I’m not sure where is the best place to begin this quotation, so this is as good as any to begin:

But lacking some larger substantive goal, the audience is left watching trick after trick after trick, each time receiving this most dreary of messages loud and clear: See, I fooled you. See, I fooled you. See, I fooled you again.

And this is why most magic sucks. I accept that as a given, an a priori assumption that colors all of my thinking about magic. It is a caveat that will hover above and lurk between the lines of these pages in the year to come.

And so I love what magic occasionally is more than what it most often is presented as.

And I hate every self-styled conjuror who misinforms the public about what magic can be. I hate every neurotic social misfit who ever bought a sponge Ding-Dong or mangled a Double Lift in an act of magic aversion therapy.

What should we do to remedy the situation? Should we spend our lives as mimics, mindlessly recycling old saws and standard tricks without a moment’s examination? Should we live awash in covetousness, as vicious thieves robbing the most precious creative fruits of those artists we envy? Should we devote ourselves to the containment of the paltry secrets of our art, as if the mechanics of a centuries-old card sleight were the moral equivalent of a state secret? Should we institutionalize mediocrity by way of our associations, avoiding honest evaluation and the pressure to achieve greatness, all in the name of good fellowship? Should we embroil ourselves in petty disputes, busily hacking at trees without a moment’s glance toward the forest? Should we use our special skills as a bludgeon with which to beat down our victims, in order to compensate for our own personal inadequacies?

If the present state of affairs is any clue, then the answer is yes.

But I say — no.

And I will continue to say no in the following pages.

After a too-long hiatus from writing for the magazine, Jamy Ian Swiss began his new Genii Magazine column, Shattering Illusions, in 1993 with an essay from which the above quotation is taken. That essay was the opening salvo to a terrific column which, as all great columns do, ended too soon.

Those sixteen essays, along with a few more, were reworked and then compiled into book form. “Shattering Illusions“ was published by Stephen Minch’s Hermetic Press.

I mention this for three primary reasons. First, I’d recently ordered a copy of the book directly from Jamy and it arrived this morning. The book had been on my “wish list” for quite a while and I only recently thought to order it. Maybe it’s on your list, too. If so, order a copy. If it isn’t on your list, order a copy anyway. (Just substitute it for the next trick you were going to buy and probably will never perform anyway; you’ll be far better off for it. Trust me.)

Second, quotation touches on a number of things I’ve already given time to here in this blog.

Finally, it’s inclusion represents a theme I’d planned for this blog from the beginning; to discuss or at least mention books that deal with the more important aspects of magic and mentalism — which is to say, books not about tricks, but books that deal with the why and not the how of magic. If there are two things most of us don’t need it would be another hole in our head and another book on how to do a magic trick.

Another book high on my current list is Richard Osterlind’s new e-book, “Essays,”which I will review in detail soon. In the mean time, you can immediately purchase and download a copy here now.