A central hub in Forteanism’s Westward expansion, though he eventually lost interest.
Donald Beatty [Edit: Beaty] Bloch was born 18 September 1904 in Evansville, Illinois. His father, Ben, was a salesman (in 1910), the son of two German immigrants, born himself in New York. His mother, Vera P. Beatty was a daughter of Indiana. They had been married around 1904, when Ben was about 25 and Vera 23. Donald was their first child. They moved often enough in his early years. According to the census, they were in Louisville, Kentucky, when Don was six.
According to his memoirs, “Journey to Parnassus,” he spent the summers with his maternal grandparents, Daniel and Margaret, at 1219 Franklin Street, in Columbus, Indiana. This seems to have been the center of his life. They were a very middle class family—picnicking each year at the population center of the country, then five miles southeast of Columbus, and memorializing the day with a photo. Don and his friends seem to have hung out with vagabonds—offering food to “hoboes” who gathered at the rail yard spur, and learning to swim and carve wood from “Jack the Bum,” who appeared every summer in Columbus. The family attended the First Baptist Church.
Donald Beatty [Edit: Beaty] Bloch was born 18 September 1904 in Evansville, Illinois. His father, Ben, was a salesman (in 1910), the son of two German immigrants, born himself in New York. His mother, Vera P. Beatty was a daughter of Indiana. They had been married around 1904, when Ben was about 25 and Vera 23. Donald was their first child. They moved often enough in his early years. According to the census, they were in Louisville, Kentucky, when Don was six.
According to his memoirs, “Journey to Parnassus,” he spent the summers with his maternal grandparents, Daniel and Margaret, at 1219 Franklin Street, in Columbus, Indiana. This seems to have been the center of his life. They were a very middle class family—picnicking each year at the population center of the country, then five miles southeast of Columbus, and memorializing the day with a photo. Don and his friends seem to have hung out with vagabonds—offering food to “hoboes” who gathered at the rail yard spur, and learning to swim and carve wood from “Jack the Bum,” who appeared every summer in Columbus. The family attended the First Baptist Church.
Some time during his childhood—when he was in Indiana, according to his memoirs—the family lived on the same block as a house that was bedeviled by poltergeists. The story is frustratingly vague, alluding to sources, but never mentioning them. The mysterious activities apparently made the newspapers. And they were mentioned in a later book—on page 319!—but I cannot specify the story any more exactly than that. The search parameters are too wide to be useful in newspaper hunts and book searches. At any rate, such incidents were not uncommon—as Fort well knew, and as other Forteans, such as Kenneth Rexroth, experienced. It may be that this incident, or similar youthful weirdnesses, sparked an interest in the anomalous which Bloch would carry with him for a long time.
By 1920, the family was back in Indiana—Peoria, this time, which would become the Athens of Forteana, by Tiffany Thayer’s reckoning. According to his recollections, Bloch’s life was still Midwest idyllic, filled with cafes and ice creams—while other Forteans were enduring the Hell of World War I. The family had grown in the intervening years, Don joined by a brother, Carroll, who was born around 1914, making him about a decade younger. Ben’s profession was now listed as an insurance agent, apparently with the Equitable Life Insurance Company of Iowa. He was supposedly quite prolific, writing at least one policy every week for 43 years. Don, according to his memoirs, was athletic, a good swimmer, a hiker and tennis player. He took to tumbling.
In 1922, he graduated from high school; Bloch matriculated at the Bradley Polytechnic Institute (not yet Bradley University), staying in Peoria. (This was some 80 miles from where he had spent his summers as a youth, in Columbus.) Two years later, at the behest of his father—who had ambitions—Don moved to George Washington University to study law. He spent only a year there—he enjoyed exploring the city, but the law was not for him—and pedaled back home that summer on a makeshift bike (having replaced the handlebars with a steering wheel). In 1925, he transferred to the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, graduating in 1927, with various honors.
Bloch continued his studies at Northwestern, as well as his athletic exploits. According to his memoir, he spent a year with a circus some time during the twenties. At Northwester, he worked towards a master’s degree in English literature, which he received in 1929. And, as the story so often goes, while teaching freshmen English, he fell in love with one of his students: Marie Halun, born in the Ukraine 1 December 1910, raised in Evanston. (according to the census, she immigrated in 1913.) Her father had recently died, and the family had fallen on hard financial times. Reading between the lines of the memoir, it seems neither were particularly hemmed in by the Victorian sexual mores the country was then shedding, taking a car trip to D.C. by themselves one Christmas.
They were married 1 March, 1930, at an Episcopal Church in Evanston—which suggests that the family wasn’t particularly dedicated to its denomination. According to the memoir, the relationship between teacher and student was frowned upon by the university—which seems unlikely, but could be the case—and the marriage prompted the university to let Don go. The 1930 census still had them (albeit as Block) in Illinois, with Don as a teacher; they were renting a place. A Belgian machinist lived in the same house. He worked in a toy factory. Soon enough, though, they headed South, trying to scrape out a living as the Depression settled over the country, Marie struggling to finish her education.
Don had a couple of teaching job, first at Alabama Polytechnic Institute—in time, Auburn University—and then Tennessee. At both places, he taught English and establish a journalism program, so that at least according to his memoirs he is the origin of those departments. Auburn was hard because he was paid in scrip, making it nearly impossible to pay his other bills; fortunately, the he resigned, he was paid off in cash, allowing him to make good on his debts and afford to live otherwise. Meanwhile, Marie took classes at API (and perhaps Tennessee) while also occasionally returning to Chicago—she wanted her degree from the University of Chicago—and completed other course through correspondence. Eventually, she did graduate, in 1935, possibly with an advanced degree.
In 1933, the Blochs moved to Washington, D.C., where Don started writing articles—on spec, as it were—building a portfolio to show to an editor. It worked, and he was on the staff of the Washington Post for about a year, occasionally doing a column—“The Odyssey”—Sunday features, and a number of book reviews. A reorganization, his memoir said, forced his ouster, and he moved to the Star, where he also worked for a short time. One of his assignments at the Post was an expose of conditions at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital—of Fortean interest because Ezra Pound would be interned there for many years after World War II. Marie supplemented the family income, one source says, by doing work as an economic for the federal government. Don, always something of a gearhead, returned to his home state each late spring to watch the Indianapolis 500.
Around 1936—the memoir and official accounts vary, to some extent, but perhaps not irreconcilably—Don took a job within the government, as an Information Specialist. It’s hard to tell with which bureau, exactly, in part because the agencies were being reorganized during this period. The Bureau of Biological Survey, which itself was reorganized in 1934, part of the Department of the Interior, increasingly coordinated with the U.S. Fish Commission, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and in 1940 the two were combined into the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, under the Department of the Interior. The memoir cites his first work as a book, “The CCC and Wildlife,” put out in 1938 by the Biological Survey; a decade later, he wrote, “Black Hills National Forest,” (which was put out by the U.S. Forest Service, then and still part of the USDA).
The work was welcome, but could be frustrating. In 1938, Marie gave birth to the Bloch’s only child, Hillary, [Edit: Hilary] and so the family now had to exist on a single income. Bloch wrote assiduously, but received little credit: his work was published without byline, or under someone else’s name. He and Marie comforted themselves with a fantasy they’d cultivated since college: opening a bookstore. All they could do at the time, though, was make sure he had a library for the books he was collecting. In 1940, they had a house built at 5066 Sonoma Road, in Bethesda, with a room for his books. They were carrying two mortgages, though, so finances were tight. Still, Bloch had his enthusiasms, physical and intellectual. He met authors in the area, among them James Branch Cabell, who lived in Virginia, his popularity now in severe decline. In 1939, Don tok up spelunking and co-founded the Speleological Society of the District of Columbia. The cave explorers spent a lot of their weekends in West Virginia. Don edited the group’s bulletin. The family continued this way through most of the war years, raising a daughter, collecting books, trudging to the office, taking off into the hills to explore caves.
In 1944, more government reorganization, and the Blochs were jettisoned far from D.C. They landed in Denver, where Bloch was still an information specialist for the Fish and Wildlife Service. They spelled at 654 Emerson Street, in the Capitol Hill area, a three-story house, with one of the bedrooms devoted to his (ever-expanding) library. Don made the requisite connections throughout the West, in Salt Lake City and the Dakotas. Hillary started school. And Marie started writing children’s books. Her first was “Danny Doffer,” in 1946. It was the beginning of a long literary career, that included her writing a number of Ukrainian folktales, too. She always considered herself a Ukrainian patriot, and, according to one source, would visit her home country several time throughout the years—though such travel would have been fraught in the Cold War. Hilary worked her way through the public schools, graduating from East Denver High in 1956.
In 1951, Bloch lost his job. The material in the Waldo Lee McAtee papers—McAtee was a fellow Fortean and fellow-government worker—only include Mcafee’s side of correspondence with Bloch, but suggests that Bloch had been promised some kind of promotion and was instead canned. Judging by what McAtee wrote, Bloch was much depressed that year. But he also seized on the opportunity provided. He spent some time in Salt Lake City organizing a catalog for a bookstore there, and then went ahead and opened his own—this after much contemplation over the matter with McAtee, Tiffany Thayer, and no doubt his family. In 1952, he bought “The Auditorium Bookstore” at 1020 19th Street, in the old Mining Exchange Building. He changed the name to “Collector’s Center,” and immediately disposed of the paperback collection and school book business, which had kept the previous store in the black. Thayer warned him business would be hard—Thayer himself had worked in the Chicago book business some three-decades before, and was still a collector:
“In the second-hand book business, of which I am an alumnus, and post-graduate student, nothing less than 400% profit will keep you in b and s. For a collector to enter the business is folly, because he invariably takes his best buys home and never realizes the paper profit. On the other hand, I have been told many times by store proprietors that all collectors are ipso facto ‘dealers.’”
The business must have been lucrative enough. A year later, he opened a second location in Central City, Colorado, which Marie managed—while also doing her writing. By the mid-1960s, she put out 14 books, as well as at least one short story, which no doubt aided the family’s budget. Don collected in a wide variety of genres, Western Americana, chief among them, but also weird and occult literature, such as Aleister Crowley, M. O. Shiel, and August Derleth’s Arkham House publications—more Fortean connections. He also collected Sherlock Holmes and—like the Fortean Anthony Boucher—was a member of the Baker Street Irregulars. Page 35 of his memoir—written by his wife—reads:
“Among the more entertaining of his collection is the shelf of books on what he called ‘the Kweet, the Kwaint, and the Quizzical.’ For he dearly loved anomaly—not only the two-headed calf variety but also that to be found in the infinite variance that every human being represents . (On the other hand, while he appreciated genuine individuality, he was quick to discern the counterfeit and had little tolerance for it.) Into the category of anomaly falls Don’s collection of Charles Fort’s books, together with his lengthy correspondence with Tiffany Thayer, for long the moving spirit of the Fortean Society.”
Forteans—they were often urban creatures, existing in old, strange buildings. (Bloch only liked to do business in person, and so resisted the urge to put out any kind of circular advertising his books.) And so they were ripe for destruction with the urban renewal of the 1960s. Such was the sad fate of many Fortean haunts in San Francisco and its surrounding Bay Area. And such was the fate of Bloch’s bookstore. The old Mining Exchange building was torn down, and the bookstore moved to 1640 Arapahoe Street. Continued renovation forced another move in 1969, to 1028 Ninth Street, in the same section of the city as the Bloch’s home. Perhaps Don was starting to feel disconnected from the business. In 1972, he sold his entire stock to the University of North Colorado (in Greeley)—only to see it sit unused in the library’s basement. Depressed, he restarted his business at the end of the year, on the 600 block of Ogden Street, five minutes from his home, using duplicates and his home library as seed for the new store. (Thayer was right about the thin line between dealer and collector.)
Marie continued to write. She published at least four more books between 1969 and 1985. Hilary graduated from Oberlin College, and, in time, married a John Hopkins, the two living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Marie would move there after Don’s death, passing herself in February 1988. Bloch continued to work at the bookstore, finally forced to quit by ill health in March of 1984.
Donald Beatty Bloch died two months later, 16 May 1984. He was 79.
Don Bloch was incredibly active in the Fortean Society, his name appearing the magazine hundreds of times, if not thousands. It would be a fool’s errand to enumerate them all, and certainly to try to ferret out what Fortean phenomena most excited him. In addition, there are hundreds of pages of correspondence between him and the Fortean Society collected at the New York Public Library. (Both Don and Marie’s materials were scattered among various institutions, from Denver to Carlisle to North Dakota to Minnesota.) He kept the Society’s circulars, its pamphlets, and letters from Thayer (as well as a few other Forteans. Most of Thayer’s letters are brisk and business-y, but an image of Bloch does emerge, if a bit vaguely. He was an important lieutenant in Thayer’s organization, albeit one who bucked for a slightly different vision of the organization. He could be needy but also made himself helpful, which was the quickest way to winning Thayer’s gratitude.
Which isn’t to say, of course, that there isn’t mystery about Bloch’s Forteanism. The first question that arises is how did he become attached to the organization at all? How did he find Fort? It seems likely he was drawn by the publication of the omnibus edition of Fort’s works in April 1941. The expected rout from other government employees just doesn’t make sense: Charles Talman, the meteorologist who considered rains of animals, wanted nothing to do with Fort or Thayer; it was Bloch who introduced McAtee to the Society; and, by appearances, it was Thayer who introduced Bloch to T. Swann Harding. What makes the book a likely draw is, first, that Bloch paid careful attention to the book trade and likely would have seen notice of the publication; second, his interest in anomalies and poltergeists would have predisposed him to at least looking into the book. And, third, his letter asking to join the Fortean Society was sent at the end of December 1941 or very early 1942. (It’s possible Bloch’s introduction to Fort may have been mediated by Charles Honce, too, an author, book collector, and Holmes aficionado.)
Thayer sent Bloch a membership card in January 1942, as well as all the issues published to then—including the fourth, which had never been sold and was only available to members. (Still it wasn’t enough for Bloch, who wanted the special circulars Thayer had sent out to people on the path of eclipses so that they could check official measurements; he had none left to give.) Immediately, Bloch offered to run errands for Thayer—and Thayer took him up on the offer. Because Thayer had eschewed copyrighting the Fortean magazine, it was not automatically sent tot he Library of Congress, and so he had Bloch go and see if it was there anyway. He sent him to the Naval Observatory to ensure that Marriott’s Warmer Winters, Barley’s Drayson Problem, and Fort were on the shelves. Indeed, he wanted Bloch to canvas as many D.C. libraries as possible to get Drayson on the shelves there: it was the most acute Fortean anomaly he had discovered, and Thayer wanted it well known. Thayer also needed Bloch to help him find a Washington bookstore that would seem issues of the Fortean magazine. (Later, when Pound was imprisoned at St. Elizabeth’s, Thayer asked Bloch for contacts in Washington, D.C., to petition for the poet’s release.) In addition, Thayer found that Bloch had a vast trove of clippings—to which he of course would add over the years, sending in something seemingly with every issue. Thayer taught Bloch the need to date what he clipped, but even those undated he checked against what he had compiled himself. Eventually, though, Thayer realized that Bloch’s scrapbooks were too meaty. He wrote,
“Where are the ‘other’ (data) scrap-books? If they are richer than the one I milked, I propose a new system to reduce my labors. Let me foliate them by hand, and neatly but indelibly ‘slug’ the Forteana numerically on the original, preparing a simple index for the Archives, so that at any time I can write you asking for ‘story 4 in book 3’--and you can send a copy. Culling and briefing so much matter is a terrific job--and once upon a time I used to be a novelist!”
That was in 1946. Two years later, by which point Thayer had presumably gone through all the material except Bloch’s spelunking collection, he was claiming dominion over it—literally taking Bloch into the Fortean fold:
“In some sense, a portion of your library is already a branch of the Society Archives, and this related [spelunking] matter should be in the same place. The pieces are numbered--keyed--so that if need arose I could ask for them by number. In this connection, to guard against eventualities, will you not insert a paragraph in your will, or instruct your heirs at once, with details in writing and a carbon copy to us, concerning the disposal of the Forteana of which you may died possessed? The idea is not to deprive your offspring of their patrimony, but to preserve against possible loss that portion of such a collection which a book-dealer (nine-times-out-of-ten) throws aways as worthless. You will understand my concern, of course. We Founders must establish the Society’s functions as perpetual activities while we are here to do it. The above is pertinent to the Society’s permanence.”
That Thayer appreciated Bloch is clear from his early announcement of Bloch’s joining the Society. Issue 7 of the magazine—appearing after the notorious “Circus Day is Over” in dated June 1943—carried the following notice, under the heading “What’s a Speleol?”: “Perhaps no other member has laid the Society under greater obligation for his general, informed usefulness, and for data and books contributed, recently, than has Don Bloch, moving spirit of the National Speleological Society.” As the title suggests, Bloch intrigued Thayer for reasons above and beyond his utility—cave exploration brought a frisson to the Society. It wasn’t yet the era of the “Shaver Mystery,” but the underground was still an area of intrigue, unknown and mysterious. N. Meade Layne ordered a copy of “Sightseeing Underground” only a few months after Bloch’s avocation was explained in the magazine, for example—presumably looking for links to his own metaphysical inclinations. A few other members were similarly intrigued by speleolology. In 1951, Thayer arranged for the Fortean Society and the National Speleological organization to swap publications.
Still, there were moments of friction. Bloch clearly expected the Society to be more sociable—and Thayer, too. Several times Thayer expressed irritation at Bloch’s impatience with their correspondence—to keep the Fortean Society business contained, he tried to do it just once a month. Bloch also continually pressed Thayer for a membership list, and expressed his concern to other Forteans that such a list wasn’t being widely shared. Thayer, though, put him off, first for a bit of (reasonable paranoia): in the early 1940s, he was being monitored by the FBI and sometimes even refused to write Bloch on Fortean letterhead, using, instead, his ad agency stationery. Later, he made it clear that his refusal to divulge a list was a way of protecting everyone’s privacy: those who wanted to exchange letters or meet in person were to write to Thayer, and Thayer would either mention it in the magazine or send letters to those in the area. After his government job ended and Bloch moved to Salt Lake City for a time, he had Thayer put out word that Bloch was lonely and looking for connection—but no one joined up with him. One gets the sense that a lack of comradeship in the Society bothered Bloch. He was a gregarious guy.
In 1944, when Bloch relocated to Denver, Thayer had all sorts errands he wanted him to run, and Bloch seemed obliged to do so. Thayer sent Bloch to find a bookstore willing to carry Doubt magazine. In 1949, Thayer wrote, “Both Denver bookstores you set up to handle DOUBT have now washed out on me. Booksellers, I fear, are in business to make money, a quaint conceit on their part. We now have a better system. Instead of bedevilling [sic] bookmen, we learn which big-city newsstand takes pride in the completeness of its line of periodicals. In Chicago, Post Office News, in N.Y.--the Times Building basement, etc., etc. We approach them by mail--and they do well. So. Will you please spot the Denver stand that does the biggest cosmopolitan-type business, and merely get the firm name and proper mailing address for me? You don’t have to sell them or even mention your connection unless you wish. Just send us the bare facts--and DOUBT begins to appear there. It’s as easy as that.” Later, still, when Bloch opened his own store, Thayer wanted him to take copies of Doubt on consignment.
Thayer also had him working as an intermediary for Western members, in much the same way he had Russell handling Fortean business in Britain (and, really, most of Europe). Thayer told Bloch to get Thomas Hudson McKee to join. (Mckee had written to Life magazine saying that World War II was being conducted to protect world capitalism, and nothing else; not identical to Thayer’s complaints, but in the same family.) McKee refused, but there were others. In 1946, Bloch approached someone named Haas (but Thayer warned: “You work on Haas. Your Secretary has too damned much to do to go gunning for individuals, however choice. Anyway, Forteanism is not a missionary religion. It is the natural state of man. If Haas and H G Wells, and a lot of others, have too many accretions, acquired characteristics, to revert to naturalism when it’s exposed to them--I never argue about it.”) In a (non-missionary?) way, Bloch also went after people named Brownley and Henry Hough. In 1952, Thayer instructed, him to look up John, John Thomas, and Constance Dalie, who recently moved to Englewood, from Ohio. “They are first-class members and keep the three cards paid up. do see them.”
As a hub, Bloch helped to pass material from one Fortean to another—for example, Frederick Hehr to Henry Hoernlein. He was a point of contact for Robert Spencer Carr, the author and founder of a Fortean lamasery in the mountains of New Mexico. He corresponded with Norman Markham, encouraging him in his Fortean endeavor of correlating anomalies with planetary motions. He brought Waldo Lee McAtee into the Fortean fold. He kept an eye on Maurice Doreal, who was a Fortean and cultist stationed in Colorado, exploring his library for Thayer. In May 1948, he even became connected—albeit tangentially—to the newly organizing Fortean chapter in San Francisco, one of the key early centers of Forteanism. That month, he was contacted by a member there, C. Steven Bristol, who was living at 755 Waller in San Francisco and had been attending chapter meetings. A subgroup of the chapter was considering a Fortean expedition to the so-called Headless Valley in Nahanni National Park, Canada. Bristol wanted information on caves in the area. (Bloch couldn’t offer any; Bristol suggested that Bloch assuage his Fortean loneliness by opening a chapter in his area.)
Whatever their differences—and there were more—Thayer greatly appreciated Bloch, so much so that in the summer of 1946, when Thayer became interested in celebrating the founders again—after the hurt of the “Circus Day is Over” fiasco and, more importantly, after Dreiser died—he elevated Bloch to the position of Honorary Founder, replacing BJS Cahill (who had himself replaced the original founder, Harry Leon Wilson). A year later, in a different context, Thayer lauded “HFFS Bloch,” including a picture with an encomium under that title:
“Our cave-crawling, book-collecting, steady contributor of superlative Fortean data, active exponent of Fortean principles and tireless propagator of the gospel of unbelief . . . From the first, Don Bloch has displayed a perfect grasp of Fortean aims and an energy in the Society’s interests second only to the Founders themselves. In fact, he has consistently acted as if he were a Founder ever since membership card 166 was issued to him so many years ago. Accordingly, at the death of HFFS Cahill (who had succeeded Founder Harry Leon Wilson), the vacant post was proferred to him—with solemn injunctions concerning the responsibilities—and he accepted . . . Formerly a reporter, he reformed sufficiently to become attached to the Fish and Wildlife Service of the US Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C. He is now stationed in Denver, whence he edits the Bulletin of the National Speleological Society . . .”
Thayer had reason to be delighted. Not only did Bloch run errands for him and correspond (too?) regularly, but he discovered new Fortean avenues. One was the work of Helan Jaworski, a sort-of renegade biologist (from what I can tell), who had monistic inclinations, seeing the world as an organism. Jaworski’s work caused a stir in the magazine for a time, with Thayer noting that one of his friends and fellow Fortean Harry Benjamin had known Jaworski, and with another, Frederick S. Hammett, translating one of Jaworski’s papers from the German. More substantively, while going through Maurice Doreal’s library, Bloch came across the writings of one Stuart X, that sent Thayer over the moon. Stuart X “exceeds all expectations,” Thayer wrote in February 1947, after ordering several of his books from Doreal. Thayer rhapsodized about him in Doubt 12 (Summer 1945)—thinking that this Stuart X was the same as the previously discovered George Malter, who had written about errors of thought. Stuart X, he noted, had been highly praised by Gertrude Stein and Aleister Crowley.
As it turned out, Stuart X was not George—though that didn’t dim his interest. Thayer (perhaps aided by Bloch) opened a correspondence with Stuart X himself, still alive. But the source of fascination was his book, “A Prophet in His Own Country,” published in 1916, with an introduction by Crowley. I have not seen the book, but it seems apocalyptic, predicting the fall of Germany, England, and the dis-uniting of the U.S. (all of which Thayer thought had come to pass) and the coming of two more wars, one of class and one of race—wth proletariat China coming out victorious over the white race. This was mainline Fortean politics, at least as presented by Thayer, and Stuart’s other enthusiasms followed suit: he was for Henry George and Scott Nearing, against the Woodrow Wilson who finally got America into the war. And, indeed, the underlying skeptical philosophy was certainly compatible with Forteanism—though it was composed before Fort—such as this bit from a 1913 letter to Sun Yat Sen (supposedly investigated by another Fortean, Frank Pease: “‘(Man) has never yet found anything fixed,/nor does his vision,/roam where it will/in Heaven or Earth,/find anything fixed;--/All is flux--/The very tombstones fail to fix the ‘Dead.’”
Thayer’s enthusiasm would ebb, as it almost always did, with everything except Fort, Italian history, and those who could help him—but still, he made Stuart X (real name: Henry Clifford Stuart) part of the curriculum in his proposed Fortean University, tethering him with Malter in the Fortean equivalent of ontology. (He thought the department the second most important, behind the study of Fort himself.) There continued some correspondence between them—a letter from Stuart appears in Doubt 20 (March 1948). He continued to keep tabs enough that he reported Stuart’s death in issue 38, though it was a very brief notice.
The topic provided by Bloch that consumed the most Fortean time and remained closest connected to the Fortean Society was Iktomi. I’m not sure when Bloch came across the man or his book, but most likely it was first the book: America Needs The Indian, published in Denver in 1937.He had shared it with Thayer by 1946, and received praise for the discovery in June of that year. By August, Thayer told him the book would be offered in the next Fortean circular of books. (Selling books was one way the Society tried to say solvent, at least in its early history; Thayer found it too nettlesome, and not lucrative enough, later one, and stopped the practice.) He also planned to give some free to Russell and important museums. As well, he made Iktomi himself an (honorary) member, and pledged one dollar from the sale of each book to him. That summer, in Doubt 15, Thayer ran a column on the book, calling Iktomi an “aboriginal Fortean.” By the end of the season, Thayer had met the man himself, and declared him a “delight.” Already, two books had been sold—but he had plans for more, and was settled in for the long haul. He knew the books would sell slowly, and he wanted to put out a scrapbook by Iktomi, too.
Iktomi himself is something of a historical mystery. The name is a pseudonym, cribbed from a Lakota mythological figure, a trickster. Thayer was sure Iktomi was a Native American, and others, much later, have also reported that he was a man of importance among the Lakota. His book showed a deep familiarity with the social structure of the Lakota and associated tribes. But there is good evidence that Iktomi was a white named Ivan Drift, who was associated with the Bureau of Indian Affairs—possibly trying to get a job there—and the so-called New Deal for Indians (or, officially, the “Indian Reorganization Act.”) Iktomi—and/or Drift—produced a book that was a sardonic commentary on this reorganization, as well as on the United States’s sad history of mis-treating Native Americans. The book is as odd as the character who wrote it, embodying the trickster aspects of the character, odd, fragmented, subversive, unclear, provocative. He played with words—in a way reminiscent of Pound—calling the Indian program the “Nude Ell,” “New Dull,” and “New Dole,.” He played with typescript and used stream of consciousness in way that recalled experiments in modernist literature and poetry—though he dismissed any such aspirations.
These traits alone would have inclined Thayer toward the book. In addition, at the time, there was something of a micro-trend among the Fortean-minded to support Native American causes—Ray Palmer editorialized on behalf of the Navajo people, for example. Besides, Thayer had civil libertarian impulses (although when pressed he dismissed the utility of racial and ethnic classifications), supporting the cause of blacks, the Japanese, and those accused of communist sympathies. In Doubt 20, when he proposed a Fortean University, Thayer made “Iktomi” one of the departments: it dealt with conservation of natural resources, “principally soil, forests, wild animals, and Indians.” (Yes, that’s a problematic juxtaposition.) The chair of the department, he said, should be Indian, or a millionaire willing to contribute generously to the Native American cause.
As expected, Thayer soon tired of Iktomi, and the projects he undertook—publishing the scrapbook, producing a calendar with Iktomi’s drawings. The first batch of sketches were horrid. Bobs Merrill refused the scrapbook, and Thayer was disinclined to try another publisher. The book wasn’t selling—it was the price, he admitted. (A whopping $7.50.) Thayer refused to “drown” in Iktomi errands. And the man started to grate on him, appearing and disappearing without always leaving an address. “A heartache and a headache,” he called him. That was all by mid-1947, but Thayer was still grousing five years later: “The trouble with him is that he considers himself the Amerind Messiah and all others gentiles.” Still, he paid $100 to buy all the remainders of the copies of the book that Bloch owned, and “raised hell” with the membership when sales stopped cold. After Iktomi came to Thayer’s attention, part of each issue’s back page was an advertisement for the book—so the issue remained somewhat close to his heart.
Fundamentally, there was a temperamental difference between Thayer and Bloch. Thayer was deeply cynical, about everything, including his own activities. Bloch was an optimist, gregarious, a kibitzer. In Doubt 17, March 1947, Thayer printed a squib from Bloch suggesting that caves might be an excellent refuge for humans after the Bomb dropped. Thayer editorialized, “To Your Secretary, the merits of preserving human life are highly dubious after intelligence has fled.” A year later, Bloch offered some praise of the science writer Walter Kaempffert—what he said exactly is unknown—and Thayer was non-plussed: “If we admire Kaempffert, whom do we hate?” It’s not really surprising that the correspondence became much more sporadic after 1952, as Bloch became more involved with his book business.
Bloch’s Forteanism was more than just an involvement with the Society, though. It was rooted in his Indiana boyhood, and may have been enabled by those connections. He visited sometimes—without telling Thayer, who complained afterwards, since he thought he’d put him in connection with Gomer Bath, the Fortean newspaperman. But Bloch had connections to Peoria’s journalism community. His younger brother, Carroll, had become a journalist (just as his big brother had been). He worked at the Peoria Star-Journal for forty years, meaning he was a colleague of Bath. Of Fortean interest, Carroll was also an amateur magician, publishing in “Linking Ring,” along with fellow Forteans Vincent Gaddis and Ernest Brady. (Thayer dabbled in legerdemain, and his friend Fred Keating was an accomplished stage magician.)
But whatever his interest in anomalies, Bloch’s connection to organized Forteanism did not outlast the Society. He inquired after the fate of the Society after Thayer’s death, only to learn it was in limbo. That was August 1959. In the mid-1960s, some younger Forteans contacted him, looking to pick up the thread, and he helped occasionally, it seems. But when the Willis brothers created the International Fortean Organization he made clear he wished them well but wanted nothing to do with the new group. His Forteanism, whatever it was, would be conducted in private.
By 1920, the family was back in Indiana—Peoria, this time, which would become the Athens of Forteana, by Tiffany Thayer’s reckoning. According to his recollections, Bloch’s life was still Midwest idyllic, filled with cafes and ice creams—while other Forteans were enduring the Hell of World War I. The family had grown in the intervening years, Don joined by a brother, Carroll, who was born around 1914, making him about a decade younger. Ben’s profession was now listed as an insurance agent, apparently with the Equitable Life Insurance Company of Iowa. He was supposedly quite prolific, writing at least one policy every week for 43 years. Don, according to his memoirs, was athletic, a good swimmer, a hiker and tennis player. He took to tumbling.
In 1922, he graduated from high school; Bloch matriculated at the Bradley Polytechnic Institute (not yet Bradley University), staying in Peoria. (This was some 80 miles from where he had spent his summers as a youth, in Columbus.) Two years later, at the behest of his father—who had ambitions—Don moved to George Washington University to study law. He spent only a year there—he enjoyed exploring the city, but the law was not for him—and pedaled back home that summer on a makeshift bike (having replaced the handlebars with a steering wheel). In 1925, he transferred to the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, graduating in 1927, with various honors.
Bloch continued his studies at Northwestern, as well as his athletic exploits. According to his memoir, he spent a year with a circus some time during the twenties. At Northwester, he worked towards a master’s degree in English literature, which he received in 1929. And, as the story so often goes, while teaching freshmen English, he fell in love with one of his students: Marie Halun, born in the Ukraine 1 December 1910, raised in Evanston. (according to the census, she immigrated in 1913.) Her father had recently died, and the family had fallen on hard financial times. Reading between the lines of the memoir, it seems neither were particularly hemmed in by the Victorian sexual mores the country was then shedding, taking a car trip to D.C. by themselves one Christmas.
They were married 1 March, 1930, at an Episcopal Church in Evanston—which suggests that the family wasn’t particularly dedicated to its denomination. According to the memoir, the relationship between teacher and student was frowned upon by the university—which seems unlikely, but could be the case—and the marriage prompted the university to let Don go. The 1930 census still had them (albeit as Block) in Illinois, with Don as a teacher; they were renting a place. A Belgian machinist lived in the same house. He worked in a toy factory. Soon enough, though, they headed South, trying to scrape out a living as the Depression settled over the country, Marie struggling to finish her education.
Don had a couple of teaching job, first at Alabama Polytechnic Institute—in time, Auburn University—and then Tennessee. At both places, he taught English and establish a journalism program, so that at least according to his memoirs he is the origin of those departments. Auburn was hard because he was paid in scrip, making it nearly impossible to pay his other bills; fortunately, the he resigned, he was paid off in cash, allowing him to make good on his debts and afford to live otherwise. Meanwhile, Marie took classes at API (and perhaps Tennessee) while also occasionally returning to Chicago—she wanted her degree from the University of Chicago—and completed other course through correspondence. Eventually, she did graduate, in 1935, possibly with an advanced degree.
In 1933, the Blochs moved to Washington, D.C., where Don started writing articles—on spec, as it were—building a portfolio to show to an editor. It worked, and he was on the staff of the Washington Post for about a year, occasionally doing a column—“The Odyssey”—Sunday features, and a number of book reviews. A reorganization, his memoir said, forced his ouster, and he moved to the Star, where he also worked for a short time. One of his assignments at the Post was an expose of conditions at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital—of Fortean interest because Ezra Pound would be interned there for many years after World War II. Marie supplemented the family income, one source says, by doing work as an economic for the federal government. Don, always something of a gearhead, returned to his home state each late spring to watch the Indianapolis 500.
Around 1936—the memoir and official accounts vary, to some extent, but perhaps not irreconcilably—Don took a job within the government, as an Information Specialist. It’s hard to tell with which bureau, exactly, in part because the agencies were being reorganized during this period. The Bureau of Biological Survey, which itself was reorganized in 1934, part of the Department of the Interior, increasingly coordinated with the U.S. Fish Commission, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and in 1940 the two were combined into the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, under the Department of the Interior. The memoir cites his first work as a book, “The CCC and Wildlife,” put out in 1938 by the Biological Survey; a decade later, he wrote, “Black Hills National Forest,” (which was put out by the U.S. Forest Service, then and still part of the USDA).
The work was welcome, but could be frustrating. In 1938, Marie gave birth to the Bloch’s only child, Hillary, [Edit: Hilary] and so the family now had to exist on a single income. Bloch wrote assiduously, but received little credit: his work was published without byline, or under someone else’s name. He and Marie comforted themselves with a fantasy they’d cultivated since college: opening a bookstore. All they could do at the time, though, was make sure he had a library for the books he was collecting. In 1940, they had a house built at 5066 Sonoma Road, in Bethesda, with a room for his books. They were carrying two mortgages, though, so finances were tight. Still, Bloch had his enthusiasms, physical and intellectual. He met authors in the area, among them James Branch Cabell, who lived in Virginia, his popularity now in severe decline. In 1939, Don tok up spelunking and co-founded the Speleological Society of the District of Columbia. The cave explorers spent a lot of their weekends in West Virginia. Don edited the group’s bulletin. The family continued this way through most of the war years, raising a daughter, collecting books, trudging to the office, taking off into the hills to explore caves.
In 1944, more government reorganization, and the Blochs were jettisoned far from D.C. They landed in Denver, where Bloch was still an information specialist for the Fish and Wildlife Service. They spelled at 654 Emerson Street, in the Capitol Hill area, a three-story house, with one of the bedrooms devoted to his (ever-expanding) library. Don made the requisite connections throughout the West, in Salt Lake City and the Dakotas. Hillary started school. And Marie started writing children’s books. Her first was “Danny Doffer,” in 1946. It was the beginning of a long literary career, that included her writing a number of Ukrainian folktales, too. She always considered herself a Ukrainian patriot, and, according to one source, would visit her home country several time throughout the years—though such travel would have been fraught in the Cold War. Hilary worked her way through the public schools, graduating from East Denver High in 1956.
In 1951, Bloch lost his job. The material in the Waldo Lee McAtee papers—McAtee was a fellow Fortean and fellow-government worker—only include Mcafee’s side of correspondence with Bloch, but suggests that Bloch had been promised some kind of promotion and was instead canned. Judging by what McAtee wrote, Bloch was much depressed that year. But he also seized on the opportunity provided. He spent some time in Salt Lake City organizing a catalog for a bookstore there, and then went ahead and opened his own—this after much contemplation over the matter with McAtee, Tiffany Thayer, and no doubt his family. In 1952, he bought “The Auditorium Bookstore” at 1020 19th Street, in the old Mining Exchange Building. He changed the name to “Collector’s Center,” and immediately disposed of the paperback collection and school book business, which had kept the previous store in the black. Thayer warned him business would be hard—Thayer himself had worked in the Chicago book business some three-decades before, and was still a collector:
“In the second-hand book business, of which I am an alumnus, and post-graduate student, nothing less than 400% profit will keep you in b and s. For a collector to enter the business is folly, because he invariably takes his best buys home and never realizes the paper profit. On the other hand, I have been told many times by store proprietors that all collectors are ipso facto ‘dealers.’”
The business must have been lucrative enough. A year later, he opened a second location in Central City, Colorado, which Marie managed—while also doing her writing. By the mid-1960s, she put out 14 books, as well as at least one short story, which no doubt aided the family’s budget. Don collected in a wide variety of genres, Western Americana, chief among them, but also weird and occult literature, such as Aleister Crowley, M. O. Shiel, and August Derleth’s Arkham House publications—more Fortean connections. He also collected Sherlock Holmes and—like the Fortean Anthony Boucher—was a member of the Baker Street Irregulars. Page 35 of his memoir—written by his wife—reads:
“Among the more entertaining of his collection is the shelf of books on what he called ‘the Kweet, the Kwaint, and the Quizzical.’ For he dearly loved anomaly—not only the two-headed calf variety but also that to be found in the infinite variance that every human being represents . (On the other hand, while he appreciated genuine individuality, he was quick to discern the counterfeit and had little tolerance for it.) Into the category of anomaly falls Don’s collection of Charles Fort’s books, together with his lengthy correspondence with Tiffany Thayer, for long the moving spirit of the Fortean Society.”
Forteans—they were often urban creatures, existing in old, strange buildings. (Bloch only liked to do business in person, and so resisted the urge to put out any kind of circular advertising his books.) And so they were ripe for destruction with the urban renewal of the 1960s. Such was the sad fate of many Fortean haunts in San Francisco and its surrounding Bay Area. And such was the fate of Bloch’s bookstore. The old Mining Exchange building was torn down, and the bookstore moved to 1640 Arapahoe Street. Continued renovation forced another move in 1969, to 1028 Ninth Street, in the same section of the city as the Bloch’s home. Perhaps Don was starting to feel disconnected from the business. In 1972, he sold his entire stock to the University of North Colorado (in Greeley)—only to see it sit unused in the library’s basement. Depressed, he restarted his business at the end of the year, on the 600 block of Ogden Street, five minutes from his home, using duplicates and his home library as seed for the new store. (Thayer was right about the thin line between dealer and collector.)
Marie continued to write. She published at least four more books between 1969 and 1985. Hilary graduated from Oberlin College, and, in time, married a John Hopkins, the two living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Marie would move there after Don’s death, passing herself in February 1988. Bloch continued to work at the bookstore, finally forced to quit by ill health in March of 1984.
Donald Beatty Bloch died two months later, 16 May 1984. He was 79.
Don Bloch was incredibly active in the Fortean Society, his name appearing the magazine hundreds of times, if not thousands. It would be a fool’s errand to enumerate them all, and certainly to try to ferret out what Fortean phenomena most excited him. In addition, there are hundreds of pages of correspondence between him and the Fortean Society collected at the New York Public Library. (Both Don and Marie’s materials were scattered among various institutions, from Denver to Carlisle to North Dakota to Minnesota.) He kept the Society’s circulars, its pamphlets, and letters from Thayer (as well as a few other Forteans. Most of Thayer’s letters are brisk and business-y, but an image of Bloch does emerge, if a bit vaguely. He was an important lieutenant in Thayer’s organization, albeit one who bucked for a slightly different vision of the organization. He could be needy but also made himself helpful, which was the quickest way to winning Thayer’s gratitude.
Which isn’t to say, of course, that there isn’t mystery about Bloch’s Forteanism. The first question that arises is how did he become attached to the organization at all? How did he find Fort? It seems likely he was drawn by the publication of the omnibus edition of Fort’s works in April 1941. The expected rout from other government employees just doesn’t make sense: Charles Talman, the meteorologist who considered rains of animals, wanted nothing to do with Fort or Thayer; it was Bloch who introduced McAtee to the Society; and, by appearances, it was Thayer who introduced Bloch to T. Swann Harding. What makes the book a likely draw is, first, that Bloch paid careful attention to the book trade and likely would have seen notice of the publication; second, his interest in anomalies and poltergeists would have predisposed him to at least looking into the book. And, third, his letter asking to join the Fortean Society was sent at the end of December 1941 or very early 1942. (It’s possible Bloch’s introduction to Fort may have been mediated by Charles Honce, too, an author, book collector, and Holmes aficionado.)
Thayer sent Bloch a membership card in January 1942, as well as all the issues published to then—including the fourth, which had never been sold and was only available to members. (Still it wasn’t enough for Bloch, who wanted the special circulars Thayer had sent out to people on the path of eclipses so that they could check official measurements; he had none left to give.) Immediately, Bloch offered to run errands for Thayer—and Thayer took him up on the offer. Because Thayer had eschewed copyrighting the Fortean magazine, it was not automatically sent tot he Library of Congress, and so he had Bloch go and see if it was there anyway. He sent him to the Naval Observatory to ensure that Marriott’s Warmer Winters, Barley’s Drayson Problem, and Fort were on the shelves. Indeed, he wanted Bloch to canvas as many D.C. libraries as possible to get Drayson on the shelves there: it was the most acute Fortean anomaly he had discovered, and Thayer wanted it well known. Thayer also needed Bloch to help him find a Washington bookstore that would seem issues of the Fortean magazine. (Later, when Pound was imprisoned at St. Elizabeth’s, Thayer asked Bloch for contacts in Washington, D.C., to petition for the poet’s release.) In addition, Thayer found that Bloch had a vast trove of clippings—to which he of course would add over the years, sending in something seemingly with every issue. Thayer taught Bloch the need to date what he clipped, but even those undated he checked against what he had compiled himself. Eventually, though, Thayer realized that Bloch’s scrapbooks were too meaty. He wrote,
“Where are the ‘other’ (data) scrap-books? If they are richer than the one I milked, I propose a new system to reduce my labors. Let me foliate them by hand, and neatly but indelibly ‘slug’ the Forteana numerically on the original, preparing a simple index for the Archives, so that at any time I can write you asking for ‘story 4 in book 3’--and you can send a copy. Culling and briefing so much matter is a terrific job--and once upon a time I used to be a novelist!”
That was in 1946. Two years later, by which point Thayer had presumably gone through all the material except Bloch’s spelunking collection, he was claiming dominion over it—literally taking Bloch into the Fortean fold:
“In some sense, a portion of your library is already a branch of the Society Archives, and this related [spelunking] matter should be in the same place. The pieces are numbered--keyed--so that if need arose I could ask for them by number. In this connection, to guard against eventualities, will you not insert a paragraph in your will, or instruct your heirs at once, with details in writing and a carbon copy to us, concerning the disposal of the Forteana of which you may died possessed? The idea is not to deprive your offspring of their patrimony, but to preserve against possible loss that portion of such a collection which a book-dealer (nine-times-out-of-ten) throws aways as worthless. You will understand my concern, of course. We Founders must establish the Society’s functions as perpetual activities while we are here to do it. The above is pertinent to the Society’s permanence.”
That Thayer appreciated Bloch is clear from his early announcement of Bloch’s joining the Society. Issue 7 of the magazine—appearing after the notorious “Circus Day is Over” in dated June 1943—carried the following notice, under the heading “What’s a Speleol?”: “Perhaps no other member has laid the Society under greater obligation for his general, informed usefulness, and for data and books contributed, recently, than has Don Bloch, moving spirit of the National Speleological Society.” As the title suggests, Bloch intrigued Thayer for reasons above and beyond his utility—cave exploration brought a frisson to the Society. It wasn’t yet the era of the “Shaver Mystery,” but the underground was still an area of intrigue, unknown and mysterious. N. Meade Layne ordered a copy of “Sightseeing Underground” only a few months after Bloch’s avocation was explained in the magazine, for example—presumably looking for links to his own metaphysical inclinations. A few other members were similarly intrigued by speleolology. In 1951, Thayer arranged for the Fortean Society and the National Speleological organization to swap publications.
Still, there were moments of friction. Bloch clearly expected the Society to be more sociable—and Thayer, too. Several times Thayer expressed irritation at Bloch’s impatience with their correspondence—to keep the Fortean Society business contained, he tried to do it just once a month. Bloch also continually pressed Thayer for a membership list, and expressed his concern to other Forteans that such a list wasn’t being widely shared. Thayer, though, put him off, first for a bit of (reasonable paranoia): in the early 1940s, he was being monitored by the FBI and sometimes even refused to write Bloch on Fortean letterhead, using, instead, his ad agency stationery. Later, he made it clear that his refusal to divulge a list was a way of protecting everyone’s privacy: those who wanted to exchange letters or meet in person were to write to Thayer, and Thayer would either mention it in the magazine or send letters to those in the area. After his government job ended and Bloch moved to Salt Lake City for a time, he had Thayer put out word that Bloch was lonely and looking for connection—but no one joined up with him. One gets the sense that a lack of comradeship in the Society bothered Bloch. He was a gregarious guy.
In 1944, when Bloch relocated to Denver, Thayer had all sorts errands he wanted him to run, and Bloch seemed obliged to do so. Thayer sent Bloch to find a bookstore willing to carry Doubt magazine. In 1949, Thayer wrote, “Both Denver bookstores you set up to handle DOUBT have now washed out on me. Booksellers, I fear, are in business to make money, a quaint conceit on their part. We now have a better system. Instead of bedevilling [sic] bookmen, we learn which big-city newsstand takes pride in the completeness of its line of periodicals. In Chicago, Post Office News, in N.Y.--the Times Building basement, etc., etc. We approach them by mail--and they do well. So. Will you please spot the Denver stand that does the biggest cosmopolitan-type business, and merely get the firm name and proper mailing address for me? You don’t have to sell them or even mention your connection unless you wish. Just send us the bare facts--and DOUBT begins to appear there. It’s as easy as that.” Later, still, when Bloch opened his own store, Thayer wanted him to take copies of Doubt on consignment.
Thayer also had him working as an intermediary for Western members, in much the same way he had Russell handling Fortean business in Britain (and, really, most of Europe). Thayer told Bloch to get Thomas Hudson McKee to join. (Mckee had written to Life magazine saying that World War II was being conducted to protect world capitalism, and nothing else; not identical to Thayer’s complaints, but in the same family.) McKee refused, but there were others. In 1946, Bloch approached someone named Haas (but Thayer warned: “You work on Haas. Your Secretary has too damned much to do to go gunning for individuals, however choice. Anyway, Forteanism is not a missionary religion. It is the natural state of man. If Haas and H G Wells, and a lot of others, have too many accretions, acquired characteristics, to revert to naturalism when it’s exposed to them--I never argue about it.”) In a (non-missionary?) way, Bloch also went after people named Brownley and Henry Hough. In 1952, Thayer instructed, him to look up John, John Thomas, and Constance Dalie, who recently moved to Englewood, from Ohio. “They are first-class members and keep the three cards paid up. do see them.”
As a hub, Bloch helped to pass material from one Fortean to another—for example, Frederick Hehr to Henry Hoernlein. He was a point of contact for Robert Spencer Carr, the author and founder of a Fortean lamasery in the mountains of New Mexico. He corresponded with Norman Markham, encouraging him in his Fortean endeavor of correlating anomalies with planetary motions. He brought Waldo Lee McAtee into the Fortean fold. He kept an eye on Maurice Doreal, who was a Fortean and cultist stationed in Colorado, exploring his library for Thayer. In May 1948, he even became connected—albeit tangentially—to the newly organizing Fortean chapter in San Francisco, one of the key early centers of Forteanism. That month, he was contacted by a member there, C. Steven Bristol, who was living at 755 Waller in San Francisco and had been attending chapter meetings. A subgroup of the chapter was considering a Fortean expedition to the so-called Headless Valley in Nahanni National Park, Canada. Bristol wanted information on caves in the area. (Bloch couldn’t offer any; Bristol suggested that Bloch assuage his Fortean loneliness by opening a chapter in his area.)
Whatever their differences—and there were more—Thayer greatly appreciated Bloch, so much so that in the summer of 1946, when Thayer became interested in celebrating the founders again—after the hurt of the “Circus Day is Over” fiasco and, more importantly, after Dreiser died—he elevated Bloch to the position of Honorary Founder, replacing BJS Cahill (who had himself replaced the original founder, Harry Leon Wilson). A year later, in a different context, Thayer lauded “HFFS Bloch,” including a picture with an encomium under that title:
“Our cave-crawling, book-collecting, steady contributor of superlative Fortean data, active exponent of Fortean principles and tireless propagator of the gospel of unbelief . . . From the first, Don Bloch has displayed a perfect grasp of Fortean aims and an energy in the Society’s interests second only to the Founders themselves. In fact, he has consistently acted as if he were a Founder ever since membership card 166 was issued to him so many years ago. Accordingly, at the death of HFFS Cahill (who had succeeded Founder Harry Leon Wilson), the vacant post was proferred to him—with solemn injunctions concerning the responsibilities—and he accepted . . . Formerly a reporter, he reformed sufficiently to become attached to the Fish and Wildlife Service of the US Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C. He is now stationed in Denver, whence he edits the Bulletin of the National Speleological Society . . .”
Thayer had reason to be delighted. Not only did Bloch run errands for him and correspond (too?) regularly, but he discovered new Fortean avenues. One was the work of Helan Jaworski, a sort-of renegade biologist (from what I can tell), who had monistic inclinations, seeing the world as an organism. Jaworski’s work caused a stir in the magazine for a time, with Thayer noting that one of his friends and fellow Fortean Harry Benjamin had known Jaworski, and with another, Frederick S. Hammett, translating one of Jaworski’s papers from the German. More substantively, while going through Maurice Doreal’s library, Bloch came across the writings of one Stuart X, that sent Thayer over the moon. Stuart X “exceeds all expectations,” Thayer wrote in February 1947, after ordering several of his books from Doreal. Thayer rhapsodized about him in Doubt 12 (Summer 1945)—thinking that this Stuart X was the same as the previously discovered George Malter, who had written about errors of thought. Stuart X, he noted, had been highly praised by Gertrude Stein and Aleister Crowley.
As it turned out, Stuart X was not George—though that didn’t dim his interest. Thayer (perhaps aided by Bloch) opened a correspondence with Stuart X himself, still alive. But the source of fascination was his book, “A Prophet in His Own Country,” published in 1916, with an introduction by Crowley. I have not seen the book, but it seems apocalyptic, predicting the fall of Germany, England, and the dis-uniting of the U.S. (all of which Thayer thought had come to pass) and the coming of two more wars, one of class and one of race—wth proletariat China coming out victorious over the white race. This was mainline Fortean politics, at least as presented by Thayer, and Stuart’s other enthusiasms followed suit: he was for Henry George and Scott Nearing, against the Woodrow Wilson who finally got America into the war. And, indeed, the underlying skeptical philosophy was certainly compatible with Forteanism—though it was composed before Fort—such as this bit from a 1913 letter to Sun Yat Sen (supposedly investigated by another Fortean, Frank Pease: “‘(Man) has never yet found anything fixed,/nor does his vision,/roam where it will/in Heaven or Earth,/find anything fixed;--/All is flux--/The very tombstones fail to fix the ‘Dead.’”
Thayer’s enthusiasm would ebb, as it almost always did, with everything except Fort, Italian history, and those who could help him—but still, he made Stuart X (real name: Henry Clifford Stuart) part of the curriculum in his proposed Fortean University, tethering him with Malter in the Fortean equivalent of ontology. (He thought the department the second most important, behind the study of Fort himself.) There continued some correspondence between them—a letter from Stuart appears in Doubt 20 (March 1948). He continued to keep tabs enough that he reported Stuart’s death in issue 38, though it was a very brief notice.
The topic provided by Bloch that consumed the most Fortean time and remained closest connected to the Fortean Society was Iktomi. I’m not sure when Bloch came across the man or his book, but most likely it was first the book: America Needs The Indian, published in Denver in 1937.He had shared it with Thayer by 1946, and received praise for the discovery in June of that year. By August, Thayer told him the book would be offered in the next Fortean circular of books. (Selling books was one way the Society tried to say solvent, at least in its early history; Thayer found it too nettlesome, and not lucrative enough, later one, and stopped the practice.) He also planned to give some free to Russell and important museums. As well, he made Iktomi himself an (honorary) member, and pledged one dollar from the sale of each book to him. That summer, in Doubt 15, Thayer ran a column on the book, calling Iktomi an “aboriginal Fortean.” By the end of the season, Thayer had met the man himself, and declared him a “delight.” Already, two books had been sold—but he had plans for more, and was settled in for the long haul. He knew the books would sell slowly, and he wanted to put out a scrapbook by Iktomi, too.
Iktomi himself is something of a historical mystery. The name is a pseudonym, cribbed from a Lakota mythological figure, a trickster. Thayer was sure Iktomi was a Native American, and others, much later, have also reported that he was a man of importance among the Lakota. His book showed a deep familiarity with the social structure of the Lakota and associated tribes. But there is good evidence that Iktomi was a white named Ivan Drift, who was associated with the Bureau of Indian Affairs—possibly trying to get a job there—and the so-called New Deal for Indians (or, officially, the “Indian Reorganization Act.”) Iktomi—and/or Drift—produced a book that was a sardonic commentary on this reorganization, as well as on the United States’s sad history of mis-treating Native Americans. The book is as odd as the character who wrote it, embodying the trickster aspects of the character, odd, fragmented, subversive, unclear, provocative. He played with words—in a way reminiscent of Pound—calling the Indian program the “Nude Ell,” “New Dull,” and “New Dole,.” He played with typescript and used stream of consciousness in way that recalled experiments in modernist literature and poetry—though he dismissed any such aspirations.
These traits alone would have inclined Thayer toward the book. In addition, at the time, there was something of a micro-trend among the Fortean-minded to support Native American causes—Ray Palmer editorialized on behalf of the Navajo people, for example. Besides, Thayer had civil libertarian impulses (although when pressed he dismissed the utility of racial and ethnic classifications), supporting the cause of blacks, the Japanese, and those accused of communist sympathies. In Doubt 20, when he proposed a Fortean University, Thayer made “Iktomi” one of the departments: it dealt with conservation of natural resources, “principally soil, forests, wild animals, and Indians.” (Yes, that’s a problematic juxtaposition.) The chair of the department, he said, should be Indian, or a millionaire willing to contribute generously to the Native American cause.
As expected, Thayer soon tired of Iktomi, and the projects he undertook—publishing the scrapbook, producing a calendar with Iktomi’s drawings. The first batch of sketches were horrid. Bobs Merrill refused the scrapbook, and Thayer was disinclined to try another publisher. The book wasn’t selling—it was the price, he admitted. (A whopping $7.50.) Thayer refused to “drown” in Iktomi errands. And the man started to grate on him, appearing and disappearing without always leaving an address. “A heartache and a headache,” he called him. That was all by mid-1947, but Thayer was still grousing five years later: “The trouble with him is that he considers himself the Amerind Messiah and all others gentiles.” Still, he paid $100 to buy all the remainders of the copies of the book that Bloch owned, and “raised hell” with the membership when sales stopped cold. After Iktomi came to Thayer’s attention, part of each issue’s back page was an advertisement for the book—so the issue remained somewhat close to his heart.
Fundamentally, there was a temperamental difference between Thayer and Bloch. Thayer was deeply cynical, about everything, including his own activities. Bloch was an optimist, gregarious, a kibitzer. In Doubt 17, March 1947, Thayer printed a squib from Bloch suggesting that caves might be an excellent refuge for humans after the Bomb dropped. Thayer editorialized, “To Your Secretary, the merits of preserving human life are highly dubious after intelligence has fled.” A year later, Bloch offered some praise of the science writer Walter Kaempffert—what he said exactly is unknown—and Thayer was non-plussed: “If we admire Kaempffert, whom do we hate?” It’s not really surprising that the correspondence became much more sporadic after 1952, as Bloch became more involved with his book business.
Bloch’s Forteanism was more than just an involvement with the Society, though. It was rooted in his Indiana boyhood, and may have been enabled by those connections. He visited sometimes—without telling Thayer, who complained afterwards, since he thought he’d put him in connection with Gomer Bath, the Fortean newspaperman. But Bloch had connections to Peoria’s journalism community. His younger brother, Carroll, had become a journalist (just as his big brother had been). He worked at the Peoria Star-Journal for forty years, meaning he was a colleague of Bath. Of Fortean interest, Carroll was also an amateur magician, publishing in “Linking Ring,” along with fellow Forteans Vincent Gaddis and Ernest Brady. (Thayer dabbled in legerdemain, and his friend Fred Keating was an accomplished stage magician.)
But whatever his interest in anomalies, Bloch’s connection to organized Forteanism did not outlast the Society. He inquired after the fate of the Society after Thayer’s death, only to learn it was in limbo. That was August 1959. In the mid-1960s, some younger Forteans contacted him, looking to pick up the thread, and he helped occasionally, it seems. But when the Willis brothers created the International Fortean Organization he made clear he wished them well but wanted nothing to do with the new group. His Forteanism, whatever it was, would be conducted in private.
