Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural - Hardcover

Steinmeyer, Jim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1585426407 ISBN 13: 9781585426409

Publisher: TarcherPerigee, 2008

Synopsis

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.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

'I am the first disciple of Charles Fort... henceforth, I am a Fortean"

Since Ben Hecht wrote this line in reviewing The Book of the Damned, Charles Fort has been an inspiration to the disaffected and curious, to ‘alternative’ modern culture and to anyone seeking significance in chaos.

Fort provides the impetus for public interest in mysterious phenomena - he coined the word teleportation, gathered accounts of spontaneous human combustion, monsters, poltergeists, and what became known as UFO's. His legacy extends to conspiracy theories, science fiction and fantasy, graphic novels and film. He has been called ‘prophet of the paranormal’ as well as ‘patron saint of cranks’, and today The Fortean Times is dedicated to ‘Fortean reportage’. Yet Fort was always more concerned with the mechanics of writing than with acolytes – invited to become a member of the new ‘Fortean society’ in 1931, Fort, true to form, refused. Jim Steinmeyer’s remarkable new biography looks at the man, the writer, behind the myths.

Told against the backdrop jazz age New York and Edwardian London, Charles Fort: The Man who Invented the Supernatural is about wonder, obsession, and mystery, and an iconoclastic author who has become an unlikely cult hero.

About the Author:

Jim Steinmeyer is the critically acclaimed author of The Glorious Deception, Charles Fort, and Hiding the Elephant, a Los Angeles Times bestseller. He is also a leading designer of magic illusion who has done work for television, Broadway, and many of the best-known names in modern magic. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

About this edition

• Publisher: TarcherPerigee
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1585426407
• ISBN 13: 9781585426409
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352