Book 39: Fooling Houdini

Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks, & the Hidden Powers of the Mind

Alex Stone

Occasionally I stumble upon a topic that suddenly and strongly piques my interest for a period of time. For whatever reason, this time it was stage magic, and I decided to pick up this book from the (admittedly slim) selection available at the library. Unfortunately, while Stone's memoir does chronicle the author's lifelong fascination with magic and even hints at the relationship between his passion for illusion and his studies in advanced physics, it suffers from a lack of focus and fails to live up to its titular aspirations. To his credit, Stone does attempt to write the kind of personal history that uses his own experiences to highlight different areas of the craft, even if he is ultimately thwarted by a lack of focus and an excess of authorial self-regard. Stone often falls victim to his own aspirations both within the context of his story and as an author retelling it and constantly confuses his platform with a mandate to make wide-ranging proclamations about the magical community that his own book indicates he is in no way qualified to make. One gets the sense throughout that Stone is constantly punching above his weight, particularly when he argues, not quite convincingly, for public revelation as a cornerstone of the magician's trade. As an outsider, I can't vouch for the validity of his arguments, but given the issue's obvious volatility his lack of tact is somewhat indicative of his tendency toward self-aggrandizement. Likewise, many of his jokes come across as tone-deaf (at best) or downright misogynist (at worst), while his attempts at modesty backfire, serving mostly to exaggerate his seeming lack of self-awareness. Given the surrounding context, many readers may not be inclined to be forgiving of such missteps.

Despite a fair number of missteps in the telling, the book does possess a reasonably straightforward narrative core, built around a promising redemption narrative following Stone's disastrous appearance at a high-profile competition. While Stone never convincingly portrays himself as anything more than a merely adequate, but obviously passionate, magician, the story provides a framework for more interesting explorations into a variety of additional topics. The book's best chapters are deep dives into the nearly unbelievable talents of card virtuoso Richard Turner, the world of three-card monte hustlers, and the relationship between neuroscience and illusion. Less successful, but still intriguing, is a discussion about the importance of gambling- and, more specifically, accomplished card cheats- to the development of close-up magic. Here too, however, the book suffers for Stone's propensity to brag; his moralistic declaration that he decides not to cheat while playing poker with his friends is not nearly as humble as he apparently thinks it is and, in fact, exemplifies the very attitude that causes most of the book's major problems.

Fooling Houdini may suffer from its author's obviously exaggerated sense of self-regard, but Stone's deep appreciation of magic and his genuine admiration for its most advanced practitioners save the book (and him) from complete disaster. He may not delve too deeply into the connections between magic and high physics, his ostensible area of academic interest, but he does explore enough tangential subjects to sustain the reader's interest, even when his personal journey and, indeed, his purported insider's insights into the magical community, aren't quite convincing. And despite Stone's obvious passion for magic and his efforts to share his love with a wider audience, the book suffers from more than its fair share of misfires, ultimately resulting in a book that is ineffective in its individual chapters and as a whole (take, for example, a late story abbreviated so abruptly by a chapter break that I immediately checked to see whether my copy was missing several pages). As a result, Fooling Houdini is a moderately successful vanity project that occasionally does justice to its subject, but far too often succumbs to the author's exaggerated sense of self-importance.

Grade: C+