolkien club, because it had an equal emphasis on Tolkien's Inklings colleagues Lewis and Williams; it was interested in other fantasy authors who created myth (that's what that "50-cent Greek adjective," as he described it, "mythopoeic," means), but it wasn't a general fantasy club either; the three authors were all Christians whose belief permeated their work, but it wasn't a religious organization; it wasn't quite a branch of science-fiction fandom; it wasn't quite an academic group, though it had academic members and would aspire to scholarly respectability - which, within its field, it has eventually achieved.
Like a great chef, Glen combined ingredients taken from all these things and created a dish with a unique flavor of its own. The Mythopoeic Society attracted people of disparate character and special interests, and blossomed in that part of the Venn diagram where they all met. All this is the mixture that Glen made.
I have always felt a unique air to the Mythopoeic Society, and despite the disputes and annoyances that attend any such organization, there's a calmness and a genial collegiality to its meetings and publications that is unmatched even in the best of other social groups I know. That calmness, too, comes from Glen. Always slowly and softly spoken, even when arguing a position with great heat, even when exasperating everyone who knew him, he was always steady in his purpose, always in the same place, like a cool rock in the shade on a summer day.
The Society's dynamics depend on an even keel resulting from the balance of many people pulling in their own different directions. Sometimes it's wobbled a bit, sometimes Glen was the wobbler, but it's gotten more stable over the years, even after he withdrew from active participation in events.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sartorias writes that, over a decade ago, Glen looked around a Mythcon and said to her, "I was afraid the Society would die when I died. Now I don't think it will."
No, it won't, and that's because he built well. I think the reason the Society survived, where spinoff groups founded by people who wanted a different direction have faded away, is because it had three pillars of activity - discussion groups, annual conferences, and publications. Each was founded by Glen and each gradually, not without pain, passed beyond his control. The Society was founded as one book-discussion group in LA, and quickly grew alarmingly. For a while there were four groups in the area, each meeting monthly on a different weekend and all moderated by Glen, but as the numbers grew further and expanded outside the area, that obviously couldn't continue. The core committee that originally ran Mythcon - and, by Glen's insistence, that's the Mythopoeic Conference, not convention, a distinctive blend of the scholarly and the fannish - burned out after a few years and its other members went on to other things, and it had to be handed to groups outside the area to survive. If these activities' directions have not been entirely what Glen envisioned, their courses were still set by him and continue to be influenced by his creative ideas. Mythcon is still recognizably Mythcon as Glen made it, not an SF con or a general fantasy monster, and long may it wave.
The job Glen kept longest was that of editor of our scholarly journal, Mythlore. He was always a unique form of editor, keeping Mythlore in a large format featuring cover and interior artwork (much of it very good) despite the formal scholarly contents printed in his favorite Palatino typeface. Some felt the format detracted from its academic respectability, and his successors shrank the page size and eliminated the artwork, which I miss. Mythlore was nominally a quarterly, but the periods it approached that schedule were infrequent and short-lived. His often very personal editorials and some of the most truly memorable typographical errors ever made also contributed to its character. In his time, it was always his journal and expressed his personality, and nothing was going to change that.
I got to know Glen well after I became editor of the monthly bulletin, Mythprint - which Glen had first handed off to others long before I arrived - and sat ex officio with him on the Society's board of directors, the Council of Stewards. We made friendships in this group, but issues and disputes of Society governance often stood in the way of an easier relationship. I regretted this, because I genuinely enjoyed Glen's company when business was not on the agenda. We could talk well about the Inklings. I remember visits to the plush townhouse, perched alarmingly on a steep hillside, that he shared with his partner, Ken, filled with the conquests of Glen's ardent book-collecting fervor, and the gleam in his eye once when he handed me his latest wrapped-in-clear-plastic purchase, a small browning and crumbling unbound volume titled A Middle English Vocabulary, sure that I would instantly know its significance (the rare separate first printing of Tolkien's first academic publication).
I'd hoped that we could improve on that relationship when he finally, most reluctantly, retired from Mythlore's editorship, but he chose to withdraw entirely from Society activity at that time. We may - I may - not have done enough to assure him he'd still be welcome. In the last few years, though, he came back to Mythcon twice, and I count it as one of my better deeds that I helped facilitate his first return. Much older, obviously not in good health, he was still the same Glen, and now that the Society bird had truly left the nest, he was at last able to assume the uncontroversial role of benevolent patriarch for which he was best suited. At the first of these Mythcons, he gave a post-banquet talk expressing his satisfaction in what he had founded and what we had all achieved, and received a spontaneous standing ovation.
And that marks our appreciation of his achievement and his legacy.
others
sartorias on how Glen brought a shy girl to life with the Society.
scribblerworks especially on Glen's fostering of scholarship.
coppervale with the view of someone who knew Glen from afar, and with his photo with Glen as Guest of Honor at Glen's last Mythcon.
obituary from the LA Times, would you believe
I hardly know how to step back and describe Glen: his presence was so pervasive in my life and that of everyone to whom the Mythopoeic Society was important, even to those who didn't know him well personally. He founded the Society in 1967 with a clear vision of what he wanted this organization to be. That vision is perhaps best described in negatives, but his view was positive in nature: these negatives are the side tracks he didn't want us to ramble off on and get stuck in a ditch with. It wasn't just a Tolkien club, because it had an equal emphasis on Tolkien's Inklings colleagues Lewis and Williams; it was interested in other fantasy authors who created myth (that's what that "50-cent Greek adjective," as he described it, "mythopoeic," means), but it wasn't a general fantasy club either; the three authors were all Christians whose belief permeated their work, but it wasn't a religious organization; it wasn't quite a branch of science-fiction fandom; it wasn't quite an academic group, though it had academic members and would aspire to scholarly respectability - which, within its field, it has eventually achieved.
Like a great chef, Glen combined ingredients taken from all these things and created a dish with a unique flavor of its own. The Mythopoeic Society attracted people of disparate character and special interests, and blossomed in that part of the Venn diagram where they all met. All this is the mixture that Glen made.
I have always felt a unique air to the Mythopoeic Society, and despite the disputes and annoyances that attend any such organization, there's a calmness and a genial collegiality to its meetings and publications that is unmatched even in the best of other social groups I know. That calmness, too, comes from Glen. Always slowly and softly spoken, even when arguing a position with great heat, even when exasperating everyone who knew him, he was always steady in his purpose, always in the same place, like a cool rock in the shade on a summer day.
The Society's dynamics depend on an even keel resulting from the balance of many people pulling in their own different directions. Sometimes it's wobbled a bit, sometimes Glen was the wobbler, but it's gotten more stable over the years, even after he withdrew from active participation in events.
sartorias writes that, over a decade ago, Glen looked around a Mythcon and said to her, "I was afraid the Society would die when I died. Now I don't think it will."No, it won't, and that's because he built well. I think the reason the Society survived, where spinoff groups founded by people who wanted a different direction have faded away, is because it had three pillars of activity - discussion groups, annual conferences, and publications. Each was founded by Glen and each gradually, not without pain, passed beyond his control. The Society was founded as one book-discussion group in LA, and quickly grew alarmingly. For a while there were four groups in the area, each meeting monthly on a different weekend and all moderated by Glen, but as the numbers grew further and expanded outside the area, that obviously couldn't continue. The core committee that originally ran Mythcon - and, by Glen's insistence, that's the Mythopoeic Conference, not convention, a distinctive blend of the scholarly and the fannish - burned out after a few years and its other members went on to other things, and it had to be handed to groups outside the area to survive. If these activities' directions have not been entirely what Glen envisioned, their courses were still set by him and continue to be influenced by his creative ideas. Mythcon is still recognizably Mythcon as Glen made it, not an SF con or a general fantasy monster, and long may it wave.
The job Glen kept longest was that of editor of our scholarly journal, Mythlore. He was always a unique form of editor, keeping Mythlore in a large format featuring cover and interior artwork (much of it very good) despite the formal scholarly contents printed in his favorite Palatino typeface. Some felt the format detracted from its academic respectability, and his successors shrank the page size and eliminated the artwork, which I miss. Mythlore was nominally a quarterly, but the periods it approached that schedule were infrequent and short-lived. His often very personal editorials and some of the most truly memorable typographical errors ever made also contributed to its character. In his time, it was always his journal and expressed his personality, and nothing was going to change that.
I got to know Glen well after I became editor of the monthly bulletin, Mythprint - which Glen had first handed off to others long before I arrived - and sat ex officio with him on the Society's board of directors, the Council of Stewards. We made friendships in this group, but issues and disputes of Society governance often stood in the way of an easier relationship. I regretted this, because I genuinely enjoyed Glen's company when business was not on the agenda. We could talk well about the Inklings. I remember visits to the plush townhouse, perched alarmingly on a steep hillside, that he shared with his partner, Ken, filled with the conquests of Glen's ardent book-collecting fervor, and the gleam in his eye once when he handed me his latest wrapped-in-clear-plastic purchase, a small browning and crumbling unbound volume titled A Middle English Vocabulary, sure that I would instantly know its significance (the rare separate first printing of Tolkien's first academic publication).
I'd hoped that we could improve on that relationship when he finally, most reluctantly, retired from Mythlore's editorship, but he chose to withdraw entirely from Society activity at that time. We may - I may - not have done enough to assure him he'd still be welcome. In the last few years, though, he came back to Mythcon twice, and I count it as one of my better deeds that I helped facilitate his first return. Much older, obviously not in good health, he was still the same Glen, and now that the Society bird had truly left the nest, he was at last able to assume the uncontroversial role of benevolent patriarch for which he was best suited. At the first of these Mythcons, he gave a post-banquet talk expressing his satisfaction in what he had founded and what we had all achieved, and received a spontaneous standing ovation.
And that marks our appreciation of his achievement and his legacy.
others
sartorias on how Glen brought a shy girl to life with the Society.scribblerworks especially on Glen's fostering of scholarship.coppervale with the view of someone who knew Glen from afar, and with his photo with Glen as Guest of Honor at Glen's last Mythcon.obituary from the LA Times, would you believe
