The design of magic
Magicians make good copy. They do
stuff that no one else can or wants to. They perform, leading lives filled with
illusion, deception, and hares.
During the ’70s, Doug Henning
represented magic in American popular culture. He was at the forefront of a new
generation reinvigorating the mysterious arts. Many other magicians had
appeared on television, but none had the same loopy charm, copious hair, and
remarkable technical skill — or the ability and desire to construct illusions
not often seen at the time.
Henning knew, like all professional
magicians, that he did not have to develop all the tricks himself. Among
others, he hired Jim Steinmeyer. Henning ran his course as a magician and yogic
flyer, but Steinmeyer remained in the magic scene, or rather behind it. Make no
mistake, great magic design is difficult — as anyone who has seen the latest
spate of Blaine-inspired levitations can attest. As opposed to all those card
forces and coin palms that fill magic books, stage magic is a relatively recent
manifestation. And it requires imagination. It has a design.
While pursuing his day job working
with Siegfried and Roy, David Copperfield, Lance Burton, and Ricky Jay,
Steinmeyer has also been producing outstanding small press books on the theory
of magic: Art & Artifice, Device and Illusion, The Complete Jarrett, etc. For the less
hard-core reader, Steinmeyer has been producing incredibly readable books on
magic history, with just enough revelation mixed in to keep things spicy. His
first was Hiding the Elephant,
documenting 19th-century magical attempts to exploit the technological advances
of the day. Recently, Steinmeyer has produced The Glorious Deception: the Double Life of William Robinson, aka Chung
Ling Soo, the ‘Marvelous Chinese Conjurer’. Keep your eyes peeled for the
part played by Rochester in magic history.
— Craig Brownlie
This article appears in Nov 23-29, 2005.
