There are some interesting affinities between Riesenberg and Fort (and Thayer), but mostly seems to have been a member of the Society because of his friendship with Thayer.
Reisenberg lived a full life, and most of it does not need to be recited here. Born in 1879, he became a maritime officer and sailed the seas from 1897 to 1907, including an unsuccessful attempt to reach the north pole. (And thus it remained a place about which Forteans could speculate.) He returned to school, learned engineering, and worked at that profession, interleaving that job with time spent at sea.
In the late 1910s, he started writing, first about the sea, and naval history, but expanded out to include fiction, his 1927 novel “East Side, West Side,” was made into a movie that same year. In the early 1930s, he wrote for Hollywood, which is where he met Thayer. In his 1937 autobiography “Living Again,” at the very end, he has this to say about the Secretary of the Fortean Society:
“Tiffany Thayer, then in the height of his fame as the author of Thirteen Men, had Call Her Savage and Thirteen Women running on the screen. Tiffany, grandest of men—Elmer Ellsworth he once was—had just written Three Sheet, a saga of venerial [sic] adventures before the days of preventive and antiseptic practices.”
Thayer obviously had great affection for Riesenberg. The older man died in 1939, and the following January Thayer wrote, under the title “Our Loss”:
“At the moment of going to press, the Secretary sorrows to report the loss of still another member of the Society, and a well-beloved personal friend, Felix Riesenberg. He wrote many books but he should be known to Forteans as the author of Endless River.”
Thayer also included a selection from Riesenberg in his 1946 edited compilation “33 Sardonics Tiffany Thayer Can’t Forget.”
The formal links between Riesenberg and the Fortean Society are few, and vague. The only mention he received in the official magazine was notice of his death. Posthumously, though, he was elevated to the Society’s masthead, along with other “honored dead” who were Forteans. It is really hard to understand what this phrase meant, though, for the rest of the list included Oliver Wendell Holmes, Lincoln Steffens, Clarence Darrow, Havelock Ellis, and Harry Leon Wilson.
There’s no doubt that Harry Leon Wilson was a Fortean, as he signed up to be one of the founders, even as the Society left him behind. In the case of the other men, though, I have found no connection to the Fortean Society. They were all of an age that they could have read Fort, and they ran in social circles that overlapped with Thayer’s, but the connection—if there is one—is small.
It is tempting, therefore, to dismiss Riesenberg as another in a long list of men Thayer knew and got to say something positive about Charles Fort. But the connection between Riesenberg, Fort, and Thayer seems stronger—even if it is hard to pin down. There was what Max Weber would have called an elective affinity between them.
First, there is the friendship, which is notable. Thayer did not often receive such glowing commendations, even from close friends; he was a difficult man. That Riesenberg gave him such praise suggests they were especially well linked. And it is possible to see this in the book that Thayer recommended Forteans read—Endless River (in addition to some of Riesenberg’s other novels).
Riesenberg was was experimental with the structure of “Endless River.” The title refers to life and its unfolding. In recognition of the vagaries of life, the book has no chapters. There is a narrator, unnamed to the end of the book, and then a wealth of stories and anecdotes and vignettes, mostly unrelated to each other and unrepeated. The book culminates in two science fiction-style endings, one about Polfly, who becomes a hero by submerging Japan and destroying Florida, thus making Europe terribly cold, though he is soon forgotten. The final episode is about a rich, eccentric man who recruits a series of helpmates—each of whom he calls Opp, and each of whom fails until the last one—and together they assemble vagrants and killers and weirdos and normal people—not unlike the reality TV shows of our day—and set down what happens in the greatest naturalistic novel of all time. As it turns out, Opps is the one who has been writing Endless River.
In its experimentation, in its quick dash into the heads of characters and then just as quickly leaving them, in the final chapter’s revelation that the whole story has been something put on by a man who desperately wants to prove his worth by writing his own story against the world’s—the book resembles Thayer’s “Thirteen Men,” which came out the year before. The style is also similar: for all that Thayer lionized Harry Leon Wilson as a writer, he never aped his style. The prose is prosaic—indeed, that is what keeps Risenberg’s novel from being truly great—and it seems to have been written without much control. One wonders how much the two men influenced each other’s writings.
There are also thematic similarities, both between what Riesenberg wrote and Thayer, as well as Fort. For instance, Riesenberg mentions the thirteen-month calendar, which became the object of one of Thayer’s crusades:
“We are in an age of reformers. The clock is moved back and forth, to the detriment and health of small children, who prefer to play by natural light and are roused out an hour too early for school. But it’s a reform, a cause. Another changer wants to cut the calendar into thirteen months, to make the rent come around oftener.”
Also, in the story of Polfly, the destroyer is honored by having his name linked to a knew time system—everything after humanity’s great awakening will be numbered A.P. “Endless River” came out in September 1931. Two months later, Thayer started the Fortean Society, and would come to invent a new system of time, as well, not only with the 13-month calendar but with dating the founding of the Society as year 1, and all subsequent years being re-numbered. Again, the connection is not air-tight, only suggestive.
The thematic connections between Risenberg and Fort might be better termed a sensibility. It is not clear that Risenberg ever read Fort, and in nothing of his I have seen did he cite Fort. But he approached life from a vaguely Fortean perspective, a wry sense of humor at the foibles of humans in their quest to better their lives, the world. He suggests that he was following a Fortean method in writing “Endless River”:
“I have looked around in places, often because others felt that I needed information. And as we work here together, we drag out shredded documents and scan them, much as learned searches dig through ancient kitchen middens.”
And he had a Fortean sense of humor. From page 197:
“It now becomes the duty of this judge to render a dissenting opinion. Two and two seldom make four, or anything approximating the answers set down by arithmetic. Certainly two pounds and two tons make something, but something quite different from a simple total. And two damn fools and two more, when they get together and add their doubt to a proposition, actually diminish things. Engineers, if any one can say what is an engineer and what is not, seldom if ever agree on anything not already accomplished by persons of lesser importance than themselves.”
Reisenberg lived a full life, and most of it does not need to be recited here. Born in 1879, he became a maritime officer and sailed the seas from 1897 to 1907, including an unsuccessful attempt to reach the north pole. (And thus it remained a place about which Forteans could speculate.) He returned to school, learned engineering, and worked at that profession, interleaving that job with time spent at sea.
In the late 1910s, he started writing, first about the sea, and naval history, but expanded out to include fiction, his 1927 novel “East Side, West Side,” was made into a movie that same year. In the early 1930s, he wrote for Hollywood, which is where he met Thayer. In his 1937 autobiography “Living Again,” at the very end, he has this to say about the Secretary of the Fortean Society:
“Tiffany Thayer, then in the height of his fame as the author of Thirteen Men, had Call Her Savage and Thirteen Women running on the screen. Tiffany, grandest of men—Elmer Ellsworth he once was—had just written Three Sheet, a saga of venerial [sic] adventures before the days of preventive and antiseptic practices.”
Thayer obviously had great affection for Riesenberg. The older man died in 1939, and the following January Thayer wrote, under the title “Our Loss”:
“At the moment of going to press, the Secretary sorrows to report the loss of still another member of the Society, and a well-beloved personal friend, Felix Riesenberg. He wrote many books but he should be known to Forteans as the author of Endless River.”
Thayer also included a selection from Riesenberg in his 1946 edited compilation “33 Sardonics Tiffany Thayer Can’t Forget.”
The formal links between Riesenberg and the Fortean Society are few, and vague. The only mention he received in the official magazine was notice of his death. Posthumously, though, he was elevated to the Society’s masthead, along with other “honored dead” who were Forteans. It is really hard to understand what this phrase meant, though, for the rest of the list included Oliver Wendell Holmes, Lincoln Steffens, Clarence Darrow, Havelock Ellis, and Harry Leon Wilson.
There’s no doubt that Harry Leon Wilson was a Fortean, as he signed up to be one of the founders, even as the Society left him behind. In the case of the other men, though, I have found no connection to the Fortean Society. They were all of an age that they could have read Fort, and they ran in social circles that overlapped with Thayer’s, but the connection—if there is one—is small.
It is tempting, therefore, to dismiss Riesenberg as another in a long list of men Thayer knew and got to say something positive about Charles Fort. But the connection between Riesenberg, Fort, and Thayer seems stronger—even if it is hard to pin down. There was what Max Weber would have called an elective affinity between them.
First, there is the friendship, which is notable. Thayer did not often receive such glowing commendations, even from close friends; he was a difficult man. That Riesenberg gave him such praise suggests they were especially well linked. And it is possible to see this in the book that Thayer recommended Forteans read—Endless River (in addition to some of Riesenberg’s other novels).
Riesenberg was was experimental with the structure of “Endless River.” The title refers to life and its unfolding. In recognition of the vagaries of life, the book has no chapters. There is a narrator, unnamed to the end of the book, and then a wealth of stories and anecdotes and vignettes, mostly unrelated to each other and unrepeated. The book culminates in two science fiction-style endings, one about Polfly, who becomes a hero by submerging Japan and destroying Florida, thus making Europe terribly cold, though he is soon forgotten. The final episode is about a rich, eccentric man who recruits a series of helpmates—each of whom he calls Opp, and each of whom fails until the last one—and together they assemble vagrants and killers and weirdos and normal people—not unlike the reality TV shows of our day—and set down what happens in the greatest naturalistic novel of all time. As it turns out, Opps is the one who has been writing Endless River.
In its experimentation, in its quick dash into the heads of characters and then just as quickly leaving them, in the final chapter’s revelation that the whole story has been something put on by a man who desperately wants to prove his worth by writing his own story against the world’s—the book resembles Thayer’s “Thirteen Men,” which came out the year before. The style is also similar: for all that Thayer lionized Harry Leon Wilson as a writer, he never aped his style. The prose is prosaic—indeed, that is what keeps Risenberg’s novel from being truly great—and it seems to have been written without much control. One wonders how much the two men influenced each other’s writings.
There are also thematic similarities, both between what Riesenberg wrote and Thayer, as well as Fort. For instance, Riesenberg mentions the thirteen-month calendar, which became the object of one of Thayer’s crusades:
“We are in an age of reformers. The clock is moved back and forth, to the detriment and health of small children, who prefer to play by natural light and are roused out an hour too early for school. But it’s a reform, a cause. Another changer wants to cut the calendar into thirteen months, to make the rent come around oftener.”
Also, in the story of Polfly, the destroyer is honored by having his name linked to a knew time system—everything after humanity’s great awakening will be numbered A.P. “Endless River” came out in September 1931. Two months later, Thayer started the Fortean Society, and would come to invent a new system of time, as well, not only with the 13-month calendar but with dating the founding of the Society as year 1, and all subsequent years being re-numbered. Again, the connection is not air-tight, only suggestive.
The thematic connections between Risenberg and Fort might be better termed a sensibility. It is not clear that Risenberg ever read Fort, and in nothing of his I have seen did he cite Fort. But he approached life from a vaguely Fortean perspective, a wry sense of humor at the foibles of humans in their quest to better their lives, the world. He suggests that he was following a Fortean method in writing “Endless River”:
“I have looked around in places, often because others felt that I needed information. And as we work here together, we drag out shredded documents and scan them, much as learned searches dig through ancient kitchen middens.”
And he had a Fortean sense of humor. From page 197:
“It now becomes the duty of this judge to render a dissenting opinion. Two and two seldom make four, or anything approximating the answers set down by arithmetic. Certainly two pounds and two tons make something, but something quite different from a simple total. And two damn fools and two more, when they get together and add their doubt to a proposition, actually diminish things. Engineers, if any one can say what is an engineer and what is not, seldom if ever agree on anything not already accomplished by persons of lesser importance than themselves.”
