Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural

by Jim Steinmeyer

The seminal biography of the twentieth century’s premier chronicler of the paranormal, Charles Fort—a man whose very name gave rise to an adjective, fortean, to describe the unexplained.

By the early 1920s, Americans were discovering that the world was a strange place.

Charles Fort could demonstrate that it was even stranger than anyone suspected. Frogs fell from the sky. Blood rained from the heavens. Mysterious airships visited the Earth. Dogs talked. People disappeared. Fort asked why, but, even more vexing, he also asked why we weren’t paying attention.

Here is the first fully rendered literary biography of the man who, more than any other figure, would define our idea of the anomalous and paranormal. In Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural, the acclaimed historian of stage magic Jim Steinmeyer goes deeply into the life of Charles Fort as he saw himself: first and foremost, a writer.

At the same time, Steinmeyer tells the story of an era in which the certainties of religion and science were being turned on their heads. And of how Fort—significantly—was the first man who challenged those orthodoxies not on the grounds of some counter-fundamentalism of his own but simply for the plainest of reasons: they didn’t work. In so doing, Fort gave voice to a generation of doubters who would neither accept the “straight story” of scholastic science nor credulously embrace fantastical visions. Instead, Charles Fort demanded of his readers and admirers the most radical of human acts: Thinking.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Paranormal, History, Magic, Occult, Biography Memoir

352 pages, Hardcover

First published September 28, 2007

About the author

Jim Steinmeyer was born and raised just outside of Chicago, Illinois, and graduated in 1980 from Loyola University of Chicago, with a major in communications. He is literally the man behind the magicians having invented impossibilities for four Doug Henning television specials, six touring shows, two Henning Broadway shows, and numerous television and Las Vegas appearances.For one of David Copperfield's television specials, Jim proposed the scenario and secret by which the Statue of Liberty could "disappear." Jim has also served as a consultant for Siegfried and Roy, David Copperfield and Lance Burton. He developed magic for Orson Welles, Harry Blackstone, and the Pendragons and many, many others.

In addition to his books and many accomplishments on stage and screen, Jim currently holds four U.S. patents in the field of illusion apparatus, and has also served as an expert witness in this field.

He currently lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife Frankie Glass, an independent television producer who has worked extensively in Great Britain and the U.S.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up, not knowing anything about Charles Fort, just knowing the adjective "fortean," meaning having to do with the strange, the bizarre, the unexplained. This turned out to be a truly entertaining read (I was reading it during a trip so it took longer than it it otherwise would have) about a man who was a real eccentric. As a young person, he got into journalism and was interested in writing short stories. But he became obsessed with gathering anecdotes concerning strange things and people. Frogs falling from the sky. Mysterious airships appearing above our world. A dog talking, people disappearing. When he got his first book, "The Book of the Damned " ( what a title!) published, it became a sensation, this being in the 20s when there was a strong interest in the occult and seances--and people going to circus freak shows...It's hard to know how serious Fort was in his writing about the paranormal. First and foremost, he saw himself as a debunker, being skeptical about the claims of both religion and science. I think a criticism some make about this book is that the author professional magician Jim Steinmeyer doesn't explain what made Fort tick.... I don't think it's any more possible to explain that than to explain how the frogs dropping from the sky had gotten there....

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Years spent in the used book trade assures that I have always been aware of figures such as Charles Fort, and I can use the term "fortean" in a sentence. But it was while I was reading Sister Carrie a few months ago that I looked up some background material on Theodore Dreiser, and learned that he was largely responsible for getting Fort into print. When I spotted a secondhand copy of Fort's complete works, I picked it up and quickly realized that he would be more interesting to read about than to read. So, I read this book.

Fort was not the crank I always assumed he was. He was a professional writer with a real sense of humor who basically just loved giving science, religion, or any other authority a hard time. Who comes off as something of an idiot in this telling is Dreiser, who is credulous and doggedly devoted to Fort's "vision" and "philosophy," two traits that Fort himself would probably have put in quotation marks as I just did.

This is not an academic or critical biography. It's a breezy trip through Fort's short and rather peculiar life, from a privileged but miserable boyhood, to time on the road, to years of barely scraping by as a journalist and short story writer. He was a recluse who loved doing the research that lead to his books of anomalies, and other than that wanted to share a glass of beer with his wife and go each night to the movies.

I might have another go at one of his own books. Lo! is reportedly the most readable.

[Dave Maddock · Rating 4 out of 5]

You have to know a bit about Charles Fort and his work before reading this biography (otherwise there's little reason to bother doing so), but it is a very well done account of his life and writings. For starters, Steinmeyer is generally skeptical of Fort's claims, but not an ass about it. As he put it in this interview:

I tend to be skeptical, but I don't consider myself a "debunker," and maybe that's why I appreciated Fort's work, even if I didn't always accept the phenomena.

The book is about Fort not Fortean phenomena--although Fort's biography goes a long way toward explaining how Fort developed his particular approach.

Steinmeyer has dug up a lot of detail about Fort's life and work (published and unpublished) from his short story days to early attempts at book-length "crank" theories, through to the four primary works that are still in print today (which Steinmeyer also edited--The Collected Works of Charles Fort.)

You will also learn a fair amount about the novelist Theodore Dreiser, who was Fort's patron and advocate, in the process. H.L. Mencken and Benjamin De Casseres also make regular cameos. These three figures typify the ways one might interpret and appreciate (or not) Fort's work: through the eyes of a credulous enthusiast (Dreiser), a scornful skeptic (Mencken), or as willfully agnostic satire (De Casseres). I myself straddle the Mencken/De Casseres borderline.

Fort's work fits into a broader pseudo-scientific, Spiritualist movement of the time where the occult, theosophy, seances, and circus freak shows were popular and names like P.T. Barnum, Robert Ripley, and Harry Houdini became well-known. Steinmeyer touches on this cultural phenomenon a little bit, but I am keen to find a broader study of this from the same point of view Steinmeyer takes with Fort. Nevertheless, this book is a fascinating piece of the historical puzzle that outlines the development of the modern paranormal community and its skeptical antithesis.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

very much the straight forward, easy to read style of biography, although that works perfectly well here since the actual details of fort's life are fairly simple. mostly takes fort seriously as writer and satirist and doesn't pronounce judgement on him particularly other than that. some of the detail about his upbringing and early life here was previously unknown to me and quite interesting. the extensive excerpts also got me wanting to read fort again - perhaps it's time for a reread..

[Kaethe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been meaning to read up on Fort since reading Chasing Vermeer, in which he is mentioned. Actually, he comes up in Good Omens, so I've been curious to learn more since 1991 or so.

***

Poor guy never did quite get the hang of people. But, boy, didn't journalism produce some fine short story writers? Very like Ring Lardner is what I mentioned to the husband, a comparison that Steinmeyer made just a few pages later on. Fort would have loved the modern age for making his collections. He could just sit in his room and gather data by computer. He'd have liked that.

[Caleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

No one wrote quite like Charles Fort, whose four books on the strange phenomena we now call Fortenalia can be read cover to cover in endless rotation and always offer something new and engaging to the reader (In that respect, they're not too different than the Bible).

Author Jim Steinmeyer doesn't write at all like Fort, but he sure has rounded up an awful lot about the writer, and recovered a lot of Fort's writing that was done outside of his four major works.

This was a great way to re-encouter Fort, and get some context into what went into his books and how they were originally received (Fort's best friend and long time literary champion Theodore Dreiser repeatedly called him the most fascinating American literary figure since Poe; H.G. Wells thought Fort "one of the most damnable bores who ever cut scraps from out-of-the-way newspapers" and that he wrote "like a drunkard.")

While he's most famous for the books assembled from the notes he took from years of library reasearch, he actually had quite a fascinating life before he got around to what he's now famous for, surviving a severely strict childhood, world travels, and frustrated attempts at short stories and novels that lead to dire poverty.

Steinmeyer quotes generously from Fort's own unpublished and unfinished autobiography, his only published novel, scraps of short stories from the magazines of his day, and his letters, devoting a little time after Fort's death to his legacy—the rancorous in-fighting of his followers, and those that attempted to take up his torch.

It's quite amazing to think how many writers and researchers Fort has inspired, and yet how none of them has every come close to his peculiar voice and point-of-view.

[Cayleigh Arnold · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this because I was a fan of the author rather than a particular fan of Charles Fort, and Steinmeyer didn’t let me down. This was an enjoyable read, one somehow even more unbelievable than the biographies of magicians. If you were going to make up a story about a loveable/annoying daydreamer, you might include anecdotes about them falling asleep on the ground next to a broken tar barrel and being unable to move they woke up in the morning; or inventing a game called super-checkers in which each player has 400 pieces; or forcing their guests to eat Topeacho, a relish made out of tomato and peaches (and then, if they were polite enough to try it, introducing Topruno). I liked reading about Fort but not sure I ever would have wanted to meet the man. As always though well-written

[Jeff Clausen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This biography seemed to promise a tale of a fascinating character, and I’m sure the author was fascinated with Fort, and likely did his best to convey that, but I was struggling to find much to recommend this. Scores of quoted material from Fort is included in the text, and therefore much of the book rides on Fort’s writing, as much as it rides on the author’s abilities, which was its downfall. Charles Fort was an oddball of the first degree and created confusion and scorn in his readers, for the main reason that he was obtuse, contradictory, and just weird. Some reviewers of his work felt that his writing was the cleverest they’d ever read, and so praised him left and right. I, on the other hand, saw little to fascinate and much to wonder about the old boy’s purposes. Titillate? Satirize? Out and out scam? It’s little wonder that almost no one has any idea who he was, and fewer still read him for pleasure. But possibly forcing someone to read one of Fort’s books cover to cover will become the newest form of torture.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's a book about a person I've never heard of but who had significant cultural influence that persists through today. I found the book to be a very entertaining biography, as well as a good effort at explaining the fuzzy and contradictory philosophy of Charles Fort. Also, the author does a great job of explaining the absolutely horrific treatment of Fort and his brothers by their controlling and sadistic father, which surely led to some of the oddities of Fort's life and thinking.

To begin, Charles Fort was born in the late 19th century to wealth in Albany, N.Y., which was then a quite prosperous city. He was a smart but odd kid, and though he was large for his age and strong, he didn't play team sports (obviously, they weren't as prevalent then as they are now). He was a loner who collected things like fossils and stamps, and he ran around the town and its woodland outskirts with his brothers. He got into trouble constantly, and his father was cruel in response -- beating him, hitting him in the face, locking him in his room for a week, and so on. The father sent the youngest son away to a work camp at age 13, and Fort saw him only once again in his life. Crazy stuff.

Anyway, Fort began writing for local newspapers as a teen and ran away to Brooklyn at age 18 to be a journalist. He had some success, but itched for more, and so he took off on a US tour and then a world tour, living on pennies a day. His father disapproved of him and never provided financial support, though Charles eventually had a modest $25/month coming from a grandfather's will.

Still only 20, Fort returned to NYC and wrote short stories and essays for magazines, building a name for himself. But eventually his obsessions got the best of him, and he began compiling lists of oddities and he thought would lead to broad understandings about how the world works. These oddities were things like stones falling from the sky or lightning striking on a clear day or people who could do weird things. All the stuff you'd see in Ripley's "Believe it or Not," which, coincidentally was being developed at the same time by an assistant to Ripley in the same NYC public library. But for Fort, the oddities were not the point -- the point was that these things could not be explained rationally, even though people had tried to do so, first by religion and then by science.

An example cited in the books is a hailstorm of frogs landing on a road. Fort said that we abandoned the idea that religion could explain them, as some type of plague from God. Instead, we say they were caused by a storm that lifted them out of a pond. But when there's no evidence of a storm at the time, and there's no evidence of other pond debris, then what have we left? We know that religion is false, so why should we believe the "religion" of science either? Science has been proven to be wrong over and over again. And that's Fort in a nutshell: be skeptical about everything, but especially science.

It's a fascinating idea, and it has lasted for the century since he brought it to light in such as direct way. Our skepticism and inquiry is so embedded in life now that we sometimes don't even realize we have it. And while we surely still have way too much trust in experts -- religious, scientific and otherwise -- we also are powerfully reminded all the time that the experts are wrong. And we have Charles Fort to thank for some of that.

Fort's philosophy is interwoven with his biography, which details how he never got a lot of mainstream recognition because his ideas were so radical and written in such a strange way. But leading novelists and journalists of his day thought he had a lot of merit, and they also loved his wry humor -- keep in mind that it was impossible to tell when Fort was seriously proposing something and when he was exaggerating to make a point. He'd turn the most mundane phrase, like "truth is stranger than fiction," on its head by saying (paraphrase): "I don't know if truth is stranger than fiction because I've never had the acquaintance of either," or “It's like looking for a needle that no one ever lost in a haystack that never was...” The message: what is true and what is fiction is impossible to understand.

But also keep in mind some big thinkers like H.G. Wells and H.L. Mencken thought he was an idiot who, at best, was playing a joke on everyone.

Fort's life was bizarre, as he was an ultra-homebody who left the house only to do research and to go to the movies 4-5 nights per week with his wife. He kept his notes on scraps of paper folded to 1.5 x 2.5 inches and indexed -- tens of thousands of scraps. And then he burned them -- two different accumulated sets. And yet he could be charming and hilarious, and seemed to enjoy his beer. In short, quite a character, and quite worth reading about.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charles Fort's renown rests primarily on four books -- The Book of the Damned, New Lands, Lo!, and Wild Talents -- unclassifiable shaggy dog collections of old newspaper and magazine accounts of rains of frogs and other assorted critters, mysterious disappearances, unexplained phenomena of all sorts, and so forth, all shot through with wryly sardonic humor and a palpable sense of glee at tweaking consensus reality. Unlike Charles Berlitz, Erich von Daniken, or most of the other hucksters who peddled tales of the paranormal after him, however, he never took himself too seriously, occasionally offering half a dozen conflicting "theories" explaining his subjects in the course of a couple of chapters. In his own way he was a true skeptic, as likely to doubt the fantastic and the supernatural as much as received scientific wisdom (his legacy lives on in the pages of the magazine Fortean Times which concerns itself at least as much with why people believe in the paranormal as whether it's actually true or not).

Steinmeyer, a professional magician and historian of magic, doesn't add much to Fort scholarship that hadn't already been said by Damon Knight in his somewhat more critical Charles Fort, Prophet of the Unexplained, but it's a lively, well-researched, and well-written portrait of a great American eccentric, and a good place to start for someone just getting interested in the man and his work.

[Boris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A moderately interesting biography of the source of the eponym "Fortean". Charles Fort started out as a ne'er-do-well writer and journalist and upon inheriting a modest legacy, compulsively collected anecdotes of various strange and unexplained phenomena from newspapers and magazines. He summarized and published these in four books, his most first and most famous being "The Book of the Damned".

Fort himself would be best described as an interested skeptic, like so many who today would watch 'documentaries' on the supernatural. Fort was also surprisingly insightful at times. One observation on Darwinism was that "survival of the fittest" was tautologous (and observation since made by many others who are expert in evolutionary biology) and he mentioned that the brave and the bold, i.e., the most fit, are also the most likely to die.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book was the description of late 19th and early 20th century journalism, which was truly the Wild West, only more anarchic. There's an amusing tale of his literary patron, Theodore Dreiser, as a young journalist having to attend 5 different performances at the same time and on the same night. Given the impossibility of the situation, Dreiser simply invented the 'performances' that he reviewed. It turned out that the performances had been cancelled and Dreiser had to slink out of town in shame.

[Reading Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started this book while in the hospital, after a morphine injection, and while I don't recommend the hospital part, reading this in a slightly altered state was an...interesting choice.

It's an homage to a weird, reclusive, but impeccable and implacable researcher. Did it do a deep dive on his psychology, as some readers want? No, but I think Fort himself would resent the attempt to find a unifying theory about himself.

Other readers complain of the amount of quotations--his books, his correspondence with Dreiser, and the like. To me these were the high points. Whatever criticism you can lodge against Charles Fort, you cannot deny the man had a way with a turn of phrase. Seeing the personalities interact through their letters felt intimate and really captured character.

Is the man less of an enigma after reading this book? No. Does the reader now have a better picture of the man, the formation of his obsessions against history? Yes.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I tend to be skeptical, but I don't consider myself a "debunker," and maybe that's why I appreciated Fort's work, even if I didn't always accept the phenomena."

Was Fort a Genius? Crank Hack? Visionary? Satirist? Or all of the above?

"More than any other book, more than the Great Gatsby, more than The Wasteland, it was Charles Fort's Book of the Damned that whispered to its readers "Welcome to the 1920s"

[Michael Reilly]

Charles Fort (1874-1932) was an odd guy. He was born in Albany, NY. His mother died when he was very young. He had a bad relationship with his disciplinarian father. He left home at 17. He spent a year bumming around America, Europe and Africa. He married in 1896 and moved to NYC.

He set out to be a novelist. Only one of the ten novels he wrote was published. He began to spend hours every day in the NY Library researching every anomalous, odd or out of whack fact he could find. He collected stories of frogs falling from the sky, snow in August, planets in the wrong location, mysterious flying vehicles and every other kind of oddity.

He developed an amorphous theory that scientists were wrong about almost everything. that they developed theories by ignoring facts that didn't fit. He had guesses about what was really going on, but never claimed to have all of the answers, only many questions. He said late in his life, "I believe nothing of my own that I have ever written."

He wrote four books on his findings, starting with "The Book of the Damned" in 1919. The books were taken seriously by many people. For example, Sherwood Anderson, Booth Tarkington, Clarence Darrow and Theodore Dreiser, all big names in the 1920s, took him seriously.

I remember trying to read one his books when I was a teenager. I found it unreadable. He favored a turgid, vague, overdone style. He had many sentences like this; "If our existence is a relationship between the Positive Absolute and the Negative Absolute, the quest for finality in it is hopeless."

After his death his reputation, if anything, increased. There is still an active Fortean Society. Many horror and fantasy writers cite his writings as an influence. P. K. Dick, Robert Heinlein and Robert Anton Wilson were all fans. Stepen King has several shout outs to him in his books.

It is striking that virtually none of the thousands of oddities he pointed out have been confirmed in the 100 years since he wrote his books. There has been no confirmed rain of frogs or spontaneous human combustion or alien abductions of misplaced planets. The writer Colin Wilson accurately called him "a patron saint of cranks."

This 2008 book is a very good Fort biography. Steinmeyer is an excellent historian of magic. He does a good job capturing the NYC literary scene in the 1920s. He outlines Fort's strong friendship with Theodore Dreiser and the involvement of literary big wigs like H. L Mencken in his life. Fort is sometimes portrayed as a loner or an outsider. Steinmeyer shows that although he could be antisocial and aloof, he was published by major publishes and was in touch with the literary world.

[Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Man Who Invented the Supernatural

Charles Fort published a book in 1920 that the author feels truly described the 1920s, not F. Scott Fitzgerald. Charles Fort took coincidences and happenstance and brought things together to question science and logic. He brought spiritualism out of religion and brought it into its own. People bought his books in droves and he published four by the end of the 20s and considered the Father of the Paranormal. His books are often the basis for new authors. What he wrote doesn’t make sense which probably made them very popular to those who wanted to make sense of them. He rejected science and medicine based on science. He was disparaged by The New York Times and other important publications that people trusted. He was ripped apart by many scientists and doctors. Authors criticized his books as being incoherent. Ben Hecht, the screenwriter, author laughed at his writings and predicted that he’d be read for generations with readers finding meaning in his empty words. Theodore Dreiser became friends with him until he died and believed him to be misunderstood. A book that I felt drifted and was confusing at times just like his incoherent subject. Hard to enjoy in full but has very bright moments and the author is successful in explains why he thinks Charles Fox was the true representative of 1920s America. Ripley’s Believe It or Not started the too. People were caught between traditional culture and many scientific breakthroughs and technological achievements. Turing to the paranormal was not out of the realm and he was born In Albany, NY. The Southern Tier, Central, Finger Lakes have always been a hotbed of new religions with Spiritualist leanings.

[Lynda · Rating 3 out of 5]

If the best defense against isolationist thinking by is to expose oneself to many points of view, then I recommend Steinmeyer's biography of Charles Fort to fellow rationalists.

Loony cult is how I summarized Forteans after a short acquaintance. And the last chapter of Steinmeyer's book does, indeed, link the Fortean approach to works such as Von Daniken's "Chariots of the Gods" which briefly fascinated me in my youth. Even worse is the conspiracy theory contributions of the founding Fortean, Tiffany Thayer.

The Charles Fort who walks in the pages of Steinmeyer's biography, however, is more original and quirky than the more obvious symptoms of his legacy allow. From his habit of writing of himself in the plural, in childhood, to his pithy quotes and contrarian responses to his few, determined boosters, there's a sense of a thinker seeing the world through a uniquely invidivual lens, driven by an obession with the making and sorting of little rectangular notes.

It's a well written book. I'd rate it more than 3 if the subject matter moved me more, but I finished it with a sense of gained perspective and unsettled certainties. It can be more interesting to brush up against a real eccentric who stands in the shadows, than to follow celebrities in and out of the spotlight.

[Aaron Boyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an ok biography. The Author interconnects excerpts of Forts Text into chronological order. The book was basically about how contemporary author Theodore Dreiser gave Charles Fort every chance to write both short stories and encouraged and fought for the publication of Forts first book. “Book of the Damned”

I was hoping that there would be a passage explaining how Fort influenced modern supernatural and horror. There was nothing connecting Fort to H. P. Lovecraft. It was through reading Lovecraft how I found CHarles fort and fell in love with his weird writing.

If you like Charles Fort and want to learn a little about his life, which is altogether boring I would recommend this book.

[Bill FromPA · Rating 4 out of 5]

Steinmeyer obviously did a good amount of research for this, and produced a well-organized and engaging biography. He tells much of the story through quotations, mostly from Fort's writings (many unpublished), but also accounts from friends (especially Theodore Dreiser) and, occasionally, opponents. It is therefore unfortunate that such otherwise exemplary work is marred by basic errors that bring the reader up short: awarding Booth Tarkington a Nobel instead of a Pulitzer, placing the Scopes trial in Dayton, Ohio instead of Dayton, Tennessee, and using "collaboration" instead of "corroboration".

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good quick read if you're already in the Fortean thought space. It was interesting to see how his work was taken in time, and since his death. He lead quite an adventurous life as a young man then seemed to turtle in and work on his research and writing, a 180 flip indeed. Probably not a book that would interest general readers however.

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

As well-researched and readable as Steinmeyer’s other books, but I just didn’t find Charles Fort as interesting as Steinmeyer’s other subjects. Also, I now have a seething disdain for Theodore Dreiser. What a jackass.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Holy Hell.

[Lafayette Lady · Rating 3 out of 5]

Never knew about Charles Fort and the crazy, creepy world of Fort. Great bio book

[Greg]

Was Charles Fort a crank, a genius, or something else all together? Jim Steinmeyer's biography of the little known writer of the early 20th century delves into just what made Fort tick, from his passion for collecting and cataloging true stories of the unexplained to the self doubt and anti-social tendencies that both seemed to hold the author back and were, to some extent at the root of his ability to distance himself from both scientific and religious dogma forging his own objectivist view of the strange world around him. The book also holds a certain interest for fans of American literature of the early 20th c. as much of both his fiction and non-fiction work saw print only due to his friendship with American author Theodore Dreiser who himself was caught between his reverence for Fort and his friendship with perpetual Fort critic H.L. Menken.

In the end, it's impossible to judge just who Charles Fort really was and how much of his own print he really believed. His influence on modern fringe writing, however, is entirely apparent.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jim Steinmeyer's biography of the man who inspired the Fortean Times, Charles Fort: The Man who Invented the Supernatural, was an enjoyable, though not very revealing, popular/populist biography of a genuine and important eccentric.

The biography fails to reveal the deeper psycho-pathologies at work in Charles Fort but tends to skim along the surface. What annoys in the book is the over-abundance and lengthy quotes from Mr. Fort's books. It almost seems as if these lengthy quotes function as filler and, for the most part, do not reveal more of Mr. Fort than reading his books would.

Here is the great failure of this less than 400 page biography: stuffed with filler, parochial interrogations of the subject's psycho-pathologies, and a limited interrogation of his interaction with the world around him and his marriage.

Mr. Fort deserves a better biography and readers certainly would like to know more about this marginal/seminal character in the world of the Other.

A nice, light summer read but not for serious readers of Fringe topics.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.

[Mark Potts · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I have one criticism of this book it is that Jim Steinmeyer has chosen a subject, about which, there is just too much information to absorb in just one reading. I'm sure that I didn't take in half of the content.

Fort was a strange man, of that there can be no argument.

Perhaps a genius, perhaps a crazy bloke. I still am not sure. One thing is for sure - he was different. What's more, he ruffled a few feathers too. Perhaps he chose to ignore the facts that didn't fit with his train of thought, maybe he fashioned things to suit his proposition, I'm not sure. He dealt with all the weird stuff, some (not all) of which has since been explained or, disproved. Still, he asked questions that others avoided and he was, undoubtedly, blessed with an intellect 100 years ahead of his time. Once cannot help but wonder what Fort would have done in the Internet age.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before reading the book, I knew nothing about Charles Fort. Madman or visionary? At the beginning of the book, I was convinced that he was insane (mostly based on his decision to refer to himself as "we" in his autobiography of childhood) but the more I read, the more I grew to admire him and his journey as a writer. His friendship with Theodore Dreiser is an endearing story, and even Robert Ripley makes an appearance.

If you like books about writers, introverts, hypergraphia, those who don't "fit in" or people so quirky that they occasionally burn everything they've written, you'll enjoy this book. I did.

[Melody · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fort was a fascinating character. This biography is far more readable than any of Fort's actual books. Interesting and just the right length. I was surprised to learn that Fort was reporting a great deal with his tongue in his cheek. I always thought he was a great big crank. Turns out that's not true. Odd, yes. But crazy? No. There's also a lot of information about Theodore Dreiser here, as he was more or less Fort's mentor. And H. G. Wells provides background snark, as does Mencken. The book is pretty light on recitations of weird phenomena, which is okay by me.

[J.R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charles Fort is one of those peripheral figures you’ll encounter if you venture into the territory of mysteries and the unexplained.

Except for Tiffany Thayer’s brief introduction to Fort’s “Book of the Damned,” little biographical material has been available on the man. Jim Steinmeyer, a historian of stage magic and illusion, has attempted to fill that void with this biography.

My full review is available at Amazon.com

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably essential reading for those with an interest in fringe topics that are now lumped together as "Fortean" in recognition of Charles Fort's seminal influence in the area but not a very compelling read. Fort's life had some interesting aspects but the surface is only skimmed and the numerous and long quotes from Fort's work slow down the book even more. Glad I read it, won't read it again.

[Jon Carroll Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't get much insight on the weird occurrences that Fort discussed (for that I probably need to read his actual books) but I was quite taken by the portrait of the cult figure as a homebody and a struggling writer.