magic books – Page 8 – MagicShow.Tips

Learning About Thurston

Last weekend I picked up the Thurston Scrapbook that was put out by Phil Temple. This book is Grace Thurston’s autobiography of life with Howard Thurston. I started reading it and there’s a lot going on that doesn’t hold up to modern standards. I’m only about 30 pages into it and it’s really changed my view of Howard Thurston.

It begins when a 29 year old Howard meets a 15 year old Grace at a train station and convinces her to go on the road with him. He then takes her shopping for clothes and says that they can deduct the cost from her wages. In modern times this is human trafficing behavior. He took her from her family to a different state and now she owes him money, so she’s stuck with him. Then he gets her to lie about her age so that they can get married.

On the first few pages she casually mentions he beat her, so there’s that. I think that men hitting women was more common an accepted by society in 1898 than it is now almost 125 years later.

At the time that they met Thurston was working as a sideshow barker and much of his troupe performed in brownface. Once again, this was more acceptable in late 1800’s than it is now. These are things that aren’t really brought up in the stories that old magicians would recite about him.

A common story about Howard Thurston that older magician would tell me when I was a kid was about his preshow ritual. Howard would stand in the wings and say, “I love my audience” to himself before he stepped onstage. In the book Grace mentions several times that he refers to his audience as “suckers”. I figure I should mention this is early in his career while he’s still working in carnivals, so that may change later.

I’m curious if more of what I was told or assumed about Howard Thurston will change as I continue reading this book.

-Louie

Will Goldston Magic Books…

It’s been an exciting couple of days for books! A couple of weeks ago I won a stack of Will Goldston books from an auction house in Florida.

Will’s books are interesting as I’m not sure who they are written for. The descriptions of how things work are very brief almost like they’re written for a general non magician audience, however the tricks aren’t things that an amateur magician could really make without a well equipped wood and metal workshop. Also without knowledge of the props and magic in general, you really couldn’t make them based on the descriptions in the books.

I did find a little surprise inside one of the books:

The Sensational Tales of Mystery Men is signed by Peter Kane! Peter is essentially the person that created Wild Card and the card trick The Elongated Lady. I’ve got a couple emails out to some people who may know if that signature belongs to that Peter Kane or a different person with the same name.

I love finding little surprises in old books!

-Louie

Magic at Powell’s Books!

Over the long President’s Day weekend my family went on a trip to Oregon. One of the places we stopped was Powell’s Books in Portland. Powell’s is one of the largest independent bookstores in the USA and has a nice mix of new and used books.

It took a bit of hunting to find their magic trick section!

They had a bunch of magic books, lots of newer ones and some older ones. I found the Thurston Scrapbook that Phil Temple put out in the 1980’s.

This has been added to my stack of books to read!

-Louie

Preemptive Line…

In the new school assembly show I do a trick with apples and oranges. It’s based on Jim Steinmeyer’s Apples and Oranges trick from his book Conjuring. The concept is the same, the the routine is completely different.

jim steinmeyer apples and oranges trick from conjuring

I’ve notice that about every 2-3 shows I have kid in the audience when I introduce the apples and oranges that will yell out, “they’re fake” and the kid is correct, they’re plastic. What puzzles me is that kid will fixate on the fact that they aren’t real and keep yelling out “they’re fake“, even after I agree with the kid that they aren’t real fruit.

I’ve tried different ways to deal with this, and yesterday I wrote the line, “they’re not real, I got them from Ikea…So they’re made of particle board and Swedish meatballs”. The goal is to address the issue before the kids says anything. I’ve done it at 2 shows and so far I haven’t had anyone yell out anything.

One challenge with this line is that I’m in North Dakota and there isn’t a Ikea for about 700 miles! The line gets a small laugh from the adults, and not much from the kids. this is better than nothing, however I think I need to write a better line…

-Louie

The Riddle of Chung Ling Soo

I’ve had the book The Riddle of Chung Ling Soo for probably 15 years and never read it. I finally took with me on a flight and read it on the plane!

I have a hard time believing it was a mass market book, and not just for magicians as it gets pretty nerdy in some areas. I did find it interesting that while Chung Ling Soo died during the bullet catch trick, the author mentioned that he wasn’t going to go into the theory of suicide. I think that’s an angle that needs to be explored for the sake of completeness.

It was a good, quick read and if you can find a copy of it, it’s a solid $10 buy.

-Louie

The Principles of Magic and Mentalism

About a month ago I picked up two Richard Osterlind books. I got The Principles of Magic and The Principles of Mentalism. These books look like they’ve been out for a while, I think the magic one had a copyright date of 2005 and the mentalism one a few years newer.

These books are filled with short thoughts on different aspects of performing. Usually these little essays about about a page and a half to two pages. Richard gets the information across, but it’s a pretty much just the facts. He doesn’t go too deep into much of it, but it’s a starting point to get you thinking about different aspects of how you perform.

I’d say these books are targeted towards someone who is going from performing for family and friends to maybe trying to do a show, or just starting doing formal shows. If that’s you, pick up a copy of the one that’s appropriate to what you do.

-Louie

Card Split

I’m in a text chat group with some magicians and one shared a “card split” idea. What I’m calling a card split is where you take a card and it becomes two cards…but the two cards value equals the value of the original card. For example a two would become two aces. This idea was popularized (created?) by Paul Harris’s Las Vegas Split in his book Super Magic.

Magicians really love this premise, however I think for a general audience it lack connection (in most cases). Yes, there are times when a presentation can have it make sense, like in a Sam, The Bellhop style card routine. However in the majority of cases if you took a joker and turned it into two signed cards, that would hit much harder!

That said, here’s what I came up with after seeing by buddy’s trick:

I feel like this method has to have been done before, if you’ve seen it before, let me know!

-Louie

Sid Fleishman – The Abracadabra Kid!

About 20 years ago I used to visit with Sid Fleishman when he visited Seattle. Sid wrote The Charlatan’s Handbook, which was a very influential book for me when I was a teenager. I learned a version of the Zarrow Shuffle and how to mark cards from the book. I also learned that he’s the creator of the Card to Fly trick where a signed card appears in the fly of your pants. Card to Fly was the big trick of my comedy club show when I was younger.

I was very lucky to get to hang out with him a few times. One time Sid had published a trick in Genii and he asked me to write a letter to the magazine saying how one of the jokes offended me. He was trying to generate some controversy over the trick. I don’t think my letter was ever published, but Sid was a cool guy.

Many years ago, I found a copy of his autobiography, The Abracadabra Kid, but never got around to reading it. I threw it in my backpack and am reading it on this trip.

I’m about 40 pages into it and really enjoying it! If you’re looking for a fun magician’s biography, so far I highly recommend this!
-Louie

Own Your Magic!

About a month or so I picked up the book Own Your Magic A Magicians Guide to Protecting Your Intellectual Property by Sara Crasson. It was recommended by Christopher Weed, who is a super smart guy!

If you’ve read this blog, you’ll know that I’ve learned a lot about protecting the magic that I sell and that I’ve been very successful in keeping knock offs of my magic products off of sites like ebay and aliexpress.

I think this is something that all magicians should read, it not only covers the different types of intellectual property (IP), but how it applies specifically to magicians. Hopefully it will inform idiot magicians who don’t know about IP from commenting in social media groups with factually inaccurate information about IP.

My favorite is when a magician says a trick is protected as a “trade secret”. Sure it can be, but if I’m not a party to the trade secret agreement and can figure it out, I’m (legally) free to use it. Trade secrets only apply to those who have signed the agreement.

If you’re a creator, I hope if gives you a base for where to start to protect an idea for a trick and the different processes for doing it. For example, I personally don’t want to patent a trick due to time and expense. I choose to copyright the art and instructions. That allows me to remove knock offs from popular sites because they are using my text and art. Most of the people knocking off don’t want to spend the time it takes to write ad copy and create art, so it narrows down the amount of knock offs out there.

If someone uses my idea and creates their own art, text and ad copy they are legally free to do make my product. Sure, I’d rather they don’t, but I’ve accepted that’s how it is based on what I was willing to do to protect my products.

I’m always amazed at how many magicians have taken the basic step of registering the text and art of their instructions and ad copy. It’s less than $100 and easy to do online.

Get the book Own Your Magic A Magicians Guide to Protecting Your Intellectual Property, read it and at least be informed!

-Louie