“Here is the best of material for a comedy. And it is as comedy that Mr Forster presents his material up to a certain point. Some may think that he would have done better had he decided to preserve that vein to the end.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p11a Mr 21 ’20 650w
FORT, CHARLES. Book of the damned. *$1.90 (1½c) Boni & Liveright 504
20–1375
The author explains: “By the damned, I mean the excluded. We shall have a procession of data that science has excluded.... I have gone into the outer darkness of scientific and philosophical transactions and proceedings, ultra-respectable, but covered with the dust of disregard. I have descended into journalism. I have come back with the quasi-souls of lost data.” He has brought together a curious assemblage of physical phenomena for which science has never found any explanation. That other planets are trying to communicate with us is one of the hypotheses suggested.
“To read of them is to be inspired with an interest which has no need of the book’s sensational title; nor is it increased by the author’s quasi-scientific speculations which he presents in a staccato style that soon produces the wearying effect of a series of explosions.”
+ − Cath World 111:410 Je ’20 140w
“‘The book of the damned’ reminds one of Harnack’s characterization of the gnostic work ‘Pistis Sophia’ as ‘dedicated to the propaganda of systematic idiocy.’” Preserved Smith
− Nation 110:sup483 Ap 10 ’20 180w