The author, Ren X, who may or may not be related to Malcom X, is apparently an academic who has possibly worked (in some capacity) at a couple of universities. Unfortunately, partly due to the author’s pen name, it’s virtually impossible to learn more detailed background info.
The book’s writing style is a mix of personal essay, couched in ponderous academic passivity, with a fair amount of repetition thrown in. As you get to the end of the book, there are several grammatical errors, which suggests to me that even the editor’s attention was waning.
The book opens with an unsual copyright page that is filled with passive-voice disclaimers that undermine the intended scholarly tone of the work. Here’s one of them: “This is a work of creative nonfiction. Some parts have been fictionalized in varying degrees, for various purposes.”
Most of the book is dedicated to defining what art is, so that by page 80 (!), the author can make a succinct argument that magic is an art. Another major topic in the book is an attempt to convince readers that truth is meaningless and subjective. In service to this point, this is one of the very few magic books that includes references to Aristotle, Nietzsche, and Goethe, along with our philosophers Burger, and Neale.
After carefully building an argument that deception is necessary for any type of art (and taking apart something that Larry Hass apparently said to the contrary), the author ends up addressing morality in absolute terms. This departure from the relativism expressed earlier in the book surprised me, but was explained when the book descends into a tired admonition that magicians should never profess supernatural influences. (In which the author ignorantly refers to Uri Geller in the past tense!)
Essentially, the author argues that deception can only be justified if it serves to communicate an important, and moral, message. Furthermore, it cannot cause any “unnecessary suffering.” (Whatever that qualification means!)
The book does include an extensive and diverse bibliography that many will enjoy, but unfortunately the citation style, as in the Hass example mentioned earlier, is lacking detail. You’ll have to be persistent to follow up with the author’s references.
It is certainly a very unusual magic book (I believe the author would argue that it’s not a magic book, but he is a magician, and it’s being sold by magic dealers, although you can find it on Amazon too.) And it’s refreshing to read a book that isn’t simply a technical manual. Overall, I found the book thought-provoking, including the parts with which I disagreed or scoffed at. And, as Eugene Burger once wrote, “What if we were to read books to see what they say, rather than for what we personally can get?” (Genii, November 1995, page 51 — see how easy a useful citation is‽)
Finally, to end this on a positive note, I must give the author a virtual “high five” for using a hooked X in their name. A nice touch, indeed.
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