Carter Beats the Devil

1) "On Friday, August third, 1923, the morning after President Harding's death, reporters followed the widow, the Vice President, and Charles Carter, the magician. At first, Carter made the pronouncements he thought necessary: 'A fine man, to be sorely missed,' and 'it throws the country into a great crisis from which we shall all pull through together, showing the strong stuff of which we Americans are made.' When pressed, he confirmed some details of his performance the night before, which had been the President's last public appearance, but as per his proviso that details of his third act never be revealed, he made no comment on the show's bizarre finale.
Because the coroner's office could not explain exactly how the President had died, and rumors were already starting, the men from Hearst wanted quite desperately to confirm what happened in the finale, when Carter beat the Devil."

2) "They exchanged a few more social comments after that, Carter mentioning his motorcycle, Borax suggesting he use the vehicle and the fine weather they'd been having to impress a lady or two, and Carter agreed that this was a fine idea.
As Carter left the house, his spirits fell. In twenty years, he'd never rubbed against Borax. He felt like they'd gone into in the forest and lost something on the way.
A hundred yards from the house, he saw a familiar graffito in red paint, lowercase letters across a turned-over wheelbarrow. She never died, it read. Such a phrase, beaten down and yet hopeful.
She never died put Carter, stepping over the fallen trees, finding his BMW, into a contemplative mood. You can't save anyone, Borax had said. He did his good works, but no longer fully believed in the spirit his unfortunate women showed every time they wrote that phrase in paint or ink or with a stick in the dirt. Now, finding his motorcycle, turning it around, ready to return a pair of gloves, Carter knew exactly what made him so sad: when faith is gone, what always takes its place is profit."

3) "Daytime fireworks were peculiar to Oakland. Everyone, hearing of such a thing, wanted to see them, once. But rarely more than that, for they were just crackles and dim sparks that left behind them shredded, burning newsprint and colored smoke.
On the ground, crowds were forming—if 'crowds' were clots of three or four or five pedestrians who had folded their arms and cocked their heads skyward—and the orchestra's brass section stood at the edge of the fruit orchards, playing Handel.
But in spite of all contrary evidence, the park made quite a lovely show of putting on a good time for all.
'You know what the hardest thing is?' Phoebe said, as the first pair of fireworks went up. 'The hardest thing is to know everything you know so far and still have faith.'
A sizzling sound, as a ratty-looking brownish smoke trail ignited, and bits of carbonized paper rained down. And then two purple ones, twisting like a pair of snakes, and a boom as sparks made a brief, flickering halo.
It would be easy to pretend to feel faith this moment, suspended over Oakland, with fireworks bursting. Carter closed his eyes. To hear them was to notice that no matter how bright, they were all launched with dull thumps.
But then the people. The cries from the ground, the exclamations.
He opened his eyes. He saw Phoebe, listening to pops and whizzing above. He wasn't lonely. Faith was a choice. So, it followed, was wonder.
By the finale of the display, a half-dozen rose-colored smoke trails dusted with glitter that caught the sunlight like diamonds, he'd found a voice in himself, calling 'bravo' with the rest of the crowd. It was unbelievable—he was actually disappointed when they ended."

4) "She looked like she was bracing herself for a punch. When he'd traveled to the Far East, he'd heard the Chinese knew the pressure points you could touch to ease pain, and Carter wished he'd paid more attention. He himself felt a lightness. He was looking at Telegraph Hill, directly behind Phoebe, where on an early morning in the spring of 1911, he had fallen in love with Sarah. Here he was less than a mile and over a decade away. What a strange world to live in. He thought of the boys and girls who looked for sweethearts at Mountain View Cemetery, and chorus girls who met their beaux behind scrim, and office romances that flourished in the buildings on Market Street, and he felt like there were little lights in alcoves here and there across the city, in cozy dens, in doorways during rainstorms, or even a chilly balcony on the Ferry building. Everywhere, little pairs of glowing lights. When you walked a city, wherever you looked, someone had probably fallen in love there."

[Spoiler]
5) "Phoebe stood with her body pointing toward the ocean, knees bent, her skirt hiked an inch or so up, her face toward him, listening, and then the surf rushed up over her ankles, which made her cry out. She dropped the end of her dress so that its very edge was buoyed on the water. 'I should just accept it,' she said, returning to walking, carefully, south, water sluicing around her feet. Carter rolled his trousers to his knees.
'You said 'but' a minute ago,' she said.
He couldn't retrieve what he meant. 'You remember how I said I liked how you couldn't see what I did for a living? It's like that.' He'd never seen an X ray of himself before. He'd been surprised to find his inner workings were exactly the same as the next man's. It made him peculiarly optimistic. 'I love magic, it's wonderful, but when it came down to it last night, you were more important.' He was thinking how life was all motion and transformation. From boy to magician and no way to turn back. And from a husband into a widower, and again, there was no turning back. His soul was once choked with grief that had now vanished by a method he hardly understood. He stood with one hand operative, the other ruined. It made him feel like he might be both a magician and a man.
She took his left hand. They walked for a few feet, and then Carter stopped to kiss her."

[Spoiler]
6) "There were never moments in your life when you actually saw something end, for whether you knew it or not something else was always flowering. Never a disappearance, always a transformation.
In his youth, Carter had believed everything was possible. Then in grief, he believed everything was impossible. And now, the very moment he stood, pulling Phoebe up with him, he felt that when you had lived enough of your life, there was no difference between the two."

Carter Beats the Devil, by Glen David Gold, is both mystery and historical fiction. Many characters in the novel--Charles Carter, President Harding, Philo Farnsworth, Harry Houdini, Max Friz, and (Francis) Borax Smith--were real people. The author makes The Golden Age of Magic come alive for the reader in this engrossing novel.


The events that take place are completely fictional, by the way, but I adore the way Gold imaged Carter's childhood to be one of material privilege and emotional neglect, where a bright, creative child would imagine his own world and obsessions. As a creation myth for a famous magician, it works very well. I also enjoyed his relationship with his younger brother, James, and the depiction of his mismatched parents--his cold father, the warmer but unpredictable mother. In the novel, his mother begs him not to saw women in half, a trick she views as misogynist. If you think this sentiment is out of place in 1920, you're right! But it was a nice touch, an amusing way of fleshing out his mother's character.

There are so many wonderful nuggets and cliff hangers in this book, so many intriguing characters, both real and imagined...I recommend it. I've long found the Carter posters to be intriguing, some of my favorite magic posters, but I'm not judging this book by its cover! It's not informative about the real Charles Carter, but the time period is well researched and it's a great story. Actually, I can say that I did learn something, too: Philo Farnsworth invented television.


Bravo!