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The Fortean Society

A

Anonymous

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Whta is known of the Fortean Society? Are there any surviving members? Do any copies of their journal, Doubt, exist? I recall that FT had a letter from a former member a while back, but since then...?

Ian Kidd

Ex incognitus scienta
 
"The Fortean Society today is unorganized, not disorganised; there's quite a difference. In fact it may have acquired new members. Every once in a while I get an application to join. Thayer used to accept all such, without quibble, on payment of a couple of bucks. My tactics are different. I mail the application on to the nearest members known to me and leave it to them to handle the newcomer."

Letter from Eric Frank Russell to Damon Knight, April 24, 1967.
(pg200 of 'Charles Fort, Prophet of The Unexplained' by Damon Knight. (1971, Gollancz, London).

"The International Fortean Organization (INFO) was incorporated as a non-profit educational society in 1965 in order to continue and expand the original Fortean Society."

http://www.research.umbc.edu/~frizzell/info

-Justin.
 
Something from the newspapers.com archives...

"The fraternal salute of the members is five fingers in front of the nose".

We are related to a fraternity?

Awesome! Do former members include...

img_resize_21.jpg
 
Would this relate to the inaugural meeting of the 'Fortean Society', or 'Fortean Club'?

From the, 'Courier Post', 27 January, 1931:

Courier_Post_Tue__Jan_27__1931__compress32.jpg
 
The Fortean Society was indeed started in 1931 New York by Dreiser.
Last on the, 'Fortean Society' and some further insight, from the, 'Beatrice Daily Sun', on 4 February,1931.

It features a brief interview with Dreiser, in which he confirms his influence on the publication of Fort's work.

Beatrice_Daily_Sun_Wed__Feb_4__1931__compress27.jpg
 
I take it no notes or drafts ever turned up about Forts 'destroyed' book 'Ex'
X not Ex. He wrote two X and Y.

From

https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/11/of-x-y-and-z-the-search-for-the-lost-works-of-charles-fort/

There had in fact been the accumulation of writings in the form of not one, but two books written by Fort, given the Spartan titles of X and Y, which were never published, despite the efforts of Theodore Dreiser, who had been particularly impressed by them.

X was, as Fort explained, based on a concept which had been inspired by the oddities he had been collecting during his descents into the catacombs within the pages of tomes kept at the New York Public Library. X was, however, not the exposition on uncanny things that The Book of the Damned would ultimately be: it was instead a fictional work which borrowed such ideas, and attempted to unite them with an underlying meaning.

In Fort’s own words, as explained in a letter to Dreiser:

If, in acting upon us, X could only make use of what we should naturally do anyway–we should, if stimulated by X, think that we were but following what we call our own free wills.


Then, in the search for X, we should look not for strange, seemingly supernatural phenomena, but for things that we should have done anyway, but in a lesser degree, historical events which have heretofore been accounted for by reason, but have in them somewhere a vague mystery or an atmosphere of the unaccountable, despite all the assurances of their own infallibility that our historians have given us.


I shall try to show that X exists; that this influence is, and must be, evil to an appalling degree to us at present, evil which at least equals anything ever conceived, of in medieval demonology.
As noted by Fort’s biography Jim Steinmeyer, “Fort’s letter to Dreiser about X included a number of puzzling statements. The finished text was nearly a hundred thousand words, but Fort seemed uninterested in boo publishing, thinking that it might make a better series in a magazine.” This had not been the most curious thing Fort would express to Dreiser about X, however. Fort seemed to hint at the idea that the “fictional” work was based in what, at very least to Charles Fort, might very well have appeared to be fact.

“I’ve given up fiction,” Fort told Dreiser. “Or in a way I haven’t. I am convinced that everything is fiction; so here I am in the same old line.”

Steinmeyer argues that, “There’s little question that Fort took X seriously, and the doubts he expressed were his modest way of kidding his efforts.” After all, the same general themes present in surviving descriptions of X would appear to have been carried over into The Book of the Damned. Following the destruction of the X and Y manuscripts, Fort went back to collecting notes on oddities:

I ended up with 40,000 notes arranged under 1,300 headings such as “Harmony,” “Equilibrium,” “Catalysts,” “Saturation,” “Supply and Demand,” “Metabolism.” They were 1,300 hell hounds gibing, with 1,300 voices, at my attempt to find finality. I wrote a book that expressed very little of what I was trying to do.
 
X not Ex. He wrote two X and Y.

From

https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/11/of-x-y-and-z-the-search-for-the-lost-works-of-charles-fort/

There had in fact been the accumulation of writings in the form of not one, but two books written by Fort, given the Spartan titles of X and Y, which were never published, despite the efforts of Theodore Dreiser, who had been particularly impressed by them.

X was, as Fort explained, based on a concept which had been inspired by the oddities he had been collecting during his descents into the catacombs within the pages of tomes kept at the New York Public Library. X was, however, not the exposition on uncanny things that The Book of the Damned would ultimately be: it was instead a fictional work which borrowed such ideas, and attempted to unite them with an underlying meaning.

In Fort’s own words, as explained in a letter to Dreiser:


As noted by Fort’s biography Jim Steinmeyer, “Fort’s letter to Dreiser about X included a number of puzzling statements. The finished text was nearly a hundred thousand words, but Fort seemed uninterested in boo publishing, thinking that it might make a better series in a magazine.” This had not been the most curious thing Fort would express to Dreiser about X, however. Fort seemed to hint at the idea that the “fictional” work was based in what, at very least to Charles Fort, might very well have appeared to be fact.

“I’ve given up fiction,” Fort told Dreiser. “Or in a way I haven’t. I am convinced that everything is fiction; so here I am in the same old line.”

Steinmeyer argues that, “There’s little question that Fort took X seriously, and the doubts he expressed were his modest way of kidding his efforts.” After all, the same general themes present in surviving descriptions of X would appear to have been carried over into The Book of the Damned. Following the destruction of the X and Y manuscripts, Fort went back to collecting notes on oddities:
Thank you :)
 
Can't let this one go without a mention.

From the, 'Tablet', Brooklyn on 11 March, 1950 and columnist, Rev Raymond J Neufeld answers a number of questions, including the following:

The_Tablet_Sat__Mar_11__1950__compress33.jpg
 
Simply to highlight a cross-post:

Post in thread 'The Troll's Head' https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/the-trolls-head.60983/post-2140945

Therein, from 'Doubt' magazine, January, 1942:

"Playing a solitaire game of super-checkers - his own invention"...

That's the first time I have seen this iconic photograph explained!

If of interest, I have located a high-quality copy. To reatain same, it has not been resized or compressed and thus the file size is slightly too larger for posting.

Therefore, a copy is available here;

www.forteanmedia.com/Charles_Fort.jpg

Did you likewise, for all these years, wonder why Charles Fort looked so 'glum' in this picture. :)
 
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