The Klutz Book of Magic

Ronald Hayden

It has thick, cardboard-like pages. It has a spiral binding. Combined, this means the pages lay flat on the spiral binding, actually letting you open the book flat while practicing the effects described within. Nothing surprising about this, except the fact that not one of the couple dozen other magic books on my shelf uses it, nor has any other magic book I've read (nor have the other books provided the gimmicks necessary to make the tricks work).

This simple, practical approach pervades the descriptions and choice of effects. The writing is clear and casual, the instructions make sense, and the illustrations are enjoyable and easy to follow without coming off as soulless medical diagrams.

So now that that's out of the way, on to the important question.

On first inspection you might pass over this book figuring it's "just for kids". The tricks are simple. Many have a puzzle-like quality. And, to top it off, it spends pages talking about how to use a thumb tip.

Well, maybe, but if so it's quite possible to make a career out of showing kid's tricks to adults.

I know because I've done it.

You can choose to take these tricks lightly, try them out, and move on to your next book. Or you can take them seriously and build a reputation on them. After nearly a decade of using this book, my casual repertoire has evolved to being three of its simple tricks that, executed properly, leave grown adults gaping and insisting I must be a master magician.

In case you're wondering, I'm not a master magician. At least not yet. Too many times I've shown these tricks poorly. But I'm working on it. That story can be found elsewhere on this website.

Now for the three tricks.

The Liko Peng Penetration (page 50). You're at a party, and the right circumstance for magic comes up. Perhaps someone starts discussing psychics, or gurus, or some crystal clap-trap. You segue into the magic by offering to demonstrate something you recently learned. To do so, you pull out a solid metal ring about 2 inches in diameter, and a piece of very thick thread. You tell the group that this doesn't always work. You really have to concentrate. You tell them that sometimes, if people watch really closely, they can actually see the thread melt through the metal. As everyone watches intently, you push the edge of the ring against the thread, struggle for a couple of seconds, then visibly pull the thread right through the metal of the ring. Those watching are momentarily amazed, then insist that there must be an opening in the ring. You let them inspect the ring and the string all they want, and they prove to themselves that you indeed did the impossible.

And you did. You could do this with any ring and any string, as long as they were an appropriate size to handle.

The Vanishing Scarf (page 80). Someone in the group insists that you do it again, so they can watch more closely. Instead, you offer to show them something else you learned. You pull out a silly-looking little handkerchief, wave it around in the air a bit, and stuff it into your hand. Your hand doesn't move, you don't pull any funny business, yet when your hand springs open a second later, the handkerchief has disappeared. As you stare at your empty hand, your head suddenly starts shaking back and forth a little. You clear your throat a bit and act confused, then put your finger and thumb up and pull the handkerchief from your mouth.

This one must be a century old (Penn & Teller call it "The National Magic Trick" and as a joke have taught hundreds of people at a time how to perform it), yet I swear to you I have performed this over a thousand times and few tricks ever have a bigger impact than this one, if it's performed quickly and with conviction.

I added the subtlety of pulling the handkerchief from the mouth. It's a nice twist that even fools magicians. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out how to manage it.

Weird Gravity Coins (page 31). For your finale (it's a party -- doing more than three tricks turns you from an entertaining personality into a boor in about two seconds flat), a coin trick. One of the more interesting coin tricks I've learned. It's just your hands and four coins (no ruinous complications like cards to hide the coins under). You start out hands face up with two coins in each hand, twice you turn your hands over, and when you're done all four coins reside in one hand. The party-goers are surrounding you, your hands have never touched, and there's just no possible way the coins could have moved. Lots of coin tricks meet the "pure magic" criteria, but this one stands alone for being completely clean, with no palming or sophisticated awkwardness to make it work.

That'll do it. Three tricks and you've cemented your image as an incredible manipulator of reality.

It's kind of pathetic that this is all it takes, but that's the way the human brain works.

An honorable mention from the book is Beam Down This Quarter, Scotty (page 26). An innocent quarter lies on top of a piece of rubber spread over the mouth of a glass. You ask the observer to touch the quarter and press down on it. They touch, they press, they press a little harder, and wham the quarter visibly and tactily penetrates the rubber and drops to the bottom of the glass. The more analytical and intelligent your audience, the more time they'll sink into the hopeless task of trying to figure out what happened. The only drawback is that you can't do this one impromptu.

The book was written by John Cassidy and Michael Stround, and illustrated by H.B. Lewis and Sara Boore. You can also purchase a video from Klutz with John Cassidy performing the tricks on an innocent bystander then stepping through how to do them. I didn't find the video very useful, except for seeing what a strong reaction he could get with this material and seeing how to do the set-up for Beam Down This Quarter, Scotty.