Status Updates From Wild Talents

first 50+ pages read like a list of news headlines. no atmosphere

The later chapters, like the one I just finished revolve around witchcraft and miracles, which Fort entertained as possible manifestations of psychic powers. The purely materialistic scientific worldview was also much younger and more obviously anomalous in the context of human history when Fort wrote this than now, something he spends many pages philosophising over.

Around here Fort speculates that latent telekinetic powers might explain poltergeists, spontaneous human combustion and all that. In other words, what I expected to be the main focus for "Wild Talents". There are also chapters about his own ideas concerning how the universe works, which I to be honest do not understand 100% but I haven't read Fort's previous books yet.

Just finished a chapter on modern day werewolf stories... and were-hyenas and were-gorillas! Including several incidents that were investigated by local police and even led to arrests and convictions of graverobbers. Also another chapter on spontaneous human combustion... I had no idea how many well documented cases of either there are from late 19th/early 20th century newspapers and police/firefighter archives

Read the chapter about the unexplained disappearances of valuables that resulted in the coining of the term "cat burglar", where in fact it was never established that a burglar was even at fault and no culprit was ever caught... highly strange. I expected this to be a book largely focused on psychic powers but it seems to be a catch all book about weird occurrences and the author's personal philosophy...

'According to a story that is told of Madame Blavatsky[,] the little bird of a cuckoo clock annoyed her. Said she: "Damn that bird! shut up!" The cuckoo never spoke again.'

The little autobiographical account of Charles Fort and his wife vs. the plague of mysterious falling picture frames in Chapter 20 is completely charming.

Actually, all the autobiographical segments are charming. I wish he'd been this approachable in all his books - and, frankly, as legible. Between the two, I feel like I have a much better grasp on his sneering.

'One time, when I was a boy, I caught a lot of flies. [...] It seems to give me an understanding of the "phantom" stabbers and snipers. I painted the backs of the flies red, and turned them loose. There was an imaginative pleasure in thinking of flies, so bearing my mark, attracting attention, causing people to wonder, spreading far, appearing in distant places, so marked by me.'

'The ideal state is meekness, or humility, or the semi-invalid state of the old. Year after year I am becoming nobler and nobler. If I can live to be decrepit enough, I shall be a saint.'