Burton Rascoe's review of Lo! mentioned two Forteans I had not heard of: Louis Sherwin and Gorham Munson. I'm still not sure who Munson is; I think I've figured out Sherwin--and also that he was not a Fortean.
The Louis Sherwin in question seems to have been Hugo Louis Sherwin Golitz, a drama critic, who attended the Fortean Society meeting as a member of the press. He wrote about the night in his "Roving Reporter" column for The New York Evening Post.
The article is a bit arch, especially with the picture of a beufddled Dreiser used to illustrate it. Nothing in it suggests Sherwin was necessarily a fan of Fort. And I have found no evidence of Sherwin's trumpeting Fort; certainly Thayer never mentioned him. Since Rascoe was also at the first (and only) Fortean Society meeting, a member of the press but also a fan, it may be that he saw Sherwin and assumed he was also a partisan.
Here is what Sherwin wrote for the Post, published 27 January 1931, the day after the meeting:
“Seeing and hearing a live man undergo the process of being erected into a cult in his own presence is something you won’t experience every day. Nevertheless, this somewhat uncustomary operation was performed last night on Charles Fort, whose ‘New Lands’ and “The Book of the Damned’ have been variously bepraised and bespattered and whose latest work, ‘Lo!” has just been published by Claude Kendall.
The event, which took place in the Savoy-Plaza apartment of J. David Stern, was the birth of the Fortean Society, whose purpose is to promulgate and celebrate, not to say propagandize, the work of Mr. Fort. This parturition seemed to be eminently successful, parents and offspring doing well.
In case you should be tempted to giggle, be careful. For several of the founders are fellows who can giggle back and giggle better. Rather a curious assortment, in a way. You would hardly expect to find Theodore Dreiser and Booth Tarkington in the same boat. But there they are, and Harry Leon Wilson also. Likewise Ben Hecht, Edgar Lee Masters, Burton Rascoe, Harry Elmer Barnes and John Cowper Powys. Tiffany Thayer, author of ‘Thirteen Men’ and ‘The Illustrious Corpse,’ is the secretary of the society. Our host, Mr. Stern, publisher of the Philadelphia Record and a string of other papers, is evidently its angel, for the time being at any rate. Not all of these were present last night, but enough for a good start.
They put one over on Fort himself in order to get him there. When he arrived he had no idea of what the shootin’ was all about. He thought he had been invited to dine and spend the evening with Stern and Dreiser. Instead of which he found himself cast for a role that might appall even a strong head. He had to sit and listen while he was described as one of the great men of all time, to hear it said that his work was the biggest thing that had happened in Dreiser’s life, that it was the opening of a new world concept. During all of which he looked patiently and meditatively at his cigar and sipped ginger ale.
Fort Listens
Personally he seemed to be a mild, simple and very engaging personage. He has a strong gift of humor, but he does not shoot it off unprovoked like a small boy with a rifle. Apparently he has no affectations. He listened to the glowing appraisals of himself without protest but also without beaming.
Charles Fort’s position is unique in the domains of thought and letters. He is the one man who can unite all scientists. Their unanimity, to be sure, is one of suppressed fury. But that is quite something to have achieved. While Sir James Jeans may be heard to titter and tut-tut at Professor Eddington, while there are savants who shake their heads at Einstein and others will tell you--not to be quoted by name--that Millikan is a sublimated publicist to the field of astrophysics, they will all as one man scowl as the mention of Fort’s name. To the scientist he is the arch-heretic.
The Forteans, on the other hand, will cheerfully admit that their prophet is a heretic. But, they say, why don’t the scientists answer him?
Fort’s doctrine, in brief, is that science is absurdly cluttered up with dogma. Away with all dogma! Scientists today are high priests of a superstition compared to when Greek mythology was a plausible body of thought.
‘We hear much of the conflict between science and religion,’ he says, ‘but our conflict is with both of these. Science and religion always have agreed in opposing and suppressing various witchcrafts. Now that religion is inglorious, one of the most fantastic of transferences of worships is that of glorifying science as a beneficent being. It is the attributing of all that is of development, or of possible betterment, to science. But no scientist has ever upheld a new idea without brining upon himself abuse from other scientists. Science has done its utmost to prevent whatever science has done.
‘Resistance to notions in this book will come from persons who identify industrial science and the good of it with the pure or academic or aristocratic sciences, that are living on the repute of industrial science. In my own mind there is distinguishment between a good watchdog and the fleas on him. If the fleas, too, could be taught to bark there’d be a little chorus of some tiny value. But fleas are aristocrats.’
We should not, he says, ‘firmly believe’ anything. Belief is an impediment to development. The only way to facilitate development is to accept temporarily.
‘Scientists, in matters of our data, have been like somebody in Europe before the year 1492 hearing stories of lands to the west, going out on the ocean for an hour or so in a rowboat and then saying: “Oh, hell! There ain’t no America.”’
For twenty-six years Charles Fort has been gathering ‘a procession of data that science has excluded.’ When certain actual and provable phenomena do not fit into the scientists’ explanations they throw them out, ignoring or denying their existence. He continues piling them up, inviting the savants to invent new dogmas to account for them or interpret them by old formulae. Hitherto none of the fraternity has answered him. Admirers of Fort who have tried to extract a reasoned reply tell me the learned doctors and professors grow annoyed at the suggestion and, if one of his books is thrust into their hands, chuck it indignantly across the room.
All of which adds to the gayety of nations, if not to the good digestion of pundits.
It was Dreiser who procured the publication of Fort’s first opus. The manuscript of ‘The Book of the Damned’ had gone the rounds and met with unanimous editorial sniffs. Dreiser read it and promptly became both proselyte and missionary. He took it to Liveright, who originally was as shy as his rivals. Finally Dreiser insisted, threatening to take his own books to another firm, and Liveright capitulated.
The purpose of the Fortean Society, in addition to making propaganda, will be to help Fort collect more data and to establish a fund for the preservation of the notes and references he has compiled.”
The Louis Sherwin in question seems to have been Hugo Louis Sherwin Golitz, a drama critic, who attended the Fortean Society meeting as a member of the press. He wrote about the night in his "Roving Reporter" column for The New York Evening Post.
The article is a bit arch, especially with the picture of a beufddled Dreiser used to illustrate it. Nothing in it suggests Sherwin was necessarily a fan of Fort. And I have found no evidence of Sherwin's trumpeting Fort; certainly Thayer never mentioned him. Since Rascoe was also at the first (and only) Fortean Society meeting, a member of the press but also a fan, it may be that he saw Sherwin and assumed he was also a partisan.
Here is what Sherwin wrote for the Post, published 27 January 1931, the day after the meeting:
“Seeing and hearing a live man undergo the process of being erected into a cult in his own presence is something you won’t experience every day. Nevertheless, this somewhat uncustomary operation was performed last night on Charles Fort, whose ‘New Lands’ and “The Book of the Damned’ have been variously bepraised and bespattered and whose latest work, ‘Lo!” has just been published by Claude Kendall.
The event, which took place in the Savoy-Plaza apartment of J. David Stern, was the birth of the Fortean Society, whose purpose is to promulgate and celebrate, not to say propagandize, the work of Mr. Fort. This parturition seemed to be eminently successful, parents and offspring doing well.
In case you should be tempted to giggle, be careful. For several of the founders are fellows who can giggle back and giggle better. Rather a curious assortment, in a way. You would hardly expect to find Theodore Dreiser and Booth Tarkington in the same boat. But there they are, and Harry Leon Wilson also. Likewise Ben Hecht, Edgar Lee Masters, Burton Rascoe, Harry Elmer Barnes and John Cowper Powys. Tiffany Thayer, author of ‘Thirteen Men’ and ‘The Illustrious Corpse,’ is the secretary of the society. Our host, Mr. Stern, publisher of the Philadelphia Record and a string of other papers, is evidently its angel, for the time being at any rate. Not all of these were present last night, but enough for a good start.
They put one over on Fort himself in order to get him there. When he arrived he had no idea of what the shootin’ was all about. He thought he had been invited to dine and spend the evening with Stern and Dreiser. Instead of which he found himself cast for a role that might appall even a strong head. He had to sit and listen while he was described as one of the great men of all time, to hear it said that his work was the biggest thing that had happened in Dreiser’s life, that it was the opening of a new world concept. During all of which he looked patiently and meditatively at his cigar and sipped ginger ale.
Fort Listens
Personally he seemed to be a mild, simple and very engaging personage. He has a strong gift of humor, but he does not shoot it off unprovoked like a small boy with a rifle. Apparently he has no affectations. He listened to the glowing appraisals of himself without protest but also without beaming.
Charles Fort’s position is unique in the domains of thought and letters. He is the one man who can unite all scientists. Their unanimity, to be sure, is one of suppressed fury. But that is quite something to have achieved. While Sir James Jeans may be heard to titter and tut-tut at Professor Eddington, while there are savants who shake their heads at Einstein and others will tell you--not to be quoted by name--that Millikan is a sublimated publicist to the field of astrophysics, they will all as one man scowl as the mention of Fort’s name. To the scientist he is the arch-heretic.
The Forteans, on the other hand, will cheerfully admit that their prophet is a heretic. But, they say, why don’t the scientists answer him?
Fort’s doctrine, in brief, is that science is absurdly cluttered up with dogma. Away with all dogma! Scientists today are high priests of a superstition compared to when Greek mythology was a plausible body of thought.
‘We hear much of the conflict between science and religion,’ he says, ‘but our conflict is with both of these. Science and religion always have agreed in opposing and suppressing various witchcrafts. Now that religion is inglorious, one of the most fantastic of transferences of worships is that of glorifying science as a beneficent being. It is the attributing of all that is of development, or of possible betterment, to science. But no scientist has ever upheld a new idea without brining upon himself abuse from other scientists. Science has done its utmost to prevent whatever science has done.
‘Resistance to notions in this book will come from persons who identify industrial science and the good of it with the pure or academic or aristocratic sciences, that are living on the repute of industrial science. In my own mind there is distinguishment between a good watchdog and the fleas on him. If the fleas, too, could be taught to bark there’d be a little chorus of some tiny value. But fleas are aristocrats.’
We should not, he says, ‘firmly believe’ anything. Belief is an impediment to development. The only way to facilitate development is to accept temporarily.
‘Scientists, in matters of our data, have been like somebody in Europe before the year 1492 hearing stories of lands to the west, going out on the ocean for an hour or so in a rowboat and then saying: “Oh, hell! There ain’t no America.”’
For twenty-six years Charles Fort has been gathering ‘a procession of data that science has excluded.’ When certain actual and provable phenomena do not fit into the scientists’ explanations they throw them out, ignoring or denying their existence. He continues piling them up, inviting the savants to invent new dogmas to account for them or interpret them by old formulae. Hitherto none of the fraternity has answered him. Admirers of Fort who have tried to extract a reasoned reply tell me the learned doctors and professors grow annoyed at the suggestion and, if one of his books is thrust into their hands, chuck it indignantly across the room.
All of which adds to the gayety of nations, if not to the good digestion of pundits.
It was Dreiser who procured the publication of Fort’s first opus. The manuscript of ‘The Book of the Damned’ had gone the rounds and met with unanimous editorial sniffs. Dreiser read it and promptly became both proselyte and missionary. He took it to Liveright, who originally was as shy as his rivals. Finally Dreiser insisted, threatening to take his own books to another firm, and Liveright capitulated.
The purpose of the Fortean Society, in addition to making propaganda, will be to help Fort collect more data and to establish a fund for the preservation of the notes and references he has compiled.”
