William Corliss & the Tailings from the Mine of Science

Grove Koger

August 28 is the birthday of William Roger Corliss, who was born in Stamford, Connecticut, on this day in 1926.

You may not recognize Corliss’s name, but if you frequent libraries or used bookstores, you may have run across some of the many volumes he compiled and published as part of a long series he called the Sourcebook Project.

Corliss graduated with an M.S. in physics from the University of Colorado in 1953, and wrote (or co-wrote) several monographs solidly within the accepted bounds of science, including the three-volume Interplanetary Pioneers (1972-73) and The Viking Mission to Mars (1974), both from NASA. Over time, however, Corliss’s attention turned to anomalistics—the study of unexplained objects or phenomena. As he himself put it, he had “always been intrigued by the tailings from the mine of science, the facts that do not fit the mold.”

Corliss set out to comb decades of scientific literature, including such journals as Nature, Science, and Meteorological Magazine for reports of unusual phenomena. He then arranged excerpts in a thematically arranged series of several dozen substantial books. The first Sourcebooks were loose-leaf affairs, but Corliss soon replaced them with bound volumes that he called Handbooks and Catalogs. Titles included, for instance, Tornados, Dark Days, Anomalous Precipitation: A Catalog of Geophysical Anomalies(1983), which ran to 202 pages and included 40 illustrations and 5 indexes.

Writing in the Journal of Scientific Exploration In 2002, Corliss described the aim of his project: “Overall, this immense accumulation of anomalies will hopefully encourage new research projects, some paradigm shifting, perhaps even the emergence of yet-undreamed-of hypotheses that will better describe nature.”

I’m happy to say that I own a rebound copy of Corliss’s second Sourcebook publication, Strange Phenomena: A Sourcebook of Unusual Natural Phenomena, Vol. G-2, from 1974. It covered a wide range of anomalies, from “Brocken Spectres, Glories, Etc.” to “Whirlwinds and Dust Devils.” I also own a hardbound copy of the 542-page Handbook of Unusual Natural Phenomena from 1977, the cover of which you see at the top of today’s post.

What does a typical entry look like? They range from very short to long, and a typical short one from the Handbook of Unusual Natural Phenomena reads like this in its entirety: “SPARKLING RAIN / Anonymous; Symons’s Monthly Meteorological Magazine, 27:171, 1892. / Rain which on touching the ground crackles and emits electric sparks is a very uncommon but not unknown phenomenon. An instance of the kind was recently reported from Cordova, in Spain, by an electrical engineer who witnessed the occurrence. The weather had been warm and undisturbed by wind, and soon after dark the sky became overcast by clouds. At about 8 o’clock, there came a flash a lightning, followed by great drops of electrical rain, each one of which, on touching the ground, walls, or trees, gave a faint crack, and emitted a spark of light. The phenomenon continued for several seconds, and apparently ceased as soon as the atmosphere was saturated with moisture.”

The Sourcebook Project eventually ran to more than three dozen volumes, with the final one appearing in 2007. Corliss himself died in 2011, and in 2023, I’m sorry to say, all of the volumes in the project are out of print. I checked online for used copies of a title chosen at random, Rare Halos, Mirages, Anomalous Rainbows and Related Electromagnetic Phenomena, only to discover that a used copy in “very good” condition can be yours for $345 plus shipping.

When I worked as a reference librarian, I saw to it that my library had several of the Project’s books on its shelves, hoping to spark the imagination of science-minded readers, young and old. But now, I’m sorry to say, they’re all gone—stolen or “weeded” as being unnecessary.

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A Lost Painting Found

Grove Koger

One of the articles I wrote during my happy stint as Copy Editor of Laguna Beach Art Patron Magazine involved artist Joseph Kleitsch, one of whose paintings figured in a story that cried out to be told. So …

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Laurence Trevino made a prescient choice one memorable day in June 2005 when he was given fifteen minutes to recover possessions from his parents’ home. Located in the Bluebird Canyon neighborhood of Laguna Beach, the structure was teetering on the edge of a cliff created when a hillside collapsed.

One of the objects he grabbed was a painting (above) of Mission San Juan Capistrano that had hung for two decades in the house. His father, Albert, had bought the work for a few dollars at a garage sale, but it meant a lot to the family. “The only reason I grabbed it was because my mom loved the mission so much,” the younger Trevino recalled later. “At least that way they’d always have something they love if they moved into a new house.”

Pat Hagen, an artist and neighbor helping out the family in the aftermath of the disaster, was immediately struck by the painting’s rich colors, and on looking more closely, noticed the signature: Joseph Kleitsch. (That’s him you see below in a self portrait.)

If you recognize that name, then you can probably guess what’s coming. If not, then here’s the story behind the story:

Born in what’s now Romania in 1882, young Joseph Kleitsch showed so much talent for art that his village awarded him a scholarship, and by the time he was seventeen he had studied in Budapest, Munich, and Paris. He immigrated to the United States in 1901 or -02, settling for a time in Cincinnati, then Denver, then Chicago, where he studied and taught at the city’s famous Art Institute. In 1920 he moved to Laguna Beach, where he set up the Kleitsch Academy with his second wife, Edna.

As a teen, Kleitsch had painted Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, and in his twenties was commissioned to produce official portraits of President Francisco Madero of Mexico and his family. A versatile artist, he had also turned out accomplished (if somewhat stodgy) genre paintings and still lifes. But the famous California light and the relaxed Laguna scene opened Kleitsch’s eyes to a different reality, and he began painting en plein air. His palette brightened, his canvases blossomed, and he was taken up by the Stendahl and Hatfield galleries in Los Angeles. One critic in that city called him a “born colorist,” while another declared that he had “discovered more varieties of loveliness in Laguna Beach than any other artist.”

Kleitsch delighted in depicting his community’s streets and trees and buildings. One of his best works, The Old Post Office of 1922 (above), shows its unassuming general store. It was owned by early Laguna businessman Joseph Yoch, and was a gathering place where residents traded gossip while picking up their mail. Kleitsch’s painting takes a sidelong glance across the store’s wooden steps and into the tall eucalyptus trees growing nearby. (Kleitsch was particularly good at capturing the kaleidoscopic character of these towering but scruffy Australian transplants.) Other memorable scenes of the area include Laguna Landscape of 1925, whose vibrant colors recall those of the Fauves of France, and Park Avenue. Dating from the final years of Kleitsch’s short life, the latter has a lively, spontaneous quality far removed from the formality of his earlier paintings.

Kleitsch became something of a character in his adopted home, setting up his easel in the middle of the road during the day and taking over a piece of sidewalk in the evening to play his accordion. An enthusiastic reporter described the artist in his heyday as a “sun-browned young man whose virility invades his canvases.”

Before his untimely death from a heart attack in 1931, Kleitsch had also produced numerous works depicting Southern California’s missions. He was especially fond of San Juan Capistrano, which he had actually visited and painted several years before moving to Laguna. He produced many more views in the years to come—which brings us back to that fateful day in 2005 when Laurence Trevino saved his mother’s much-loved painting of the mission.

After seeing the signature on the canvas, the neighborly Hagen contacted local art dealer Ray Redfern, who confirmed that the work really was a Kleitsch. The painting was subsequently identified as Evening Shadows, painted in 1923 and long considered “lost.” And just how did it get that way? It may have been bought decades before from the estate of Kleitsch’s widow and handed down through the buyer’s family before ending up in the yard sale where Trevino found it. In any case, Redfern offered to broker its sale free of charge. It might be worth, he estimated, as much as half a million dollars. And in the annals of Lost and Found, that has to be one for the books.

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The Extravagance of Being Oscar

Grove Koger

August 14 is the anniversary of the death of Oscar Levant, who died on this day in 1972.

If you’re old enough, you may remember Levant’s appearances on the Jack Paar Show—occasions on which the pianist and wit could be counted on to discuss his various neuroses and to throw off the most delightfully outrageous quips. Or you may have heard recordings of his performances of his good friend George Gershwin’s compositions—performances that were regarded as definitive. Or maybe, just maybe, you may realize that Levant recorded the music of a number of other composers, ranging from Bach to Liszt, with world-famous conductors.

What you probably don’t know is that Levant was a composer in his own right—a good one who might have been a great one. As he readily admitted, he was lazy. He also seems to have been cowed by Gershwin, who was, after all, the greatest composer the United States has ever produced. As Levant would later write, “I got so much, vicariously, out of [Gershwin’s] ability and creativeness that whatever latent talents I had were completely submerged.” And yet …

Levant was born in 1906 in Pittsburgh and in 1922 moved to New York City, where he took lessons from composer Zygmunt Stojowski. Later he studied with a much more famous and influential composer, Arnold Schoenberg, whose dissonant, twelve-tone techniques proved as popular with critics as they were unpopular with audiences. Among the few pieces by Levant that have survived, thanks to recordings, is a beguiling Piano Sonatina and a short, angular Piano Concerto challengingly blending Schoenberg with boogie-woogie. You can listen to them here and here on YouTube, or on the DRG CD whose cover you see at the top of today’s post.

As Levant would later write, “This concerto is fourteen minutes long, mostly in fast tempo, relieved with an all-too-short slow section. Composed in the late Thirties, this music reflects an arrogance and a pretentiousness based on an economic and emotional insecurity. However, those are days we now look back on as happy.”

Levant was right about the slow section being “all-too-short,” and it and the slower sections near the end of the piece are easily the ones easiest for the listener to fasten onto. However, Levant himself disparaged them, remarking that they “spoiled the whole thing.”

Levant premiered the concerto in 1942 with the NBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Alfred Wallenstein. Reviewing the work for the Herald Tribune, critic and fellow composer Virgil Thompson remarked that the “impact of Mr. Levant’s battling personality is not absent. His music, like his mind, is tough and real and animated by a ferocious integrity.” Thompson added that “beneath its schoolboy homage to Gershwin and Schoenberg,” the work is “hard and lonely and original music, full of song and solitude.”

It seems to have been stage fright that ended Levant’s concert career. His last public performance was in 1958 at the Hollywood Bowl before an audience of twenty thousand. Fittingly enough, he played Gershwin’s masterful 1925 Piano Concerto in F.

But music wasn’t Levant’s only endeavor. In his spare time, he appeared in seventeen films, including An American in Paris (a still from which you see above), which was inspired by Gershwin’s famous 1928 orchestral piece, and wrote three volumes of memoirs, including The Unimportance of Being Oscar (1968).

Levant once quipped that “there’s a fine line between genius and insanity; I have erased this line.” There were times when he seemed to live off of his neuroses, as if they were a life-giving drug. But eventually the drug took its toll and he was hospitalized several times for addiction. He died at the age of 65 of a heart attack.

Levant’s friend Harpo Marx remembered an occasion when he found him reading a book, listening to a record, playing the piano, and singing—all at the same time.

I wish I’d been there.

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Wilfred Thesiger in the Marshes

Grove Koger

As I expand and update When the Going Was Good, I’m posting revised entries from the first edition. Today’s deals with an account by Wilfred Thesiger (1910-2003) of his experiences in southern Iraq in the 1950s.

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The Marsh Arabs (London: Longman, 1964)

Wilfred Thesiger, whose father was ambassador to Ethiopia, was the first English child born in that country. He went on to record his delight in the culture and ceremonies of the pastoral, so-called primitive peoples of Africa and Asia, as well as an intense hatred of progress and the “drab uniformity” it engenders. Called by an admirer a “great crag of a man,” he reserved a particular antipathy for the internal combustion engine.

As I noted in my post for June 3, 2019, which dealt with Thesiger’s 1959 classic Arabian Sands, he believed “that in those empty wastes [he] could find the peace that comes with solitude, and, among the Bedu, comradeship in a hostile world.” The traveler and writer was to seek a similar comradeship among the peoples of al Hor in southern Iraq, an area that he first visited in 1950. Inhabiting the marshy lands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, an area of some 6,000 square miles, the region’s people had evolved a striking way of life based on fishing, raising water buffalo, and hunting giant wild boar. They built reed houses on floating islands of vegetation and moved from place to place in long, graceful canoes.

Although fascinated by them, Thesiger (seen above in a 1944 portrait by Anthony Devas) was not accepted by the Marsh Arabs until they discovered that he could perform circumcisions, a role that established his bona fides! Thesiger subsequently tried to spend part of every year among the Marsh Arabs, abandoning his visits only when revolution swept Iraq in 1958.

Thesiger insists that his account of al Horis is “not properly a travel book.” Yet it succeeds as a poignant record of a unique and delightful way of life—one that began to disappear when Iraq’s government started draining the wetlands (known as the Mesopotamian Marshes or Iraqi Marshes) in order to subjugate the region’s unruly inhabitants. Fortunately, restoration efforts have been undertaken since the American-led invasion of 2003.

Thesiger’s other travel works include Desert, Marsh, and Mountain: The World of a Nomad (1979; also published as The Last Nomad: One Man’s Forty Year Adventure in the World’s Most Remote Deserts, Mountains, and Marshes); Visions of a Nomad (1987); The Life of My Choice (1987); The Thesiger Collection (1991); My Kenya Days (1994); The Danakil Diary: Journeys through Abyssinia, 1930–34 (1996); and Among the Mountains: Travels through Asia (1998).

For further information on Thesiger, see: Michael Asher, Thesiger: A Biography (1994); Mark Cocker, Loneliness and Time: The Story of British Travel Writing (1992); Timothy Green, The Restless Spirit: Profiles in Adventure (1970); and Richard Trench, Arabian Travellers: The European Discovery of Arabia (1986).

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About Those Rocs

Grove Koger

No, that’s not a typo.

Even if you’re a diligent birdwatcher, you can be forgiven if you’ve never heard of the bird of prey known as the roc—much less seen one.

Rocs are large, really large, although estimates of their size vary, well, enormously. The largest are said to be able to carry elephants long distances.

If you care to, you’ll find out a lot about rocs online, learning, for instance, that they live, or at least lived, in the Middle East and figure in such folkloric compilations as the “Arabian Nights,” more properly known as the One Thousand and One Nights. In one episode of that work, Sinbad hitched a ride on a roc. In a subsequent adventure, he and the crew of his ship came upon a roc’s egg on an island and foolishly broke it open.

In any case, rocs have inspired a number of fanciful works of art, two of which I’m including in today’s post. The one at the top is Sinbad and the Giant Roc, a color lithograph by an unknown illustrator of the English school. The second is an oil painting, The Roc’s Egg, by Elihu Vedder. If you look carefully near the upper left, you’ll see the parent rocs approaching the scene of the crime, while two crewmen on the right are frantically trying to warn the rest of their party. Vedder seems to have had a sly sense of humor, and I find myself grinning every time I happen across this painting.

But my main interest in the roc involves the real birds, or rather the fossils of real birds, that may have inspired the legends. A prime suspect is the Aepyornis, or “elephant bird,” several species of which once lived on the island of Madagascar off the east coast of Africa. The largest of these, Aepyornis maximus, is thought have been the largest bird that has ever lived, reaching nearly 10 feet in height and weighing as much as 2,200 pounds. They were also flightless, which is probably a good thing. The photograph above, of an Aepyornis maximus skeleton and egg, is taken from “Paleontologie de Madagascar” in Annales de Palaeontologie 8 (1913) by L. Monnier.

In this connection, I have to mention a wonderful story by H.G. Wells, “Aepyornis Island,” which originally appeared in 1894 and was republished in the February 1905 issue of Pearson’s Magazine, with a cover by Wallace Blanchard. In the story, a hapless collector is marooned on an island in the Indian Ocean with a fertile egg of what has since been dubbed Aepyornis vastus. I wish I’d written it myself.

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