Of course, if you have any gumption, you’ll design your own fortune telling cards. Above is one of the cards from a Tarot deck by the remarkable Argentine artist Xul Solar (1887-1963). His deck includes curious personalities such as this (Gemini?), as well as more traditional trumps.

And deities from other traditions, such as Bes and Ganesha.

I was fortunate enough to visit the Museo Xul Solar in Buenos Aires earlier this year. His first New York exhibit is now up at the Americas Society in Manhattan; it’s well worth a visit.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The activities of the Fortean Society, apart from Tiffany Thayer’s magazine Doubt, are somewhat unclear.  Perhaps that was intentional; as Thayer said, with his usual bravura, “Many details of Fortean endeavor are necessarily surreptitious, because any activity with the avowed intention of causing men to think for themselves and to cherish self-respect is opposed in this world by very powerful interests.”

But we have here an excerpt from a brochure, published to promote the society in 1956 or 1957, that gives a few details on the membership structure, and specifies some of the people in it.  The organization is rather complicated, including Corresponding Members, Life Members, Accepted Fellows, Honorary Founders, Founders, and Non-Member Named Fellows.

Many famous and intriguing names appear on the rolls, but it’s always been equally unclear how many actually joined, and how many were drafted.  The Non-Member Named Fellows seem to fall into the latter camp: people whose work Thayer simply stamped with his seal of approval.  H. G. Wells and H. L. Mencken were probably listed against their will; Dreiser sent them both copies of Fort’s books, and they wrote back to protest.

But here it is, a peek into the Society in the late ’50s.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The next Ullage Group event is in the works.  We’re planning something tasty, and will meet again when Anthony gets back to town.

I direct your attention to an interview with Norman Conquest, the distinguished Président-Fondateur of Black Scat Books, which has published several of my translations, some with my illustrations.

And, speaking of Black Scat Books, my Alphonse Allais campaign continues.  Captain Cap Volumes 3 and 4 are due in July and August, respectively; and the next issue of the Black Scat Review will include my translation of Allais’s story “Absinthes” (one of my favorites, parenthetically), and of short texts about Allais by Jules Renard and François Caradec.

There’s more good news in the publishing world: Anomalist Books has republished John Keel’s game-changing study of UFOs, Operation Trojan Horse.  And you are, of course, invited to visit the site I maintain in John’s memory.  The last series of posts documented the book that he almost wrote with the equally colorful Ivan T. Sanderson.

I’m currently recording my next album, Maybe Those Hornets Would Like These Posies,  with David Gold on viola and Doug Roesch on guitar and bass.  Several songs are done already, and this week I added keyboard and interesting noises to several of them.

Meanwhile, I’ve learned that one of my students, Tom Huang, has posted part of my birthday show from this year, with some visuals of his own devising.

And my next show, by the way, will be at the Jalopy Theatre on July 13, where I will be joined by Doug Roesch on guitar and Ralph Hamperian on tuba.

Lastly, there is apparently a book of Wikipedia articles about me, offered by some enterprising character.  I don’t suggest that you buy the thing, but I do encourage you to review it.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The Palm Beach Post, September 26, 1937, published a review of the first issue of the Fortean Society Magazine. The reviewer, E. C. K. (and I have no clue who that is), was impressed by the roster of founders, intrigued by Fort, and puzzled by Thayer. He or she had also never heard of Fort, leading to these verses. I don’t know of any other poetry about Fort; maybe there’s some out there.

Incidentally, the interesting verb “debunk” has changed over the years. Now, it mostly means “disprove”; in the ’30s it usually meant “remove the bunk from”: Clarence Darrow was described by an admirer as debunked, meaning that he’d freed himself of silly ideas. Fort, it should be pointed out, debunked science in that earlier sense of the word.

I never heard of Charlie Fort —
How dumb a person I must be —
For judging by his partisans,
His was a great mentality.

I never heard of Charlie Fort
Who spent his time debunking science,
Who never feared to say “‘Tain’t so!”
Who hurled at sacred cows defiance.

I never heard of Charlie Fort
Until the press enlightened me;
But from the shameful depths I ask:
Did you yourself, now honestly?

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

“The Military Fortune Tellers” was published by H. V. Loring, in Chicago, in 1917.  The deck is 52 cards; but the four suits are stars, hearts, bells, and doves, and the face cards are Jack, Nurse, and Soldier.  The instructions are curiously garbled: “This is a Military Sectional Fortune Telling Chart forming a square when laid out.  (See Diagram) and is made card-form for the purpose of shuffling or mixing so as to obtain a different meaning each time laid out…  The cards forming a direct course circularly, horizontally, vertically and diagonally have particular significance only.”

The box has a pleasing severity:

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Have you ordered your copy of How I Became an Idiot?  As you no doubt read in the last post, Doug Skinner has translated four examples of Alphonse Allais’s sustained mockery of the conservative critic Francisque Sarcey, and they are now available in a nice little volume from Black Scat Books.

Allais, seen above lunching at the Chat Noir with Henri Jouard and George Auriol, for many years wrote a column under Sarcey’s name for the Chat Noir’s paper.  Sarcey, apparently astute enough to realize that complaint would only prompt more ridicule, gamely excused it as youthful exuberance.

To pique your interest, here’s a bit of another column, from 1889, not included in the book.  Here, the pseudo-Sarcey remembers how he met Rodolphe Salis, director of the Chat Noir.  The general referred to is probably Boulanger, then at the height of his popularity; I should also add that Salis did indeed provide a special chair for Sarcey in the club, since the usual chairs were, um, too small.

I first met Rodolphe Salis at the Odéon, at the premiere of some play, I don’t remember which.

I was very uncomfortable, and, to use the vulgar expression, not feeling so hot.

Did you read, in my last column in the Temps, the indignant lines that I devoted to those velvet seats, upon which, like it or not, theater owners compel us to rest our buttocks?

As I correctly pointed out, velvet is the worst thing possible on some occasions, and that evening, precisely, was one of those occasions.

My God, I suppose I can tell you, since our distinguished general has them, that I suffer from hemorrhoids, and that there are days when I really don’t know where to sit.

Prey to the cruelest torture, I was writhing around on my velvet, when I saw the man to my left lean toward me.

He was a tall lad, well built, and reddish blond, that reddish blond that, according to experts, was the color of Christ.

“You don’t seem too comfortable, my uncle?” the young man said, in a respectfully sympathetic tone.

“Not very,” I answered.

“Hemorrhoids, perhaps?”

“Exactly.”

“If that’s all, I’ll be back in five minutes.”

Soon the young man returned, carrying one of those inflatable devices, in the form of a wreath, upon which the afflicted can rest the sorest backsides with impunity.

I was saved.

I tried to thank the young man at the first intermission, but, probably bored by the play, he had disappeared…

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Francisque Sarcey (1827-1899) was, for much of his career, the most powerful theatrical critic in Paris. He was the perfect model of the blunt bourgeois, championing common sense, anti-intellectualism, and traditional values. He favored light, commercial fare, and railed against Ibsen and Jarry.

He was, predictably, a prime target for young artists. Alphonse Allais took the ridicule to new heights: from 1886 to 1893, he wrote a regular column for Le Chat Noir, which he simply signed as Francisque Sarcey. The pseudo-Sarcey became a grotesque caricature of the smug middle class, a sort of proto-Ubu: an obese, gluttonous, lecherous, hypocritical dolt, prattling on about his constipation and hemorrhoids, in loosely-knit sentences studded with clichés.

“How I Became an Idiot” collects four of Allais’s nastiest columns, translated, introduced and annotated by Doug Skinner.  It’s available in a limited edition of 60 from Black Scat Books. None of this material has appeared in English before: snap one up!

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The Fortean Society was founded in 1931 to promote the work of that indescribable author Charles Fort.  The founders were: Theodore Dreiser, J. David Stern, Tiffany Thayer, Ben Hecht, Booth Tarkington, Aaron Sussman, Burton Rascoe, Harry Elmer Barnes, Alexander Woollcott, John Cowper Powys, and Harry Leon Wilson.  Sussman was a book designer, and Stern a publisher; the rest were writers.

Fort died in 1932, and the Society lay somewhat dormant for a while.  In 1937, Thayer decided to start a magazine.  His first step was to quarrel with Dreiser, who withdrew from the Society.  He then started publishing The Fortean Society Magazine, which, after 11 issues, he retitled Doubt.

Beginning with that 11th issue, too, Thayer put his name in big letters on the cover.  For Doubt, although inspired by Fort, was full-throttle Thayer.  Fort’s ruminations on the interconnectedness of all things, his flights of fancy, and his satires on confirmation bias were replaced by Thayer’s noisy denunciation of all authority and dogma.  Art Castillo’s cartoon from #25 summed it up well.  Dogma was a slavering Cerberus of Church, State, and Science: “all three are merely Orthodoxy in a different set of clothes.”

Latter-day Forteans usually document scientific anomalies; Thayer was more interested in political issues: government waste, compulsory vaccination, atheism, the Indian aristocracy, pacifism, scientific boondoggles.  He also promoted the activities of the society’s members, who were often doing interesting things: Caresse Crosby, Buckminster Fuller, Henry Miller, and others.  There were 61 issues; the magazine folded in 1959 with Thayer’s death.  It was consistently irritating, sophomoric, puzzling, and profoundly entertaining.

You can read a longer article I wrote about Thayer for The Fortean Times over here; and below is a sampling of covers.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Well, I’ve given you 200 children’s card games to eyeball, so now it’s time for a change.  Here’s the first of a series of fortune telling cards.

You can, of course, tell fortunes with ordinary playing cards, or with the tarot (or, it must be said, simply by free association); but card manufacturers have nevertheless provided some attractive art for the purpose.  As with the children’s games, no artists are credited.  These were drawn by the anonymous and the unsung.

This 36-card deck, “Old Gypsy Fortune Telling Cards,” was issued by Whitman in 1940; I’m afraid the key to what the cats meant is missing.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

We return to the great French journalist, humorist and nonpareil, Alphonse Allais.  I remind you that my translations of his Captain Cap stories, Captain Cap Volumes 1 and 2, are available from Black Scat Books; and that further installments are scheduled for July and August.  A collection of his immortal mockery of the reactionary critic Francisque Sarcey is also slated for June.

Allais sometimes appended a brief “Petite Correspondance” to his column.  It permitted responses to real and fictional correspondents, extra jokes, addenda to previous columns, running gags, plugs for his books, and other odds and ends.  Here is a sampling, taken from Le Journal, 1895-1897.

I received numerous contributions intended for the Franco-Lapp Society, to draw cyclists up the slopes with reindeer.  Unfortunately, due to an accounting error, the sums received were used in large part to pay for the cold drinks that I had to consume last week.  The remainder was put into the hands of an umbrella seller in Le Havre, a city in which I was surprised by a sudden storm.  A thousand pardons. 

M. Jules Renard, the author of Natural Histories:  Like you, I adore cats, and have proven it.  But I do not share your opinion on these exquisite beings’ romantic discretion.  When they are in love, they cry it from the rooftops.

To some compassionate souls:  Many thanks for the sympathy you have expressed for the son of my former concierge.  The poor lad has finally found a position.  He is employed in the thoroughly artistic atelier of M. Rochas, a photographer in Blois, where he has had the good fortune to encounter photographic plates even more sensitive than himself.

Mme. la Marquise de B., in Compiègne:  No, a thousand times no!  If you go out in the street in a diving-suit, do not take an umbrella; you will make yourself conspicuous.

M. Paul Escudier, municipal counselor in Paris:  I received your thirty francs, but basic honesty compels me to inform you that I am no longer a voter in the Saint-Georges district.  M. Bompard, for whom, here, I promise to vote, will be glad to reimburse you.

Mademoiselle Nina Pack, of the Opéra-Comique:  You are charming, miss, but your anthropological conclusions are somewhat frivolous.  There is no reason, because a man is of normal height, to assume that he is the son of a dwarf and a giantess.

R. C. of the Vésinet:  The story to which you refer, in my book 2 + 2 = 5, originally appeared in Le Chat Noir, whereas the cabaret song in question is from last year.  It is therefore your friend who is an imbecile and a thief.

M. Léon Gandillot, in Paris:  You have not been deceived, sir; cats that eat flies never grow fat.  Nor tigers!  Especially if they eat nothing else.

In the past few months, I have received a recrudescence of letters, full of cordiality, but a bit familiar, in which I am addressed as “My dear Alphonse”; some even go so far as to call me “pal.”  I warn these ladies and gentlemen that, in the future, I will only open correspondence that treats me with respect.

To some readers:  Absolutely!
To others:  Not on your life!

(Posted by Doug Skinner)