I see that, for whatever reason, the introduction did not post last time. Let's try again:
In August 1943, stones fell from a clear sky onto a little white stucco house. At least that’s what the newspapers said. The house was on 89th Avenue in Oakland, California, and belonged to Irene Fellows, a grandmother. Some of the rocks were pebbles, some as large as chicken eggs. According to reports, the stones fell only on the Fellows’s house. Police investigated but could find no cause. The story gained local attention. The San Francisco Chronicle reported on the mystery and its book review editor used the event as an introduction to one of his daily columns. Anthony Boucher, resident of the adjacent city Berkeley, California, visited and collected one of the stones. He gossiped about the event with fellow writer Miriam Allen de Ford, who lived across the bay in San Francisco. For many of the people—for the journalist who wrote the story, for Joseph Henry Jackson, the Chronicle’s book reviewer, for Boucher and de Ford, for Manly P. Hall who told of the happenings in his magazine Horizon—the odd occurrence on 89th Avenue immediately brought to mind one name: Charles Fort.
Born in 1874, Charles Hoy Fort was an American writer who spent inordinate amounts of time in libraries collecting reports of mysterious events—stone falls such as the one in Oakland, as well as other unusual things dropping from the heavens, unidentified lights in the sky, disappearances and such—weaving these into four books, the last one published in 1932, the year of his death. Fort inspired a cultish following, a loosely allied group who called themselves Forteans. It was Forteans who had his books republished as an omnibus edition in 1941, and they have never been out of print since. To the extent that Forteans do garner attention, it tends to be as cranks: conspiracy theorists, mystery-mongers, the naïve and credulous. There is some truth to this characterization—some Forteans are mystery-mongers; some are credulous—but it oversimplifies a much more complicated, and interesting, story. Not all Forteans are cranks—and, indeed, many played important roles in the history of the twentieth century. Forteans invented practices and crafted a vocabulary that allowed individuals to simultaneously recognize the growing power of science and liberate themselves from its determinisms, and these practices, this language have hardly been investigated. To put the matter bluntly—perhaps too bluntly—it is impossible to fully understand the public meaning of science in twentieth-century America (as well as England and France) without understanding the Forteans.
The Forteans, though, remain obscure, fringe figures. Fort himself has warranted two biographies, the first by science fiction writer Damon Knight, the second by magician and writer Jim Steinmeyer. Steinmeyer’s biography, published in 2008, came as Fort was gaining a small semblance of scholarly respect: Jeffrey Kripal, Simon Locke, and Deborah Dixon have all had occasion to write about Fort, with Dixon offering the most sympathetic interpretation of the Forteans. In addition, author Colin Bennett published an analysis of Fort and his ideas in 2002. These various writings can be understood as part of a larger literature, concerned with the relationship between science, modernity, and enchantment—for Fort’s mysteries are nothing if not enchanting. Historian Michael Saler has usefully divided this literature into three. The first line of though descends from Max Weber’s influential statement that science has disenchanted the modern world. Studies in this tradition set science and enchantment as opposites, and so Fort and the Forteans become emblematic of the antiscientific view, chasing a disappearing enchantment. Saler classifies these works as binary. There is a strong binary tendency in both biographies of Fort as well as in Bennett’s Politics of the Imagination. The second way of sorting the relations between science, modernity, and enchantment is best exemplified by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer—they are what Saler calls dialectical. Such works argue that modern science, by being so closely allied with capitalism, enchants the public and so distracts them from more important issues. Bennett’s argument sometimes toys with this approach as well. Saler calls the third category antinomial, and in it belongs much writing on science, modernity, and enchantment over the past fifteen years or so. Certainly, Kripal, Locke, and Dixon are best understood as antinomials, although there concerns are also often with their own disciplines—religious studies, sociology, and geography, respectively. According to the antinomial perspective, modernity is not disenchanted, necessarily, nor is science. Rather, science and enchantment both continue to exist in the modern world; both are continually produced, and not just to dupe the public. Rather, enchantment is an important component of science, of reason. Weber was wrong: science did not disenchant the modern world. It merely redrew the boundaries between the two. The question then becomes, How did individuals live in a world where the boundary was being redrawn, a world in which scientists could exploit the fundamental forces of nature to destroy a city with a single bomb, and in which stones could fall from an empty sky?
Forteans provided answers to this existential question. By no means were they the only answers—indeed, Weber’s binary thinking and the Marxist dialectics of Adorno and Horkheimer provided, and continue to provide, influential answers to this question. But the Fortean answers were significant. This paper outlines some of these answers. It focuses on Forteans in the San Francisco Bay Area between 1920, just after Fort published his first book, and 1959. The end date is chosen both for practical and methodological reasons. By the mid-1950s, San Francisco Forteanism was petering out. As well, 1959 marked a change in Forteanism, the nature of which is beyond the scope of this paper. The Bay Area was chosen entirely for pragmatic reasons: there was a diverse community of Forteans living in the area. They were connected to other Forteans throughout the country, but nonetheless were circumscribed, even if the community was not very well integrated. Bay Area Forteans were identified through the Fortean Society’s official publication and newspaper searches; basic biographical information, writings, and a few archival collections—especially that of Anthony Boucher’s—provided materials for reconstructing the community, its shape and concerns.
The argument falls into three parts. First, is an overview of the life of Charles Fort, the founding of the Fortean Society, the development of Forteanism, and its detractors. The paper then moves on to consider how Forteanism came to the San Francisco Bay Area from its home in New York and the varieties that it took. Roughly speaking, there were five forms—five answers to the question of how science and enchantment related in the modern world: some saw Forteanism as an adjunct to science, some as a key to mysticism. Others understood Forteanism ironically, as certainly wrong but still worth considering. Artists, especially, found much to admire in Fort’s works, which was easily adapted to some of their theoretical concerns. Fort was used to investigate unexplored realms of human experience, including phenomena that were beyond analysis: weird events. The third section of argument tries to find an underlying logic to these varieties of Forteanism by comparing Forteans to (political) anarchists as described by James C. Scott. This comparison provides a model for understanding other Forteans as well as others of similar bents, the so-called crackpots and aficionados of the weird and wonderful.
In August 1943, stones fell from a clear sky onto a little white stucco house. At least that’s what the newspapers said. The house was on 89th Avenue in Oakland, California, and belonged to Irene Fellows, a grandmother. Some of the rocks were pebbles, some as large as chicken eggs. According to reports, the stones fell only on the Fellows’s house. Police investigated but could find no cause. The story gained local attention. The San Francisco Chronicle reported on the mystery and its book review editor used the event as an introduction to one of his daily columns. Anthony Boucher, resident of the adjacent city Berkeley, California, visited and collected one of the stones. He gossiped about the event with fellow writer Miriam Allen de Ford, who lived across the bay in San Francisco. For many of the people—for the journalist who wrote the story, for Joseph Henry Jackson, the Chronicle’s book reviewer, for Boucher and de Ford, for Manly P. Hall who told of the happenings in his magazine Horizon—the odd occurrence on 89th Avenue immediately brought to mind one name: Charles Fort.
Born in 1874, Charles Hoy Fort was an American writer who spent inordinate amounts of time in libraries collecting reports of mysterious events—stone falls such as the one in Oakland, as well as other unusual things dropping from the heavens, unidentified lights in the sky, disappearances and such—weaving these into four books, the last one published in 1932, the year of his death. Fort inspired a cultish following, a loosely allied group who called themselves Forteans. It was Forteans who had his books republished as an omnibus edition in 1941, and they have never been out of print since. To the extent that Forteans do garner attention, it tends to be as cranks: conspiracy theorists, mystery-mongers, the naïve and credulous. There is some truth to this characterization—some Forteans are mystery-mongers; some are credulous—but it oversimplifies a much more complicated, and interesting, story. Not all Forteans are cranks—and, indeed, many played important roles in the history of the twentieth century. Forteans invented practices and crafted a vocabulary that allowed individuals to simultaneously recognize the growing power of science and liberate themselves from its determinisms, and these practices, this language have hardly been investigated. To put the matter bluntly—perhaps too bluntly—it is impossible to fully understand the public meaning of science in twentieth-century America (as well as England and France) without understanding the Forteans.
The Forteans, though, remain obscure, fringe figures. Fort himself has warranted two biographies, the first by science fiction writer Damon Knight, the second by magician and writer Jim Steinmeyer. Steinmeyer’s biography, published in 2008, came as Fort was gaining a small semblance of scholarly respect: Jeffrey Kripal, Simon Locke, and Deborah Dixon have all had occasion to write about Fort, with Dixon offering the most sympathetic interpretation of the Forteans. In addition, author Colin Bennett published an analysis of Fort and his ideas in 2002. These various writings can be understood as part of a larger literature, concerned with the relationship between science, modernity, and enchantment—for Fort’s mysteries are nothing if not enchanting. Historian Michael Saler has usefully divided this literature into three. The first line of though descends from Max Weber’s influential statement that science has disenchanted the modern world. Studies in this tradition set science and enchantment as opposites, and so Fort and the Forteans become emblematic of the antiscientific view, chasing a disappearing enchantment. Saler classifies these works as binary. There is a strong binary tendency in both biographies of Fort as well as in Bennett’s Politics of the Imagination. The second way of sorting the relations between science, modernity, and enchantment is best exemplified by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer—they are what Saler calls dialectical. Such works argue that modern science, by being so closely allied with capitalism, enchants the public and so distracts them from more important issues. Bennett’s argument sometimes toys with this approach as well. Saler calls the third category antinomial, and in it belongs much writing on science, modernity, and enchantment over the past fifteen years or so. Certainly, Kripal, Locke, and Dixon are best understood as antinomials, although there concerns are also often with their own disciplines—religious studies, sociology, and geography, respectively. According to the antinomial perspective, modernity is not disenchanted, necessarily, nor is science. Rather, science and enchantment both continue to exist in the modern world; both are continually produced, and not just to dupe the public. Rather, enchantment is an important component of science, of reason. Weber was wrong: science did not disenchant the modern world. It merely redrew the boundaries between the two. The question then becomes, How did individuals live in a world where the boundary was being redrawn, a world in which scientists could exploit the fundamental forces of nature to destroy a city with a single bomb, and in which stones could fall from an empty sky?
Forteans provided answers to this existential question. By no means were they the only answers—indeed, Weber’s binary thinking and the Marxist dialectics of Adorno and Horkheimer provided, and continue to provide, influential answers to this question. But the Fortean answers were significant. This paper outlines some of these answers. It focuses on Forteans in the San Francisco Bay Area between 1920, just after Fort published his first book, and 1959. The end date is chosen both for practical and methodological reasons. By the mid-1950s, San Francisco Forteanism was petering out. As well, 1959 marked a change in Forteanism, the nature of which is beyond the scope of this paper. The Bay Area was chosen entirely for pragmatic reasons: there was a diverse community of Forteans living in the area. They were connected to other Forteans throughout the country, but nonetheless were circumscribed, even if the community was not very well integrated. Bay Area Forteans were identified through the Fortean Society’s official publication and newspaper searches; basic biographical information, writings, and a few archival collections—especially that of Anthony Boucher’s—provided materials for reconstructing the community, its shape and concerns.
The argument falls into three parts. First, is an overview of the life of Charles Fort, the founding of the Fortean Society, the development of Forteanism, and its detractors. The paper then moves on to consider how Forteanism came to the San Francisco Bay Area from its home in New York and the varieties that it took. Roughly speaking, there were five forms—five answers to the question of how science and enchantment related in the modern world: some saw Forteanism as an adjunct to science, some as a key to mysticism. Others understood Forteanism ironically, as certainly wrong but still worth considering. Artists, especially, found much to admire in Fort’s works, which was easily adapted to some of their theoretical concerns. Fort was used to investigate unexplored realms of human experience, including phenomena that were beyond analysis: weird events. The third section of argument tries to find an underlying logic to these varieties of Forteanism by comparing Forteans to (political) anarchists as described by James C. Scott. This comparison provides a model for understanding other Forteans as well as others of similar bents, the so-called crackpots and aficionados of the weird and wonderful.
