MAGIC WORDS

Borges' Library of Babel, containing all possible books.

The latest issue of Gibicière, the quarterly journal of the Conjuring Arts Research Center, has a wonderful piece on the use of magic in literature: “Borges and Magic: How to Hide A Murder with a Card Trick,” by Federico Ludueña. It’s all about a story by Jorge Luis Borges, appearing in his delightful book Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi. Don Isidro, depicted here, is a character Houdini would surely have loved: a full-time jailbird who nevertheless manages to operate with more freedom and clarity than most “free” citizens.

Borges, according to Gibicière, was a devotee of magic and even had a longterm love affair with the sister of the most famous Argentine lady magician, stage name Kamia. 

Kamia's memoirs, including a chapter on the psychology of spectators.

The beauty of the don Isidro story is not that it's ABOUT magic. It USES principles of magic – magician's choice and one-ahead – to construct a gem of a tale.

In our own writing career we’ve struggled to perfect this technique ourselves. It first came to our attention not from Borges but from locked-room mysteries and tales of the dervishes. Dervish tales are short, pithy vignettes that, like a fine piece of magic, seem to have an internal action on the brain beyond mere entertainment.  Here’s an example, attributed to the controversial author Idries Shah:

Once upon a time there was a monkey who was very fond of cherries. One day he saw a delicious-looking cherry, and came down from his tree to get it. But the fruit turned out to be in a clear glass bottle. 

After some experimentation, the monkey found that he could get hold of the cherry by putting his hand into the bottle by way of the neck. As soon as he had done so, he closed his hand over the cherry; but then he found that he could not withdraw his fist holding the cherry, because it was larger than the internal dimension of the neck.

Now all this was deliberate, because the cherry in the bottle was a trap laid by a monkey-hunter who knew how monkeys think.

The hunter, hearing the monkey's whimperings, came along and the monkey tried to run away. Because his hand was stuck in the bottle, he could not move fast enough to escape. 

But he still had hold of the cherry. The hunter picked him up. A moment later he tapped the monkey sharply on the elbow, making him suddenly relax his hold on the fruit. 

The monkey was free, but he was captured. The hunter had used the cherry and the bottle, but he still had them - and now he had the monkey, too.

Timing and misdirection. It works in magic and in literature. To enjoy the magician Borges at work, read The Twelve Figures of the World.