Wild Talents Read Free Page B

century settle in the minds of readers to come, carrying them to far different places than probably even Fort foresaw.

    Unknown, luminous things, or beings, have often been seen, sometimes close to this earth and sometimes high in the sky. It may be that some of them were living things that occasionally come from somewhere else in our existence, but that others were lights on the vessels of explorers, or voyagers, from somewhere else.

    ***

    By late 1931, Fort, growing progressively blinder, finished the manuscript of a new book, Wild Talents , his most personal book in many ways; the phenomena here pertain almost exclusively to the individual's specific reactions vis-a-vis the Fortean. He uses some of his most straightforward language to offer some of his most provocative ideas. As you read the book it can almost seem that the more he studied the actions of people at large -- whether they be disappearing mysteriously, bursting into flame, having stones thrown at them by unseen agencies, being stabbed by unseen assailants, possibly turning into other animals -- the less he was troubled by the behavior of astronomers. In Wild Talents Fort's humor pours forth, most unforgettable as he describes in chapter five the steps he takes in approaching The Data, beginning:

    "Good morning!" said the dog. He disappeared in a thin, greenish vapor.
    I have this record, upon newspaper authority.
    It can't be said -- and therefore will be said -- that I have a marvelous credulity for newspaper yarns.
    But I am so obviously offering everything in this book, as fiction. That is, if there is fiction.

    And ending:

    I draw my line at the dog who said "Good morning!" and disappeared in a thin, greenish vapor. He is a symbol of the false and arbitrary and unreasonable and inconsistent -- though of course also the reasonable and consistent -- limit, which everybody must somewhere set, in order to pretend to be.
    You can't fool me with that dog-story.

    Among the delights to be found in these pages is his account of having one day stared at a picture in his apartment and (seemingly) causing it to fall from the wall, and his proffering of the eternal question "Was somebody collecting Ambroses?" And, in his most perfect expression of the underlying oneness of all things, a metaphor by the end of the last century had pretty much become received wisdom:

    Not a bottle of catsup can fall from a tenement-house fire-escape, in Harlem, without being noted -- not only by the indignant people downstairs, but--even though infinitesimally -- universally -- maybe--
    Affecting the price of pajamas, in Jersey City; the temper of somebody's mother-in-law, in Greenland; the demand, in China, for rhinoceros horn for the cure of rheumatism -- maybe --

    And, although by this point he was already being seen with a certain suspicion by more of its practitioners (for example run down, if interested, the musings of First Fan Sam Moskowitz, who believed Fort to be a less rabid version of Richard Shaver), Fort courteously tosses down one last useful concept to science fiction literature and film before riding off on his comet:

    Girls at the front--and they are discussing their usual not very profound subjects. The alarm--the enemy is advancing.
    Command to the poltergeist girls to concentrate--and under their chairs they stick their wads of chewing gum.
    A regiment bursts into flames, and the soldiers are torches. Horses snort smoke from the combustion of their entrails.
    Reinforcements are smashed under cliffs that are teleported from the Rocky Mountains. The snatch of Niagara Falls--it pours upon the battlefield.
    The little poltergeist girls reach for their wads of chewing gum.

    ***

    Fort's final note reads: "Difficulty shaving. Gaunt places in face." It is thought now that he suffered from undiagnosed leukemia. On May 3 1932, he was taken to the hospital. Thayer brought him the first copy of Wild Talents , hot off the press. He died, a few hours later.
    Some time