Comments on: Charles Fort and Andre Breton

By: Ultan

Ultan — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 01:25:00 +0000

No need to sponsor Amazon - Fort's works are out of copyright, and have been for at least a decade in the US - he died 80 years ago next month. Go to: resologist.net, which not only has the full text of Fort's non-fiction books also some of Fort's short stories and correspondence. Another great resource for Fortean reports is the late William Corliss' 30-year collection of abstracts of odd reports from the scientific literature: Science Frontiers Online

By: AviSolomon

AviSolomon — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 22:31:00 +0000

Too bad the Wunderzeichenbuch is not available online in it’s entirety:
http://lanternativa.info/desfraul-estetic-al-mortii-xxiii-wunderzeichenbuch/

By: LogrusZed

LogrusZed — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 20:38:00 +0000

What’s really incredible is that he wasn’t even a Century-Baby.

By: C W

C W — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 19:44:00 +0000

So how many of the Fortean stories were outright made up? (by Fort, not by the rest obviously. Those are countless…)

By: C W

C W — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 19:42:00 +0000

Pleased to meet you, a few members of my family do.

By: David Pescovitz

David Pescovitz — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 19:24:00 +0000

Wow! This looks fantastic, Art! Thank you!

http://seenandsaid.blogspot.com/2010/10/wunderzeichenbuch.html

By: Art

Art — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 18:25:00 +0000

This fascinating work reminds me of the 16th century Augsberg, German, “Wunderzeichenbuch” (The Book of Miracles). This was the earliest bona fide attempt to scientifically gather and catalog preternatural phenomena. Thanks for the post, David! :)

By: tristan eldritch

tristan eldritch — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 18:24:00 +0000

Gideon – Your point is fairly legitimate. To my mind, a great many people who followed after Fort just took the wild stories to heart, and didn’t really engage with his larger philosophical purpose in collecting them. They became ardent and literal believers in some mythos or other of the anomalous, which of course went completely against the skepticism that Fort espoused in the first place. However, there have been some great Forteans in the proper sense of the word down through the years: Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier (whose work was also closely associated the Surrealist movement) and Robert Anton Wilson spring to mind.

I think Fort’s response to your question, though, would probably be: “Does anyone know roughly when the fun collectors of mundane, everyday, and predictable events started to believe it was all real and deadly serious?”

By: Gideon Jones

Gideon Jones — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:59:00 +0000

Next you’ll be telling me they aren’t actually Scotsmen either.

By: David Pescovitz

David Pescovitz — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:42:00 +0000

I don’t know any actual Forteans who believe “it was all real and deadly serious.” And I know a lot of Forteans.

By: Gideon Jones

Gideon Jones — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:28:00 +0000

So does anyone know roughly when did the Fortean folks go from the fun collectors of odd stories to believing it was all real and deadly serious?