Ben Hecht wrote “Minutes of the Fortean Society” for his regular column in P.M. magazine. It was published in May 1941 as a kind of review of The Books of Charles Fort, which had been released the previous month. The column was later reprinted in 1001 Afternoons in New York and by Thayer in The Fortean, January 1942 (11-12).
Interesting about the review is that it is so different than the one Hecht published of Book of the Damned. In that first consideration of Fort, Hecht--as Burton Rascoe would, too--left open the possibility that Fort was truthful or pulling a joke, or writing these insane things for any number of reasons. He drops that in this second piece. To be sure, he admits that Fort might be mad, but he also insists that Fort proved physics wrong, and that he ran down the various stories he published--which certainly was not true.
It is also odd that Hecht takes to referring to Fort as ‘our master.’ And crediting him with the invention of three great laws, the first of which was certainly not new, and none of them central to what Fort was saying. Despite the seeming deference to Fort throughout the piece, the overwhelming impression is that Hecht was writing with his tongue in--or at least near--his cheek. The ‘our master’ mantra then becomes sarcastic.
Maybe that’s just my reading, but it is certain he was attacking his fellow Forteans in the penultimate paragraph. Dreiser squats and grunts in behalf of the befuddled communists. Woollcott is a champion of the obvious who defends tweedledums. And Thayer, poor Thayer. Suddenly, there is an imagined president of the Fortean Society sitting over him. And he--who had recreated the Fortean Society, had gotten Fort’s omnibus edition published, who was putting out The Fortean by himself--he did not rate as an evangelist. No, Hecht wanted others to spread the word of Fort.
“This month our master, Charles Fort, sits up in his grave, sticks his head through a geranium pot, and favors his disciples with a large wink. The occasion will be the appearance of his complete writings all in one fat blue volume labeled The Books of Charles Fort. Our master will most certainly throw a basket of frogs in the air and hurl his tombstone over the fence.
But I wish he would come out altogether. He is needed.
When he was on earth not so long ago he went to a lot of work establishing the three great Fortean Laws. These are--that Man is a fool, that his soul is a swamp in a derby hat, and that his intellect is a foetus in a frock coat.
In promulgating these three great basic laws, our master had to do a lot of groin-kicking. Ask any astronomer who Charles Fort was, and see for yourself. If you can’t find an astronomer, try a physicist or geologist, or a philosopher with initials after his name. They will all pretend to laugh, and they will all give the same answer. They will tell you that our master, Charles Fort, was an imbecile.
This is untrue. But it is understandable. The astronomers have to say that or give up their astronomy.The same with the physicists and philosophers. They would all have to resign if there was any truth in the visions of Charles Fort. As one of the founders of the Fortean Society I can assure you that they will all resign--some day.
During his lifetime, our master investigated some 100,000 phenomena. These included tiger children, leopard boys, poltergeist girls, red rains from the sky, meteors with writing on them, and mountains that moved themselves. All the strange facts of earth and sky, and the misfit data that scientists had always omitted from their text books because they couldn’t explain them--were his laboratory.
Where the footprints of Man or Thing that had disappeared into thin air stopped-there our master began. Where firs of unknown origin had raged and destroyed nothing, where trees walked and rivers flowed up hill, there our master stood, note book in hand. In his office he had 20,000 pigeon holes full of miracles. These he had clipped out of the newspapers and magazines of the world. And most of them he ran down and proved.
Before his death he succeeded in demonstrating that the moon may be made of green cheese for all we know. He exposed the law of gravitation as a hoax. He trampled the hell out of the Darwinian theory. And he made one large comical sieve out of all our dogmas.
I don’t want to exaggerate the genius of Charles Fort. He was no philosophical comet. He was more a roller coaster that took everybody for a ride. And for us Forteans the sciences have never quite recovered from this frolic. For us, the lights in the skies, the strange things cast up by the sea, the things that vanish from earth without trace, and the presence of all sorts of goofy-dust rains everywhere will always take first place over Euclid, Eddington and even Einstein. No such tales of lightning haunted people, of hobgoblin footprints and interplanetary fandangos were ever taught us in school. The textbooks of science disdained what they couldn’t explain. Our master preferred the inexplicable to science.
It is possible that our master was a little mad, and given to seeing chimeras where only crackpots existed. It is possible, too, that there is a touch of Flash Gordon in his vision of sky monsters, cloud demons and astral were-wolves bedeviling the earth. But the looney fringes that hang from his sacerdotal robes are a minor matter.
The major matter is that long before the headlines bore them out, our prophet had offered his Laws to the world. The folly of man, documented as never before in any books, is to be found spread out in his writings. They are writings that should be read today. They will relax you. They will throw the present troublesome idiocies of the race into soothing perspective. You will see that these political idiocies are mere nothings as compared to the pompous and unremitting imbecility that has been going on among professors with long whiskers and savants with high hats. You will see that man is no nearer the truth of life than are the sea shells. He only makes a little more, and a little less tuneful, noise.
There are quite a number of us Forteans. We have a letter-head with some moons and planets on it, a president, and an active secretary--Tiffany Thayer. Our roster includes J. David Stern, Booth Tarkington, Aaron Sussman, Burton Rascoe, Alexander Woollcott, John Cowper Powys, Theodore Dreiser and numerous other sane and notable gentry. We lack, however, evangels. In our Society at present there are only two, both of them a little footling. One is Dreiser, who squats in the Golden West and grunts away in behalf of the befuddled Communists. As for the other--Woollcott--that fearless champion of the obvious is lying fallow just now, waiting for some Tweedledum to defend.
There is room in the Fortean Society for some high and clacking tongues to cut loose in behalf of our master, and plenty of room for members to provide the proper niche in the world for this Apostle of the Exception, Keeper of Ghosts, Observer of Secret Rays, Avenger of Forgotten Theories, Lost Causes and Strayed Comets; Jocular Priest of the Improbable and Demonstrator of Idiocies.”
Interesting about the review is that it is so different than the one Hecht published of Book of the Damned. In that first consideration of Fort, Hecht--as Burton Rascoe would, too--left open the possibility that Fort was truthful or pulling a joke, or writing these insane things for any number of reasons. He drops that in this second piece. To be sure, he admits that Fort might be mad, but he also insists that Fort proved physics wrong, and that he ran down the various stories he published--which certainly was not true.
It is also odd that Hecht takes to referring to Fort as ‘our master.’ And crediting him with the invention of three great laws, the first of which was certainly not new, and none of them central to what Fort was saying. Despite the seeming deference to Fort throughout the piece, the overwhelming impression is that Hecht was writing with his tongue in--or at least near--his cheek. The ‘our master’ mantra then becomes sarcastic.
Maybe that’s just my reading, but it is certain he was attacking his fellow Forteans in the penultimate paragraph. Dreiser squats and grunts in behalf of the befuddled communists. Woollcott is a champion of the obvious who defends tweedledums. And Thayer, poor Thayer. Suddenly, there is an imagined president of the Fortean Society sitting over him. And he--who had recreated the Fortean Society, had gotten Fort’s omnibus edition published, who was putting out The Fortean by himself--he did not rate as an evangelist. No, Hecht wanted others to spread the word of Fort.
“This month our master, Charles Fort, sits up in his grave, sticks his head through a geranium pot, and favors his disciples with a large wink. The occasion will be the appearance of his complete writings all in one fat blue volume labeled The Books of Charles Fort. Our master will most certainly throw a basket of frogs in the air and hurl his tombstone over the fence.
But I wish he would come out altogether. He is needed.
When he was on earth not so long ago he went to a lot of work establishing the three great Fortean Laws. These are--that Man is a fool, that his soul is a swamp in a derby hat, and that his intellect is a foetus in a frock coat.
In promulgating these three great basic laws, our master had to do a lot of groin-kicking. Ask any astronomer who Charles Fort was, and see for yourself. If you can’t find an astronomer, try a physicist or geologist, or a philosopher with initials after his name. They will all pretend to laugh, and they will all give the same answer. They will tell you that our master, Charles Fort, was an imbecile.
This is untrue. But it is understandable. The astronomers have to say that or give up their astronomy.The same with the physicists and philosophers. They would all have to resign if there was any truth in the visions of Charles Fort. As one of the founders of the Fortean Society I can assure you that they will all resign--some day.
During his lifetime, our master investigated some 100,000 phenomena. These included tiger children, leopard boys, poltergeist girls, red rains from the sky, meteors with writing on them, and mountains that moved themselves. All the strange facts of earth and sky, and the misfit data that scientists had always omitted from their text books because they couldn’t explain them--were his laboratory.
Where the footprints of Man or Thing that had disappeared into thin air stopped-there our master began. Where firs of unknown origin had raged and destroyed nothing, where trees walked and rivers flowed up hill, there our master stood, note book in hand. In his office he had 20,000 pigeon holes full of miracles. These he had clipped out of the newspapers and magazines of the world. And most of them he ran down and proved.
Before his death he succeeded in demonstrating that the moon may be made of green cheese for all we know. He exposed the law of gravitation as a hoax. He trampled the hell out of the Darwinian theory. And he made one large comical sieve out of all our dogmas.
I don’t want to exaggerate the genius of Charles Fort. He was no philosophical comet. He was more a roller coaster that took everybody for a ride. And for us Forteans the sciences have never quite recovered from this frolic. For us, the lights in the skies, the strange things cast up by the sea, the things that vanish from earth without trace, and the presence of all sorts of goofy-dust rains everywhere will always take first place over Euclid, Eddington and even Einstein. No such tales of lightning haunted people, of hobgoblin footprints and interplanetary fandangos were ever taught us in school. The textbooks of science disdained what they couldn’t explain. Our master preferred the inexplicable to science.
It is possible that our master was a little mad, and given to seeing chimeras where only crackpots existed. It is possible, too, that there is a touch of Flash Gordon in his vision of sky monsters, cloud demons and astral were-wolves bedeviling the earth. But the looney fringes that hang from his sacerdotal robes are a minor matter.
The major matter is that long before the headlines bore them out, our prophet had offered his Laws to the world. The folly of man, documented as never before in any books, is to be found spread out in his writings. They are writings that should be read today. They will relax you. They will throw the present troublesome idiocies of the race into soothing perspective. You will see that these political idiocies are mere nothings as compared to the pompous and unremitting imbecility that has been going on among professors with long whiskers and savants with high hats. You will see that man is no nearer the truth of life than are the sea shells. He only makes a little more, and a little less tuneful, noise.
There are quite a number of us Forteans. We have a letter-head with some moons and planets on it, a president, and an active secretary--Tiffany Thayer. Our roster includes J. David Stern, Booth Tarkington, Aaron Sussman, Burton Rascoe, Alexander Woollcott, John Cowper Powys, Theodore Dreiser and numerous other sane and notable gentry. We lack, however, evangels. In our Society at present there are only two, both of them a little footling. One is Dreiser, who squats in the Golden West and grunts away in behalf of the befuddled Communists. As for the other--Woollcott--that fearless champion of the obvious is lying fallow just now, waiting for some Tweedledum to defend.
There is room in the Fortean Society for some high and clacking tongues to cut loose in behalf of our master, and plenty of room for members to provide the proper niche in the world for this Apostle of the Exception, Keeper of Ghosts, Observer of Secret Rays, Avenger of Forgotten Theories, Lost Causes and Strayed Comets; Jocular Priest of the Improbable and Demonstrator of Idiocies.”
