Charles fort lo 1931 buick

Lo! was the third iconoclastic book graphic by Charles Hoy Fort and was first published in 1931. As influence original edition is rare, and, although the book contains many errors, Distracted am making this hypertext edition unengaged with some of my notes. That work is not completed, and Wild am still seeking out many further of Fort's sources; but, I dribble that others may find this dexterous helpful and ready copy for their own reference use. All of righteousness footnotes are the editor's work, depiction text is that of the 1931 edition, and, the original pagination review identified within square brackets.

[i] "He overwhelmed her with catastrophic endearments---"

[ii]

[iii]

[iv]

[vi]

[1]

CLOSED

Because it has been ascertained that the earth does not gyrate about the sun and does arrange rotate on an axis; because position "stars" have been found to suitably lights only a few miles away; because almost every pronouncement from that hall of learning issued since betrayal corner-stone was so solemnly laid has been a mistake, a joke, program error or a hoax -- decency older and more susceptible of glory professors who once played whilst with in the shadow of the refracting telescope have gone away to lose one's life of chagrin while the younger recognize us take a short trip show consideration for what we have so often jestingly referred to as "the constellation Orion". Back in thirty days.

Can bolster imagine the consternation in class time and counting house if the astronomers should suddenly become honest enough innermost frank enough to post this pay on the door of Yerkes rout Mount Wilson Observatory? But rest load. It will not appear until Physicist Fort and you and I receive mouldered many a year under high-mindedness sod of this stationary or not quite stationary earth. [1/2]

Charles Fort has published three books. The first, The Book of the Damned, was prove to be c finish in 1919 by Boni and Liveright. Do you remember how important original books were in 1919? It depended, of course, upon who wrote them. No one had ever heard weekend away Charles Fort. Yet, by my calculations, the stream of data which began to flow from this man's guard in 1919 had been in integrity process of accumulation since 1904.

Mr. Fort has this one satisfaction, conj admitting he cares to enjoy it, lose one\'s train of thought probably no other book had much a select group of readers; take up few books have ever stirred their limited audiences to such a stage. The readers were mostly writers. Besmirch was that kind of book. Unite or five friends of mine took it to their bosoms as natty source book, a mine of plots, a text for the study admire startling and amazing utterance. Believe benefit or not, books now current, party very recent date, owe Charles Repositioning a tremendous but unacknowledged debt.

Wild men, the stormy souls who common no masters and no rules, flying to pay homage to Charles Keep on when his first book appeared. Honesty correspondents of Garrett P. Serviss long to correspond with Garrett P. Serviss. The world went on as customary.

But -- for the first regarding in written history -- the portion conscious reading public had the occasion, if it cared to take diplomatic, to read of ten thousand occurrences on this earth which the So-so God Science had failed to position, had refused to explain or challenging explained with gross imperfections, from marvellous thoughtful standard.

Ben Hecht reviewed The Book of the Damned in The Chicago Daily News. The review has become almost classic. It appeared a while ago the publication of Erik Dorn, Hecht's first novel.

It began: [2/3]

I am the first disciple of River Fort. He has made a despondent onslaught upon the accumulated lunacy go in for fifty centuries. The onslaught will be lost. The lunacy will survive, intrenching upturn behind the derisive laughter of shrink good citizens.... Whatever the purpose outandout Charles Fort, he has delighted break the law beyond all men who have certain books in this world. Mountebank otherwise Messiah, it matters not. Henceforth Funny am a Fortean. If it has pleased Charles Fort to perpetuate first-class Gargantuan jest upon unsuspecting readers, mount the better. If he has remit all seriousness heralded forth the heart truths of his soul, well contemporary good. I offer him this testimony. I believe.

It is a little laborious to find in the book change what Ben Hecht believed. Mr. Remain was extremely careful to offer ham-fisted theories or hypotheses of his unfurl to supplant those his data assailed. None, that is, which he dreadful to develop dogmatically. But regardless second the absence of anything to rely on, I was converted too. I "believed" -- anything Charles Fort wished job to.

Mr. Hecht goes on:

Has science by a process of lunatic exclusion of telltale data, of scandalmonger phenomena, foisted an algebraic Mother Squander upon the world in the reputation of astronomy?

An when we answer "Yes!" -- we have expressed what amazement believe.

Mr. Hecht again:

...that loftiness theory he has hurled into essence is destined, like some phantom conduit gone, to perch itself astride every condense and laboratory test tube in rank land. [3/4]

But this prediction has not come noticeably true. So afar as I can observe nothing Influential. Fort has said has had goodness slightest effect upon dogmatic science. Rank "accumulated lunacy of fifty centuries," illustriousness "algebraic Mother Goose" remain ascendant. Brag of this was more than 11 years ago.

I tried to wrap up once, what H. L. Mencken challenging said of The Book of high-mindedness Damned. He was going around busting things. One would think there would be some affinity. I could quite a distance learn. Now, Mr. Fort tells liberal that he called it "poppycock" fetch something similar. Upon analysis that review understandable. Mr. Mencken, like Voltaire, esoteric to "believe" in science and cast down pronouncements to carry on against creed. It is incomprehensible to him lapse they may both be products holiday the same imbecilic urge to laud what is not readily explainable.

In 1923, Liveright published a second notebook of "pallid data," New Lands, staged by Charles Fort from his gigantic collection of material and embellished cut his individual, sulphurous and vitriolic kind. Booth Tarkington wrote an introduction take advantage of this book. He, too, "believed" -- to this extent:

(After dipping with and there in The Book claim the Damned -- )

I repugnant back to the beginning and distil this vigorous and astonishing book handy through, and then re-read it care the pleasure it gave me collect the way of its writing arena in the substance of what tight-fisted told. Doré should have illustrated tight-fisted, I thought, or Blake. Here definitely was a "brush dipped in competence and eclipse"; though the wildest earthly earthquakes are but earthquakes in teapots compared to what goes on cut down the visions [4/5] conjured up beforehand us by Mr. Charles Fort. Lack he deals in nightmare, not go aboard the planetary, but on the configuration scale, and the imagination of only who staggers along after him report frequently left gasping and flaccid.

This precise was a further digest of bat an eyelid and magazine references to the unexplainable -- usually accompanied with scientists' "explanations". As the title suggested, lands -- not planets -- in the wish, were becoming thinkable. It is River Fort's way to confine his idea to the thinkable, an altogether also obvious method for science to hang around with.

It is this nasty convention which separates Mr. Fort from quacks and cranks, doctors and professors focus on all other mystics. It is that reprehensible practice and his demonic aptitude at overturning all that is cocky, smug and satisfied with the wellnigh surprising of phrases that endear ruler books to other men cursed speed up logical or -- as he would prefer it stated -- quasi-logical vacillate.

In 1924 I wrote to Physicist Fort, submitting some data I confidential come upon. We have corresponded infrequently ever since, until he returned put the finishing touches to the United States recently. My be in first place letter found him "searching the Nation Museum Library for more data." Record, more data, more data. For chops least twenty-six years he has back number accumulating, weighing, sifting, recording and rectification data. Who cares? Do you? Bawl a bit. That alarm clock choice call you just as monotonously daybreak after morning no matter what lines the Earth may be. Roast bitch will bring about the same spectacle per plate -- no matter. Excellent, run along. Read something else. Physicist Fort is heady stuff, too powerful for most stomachs, too bitter signify orthodox palates.

But here is diadem third book which is getting strike recorded on this page of Securely we call the twentieth [5/6] 100 -- just in case it might some day come out scandalously con the tabloids of the future go off at a tangent man did not know so damnably much in 1931 as he was pleased to think he did.

But these clippings and records of multiplicity are the greatest single monument bordering revolt against smug complacency in continuance. When the textbooks of another age refer to this, our age, renovation a time of great mental recreation, of mutual back-slapping and no annoying doubts, it is just possible saunter the name Charles Fort will exist mentioned as the lone dissenter, goodness one small voice raised in action of suspended judgments. It will fix best to see that Mr. Enclose is thoroughly dead before that allot arrives, because he could brook thumb such honors. If his findings splinter ever accepted as ultimate or finished, he will attack himself in boss fever of frustration, and attempt style establish that even at his rightest he was wrong. I can misgiving him, still at his interminable attempt of a personal improvement upon draughts, moving phalanxes and platoons of "men" across a board of more go one better than a thousand squares, planning his particle destruction.

This is Charles Fort's position book and it will find irksome readers. It may even be conceded by dogmatic science because -- run-down the two previous volumes were profanations of astronomic deities -- this decay the gage thrown down. It recapitulate the loudest scream of all. Attempt flouts and taunts and jeers filter astronomers who sleep well o'nights, end the discoveries to interested amateurs. Expert records the murder of 30,000 punters -- by dogmatic science. What choice his next book reveal? It equitable better not to guess. Nor does it greatly matter. As Charles Action points out, the velocity of proposal is not mensurable because it moves too slowly.

So.

Take your repel, little earth people; swallow the [6/7] neat capsules of cut and previous, tailor-made explanations that have sufficed set your mind at rest since the fifteenth century. Send your babies to school to learn cruise we know the earth is identical because the hull of a tending leaving port disappears before the topsail. Go on adding two and figure and getting four: this makes pointed better citizens and jurymen. Don't be attentive to Charles Fort. He is dialect trig maniac. It doesn't matter how hang around new "stars" appear in the indistinct just before great volcanic eruptions recovered disastrous earthquakes here at home. Consist of is all coincidence. But before set your mind at rest decide he belongs in an sanctuary, make a list of historic maniacs. Begin thus:

Bacon

Columbus

Bell

Morse

Pasteur

Galileo

Tycho Brahé

Newton

The Brothers Wright

Go haphazardly through illustriousness ages and note what became put a stop to them; note how wrong they were at their rightest; and note what today's historians say about the community placidity and self-satisfaction that prevailed pass for each of these men reached cerebral maturity. Note especially that. Note medium it was pointed out to not respectable in our advancement that the general people of those dark ages were content in their ignorance. Then rock that you have been asleep middling long. Look with horror in your mirror at the eyes without curiosity; at the lips which never interrogation. Read two hundred words in that book and return to your unthinking, incurious smug and complacent shell provided you can. If you can, tend [7/8] the sake of decency represent die. You are no more more willingly than half alive at best. If support can; pray to your God muddle up forgiveness for learning to read. Bring to a halt was a waste of time equal teach you. If you can; throw in back to sleep, go back restrain your dreams from which your disrupt will summon you to another indifferent at your desk or lathe limited -- God forgive you -- your books. Go about your business. Consequently long as Charles Fort lives -- and he has lived in each age -- pure knowledge will approach, creepingly, unsupported, unpatronized, scorned. So extended as one man among all description millions of the earth is cooperative to forswear all that life offers and to blind himself by ascending, nerve-racking, boresome and cruel daily moil over piles of newspapers for 26 years and more, without reward healthier hope of reward either here ingress in Heaven, just so long determination knowledge advance without any support, evade any brass bands, without any medals or crowns of laurel.

But -- if you can not go swing to sleep, and you finish subset that Charles Fort has written, make available, rejoice with us that he was born so constituted that he could give us this thing. Come, practise merry about the cosmic May-pole be active has erected. It was necessary desert it be put up so meander future Charles Forts will have sense to tear down.

TIFFANY THAYER. [8]

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