Fooling Houdini Read online

  Physics had always struck me as a kind of spiritual pursuit, a window into the deepest mysteries of nature. How did the universe begin and how will it end? What are the smallest irreducible building blocks of matter? What is the geometry of space and time? These are lofty questions, and it’s remarkable how close physicists have come to answering them.

  “The most incomprehensible thing about the world,” Einstein mused, “is that it is comprehensible.” But even Einstein probably never envisioned the likes of string theory, an ambitious attempt to describe everything from black holes to the atomic nucleus with one godlike equation. According to string theory, all matter is composed of tiny* vibrating strands of energy known as strings. These wispy filaments can sound different notes (not unlike guitar strings), and these notes correspond to the fundamental particles observed in nature (electrons, quarks, neutrinos, etc.). As if this weren’t enough, string theory allows for the possibility of parallel universes (another you, another me), miniature black holes, and an endless chain of Big Bangs stretching back through time in a Nietzschean cycle of eternal rebirth. Got magic?

  String theory also requires the existence of extra dimensions—the original three (length, width, and height), plus time, plus a bunch more we don’t see—and physicists are busy hunting for evidence of these other realms inside particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider, an Olympian machine 8 kilometers west of Geneva that accelerates protons to 99.9999991 percent the speed of light (roughly 186,281.998 miles per second) and smashes them together in a cosmic fireball 625,000 times hotter than the core of the sun.

  After the 1999 publication of the bestselling book The Elegant Universe, by Columbia’s own Brian Greene, it seemed like everyone knew enough about string theory to have a conversation about it in a bar. Not that anyone—save for a few eggheads—actually knew what they were talking about. Still, physics had caught the public eye. Physics professors (some of them people I’d studied with) were appearing on late night television, sitting down to talk with David Letterman, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert. Greene, for his part, had become something of a celebrity, a nerd hero, one of the most recognizable names in the sciences. Physics, it seemed, had hit a pop culture tipping point. More so than at any time since World War II, physicists were deemed cool.

  My friends in academia, who were busy clawing their way toward tenure, quickly dismissed my starry-eyed fascination with physics as so much restless woolgathering, a misguided search for meaning and a textbook case of post-college seven-year itch. Grad school was unlikely to quell my existential longings, they assured me. But at the very least, I thought, it might satisfy my curiosity, so I left the editor’s desk at Discover and enrolled for the fall term. After more than six years of holding down a job, I was a student again.

  Before going to grad school in physics, I thought of myself as a fairly smart person. But that got hammered out of me faster than it takes muons to decay into electrons and neutrinos—roughly 2.2 microseconds (in the muon’s frame of reference). I quickly found myself wondering how I had managed to survive into adulthood with so blunt an intellect. Was I, like, an idiot? For the first time in my life I felt stupid.

  Being surrounded by geniuses was humbling, to say the least, but it was exhilarating, too, and the contact high I got from feeling the occasional spark of insight rub off on me was well worth the grueling hours I spent in an airless room slogging through heaps of differential equations alien as hieroglyphs and tearing my hair out over problems that took days, or even weeks, to solve.

  Luaus and umbrella drinks were nowhere in sight, but the life of a grad student, even a physics grad student, afforded plenty of leisure time. Ostensibly, these hours were for boning up on tensor analysis and sifting through preprints, but I could only jam so much physics into my brain before it started to hurt. I needed an escape from all those integrals, a psychological release, a safety valve, a way to channel my anxiety and burn off steam. But with Rachel gone, my primary social outlet had vanished south of the border. Who would help me while away the hours? How would I waste time?

  Once upon a time, magic had been my go-to act of escapism. But the magic virus that infected me when I was five had been in remission ever since the Magic Olympics. It was still there, only dormant. Lately, however, I could feel it tingling at the base of my spine.

  I think it wanted to come out and play.

  EVENTUALLY I WORKED UP THE nerve to attend a gathering of the SAM. I hadn’t been to a SAM meeting in a long while. The last time had been for a funeral—or, more precisely, a Broken Wand Ceremony, a ritual for a deceased magician, in this case a longtime SAM affiliate and New York native who had died of a heart attack. I’d read about the ceremony in the Spellbinder, the SAM newsletter, and had decided to pay my respects.

  SAM parent assembly president Ken Schwabe, a middle-aged substitute teacher with a nasally New York voice, had presided over the ceremony. Standing at the front of the room, he’d held a wooden stick over his head with both hands and intoned these words: “When you were initiated into the Society of American Magicians, you were presented with a wand, this ancient emblem of mystery. It symbolized the magic power that was yours as you used your knowledge of magic secrets and your skill in their exemplification. Now its power is gone. It is a mere stick. Devoid of all meaning and authority. Useless without your hand to wield it!”

  He paused and looked out over the faces of his flock, then lowered the wand to chest level. His face clenched in a look of exertion as his short, pudgy frame struggled to break the scepter. The SAM bylaws include precise specifications for the Broken Wand Ceremony: “The wand should be made or obtained from inexpensive lightweight wood, painted black with white tips, and easily broken in the hands. If the dowel is too strong to break, it should be weakened (precut partway through the center). It is always better to test break a duplicate wand or two when rehearsing the ceremony than to have difficulty in breaking the wand at the actual ceremony. A good source for balsa dowels or other easily broken lightweight wood is from a hobby shop that sells supplies to model makers.”

  “Harrumph!”

  The wood finally yielded, snapping in a splinter of sound. Ken resumed the oration, his voice a knell: “Fellow compeers, may the broken wand symbolize our submission to the mandate of the Supreme Magician to whom all secrets are known, even of life and death. Into the surety of his love we commit the keeping of our brother!”

  That was the last time I’d seen my fellow magic brethren at an official SAM function. In a sense, the Broken Wand Ceremony had been an omen, because shortly thereafter I met my own untimely end at the Magic Olympics. It seemed fitting, therefore, that an initiation ceremony would be what brought me back to life.

  Walking in through the double doors of the large conference room where everyone had gathered, I found the ceremony already in progress. Ken Schwabe was again officiating, this time with two neophytes—a middle-aged man with a dark dye job and a cheerful-looking blonde woman of about the same age—standing next to him onstage.

  “These are the two new applicants that we tested tonight,” a man from the membership committee informed the assembly. “We passed both of them.”

  Ken nodded. “All those in favor of granting them membership, say aye!”

  The audience replied as one. “Aye!”

  “All those opposed, say nay!”

  Silence.

  “Members, rise!”

  We all stood up as the neophytes took the pledge. (Ken hadn’t brought his ritual book with him, so he had to wing it.) He administered the vow one line at a time, pausing after each phrase so the neophytes could respond.

  “I do solemnly swear.”

  “I do solemnly swear.”

  “To be a member of national SAM and Parent Assembly Number One.”

  “To be a member of national SAM and Parent Assembly Number One.”

  “To keep the secrets of magic of both organizations as secrets.”

  “To keep the secrets of magic of both organizations as secrets.”

  “And not to hurt any member willingly.”

  “And not to hurt any member willingly.”

  “And to use my magic to promote harmony and elevate the art.”

  “And to use my magic to promote harmony and elevate the art.”

  The audience chimed in unison: “We all bear witness to their oath!”

  Ken shook the neophytes’ hands, welcoming them into the fold, and everyone cheered. After a few announcements, a man in the third row moved to adjourn, and Ken closed the ceremony with the sacred catechism.

  “What is our Cabala?” he asked in a booming voice, and the assembly chorused in reply: “M—U—M!”

  Class dismissed.

  After the ceremony, I circled the room, chin down, trying to stay under the radar. I waited for the laughter and booing, but none came. Nobody seemed to care. I saw a skinny high-school kid who had been at the Magic Olympics in Stockholm. He smiled and waved. A few feet away by the exit, Ken Schwabe was greeting people. He too had seen me get whacked in Stockholm. I dreaded speaking to him. I tried to sneak away, but he caught up to me and put his hand on my shoulder. “How are you doing?” he asked, drawing me into his orbit. “Glad to have you back.”

  That’s it? No scolding? No insults? No lectures about how I’d brought shame to the Society? After speaking to a few more of my peers that night, I was shocked that none of them took the opportunity to knock me down a peg. If anything, the chutzpah I’d shown in braving the Magic Olympics against all better judgment had gained me some respect among my fellow conjurors, some of whom, I suspect, had always dreamed of competing but, unlike me, knew better. Though hardly a hero’s welcome, it was enough to make me think about doing magic again.

  Gradually, I eased my way back into the saddle. The following Saturday, I went to Tannen’s, which had lately relocated to the sixth floor of an old building on West Thirty-fourth Street, near Herald Square, down the hall from what had once been Martinka and Co., a shop Houdini had owned in his prime. Tannen’s is as close to a permanent New York institution as one finds in this day and age. It has catered to all the greats, from Dai Vernon to Doug Henning to David Blaine. (Blaine is an alumnus of Tannen’s Magic Camp, and he frequently asks the staff to consult on his television specials.) But its role as a store is secondary. Above all, Tannen’s is a meeting place, a hub of the underground magic community, where magicians gather and share their secrets.

  The store was unusually busy that day, its cramped space humming with eager dads and their wide-eyed kids, a number of pros stocking up on supplies—flash paper, mouth coils, close-up pads, gaff coins, thumb tips, cards, dove pans—and several amateurs hanging out and jamming. Leaning against a glass display case filled with shiny coins, an ancient man in a fobbed blue three-piece suit was palming cards off the top of a deck with a hustler’s grace, swearing all the while like a drunken sailor. I tried to show him a card trick, and he made a disparaging remark about my manhood.

  In one corner of the shop, a trio of gawky teenagers were manipulating cards with remarkable speed. The cards fanned and blossomed like flowers, sprang out of the deck as though possessed, changed colors in the blink of an eye. Watching them, I couldn’t help but wonder why everyone wasn’t doing this. They were like superheroes walking around in broad daylight, amazingly skilled. “Holy cow,” I thought to myself. “I wish I could do that.”

  I started going to SAM meetings again. I began to contemplate a comeback. In all likelihood I’d never again be allowed to compete at the Magic Olympics, but there were other competitions. The top U.S. tournament, hosted by the International Brotherhood of Magicians, attracted a yearly roster of world-class talent. With enough dedication and practice, could I compete at the IBM without fear of being hustled offstage? What would it take to reach that level? I tried to picture myself standing in front of the judges again, only this time, instead of being heckled red and doused with loser juice, I win the crowd and wow the experts with what Magic magazine (the publication of record in the magic world) calls an antic mash-up of jaw-dropping miracles and heart-stopping feats of magical derring-do. The judges, nodding in accord, hold up a row of tens. What’s that? A standing ovation? Pour moi?

  One thing was certain: it would take immense dedication. I’d have to knuckle down, sharpen my focus, and approach the study of magic with the same semimonastic discipline I was applying to my physics studies. I wondered how I would ever be able to pursue these two goals simultaneously without overextending myself. But whatever reservations I had at the time didn’t stop me from plunging recklessly ahead.

  Having spent several years futzing around on my own only to have my ass handed to me at the Magic Olympics, it occurred to me that if I was truly serious about magic, I might want to seek out formal training. What I needed was a place where I could learn the real secrets of wizardry, a place like Hogwarts, except not fictional and not British. I decided, in short, that it was time to go to a magic school, and I persuaded myself that this was a perfectly reasonable adult ambition.

  What I knew from my research prior to the Magic Olympics, and the minimal reporting I did at the games, was that magic schools do exist. They are a bit like the art world. As with the Barbizon, Antwerp, or Hudson River schools, a magic school typically comprises not only studios with teachers and students but also a distinct set of values and belief systems; they are schools of thought. Because magic is primarily an oral tradition organized around great masters, new ways of thinking about the craft tend to radiate outward much in the way that languages and cultures do. Descendants of one tradition in turn migrate away from their schools, exporting the school’s teachings in the process.

  The premier academic brand in magic is the Madrid School, spearheaded by Juan Tamariz, gold medalist at the 1973 Magic Olympics in Paris and by most accounts the greatest living close-up magician.* Having groomed two generations of Olympic champions, the Madrid brand looms large at international competitions. Young magicians from all over the world flock to Spain to train under Tamariz, often returning to their native lands to found satellite schools of their own. The influential “Flicking Fingers” clan in Germany and the Argentine academy of one-handed master René Lavand are two such spin-offs.

  I also knew that state-sponsored magic schools in Asia—particularly China and Korea—produce many powerhouse teams. Students at these schools train in formal apprenticeships designed to groom them for careers in show business and the circus. They are known for their technical virtuosity, especially in stage manipulation, and they frequently dominate the international circuit. (The winner of the gold in stage manipulation at the Olympics in Stockholm, whose name was Dai, trained at a school in Beijing funded by China’s Ministry of Culture.) But I knew nothing about magic schools in the United States. Did they even exist? What were the American counterparts to these overseas institutions?

  Googling “U.S. magic school” led me to the website of a place in Las Vegas called McBride’s Magic and Mystery School. I recognized the name at once. Jeff McBride is one of the world’s top professional magicians, a towering figure in the magic community. He is perhaps best known for his exotic outfits and his love of masks, which he deploys onstage in a heady mix of illusion, mime, dance, martial arts, and Japanese Kabuki theater—a sweaty son et lumière extravaganza I’d seen him perform on the main stage at the Magic Olympics. (If McBride were a rock band, he’d be Kiss.) His bestselling video series, The Art of Card Manipulation, is a favorite among beginners. I’d learned how to fan cards from volume 1.

  The next class was in January, in two months, and it cost $675, which would take a big bite out of my graduate stipend. But Vegas would be nice at that time of year—nicer than New York at least. Plus it was only a three-day class, and it was over a weekend, so it wouldn’t compromise my physics studies all that much. I filled out an online application and two days later received an e-mail. Not bad, I thought. Columbia had taken three months with their decision. “You are invited to join us,” it read. I had snagged the last available spot. A nice piece of luck, I thought. Perhaps even an omen.

  THERE MUST BE A SERUM, some sort of neurotoxin in the local water table, that numbs the critical faculties of people who visit Sin City but to which long-term residents have become immune. Otherwise, how could the city survive? (Let alone thrive: for years Vegas was the fastest-growing metropolis in America.) Clearly I had the frail resistance of an uninoculated newcomer. Within hours of landing, I’d eaten at Burger King, scarfed down a Cinnabon with extra frosting, lost fifty bucks at craps, and purchased an Ed Hardy T-shirt. The flood of negative introspection unleashed by this mindless bender helped shed light on all those jump-proof windows you see in the hotels: in Vegas, the suicide capital of America, the odds of a random person taking his or her life are twice those of any other city; on average, someone commits suicide here each day. Still, this didn’t change the fact that if I was serious about magic, I’d have to keep coming here, because aside from being the off-yourself capital of America, Vegas is also, as Jeff McBride is fond of pointing out, the World Capital of Magic. “There’s more magic per square foot here than anywhere in the world,” he told us on the first day of class, tossing back his long hennaed curls. “Where there’s light, there’s magic.”

  The Magic and Mystery School is based out of Jeff McBride’s two-story home—dubbed the McBride House of Mystery—in a rambling suburb east of the airport. Driving there on a clear, brisk morning in early January, past tract homes and parched lawns, I experienced the same queasy feeling I always do when I’m reminded that real people with jobs and families actually live in Las Vegas, a zone that feels about as nourishing to life as the hardpan alkali doomscapes of Death Valley two hundred klicks northwest, and where raising a child must be a violation of some UNICEF guideline.