The Books Of Wonder Volumes One And Two by Tommy Wonder and Stephen Minch
Reviewed by Jamy Ian Swiss (originally published in Genii June, 1996)
Tommy Wonder—inventor, builder, lecturer, widely regarded as one of the world's finest
all-around magicians, well-deserved (!) winner of FISM awards in both close-up and
stage magic categories—has given the world of conjuring what I believe to be among the
very greatest books of this, or perhaps even the next, century. It's difficult to imagine a
more extraordinary book than this being produced in our lifetimes.
These two volumes total close to 700 pages, containing between them a total of 56
technical entries (routines, tricks and/or sleights), half in each volume, amidst 34 essays
and articles in the first volume and 22 in the second, covering a range of subjects from
technique and craft, through misdirection and performance, on to art and philosophy.
There is close-up magic with cards, coins, cigarettes, cups and balls and more; there is
manipulative magic, children's magic, parlor, platform and stage magic. There are
sleight-of-hand and mechanical methods, each type as mind bogglingly original as the
other.
The first volume, following an introduction by Max Maven, is divided into five sections:
Attention Getting Devices is concerned with misdirection and related subjects; Travel
Tales of Mr. Pip includes eleven card items (three sleights and the balance being
routines); The Tamed Card, a Wild Card routine with associated essays; Presentations in
Silver, a section on coin magic; and finally, Group Encounters, including six routines for
children, parlor or small platform performance. The second volume parallels the first in
this general organizational scheme; and it is, I must add, a sophisticated and effective
scheme at that. Following an introduction by Eugene Burger, here the reader will again
find five chapters or sections, including: In the Trenches, a section of general close-up
magic; Acetabula et Calculi, concerning the cups and balls; Finger Sprints, containing
manipulative stage magic; Department of Utilities, addressing utility devices; and
finally, Mechanical Marvels, concerning apparatus magic.
Some readers may be familiar with portions of the contents via Mr. Wonder's distinctive
lecture or other previously published material, the most significant shares of which were
included in two sets of lecture notes: Jos Bema's Original Magic From Holland (1976),
and Wonder Material (1983). Another block of material was contributed, over a period
of several years, to Fred Robinson's highly regarded journal, Pabular. Items have also
appeared in journals including Linking Ring, Magic and Genii , and in collections such
as The New York Magic Symposium Collection Volume Five (1986) and the 1990 collection, Spectacle, both by Stephen Minch. All of this material reappears in the
volumes at hand, entirely rewritten and newly illustrated. Regrettably, these texts lack a
complete accounting of Mr. Wonder's published record. Notable amid that record is the
1983 manuscript, Tommy Wonder Entertains, subtitled Three Novel Routines based on
the Cups and Balls by Jos Bema, written by Gene Matsuura, which included a superb
description of the Two-cup routine, along with two excellent additional items. The Two-
Cup routine has been redescribed for these newly released books; the Matsuura work
remains the only published source for the two remaining routines.
One of the most impressive elements of these books is the organization of the material;
there is a symmetry and balance both between and within the two volumes, and a
deceptively easy relationship between the technical and theoretical material throughout.
Although the two volumes can be purchased independently, I cannot imagine buying
only one. This is a single unified work, reflecting a totality of one artist's vision, and
simply must be experienced as such.
The illustrations by Kelly Lyles are serviceable, although frankly not quite up the
standard of the rest of the production elements; admittedly there are some unusually
demanding aspects to the graphic challenges of this book, such that would have no
doubt tested any competent illustrator, but on occasion Ms. Lyles remains only barely
up to the task. A draftsman-like precision would have been useful in the case of some of
the most mechanically technical material, and the portraits of the author are
distractingly unflattering. Nevertheless, the publisher is at least generous in most cases
with the quantity of illustrations, and that is greatly appreciated.
And so—imagine a Wild Card routine with a unique and entertaining presentational plot
that actually justifies the effect with a meaningful kind of logic; imagine a Wild Card
routine designed for walk-around conditions, without a performing surface, where
virtually all the cards are dealt into the spectator's hands; imagine a Wild Card routine
which recycles itself. If in the first performance you change all Two's of Clubs into Kings
of Hearts, were a curious spectator to follow you to your next performance, he would see
you bring out a packet of Kings of Hearts and change them into yet another card
entirely, with which you would then begin your third performance before cycling back to
the original deuces. Try and imagine that, but don't hurt yourself—it's called The Tamed
Card, and you'll find it in Volume One, accompanied by no less than ten relevant and
indispensable essays.
The crowning technical entry of the first volume is an amazing and elegant handling for
Oswald Williams' Burglar Trick, in which the magician's money, finger ring, and wrist
watch vanish, while a tale is told of a robbery, only to magically return to the performer's
wallet, finger, and wrist. A number of versions of this trick have recently been seen both
in performance and on the dealer's shelves, but let me assure you that none comes even
remotely close to the beauty and deceptiveness of Mr. Wonder's; when I first witnessed
it—almost a decade ago—I was so badly fooled that it was the first entry I turned to
when I pulled the galley pages from the package just a few weeks ago. Be forewarned
that not every reader will have the wherewithal to construct the necessary props for both this and a number of other mechanical items in these books, but should you wish to do,
so the information is all here in careful and caring detail.
The first of the book's five chapters, entitled "Getting the Mis Out of Misdirection,"
contains three articles of extraordinarily clear and practicable thinking about
misdirection. Some of the concepts presented here are remarkably fresh and original;
while experienced performers may recognize some of these ideas, one of the great
services that discerning critical thinkers like Mr. Wonder render is that they help to
provide the rest of us with tools with which we can better utilize sometimes disparate
fragments of information we might already possess. In "Attention Getting Devices," the
author states that "Your goal is to make everyone believe that they didn't miss a thing,
yet miracles happened." He then goes on to provide a number of extremely useful tools
for achieving this obviously desirous end. Mr. Wonder is ruthless in his demands of both
himself and his work; he is also extremely eclectic in his choice of weapons with which
to achieve these goals. In the course of these books, you will be introduced to a panoply
of tools—psychological, manipulative and mechanical—to insure that your methods
remain invisible and your deceptions absolute, and this array will eventually be
summarized in a thought-provoking essay late in the second volume titled "The Three
Pillars."
Throughout, Mr. Wonder shares his thinking about what is good and bad about magic,
and how to make it better. His background, training and experience in theatrical arts
leads him to comment that "When people begin to identify with you, to recognize the
feelings you are feeling, they stop simply watching the magic and begin to experience it.
This is what makes magic interesting and something worth paying to see." And Mr.
Wonder's ideas of "good" and "better" are ambitious and sophisticated. In an essay
entitled "High and Low," he points out the pitfalls in too often aiming our work at or
near the lowest common denominators of entertainment and audience. "To be so direct
in our work that we lose the culturally educated, more sensitive audiences is a loss—as
much of a loss as losing the less refined audiences. Since, for most of us, our market
encompasses all levels of cultural educations, it would better serve us if we could please
all levels." Hence we are asked to consider not only the artistic implications of bringing a
higher level of cultural, intellectual and artistic sophistication to our work, but the
commercial ramifications as well. Mr. Wonder is frank in pointing out what he perceives
to be the limitations of magic: "...the times are gone when people automatically awarded
respect for doing something they can't. For one to win respect for a skill today, it must
either do something for or mean something to other people." Mr. Wonder's prescription
for future success? "The whole face of magic would change completely if we never again
did things without having a presentational reason. The majority of magic today is
vacuous non-sense. .... If we wish to be seen as a mature performing art, we must stop
being shallow and trivial ourselves. Ensuring that there are always reasons for the
effects we perform is a small step but an essential one in elevating magic to a level
worthy of respect." And, oh yes, one more thing: "To begin with, we should immediately
stop accepting such ideas as 'The audience doesn't notice all those nuances,' for in
virtually every audience there are those who do."
How do we make our performances more powerful and compelling for the public we
wish to entertain and affect? In an essay on acting (and what some might call method
acting) for magicians, he tells us that "Acting is not making faces; it is thinking and
feeling what you think. This practice controls the body's expression of emotion far better
than can ever be achieved by conscious control.... Thinking is necessary, thinking plus
belief. Without these things there can be no acting." If you doubt this, ask yourself—or
better yet, ask an objective layperson—how convincing was the acting the last time you
saw a magician discover that he has "mistakenly" burned up the spectator's bill,
"accidentally" forgotten to locate one selected card among many, or supposedly riveted
the audience with a portrait of love's fiery passions playing across his face; more often
than not the only mistake is the magician's in believing he has convincingly acted any of
these roles. Mr. Wonder adds further, in an essay on "Conflict and Emotion," that
"Emotion is interesting, and in theater it is ultimately the only thing that counts. The
rest is dull, extremely dull. ... Most magic is extremely dull."
Tommy Wonder's Two-Cup Routine hardly falls into that category, and it will be found
in Volume Two in all its glory. This achievement is perhaps Mr. Wonder's most famous
single creation, described here in its entirety. The routine is magic of the purest sort:
Two and a half minutes of effect, plot, and character, with a minimum of verbiage and a
great deal of action. For those who came in late: Two cups are withdrawn from a cloth
drawstring bag, which is set aside on the table; the drawstring terminates in a large
pompon. The routine which ensues is performed with two rather sizeable pompon-like
balls, and consists of a number of surprising and original phases, as in the opening
segment when one ball placed beneath each cup is then magically and visibly withdrawn
through the tops of the inverted cups. In the course of events, the pompon magically
appears under one of the cups, having mysteriously detached itself from the tabled bag.
Somewhat nonplussed by these occurrences, the magician reattaches the perverse
pompon to the bag's drawstring. Continuing with the routine, the magician eventually
causes one of the balls to vanish and appear under a cup on the spectator's own hand,
another unique effect in the annals of cups and balls magic. Ultimately, the performer
lifts one of the cups to discover the drawstring pompon beneath it yet again! Turning to
locate the previously tabled bag, the magician discovers that it is now missing. In
curiosity mixed with trepidation, the performer lifts the second cup—within which is
found the scrunched up cloth bag!
"If you don't enjoy this work, if you don't have the time for it or you just
don't want to expend the necessary effort, but you do delight in watching
magic, reading about it, meeting other magicians, toying with the ingenious
props and secrets—then I think you should realize that you are not an
amateur, let alone a professional. You are a FAN of magic.... Fans do not do
shows. If you want to do shows, then be an amateur and put in the work
required." —Tommy Wonder, The Books of Wonder
That extraordinary climax is misdirective magic of the highest order; that is, magic in
which the audience seems to superficially "understand" the method—the magician must
sneak the items into the cups without the audience noticing—and yet is increasingly
astounded by the magician's repeated success. This is, in my estimation, one of the highest forms of conjuring, for it requires an absolute mastery of misdirection; it is also
the one kind of magic wherein repetition serves to continuously enhance rather than
detract from the impact of the effect, as in Heba Haba Al Andrucci's Card Under Object,
or Albert Goshman's coins and salt and pepper shakers.
While I wouldn't recommend anyone try to duplicate outright such a signature piece,
this is an inspiring piece of work, the study of which, for its own sake, will yield
countless insights. The changes Mr. Wonder has wrought go far beyond the obvious
ones of the final loads: the routine's unprecedented climax was discovered in the course
of the creator's search for a practical solution to the management problem of final loads
weighing down bulging pockets (the solution: the loads double as the carrying case, and
you just leave them out in the open); consider also that he never once goes to his
pockets, even at the completion of the routine, and thereby eliminates their use as any
possible explanation for the audience. This is a work of purity and genius, and nothing
less.
One of the most bountiful sections in either of these texts is the chapter on utility
devices. Mr. Wonder makes some marvelous contributions to established devices such
as the tails and belly servantes, geared toward improving their reliability and efficiency.
He also discusses the so-called pendulum principle, an idea exploited previously by the
regrettably all but unknown performer Jan, along with John Cornelius and others. And
he contributes a simply extraordinary addition to the Jack Miller holdout that should
revolutionize its use for serious practitioners. In brief, Mr. Wonder has created a device
he calls the "Frozen Lock," which maintains the pull up and out of view and reach when
not in use, and releases it to bring it down in reach for use, all at will and—and think
about this carefully—without any moving parts. The implications are boundless for the
dedicated and inventive professional, and if you don't think so, then you've been very
badly fooled indeed by Mr. Wonder's beautiful and deceptive stage act.
An effect that Mr. Wonder knows a great deal about is the Zombie, which he discusses in
Volume Two in both a technical contribution and an accompanying essay. The author
has a great deal to say about this timeless, oftabused and ill-used effect, and for good
reason; he has obviously invested a great deal of effort in the subject, as evidenced not
only by his thoughts here, but by his breathtakingly magical floating cage from his
aforementioned stage act; a work which is, I will add, one of the most elegantly plotted
and richly conceived silent acts I have ever seen. Mr. Wonder has contributed a number
of significant technical improvements to the Zombie principle, some of which he
describes in the text. Other elements will remain restricted to those who make the
modest but no doubt wise investment in his commercially-released version, the advance
advertisements for which began to run several months ago. In the interim you can read
some of Mr. Wonder's original ideas, and much of the thinking and theory behind them,
in Volume Two. A sample of the latter: "With many tricks people can cheat their
audiences into thinking they've studied their art, because their lack of artistry and skill is
protected by the secret! Not so with Zombie. Zombie ruthlessly filters out the bad
magicians and reveals them to all. Zombie proves that magic cannot be achieved without
thought... Zombie is to magic what magic is to the other arts: It is often held in very low
esteem, but it can be one of the finest."
While I simply cannot address the entirety of these books—the myriads of technical
entries, or the scope of the theoretical material—in Volume One they include: a multi-
phase coin routine which climaxes with the startling appearance of one of the coins in
the performer's eye, monocle-fashion; a manipulative stage routine with plot and
reason, wherein cards and their case cavort seemingly at their own will, transforming
one into the other, and back again, and transposing places, too; a billiard ball routine
which introduces an entirely new principle to the subject, namely an unusual change of
shape of the "balls;" and a series of wacky and intensely visual effects with playing cards
in which card boxes shrink, pips are shaken from one end of a deck to the other, and
poker-sized cards are visibly forced into a miniature case! In Volume Two, Mr. Wonder's
discussion of the Vanishing Birdcage and the locking take-up reel will, to the expert and
skillful user of apparatus—admittedly an increasingly rare breed of conjuror—be worth
far more than the entire purchase price of these books. And three complete versions of
the watch in Nest of Boxes serve to bring the mechanical material to a mindblowing
climax; here we find ourselves virtually plunged into the author's mind as we join him
on the voyage of a fantastic search for the ultimate effect, and its requisite ultimate
methodology.
"If, in a magic organization, brotherhood is elevated above the development
of quality magic, magic will suffer and the magic organization will have
become an anti-magic organization!"—Tommy Wonder, The Books of Wonder
Some of Mr. Wonder's cogent commentary about the anthropology and sociology of
magic may well raise some hackles, but is possible that the essay that may cause the
greatest controversy among serious practitioners will be the one addressing the Too
Perfect Theory. While there has been much discussion about this subject since Rick
Johnsson's influential 1971 essay in Hierophant [page 454 ], surprisingly little has
appeared in print. Although this is certainly an oversimplification, in my personal
experience the theory's most vocal critics are frequently non-performers, while fulltime
entertainers tend to support its basic premise, albeit with reservations in some cases;
admittedly there are plenty of exceptions on both sides of the argument to go around. In
contrast, Mr. Wonder comes down firmly against the theory—or, at least, claims to.
"Claims to," because I believe we can find examples elsewhere in his work where one
might be inclined to suspect him of adhering to the tenets of the theory. Despite the fact
that he makes some vehemently negative claims about the theory, declaring it defeatist
and emphatically insisting that it must invariably lead to inferior magic, his examples
appear isolated and unconvincing to me. In Mr. Wonder's superb version of the Kaps
Card in Ringbox, for example, he might easily repeat the mistakes of some others,
namely to give the box directly to the spectator at the start of the effect. Of course, if you
do this, some segment of the audience will, because the effect is too perfect for the
method to support, thereby successfully puzzle out the method. I can only surmise that
Mr. Wonder avoids such a flawed approach because he realizes this hazard, and instead,
following the path of the Too Perfect Theory, "weakens" the effect a tad by leaving the
box out on the table. Of course, in actuality he has not weakened the effect, he has
strengthened it; what he has done is softened the proof—and wisely.
Similarly, in a clever effect with miniature slates described in Volume Two, Mr. Wonder
explains that, "When I first developed this trick, I showed all four sides of the slates
blank at the start, then made the four messages appear. But experience proved that this
was not as deceptive as when I failed to show one side, deliberately creating suspicion
and a false solution that I later knocked over. Perhaps showing all sides blank before
producing the messages was just too much, leaving the audience thinking that the slates
must be mechanical, which unfortunately they are. However, if a false solution is set up
in the beginning, then is suddenly knocked over, it frustrates correct analysis and
produces the magic effect we desire." Perhaps showing all sides blank before producing
the messages was just too perfect, and by making the effect a bit less perfect, a more
effective illusion was achieved. I admire and respect Mr. Wonder's goals, and in fact
appreciate his reservations about the theory's risks, but I would not blame the theory for
those who apply it poorly.
But whether I agree or disagree with Mr. Wonder on this or any other subject is quite
beside the point; the point here as elsewhere is that we have been invited into dialogue,
between the author's ideas and our own, between our own and those of our peers, and
we have been encouraged into a discussion at a high level; frankly, at an adult level. In
fact, what repeatedly struck me as I read these books is that these are truly adult books,
among the most mature conjuring texts I have ever read. They are books for people
whose interests and outlook extend to a universe of ideas far beyond the culturally
claustrophobic borders of magic; who are informed in their perspective, cosmopolitan in
their world view and mature in their experience. These are, in sum, books for grown-
ups— and in magic that seems to me a rarity, even more so now that I have read these
new works. These are grand books, where every page seems to brim and seethe with a
riot of ideas and inspirations.
The Books of Wonder seem the perfect arrival for fin de siècle conjuring; there is a
lurking sense of change in the wind these days, of some coming to an end of sorts, of
impending catastrophe even, of important issues at stake that we must consider if we
are to rescue our art from on-line trivializers and video marketeers and television
exploiters. All of that is reflected in these books, and beyond their tough love messages
there is also something of birth, of spring, of newness and joy in these pages. These
books contain more than merely state-of-the-art technology, or even state-of-the-art
thinking; they comprise an apt report of the state of our art today. There are truths to be
found in the pages of this book; truths about art, about life, and— Wonder of Wonders—
about magic.
