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In infancy, he seems to have been bitten by a rabid astronomer

9/15/2013

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Harry Leon Wilson was listed as one of the founders of the Fortean Society, though he was a late convert to the writer. Below is the only comment I've found by Wilson on Fort. It's from The Fortean, December 1943, p. 1

“I am today returning New Lands and am sending my copy of Lo! to an inquiring friend. Also I enclose a small contribution to the Cause.

Fort is highly exciting to me. I cannot share, as fellow host, quite all of what he somewhere speaks of as his ‘bizarre hospitalities,’ but I do greatly enjoy going to his parties.

In early infancy he seems to have been bitten by a rabid astronomer--and more venom to him.

As I go down into the vale of years I grow more and more suspicious of all certainties. Perhaps in another dozen years some one will be attacking Fort’s certainties and I’ll be for that guy, too.

A note from Milliken the other day--’99/100 of what is written on four dimensions is merely nonsense.’ It’s up to C.F. to take care of that minute reminder [sic]. With Einstein as the North Pole and Fort as the South, maybe we can get somewhere. I shall look forward to the next assault on old walls.”

1 Comment
Doug Skinner link
9/19/2013 03:53:20 am

Wilson was a close friend of Tarkington, so maybe that's how he got roped into the cause. As you must have noticed, his son, Harry Jr., was mentioned more often in "Doubt," since he was a conscientious objector. Thayer liked conscientious objectors. The elder Wilson was in a car crash in 1932, which slowed him down considerably.

Wilson is also mentioned several times in Thayer's very odd novel "Little Dog Lost." The protagonist, a Tiffanyesque screenwriter, finds Wilson a better writer than Dreiser, and ends his mid-life crisis by deciding to put out a magazine like Wilson's "Puck." So Wilson may have been the inspiration for "Doubt."

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