I learned something new today--which is one-half of a perfect day.
Booth Tarkington's praise of Charles Fort in _The Bookman_ is widely cited in the Fortean literature. Miriam Allen DeFord notes it, as does Damon Knight and Jim Steinmeyer. According to them, Tarkington read Fort's 'Book of the Damned' while sick one day, and soon thereafter sent a letter to the magazine _The Bookman_, praising Fort and his book. Thayer later reprinted the letter in _The Fortean Magazine_.
Which is where all the citations begin and end. No one cites the original _Bookman_ letter.
And that includes Dorothy Ritter Russo and Thelma L Sullivan, who compiled a comprehensive bibliography of Tarkington's writings, including going through _Bookman_. The best that they can figure is, it appeared in _The Bookman_ as advertising material--giving the letter a different vibe. Certainly Booth Tarkington appreciated Charles Fort. But the legend is not quite what it was made out to be, maybe.
At any rate, here's the 'letter' as it appeared in _The Fortean Magazine_:
A Letter to The Bookman:
“Who in the name of frenzy is Charles Fort? Author of The Book of the Damned. I’m just pulling from influenza and this blamed book kept me all night when I certainly should have slept--and then, in the morning, what is a fevered head to do with assemblies of worlds, some shaped like wheels, some connected by streaming filaments, and one spindle shaped with an axis 100,000 miles long?
A clergyman, old brilliant friend of mine, ‘went insane’ one summer--got over it when his wife got home from Europe but that summer he was gone. I remember when I caught him: he spent all of a hot afternoon telling me, at the University Club, about a secret society of the elect--adepts--who had since days immemorial welcomed (and kept hidden) messages from other planets. That’s where this alleged Charles Fort shows his bulliest dementia--but he’s ‘colossal’--a magnificent nut, with Poe and Blake and Cagliostro and St. John trailing way behind him. And with a gorgeous madman’s humor! What do you know of him? And doesn’t he deserve some BOOKMAN attention? (I never heard of the demoniac cuss.) People must turn to look at his head as he walks down the street; I think it’s a head that would emit noises and explosions, with copper flames playing out from the ears.”
Booth Tarkington's praise of Charles Fort in _The Bookman_ is widely cited in the Fortean literature. Miriam Allen DeFord notes it, as does Damon Knight and Jim Steinmeyer. According to them, Tarkington read Fort's 'Book of the Damned' while sick one day, and soon thereafter sent a letter to the magazine _The Bookman_, praising Fort and his book. Thayer later reprinted the letter in _The Fortean Magazine_.
Which is where all the citations begin and end. No one cites the original _Bookman_ letter.
And that includes Dorothy Ritter Russo and Thelma L Sullivan, who compiled a comprehensive bibliography of Tarkington's writings, including going through _Bookman_. The best that they can figure is, it appeared in _The Bookman_ as advertising material--giving the letter a different vibe. Certainly Booth Tarkington appreciated Charles Fort. But the legend is not quite what it was made out to be, maybe.
At any rate, here's the 'letter' as it appeared in _The Fortean Magazine_:
A Letter to The Bookman:
“Who in the name of frenzy is Charles Fort? Author of The Book of the Damned. I’m just pulling from influenza and this blamed book kept me all night when I certainly should have slept--and then, in the morning, what is a fevered head to do with assemblies of worlds, some shaped like wheels, some connected by streaming filaments, and one spindle shaped with an axis 100,000 miles long?
A clergyman, old brilliant friend of mine, ‘went insane’ one summer--got over it when his wife got home from Europe but that summer he was gone. I remember when I caught him: he spent all of a hot afternoon telling me, at the University Club, about a secret society of the elect--adepts--who had since days immemorial welcomed (and kept hidden) messages from other planets. That’s where this alleged Charles Fort shows his bulliest dementia--but he’s ‘colossal’--a magnificent nut, with Poe and Blake and Cagliostro and St. John trailing way behind him. And with a gorgeous madman’s humor! What do you know of him? And doesn’t he deserve some BOOKMAN attention? (I never heard of the demoniac cuss.) People must turn to look at his head as he walks down the street; I think it’s a head that would emit noises and explosions, with copper flames playing out from the ears.”
