Got a few hours to be amazed? Marguerite Wolf has taken an incredible amount of time and effort gathering information from Charles Fort’s indispensible books for her website called Tales From The Fort: The Charles Fort Files. Wolf’s intro to the site:

This site is an effort to organize the research of Charles Hoy Fort into a more easily utilized resource by gathering and placing under various subject headings the vast amount of information scattered throughout Fort’s books. The information contained within these pages is gleaned from extensive study of the four non-fiction books published by Charles Fort in his lifetime.

The information contained in Fort’s books was gleaned by him through an exhaustive twenty-seven years of research in the New York Public Library and the library of the British Museum. Fort read through innumerable manuscripts, scientific journals, newspapers and magazines and noted every oddity he encountered. For many, the works of Charles Fort are as close as they will ever come to these original sources. This makes his work of added importance since, otherwise, this information would have been largely lost to the greater public.

The info is organized into seven main categories, like “OOPARTS” (Out Of Place ARTifacts) “Creatures” and “UFOs” as well as several sub-categories. Here’s a couple of real humdingers I found by just searching for a few seconds:

Man Who Could Not Be Drowned
“New York Herald Tribune, Aug.13, 1931— The Man They Could Not Drown— ‘Hartford, Conn,. Aug.12— Angelo Faticoni, known as ‘The Human Cork,’ Because he could stay afloat in water fifteen hours with twenty pounds of lead tied to his ankles, died on August 2 in Jacksonville, Fla., it became known here today. He was seventy-two years old. Faticoni could sleep in water, roll up into a ball, lie on his side, or assume any position asked of him. Once he was sewn into a bag and then thrown headforemost into the water, with a twenty-pound cannonball lashed to his legs. His head reappeared on the surface soon afterward, and he remained motionless in that position for eight hours. Another time he swam across the Hudson tied to a chair weighted with lead. Some years ago he went to Harvard to perform for the students and faculty. He had been examined by medical authorities who failed to find support for their theory that he was able to float at such great lenghts by the nature of his internal organs, which they believed were different from those of most men. Faticoni had often promised to reveal the secret of how he became ‘The Human Cork,’ but he never did.’”

Report From Germany
“On August 17th (London , August 19) laborers at work in the forest east of Dessau, Germany, saw in the sky an object that they thought was a balloon. It suddenly flamed, and something that was thought to be its car, fell into the forest. The chief forester was notified, and a hunt, on a large scale, was made, but nothing was found. Aeronautical societies reported that no known balloon had been sent up. It was thought that the object must have been somebody’s large toy balloon. About this time, the fall from the sky of a white cylinder of marble was reported. …(it was a) symmetric, seemingly carved cylinder, 12 inches long, weight about 3 pounds.

7 Comments to “Fort’s Writing Catalogued”

1. drew hempel Says:
   May 31st, 2008 at 6:05 pm

   I guess my favorite thing about Fort is when he just goes ape-shit on science as a whole. His prose is excellent and his rambling sentences are better than other avant-garde famous rambles (Joyce, James, Faulkner).

   There is always this urge to categorize his listings, as this website attempts to do, but it seems to hack up Fort. Form is content. It kind of reminds me of when this professor wrote a forward to my favorite novel, “The Third Policeman” by Flann O’Brien. If you get that edition, make sure to tear out the forward before you read it.

   Then there’s Corbliss’ books, categories of anomalies — Fort is so beyond Corbliss yet this “listing” website might give people the wrong impression. I even found Corbliss’ books in the engineering library at the U of MN. Try to find the Complete Books of Fort at the engineering library.

2. craig york Says:
   June 2nd, 2008 at 12:47 pm

   Piffle. Fort’s work is information, no
   matter how you sort it. Not sure what you mean to imply by the mis-spelling
   of William Corliss, but he’s a worthy
   successor, to my way of thinking.

3. drew hempel Says:
   June 2nd, 2008 at 7:10 pm

   My reading of pages 860-885 today in the Complete Books of Fort was worth more than off of Corliss’ oeuvre.

4. craig york Says:
   June 3rd, 2008 at 10:17 am

   One man’s mead is another man’s margret,
   I guess. I like Fort, I admire Fort, I
   respect Fort. But he wasn’t looking for
   a pedestal, and I won’t put him up on
   one either.

   I will say it tickles me no end to read
   about “Going ape-shit on science…”
   when that reply depends on the current
   pinnacle of western science and engineering, the modern computer…

5. drew hempel Says:
   June 4th, 2008 at 9:31 am

   Yes but considering I have no computer, no phone, no t.v., no car, no watch … I’m pretty much leveraging the mass technology forced upon us.

   Science = Imperialism

6. craig york Says:
   June 9th, 2008 at 3:12 pm

   Trivializing Rationalizations=Nincompoops.

7. drew hempel Says:
   June 9th, 2008 at 5:04 pm

   Seriously Craig — I’m totally against trivia. Here’s my blogbook: http://www.mothershiplanding.blogspot.com

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