Harry Schmarje
(December 27, 1925 – June 27, 1990)
Harris M. Schmarje was a thin-skinned fan from Muscatine, Iowa, active in the early 1940s. He published the fanzine Starlit Fantasy and founded the Midwest Fan Society with Charles McNutt, but the two had a falling out over money.
He attended the 1942 Michiconference and behaved gauchely enough to disgust Walt Liebscher, who already didn’t think much of him — Schmarje embellished his letters with self-important green stickers reading “Harris M. Schmarje, Author, Columnist, Critique”; his Midwest Fan Society proposed to run a “Chicon”; he smoked with pretentious mannerisms; and, unasked, he availed himself of a ride to Chicago with Jane Tucker, annoying Jane. (“Harris” was apparently a fan name. In all of his official documents, including his gravestone, he was simply “Harry.”)
In Le Zombie 50 (December 1942), Liebscher wrote a smart-assed conrep full of mild and not-so-mild insults about those in attendance; about Schmarje, he was especially cutting: “Harris M. Schmarje (Author, Columnist, Critique) is the great grandfather of all jerks.”
Schmarje took it badly and wrote angst-filled letters to both Bob Tucker (the faned) and Liebscher. Tucker replied in the following issue’s lettercol with well-meant direct advice (“be extrovert enough not to care what fans think of you”), while Liebscher wrote at length about what he did think.
Schmarje seems to have gafiated after that. In Le Zombie 53 (June 1943), Tucker reported, “Harry Schmarje resigns from the FAPA, and probably the rest of fandom.” Schmarje had previously written to VOM 23 (June 1942), “Will you please announce in VOM ... that I am resigning - from fandom,” but it seems as if he finally meant it.
| Person | 1925—1990 |
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