Start Reading!
Thanks for joining the Magicians’ Book Club – a special interest book club for magicians and students of the art of magic run by The Bangalore Ring. This page helps you get started with the book club, especially for those that joined us recently and want to catch up on what’s been happening.
✅ Join the Book Club
DONE! Since you are here and reading this, we assume that you have already joined the book club! If not, what are you waiting for?
You can also invite more of your magician friends to join us there, so that we can all benefit with the thoughts and inputs of more like-minded people.
✅ Choose the Book
DONE! The group had decided to start with C. Lang Neil’s “The Modern Conjurer and Drawing-Room Entertainer” as our first book for combined reading.
✔️ Get the Book
EASY! Normally you’d have to buy a book that you don’t already own, but you can get this book for FREE (and legally) from the Library of Congress as it is one of the books in the public domain:
Library of Congress: The Modern Conjurer and Drawing-room Entertainer
✔️ Read the Book
To help ensure everybody reads the book at their own pace, we announce the chapters or sections that have to be read together, in a particular time-period. You can, of course, choose to get started early and take a lead over your friends.
Currently, the group is reading and discussing Pages 1 to 32 of The Modern Conjurer and Drawing-room Entertainer.
✔️ Join the Discussions
Since WhatsApp does not allow showing past chats to new members, we have set up this page to help you catch up with the basic readings and conversations around the current book being read by the group.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Published in 1902 by C. Lang Neil ‘The Modern Conjurer and Drawing-Room Entertainer’ is a seminal book in the history of magic literature. It is widely considered among the best books ever written in the subject of magic and conjuring.
It is accredited to be the first conjuring book to contain photographs, and is all the more special because of the legendary magicians that collaborated with Lang Neil to provide the now iconic teaching photographs, including Jasper Maskelyne, Charles Bertram, Nelson Downs and Ellis Stanyon to name a few.
Among its 400-odd pages, it covers a wide array of magic tricks, effects, and theory of performance, giving us an opportunity to discuss many diverse topics and learn together.
Best of all, thanks to it being Conjuring Art’s “Summer Reading Book” last month + being available on the Library of Congress, it provides an easy and legal way for all our members to procure a copy of this book if they don’t already have it.
PRESCRIBED READING: PART 1
We shall start with Section One of the book — from the Title page till page 32 of the book. If you are looking at the PDF page numbering, this would be pages 1 to 36.
This section includes the Title pages, TOC, Preface, Introduction, and the Principles of Natural Magic, including the chapters on Manner and Gesture, The Conjurer’s Clothes, The Wand, and The Table.
Stop just before the ‘Sleights Used In Card Conjuring’ section unless you want to take a lead over the other readers. You are free to do that, provided you have finished reading through the prescribed section.
Feel free to start posting your thoughts, readings, highlights, insights, notes, etc., from the first 32 pages of this book to the WhatsApp group.
EARLY INPUTS FROM READERS
From Nakul Shenoy:
I did a little digging around to find out more about the author, Charles Lang Neil.
Neil was not a performer himself, but his wife was originally an assistant to Charles Bertram and evolved to be a respected magician and performed as “Conjuress” Mademoiselle Patrice. He mentions her in this book, but does not call special attention to the fact that she’s his wife.
Neil also wrote the book ‘Modern Card Manipulation’ among others.
From Balasubramanian Chandran:
Just read up to the first article, “THE PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL MAGIC”
“It is the quickness of the hand that deceives the eye.”
This line reminded me of an older article I wrote that’s quite relevant.
I’m sharing it here for your perusal, folks. Hope I’m not hijacking your reading experience of THE BOOK!
Read Article: Speed vs Stealth by Balu
From Prahlad Saldanha:
Speed may have been more important to previous generations of magicians because they relied much more on secret moves, such as the classic pass or the top change. Nowadays, a lot more magic uses simulated moves, such as shuffle controls or double lifts.
From Nakul Shenoy:
What’s referred in this early book as “drawing room conjuring” can be seen as easily relating to today’s “parlour shows” and more specifically to corporate entertainment and private party performances.Like Balu, I too am fascinated with the author highlighting what misdirection is read as and what it really is: “mere quickness of hand” (juggling order of sleight of hand) versus “the mind of the spectator which must be deceived” (conjuring).
The highlight on the importance of body actions, presentation, storytelling, audience management, etc., is so very evident in this early work and clearly set the path for so many later books — even those being written today — to focus on the real aspects that make mere tricks into real magic.
From Nakul Shenoy:
I can’t help but wonder if it was to Lang Neil’s advantage that he was not a magician and that he had the ability of looking at things outside-in.These couple of lines in the PREFACE appear to set the perfect tone for the learnings that can be expected from this book: why does the same effect become a mere puzzle in the hands of many while it can turn into a miracle in the hands of a few others?
Here’s the relevant para from the Preface:
“Two men may perform the same feat with equal dexterity and effect, so far as the deception of their audience is concerned ; each may have followed skilfully the lines which govern the perfect presentation of the particular trick, but one has added to it many subtle touches of his own, which stamp him with the hall-mark of supremacy, and set him head and shoulders above the other.”
From Nakul Shenoy:
It is super fascinating and interesting that as early as 1900, Charles Bertram’s Introduction draws attention to the fact that, “Much has been written from time to time upon the subject of legerdemain and modern conjuring, and it might seem that little remains to be said upon the subject…”Given that he already thought there were way too many books already written in 1900, can’t help but wonder what he’d say today! 😅
From Nakul Shenoy:
I find Neil’s insights into why younger minds (read children) are more difficult to deceive over older minds (read adults) very interesting. The words I’d use are different, but I agree wholeheartedly with his point of view when he says the “perception of repetition” helps ensure “display cause to the quick thinker, and effect springs of itself instantaneously before him”.This should be of special interest to my friend Clifford (there’s a private joke in that).
From Nakul Shenoy:
The importance attributed by Lang to adding / ensuring “naturalness” to one’s props, handling, and effects — even clothes, table, and magic wand — is absolutely timeless and I love the way it is highlighted in the “manner and gesture” section.The section on “Conjurer’s Clothes” is clearly from another era and written for a Victorian world, but there are many aspects there that provide ideas that can help us even today — especially if we are looking to design or modify what we wear for our shows.
This goes back to my earlier reference of “drawing room performances” relating quite closely to our current day private parties and corporate gigs.
I think these couple of lines (slightly modified by me) best sum up the learnings from this chapter:
“Ordinary clothes with a few extra pockets in convenient places are all that is necessary. (…) Fashions change so rapidly that it is impossible to lay down exact positions for a conjurer’s pockets. (…) With these few hints a conjurer’s ingenuity will require no further direction in the matter of pockets.”
From Prahlad Saldanha:
He puts a strong emphasis on naturalness, whether it’s naturalness in the context of sleight of hand, persona, or clothing. I expect that the tricks/sleights/apparatus explained later on in the book have been structured with this value in mind.
NOW IT’S YOUR TURN!
Okay! So you have caught up on what some of us had to share from our reading of (or reading between the lines of) the first section of 32 pages. We look forward to hearing your thoughts from your readings and learnings.
You can send in your thoughts directly to the WhatsApp group in whatever format suits you best: as text, voice notes, videos, or even written articles! The important thing is that you read the book and then share your learnings with the rest of us.
✔️ What’s Next?
Now that you are here, we start with the book club for real!
What are the aspects that stood out for you while reading C. Lang Neil’s ‘The Modern Conjurer and Drawing Room Entertainer’.
Go on! We are waiting eagerly to hear your thoughts on the group.
PS: When most of us have read this current section, we should be ready to move forward to the other parts of this fascinating book. And after that, to the next book!
