The Red Cross of the Human Mind
Fort’s agitating leukocyte failed to persuade his fellow white cells. Fort himself made converts with the first of his four book series. In his review, Ben Hecht (later a well known author, then a short story writer) said, “Whatever the purpose of Charles Fort, he has delighted me beyond all men who have written books in this world. Mountebank or Messiah, it matters not. Henceforth, I am a Fortean.” Pultzer-prize winning author Booth Tarkington was so taken by Fort that he wrote the foreword to his second book. And that book, too, gained him fans—indeed, perhaps his most important—if not famous—fan besides Dreiser: Tiffany Thayer. Son of actors, Thayer was something of a free spirit, having dropped out of school in Illinois to tour with an acting company. He came to New York in 1926 to make his fame and fortune. Fort and Thayer corresponded for six years, before their first meeting, in 1930. At this point, Fort was close to publishing Lo!—the title provided by Thayer—and Thayer decided to found a Fortean Society as a kind of book-release party. Fort wanted no part of such an organization—he was an iconoclast, not an icon—but was tricked into attending the first meeting. Dreiser was declared president. Tarkington and Hecht were there, too, as were other literary luminaries, including Burton Rascoe and John Cowper Powys. The initial meeting of the Fortean Society was held 26 January 1931 at the Savoy-Plaza Hotel, and generated a fair bit of national publicity.
Fort was prophetic about the dangers of having his name turned into an institution, although it did not seem so early on. After its debut, the Fortean Society met irregularly, mostly, it seems, as a kind of dinner club for authors. It went on hiatus after Fort died and Thayer headed to Hollywood to try his hand at scriptwriting. When he returned to New York in 1936, Thayer announced his attention to publish a Fortean magazine. Dreiser wanted no part of such an operation, but Thayer pushed ahead, crafting a new kind of Forteanism. In the foreword he wrote for Lo!, Thayer had maintained some of Fort’s agnosticism, but, in retrospect, it seems clear that Thayer was not one to suspend judgment. The first issue of The Fortean Society Magazine came out blasting, blaming science for the (likely) death of Amelia Earheart—scientists, he implied, pretended the world was better known than it was, and that ignorance had led the aviatrix to crash. The article, if nothing else, was a triumph of publicity-generation: wire services placed descriptions of Thayer’s theory in hundreds of newspapers around the country. From the start, Forteanism was associated with the cranky crackpottery that Fort himself had avoided by rewriting X, Y, and Z.
And the eccentricity was just beginning! After a slow start and a title change—the magazine became Doubt—Thayer hit his stride. Thayer retained some of Fort’s humor, never taking himself too seriously in the prolix editorials he used to fill Doubt’s pages, but he was not shy about dogmatism: science was a fraud. Vaccines were dangerous. Flying saucers were inventions of the defense department. Both World Wars had been hoaxes. The old Forteans dropped from the rolls, or were attacked, as happened with Ben Hecht, who Thayer resented for supporting Israel. Space was opened to heterodox thinkers such as Ernst Philipp Barthel, who proclaimed the end of Copernicanism, advertisements for books and pamphlets on odd theories, such as Alfred Wilkes Drayson’s claim that ice ages resulted from the earth’s tilting axis, and cartoons poking fun of Einstein. Thayer conceived of Forteanism a religion that preserved human dignity and helped rid the world of false ideologies—and replaced them with truth, he often implied, although sometimes paying homage to Fort’s skepticism. Gone was any discussion of Dominants or a coming era of Intermediatism. Instead, Thayer’s version of Forteanism was, as he said in a pamphlet, “The Red Cross of the Human Mind,” rescuing those who had become prisoners to dogma.
Fort’s agitating leukocyte failed to persuade his fellow white cells. Fort himself made converts with the first of his four book series. In his review, Ben Hecht (later a well known author, then a short story writer) said, “Whatever the purpose of Charles Fort, he has delighted me beyond all men who have written books in this world. Mountebank or Messiah, it matters not. Henceforth, I am a Fortean.” Pultzer-prize winning author Booth Tarkington was so taken by Fort that he wrote the foreword to his second book. And that book, too, gained him fans—indeed, perhaps his most important—if not famous—fan besides Dreiser: Tiffany Thayer. Son of actors, Thayer was something of a free spirit, having dropped out of school in Illinois to tour with an acting company. He came to New York in 1926 to make his fame and fortune. Fort and Thayer corresponded for six years, before their first meeting, in 1930. At this point, Fort was close to publishing Lo!—the title provided by Thayer—and Thayer decided to found a Fortean Society as a kind of book-release party. Fort wanted no part of such an organization—he was an iconoclast, not an icon—but was tricked into attending the first meeting. Dreiser was declared president. Tarkington and Hecht were there, too, as were other literary luminaries, including Burton Rascoe and John Cowper Powys. The initial meeting of the Fortean Society was held 26 January 1931 at the Savoy-Plaza Hotel, and generated a fair bit of national publicity.
Fort was prophetic about the dangers of having his name turned into an institution, although it did not seem so early on. After its debut, the Fortean Society met irregularly, mostly, it seems, as a kind of dinner club for authors. It went on hiatus after Fort died and Thayer headed to Hollywood to try his hand at scriptwriting. When he returned to New York in 1936, Thayer announced his attention to publish a Fortean magazine. Dreiser wanted no part of such an operation, but Thayer pushed ahead, crafting a new kind of Forteanism. In the foreword he wrote for Lo!, Thayer had maintained some of Fort’s agnosticism, but, in retrospect, it seems clear that Thayer was not one to suspend judgment. The first issue of The Fortean Society Magazine came out blasting, blaming science for the (likely) death of Amelia Earheart—scientists, he implied, pretended the world was better known than it was, and that ignorance had led the aviatrix to crash. The article, if nothing else, was a triumph of publicity-generation: wire services placed descriptions of Thayer’s theory in hundreds of newspapers around the country. From the start, Forteanism was associated with the cranky crackpottery that Fort himself had avoided by rewriting X, Y, and Z.
And the eccentricity was just beginning! After a slow start and a title change—the magazine became Doubt—Thayer hit his stride. Thayer retained some of Fort’s humor, never taking himself too seriously in the prolix editorials he used to fill Doubt’s pages, but he was not shy about dogmatism: science was a fraud. Vaccines were dangerous. Flying saucers were inventions of the defense department. Both World Wars had been hoaxes. The old Forteans dropped from the rolls, or were attacked, as happened with Ben Hecht, who Thayer resented for supporting Israel. Space was opened to heterodox thinkers such as Ernst Philipp Barthel, who proclaimed the end of Copernicanism, advertisements for books and pamphlets on odd theories, such as Alfred Wilkes Drayson’s claim that ice ages resulted from the earth’s tilting axis, and cartoons poking fun of Einstein. Thayer conceived of Forteanism a religion that preserved human dignity and helped rid the world of false ideologies—and replaced them with truth, he often implied, although sometimes paying homage to Fort’s skepticism. Gone was any discussion of Dominants or a coming era of Intermediatism. Instead, Thayer’s version of Forteanism was, as he said in a pamphlet, “The Red Cross of the Human Mind,” rescuing those who had become prisoners to dogma.
