Staged magic, with no claim to true divine power, has a wide-ranging influence on modern culture, claims During (Foucault and Literature), professor of English and cultural studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia. "From the moment that they were widely tolerated and commercialized," he writes, "magic shows have helped provide the terms and content of modern culture's understanding and judgment of itself." To back up this sweeping assertion, During begins with a terse account of how magic from ancient times to modern was "transformed into jokes, or more precisely, amusements... old marvels or wonders normally survive as such only with a tinge of irony." During describes a substantial number of performers who worked "at the intersection of entertainment, science, and magic." Rather less convincingly, a chapter on "Magic and Literature" juxtaposes writers like Edgar Allan Poe and the French eccentric Raymond Roussel, but not in a way that suggests a real continuity between them. During's interest in magic, the book's subject, is more metaphorical than that of the literal practitioners of magic described herein, like the Frenchman Robert-Houdin. Well-researched, and clearly written in academic prose, this study nevertheless comes to grief by the sheer range of material it attempts to digest. 12 halftones. (Apr.)
Forecast:Despite the popular subject, the method and manner here make a crossover highly unlikely, but with so little work in the gray area between performance and literature of magic, the mere attempt at synthesis, along with the intriguing bibliographical references, should generate some attention on campus. Even readers in academia may find this study overreaching and inconclusive, however.
