Fooling Houdini
Magicians, Mentalists,
Math Geeks, and the
Hidden Powers of the Mind
by Alex Stone
Harper
New Yorker Alex Stone, a self-described unsocialized dweeb, thought he had a cure for his awkwardness.
“That’s right, I thought magic would actually make me less nerdy,” he writes.
It didn’t (duh). But what it did do was allow him close and personal access to some of the greatest and strangest characters in a subculture still seen as geeky, even among geeks. Steampunks, Trekkies and Scrabble obsessives have all had their day in the sun (in the form of books or documentaries), but how much do we know about the guy pulling a rabbit out of a hat at a child’s birthday party? Not nearly enough, if this book is any indication.
The problem is that magicians are manically secretive. They rely on pacts and oaths; tricks and secrets are not to be shared under penalty of excommunication; most knowledge is passed down orally from generation to generation.
Being a magician is like “being in the CIA,” Stone writes. If he breathed a word about the goings-on at these backstairs meet-ups, he would be “ostracized, condemned as a traitor for breaking the magician’s code.”
At any given day in New York, meanwhile, there are “a dozen private gatherings — in the back of diners, at split-level veterans’ lodges, in spare rooms at medical centers and universities,” all of which us non-magical, normal folk are unaware.
Luckily, Stone is willing to break the code of silence. The result is a hilarious and illuminating memoir “Fooling Houdini,” which is less a how-to guide, and more about the bizarro-personalities, the infighting and the jaw-dropping dedication and dexterity required to be a truly great magician.
And with his day job as a former science journalist with a master’s degree in physics from Columbia University, the book also tackles the neurological and psychological underpinnings of how and why we are so fooled by illusions.
Stone’s love of magic started as a 5-year-old, when his father gifted him an FAO Schwarz magic kit.
“Most people outgrow it; I clearly didn’t,” he says.
This obsession led him to Stockholm in 2006 to compete in what is known as the Magic Olympics (yes, that really exists), a scene that opens the book.
It was the culmination of years of practice in back alleyways, at society meetings, at bar mitzvahs and birthday parties. Despite this, Stone was painfully unprepared. Just a few minutes into his routine, he was ushered off the stage, disqualified and shamed.
After the embarrassment, he embarked on an odyssey across the country, apprenticing with the best magicians in the world. Think of it as “The Karate Kid,” except the Mr. Miyagis are card sharks and hustlers.
Stone spent every Saturday with Wesley James, one of the best sleight-of-hand magicians in the world, who hangs out at the Herald Square pizzeria Café Rustico II. James teaches Stone how to “think and act like a cheat” by showing him the art of false cuts, crooked deals and how to get a secret glimpse at the deck of cards. James’ own mentor was the fascinating Dai Vernon, best known in magic circles as the man “who fooled Houdini” by creating the “ambitious card routine,” where playing cards seem to rise to the top of the deck.
In general, magic is about misdirection and fooling the mind. The best tricks are the ones that exploit our own innate neurological shortcomings. For example, tricks often rely on false memories (we remember a different card than was actually shown) and blind spots (magicians are skilled at drawing the attention of their mark away from the action, which is what happens during disappearing-coin tricks).
It’s the mind’s limitations that allow magicians to baffle us, Stone says. Neurologically speaking, there is a gap, a small one, between perception and awareness. During this lag, what we see, hear and feel can be compromised. This is the basis of illusion.
Finding new ways to exploit this lag became an obsession for Stone. He attended clown college and enrolled in a weekend-long seminar at a magic school in Vegas that looked conspicuously like Hogwarts.
He tracked down the “greatest card handler of all time,” who also happens to be legally blind, and learn the value of tactile sensations in tricks. He also commissioned the help of a professional grifter, who once made a living scamming tourists on Canal Street with classic hustler games like three-card Monte.
The need to hone his skills as a magician became so overpowering that his relationships suffer. He finds himself performing to strangers on subways, getting kicked out of the bars for doing too many tricks, and annoying his physics professors. Poof! One by one, his girlfriends disappeared.
He spent an “embarrassing” amount of money (tens of thousands, he admits) on tricks. Decks of cards became a pack-a-day habit.
During this time, he also wrote a tell-all article for Harper’s magazine about magicians, which alienated him from his group of “misfits.” His local chapter of the Society of American Magicians even rescinded his membership after the article ran.
Just imagine what they’ll do now that the book is out.
“Some people still won’t look at me or shake my hand,” he says.
Though Stone suffered from the fallout at the time, he now disagrees with those who feel he has revealed too much about this secret world.
“My personal belief is that magic is not quite as vulnerable to exposure or as reliant on secrecy as typically or as traditionally is believed. I don’t necessarily believe that knowing a few secrets here and there makes you less interested in magic; in fact I think it makes you more interested in magic,” he says.
Even after his journey, Stone still regularly practices and performs and loves it just as deeply as when he was a 5-year-old.
“Magic is so full of innovation, especially sleight-of-hand and close-up magic. Expert magicians are still fooling each other with new material. I don’t think there’s any danger of running out of tricks or of me losing interest.”