On Deception E-Book

Harry Houdini

• Herausgeber: Hesperus Press Ltd.
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 125

Beschreibung

Throughout his life, the world's most famous escapologist strove to expose the methods and tricks of illusionists and sham spiritualists. Studying entertainers and criminals alike, Houdini investigates the tricks of the mind and sleights of hand that have deceived people throughout history. The magician's writings caused a public sensation; legend has it that his book The Right Way to Do Wrong was bought in bulk by burglars in an attempt to guard the tricks of their trade. This collection also includes Houdini's revelations about the methods behind some of his own most famous tricks, and articles he wrote to expose his imitators.

Leseprobe

On Deception

Harry Houdini

Foreword byDerren Brown

‘on’

Published by Hesperus Press Limited

First published 1906–20

This collection first published by Hesperus Press Limited, 2009 Reprinted 2010

This ebook edition first published in 2023

Foreword © Derren Brown, 2009

Designed and typeset by Fraser Muggeridge studio

Printed in Jordan by Jordan National Press

ISBN: 978-1-84391-613-0

E-book ISBN: 978-1-84391-994-0

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the express prior consent of the publisher.

Contents

Foreword

Houdini on Houdini

Thieves and Their Tricks

Light on the Subject of Jailbreaking

Miracle-Mongers and Their Methods

Biographical note

Foreword

The craft of the magician is to deceive; his art is to lead an audience into a place of wonder by transforming deception into drama. Houdini was the master of dramatic deception: at a time when economic shackles firmly restrained the imagination of his spectators, his symbolic escapes and defiant gestures must have touched upon something deeper than a mere pleasure in being fooled. The greatest magical conceits always seem to have resonated with their times: Selbit’s Sawing In Half of the early 1920s is difficult to separate from the emerging Suffragette movement, the Parisian Grand Guignol theatre of horror which was flourishing in London following the grim shock of the First World War, and the new role of the heroine-in-jeopardy being explored by film and theatre (fashions were changing, too, and it would be easier to bundle the slimmer dress of an Edwardian lady into an illusion box than one of those billowing, hooped parachutes favoured by any Victorian dame hoping to be divided). Dull magic is a collection of tricks: great magic should sting.

The name ‘Houdini’ is synonymous with grand deception, and even the name is not all it seems. Houdini’s real name was Erik Weisz: he took his assumed name from Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, a virtuoso clockmaker and the father of modern magic, a man with whom Harry had a tempestuous relationship. ‘Houdini’ means ‘Of Houdin’. Harry’s temperament sat at odds with the French conjuror’s flair for literary exaggeration (Robert-Houdin’s autobiography The King of the Conjurors is a sensational, semi-fictional romp and one of the greatest autobiographies ever written) and, ego oddly pricked, Houdini devoted much of his time to angrily exposing the ruses employed by his former hero.

Why should a magician wish to expose another’s deceptions? It is an odd tendency, still rife amongst magicians today. The false displays of power and ludicrous posturing associated with the magician – generally at heart a lonely type who resorted to tricks at a young age to compensate for a lack of social confidence – do not sit well with encouraging a spectator’s astonishment at a fellow (and potentially ‘rival’) magician. Rather than nurture the layman’s delight in a successful illusion, and therefore celebrate the wonder and impossibility of it all (which ultimately helps all magicians), the preference amongst most conjurors is to immediately let it be known that they themselves can produce the same feat; that it is far easier than it appears; that the magician in question is really not quite as talented as he might have appeared. In a profession where appearance and misjudgement are the principal currencies, this is rather a bizarre and shameful tendency, though perhaps understandable given the kind of flatulent ego needed to pose as a miracle worker in the first place. For those in doubt, read the pages that follow: this book is full of bitter self-aggrandising and petty point-scoring from probably the greatest magician who ever lived.

There is, at least, an unspoken contract between magician and audience, according to which deception is both allowed and expected. In other areas, artful deception is practised without such a contract, such as that of the fraudulent psychic or medium, whom Houdini attacks vociferously in other works. The loss of his own mother, to whom Harry felt enormously close (he says, perhaps a little self-consciously, in these pages that he never travelled to Australia because he could not bear to be so far from her), and the fraud and failure he discovered while attempting to reach her through mediumistic channels, again lent the sharp sting of bitterness to his crusade to publicly expose those mediums deceiving the public. The mediums of the time were far more noteworthy than the limply unpleasant cold-readers known to us through television and radio today. The rational, scientific agenda of the Enlightenment had left a gap for the arcane and spiritual to flourish, while still demanding ‘evidence’ from those offering new paths to knowledge. Hence, the popular mediums of the latter half of the nineteenth century both found their lacuna in society and were obliged to produce physical ‘proof’ of the spirit contact they promised. For many years, tables levitated in the lightless séance room, spirit hands and ectoplasm drifted through the darkness, until the use of infra-red photography exposed the tricks of the mediums and their ‘evidence’ gradually shifted to the purely verbal illusions and dodges of the modern practitioners. This lack of physical ‘proofs’ of the modern medium has made the frauds more difficult to expose, and has most likely brought about far more well-intentioned psychics who do not consciously deceive at all, but instead honestly come to believe in their own professed powers. The capacity for self-deception, rarely acknowledged or understood by those who offer us supernatural answers to our problems, is huge: as easy as it is to make a medium’s cold-reading statements ‘fit’ our own situation and come to believe that he must have some paranormal insight, it is hardly any more difficult for a would-be psychic with an average ego, upon hearing frequently positive feedback, to believe over time that he must be blessed with a special gift. It’s harder to think you’re doing it for real when you’re tossing tambourines in the dark or have ready-made ectoplasm stuffed into your mouth or bottom.

The psychic has no contract with the audience that permits conscious fraud; the stage or close-up conjuror generally has a clear contract that permits all deception to take place to produce the final effect; the mind-reader or escapologist exists between the two and decides for himself how honest he wishes to be with his audience. The mind-reader frequently offers a nervous disclaimer – ‘Everything you see is for entertainment only and I make no psychic claims’ – generally this is no more than a reluctant legal get-out clause, as generally seen flashed up on the screen at the end of the shows of television psychics, but its message may be lost in the quite contradictory implications of the act itself. Escapologists such as Houdini also employ deception, usually cartloads of it, but as the misleading of the public is less worrisome than with a medium, the issue is perhaps an artistic choice rather than a moral concern. But even with magicians, in whose case we expect to see (or, strictly speaking, not see) deception at work, we might feel that some contract of trust had been broken were we to find out that what was being presented as a card-sharp demonstration of virtuosic centre-deals and card-control was in fact an easy trick accomplished by far more mundane methods such as duplicate cards and so on. In a profession inextricable from deceit and whose end purpose is entertainment, there are no easy resolutions to these questions, and performers argue endlessly amongst themselves over what level of deception is permissible.

To all magicians (save perhaps those engrossed in the early career stages of mastering sleight-of-hand), the best deceptions are the biggest and boldest. Houdini betrays this delight in such stratagems when he talks with barely disguised admiration of the grand confidence tricks pulled off by some of the great characters described in these pages. The balls, the chutzpah, the gall, nerve and impudence of the successful lie that is huge enough to never be questioned is always a source of immense professional pleasure amongst magicians with any sense of the theatrical. And given that there is often a dose of envy bubbling within the moral outrage held by any one group for another, Houdini’s famous pursuit of fraudsters is probably inseparable from a guilty resentment of their ability to masquerade and dissemble without limit.

To most of the audience, there is a delight in being fooled, and a granted unspoken licence for the magician to play the part of the mysterious wonder-worker we know he cannot be. This licence runs out when the magician becomes too enamoured with the role we have, as audience, allowed him to play. Unable to express his joy at the truly fascinating employments of misdirection and gimmickry that have secured his feats, the would-be Svengali must posture vacuously in order to secure the interest of his public. Stunts may become more self-aggrandising, public claims more ludicrous and the pretensions of a manufactured personality may start to grate. Part of the success of the modern duo Penn & Teller is that they have avoided playing the whimsical god role, which, as Teller has eloquently pointed out, is far less interesting than the contrasting figure of the very human, struggling hero. Deception alone has a limited shelf-life in terms of maintaining public enjoyment: replacing ego with an understanding of character, drama and what an audience wants is necessary for lasting popularity. Penn & Teller, now fifty-four and sixty respectively, are every bit as cool and fresh as they were when they became well known in the 1980s. Their recent, vociferous, highly successful Bullshit! series, exposing modern frauds from mediums to penis-enlargement schemes, would have made Houdini proud.

There will always be liars, swindlers and charlatans. Hopefully there will also always be the modern Houdinis and the seekers of truth, snapping at their heels and holding them to account. The knowledge of the magician, the escapologist, the gambling expert and the mentalist might keep us armed against thieves, lock-pickers, poker cheats and psychic fraudsters for some time to come. And as much as sceptics and fraudsters will fight bitterly to the end, they will remain bonded by ego, and the delight of deftly engineered deceit.

– Derren Brown, 2009

Houdini on Houdini

How does he do it? That is the usual question I hear asked about my work in the theater. No, dear reader, it is not my purpose to tell you how I open locks, how I escape from a prison cell into which I have been locked, having previously been stripped naked and manacled with heavy irons. I do not intend to tell you in this book how I escape from the trunk or the tightly corded and nailed-up box in which I have been confined, or how I unlock any regulation handcuff that can be produced – not yet!

Some day I may tell all this, and then you will know. At present, I prefer that all who see me should draw their own conclusions. But exactly how I accomplish these things I shall still leave you to guess, gentle reader. I should not want you to go into the show business. It’s a hard life, so they say.

‘Have you ever been stuck at it?’ I think I hear you ask. Not yet. I have had some pretty close calls, but have always pulled through somehow. The nearest I ever came to giving in was during my engagement at Blackbourne, England. There I offered a prize to the man who could fasten me in such a way that I could not escape. One man accepted my challenge. He was an instructor in athletics, and was out for blood. He evidently looked upon my challenge as a personal affront to him. At any rate, he started in to shackle me.

He first handcuffed my hands in front, then locked elbow irons, the chain of which went behind my back. Then he hand-cuffed my legs, and after this bent me backward and chained my back and feet together. I had to kneel down. Every chain and handcuff was fitted to the limit. I started in, but at the end of an hour I suffered so under the strain that I asked to be let out. My back was aching, my circulation was stopped in my wrists, and my arms became paralyzed. My opponent’s only reply was, ‘This is a bet. Cry quits or keep on.’

The music hall where I was playing was packed, and while watching me became fairly wild. I kept on, but I was only about half conscious. Every joint in my body was aching, and I had but little use of my arms. I asked as a favor that he free my hands long enough for the circulation to start again, but he only laughed and exclaimed, ‘This is no love affair, this is a contest. Say you are defeated and I’ll release you.’

I gritted my teeth and went at it once more. For two hours and a half I exerted myself, fighting for my professional good name. In the meanwhile, the audience was cheering itself hoarse. Some cried ‘Give it up,’ and others, ‘Keep on, you’ll do it.’ I don’t believe any such scene was ever acted in a theater. The house was crazy with excitement, and I was covered with blood brought on by my exertion to release myself and chaffing irons. But I did it. I got free of every chain and handcuff. Then they had to carry me off the stage, and I suffered from the effects for months afterwards.

As for the prison cell, I have never been locked in one I could not open. I have had the honor of making my escape from securely locked cells in jails, prisons and police stations in almost every large city in the world, and under the most rigid conditions. The chiefs of police, the wardens, the jailers, the detectives, and citizens who have been present at these tests know that they are real and actual. Perhaps the most historic American feat that gained for me the most notoriety was my escape in January 1906, from Cell 2, Murderers’ Row, in the United States Jail at Washington, D.C.; from the very cell in which Guiteau, the assassin of President Garfield, was confined until he was led forth to be hanged. Since my return from abroad in October 1905, I have escaped, after being locked up in a nude state, from cells in New York City, Brooklyn, Detroit, Rochester, Buffalo, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Providence, and city tombs in Boston and Lowell. In all cases I submitted to a close search, being stark naked and heavily manacled into the cell, which was also thoroughly searched.

I am an American by birth, born in Appleton, Wisconsin, U.S.A., on 6th April 1873. To my lot have fallen more experiences, more strange adventures, more ups and downs, in my thirty-three years of life than to most men.