Magic Is Dead

Short version: Don't be fooled by the book's cool cover art or jacket description. There's no mystery, just name-dropping.

I don't know if the author, editor, or publisher is to blame for presenting the book as a look inside "the52, a secret society of the most innovative performers and creators of illusion, deception, and mystery." That would be an interesting book, but that's not what the actual book is about, and the52 goes unmentioned for whole chapters.

Basically, the journalist Ian Frisch makes friends with some very successful YouTube/Instagram magicians. He's smitten with them, and the luster never wears off, so the bulk of the book is Ian's descriptions of just how freakin' cool these famous and successful people are.

There's no twist, no reveal. I was hoping for something like the documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, where the viewer realizes partway through that the filmmaker is not in control of what's happening. Nope. Then I was at least expecting some immersion journalism in which the writer shows us a little-known subculture from the inside but then brings some critical perspective. Again, no. It's more like "I always suspected magicians were cool, but now I know THEY ARE SUPER COOL and I'm finally one of them! Although I still look down on the majority of magicians as lame."

That's the other thing. Over and over and over his friends as described as "young guns," "the new generation," shaking up the establishment, etc. They ridicule the stodgy oldtimers. But after finishing the book I still don't know what they're trying to get away from. Top hats and rabbits? Their only genuinely new thing seems to be using social media and personal "branding." OK, fine, those are relatively new concepts, but they simply didn't exist for previous generations so I don't see the substantive difference between old and new.

Here are two quotations that show the narrator's unreliability [but not the entertaining kind of unreliable narrator]:

1) Early in the book, when he's just being introduced to famous magicians, he writes: "I had only heard whispers about the52. Ramsay, right before I came to Blackpool, had cryptically mentioned it: a secret society, founded by Laura London and Daniel Madison, comprising the world's most prominent young magicians, all of whom were pushing the craft forward and doing truly unique things."

Those are not cryptic whispers. That's a complete, thorough description. The only twist we learn later in the book is that it's not really a secret society, since members post photos of their induction tattoos on Instagram.

2) Later, at a magic convention in Buffalo, he attempts to contrast the oldtimers with the brash young innovators. "The older guys mostly kept to themselves, rehashing experiences from memories past or immodestly showing each other moves that had been invented decades ago." Literally two sentences later: "Xavior [a member of the52] held court at a corner table and showed a small crowd his work on Raise Rise, an effect invented and made famous back in the 1990s," i.e. decades ago.

Frisch includes chapters about his childhood and parents, which are actually quite touching and subtle. I don't think his personal story arc complements or resonates with the main themes of magic as much as he thinks it does. Other chapters on the history of magic are interesting but that topic has been covered better elsewhere.