Once upon a time, my child bride Maleficent, a lady loathe to magic and even more loathe to my spending money on magic, waved a monthly Visa bill in my face and berated me for having spent yet more money on Paul Harris. It took but a moment's scrutiny of the document to point out to her that the charge was not, as she surmised, a result of my having spent more money on card tricks devised by Chuck Martinez's unconventional friend, but was rather a result of her having purchased some necessary item from Paul Harris, Inc. -- a chain of clothing stores for women. It was a small victory against a lifetime of smashing defeats. But the incident pointed out that even then, at what was for Paul Harris a quite tender age, his name had risen above the murk of obscurity in which most magical authors wallowed to become, in our house at least, a household word. It is a testament to Paul's enduring affiliation with quality that, when the three sumptuous and patently pricey volumes that comprise The Art of Astonishment arrived at our house this Christmas, they barely raised a chastening glance. In case you've "been away" the past few months, you cannot have failed to notice the ads for this multi-volume compendium of Paul Harris magic. Physically, these are three oversized books, each exceeding 300 pages, with individual full-color dust covers. As with previous Paul Harris books, the layout is a joy to behold, with a light, airy font, and with numerous clear and cartoon-like drawings. Paul has also edited and revised the introductions to various effects and added illuminating afterthoughts called "phootnotes." As to substance, the books hold the best of Paul's material from the past 23 years along with a substantial amount of new work by Paul and his friends. Some 50 previously published items have been eliminated (". . . because either more elegant versions have evolved or because the original effect was genetically mediocre."), while some 73 new effects have been added. To quote the ads: "A total of 222 effects in all!" "Over 2000 illustrations!" Regarding distribution of effects, each volume opens with a section of new material. Material from the previously published books and manuscripts then follows in chronological order, spread across the three volumes. New effects that are complete updates of previously published effects are inserted adjacent to the original effect. For example, David Harkey's five-card version of "Whack Your Pack" ("Juke") immediately follows "Whack Your Pack" and is annotated "1996." Essays and new material by friends appear at the end of each volume. To make navigation easy, a full index is included at the back of each volume. Although many are thanked along the way, the obvious credits go to Mike Maxwell for the idea, for securing the rights to all of Paul's "twenty or so books, manuscripts and videos currently owned by everyone else," for talking Paul and some special friends into working on the project, and for putting up the loot; to Eric Mead for working on all the new stuff with Paul, for audience testing it, and for writing the original "what-fingers-go-where" drafts; to a lot of Paul's friends I'll try to mention below for contributing new material and for working with Paul on his earlier material; to Tony Dunn for beautifully and uniformly re-illustrating a lifetime of Paul Harris magic; and to Andre Hagen for the daunting task of editing all this. My only quibble is with whoever was responsible for the book's having "been proofed about a million times," as too many typos crept in for a set of books of this otherwise startling quality (including my pet peeve, the misspelling of possessive pronouns: ". . . completely disregarding it's own personal safety -- wedging itself like a stale slice of Camembert cheese between the two Aces"). Fortunately, most of you, up to your armpits in mutilated cards, will be having too much fun to be bothered by these occasional slips.

A publishing event of this magnitude is cause to reflect on all the things that make not only the books, but the life that has gone into them, special. On Astonishment -- The complete title of these books is The Art of Astonishment, Pieces of Strange to Unleash the Moment. What this refers to is a new paradigm in which Paul envelopes all the material in this book, which is basically that the child-like emotion of astonishment is a real thing that the spectator can experience, and that the magician can do certain things to both unleash that moment of astonishment and to let it linger. In Paul's words, "Tricks are tools. Astonishment is real. You're just helping them to unleash the moment." I found this a more satisfying approach to "real magic" than one sees propounded, say, by Eugene Burger and Robert Neale. Mr. Burger and Mr. Neale are theologians, and their notions of real magic are, on occasion, a bit deeper than mine, although it's quite interesting to compare Paul Harris's essays with those in Magic and Meaning. A closer echo of Paul Harris's views on magic and astonishment can be found in the recent book, Walt Disney Imagineering: "If you are truly into a Disney story, be it film or a three-dimensional world [the theme parks], you can feel the magic swell up within you. Gently, it captures your emotions, evokes a happy thought, brings back the child in you, and awakens a precious memory. There it suddenly appears, causing you to forget all your worldly cares, if even for a lovely moment or two. We may provide the stimulus, but certainly not the reaction. We make the magic real, but the real magic comes from inside you. Strange, but in all our creating, that which we do not create -- but rather, you do -- is our most treasured product." On Mutilating Cards -- One of my favorite magic books from my childhood, deep in the stacks of the Cairo Public Library, is regrettably a book I can no longer put my finger on, for I have forgotten its title. It was one of those gentle introduction-to-magic books, such as Robert Parrish wrote so well. What captured my fancy was its introduction, in which the young author visited the inner sanctum of a mysterious local magician, to be exposed to the arcane apparatus and flotsam and jetsam of the conjuror. Here it was pointed out that some magicians -- I would later learn that Dai Vernon fell into this category -- performed card magic with a simple, innocent deck, while others easily stooped to any degree of cutting and pasting cards in advance or during performances to achieve a magical effect. Paul Harris is clearly of this second camp. To prepare for this review, I sat at a single table and worked through, over a period of several days, every item in the books. At the finish I had to look up and laugh, for I faced a pile of mass destruction. Several decks of cards lay bent, ripped in half, quartered and three-quarter restored, stapled, hinged, folded into cubes, stuffed into a bottle, written upon, glued into a solid block, impaled on a coathanger, sculpted into thumb cuffs, and linked in ways I never thought possible. If you are serious about becoming a student of Paul Harris, be prepared to lay out lab fees for all those decks. The Cairo Public Library, Cairo, Illinois On Difficulty -- Perhaps one of the reasons that Paul Harris's material has proven so popular over the years is that it achieves true astonishment with relatively easy sleight of hand. A top palm, a double lift, and an Elmsley count are expected, but nowhere among these nearly 1000 pages will you be required to deal seconds or bottoms, to perform an invisible pass, or to execute a perfect faro shuffle. Possibly the most difficult sleight in the book is Paul's "Instant Replay" flourish, in which a card springs off a deck, does a half turn and lands in your hand, then suddenly shoots back onto the deck "as though attracted by a powerful magnet." This item is there for the guys who want to stay up all night practicing moves, but the remainder of the book, as the early Macintosh ads used to boast, is "magic for the rest of us." On Chuck and Mary -- If you were to ask any seasoned magician to name his favorite Paul Harris book, it would likely be one of the books produced by Chuck Martinez. Following his early success with a marketed deck vanish and a book or so with Jerry Mentzer (a nationally established magic dealer, then and now), Paul made the strange move of putting his career into the hands of a kid whose magic shop was a high school Junior Achievement project that took up part of the space of his father's TV tuner repair shop. Well, it wasn't quite that bad when Paul came along, but that's how I first encountered Chuck's shop. By the time Paul hooked up with Chuck, the shop had moved over to 30th street in San Diego and established itself as Magician's World, one of the finest shops in California. As often as not, the counter was staffed by Chuck's mom, Mary, an indulgent and sharp-witted lady that many magicians have come to know and love. Despite the increasing professionalism of the store, both Chuck and Paul were still extremely young, and the whole enterprise seemed to need a mother around. Following the breakthrough success of Super Magic (1977), Chuck and Paul went on to produce five hardback books together, including Las Vegas Close-up (1978), Close-up Entertainer (1979), Close-up Fantasies 1 and 2 (1980), and Close-up Fantasies Finale (1981), plus the famous manuscript, Cardboard Connection (1977). In addition to the highly innovative magic included by Paul and his friends, the books featured humorous commentary by Chuck and lovely cartoon art by Dwight Dunaway. Along with the better material from these books, I am happy to find commentary by Chuck and Mary, plus a smattering of Dwight Dunaway art, included in the new set of books. Chuck and Paul later collaborated, of course, on the movie Nice Girls Don't Explode, with Wallace Shawn and Barbara Harris. The magic shop was bought out, and eventually folded, but its young demonstrator, Brad Burt, went on to establish his own Brad Burt's Magic Shop in San Diego, now purveyor to the world. On Visual Trickery -- Having enjoyed Paul's material over the years, I never bothered to analyze it for common threads of methodology. In viewing the entire oeuvre in a sitting, I was struck by how many of the effects rely on fooling the eye as their primary method, beginning with the separately marketed "P.H. Vanishing Deck." Some of these optical illusion effects include the new items "Buck Naked," "Apple," "Lysdexia," and "Membrane." Old favorites include "Flash-fold," "The Ultimate Rip-off," "Absorption," "Looy's False Count," "Cardboard Connection," "Immaculate Connection," "Torn and Restored Deck," "Twilight" (its very plot is optical illusion), "Super Swindle," "Guts," "Seductive Switch," "Bushwacker," "Bleached Blackjack," and "The P.H. Breakthrough." On Creativity -- Although Paul Harris is frequently saddled with such praise as "the most innovative magic mind of our day" (Genii, December 1996), the high percentage of contributions from friends running through the Harris literature raises the question of how much is Paul Harris creator and how much is he catalyst? I don't know the answer, but I suspect the two are closely intertwined. It is certain that his finished products have been enhanced by his bouncing ideas off the best in the business. During the glory days of his Chuck Martinez period, Paul's publishing efforts were based in San Diego, but his creative efforts appear to have been based in Las Vegas. Paul seemed to head up a creative stock company that included Daniel Cros, Allan Ackerman, Looy Simonoff, Jimmy Grippo, Tayari Casel, Dana Betz, and others. (For years, until I started visiting Las Vegas regularly myself, I thought the unlikely name Looy Simonoff was a fabrication. Now I'm suspicious of Silvain Mirouf.) Daryl and Michael Ammar became part of the creative circle. These new books add such names as Patrick Martin, Gregory Wilson, David Harkey, Steve Blencoe, Patrick Snowden, Harry Eng, Chad Long, Jay Sankey, Guy Hollingworth, and, among all the others, especially Eric Mead. Paul has always been both generous and specific as to the contributions of others. Perhaps the most famous of these instances was a young Jay Sankey's (before he became the Jay Sankey) contribution to "Immaculate Connection." I had thought along similar lines myself, back when everyone was trying to come up with a method to link cards, having decided that something could be wrought from Bob Hess's "Droxene's Ring" (Pallbearers Review, January 1972). I got no farther. It was then that I began to feel that Paul's real genius was in taking an idea, whether the original key was his own (frequently the case) or an idea from a friend, and in pushing that idea to its limit. In the case of "Immaculate Connection," Paul pushed an idea (which had itself sprung from his considerably earlier "Cardboard Connection") sufficiently far that it became one of the few card tricks David Copperfield has featured on his televised specials. On Flirting -- Boys! Want to do card tricks and meet girls? There is a spot in Steve Martin's Picasso at the Lapin Agile, which features a young Einstein and Picasso, in which the waitress turns to them and says, "Oh, please. You two are spouting a lot of bullshit, and I say, the only reason you got into physics and art in the first place is to meet girls." I've always considered this a worthy justification for any endeavor, including card magic, and suspect Paul Harris might concur. He is, let's face it, a charming fellow -- Columbine has been in a tizzy all month in hopes he might call us -- and a significant number of his items seem designed for interplay with the opposite sex. If that is your goal, you should enjoy "Las Vegas Leaper," "Buck Naked," "Backlash," "The Fluffer Deck," "The Anything Deck," "Wax Lips," "Hi There Baby Cakes," and "Whack Your Pack." On The Trick That Isn't There -- Mike Maxwell and Paul had the cool idea to build a Miko-type effect into one of the books, and it appears in Volume 3 as "Moms Come And Go But A Rolex Is Forever." The effect involves a nice force that will take your victim to page 3 1/2. The idea is for you to win the spectator's Rolex via this ruse, and relies on a specially printed page. Unfortunately, if you follow the effect to the letter, you will lose your Toyota, as the special page isn't there. As I understand it, the printer refused to believe Mike Maxwell's repeated instructions and failed to print the page as directed. A bit of work with some Letraset transfers should correct the problem. On the Gimmicks That Aren't There -- Despite the fact that these books are chock full of the best of Paul's books and separately marketed manuscripts, it wasn't feasible to include any of the separately marketed hardware. The recently popular "Cardian Angel" deck isn't thrown in for free, nor is my favorite Paul Harris gimmick, "Nightshades" (although a make-it-yourself version is in the books). This is of course a wholly unreasonable complaint! On Why Buy These Books, I Have All the Old Ones? -- Reprints are an increasingly recurring phenomenon in the magic publishing world, with magazines being reprinted such as Pallbearers Review and Epilogue, Ibidem, Hugard's Magic Monthly, Richard's Almanac, Mahatma, Stanyon's Magic, and so on. The same is true of books, with the Vernon Inner Secrets series being the most recent example. As to Paul's books, aside from the obvious advantages of combining all the old documents into a single handy encyclopedia, you get a lot of new material, all new illustrations, and a lot of rethinking of the original material. If you are a close-up magician, this set of books is a must. On the other hand, those of you who own the old books are going to be happy that you do, as they should also go up in value. Not only do you have the performance material that Paul dropped, but you have all of the original artwork. All those illustrations and cartoons by Dwight Dunaway, and later by Sandy Kort, were the stuff of happiness, and they should continue to provide pleasure whenever you feel like browsing through your library.

As mentioned above, there are some 222 tricks in these books, and we certainly aren't going to comment on all of them. Most of you already have favorite Paul Harris tricks in your repertoires. Just to go on record, I'll mention a few of mine below. From the New Material: "Buck Naked" -- A beautiful, visual switch of bills. The effect is that a spectator's dollar bill changes to a five, and she gets to keep it. This is squeaky clean. "The Shape of Astonishment" -- Just a coin and a small square of aluminum foil. The carefully formed heads-up image of a quarter in the foil suddenly changes to tails up when the spectator turns the real quarter over. "Lysdexia" -- A word in a line of text changes its position in the line. "The Anything Deck" -- You remove a few cards from your wallet and place them under your card case. You then ask the spectator to name a meaningful word. Let's say it's rose. You use this word to help find her selected card. And the cards under the case? You slowly spread them, and large letters inked on the backs of the cards spell out a single word: ROSE. From Super Magic: "Earth Shoes" -- This is the original rock-from-shoe effect. It's a hit both in close-up and on stage. From Las Vegas Close-up: (Note: This is my favorite of the early Paul Harris books, and I routinely perform material from it. Two of the items from the book, "The P.H. Invisible Palm" and "The Incredible Tap Dancing Aces" shifted from this section to the Magical Arts Journal section.) "Las Vegas Leaper" -- It was 1978, at the IBM convention in San Diego, where I first saw Paul perform this effect. He was demonstrating at a counter, and had just talked a beautiful spectator-assistant into tucking 10 cards into her bra. It was a defining moment, and my friends now refer to the trick, and request it, as "The Cards in the Bra." Paul was rather engrossed in the performance himself that day, and Chuck Martinez was standing behind him saying, "Sell some books, you ____." "Interlaced Vanish" -- Several aces placed between the four kings vanish and are later rediscovered. This clean vanish is the trick that launched the magazine Apocalypse. From the chapter "Connections": "Osmosis," by Silvain Mirouf -- This is the ultimate linking card effect. Just two cards and some incredible routining, and everything can be examined at the finish. From separately marketed effects: "Twilight," by Paul and Tayari Casel -- This is the beautiful coins in the mirror effect (that later prompted one of Tenyo's best effects). Lewis Carroll would have loved this one. From Close-up Entertainer: "A Subtle Poker Move" -- You deal five cards each to you and a spectator. When she looks up, you have her beat, with over 15 cards in your hand. If she's cute, I'd build this up as a strip poker routine. From Close-up Fantasies 1 & 2: "Stuck!," by Don Voltz -- This is a new item based on Martin Lewis's "Stamped Second," but which uses no magnet. From Close-up Fantasies Finale: "Torn and Restored Deck" -- Based on "Micro-Macro," this is a convincing effect in which a deck cut in half is restored to its complete self. Free topical patter: "Sorry if I look tired. I just got back from Hollywood. I didn't want to do it, but I was at a party and wound up doing card tricks for O.J. Simpson. I asked him to cut the deck, and Jeez! He had that knife out in a flash. Look at what he did . . ." From the Magical Arts Journal: (Note: In the Doc Eason issue of The Little Egypt Gazette, I mentioned Michael Ammar's incredible generosity in publishing the special Rocky Mountain Magic issue. He was equally generous in publishing "The Act," a full issue of the material Paul Harris was actually using in professional performances.) "Whack Your Pack" -- This is the terrific audience interaction effect formerly known as "Reflex." A spectator tries to slap her hand onto a thought-of card before the magician can. "The Incredible Tap Dancing Aces" -- Four aces vanish from the hands and appear in the deck. But you may have to be Paul Harris to use this patter. "P.H. Invisible Palm" -- This is Paul's ultra clean handling of the effect associated with Larry Jennings and others. Four aces migrate from the hands to the table, invisibly. I use this regularly. "Big Time Leaper" -- An updated version of "Las Vegas Leaper." In another article in the book, Paul comments on emotional hooks: "The basic effect of causing a selected card to reverse itself in the deck does not contain an effective emotional hook. Causing a selected card to reverse itself in a deck that's being sat on by a naked lady does." I'd stick with the versions of "Leaper" in which breasts come into play. Without them, it's just a math trick. "Galaxy," by Paul and Wyman Jones -- A dead easy and effective version of "Out of this World." From Close-up Kinda Guy: "The Perfectionist" -- I had overlooked this one the first time around. According to the text, even Paul had overlooked it and was fooled by someone doing it for him several years after the book came out. A lot of magic in which the red and black cards transpose, despite your efforts to either keep them apart or together. From Close-up Seductions: "Limo Service" -- Some audio deception helps four jacks vanish from your hands and appear inside a card case. "Seductive Switch" -- A bad blackjack hand (a 6 and a jack) is turned face down. You rub a folded card over the cards, and the 6 is replaced by an ace. The folded card turns out to be the original 6. Some excellent visual trickery at play here. From the chapters "Astonishing Friends" (etc.) : "The Incredible Mystery of the 10th Card," by Eric Mead -- Don't want to tip any details here, but this is the most commercial version I've seen of "Edward Victor's Eleven-Card Trick." "411," by Gregory Wilson -- Someone selects any object from a table. Any phone number is dialed, and the person at the other end describes the object. "License to Thrill," by Gregory Wilson -- This is Gregory's full-blown stand-up comedy club routine involving a switch of driver's licenses. "Tensegrity," by Patrick Snowden -- This is a bizarre take on Gaeton Bloom's balancing card. One card is balanced vertically while another is balanced, straight out at right angles to it, like a shelf magically suspended. The "shelf" is strong enough to support a pencil. "Eng's Bottles," by Harry Eng -- How to put a deck of cards into a bottle whose opening is way too small to allow the deck to pass. "The Shuffling Lesson," by Chad Long -- Chad is one of my favorite new creators. This is an easy shuffling/dealing effect in which you deal yourself four kings and the spectator deals herself four aces. "The Voodoo Card," by Guy Hollingworth. This is Guy's brilliant torn/restored card that he performed on The World's Greatest Magic III -- not! Just wishful thinking. But it is a cool effect in which, if you play it right, evil acts suggested by the spectators and inflicted on a card are suffered by its mate.

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