Recently, at the public library, I found a book titled, “Magic Tricks for Grown-Ups.” The author is a British bloke named Jon Tremaine.

The book itself contains four main sections:

1) Magic in the Office
2) Magic in the Bar
3) Magic in the Restaurant
4) Magic with Cards

Overall, it has around 60 tricks explained in its pages, is hard bound and was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2006. Brand new, it sells for $14.95

The book has mostly impromptu tricks using objects readily at hand. There are a couple of effects that call for a prior set up but none of them are terribly hard or require very much experience on the magician’s part to perform. In fact, you could buy this book having never performed magic in your life and you’d have a reasonably solid repertoire with which to show and entertain family and friends.

Of course, I have to mention the fact that there is nothing that you would call cutting edge in the this particular book, but if you’ve been studying magic for under a year, you will find workable material in its pages. While this book doesn’t delve deeply into theory, Tremaine does give the reader enough tips on the presentation of these tricks to help the student along on the road to being an entertaining magician.

I bring this up because I’ve noticed what I consider to be a disturbing trend in the magic industry today - the one off trick with DVD for $30.00 to $50.00 dollars.

When I come across books like the Tremaine book, I wonder why anyone would pay such an exorbitant amount for a single trick. I’ve heard where some magicians support this trend and they have several arguments in favor of the single trick DVD. One of the better arguments is that the single trick DVD allows for an in depth discussion of the trick, showing the student every possible angle of presenting the trick to the spectators.

Nevertheless, I still come back to the fact that you are only getting one trick for that kind of money. I’m sorry, but it just doesn’t make any real sense to me. I just cannot understand how spending $30.00 for that one off trick could ever be considered a worth while use of money when you can get any of the Tarbell books for less money and get, quite literally, hundreds of tricks packed in its pages.

Of course, I understand that this comes down to priorities and opinions. Still, there is a logical flow from this discussion that leads to a completely separate topic, which has a lot to do with how we as magicians are perceived by the general public today. This perception of magicians by the public can actually be traced back to Fitzkee’s writings in the middle 1900s where he noted that magic and magicians were no longer mainstream entertainment.

In the years since Fitzkee noticed the relegation of magicians to second and third class entertainment, we have had a few magicians who broke out of that mold and attempted to bring us back up to date in a desire to put magic back on the map in the entertainment industry. Bill Bixby tried with his series, “The Magician.” Unfortunately, that one failed. Doug Henning did very well, going so far as to perform on Broadway (for a good, long run) and even pulled in a television deal giving him a yearly program on a major network.

More contemporarily, we had David Blaine and he paved the road for Criss Angel. Unfortunately, Blaine went off the deep end and Angel has become far too enamored with television style magic (actors for spectators, editing in place of misdirection, etc.).

On a side note, I’ve heard many magicians explain that because of the cold eye of the camera that a magician is required to have the material edited because you cannot misdirect the camera. Watch Paul Daniels or any masterful magician present magic on television without the use of edits and you’ll realize that that argument simply does not hold water.

To link the one off DVD to the relegation of magic into second and third class entertainment isn’t a matter of simple steps, but rather it is a complex descent into what we have become as a society over all. I believe that the trend of magicians today paying an exorbitant price for a single trick is a symptom of our society today, rather than the other way around. There are a plethora of symptoms that encompass this trend, one of them being “the visual learner.”

Over the course of my next few articles I intend to pick apart the issues which I have brought up in an attempt to try to understand where we are going in the magic industry and what it is incumbent upon us to do in order to gain back our standing within the entertainment industry. If you have any thoughts or consideration that you’d like me discuss that is directly related to this issue, please send me an e-mail at michaeljay1965@yahoo.com and I shall include any points that are pertinent in this extremely important topic.

Until later, thank you for reading and take care.

Mike