Charles Fort had a lot of interesting ideas, as is evident from this book and his development of the “Intermediatist” philosophy of knowledge, but unfortunately, none of it comes off with any coherence in this maddening, opaque ode to open-mindedness.

Written nearly a century ago, in 1919, “The Book of the Damned” presents a lot of interesting
food for thought but, in the end, I found it all nearly incomprehensible. Charles Fort, the origin of much modern day studies and philosophies of the paranormal and the weird in popular culture, from aliens to time travel, writes about facts “damned” by mainstream early 20th century science for not fitting into preconceived conceptions of the world. Listing off weird weather events, things falling from the sky, odd coincidences and other oddness garnered from news reports from across the world (Fort was nothing if not an exhaustive researcher), his arguments become quickly bogged down in long, pointless digressions.

Fort’s concerns involving scientists forcing their discoveries and theories to fit into imperfect human thought patterns could still be important today, but on the other hand a lot of Fort’s speculation and ideas were rendered even more ridiculous through as scientific knowledge continued to advance throughout the century. Worse, Fort’s prose is so dense, impenetrable, and meandering, his chapters organized by no discernible order, it made it very tough reading in spite of how interesting I found the subject matter.