It has accured to me that an interesting way to develop this blog might be to find a book that is in someway inspired by the last one I read. I should thus end up with an interesting literary line of connection. It's an experiment I would love to do for internet browsing actually - to collect data from different people about the first website they look at in a day to the last and to see the various leaps and twists that led from one to the other.
But that is perhaps best reserved for another time and another blog. For now I am eagerly awaiting the delivery of 'The Lore of the Playground' by Steve Round.
Lore of The Playground on Amazon
This is inspired by one of the footnotes in Derren Brown's 'Confessions of a Conjurer' where he recollected using the term 'Vainlights' (or one of it's many variants - we used 'Feign nights' in our school) as a term of immunity or truce when playing games at school. This little aside got me thinking about the term and eventaully led to the discovery of this book which I shall review at the earliest possible opportunity.
In the meantime, feel free to comment with your own recollections of any 'truce' terms used in your schools, or any that you know in use today.
Monday, 10 January 2011
Friday, 7 January 2011
Review of Derren Brown 'Confessions of a Conjurer'
I read a lot, usually having a couple of books on the go and so, in a vague new year’s resolution to increase my creative output and inject a bit of discipline into my life I thought I would begin reviewing the books I read. Apart from anything it may serve as a nice reminder of my reading habits should I in fact manage to keep it up for any length of time.
A dim memory has just appeared of a small notebook my dad had in which he would write down the details of each book he read, so perhaps I am merely fulfilling some inbuilt genetic pre-disposition to cataloguing my reading matter. I must remember to ask him if he still keeps such a notebook. (I shall also resolve to read and review the book he lent me some months ago and which I have yet to open; an account of Karl Marx’s brief time in London when he lived in a house in Clerkenwell.)
The first book I finished reading this year is Derren Brown’s ‘Confessions of a Conjurer’. This came out a while ago and I resisted buying it just in case someone got it for me as a birthday and or Christmas present. Rather surprisingly, no-one did and I was pleased to see it was half-price in the Waterstones near work and so I started it on the grim rain-sodden journey home on the Central Line.
First Impressions were promising. The cover is rather beautifully designed, and as I’m a bit of a typography nerd I turned to the opening page where all the copyright info is to see if they had specified the typeface used. It’s an odd thing – some books do, some books don’t and it makes very little difference but I like to know whether the text I’m reading is Adobe Minion or Jenson or Bembo or any of the other thousands of typefaces out there. Of course true type nerds wouldn’t need to see this info and would be able to tell instantly from the particular way an uppercase Q looks exactly what the typeface is. I have not yet reached such heights of nerdiness so I like to see it written down. Confessions of a Conjurer pleased me immensely in that it not only declared itself to be set in Bembo, but also indicated by the numbers 12.75/17.5 the exact size it had been set at and the measurement of the space between the lines.
As to the book itself – it is a curious thing. To the best of my recollection it is the only auto-biography I have ever read so I cannot comment on how it compares to others but I would imagine that there are not too many that are so particularly and peculiarly crafted.
It has as it’s primary narrative structure not the standard chronological sequencing that I imagine is the more usual method of biography, but rather a single performance of a card-trick during Derren’s time as an after-table magician, performing in a Bristol restaurant a few years before becoming famous.
Derren’s recounting of this trick is interspersed with observations and recollections which leap around his life and philosophy and spin off into tangential footnotes on a bewildering array of subjects. The overall impression one gets is slightly giddying, and the fact that some of his footnotes span several pages necessitates physically having to turn back the pages to hunt for one’s place in the main text. This, understandably, has annoyed some reviewers on Amazon, but I find it rather interesting as it involves constant readjustments and forces one to actively search through one’s memory to return to the main flow. Whether intended by Derren or not, it creates a level of participation with the text that is subtle but inescapable.
Another thing mentioned by many reviewers on Amazon is that this book will not give much away to anyone looking for how Derren achieves his tricks but it would argue that in fact it gives away a great deal. Certainly it does not give away the ‘how-to’ step by step instructions of how to physically execute his effects (with the exception of the card-routine that forms the narrative backbone), but it does show time and again how his approach turns mere magical puzzles into magical moments of beauty.
By coincidence, on the night that I finished this book, Channel 4 aired a performance of Derren’s ‘Enigma’ stage show. One trick he performed was a version of the ‘Coin in a ball of wool trick’. I was delighted to see him perform this as it is one I remember well from a magic book I had as a child and which I can remember having performed once at one of the many small shows I forced my mum to sit through. Derren’s performance of the trick was truly beautiful and I have no shame in admitting that it brought a single tear to my eye.
I will refrain from describing the trick in full in case anyone wishes to see it and won’t want the ending spoiled but what struck me was how he elevated it into a peace of drama that transformed it from the mundane “That was suprising – how did he do that?” into a story that genuinely touched not only the participant but also those who were watching. It is an excellent example of what he talks about throughout this book.
I mentioned to my wife that it was a trick I had performed and she questioned whether it spoilt my enjoyment of it knowing some (but by no means all) of the methods Derren uses. On the contrary, it allowed me to see just how a simple method could be elevated into something transcendent and this is a theme that Derren returns to often in this book. He talks often about the potential of magic as a dramatic vehicle and how often this remains unrealised by many magicians who are so focused on the method or ‘trickery’ that they neglect the potential of the trick to produce a moment of true wonder and delight and a genuine desire to give some meaningful feeling to a person. To see how Derren uses some remarkably bold and daringly simple methods to do this shows that his focus is not on the technicalities or ‘mechanics’ of the trick but on the journey that he takes his audience through.
A fascinating example of this approach is revealed in his description of the restaurant card-trick that runs throughout the book. In this description he reveals numerous examples where he will make some gesture or movement which looks as if his performing some nefarious move. In fact he uses this as misdirection; the participants think they have spotted something significant but in fact he is misdirecting them from what is really happening. It is the way he adds layer upon layer like this far beyond the mere working of the trick that make him such an amazing performer to watch. These minor details go a long way to show how much he tries to put himself in the mind of the participant and to make their journey all the more powerful.
These insights into the nature of performance and how Derren feels about magic, and particularly the inescapable fact that it is all about deception and trickery and yet at the same time a chance for beauty and drama are for me the most interesting parts of the book and where I feel the most passion from the author. The recollections are charmingly told, but I personally found them of secondary interest to this more central discussion of the nature of magic and performance.
A dim memory has just appeared of a small notebook my dad had in which he would write down the details of each book he read, so perhaps I am merely fulfilling some inbuilt genetic pre-disposition to cataloguing my reading matter. I must remember to ask him if he still keeps such a notebook. (I shall also resolve to read and review the book he lent me some months ago and which I have yet to open; an account of Karl Marx’s brief time in London when he lived in a house in Clerkenwell.)
The first book I finished reading this year is Derren Brown’s ‘Confessions of a Conjurer’. This came out a while ago and I resisted buying it just in case someone got it for me as a birthday and or Christmas present. Rather surprisingly, no-one did and I was pleased to see it was half-price in the Waterstones near work and so I started it on the grim rain-sodden journey home on the Central Line.
First Impressions were promising. The cover is rather beautifully designed, and as I’m a bit of a typography nerd I turned to the opening page where all the copyright info is to see if they had specified the typeface used. It’s an odd thing – some books do, some books don’t and it makes very little difference but I like to know whether the text I’m reading is Adobe Minion or Jenson or Bembo or any of the other thousands of typefaces out there. Of course true type nerds wouldn’t need to see this info and would be able to tell instantly from the particular way an uppercase Q looks exactly what the typeface is. I have not yet reached such heights of nerdiness so I like to see it written down. Confessions of a Conjurer pleased me immensely in that it not only declared itself to be set in Bembo, but also indicated by the numbers 12.75/17.5 the exact size it had been set at and the measurement of the space between the lines.
As to the book itself – it is a curious thing. To the best of my recollection it is the only auto-biography I have ever read so I cannot comment on how it compares to others but I would imagine that there are not too many that are so particularly and peculiarly crafted.
It has as it’s primary narrative structure not the standard chronological sequencing that I imagine is the more usual method of biography, but rather a single performance of a card-trick during Derren’s time as an after-table magician, performing in a Bristol restaurant a few years before becoming famous.
Derren’s recounting of this trick is interspersed with observations and recollections which leap around his life and philosophy and spin off into tangential footnotes on a bewildering array of subjects. The overall impression one gets is slightly giddying, and the fact that some of his footnotes span several pages necessitates physically having to turn back the pages to hunt for one’s place in the main text. This, understandably, has annoyed some reviewers on Amazon, but I find it rather interesting as it involves constant readjustments and forces one to actively search through one’s memory to return to the main flow. Whether intended by Derren or not, it creates a level of participation with the text that is subtle but inescapable.
Another thing mentioned by many reviewers on Amazon is that this book will not give much away to anyone looking for how Derren achieves his tricks but it would argue that in fact it gives away a great deal. Certainly it does not give away the ‘how-to’ step by step instructions of how to physically execute his effects (with the exception of the card-routine that forms the narrative backbone), but it does show time and again how his approach turns mere magical puzzles into magical moments of beauty.
By coincidence, on the night that I finished this book, Channel 4 aired a performance of Derren’s ‘Enigma’ stage show. One trick he performed was a version of the ‘Coin in a ball of wool trick’. I was delighted to see him perform this as it is one I remember well from a magic book I had as a child and which I can remember having performed once at one of the many small shows I forced my mum to sit through. Derren’s performance of the trick was truly beautiful and I have no shame in admitting that it brought a single tear to my eye.
I will refrain from describing the trick in full in case anyone wishes to see it and won’t want the ending spoiled but what struck me was how he elevated it into a peace of drama that transformed it from the mundane “That was suprising – how did he do that?” into a story that genuinely touched not only the participant but also those who were watching. It is an excellent example of what he talks about throughout this book.
I mentioned to my wife that it was a trick I had performed and she questioned whether it spoilt my enjoyment of it knowing some (but by no means all) of the methods Derren uses. On the contrary, it allowed me to see just how a simple method could be elevated into something transcendent and this is a theme that Derren returns to often in this book. He talks often about the potential of magic as a dramatic vehicle and how often this remains unrealised by many magicians who are so focused on the method or ‘trickery’ that they neglect the potential of the trick to produce a moment of true wonder and delight and a genuine desire to give some meaningful feeling to a person. To see how Derren uses some remarkably bold and daringly simple methods to do this shows that his focus is not on the technicalities or ‘mechanics’ of the trick but on the journey that he takes his audience through.
A fascinating example of this approach is revealed in his description of the restaurant card-trick that runs throughout the book. In this description he reveals numerous examples where he will make some gesture or movement which looks as if his performing some nefarious move. In fact he uses this as misdirection; the participants think they have spotted something significant but in fact he is misdirecting them from what is really happening. It is the way he adds layer upon layer like this far beyond the mere working of the trick that make him such an amazing performer to watch. These minor details go a long way to show how much he tries to put himself in the mind of the participant and to make their journey all the more powerful.
These insights into the nature of performance and how Derren feels about magic, and particularly the inescapable fact that it is all about deception and trickery and yet at the same time a chance for beauty and drama are for me the most interesting parts of the book and where I feel the most passion from the author. The recollections are charmingly told, but I personally found them of secondary interest to this more central discussion of the nature of magic and performance.
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