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"Fort also had a small circle of literary friends and they would gather on occasion at various apartments, including his own, to drink and talk, which was tolerated by Anna." This is a very peculiar phrase. Do we know that Anna "tolerated" these gatherings? For all we know she enjoyed hosting her husband's friends. Methinks whoever wrote this phrase might be injecting their own personality in a place where objectivity and NPOV is called for. Kerry ( talk) 23:26, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
All the needed citations can be found in Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented The Supernatural, by Jim Steinmyer. Penguin 2008. 66.170.201.113 ( talk) 20:14, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
I have added a bit to show the influence of Fort (usually subterranean) on contemporary philosophy of science. BScotland.
It seems to me that Fort was something of an early postmodern. Would this be a valid characterisation? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.57.235.123 ( talk) 04:35, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
I think it's fairer and more accurate to typify Fort as a cultural visionary. He was interested in the same things that Umberto Eco or Thomas Pynchon would find interesting, but I don't necessarily think that he is "Post-Modern". 67.0.213.91 ( talk) 18:22, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
The guy who's whole thing was critiquing the cold objective pretense in the monism of science? Yeah, Fort was a huge postmodernist. Even had the polemic, meandering Continental style of writing. I don't know if it helps clean up this messy biographical article, but framing him as a postmodernist is definitely an accurate way to explain his critical philosophy. Titus Lucretius Carus ( talk) 01:37, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
Actually, rain of meat, frog and fish are well stablished facts these days. They have happened recently, are documented and there are scientific explanations to account for them. The meat is basically cattle taken by a whirlwind and butchered in the sky. They are all frozen, which is indicative of the high altitudes they are taken to. 201.79.81.239 14:14, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
What? Gosh. But why are these "rains" so discriminating? Why don't we get rains of all sorts mixed together? And why not of frozen and butchered human beings rather than those hefty heifers? Wasn't it these puffed-up attempts at "scientific" explanation that Fort was in business to deflate? Squirrel Nutkin ( talk) 00:01, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
This article has serious POV problems. Rather than claiming outright that Fort had a "poetic," or "passionate" style of writing (neither of which appear to be evident in the quotes you provided; mere epigrams), wouldn't it be preferable to indicate whether these claims are shared by his critics? Consistently throughout the article, fort's ideas are treated with opionated narrative rather than objective analysis. Case in point: "Sceptics and critics frequently misunderstand Fort in the face of these examples and consider him as credulous and naïve — he was not."
If someone does see this, I hope some relevant changes might be made. I am in no position to edit a page on which I am ill-informed on, but the article does need bit of neutralizing.
[aboved comment was unsigned but by User:68.126.211.12 ]
I think that the Browning excerpt is a terrible example of biographical description in an encyclopedic style. It doesn't use quotes to demonstrate its assertions, it doesn't cite sources, and it indulges in glittering generalities instead of facts. However, it is a small excerpt that you have edited further. Those few sentences may have their place in a larger article. 67.0.213.91 ( talk) 18:30, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
I felt that the article was unnecessarily critical of Fort, particularly the section on his prose style. 67.0.213.91 ( talk) 18:24, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
Coming to Wikipedia from a Fortean perspective, I believe it would be worthwhile to take a fresh look at taxonomy, because Forteana actually includes all of these areas (and many others) under its broader umbrella. Some things I would like to take on include: (1) Develop a new Forteana or Forteanism article and transfer some of the general Forteana amd Forteanism content sitting in Charles Fort there; (2) Consider merging Anomalous phenomena with new Forteana article; (3) create Category:Forteana and promote it above certain existing related categories such as Category:Paranormal phenomena. I anticipate community debate on this idea. Wikipedians coming from the classically skeptical perspective may not be very interested in Forteana and probably will not agree at all, for instance. For this reason I am interested in hearing input from other like-minded Forteans. — FJ | hello 20:10, May 6, 2005 (UTC)
See also a short story called "The Adventure of the Man Who Never Laughed" by J. N. Williamson (1997) in which, somewhat anachronisticly, Charles Fort and Sherlock Holmes correspond.
J.M.W.
Shouldn't the Anna Filing article be merged with this one? She doesn't strike me as being notable enough to have a page of her own. — Meidosemme 01:37, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
Specious argument. If there is so little biographical information of note or relevance to the general public, then it is excess to include it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.0.213.91 ( talk) 18:32, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
A link provided in the page connects to The Book of the Damned; however, there is another, more detailed page concerning the same work, entitled Book of the Damned (more detailed, but inaccurate in title). These two should be merged. -- Chr.K. 08:27, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to reorganize the "References" section along the following lines:
I'd also standardize the appearance and information related to each reference (to the extent I can find the necessary information), and move the comments concerning Bennet and Kaplan next to those books (similar to Knight, Magin, and Pauwels & Bergier).
I'd appreciate anybody's thoughts before I undertake the reorganization. Thanks! — Malik Shabazz | Talk 20:12, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
The latter two books, by Bennett and Kaplan, are arguably not worth reading: Bennett's is so idiosyncratic as to be unrecognisable as anything resembling Fort, and Kaplan's book is a collection of extended quotations, with unprofitably brief and unhelpful 'introductions'.
The Science Fiction book Into the Alternate Universe ( 1964) by A. Bertram Chandler seems to be inspired by Fort's idea of the " Super-Sargasso Sea", and depicts an actual such "Sea" in space - where the protagonist discovers many lost spaceships and ocean-going ones, some fictional and some historical, which have "fallen through a dimensional barrier".
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I have put nowiki tags around http://www.pokerplayermagazine.co.uk on this talk page because edits to this talk page were rejected by the spam filter.-- Patrick ( talk) 13:37, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
There appears to be some missing material in the fourth paragraph of the Biography section. It looks like possibly a botched edit. I've put a note about it in the article. Maybe somebody will notice it and fix it. Lou Sander ( talk) 15:57, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
There seems to be a discrepancy here...
Last line of Biography:
His more than 60,000 notes were donated to the New York Public Library.
Second paragraph of Fort and the Unexplained > Overview:
...he is said to have compiled as many as 40,000 notes, though there were no doubt many more than this. The notes were kept on cards in shoeboxes. They were taken on small squares of paper, in a cramped shorthand of Fort's own invention, and some of them survive today in the collections of the University of Pennsylvania.
It's been there since the September 6, 2006 edit.
Elmyr ( talk) 06:06, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
The link "Forteana" under "See Also" refers back to this page; in other words, the page links to itself. I assume this isn't intentional for any reason? -- DustFormsWords ( talk) 23:12, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
In the Popular Culture section it says [citation needed] for the following passge, to which I've added two new sentences.
"Paul Thomas Anderson, the director and writer of the critically acclaimed film Magnolia, is a fan of Fort and many aspects of the film were inspired by his books. Character Stanley Spector has one of Fort's books in the library scene. Frogs falling from the sky at the film's climax is a phenomenon Fort wrote about.[citation needed]"
This can be verified by watching the film or visiting the trivia section of its imdb.com entry. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175880/trivia where it states:
One of the books Stanley is reading at the library is about scientist Charles Fort, who is noted for his work expanding the boundaries of scientific research to include strange phenomena such as those featured in the film.
The title "Magnolia" not only refers to Magnolia Blvd in LA, where much of the movie takes place, but is also similar to the term Charles Fort (who is referenced many places in this movie) coined for a hypothetical region where things that fall from the sky come from - "Magonia".
Paul Thomas Anderson has said that he was unaware that the story of frogs falling from the sky is in the Bible (he took it from Charles Fort's writing) when he wrote the screenplay. Christinebeatty ( talk) 03:09, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Christinebeatty —Preceding unsigned comment added by Christinebeatty ( talk • contribs) 04:13, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
Revision as of 15:41, 21 February 2009
TootsMojo
(founders of the Fortean Society)
(Difference between this and previous revision)
The board of Founders included Dreiser, Hecht, [[Booth Tarkington]], Aaron Sussman, John Cowper Powys, the former editor of "Puck" [Harry Leon Wilson, Woolcott and J. David Stern.
There is no closing square bracket to match the open square bracket before "Harry Leon Wilson". If we remove the bracket, the sentence would say that Harry Leon Wilson was a former editor of "Puck". But the article on "Puck" does not mention Wilson. Where did TootsMojo get the board of Founders? -- Cootiequits ( talk) 18:26, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
"Like most good Bronx residents, Fort would frequent the nearby parks where he would sift through piles of his clippings."
I grew up in the Bronx, and I never frequented nearby parks to sift through piles of clippings. Perhaps I wasn't a good Bronx resident. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.147.119.14 ( talk) 22:16, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps so, only you can judge. The parks in the Bronx serve as a backyard to most everyone, clippers or not. Fort often wrote about his excursions to the parks, which were as much a part of his latter daily life as was his forays to the New York Public Library. 216.240.101.40 ( talk) 05:52, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
I can see why the popular culture section was removed [4] as it had got horribly bloated with some very trivial mentions but some of those (the much earlier core, that I had a hand in) seem worth mentioning but possibly as part of his legacy rather than simply a pop culture section (which are largely discouraged: WP:POPCULTURE). Thoughts? ( Emperor ( talk) 02:48, 8 January 2010 (UTC))
This article says Charles Fort wrote four books, but the info about him in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranormal_phenomena#Anecdotal_approach says he wrote seven, but only four survived. Which claim is true, or are they both wrong?-- TechnoDanny ( talk) 18:13, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
In the section "The Forteans," there is a line that reads "In Chapter 1 of Book of the Damned, Fort states that the ideal is to be neither a 'True Believer' nor a total 'Skeptic' but 'that the truth lies somewhere in between'."
This might be a reasonably fair summary of Fort's position, but that quote appears nowhere in The Book of the Damned. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.111.162.65 ( talk) 22:37, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
Under: /info/en/?search=Charles_Fort#Biography
The last sentence of the fifth paragraph seems to require a citation:
"The title referred to "damned" data that Fort collected, phenomena for which science could not account and was thus rejected or ignored.[citation needed]"
Such a citation may be:
"When The Book of the Damned was completed, wary editors read the opening lines and held their noses: A procession of the damned. By the damned, I mean the excluded. We shall have a procession of data that Science has excluded. Battalions of the accursed, captained by pallid data that I have exhumed, will march. You'll read them – or they'll march. Some of them livid and some of them fiery and some of them rotten."
From:
Disneyland of the Gods, Copyright © 1988 by John A. Keel
Spiffytoad ( talk) 09:38, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
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