Tiffany Thayer

Tiffany Ellsworth Thayer (March 1, 1902 – August 23, 1959) was an American actor, author and founder of the Fortean Society.

Biography

Born in Freeport, Illinois, Thayer quit school at age 15 and worked as an actor, reporter, and used-book clerk in Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland. Aged 16, he toured as the teenaged hero in the Civil War drama The Coward. Thayer contacted American author Charles Fort in 1924. In 1926, Thayer moved to New York City to act, but soon spent more time writing.

In 1931 Thayer co-founded the Fortean Society in New York to promote Fort's ideas. Primarily based in New York City, the Society was headed by first president Theodore Dreiser, an old friend of Fort who had helped to get his work published. Early members of the original Society in NYC included such luminaries as Booth Tarkington, Ben Hecht, Alexander Woolcott and H.L. Mencken. The first 6 issues of the Fortean Society's newsletter "Doubt" were each edited by a different member, starting with Theodore Dreiser. Thayer thereafter took over editorship of subsequent issues. Thayer began to assert extreme control over the society, largely filling the newsletter with articles written by himself, and excommunicating the entire San Francisco chapter, reportedly their largest and most active, after disagreements over the society's direction, and forbidding them to use the name Fortean. During World War II, for example, Thayer used every issue of "Doubt" to espouse his politics. He celebrated the escape of Gerhardt Eisler, and named Garey Davis an Honorary Fellow of the Society for renouncing his American citizenship. In particular, Thayer frequently expressed opposition to Civil Defense, going to such lengths as encouraging readers to turn on their lights in defiance of air raid sirens. In contrast to the spirit of Charles Fort, he not only dismissed flying saucers as nonsense but also dismissed the atomic bomb as a hoax by the US government.^[1]

Thayer also wrote several novels, including the bestseller Thirteen Women (1930) and a number of novels which contain elements of science fiction or fantasy, including Dr. Arnoldi (1934) about a world where no-one can die.^{[2] [3]} He also wrote "America Needs Indians" and "Raped Again!", the latter described as a blueprint for enslaving entire populations.^[1]

Towards the end of his life, Thayer had championed increasingly idiosyncratic ideas, such as a Flat Earth and opposition to the fluoridation of water supplies.^{[citation needed]}

The Fortean Society Magazine (also called Doubt) was published regularly until Thayer's death in Nantucket, Massachusetts in 1959, aged 57, when the society and magazine came to an end. The magazine and society are not connected to the present-day magazine Fortean Times.

Writers Paul and Ron Willis, publishers of "Anubis", acquired most of the original Fortean Society material and revived the Society as the International Fortean Organization (INFO) in the early 1960s which went on to incorporate in 1965, publish a widely respected magazine, The INFO Journal: Science and the Unknown, for more than 35 years and created the world's first, and most prestigious, conference dedicated to the work and spirit of Charles Fort, the annual FortFest which continues to this day.

Critical reception

Thayer wrote genre romances that were disliked by literary critics.^[4] Dorothy Parker, in a New Yorker review of An American Girl, said "He is beyond question a writer of power; and his power lies in his ability to make sex so thoroughly, graphically, and aggressively unattractive that one is fairly shaken to ponder how little one has been missing."^[4] F. Scott Fitzgerald said "curious children nosed at the slime of Mr. Tiffany Thayer in the drug-store libraries."^[4] William Tenn, recalling Dr. Arnoldi more than sixty years after read read it, characterized it as "absolutely fascinating---and disgusting. . . . If you ever find a copy, give it to some sf fan you dislike. Your reward will be the baffled misery in his eyes after he's read it."^[5]

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} see "Personalities in Science Fiction: Charles Fort: His Objects Fade in the West", by Robert Barbour Johnson (If, July 1952).
2. ^ William Tenn, Dr. Arnoldi in Fantasy and Science Fiction,[1]
3. ^ see The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, by John Clute and Peter Nicholls (1993).
4. ^ ^{a b c} Thirteen Women, by Tiffany Thayer at Neglected Books Page, February 13th, 2011
5. ^ "Curiosities, F&SF, August 1998

References

• Nichols, Lewis, "A Talk With Tiffany Thayer", New York Times, June 10, 1956
• Skinner, Doug (Summer 2005) "Doubting Tiffany", Fortean Times

External links

• International Fortean Organization
• Thirteen Women, by Tiffany Thayer at Neglected Books Page, February 13th, 2011
• Tiffany Thayer at the Internet Movie Database
• Fortean Times

Persondata
Name	Thayer, Tiffany
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	March 1, 1902
Place of birth
Date of death	August 23, 1959
Place of death