Dr. Rebecca Josephy: Essays on Intersecting Modes of Mystery
In this episode, Dr. Rebecca Josephy discusses her book "Magic, Magicians, and Detective Fiction." As editor of a unique collection of essays, she explains the surprising extent of overlap between performance magic and mystery writing, from magician-detectives to magical criminals. Dr. Josephy reveals how author Maurice Leblanc drew from the French magic scene to create the character of Arsène Lupin and explores how magic appears in detective fiction across different cultures and time periods.
Transcript
Coming up in this episode of The Magic Book Podcast.
Rebecca Josephy [:The thing that surprised me, I think, the most was the extent and the breadth of the overlap between magic and detective fiction. But I didn't realize how extensive the link was, how many practicing magicians were also mystery writers, how many magic references, performance magic in particular, were in detective fiction.
Adrian Tennant [:You're listening to The Magic Book Podcast, conversations about classic and contemporary books that teach, illuminate, and celebrate the art of magic. I'm your host, Adrian Tennant, a lifetime student of magic and mentalism, occasional performer, and longtime book collector. Thanks for joining me. Today, my guest is doctor Rebecca Josephy, an associate professor of French at Oakland University and editor of the book "Magic, Magicians, and Detective Fiction: Essays on Intersecting Modes of Mystery." As the editor of this groundbreaking collection, Dr. Josephy brings together essays examining how magic and magicians have influenced detective fiction since its inception. She also contributes an essay herself exploring the ways author Maurice Leblanc borrowed from the French magic scene of the Belle Epoque to create the character of Arsène Lupin. Published in January by McFarland Press, "Magic, Magicians, and Detective Fiction" provides new insights into the deep connections between performance magic and mystery writing across multiple languages, cultures, and traditions. Rebecca, welcome to The Magic Book Podcast.
Rebecca Josephy [:Thank you. Happy to be here.
Adrian Tennant [:You specialize in French language and literature with a particular focus on religion. So what led you to explore the relationship between magic and detective fiction?
Rebecca Josephy [:So this is going to actually probably be a very long answer because a lot of things have led me here. So as someone who works on detective fiction, I often go to different crime fiction conferences. And I'd happened to go to a series of conferences back in 2019 where there were quite a few speakers giving talks on magic and detective fiction. So first there was the Popular Culture Association, the PCA, and there I saw a talk by Zi-Ling Yan, who is a contributor to the book and who focused on detective magicians and the paranormal and really highlighted the presence of stage magic in the pulps - so, American pulp magazines. Then there was another speaker who talked about supernatural sleuths. Then just a few months later, I went to another conference in Italy, the ICA, International Crime Fiction Association. And in the conference program, I noticed yet another talk on magic and detective fiction, and this time in the nineteenth century.
Rebecca Josephy [:And it was so completely different genre of detective fiction, completely different period. And I remember thinking as I was watching these talks that this is really exciting and that the parallels between magic and detective fiction extended beyond a single type of detective fiction, beyond a single period of time, and that there were deep and substantial connections between both worlds. That really should be a book. Now I should mention that I was also especially interested in the topic of magic because there are a lot of parallels between religion and detective fiction and magic and detective fiction. And of course religion was something I'd been working on previously. So detective fiction has traditionally and historically been associated with rational scientific thought. So when most people think of detective fiction, they immediately think of Sherlock Holmes. And so they think of this sort of hyper-rational, almost inhuman-like character.
Rebecca Josephy [:And yet despite this ode to reason, detective fiction is, in my opinion, deeply theological. So it has a theological function to it. So the detective becomes a sort of god-like creature in his or her intellectual ability to solve the most complex mysteries and the reader really believes in the detective in his or her extraordinary abilities. And then of course when the mystery is solved, there's this moment of epiphany or this "Whoa!" So in both cases, the reader - or spectator in the case of the magic show - feels this overwhelming sense of, "Wow, how did he or she do it? How did the detective do it? How did the magician do it?" Or how, in some cases, did the detective-magician do it? Right? So there's a sense of awe and wonder. And then another thing that I should probably mention is that I just, right before going to these conferences, I had also come across magic in my own research because I just finished writing an article on Conan Doyle and the Bible.
Rebecca Josephy [:And for this article, I stumbled on an interesting anecdote about Conan Doyle and the magician Houdini. And so in this anecdote, you have, of course, Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was very good friends with Houdini. And as you know, it's kind of an odd friendship. They were different ages, different nationalities, different religions. And when the two men were in the same place, Conan Doyle would often attend Houdini's magic shows. And during one of these magic shows, Houdini had set up an act where writing would appear on the wall after a member of the audience would write down whatever they wanted to write on a piece of paper. And of course somehow Houdini knew what this was. I do not know how.
Rebecca Josephy [:And so this job fell to Conan Doyle who had decided to write the words "mene, tekel, upharsin." So these are very obscure Aramaic words from the Book of Daniel. And it's from a chapter known as the "Writing on the wall episode" in the Book of Daniel. It's where the expression "the writing is on the wall" comes from. So Conan Doyle rather brilliantly had realized that Houdini's magic act involved writing on the wall and immediately thought of the episode in the Book of Daniel and had wanted to recreate it. So here's the catch though. Houdini, of course, performed the trick really well as intended, and Conan Doyle thought it was so spectacular, so incredible that it was in fact divine in nature. So at that time, Conan Doyle had become a believer in spiritualism, sort of this fad religion at the time where people believed in being able to speak with the dead, ghosts, that type of thing.
Rebecca Josephy [:And I've always found Conan Doyle's naïveté or his gullibility really surprising, especially considering he's the creator of Sherlock Holmes. I've also found that relationship between Conan Doyle and Houdini interesting. So not only was I discovering through these conferences that I had attended, magic and magicians in different forms in the mystery and detective fiction genre over different periods of time, but I was also seeing it in my own research. So I knew there was something interesting there, and I really wanted to delve further into it and explore it in a book.
Adrian Tennant [:Rebecca, as the editor of "Magic, Magicians, and Detective Fiction" what did your role entail?
Rebecca Josephy [:So my first job was pitching the idea to publishers. So this turned out to be the easiest part of my job. I created a two page introduction of what I wanted to explore, explaining why the book was unique, how the topic was filling a current void. And actually, I say pitching it to publishers, but it was really only one publisher because I really knew that McFarland would be a great publisher for the book. They also are the publishers for the journal "Clues," which focuses on mystery and detective fiction. And so I submitted the proposal. I got a response back almost immediately within a week, I think, of, "Yes, absolutely!"
Rebecca Josephy [:"This is interesting." And then came the hard part. So I had to find contributors for the book. I already knew of some from these conferences I had attended, but I had to find more. And we were right in the middle of COVID. So that was hard because some people were kind of moving into the project, others would move out. Things were in flux during that time. Some people were more productive, others were less.
Rebecca Josephy [:So that was a tough period to get things settled in. But once I did have all the different essays, I then had to work on figuring out the layout for the book, editing the book. And here, I really didn't have much work to do because the contributors were excellent. And so I edited with a really light hand. I wanted their voice to show through and to shine through.
Adrian Tennant [:In your introduction to the book, you note that magic appears in detective fiction through various means from conjuring detectives to magician-criminals. Now, as you began exploring these connections, were there any aspects of your contributors research that surprised you?
Rebecca Josephy [:Yes. Actually, many things. But the thing that surprised me, I think, the most was the extent and the breadth of the overlap between magic and detective fiction. So I knew from listening to various talks during the conferences that I had attended that there were a lot of performing, stage magicians who were also mystery writers and that these writers would often bring their craft to the puzzle or the sort of main key thing in the detective story. So as someone who works on detective fiction, I of course knew of [Clayton] Rawson and The Great Merlini. I had seen many versions of performance magic in the Cozies, like TV series and movies, "Monk," "Murder, She Wrote," "Columbo," etcetera. But I didn't realize how extensive the link was, how many practicing magicians were also mystery writers, how many magic references, performance magic in particular, were in detective fiction. So I was surprised by the sheer number of magic related detection, particularly during the Golden Age.
Rebecca Josephy [:So that's from around 1910 to 1940. And so for this reason, at the end of the book, we included an appendix. So one of the contributors, Zi-Ling Yan, and another contributor, Neil Tobin, ended up contributing to this appendix. And right before going on this podcast, I was re-reading the book and I went back to the appendix, took out a calculator to see exactly how many stories and novels there were. And I got to over 500 stories and novels of magic-related detection just during that period and just in English. So American and British detective fiction.
Adrian Tennant [:It's amazing. It really is. "Magic, Magicians, and Detective Fiction" has three sections. The first opens with Zi-Ling Yan's typological approach to magic and detective fiction. Rebecca, how did this essay help set up the theoretical framework for this section?
Rebecca Josephy [:So I think this was a really important essay for that reason, for creating a framework. So in detective fiction studies, there's a relatively famous chapter on the genre written by Tzvetan Todorov, a French-Bulgarian theorist, who wrote a chapter called, so "The typology of detective fiction." And as a literary theorist, Todorov was big on classification systems. And detective fiction, in particular, lends itself to different categories. It is a genre that has a lot of variation from the whodunit to the grittier hardboiled genre to suspense novels and a lot of subcategories within those categories. There are various forms of crime fiction each with its own specificity. So much like Todorov's well-known work, I think Zi-Ling Yan's essay does a really good job of subdividing different forms of magic and detective fiction during the Golden Age. So for example, in the 1910’s, a slew of detective stories published with occult detectives.
Rebecca Josephy [:So these are detectives that investigate paranormal activity. In other words, magic is very much accepted as a given in these fictional worlds. Then in the thirties and forties, you have a series of stage performers-turned-detectives who make up a surprisingly large subcategory of detective fiction. And finally, a third category of detectives who themselves have paranormal abilities and make use of these powers during investigations. So Zi-Ling Yan uses a diagram created by the magician Robert Neale that outlines different forms of magic, magic simply in life, all the way up to, meta magic or what Neale calls "self-reflexive magic." So I guess where you break the fourth wall. So I really like that Zi-Ling Yan used the magician Robert Neale's work as a theoretical framework, how it highlights how many different types of magic exist. In fact, I think one of Neale's studies is called "Many Magics."
Rebecca Josephy [:So it really shows the plurality of magic. And one thing I learned too while I was working on this project is just how extensive the research is from the magic community. So when I was working on my own essay, which was from an earlier period, I was coming across works on magic from the late nineteenth century, technical works dealing with illusion with these beautiful, detailed illustrations, really sort of where you could see the magician's hands, but also more theoretical works on topics like psychology, the psychology of illusion, hypnotism. So the research from the magic communities is really rich. And I think as we see with Robert Neale's work, it can have broader implications. Yeah. Something I've really learned to appreciate.
Adrian Tennant [:Well, Neil Tobin, who was our guest on the previous episode of The Magic Book Podcast, contributed two essays about magician-authors and magician-detectives. What insights did you hope readers would gain from his performer's viewpoint?
Rebecca Josephy [:Neil is just great. And I was thrilled when he joined the project, and his contributions really added something special to the book, I think. So I think as readers, and maybe I'll just talk for myself on this, I have a tendency to venerate or elevate writers and artists to not always think of them as real people with their own problems, their own issues, their own neuroses. I mean, you don't think of a writer taking out the garbage, for example. Right? And so what struck me the most about Neil Tobin's essays is how human the writers and magicians felt. He brought the writers to life for me. So he really did a deep dive into various magician periodicals. He highlighted numerous conversations between different magicians.
Rebecca Josephy [:He really brought the magician societies to life for me. He wrote about different magician-writers and how they had very real publishing concerns, not to mention concerns about how magic would be perceived. He also focused on the mechanics of the magic show and was able to demonstrate the connections between the creation of magic, so it's sort of backend, and the creation of mystery fiction in a really profound way and really easy to understand way. He did it in a way that's very easy for the reader to follow. So his essays brought the community of magic to life for me and made me appreciate the work involved in the craft even more than I already had. It was like getting a glimpse behind the curtain and allowed me to see this true sense of the personality of each performer and writer. So to me, his perspective was invaluable, and I think the readers are going to really enjoy his essays.
Adrian Tennant [:Absolutely. If you're enjoying this episode of The Magic Book Podcast, please consider leaving a rating on Spotify or a review on Apple Podcasts. You can also follow The Magic Book Podcast page on Facebook. Thanks. Rebecca, the second section of "Magic, Magicians, and Detective Fiction" explores the topic in a historical and social context. What prompted you to organize the essays in this way?
Rebecca Josephy [:So interestingly, the book didn't actually start out in this order. I originally laid the book out in chronological order starting with the nineteenth century and moving towards the present day. So originally the book started with a discussion of the rise of and popularity of stage magic alongside the rise of mystery and detective fiction. And so I think this is really a very, I guess, an obvious order, the chronological order. However, when I sent the book out for peer review, one of the peer reviewers had suggested switching the order of the book. And when I first got the suggestion, I thought, "Well, that's really interesting." But I wasn't sure. So usually when I'm not sure about something, I mull it over for a few days and I figure I'll have clarity in a couple of days. That didn't happen here.
Rebecca Josephy [:I still had no idea. And so I ended up just biting the bullet and changing the order of the book exactly as the peer reviewer had suggested. And when I saw it in black and white is when I realized, "Oh, this is neat. This allows the reader to understand the importance of magic in the genre on a functional, theoretical, and narrative level, before going into the history of it. So to see connections beyond chronology. For example, to see the link between impossible mysteries and stage magic. So in detective fiction, of course, as you know, there is a subset of mysteries involving impossible crimes. For example, so murder happens in a locked room with no way to get in or out.
Rebecca Josephy [:The first Edgar Allan Poe, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," is exactly this type of impossible mystery. And these sort of impossible scenarios are very reminiscent of what occurs in stage magic where you might have, for example, a blade passing through a body. So something that seems impossible. So in both detective fiction and magic, the reader and audience are presented with these scenarios. You also get a sense of the importance of deception in both art forms. So in classic detective fiction all the elements to solve the crime or the mystery are present and yet the reader does not see the solution. The sort of hidden in plain sight adage. So similarly with the magic show all the elements are there but the spectator is unable to see it.
Rebecca Josephy [:So in detective fiction, the writer guides the gaze of the reader away from the truth with red herrings and other narrative techniques, similar to the magician's use of distraction and psychology to direct the audience away from the truth. I think the earlier essays also highlight the mechanisms and theory behind magic and mystery. They also really show the real number of performing magicians who were themselves crime fiction writers. So the new order gives a more of a bird's eye view, like big picture understanding of the connections between both art forms and allows readers to get the full appreciation for magic-related detection, it’s scope, before going into the shared history of magic and mystery and the specific socio-historical conditions that give rise to magic in the genre.
Adrian Tennant [:Now your own essay appears in this section and explores how author Maurice Leblanc drew from the French magic scene of his day to create the character of Arsène Lupin. Can you tell us a bit about the author and what drew you to focus on this topic?
Rebecca Josephy [:So I love Arsène Lupin. He's a character I find infinitely appealing. Maurice Leblanc began writing mystery and detective fiction in the early nineteen-hundreds and was essentially commissioned to create a French rival to Sherlock Holmes. And so some of his early stories have the character of Arsène Lupin - this great thief going up against his British rival, Herlock Sholmes, a sort of scrambled version of Sherlock Holmes. Yeah. It's so good. So I had been working on and publishing on Maurice Leblanc and the Arsène Lupin series for many years.
Rebecca Josephy [:I'd also taught Maurice Leblanc to my students, and it's a series I came back to over and over and over again. And so when I had gone to these conferences, the PCA conference, the International Crime Fiction Association conference, and had learned more about magic in the detective fiction genre more generally, I immediately thought of Arsène Lupin. Because when I really drilled down on what it is in the Arsène Lupin character that I love so much - what allowed me to read it, you know, dozens of times without losing interest - I think when you really drill down, it's because he is a magician. He's a character who is deeply surprising. He can be a rich prince one day, the next day a pauper. He's old one moment in the text, young in another. So if there's one static thing about Arsène Lupin, it's that Arsène Lupin is not static.
Rebecca Josephy [:He's infinitely changeable, infinitely malleable. You never know what he has up his sleeve and he always, like any good magician, he always has something up his sleeve! Nor do you know where Lupin is. Often he's hiding in plain sight and right when you think you have him he just - “Poof!” - vanishes in sort of a puff of smoke.
Adrian Tennant [:Mhmm. Well as you know, the character of Lupin can seem to appear and disappear, steal treasures, and impersonate others with apparent ease. How do these magical abilities contribute to his appeal as a character, do you think?
Rebecca Josephy [:Yeah, I think this is really all of those things you just mentioned are exactly what makes him appealing. I think that the gentleman thief and gentleman, I think, is the operative word - and Arsène Lupin is called the gentleman thief is what people find appealing. And it probably goes back to the character of Robin Hood, that there's this individual willing to transgress boundaries for a greater good, to steal from the rich, to give to the poor. So as long as the character has a moral core but is still doing all these fun things, I think he's very appealing. I think people like bad characters but who are not that bad and where it becomes a cat-and-mouse game. So for those who've watched "Catch Me If You Can" or the TV series "White Collar" - and, of course, there are numerous other examples of this nature - you know how enthralling that type of character is. It's someone who seems to be able to get away with anything.
Rebecca Josephy [:A character who is incredibly suave, confident, can walk into any space and command attention. And to me, this feels like a magician who directs the gaze of the audience while they are doing something else right under their noses. It's exhilarating. Just to give you an example of how far it goes in the Lupin series, in one of the novels, Lupin impersonates the head of the Sûreté nationale. So the Sûreté nationale is the equivalent of Scotland Yard in the French world. And so he impersonates the head of the Sûreté nationale, and he is the police officer tasked with finding none other than himself, i.e., Arsène Lupin. So it's jaw-droppingly brazen, and I think that's the appeal. It's the skill and the audacity to pull off the task that, you know, that this sort of element that's just so incredible.
Adrian Tennant [:So in some ways, he is the anti-hero.
Rebecca Josephy [:Yes. Yes. Although at times, he does morph into a detective himself. So he really goes between both categories.
Adrian Tennant [:Are there any Arsène Lupin stories available in English?
Rebecca Josephy [:Oh, yes. The whole series has been translated. Yeah. And by many different translators. And you can actually … I mean, Wikisource has it available. So I think all of his stories are out of copyright at this point. So there are a lot of copies that you can find.
Adrian Tennant [:In researching the essay, you discovered references to actual magicians that you hadn't noticed in previous readings. Rebecca, could you tell us about some of those connections?
Rebecca Josephy [:Yes. So the Arsène Lupin character exhibits many of the qualities of performing magicians just like we just saw, but the connection goes beyond broad level comparisons. So, in the very first story of the Arsène Lupin "Gentleman-Cambrioleur" - "Gentleman Thief" series, there's a long description of Lupin where the narrator explains the gentleman thief had apprenticed under the magician Dicksonn. Okay. Then in another story in 1911, the reader learns that Lupin also worked with the hypnotist and illusionist, Pickman. So when I first read the series, I must have assumed that these were fictional made up names of magicians. I wasn't really aware of that world at the time. But of course, a quick search revealed that Professor Dicksonn is not only real, but a very prominent magician during the Belle Epoque. Dicksonn is a stage name for Paul Alfred de Saint Genois.
Rebecca Josephy [:He took over the Robert-Houdin theater before Georges Méliès rose to the position. So in the book, I include this poster from the period, and a lot of those magician posters are just really beautiful and striking. And in this poster, you can see in the top right in prominent letters, it's written "Ex-Director du Théâtre Robert-Houdin de Paris," so "ex-director of the Robert-Houdin Theater in Paris." So really, you see how important that was at the time. And just as an aside I think it's important to note that almost every essay in the book that talks about stage magic references Robert-Houdin in some way. So, as you know, Houdin - like Houdini pays homage to Houdin with his name - Houdin was very, very instrumental in the magic scene of the nineteenth century, performance magic, making it more popular really. He created his "Soirée Fantastiques" which are called fantastical soirees. And from reading Houdin's autobiographies and writings and from examining posters and material of the time, you really get a sense of the excitement, the novelty and the modernity of magic shows of the period. And so yeah.
Rebecca Josephy [:So there were references to Dickonn, the ex-director of the Robert-Houdin Theater, and references to Pickman. And so we really see concrete references showing that Lupin was not just magic-like, but trained as a professional magician. And I think it's also interesting to note that this is really in the beginning of the series. So in the end, you don't get these references. The Arsène Lupin series spans decades. So as the glamour and the fun of the Belle Epoque winds down, the character of Lupin and the series itself shifts quite dramatically. Lupin still sort of acting, he’s still impersonating, he still maneuvers out of sticky situations, but the literature takes a sort of darker turn with the beginning of the First World War. And there are several Lupin books published during this period and the books start to become very propaganda-like, actually.
Rebecca Josephy [:The villains are almost always German. They're called "super Boches" and the Lupin series loses some of the lightness and fun of the earlier stories. So while it's really fun to study this shift in the series, as a reader, I really prefer the cheekiness and the fun, the brazenness of the earlier Lupin series where he's much more like a magician.
Adrian Tennant [:Turning now to another essay, this one from Beatrice Ashton-Lelliott. Her essay examines how Victorian magician autobiographies employed detective fiction tropes. How does her essay complement yours in exploring the relationship between conjuring and criminality?
Rebecca Josephy [:Mhmm. So I think there are a lot of parallels between Ashton-Lelliott's essay and my own. So Dr. Ashton-Lelliott focuses, as you just mentioned, autobiographies and of two magicians in particular, Robert-Houdin and the magician known as Signor Blitz. And from these autobiographies, it becomes clear that magic's reputation in the early nineteenth century was especially bad. Magicians were associated with the underworld, marginalized, in some cases viewed as devils, not to mention that there were often negative cultural slurs lobbed at them. So in the case of Robert-Houdin, he made a concerted effort to refute this negative image and to expose card sharpers, swindlers, etcetera. So in other words, he would position himself as sort of the authority figure, much like a detective, someone who had superior abilities.
Rebecca Josephy [:Signor Blitz, you get the same sort of idea, although he leans into deception and trickery a bit more, so more the criminal side. But really he is showcasing himself as extraordinary, you know, as having supernatural skill. And I think we also see this very clearly in the character of Arsène Lupin, who is both a gentleman thief, so on the side of criminality, but also someone who is described as inherently good and who often works on the side of justice. He morphs into a detective on occasion. So this duality is very much part of the character and clearly also a big part of the magician's dual identity at the time. And also just like the magician autobiographies, Lupin is also clearly the hero of the story. So even though he's a gentleman thief, the reader is still rooting for him. And his magical abilities, you know, his sleight of hand, his trickery, his impersonation, these are all presented as absolutely extraordinary.
Adrian Tennant [:Staying with the second section, Christopher Pittard's essay discusses magic in Grant Allen's "An African Millionaire." How does his analysis differ from the other essays in this section?
Rebecca Josephy [:I think he kind of reveals some of the aspects of magic that might not necessarily be so spectacular unlike what we see in the autobiographies and what we see in the Arsène Lupin character. So more specifically, Dr. Pittard explores finance and economics. And Clay, the magician in "An African Millionaire," is someone who could be called a financial fraudster. There's one particularly striking scene that Pittard highlights where, as part of his magic act, the magician has the audience member sign their name on a piece of paper as part of the trick. And of course later you realize that they have in fact signed their name to a blank check. In another instance, part of the magic trick is to artificially create diamonds really cheaply and in such a way that it devalues the diamond assets of another financier. So in that way, the magician can then buy up diamonds at a lower price. But the mechanisms of the machine aren't really understood and feel a bit hokey.
Rebecca Josephy [:So through these examples, you get a sense of the changing economic landscape of the time, but also the extent to which magic in Grant Allen's "An African Millionaire" can at times seem somewhat gimmicky. So at the end, he gives the example of the criminal who was brought to justice because of a camera that can see through disguises. So something that I think, you know, I would very much agree with Dr. Pittard here seems pretty gimmicky. So in other words, unlike the magician autobiographies, unlike the superhuman way that Arsène Lupin is depicted, Pittard shows that literary magic and real magic can also fall flat on occasion.
Adrian Tennant [:Just a reminder that you can be notified when new episodes of this podcast are published by subscribing to the email alerts. You'll find all the details on the podcast website at TheMagicBookPodcast.com. Rebecca, the third section of "Magic, Magicians, and Detective Fiction" examines magic in fiction from Japan, Russia, and Mexico. But the magic here is not performance magic. Can you give us an overview of how this section differs from the previous two?
Rebecca Josephy [:Yes. So the final section of the book looks at magic, I think, more broadly. So instead of focusing on the professional side of magic, it delves into magical thinking, magic realism, irrationality, the fantastical, fantasy, and the supernatural. So for me, it was an opportunity to explore literature and magic outside of the framework of the Western world and sometimes actually also in contrast to the Western world.
Adrian Tennant [:Well, in his essay, Robert Del Greco contrasts magic in Japanese detective stories from two leading authors writing decades apart. What drew you to include this perspective?
Rebecca Josephy [:So from the start of the project, it was important for me to find someone who worked on Japanese literature because even though I hadn't read much Japanese literature, what I had read felt very magical to me. I really felt there was probably something there. And actually Murakami's "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle," one of the works that Dr. Del Greco analyzes, that was one of the few Japanese works that I had read previously. And I had read it when it first came out in translation into English. So this is, I'm guessing, about twenty five or thirty years ago now. But I remember being really intrigued by the story. Mystery was everywhere and yet not in the traditional sense of mystery and detective fiction, probably more in line with [Jorge Luis] Borges's philosophy on modern literature. He sort of very famously said that most modern literature is like detective fiction with its taste for complexity and intertwined plots.
Rebecca Josephy [:So I think Dr. Del Greco does an excellent job of bringing this logic to the forefront. He also provides a detailed history of popular literature in Japan. So after reading his essay, I really enjoyed it. And I was interested in discovering the second author that he works on. So it was Edogawa Ranpo, who I hadn't read before reading his essay. So Edogawa Ranpo, by the way, is a play on Edgar Allan Poe. So it's the sort of Japanese pronunciation of Edgar Allan Poe.
Rebecca Josephy [:So I ended up, you know, going down a rabbit hole and reading quite a lot of Edogawa Ranpo's stories and becoming quite a fan of his. So he has this really uncanny way of getting under your skin with references to magic, but he intertwines it with horror. Technology plays a role. So it's really very interesting, and I think doctor Del Greco does a great job of exploring magic and modernity in these works and contrasting them really well.
Adrian Tennant [:George Cole's essay on the author Francisco Haghenbeck introduces readers to a supernatural investigator who evolves into a shaman detective. Now, I'm guessing some listeners may be familiar with this character thanks to the Netflix series "Diablero" which is based on Haghenbeck's books. This is the most contemporary example. So what does it tell us about the ways mystery and occult themes can coexist within detective fiction, Rebecca?
Rebecca Josephy [:That's really interesting. I think contemporary authors in particular have embraced fantasy and the occult. There are a number of contemporary crime fiction series that skirt the line between fantasy and detective fiction, and that really push the boundaries of what detective fiction is, the sort of definition of detective fiction. So I think with Dr. Cole's essay, the book comes full circle. So the first essay in the book, Zi-Ling Yan's, essay references a subset of occult mystery and detective fiction from the Golden Age. So again, those are detectives who investigate paranormal phenomena and in some cases have paranormal abilities themselves. And then in the final essay of the book, we return to the occult but with a unique feel specific to the Mexican tradition and specific to Haghenbeck.
Rebecca Josephy [:There are always ebbs and flows with art, shifts in public taste, and I think darker, occult magic is here to stay in contemporary crime fiction, at least for a while.
Adrian Tennant [:When we were preparing for this interview, you shared with me that while you were working on "Magic, Magicians, and Detective Fiction", you had never seen a live magic show. Now, it obviously didn't preclude you from editing the book, but it is a little surprising given the topic of the book. So have you seen a full magic show yet?
Rebecca Josephy [:I have not, and I can't believe I admitted that to you, but there it is! So I should mention that I haven't seen a live magic show, but I've seen, of course, other magic shows, televised magic shows. And I think the reason I haven't seen a live magic show, and I'm scared to, is because I appreciate the magician's skill so much that I have a hard time watching it. I get overly involved, overly amazed by everything, and I think that level of emotion scares me, if I'm being honest. Also with live shows, and I know this is completely irrational, but there's always the possibility that the show could continue after the show, which I know doesn't generally happen. But I've watched enough TV shows and movies to be deeply terrified by this possibility. So yes, I know very irrational, but that's what it is. So the magician Robert Neale, and this is one of the quotes cited in the book, views the confines of the magic show, and I just wrote it down here, "as a safe place where the imagination can be at play with frightening realities in our lives."
Rebecca Josephy [:So I can see how this idea of the safe place could be true for some people, and I can especially see how it might have been true for an audience member from the nineteenth century. So that's more of the period that I work on. And I often sort of visualize, you know, a nineteenth century audience going to the magic show, dressing up. And these are people who would have been subjected to intense changes in society, experiencing new inventions constantly - cameras, telegraphs, fast trains, advancements in medicine, physics, chemistry. And so I can see how, as Neale suggests, that the magic show would have been a safe place to explore these advancements, explore scientific changes where the perception of space and time might have changed, and how after the magic show is done, they would go home and be able to close the door, you know, go back to their comfortable life, and there, that's it, done with that. So in this way, actually, the magic show is really similar to detective fiction. It's a genre that is rooted in anxiety reduction. So when you think about it, really horrible things happen in crime fiction.
Rebecca Josephy [:There's theft. There's murder. And these difficult themes are explored in a way that is often light, where there's a resolution at the end, where good prevails over evil. We see that constantly in detective fiction. Order is restored, at least in the classic or cozy variety of detective fiction. So I can see how a magic show would fulfill the similar soothing function for some audience members. For me, though, there's still a bit of danger present. So unlike the book where you can close it, you get to the last page and you can sort of tuck murder and mayhem away with magic, there's always the possibility, no matter how slight, that the game is still afoot, so to speak.
Rebecca Josephy [:So again, I know it's irrational, but I always feel like the magician's skill is so extraordinary, so limitless that anything could technically be possible.
Adrian Tennant [:Wow. Okay, Rebecca. We need to connect you with somebody in the local magic society close to where you live.
Rebecca Josephy [:I think so.
Adrian Tennant [:We need to introduce you to live magic. I promise there's no murder or mayhem at the average live magic show. We really need to help you with this because you're missing out.
Rebecca Josephy [:I know. Yeah. And I know I am. So yes. Absolutely. I am going to overcome my fear of this.
Adrian Tennant [:Good. Okay. Well, I'm going to check-in with you again in a few months and see how we're doing on that. The book has been out only for a few weeks, but what kind of reactions have you received?
Rebecca Josephy [:So far there's been a lot of interest in the book, and the reaction has been very positive. So when the book was on pre-order on the publisher's website, I received several emails from people who were interested. So it felt like the topic was responding to something in the zeitgeist, certainly fulfilling a need within the academic community. I was also contacted by people from the magic community who wanted to know what would be in the book. At that point, the table of contents wasn't on the website yet. So there's been a fair bit of interest from both the academic community and the magic community, and the response has been quite positive thus far.
Adrian Tennant [:Excellent. So do you see yourself editing future collections of essays about magic and detective fiction?
Rebecca Josephy [:I think so. I think there are quite a few other areas that we could explore with magic and detective fiction. For example, definitely more contemporary authors. There's quite a lot of contemporary authors right now working in that field in magic and detective fiction. I think children's literature is also something that'd be really interesting to explore. One of the authors who was on your podcast previously, John Gaspard, one of his latest books is a prequel and is part of this children's literature. So I think that would be a really interesting essay to look into especially, because I think for a lot of people, their love of magic begins early.
Adrian Tennant [:Yep.
Rebecca Josephy [:So I think this would be really interesting. Also the Conan Doyle-Houdini connection, I had originally pitched that essay as part of the book, but the book ended up being too long. And so I could only contribute one essay to the book. So I could possibly work on that for part two. I'm interested as well in Jewish detective fiction. A lot of magicians are Jewish, for a lot of historic, cultural, social reasons. And so I think that would be a really interesting connection to explore.
Rebecca Josephy [:African detective fiction, more Spanish language detective fiction. Borges, for example, has a lot of magic in his mystery in detective fiction. And perhaps an essay on the Lord Darcy series. I was actually surprised when I was trying to find contributors. There was a proposal that I sent and I was surprised no one had sent in anything for that because I think that would certainly devote a whole essay to the Lord Darcy series, so yeah, I think there's quite a lot there.
Adrian Tennant [:So, Rebecca - what's next for you? What are you working on currently?
Rebecca Josephy [:So, I'm currently working on a book that explores the Book of Daniel in mystery and detective fiction. So to give you a bit of a background, historians in detective fiction are split between those who believe that mystery and detective fiction as a genre began sort of whole cloth in the nineteenth century and that there were no previous examples of, no matter how rare, of similar types of narrations - and those who believe that there are precursors to the modern detective novel. So I'm firmly in the latter camp. In particular, there are several chapters in the Book of Daniel that very closely mirror the narrative structure of modern mystery and detective fiction. And numerous contemporary authors, many that I mentioned during this podcast, so Conan Doyle, Maurice Leblanc, but other ones, Agatha Christie for example, have modeled their stories on some of these biblical texts. So not only do they reference the Book of Daniel very specifically but the entire structure of the story is modeled on certain chapters in the Book of Daniel. So that's the book I'm currently working on. Many new Book of Daniel mysteries in modern crime fiction.
Adrian Tennant [:If anyone listening is interested in reading more about the connection between performance magic and detective fiction - besides "Magic, Magicians, and Detective Fiction," of course - are there any other books that you would recommend?
Rebecca Josephy [:So I would recommend checking out Chris Pittard's book. So, he of course is one of the contributors that we talked about who contributed to the book and recently published his own monograph on performance magic and Victorian literature. So that's titled "Literary Illusions: Performance Magic and Victorian Literature." There's also a bibliography at the end of, "Magic, Magicians, and Detective Fiction". And that was a bibliography that we all worked on as a group together. So a very collaborative effort. So I think there's some interesting resources there for listeners.
Adrian Tennant [:Absolutely. Rebecca, where can listeners purchase "Magic, Magicians, and Detective Fiction"?
Rebecca Josephy [:So you can purchase it from the publisher's website so just McFarland if you just type in "McFarland" in Google. It's also available at most book retailers, as well as on Amazon.
Adrian Tennant [:And we'll include a link to that in the show notes for this episode. And if listeners would like to follow your work, what's the best way to do so?
Rebecca Josephy [:Probably through the university website. So I work at Oakland University in the department of modern languages and literatures. And if you just go to the website, there's a little bio of me. I've written out a list of my most recent publications on the website. So listeners, if they're interested, can follow-up on those publications or can contact me through the contact info that's on the website.
Adrian Tennant [:Great conversation. Rebecca, thank you so much for being my guest on The Magic Book Podcast.
Rebecca Josephy [:Thank you. This is wonderful.
Adrian Tennant [:You've been listening to The Magic Book Podcast. In this episode, Dr. Rebecca Josephy shared insights from her groundbreaking collection of essays examining the deep connections between magic and detective fiction. She explored how conjuring and crime solving have influenced each other from the Victorian era to the present day across multiple cultures and traditions. You'll find a transcript accompanying this episode on the website at themagicbookpodcast.com, plus a blog post with a summary, time stamps, and links to the books Rebecca mentioned. If you have a question or would like to suggest a topic for a future episode, please contact me, adrian@themagicbookpodcast.com. Thanks for listening to The Magic Book Podcast. I've been your host, Adrian Tennant. Until next time.
Adrian Tennant [:Goodbye.
