On the Radio 07/26/2010
 
A couple of weeks ago I did an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio about my book Bigfoot.  An edited version of that interview has now been incorporated into an episode of "To The Best of Our Knowledge" about monsters.  Enjoy!
 
 
New Bigfoot article, just came out: Wildmen on the Cyberfrontier: The Computer Geek as an Iteration in the American Wildman Lore Cycle.
 
 
Steven adds some more about the interview I did with him, among other things replaying a back-and-forth I had with Matt Moneymaker and offering some snark from Jeff Meldrum.
 
 
Among Boucher’s great enthusiasms was Sherlock Holmes.  He wrote radio plays about the fictional detective’s exploits, essays about him, anthologized other works about Holmes, and belonged to the Baker Street Irregulars, a Sherlock Homes fan group (not unlike, in its way, some of the science fiction fan groups; apparently, the Irregulars were all men, but when Boucher and an editor at the San Francisco Chronicle formed a Bay Area chapter they were so inundated with requests from women to join that they formed a women’s auxiliary group, which demonstrates, at least a little, some of Boucher’s liberalism and sense of social justice).  His books made regular reference to Holmes—not surprising since those who belonged to the Irregulars had to have read all of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes novels and short stories and pass a test. 

It is worth spending a few moments thinking about this fascination with Sherlockiana, as there are a couple of ways in which it connects to Fortean activities.

As I discovered in writing my book on Bigfoot, Sherlock Holmes was a favorite among cryptozoologists: Bernard Heuvelmans considered himself the Sherlock Holmes of Zoology and Holmes’s aphorism, “when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth” was repeatedly quoted by those such as Grover Krantz who were deeply committed to proving the existence of Sasquatch.

Certainly, part of this interest in Holmes merely reflected the fact that he had become the very epitome of scientific detection—even people with no knowledge of the fifty-six Sherlock Holmes short stories and four novels know of the name and know its meaning.  As well, there very well could have been a somewhat closer connection, in that Holmes was often referred to in the men’s adventure magazines which published so much about Bigfoot in the 1960s and 1970s, and so Bigfooters would have often tripped over references to Holmes.

But there’s another reason, too, I think Holmes appealed to Bigfooters: because, as historian Michael Saler says, he embodied a certain kind of rationality that was attractive to Bigfooters.  The rise of modernity and the power of science in the first part of the twentieth century, made many people worried that magic, imagination, and enchantment were being drained from the world.  Not to put to fine a point on it, but there was a sense that—in Max Weber’s phrase—the “Iron Cage” of Rationality, Science, and Bureaucracy—yes, all capitalized—conspired to turn all of us moderns into drones, mere numbers in a larger symptom.  That fear, obviously, has dwindled some but not gone away.  Holmes’s showed how to confront this dilemma and triumph over it—how to accept rationality and reason but imbue it with imagination.  Saler writes, “Holmes solved cases by relating seemingly discrete facts to a more encompassing and meaningful configuration, whose integuments were derived from a combination of rigorous observation, precise logic, and lively imagination.”  Bigfooters saw themselves employing the exact same method.  Scientists themselves were slaves to instrumental reasoning; they lacked the imagination to understand all of the subtle clues.  Bigfooters, on the contrary, could see how the tracks, the hair, the sightings added up to something exciting, something wonderful—that reason could enchant the world.  That ratiocination could prove the improbable.  Such as the existence of a monster in the Pacific Northwest woods.

Or, more broadly, that Forteans, perceptive to life’s clues and blessed with an imagination, could add up those observations and discover wonders ignored by science: falling rocks, UFOs, teleportation or, more grandly, our Et overlords or the Super Sargasso Sea that hovered above the Earth.

(A similar form of what Saler calls “animistic reason,” the melding of imagination of rationality, motivates science fiction writing, as well).

But this statement—that Forteans might believe in a Super-Sargasso Sea from which strange objects fall onto the Earth—needs to be immediately qualified, and interest in Sherlockiana shows how.

One conceit of the Baker Street Irregulars was that Holmes really existed—that Arthur Conan Doyle merely chronicled the real life exploits of a detective.  They celebrated Holmes’s birthday (the theologically meaningful January 6), for example.  There were even biographies written of Holmes.  In one of his mysteries, The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars, Boucher himself played around with this idea: the dedication read, “All characters portrayed or referred to in this novel are fictitious, with the exception of Sherlock Holmes, to whom this book is dedicated.”

Of course Boucher knew that Sherlock Holmes was fictional, as did other members of the Baker Street Irregulars, and even those who wrote a biography of Holmes.  But they were, Saler argues, indulging another response to the grim prospects of modernity: using what he calls the “ironic imagination.”  By suspending disbelief and playing around with the idea that a fictional character actually existed, they could enchant the world—make it seem magical and wonderful—while not giving up on rationality, while recognizing that what they were doing was play.

Fortean interests, I would argue, are often driven by this self-same ironic imagination.  Indeed, Fort said explicitly that he did not believe in all of his theories—nor did all of his followers.  They didn’t really think that there was a giant sea surrounding the world.  But the idea of it made the world seem more interesting, more magical.

Boucher’s interest in Holmes, then, was (possibly) of a piece with his interest in Fort.  It was a way of reclaiming a space for the imagination in a world that threatened to destroy it.

 
 
A while back, on Laelaps's blog, I had a contretemps with Matt Moneymaker, head of the BFRO.  Although he resolutely refused to read my book--because it was supposedly part of some literary scam--he thought he understood the details of my argument and also could suss out my personality.

I let the issue go then, and don't mean to revivify it now.  Participants at the BFRO forum were convinced he had gotten the better of argument.  I disagree, but otherwise leave it to the reader to decide.

What I've been thinking about recently, though, is the way that his attack supported the thesis of the book.

One argument I made was that Bigfoot was popular among (some) working-class white men because through it ideas about masculinity could be wrestled with--not necessarily solved, but confronted and played with.

So, it's no surprise, then, that Moneymaker would boil the argument down to masculinity.  He suggested that I was homosexual--and, more than that, a gay man who was uncomfortable with his own sexuality and could not be a true man, but let the world hold me back.

I let the comment slide at the time because, in part, I don't want to take offense at being called gay.  I'm not, but I don't want to treat the term as pejorative, which, i think, was part of Moneymaker's intent.  I also let it slide because it seemed to me then--as it does now--that Moneymaker proved the weakness of his own argument by resorting to questions about sexuality--forgetting any attempt to deal with, you know, evidence and logic.

But, I think it is worth noting as a data point which supports the thesis.  Bigfoot, at least as it's been understood over the last half-century or so, often raises questions about the authenticity of masculinity.
 
 
This is an old story--and a badly uploaded picture--but an interesting one nonetheless.  It comes from the 22 August 2008 San Francisco Chronicle.  I found it in some files I was sorting yesterday.

The (fake) article refers to the supposed capture of Bigfoot by two men in Georgia, which was announced to a anxious--and bemused--world last summer.  This story has it that Bigfoot was not a gorilla stuffed with roadkill, but a costume of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was one of the masterminds behind 9/11.

The joke works on a couple of levels, I think.  One thing it does is call into question just how scary these terrorists are--by conflating them with the Bigfoot--who is best known for his absence.  It also suggests that many terrorists may not be caught--they are as elusive as the beast.

What intrigues me, though, is the way that Bigfoot is used to dehumanize the terrorist.  This is one of the functions of wildmen throughout history, to question the line between human and non-human.  Here, in a very explicit way, the wildman is being used to suggest that terrorists are not human: they are dirty, stinking, hairy, they live in caves.

The trope of the wildman in America combines several different conflicting ideas.  And here, we see those meanings shuffled to reveal the inhumanity of the beast--and, by extension, the inhumanity of some humans.
 
 
Probably not the world's best excuse:

A man who told police he was hunting Sasquatch is in the Benewah County Jail after a high speed chase that ended with his arrest Sunday in Worley.
 
 

In a digressive post, DB Donlon, the Blogsquatcher, comments on Sigrid and my conversation about Bigfoot and Yeren over at the University of Chicago Blog.

Donlon reiterates a criticism he made of my book based on some early publicity: that I advocate the psychological hypothesis--I dismiss all Bigfoot sightings as imagination or mis-identification.

I would like to repeat--and amplify--my response to the first post as a rejoinder to Donlon's latest.

I am not a "skeptic" in the sense that I want to debunk belief in Bigfoot.  I am a skeptic in the sense that during my research for the book, I had a chance to study a lot--although by no means all--of the evidence put forth in support of Bigfoot's existence.

But the book is not primarily about the evidence for and against Bigfoot.  Nor, really, is the conversation between Sigrid and myself.  Rather, it is about social questions--how society works--not psychological ones--how the brain works.

Certainly, bits and pieces of are [edited: our] skepticism come through--and Donlon highlights those, including mis-reading Sigrid's explanation for why she read Bigfoot fiction: she said that she enjoyed the works and justified it as connected to her dissertation the Chinese wildman, yeren.  Donlon understands her use of the word justify to mean that she thinks all Bigfoot-related material is inherently un-intellectual.  I read her to mean that she felt guilty about any reading not directly related to her work and so she had to excuse herself for reading "fun" books.

Instead, the book--and our discussion--is about the cultural meaning of wildmen.  Indeed, in Sigrid's final comment she distances herself from debunkers.  We want to know how people make sense of these wildmen stories, regardless of their truth or falsity.  I thus don't like the word myth, but prefer legend--which has a technical meaning among folklorists: a legend is a truth proposition.  It is a story put forward that could be true, or might not be.  Myths, by contrast, are generally accepted to be false.  I wanted to understand what Americans did with the legend--the possibility--of Bigfoot.

This exact same methodology could be applied to undoubtedly existing animals--as I did in my first book, The Fire Ant Wars.

In fact, I am agnostic about the various hypotheses Donlon puts forth to explain Bigfoot sightings--the flesh-and-blood hypothesis, the psychological hypothesis, and the Native American hypothesis.  I simply do not know what people have seen nor am I particularly concerned about it.  What interests me is that people believe they have seen something, or, in many cases, they go out in the woods expecting to see something.

I want to know how they make sense of that thing they have seen or expect to see.  How does it both reflect cultural categories and cause them to think differently about their world.  To repeat myself, what meaning do they take from it.  And, by extension, what does American culture more generally make of these supposed sightings.  Because in looking at that, we can see some of the workings of our society: how knowledge is judged credible or not, who has the authority to speak, how is meaning made in the modern world. 

 
New York Post 06/30/2009
 

The New York Post ran a short article of mine on Bigfoot this past Sunday.