How Many Of You Have Actually Read Charles Fort's Books?

Matt

Matt

Self-transforming Machine Elf of Hyperspace
Joined
Jun 4, 2021
Messages
169
Just wondering if anyone has managed to make it through any of the books with his idiosyncratic and odd writing style. I'm struggling.
 
Matt said:
Just wondering if anyone has managed to make it through any of the books with his idiosyncratic and odd writing style. I'm struggling.
Click to expand...
I read all of them, but it was a long time ago.
 
I read several, but with all due respect to our founder, they're a bit long winded and repetitive.
So I think I browsed them, not really read them cover to cover.
But the ideas are good.
 
I'm currently reading "Letters of the Damned" at the moment and Fort's letters to the press are actually clear and direct compared to his books. And the letters have some strange ideas that show he wasn't the open minded sceptic/agnostic that Forteans think he was.
 
I think I have read all his non-fiction works, though there are probably more letters out there!

I think I downloaded the fiction some years ago and may still dig it out.

We have lost touch with Fort's literary models: Carlyle and Mark Twain, especially. His weirdness comes from applying their dialectic methods to anomalous stuff. The style is essentially comic. Books of curiosities were a Victorian publishing cliché. Sometimes, they were paraded as delusions of earlier days, or the Madness of Crowds. Fort gives the genre a twist and explicitly presents himself as council for the defence of the excluded data. He seemed an oddity himself because he was a Victorian at heart. :)
 
Matt said:
Just wondering if anyone has managed to make it through any of the books with his idiosyncratic and odd writing style. I'm struggling.
Click to expand...
Same here. I'm almost done with New Lands. I started like 15 years ago. It's probably best to read them one chapter per day. His writing is incredibly irritating to me in many ways.

I also have both volumes of Redemption of the Damned and I'm more interested in getting to them.
 
Matt said:
Just wondering if anyone has managed to make it through any of the books with his idiosyncratic and odd writing style. I'm struggling.
Click to expand...

I've read one totally and others by skimming.

JamesWhitehead said:
We have lost touch with Fort's literary models: Carlyle and Mark Twain, especially. His weirdness comes from applying their dialectic methods to anomalous stuff. The style is essentially comic. Books of curiosities were a Victorian publishing cliché. Sometimes, they were paraded as delusions of earlier days, or the Madness of Crowds. Fort gives the genre a twist and explicitly presents himself as council for the defence of the excluded data. He seemed an oddity himself because he was a Victorian at heart. :)
Click to expand...

this is very good to know! I will attempt ot be more tolerant and not feel the itch to mark him as a I would a grad student! :twothumbs:
 
Perhaps pithy sayings are a good way to get to know the man. I admit I am here of last resort but due to the fact will eventually have to do some reading. I am reading The Making of Homonology a few pages at a time, unfortunate he is of the era where Patterson & Gremlin seemed like the holy grail, that and scientific acceptance. I can recommend Origins by Richard Leakey.
 
I read the four when I was a lad in the 1970s, and again a few decades later when I misplaced those old paperbacks and got the Dover all-in-one edition (I used to live down the street from the Dover headquarters/warehouse and they had a little shop attached to it back then.) Yes, at times a difficult read, but not quite Tolkien-level. Enjoyed them all.
 
For what my opinion is worth (of someone who speaks little and very bad English) ...

The four main books I managed to read in English (somehow): "Book of the Damned", "New Lands", "Lo!" and "Wild Talents".

I tried to read "The Outcast Manufacturers", only a couple of pages, and I wondered what language it was written in. :oops:
 
I tried one, once. Whilst I love his approach, that book was nearly the death of me. Count me another among the 'irritated'.

Sorry CF, but I don't have long enough left to me on the planet to wade through any more, it's just stylistically not my thing.
 
I've got the big four in one volume which I read probably no less than ten years ago. My memory of it is that it was engrossing and interesting to begin with but, by about halfway through the second book, became a chore that occasionally threw something novel at me. I made notes at the time so that I would know what things that particularly interested me could be found where, but I've moved three times since then and downsized twice. I think it's the spirit of Fort that endures, but his subjects are perhaps better experienced through other authors.
 
Aren't the particular faults with Fort's writing style simply emblematic of prose, and poetry, in which the authors set out to criticise things, people, received wisdom etc etc? For instance, I frequently find my own writing style annoying, not least because of its 'routines' and...well, loads more stylistic faults which have little do with my actual ability regarding writing. Even this paragraph is bloody irritating...

To be clear, at last: I'd argue that reading any piece of written work that seeks to criticise - even one in which we happen to agree totally with the author's points or agenda - can make us want to stop reading. The piece might even 'succeed' in making us see the point-of-view of the criticised, something which is a failure on the author's part. Negativity, generally, makes for a depressing and, sometimes, interminable read - whatever Fort's flaws, whatever the instances when he seems to us to be correct in his criticisms, writing with a fundamentally negative agenda drives the reader to an extreme of one kind or another: perhaps either cheerless agreement or else a rejection apart from what is actually being criticised or praised.
 
Steven said:
Aren't the particular faults with Fort's writing style simply emblematic of prose, and poetry, in which the authors set out to criticise things, people, received wisdom etc etc? For instance, I frequently find my own writing style annoying, not least because of its 'routines' and...well, loads more stylistic faults which have little do with my actual ability regarding writing. Even this paragraph is bloody irritating...

To be clear, at last: I'd argue that reading any piece of written work that seeks to criticise - even one in which we happen to agree totally with the author's points or agenda - can make us want to stop reading. The piece might even 'succeed' in making us see the point-of-view of the criticised, something which is a failure on the author's part. Negativity, generally, makes for a depressing and, sometimes, interminable read - whatever Fort's flaws, whatever the instances when he seems to us to be correct in his criticisms, writing with a fundamentally negative agenda drives the reader to an extreme of one kind or another: perhaps either cheerless agreement or else a rejection apart from what is actually being criticised or praised.
Click to expand...
I think it is more than that. The style seems dense and does not flow easily to the modern eye - this is quite common for non-fiction books of the period, where grammar and vocabulary were used in a fashion that we are no longer used to.
 
SimonBurchell said:
I think it is more than that. The style seems dense and does not flow easily to the modern eye - this is quite common for non-fiction books of the period, where grammar and vocabulary were used in a fashion that we are no longer used to.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it could simply be a historical thing - even Victorian-era novels which I'm certain I'd love have been so convoluted and overwritten in style that I've given up on them. Plus, I learned to appreciate Shakespeare's play from books of criticism, not by reading the plays themselves - the language and style were off-putting and 'difficult'.
 
A curiosity: after thirty years (or maybe more) they are printing Fort's books in Italian and the publisher is "Profondo Rosso", that is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Red , I think the owner is Dario Argento himself.

1746523234622.png


https://www.profondorossostore.com/it/cerca?tag=Charles+Fort

In reality the operation is questionable: they divided the books in a strange way, they changed or created the titles making them sensationalistic. But as long as Fort is published this is also fine.
 
@Matt ? this is an interesting thread :twothumbs:

Is the picture more or less as you were expecting? Or was it a blue skies impulse?
 
Steven said:
Aren't the particular faults with Fort's writing style simply emblematic of prose, and poetry, in which the authors set out to criticise things, people, received wisdom etc etc? For instance, I frequently find my own writing style annoying, not least because of its 'routines' and...well, loads more stylistic faults which have little do with my actual ability regarding writing. Even this paragraph is bloody irritating...

To be clear, at last: I'd argue that reading any piece of written work that seeks to criticise - even one in which we happen to agree totally with the author's points or agenda - can make us want to stop reading. The piece might even 'succeed' in making us see the point-of-view of the criticised, something which is a failure on the author's part. Negativity, generally, makes for a depressing and, sometimes, interminable read - whatever Fort's flaws, whatever the instances when he seems to us to be correct in his criticisms, writing with a fundamentally negative agenda drives the reader to an extreme of one kind or another: perhaps either cheerless agreement or else a rejection apart from what is actually being criticised or praised.
Click to expand...
It's not the "negativity" that makes his work so inaccessible to a lay reader, but the actual style. While excessive negativity can turn people off, negativity in general often attracts attention and emotional investment. Fort's stuff is just dense, convoluted, and consequently not fun to read. All professional writers should work to develop a style that balances 1) their authentic voice and 2) readers' need to find the writing clear and compelling.
 
Frideswide said:
@Matt ? this is an interesting thread :twothumbs:

Is the picture more or less as you were expecting? Or was it a blue skies impulse?
Click to expand...

I'm quite surprised at how many people on here have actually managed to get through any of Fort's books at all. I thought it would be a lot less.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top