A little over ten years ago, a mass market book arrived that caused a stir in the magic world. Specifically, it was Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks, and the Hidden Powers of the Mind by Alex Stone. Stone was a graduate student at the time as well as an aspiring writer and part time performing magician. From what I can gather, he completed his graduate studies and has gone on to write for several science publications. His magic career? I can’t say.
I obtained a copy through inter-library borrowing as our local library didn’t have a copy. I won’t take the space here to detail the book as others have. Jamy Ian Swiss published a thorough review in Genii July, 2012. It’s available on the Vanishing Inc website. Ricky Jay also published a review at the time. Unfortunately it was in the Wall Street Journal and like all good capitalists, the Journal has it behind a paywall. I believe that this quote is from that review:
Magic is a powerful art that can support a weak performer. ~ Ricky Jay
The book opens with Stone recounting his experiences at the FISM competition which he insists on calling the Magic Olympics. It’s an apt metaphor however once is enough. It seems that Stone convinced SAM President, Richard Dooley, to sponsor him. I found a description of his performance on a FISM blog:
Alex Stone entered and began talking about magic and science. He looked extremely nervous and then proceeded to do the worst sequence of jumbo coin manipulations I’ve ever seen. He was either nervous beyond belief or simply not competent, either way he was below FISM standard. He even dropped one coin and said “S#*t!” as he picked it up. He did a matrix with jumbo cards that showed no skill whatsoever, then asked Rich Bloch to name any card and, while Alex told us what was going to happen, he basically looked for the card and reversed it in the deck. He then spread the cards and showed Rich his card was the only one reversed in the spread. When he took the shuffled deck and proceeded to give them one more shuffle himself, below the level of the table, the audience was laughing so much in disbelief the judges pressed their buttons, the red light lit up, and he was asked to finish.
It sounds like Stone wasn’t ready for the competition. It’s apparent that jumping into the deep end of the pool right off isn’t the best idea.
My issue with the book is that I can’t get Stone’s motivation. On one hand, it’s clear he loves magic while on the other, the book is full of unnecessary exposure. He vacillates from praising performers like Richard Turner and Wesley James to detailing how magic is accomplished. It’s confusing to me as a general reader and baffling as a magician.
I found Fooling Houdini terribly boring and surprised it garnered pull quotes from notables. Too many tangents that seem like padding. As they say I took one for the team: not recommended.
