The Complete Books of Charles Fort: The Book of the Damned / Lo! / Wild Talents / New Lands

page 38 - So Science functions for and serves society at large, and would, from society at large, receive no support, unless it did so divert itself or dissipate and prostitute itself. It seems that by prostitution I mean usefulness.

page 324 - That our existence, a thing within one solar system, or supposed solar system, is a stricken thing that is mewling through space, shocking able-minded, healthy systems with the sores on its sun, its ghastly mooons, its civilizations that are all broken out with sciences; a celestial leper, holding out doddering expanses into which charitable systems drop golden comets?

page 389 - We assemble the data. Unhappily, we shall be unable to resist the tempation to reason and theorize. May Super-embryology have mercy upon our own syllogisms. We consider that we are entitled to at least 13 pages of gross and stupid erors. After that we shall have to explain.

page 643 - As to data that we shall now take up, I say to myself: "You are a benign ghoul, digging up the dead, old legends and superstitions, trying to breath life into them. Well, then, why have you neglected Santa Claus?"

What use is Fort today? Most published Forteans (Keel, Coleman) are on-site researchers, methodically tracking down and experiencing that of which they write. The only place Charles Fort traveled to was the library.

Fort would think that his writings and opinions were above classification, and if anyone is, he is probably the one. But we have to connect all writers to something. I see alot of Hegel in his writings, particularly in his dialectical analyses and his fixation on negation. Hegel's famous quote - The whole of philosophy resembles a circle of circles - is hearkened to in Fort's famous circle quotation. But this is no philosophy text. You could boil down Fort's philosophy in Book of Damned to a concise three pages. Yet Fort reiterates, and rephrases, and belabors. And it's excruciatingly enjoyable. If you don't like being told the same thing over and over again, albeit wittiily and elaborately and incorrigibly, don't read this book.

I treat Fort like I treat the Bible. I don't mean that irreverently (I happen to think the Bible is pretty holy meself). Open the 1100+ page book anywhere, and read a chapter. Be enlightened, be bemused, be annoyed. Maybe the response is the key. Fort had his pet theories, and they are absurd. But he was onto something. An absoluteness I think. He lambasts religion, and he really lays into science. This may offend people, but theories are meant to be attacked, aren't they? And that is the primary Fortean dogma.

Forteans are a motley and diverse bunch. Yes, you'll find UFO passages, animal mutilations, falling frogs. To me, the details are only significant in volume. If you decide to read this book, leave your pet theories outside of the covers.

I like to believe that Fort was searching for the Absolute, even if the Absolute turns out to be completely absurd to the human perspective. If absolute theories exist, it might only be our ignorance and prejudice which make them absurd.

Oh I could say that everybody should read this book. But the fact is most people won't get through the first chapter. This book is an artifact in many ways, and was written for people with certain intellectual and literary backgrounds. If that sounds a bit snobbish, so be it. Fort was such a snob that he kept his circle of friends exceedingly small, and treated well-respected ideas like lepers. Today, I encounter this book much like I did almost twenty years ago. Like a child, full of wonder, and ready to believe and disbelieve anything.


Mind open, tongue in cheek, questions ready.   April 16, 2001
41 out of 42 found this review helpful

It would be foolish, really, to try and write a review that in some way offers more information than the one by Jesper Sampaio. And so, I don't intend to. I merely want to offer a few instructions and my own opinion.

Instruction number one: don't take it at face value. Many of the explanations Fort offers for any number of unexplained phenomena are intentionally fantastic, sarcastic or ironic. It is, I think, part of his overall effort to get people to question the "conventional" explanation. Many scientific explanations, after all, simply fit the facts available and, in that respect, are no more or less valid than some of Fort's.

Instruction number two: get ready for rather turgid prose. I personally like the way Fort writes, but it can be tough to get through for the uninitiated. Remember that he was writing in the early part of the century.

Instruction number three: don't be afraid to jump around. I know it's best to read these books "back to back" as it were, but it's not necessary. If you get tired of a particular avenue of discussion just jump ahead. Skip to a different book if you want. Part of my enjoyment of these books was being able to pick the volume up whenever the mood struck me and simply open to any chapter. Sure you miss some of the overarching themes, but it makes it much easier to enjoy.

So, for what it's worth, here's my opinion:

This is a really great primer for Forteana and unexplained phenomena. It is also a sharp and witty condemnation of blind trust in ANY particular system of belief and of the scientific view in particular. The scientific view receives particular condemnation, I think, because of the tendency of those within the scientific community to speak in absolutes. Science, says Fort, has a nasty habit of drawing lines in the sand and saying "this is the way things are" and condemning anyone who says different. The Earth is the center of the universe and rocks don't fall from the sky. Eventually the line gets redrawn, but Fort suggests that perhaps scientists should have just as healthy a sense of skepticism about their own fields of study as they do about the more fantastic things they habitually reject.

Enjoyable by believers and skeptics alike, the Complete Works of Charles Fort is both entertaining and thought provoking.


Fossils in meteorites?   December 12, 2004
ROBERT REESE (EASTON, PA United States)
12 out of 12 found this review helpful

From page 80 in Fort's "The Book Of The Damned" published in 1919: "Dr. Hahn said he had found fossils in meteorites." Fred Hoyle, the British astronomer, published in his 1984 book "The Intelligent Universe," photographs of fossils in a meteorite. Of course, in 1996 NASA announced finding fossils in a meteorite. What took NASA so long?

Fort's point: What doesn't fit in is damned. What other strange phenomena have been excluded from respectable consideration? Fort tells of fish and stones falling from the clouds, strange craft cruising the skies in the 1890's, lights moving beneath the surface of the sea, vitrified (melted) stone forts in Scotland, disappearing stars, red rain, unknown planets crossing the sun, and sea serpents.

Fort's style of extreme and fantastic hyperbole makes for difficult reading until the reader allows his thinking to slide into the Fortean mode. Of course, thats what Fort had in mind all along, to stretch the reader's thinking to the point where he will at least consider what others have ignored.







Indispensible, inimitable, incorrigible.   February 22, 1997
10 out of 11 found this review helpful

Charles Fort collected what he called "damned facts"; facts that science refused to acknowledge; rains of frogs, eclipses that shouldn't happen, sheep-mutilating werewolves and disappearing Ambroses. He had several mutually contradictory theories to explain them ("I think we're fished for" is perhaps my favorite) and wrote in a jaunty, wry, telegraphic style that could define "inimitable."

Indispensible for the well-read UFOlogist or lover of the bizarre, this omnibus volume is indexed by place, date, and type of incident ("Periwinkles, fall of"). Really, Fort should be required reading for all journalists, scientists, and saucer-watchers, if only because of the fights it would start


The Really Good Book   April 11, 1997
7 out of 8 found this review helpful

The best comparisn I think of for this book is the Bible. Both are really long, both discuss at length strange and inexplicable events that there is no logical explanation for (odd things falling from the sky, people disappearing without a trace, ect.), and both challenge the superiority of science over other, more cosmic forces. However, Charles Fort is a better read than the Bible. And a lot funnier too