Review in the Fortean Times

4/26/2025

3 Comments

Ian James Kidd

4/27/2025 06:10:54 am

Hope you enjoyed the review, Joshua. As I said, an excellent book that sets new standards for Fort research.

Paul

4/27/2025 07:42:15 pm

I too would’ve liked a wee bit more on one of my favourite writers, Benjamin De Casseres, although the featured excerpts from his letters to Fort have never previously been published. Tiffany Thayer originally planned to issue a book of Fort’s correspondence with DeCasseres along with Ben’s essay on Fort; unfortunately this project (like numerous other ideas of Thayer’s) didn’t come to fruition.
Joshua Buhs’s blog post, ‘Benjamin DeCasserse as Fortean’ is probably the best single biographical essay on him.

Joshua B Buhs

4/28/2025 09:43:35 pm

Count me as a third who would have liked more DeCasseres. I just wish the evidence was better. It is very suggestive of a rich connection between Fortean, Decadent, and Modernist sensibilities, of egoism and irony. But the details seem to be lacking. The extant correspondence that I have found is thin--hinting at the connections, not elucidating them. Fort's famous refusal to be pinned down adds extra interpretive challenges. I am sure there are ways to extract information from the connecting tendrils that do exist, but they were beyond me. I'd love it if someone could figure it out, though.

Review in the Fortean Times

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