Neil Tobin: Magic, Magicians, and Detective Fiction
Neil Tobin discusses his approach to performing magic and mentalism with site-specific experiences, including the acclaimed "Supernatural Chicago." We also discuss Neil's recent academic research and essays on magicians who wrote detective fiction and learn how Walter B. Gibson and others connected magic and mystery writing communities, using detective stories to elevate the public's perception of magic. Neil also previews his upcoming annotated edition of Clayton Rawson's Great Merlini novels.
Transcript
Coming up in this episode of The Magic Book Podcast.
Neil Tobin [:The literary academic world is suddenly as interested in magic as we are. I mean, who knew? One of the first detectives in Western literature was Inspector Bucket in "Bleak House" by Charles Dickens, who was a performer of magic. Coincidence? What this book shows is that the influence of magic on the genre is now an object of serious study.
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 Neil Tobin, a theatrical performer, writer, and historian known for creating innovative magic shows that transcend traditional performance formats. Neil ran the acclaimed "Supernatural Chicago" show weekly for ten years at the historic Excalibur nightclub. His original theatrical productions include "Palace of the Occult," which explores the life of 1930s psychic entertainer, Erik Jan Hanussen, and "Near Death Experience," performed at Chicago's Rosehill Cemetery. As a writer, Neil has contributed to numerous magic publications and recently authored two essays that appear in "Magic, Magicians, and Detective Fiction: Essays on Intersecting Modes of Mystery," published by McFarland earlier this year. Neil has also created original magical effects, including "The Xpert," "Hands-Off Multiple E.S.P. System," and "Cut and Color."
Adrian Tennant [:Neil, welcome to The Magic Book Podcast.
Neil Tobin [:Thank you.
Adrian Tennant [:Well, let's start at the beginning. You initially studied law before discovering your path in advertising and magic. Can you tell us about that journey?
Neil Tobin [:Sure. Well, actually, I mean, my interest in magic goes way, way back. Probably, like 99.9% of the people who are listening to this podcast, I was a magician when I was a kid, and I performed at other kids' birthday parties. Many of the magicians who I've met as an adult never really stopped from there, but I did. During high school and college I was just immersed in theater and music, and there was no time for magic. The one academic I was any good at was English, so that became my major in college. And from there, I went to Los Angeles for law school; I was on scholarship. And unlike some of your prior guests, for me, law school didn't work out.
Neil Tobin [:It was actually a very sad story I'm not going to go into here, but after a year it was a washout. And looking back on what I'd enjoyed doing previous to that, when I was in college I enjoyed the creativity of creating print ads, press releases, flyers for the organizations and activities that I participated in. So I found a portfolio program for advertising creatives when I was in Los Angeles and went through it, loved it, and then moved back to Chicago and have been working for agencies in the advertising and marketing world ever since. Anyway, when I was in law school for that one horrible first year — which, I mean, people have written books about how bad that first year is — a little glimmer appeared in my head, just a memory from my childhood: of seeing photographs of Mark Wilson floating his wife in front of that Magic Castle. And I remember, "Oh, that was in Hollywood, right?" So I looked it up, and I called them up and asked if, you know, "Hey! I'm a visiting magician from out of town," which was kind of a lie or half of a lie because I hadn't touched magic in a while, but I was from out of town. And "Could I come?" And they said, "Sure!"
Neil Tobin [:"And could I bring some friends?" "Sure." So I grabbed a couple of friends from law school, and we went. We had an incredible time. Next day I was at Hollywood Magic buying books again. And the takeaway from that whole journey really is that when I did that, I had to reevaluate all the magic that I used to do; and saw that, you know, most of it did not fit who I was then. So, anybody who's listening, I'm here to tell you that if you're a performer, having the time to step away from magic and gain some objective distance can be incredibly helpful. It completely changed how I approach it.
Adrian Tennant [:Well, you returned to Chicago, which is where you still live. And I understand that Eugene Burger was one of your mentors. How did his guidance influence your approach to performance?
Neil Tobin [:Well, I mean, there isn't a magician in Chicago who wasn't influenced by Eugene Burger. I mean, he was very visible. He was always available to people in town. He lectured. He performed. And of course he wrote these wonderful books that people around the world were reading. Of the books that I immersed myself in when I was rediscovering magic, the one that really hit me as the type of repertoire that I wanted to explore was in his book, "Spirit Theatre." And, the first show that I ended up mounting as an adult, I was a member of the Society of American Magicians here in Chicago, and Halloween time was rolling around, and there was no money in the coffers, and I was tired of hearing the treasurer saying that there was no money in the coffers.
Neil Tobin [:And so I suggested, "You know, Houdini died at Halloween, we could do a Houdini seance, sell tickets, make some money." And they're like, "Great! You do it." So I became the Medium for the Houdini seance. I wrote the show, I performed it every Halloween for a dozen years, and I have Eugene to thank for sending me in that direction. Another book that he wrote that I thought was absolutely fantastic is "Mastering the Art of Magic," and I recommend that to performers all the time for not only his effects but for the audience management, audience connection portions.
Adrian Tennant [:Neil, you co-wrote and edited the book, "Unspeakable Acts: Three Lives and Countless Legends of Tom Palmer / Tony Andruzzi / Masklyn ye Mage" — another performer with a strong connection to Chicago. Of course, Tom Palmer was at various times an award-winning comedy magician and magic shop owner, a publisher, and probably best known now as a pioneer of Bizarre Magic. So what inspired the biography?
Neil Tobin [:Well, one of the great disappointments of my life is that I never got to meet Tony Andruzzi, which was his name when he was in Chicago. He was in town producing his Invocationals and writing "Invocation" at the exact same time that I was on my sabbatical from magic. But when I returned to magic, which was still, you know, pretty big, it was the Stone Age of the Internet, and the gathering point for an awful lot of magicians was The Magic Cafe. And Jim Magus was working on a biography, and he, of course, was very deep in Bizarre Magic himself. And he had mentioned that he was doing this, and I contacted him as a volunteer to help him out. I know that Terry Nosek had written a small portion and had died before he was able to complete it, and Jim was just trying to put everything together. And Andruzzi was such an important figure in Bizarre Magic, and I had become someone who was so interested in that topic and had been performing in that area myself, and I wrote for a living — and I mean no offense to anyone, but I've read a fair amount of magic biography that simply wasn't written very well, and I really wanted to make sure that we did right by Tony Andruzzi. So I volunteered. And we both discovered, Jim and I, that the enormity of the job had been somewhat underestimated, and I ended up co-authoring it, co-editing it, I was even laying out pages. And ultimately, it was very gratifying: it was extremely well reviewed in the trades. We even heard kind words from Max Maven, and he doesn't give those out lightly. Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up. It's really quite a book.
Neil Tobin [:It reads like fiction, but it's not.
Adrian Tennant [:It's the real thing — real stories. Your hit show "Supernatural Chicago," which ran for ten years, offered a unique blend of local history, paranormal stories, and, of course, magic. Neil, how did that come about?
Neil Tobin [:Well, I told you that I was running the Houdini seance for the S.A.M., and that had started out in the suburbs the first year we did it because that's where we were meeting and it got good press. But I realized that to grow, we really needed to move it somewhere where more people could see it. So I looked into Chicago locations, and since atmosphere is such a big part of theatrical seance — as learned from Eugene Burger — it needed to be a place that was suitably spooky. So, I cold called a location that just popped into my mind. It was a nightclub that had one of the most haunted reputations in Chicago: Excalibur Nightclub, previously The Limelight, previously ... I mean, long, long ago, it was built to be the Chicago Historical Society. It's an incredible building. And I told them, "Hey! You know, Halloween's falling on an off-night this year. We could do the seance there. You get some people in, and you could get some press like we got last year."
Neil Tobin [:And they decided to give it a spin, and it worked. They got press; and they were so pleased with it, they just said, "Okay, what can you do the rest of the year?" And I was prepared for that. I had known about their haunted history, and I thought about using that as a springboard to build a show that shared more documented stories of Chicago's paranormal past and using demonstrations of magic and mentalism to turn that into interactive theater. And they said, "Okay. Let's try it." And it ran for ten years.
Neil Tobin [:When we started it, there was no weekly location where the public could see theatrical magic in Chicago; so when it did become a success, it really, I mean, it opened the door for the theatrical magic scene Chicago has now, and that has just been incredible to see. I'm sorry. Can I go back to Eugene Burger?
Adrian Tennant [:Of course you can, yeah.
Neil Tobin [:Okay. Well, like I was saying, I wouldn't have built the show without his inspiration, his emphasis on storytelling, his audience connection, his approach to the Bizarre. So when the show opened, I had never met him; I only knew him through his books. And so I got his email off his website, that was an AOL email, and I invited him to be my guest at the show, and he came. And coming from a theater background, I thought: you do a show, you do your bows, you go behind the background until everyone leaves because I didn't realize until after — no, no, no.
Neil Tobin [:The audience wants to meet you after the show. That's important. So … but anyway, the first few shows, I was hanging out behind that backdrop, and Eugene peeks over the edge of it, hands over his card, and says, "Let's have lunch." He's so good.
Adrian Tennant [:With that sonorous voice...
Neil Tobin [:Oh, yeah. I mean, I can't really do him that well, but, I mean, so good. And so the following week, we had lunch, and he had written up pages of director's notes that he so generously shared with me. I mean, magicians paid him money to do that, and he just did that out of the goodness of his heart. And so I received them, I read them, I incorporated them. And when he came back a few months later, he saw the show and wrote a very kind review in Genii.
Neil Tobin [:And, you know, we continued to meet up for lunch over the years ever since.
Adrian Tennant [:For ten years, that's quite an achievement in itself. But weren't you the number one rated show on TripAdvisor for some of those ten years?
Neil Tobin [:Well, this is early Internet, so there were no other weekly shows that had a magical theme to it. But, yes, I mean, it wasn't like I was being ranked against other shows with magic. I was being ranked against all attractions in Chicago, and I was ahead of The Art Institute of Chicago at some point because so few people were really using the Internet the way I was at that point. So, yeah, it was in the top things to do in Chicago for quite some time until other people caught on, got wise on how to use the Internet.
Adrian Tennant [:Well, Neil, you've mentioned the importance of theatricality in your approach, and your immersive experience “Palace of the Occult” tells the story of Erik Jan Hanussen. For anyone unfamiliar with Hanussen, who was he and what drew you to him?
Neil Tobin [:Yeah. Great question. I found out while I was doing my previous show, "Supernatural Chicago" — I was about eight years into it, you know, I was looking around for other things to do because that show had been running for a while. And as an artist, I wanted to grow and stretch and try other things. And I read this biography by Mel Gordon of Erik Jan Hanussen, and was hit really hard by his story. He was the most famous psychic performer in Europe pre-World War II. And as far as what hit me hard about it: here was a guy, he was a successful mentalist, a huge hit during the Weimar Republic, and he was living by his wits to try to stay afloat during the rise of white nationalism, you know, Nazism, while passing as white himself, but secretly a Jew.
Neil Tobin [:And to say I identified with him is something of an understatement. The story felt so important to me that I teamed up with the Illinois Holocaust Museum to do a post-show audience talk back. That went great. On a purely personal level, as a magical performer, it gave me the opportunity to pay homage to his repertoire or to the repertoire that he could logically have done during that period of time. So I had the opportunity to do mind-reading, yes, and psychometry, and I even had a real skewer-through-the-cheek penetration, because he was doing fakir stunts as well. And to be able to tell a whole two-act narrative about someone and seamlessly incorporating magical and psychic entertainment was just an amazing opportunity.
Adrian Tennant [:What really comes through is how site-specific your shows often are, performed in historic buildings, and I believe once even a cemetery chapel. How does the venue influence your creative process?
Neil Tobin [:In theater today, there's a whole lot of buzz around the word "immersive," but site-specific theater extends that further. With immersive theater, you can place your audience in the middle of the action and extend the experience outward. For example, I was just in New York a few months ago and saw “Cabaret” on Broadway. The whole idea there is they take the Kit Kat Club, where much of the action traditionally happens, and they just expand it outward through the whole building. So you get there and there are multiple bars, and there's cabaret entertainment before the show and throughout the building, and that's immersive theater. But site-specific goes further because if you can be in a space with an authentic connection to the experience that you want to give your audience, then you're able to provide a dimension that you can’t get otherwise. So for “Supernatural Chicago” the subject was stories of the paranormal, and here we get to stage it in a building on the National Registry of Historic Places, this imposing piece of Victorian Romanesque architecture — it looks like a decommissioned cathedral — that was operating as a nightclub and it was known as a haunted location. In fact, while the show was going on, the various ghost-hunting TV shows were starting up; and every time they rolled through town, I was the talking head that they talked to about the place.
Neil Tobin [:So audiences understood that going in. And that absolutely informed their experience of the theatrical piece. When I wrote my show "Near Death Experience," I wanted to explore our relationship with mortality. And part of that is our relationship with cemeteries. In Victorian times, people went there on the weekends and had a very open relationship with their ancestors. And then you get to mid-century, in America at least, and all those headstones are flush with the ground so that from the highway it looks like a golf course. That's how little we want to talk about death. Staging that kind of theater piece in an architectural jewel of a chapel in the middle of a historic cemetery where an audience has to walk through it to enter and exit — I mean, you can spend a million dollars to try to turn a theater into something resembling that, but it still won't be as good. The audience knows the difference.
Neil Tobin [:I'm a huge fan of site-specific for that reason.
Adrian Tennant [: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 on our Facebook page. Thanks! Neil, your two essays published in "Magic, Magicians, and Detective Fiction" examine the intersection of magic and mystery writing. How did you become involved in this academic publication?
Neil Tobin [:I ask myself that! I did not set out to be a historical scholar. I have a degree in English, yes, but my writing has been for the public, you know, through advertising and marketing. But as you mentioned earlier, I do create magic and I market it and, you know, share with the community through magic shops. And I was researching the genre of a magical effect that I was planning to share with the magic community — it was a finger chopper effect — when I came across a biographical aside about the inventor of the finger guillotine we all know, Ed Massey. And it turned out he wrote a few mystery novels in the first half of the twentieth century. And that set off a bell in my head because I already knew three magicians who had written mysteries during that time.
Neil Tobin [:I mean, you probably know them too: Walter B. Gibson, Bruce Elliott, Clayton Rawson. And that raised the question that I found out later that Milbourne Christopher had tossed off in The Sphinx: "How many magicians were writing these things?" So I fell down the research rabbit hole, and one question led to another, and before I knew it, I was writing up my research. And a paper I bumped into was written by a professor in Taiwan, who clearly was an insider. He was citing Eugene Burger and Robert Neale, and a bunch of guys we all know. And so I dropped him a note to tell him how much I enjoyed it and let him know that I was exploring similar territory, and he was encouraging and told me I should talk with his editor, Rebecca Josephy, who was working on this book that was also talking about this stuff. So I contacted her, and she was also very encouraging and was interested, but she also warned me that inclusion in this book wasn't a sure thing.
Neil Tobin [:It wasn't up to her. This was a peer-reviewed publication, and that means that like other research journals in academia, all articles would be submitted anonymously and read by reviewers in the field, and then they make the determination of what gets in. So I continued my research, and because of the word count, I ended up breaking what I had into two papers instead of just one, and I sent them both in. And it took about a year for them to go through all the submissions. And when they made their final selections, I found out they chose both my essays.
Adrian Tennant [:Bonus!
Neil Tobin [:Yeah. I mean, crazy! Believe me, I did not expect that.
Adrian Tennant [:Well, in your first essay, "Creating the Impossible: Magician-Authors and the Mystery-Making Process," you profile several magician-authors from the first half of the twentieth century. What was your research process for uncovering these connections?
Neil Tobin [:Well, my first big step was just defining what a magician is for the sake of this work because, I mean, any writer can throw in a magic theme, but that doesn't make him a magician, you know. Or he can look up how a specific illusion works and throw that in his explanation, but that doesn't make him a magician, right? So I had to set up the criteria from the start — and this is going to be controversial for some of your listeners — but for the sake of limiting and making it clear, I would only include someone as a magician if they were known to have performed magic. This is the same distinction I'm not alone in making. Charles Pecor, who you might know — he was a Bizarrist and mentalist, he was also a college professor: he made the same distinction in his work. And I mean, much like you can have people who study theater and they're theater scholars, but once they actually step on stage and perform, now you're an actor. You can't be an actor in a vacuum. Right? So the same distinction. So using that as the criterion, I dug into published mysteries and looked into the trade periodicals because they always reported, oftentimes anyway, when a magician had something published.
Neil Tobin [:So, you know, The Sphinx, The Jinx, The Phoenix, Seven Circles — all the house organs for the various magic organizations. And so you'd oftentimes get a mention that this magician was just published in, you know, Saturday Evening Post, you know, because they wrote this thing or that thing, you know, whatever for the public. Another avenue to go was the other way around where I'd find there were periodicals specifically for authors of early detective and pulp fiction. So I'd look through those listings of mysteries that had magical themes to them as perhaps a little clue, and then cross-indexing those against the trades to see how many of those people might have been themselves performing magicians and just trying to connect dots between one and the other. And there are resources where in some cases I can convert people who are performing under nom- — well, you wouldn't call them nom-de-plumes because they're in performance, but — you'd have stage names, and then you'd have writers, and everyone's got other names, and there were places that one could look to to try to try to convert some of them. So bottom line: it wasn't easy. There was a whole lot, but at the end of it, not only was I able to find a surprising number of names, but I was able to turn up how they were connected because, again, through the trades, you might find connections like, these two people were at the same testimonial dinner or these two shared the stage at an S.A.M. party or something like that. So to be able to find not only the names but how they were intersected was fascinating.
Adrian Tennant [:Well, you highlight Walter B. Gibson's role in connecting the magic and mystery writing communities. How significant was his influence during the Golden Age of detective fiction?
Neil Tobin [:Well, Walter B. Gibson, I refer to him as part of the holy trinity of connectors between the two communities. The other two were Bruce Elliott and Clayton Rawson. To the public, he was known as Maxwell Grant, creator of "The Shadow." Most people in the public didn't know his real name, but his publishing company — or the publishing company that he wrote for — owned that name, Maxwell Grant. And "The Shadow," by the ... I mean, if you don't know, if it was before your time, it was certainly before mine, but I know something about it ... was an absolute crime fiction phenomenon. It was in pulps. It was in comics. It was in radio.
Neil Tobin [:It was in film. It was everywhere. And he was such a prolific writer that he was referenced in ads for typewriters. But magicians knew who Maxwell Grant really was, and that was Walter B. Gibson, who was very visible in the magic community. They were in contact with him because he was editing magic publications like Seven Circles and The Phoenix. He was marketing effects. He was writing books for the trade, you know, effects and biographies. They'd see him on the road when he was doing publicity for Blackstone.
Neil Tobin [:They would meet him on the social scene when he was attending magic conventions, when he was performing at magic conventions. He was at cocktail parties thrown by Bruce Elliott, his co-editor on The Phoenix. So, bottom line, if there was a crime fiction writer in the magic community at that time, they knew who Gibson was and they wanted to meet him and had every opportunity to do so.
Adrian Tennant [:Excellent. Generally speaking, how important were magicians to the development of the detective genre?
Neil Tobin [:One could argue, as the whole book in which my essays appeared does, that magicians played a major role in the development of the genre. I mean, both arts grew in popularity side-by-side. They both share transferable traits in terms of deception used for entertainment. Little known fact: one of the first detectives in Western literature was Inspector Bucket in "Bleak House" by Charles Dickens, who was a performer of magic. Coincidence? And my research turned up the names of a dozen confirmed performers in the first half of the twentieth century, which is the formative period considered mystery's Golden Age. So when you consider that pulp writers and magicians use pen names and stage names alike, that number is only going to increase in the years to come.
Adrian Tennant [:Yeah. Your second essay is titled "Tricks with Mirrors: The Magician-Detective as Proxy in Magician-Written Mysteries." So Neil, how did magicians use detective fiction to explore themes they didn't feel they could address directly?
Neil Tobin [:Oh, yeah. That's an interesting subject. When I was comparing various novels written by different magicians, there were several themes that emerged that they had in common. And one was an effort to depict magic as respectable, to set it apart from the underworld with which it shared, you know, a sketchy border. Think about it. Magicians are using the skills of pickpockets. They're using the skills of lock-pickers and safe-crackers. They're using the skills of card cheats.
Neil Tobin [:I mean, Erdnase, right? So, to distinguish themselves, because they were sensitive of being lumped in with criminals, they'd show an adversarial relationship between them and criminals — by, through their proxies, through their magician characters in their books, have them act as advisors to the police on con games and gambling cheats, for instance. They'd show them as well connected with heads of business, of being trustworthy, of being professionals living respectable, even affluent lifestyles. And more than that, I think we can all agree magic doesn't receive the same level of respect as other performing arts. And one of its inherent problems is that beyond that relationship to the underworld — I think at this point we're largely past that — is that for magic to feel like magic and not just, you know, juggling or finger-flinging, it has to appear effortless in performance. So because of that, laypeople undervalue it because it looks easy. And they get messages — you know, when I was a kid, you turn on the TV and there's Marshall Brodien with TV magic cards saying "It's easy when you know the secret." Right?
Adrian Tennant [:Yeah.
Neil Tobin [:So laypeople undervalue it. They have no idea how hard it is. And so magical authors writing mysteries figured out that they could use their proxies as a way to give readers a behind-the-scenes little, you know, careful peek behind the scenes to increase their magical appreciation of what goes into it without exposing anything. So they can see from the magician's point-of-view the discipline of constant practicing. One of the writers that I looked at, Massey, actually, he has a character drop a coin and then sentence himself to 50 repetitions of the same sleight that he was noodling with because that discipline, getting things into muscle memory, is so important; and regular people don't know that. They get a chance to show the meticulous attention that goes into the smallest amount of deception. The scholarship — Rawson talks about the hundreds of volumes in his magician character's personal library.
Neil Tobin [:People don't know we have libraries. They just know we go up there and do tricks. Right? The scientific knowledge that grounds so much of the work that we do. Many of the authors will have their magicians expound on psychology, or show a knowledge of chemistry, or mechanical, or electrical abilities. All the stuff that we do use, but again, we have to conceal. But within the safety of a mystery, they're allowed to get a little bit of a peek. The adaptiveness, the improv ability that we have.
Neil Tobin [:There's a great example that Gibson gives in one of his books where he has a performer have to recoup after a trick, you know, doesn't work. And, you know, when a magician does that well, the audience has no idea. Well, now in the safety of the mystery, they can get a little bit of a behind-the-scenes look at, well, here's a guy who has to think on his feet and read the room and move onward, and how does he really do that? And it's fascinating. And on top of all that, I mean, there's also the whole sense of community that, again, most people have no idea exists. They don't know we go to conventions. They don't know that we hang out together, that we meet up at, you know, S.A.M. meetings or I.B.M. meetings or what have you, and, you know, share trade knowledge and the kind of thing that we, you know, we'd go crazy, keeping up inside because we can't share it with the public, but that's our pressure valve. You know, and the sense of camaraderie. So all of those things are ways that proxies are used, I believe, as tools for the authors to give a greater appreciation for magic and magicians.
Adrian Tennant [:I mean there's an interesting tension because obviously as magicians we pledge never to reveal our secrets — and yet as a magician-author creating these detective fictions, they were revealing secrets — somewhat?
Neil Tobin [:Oh. Well, well, well … I can address that if you'd like me to.
Adrian Tennant [:I would.
Neil Tobin [:Because that was actually one of the more surprising things that I … something that I didn't realize that magicians would be doing in the context of the research. But I thought it was funny, first of all, how careful that magicians writing about magician characters, how careful they were not to expose. You get accounts in the trade magazines of the day saying, "Oh, guys, you've got to read this book because there are no exposures and it's great." You know, "You'll feel really good about that this is going out to the public. It's super entertaining. No exposures." And here's the thing, this was at a time when there had been a lot of exposures, and people were really sensitive to it. One of the cheap ways that the press would get readers was, hey, you know, it's very much like Masked Magician would get ratings for, I think it was Fox.
Adrian Tennant [:It was Fox.
Neil Tobin [:Yeah. So, I mean, it was a proven tactic to get viewers, right? So there was quite a lot of hubbub, and a lot of the exposure rules that exist in magic societies that we've grown to know were initiated when exposures in newspapers were a serious problem. So here are these guys who are writing mysteries and taking such pains not to expose, but in order to quench the public's thirst for some something, you know — and in a fair play mystery, if it's pertinent to the plot, you gotta give them some kind of explanation, otherwise it's not fair play. The lengths to which writers would go to create what I call "decoy exposures," they're not really exposures — to the layperson, it seems plausible, but any magician reading it would laugh their heads off because they're totally impractical. There's no way in hell. Gibson does a great one. He wrote a pulp called, I think it's called "Looks That Kill," in which his lead character is a mentalist, and he has him do the “Call the Wizard” effect.
Neil Tobin [:[An] audience member selects a card freely, then calls a phone number that the mentalist gives to him. And at the other end of the line, the performer's assistant who's, you know, out of town or whatever, tells them over the phone the name of their selection, reads their mind. It's a classic effect. And at the time that Gibson published this, it was a part of working repertoire. People had many ways to do this. And Gibson instead describes this switch box that could have been a "Mission Impossible" gadget that is just unbelievable. It clips onto the phone line and by the performer pressing one of 52 buttons causes a recording of his assistant naming whatever card. And, I mean, with the technology at the time, this was patently impossible.
Neil Tobin [:But, you know, to a layperson, "Yeah, okay. I can buy that."
Adrian Tennant [:Love it!
Neil Tobin [:Yeah. Great stuff.
Adrian Tennant [:Did you uncover previously unknown information about any of the magician-authors during the research? I'm guessing you did. But what surprised you the most?
Neil Tobin [:Well, the whole idea of exposures or of mock exposures or decoy exposures was probably my favorite thing that I found that I wasn't expecting.
Adrian Tennant [:Got it.
Neil Tobin [:But I just loved also learning that they would throw in these inside jokes for each other. Magicians writing mysteries, yes, you had to entertain the public, but there's all kinds of stuff you can plant that other people aren't going to catch. So magicians were planting names of other performers into the text as characters or modeling characters on performers that, again, would fly by laypeople. But, I mean, for instance, in the first Rawson novel, he's got multiple characters modeled after magicians of the day. So, I mean, wonderful. And Crossen, in his "Invisible Man Murders" has someone go to a convention, and he names the people he sees there. You see, you get all these great little touchstones in addition to, like I said, these ridiculous explanations. So lots of fun there.
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. Neil, reflecting on your contributions to "Magic, Magicians, and Detective Fiction," have you learned anything new about the relationship between magic and literature?
Neil Tobin [:Well, what I learned is just that the literary academic world is suddenly as interested in magic as we are. I mean, who knew? When I started this little research project, I originally thought, you know, it would make a nice article for Genii, and an excerpt did eventually get published there [March 2023]. But detective fiction, as it turns out, like science fiction, and other writing that was previously disregarded as genre, is finally getting its due, and it's being discovered or rediscovered by academic institutions. So what this book shows is that the influence of magic on the genre is now an object of serious study, and I'm hoping that the more English departments and university libraries put this book on their shelves, the better the chance that the legacies of magicians like Gibson, and Elliott, and Rawson, and Henning Nelms, and Ken Crossen, that their contributions to the genre will be preserved.
Adrian Tennant [:You share something in common with Edward M. Massey and Clayton Rawson, namely a background in advertising copywriting.
Neil Tobin [:Correct.
Adrian Tennant [:Neil, how do you think their advertising experience influenced their approach to mystery writing? And do you see any parallels in how these skills translate across both fields?
Neil Tobin [:Well, I'm just speaking off the cuff because that isn't really something that I've researched. But speaking as someone who's been in the field, the ability to quickly figure out how to write an essay, I mean, how to how to get from point “A” to point “B” to point “C” to a conclusion, can only serve you well when you're creating something as linear as a mystery. Because it's all strung along very well that way. And being able to keep people engaged in your writing is something that in advertising and marketing, it's writing for the public. It's writing for engagement. So there's an awful lot of … I mean, again, not to cast aspersions on other writers in the scholarly areas, or in other vocations … not all writers are necessarily all that concerned with taking someone by the hand and bringing them through all your points and getting them to the end in a way that's entertaining. But advertising, if you don't hook them from the beginning, if you lose them for a second, they drop off.
Neil Tobin [:So I just think that's a really good training ground for anybody who wants to write for the public.
Adrian Tennant [:Neil, you've uncovered such interesting information in these two academic essays. Do you have plans to expand on them for the broader magic community?
Neil Tobin [:Oh, well, I'll give you a little secret. Of the magicians whose work I studied, the work of Clayton Rawson really stood out. He wrote four novels featuring his magician-detective, The Great Merlini, and they were all extremely well-received when they came out in the thirties and forties. And they were on top 10 lists, they're getting rave reviews from book reviewers, and not just in magic magazines like, you know, The Jinx, but in the pages of Time and, I mean, major publications. The public loved it. Two of his novels ended up being made into films — so, you know, 50 percent film conversion rate, that's pretty high. And what I've been finding out about Rawson is that not only did he sneak in gags for other magicians, like I've just told you; he was a member of multiple other subcultures, and he snuck in things for them too.
Neil Tobin [:He was a commercial artist, so he slides in art history gags for other artists to enjoy. He had a degree in liberal arts, so there are lots of references to all kinds of college-level sources that, again, I mean, they might fly by if you didn't go to college in 1938, you know, or previously. He's a hardcore mystery fan, so he makes comments left and right that are just for that audience. He's a man of his time, so he makes tons of references to current events. And again, unless you're an authority on events from that period of time, a lot of it you would just miss. So instead of just expanding the essays that I've written for the academic world, I thought, "You know, I've given the academic world enough, let's annotate all four novels. Let's pull out all that information into footnotes to create new doorways of appreciation for his work and get them published for a wider audience of people to enjoy and really rediscover his work as it deserves to be seen." And, that's what I'm working on right now.
Neil Tobin [:It's going to be incredible. I'm, at this point, really close to handing things over to my publisher. And so hopefully, it'll — I mean, I don't want to get everyone going crazy and calling up my publisher and bugging them — but just know it's, you know, it's probably a year or so away.
Adrian Tennant [:Got it. Well, I was going to say I hope this podcast is not what's standing in the way of you finishing the book and getting the book to your publisher.
Neil Tobin [:No, I can afford a conversation, certainly!
Adrian Tennant [:So I'm curious, Neil. Is it going to be one book combining the full text with annotations, or are you thinking it's a series of books?
Neil Tobin [:Good question. We had originally discussed a big, hardbound, beautifully presented, ribbon-bookmarked, gorgeous object with all four in it with footnotes and endnotes and illustrations and all and the whole nine yards. But they're four full novels plus all that other material. So there's a chance that it could be broken down into a couple of volumes. We're just going to have to see how that plays out.
Adrian Tennant [:Okay. Now besides the original text, what other sources are you referencing for your endnotes, footnotes, and other annotations?
Neil Tobin [:Sure. Well, just to talk about those original texts just for a second, because it's not even as cut-and-dried as that. There are multiple editions of each of those novels, and some of them have been significantly edited down. In the 1940s, Dell came out with this wonderful line of paperbacks with some of my favorite artwork on it, you know, out of any of this stuff, but they cut the page counts way down. So there's a lot of stuff missing, and there are no footnotes, and there are no illustrations, and several later editions used those as their blueprint. So you've got, I mean, some of those are still available today. On top of that, each of these different editions, you have different editors making different choices regarding spelling and paragraph breaks and punctuation and things like that. So these novels, for the first time, will be the most complete versions of them.
Neil Tobin [:Because I'm comparing different editions. I'm making sure that all the text is there. And since Rawson was an artist and included these illustrations, we're making sure that all of his illustrations are in there too because, I mean, those have fallen out of many of these editions. As for sources outside the text, the Rawson estate has been absolutely incredible and given me access to some of his letters. I've seen diary pages. I've gotten personal memoirs from the family. Specifically, his youngest son, Clayton Jr., has been incredibly generous. And so when I bump into a wall, he's very quick to return my emails and phone calls.
Neil Tobin [:Outside of that, I'm, of course, drawing from art history books; from the whole history of mystery writing when he makes those references; from newspapers, magazines, films and radio shows of the early twentieth century. And that can be obsessive work. I mean, as a fellow book collector: at one point, I went on eBay, bought a literary magazine from 1935 because I had to double check a poetry quote! So, the novels are just so rich, and I just want to help readers enjoy everything that he packed into them.
Adrian Tennant [:And I should mention that there are illustrations accompanying your essays in "Magic, Magicians, and Detective Fiction" as well, but they're in black and white.
Neil Tobin [:Yeah. I was disappointed to see that on the galleys, but you know, I don't have a whole lot of pull over at McFarland. What can I tell you?
Adrian Tennant [:But listeners can see full color images in the article you wrote for Genii magazine, "The Secret Society of Golden Age Magical Mystery Writers," which was published in the March 2023 issue.
Neil Tobin [:Correct. Yeah.
Adrian Tennant [:Well this is The Magic Book Podcast and regular listeners know this is one of my standard questions. So Neil, what is your most cherished magic book — or books — and why?
Neil Tobin [:Yeah. Okay. I mean, I've got a library as you can imagine, and a lot of it is a working library and a lot of it is so exciting to have. I mean, as a member of the Psychic Entertainers Association, I've got the full run of Vibrations, which people outside the organization don't even get to see. And it's some of the greatest mentalists who've ever lived, have contributed to that. I've got, you know, all of Oracle, which was such a great publication. But in terms of things that I have real sentimental attachment to, I have several that were specifically signed to me by friends and mentors, so I'll quickly call out "Protoplasm" by Christian Painter, which is a wonderful mentalism book. I'll specifically call out "Para Lies" by Joshua Quinn, also marvelous. "Prism" by Max Maven.
Neil Tobin [:I mean, you know that name. But if I had to center on one, I'd go with the one that I mentioned earlier that helped set me on my whole path of rediscovery of magic, and that'd be "Spirit Theatre" by Eugene Burger. In it, if you don't have it, Eugene covers not only some great effects from his repertoire, but personal memoir touching his own performance. To readers who don't have it, he describes the show that he mounted with his roommates haunting his home in Evanston, and that grew into a spirit theater show that he toured and, you know, played the network of Playboy clubs with. And he gets into the show structure and the marketing and all of that. And he does a lovely job before that, setting context with a concise history of spiritualism and of mediumistic performance, and then how that ball was taken up and carried forward by the whole Bizarre Magic movement. And he even has an interview with Tony Andruzzi.
Neil Tobin [:It's a great book, and, you know, I wouldn't be where I am without it, and my copy is extra special because he even signed it for me.
Adrian Tennant [:Mhmm. That's lovely. Neil, what advice would you give to others who are interested in researching and writing about magic history?
Neil Tobin [:Well, from my own experience, I mean, magic history is such a broad topic. I mean, you can be talking about a generation ago or you could be talking about a thousand years ago. But if you're like me and you're studying the more recent history — I mean, I'm still twentieth century — if you have a subject that you're passionate about, that you're excited about, that your brain won't let you stop obsessing about and you want to dig into it, I can't encourage you enough to do it now. Don't wait. Just like a detective story, leads dry up if you don't follow them. And for all the digging that I've been doing into the Rawson work, all the gems I've been able to find, my contact with Clayton Jr. has been incredible, all of that, I can't help but kick myself that I hadn't started it while the author himself was still alive. I mean, then I remember then I would have been five at the time for that to have happened.
Neil Tobin [:So I cut myself some slack there. But, you know, his oldest son died in 2013. He would have been a great resource, and I missed out on that, you know? So, again, history is constantly moving. If you’ve got something that's a passion project for you, do the research, write it down.
Adrian Tennant [:Very good advice. Neil, if listeners would like to learn more about you, your effects, your performances, or your essays in "Magic, Magicians, and Detective Fiction," what's the best way to connect with you?
Neil Tobin [:Well, I mean, for my effects, you can go to your favorite magic shop: Murphy's Magic distributes a lot of my stuff. I also have some exclusives at Penguin Magic, at Alakazam in The UK, at Hocus Pocus in California, at Magic Inc. in Chicago. For shows, writing, contact in general, since I perform under Neil Tobin, Necromancer — which has been my billing for decades because editors like using that word in headlines — you can find me by that name on Facebook and on Instagram, and I'm easy to contact through there. Whenever I have something in writing, I'll talk about it there even if it's in one of the periodicals that aren't aimed at magicians just because, you know, everyone can know that. I'm not disclosing anything that they don't need to see. In terms of the book itself, which includes not only my two essays, but some other really fascinating ones. I need to talk about Rebecca again for a second.
Neil Tobin [:Her essay, on the connection between Lupin and the magic scene in France at that time, it's great. You can find that book at mcfarlandbooks.com. And again, if at the expense of repeating myself, please tell your Alma Mater or favorite institution to put it on their shelves. It may be priced a little high for the casual reader, but for academic collections, great. Get them there. And again, it's not for my sake, I don't see a penny of this, but to help preserve and celebrate the magic community's contributions to literature and culture. People outside our insular little world need to know this stuff.
Adrian Tennant [:Mhmm, well said. Neil, thank you so much for being my guest on The Magic Book Podcast.
Neil Tobin [:Oh, thanks so much for inviting me. It's been a pleasure.
Adrian Tennant [:You've been listening to The Magic Book Podcast. In this episode, we explored Neil Tobin's journey from advertising copywriter to theatrical innovator, examined his groundbreaking research on magician-authors and their contributions to mystery fiction, and learned about his upcoming projects that continue to bridge the worlds of magic and literature. If you enjoyed the conversation with Neil about magician-authors, you won't want to miss the next episode of The Magic Book Podcast because my guest is Rebecca Josephy, the editor of the book in which Neil's two essays appear: "Magic, Magicians, and Detective Fiction." That's next time. You'll find the transcript accompanying this episode on the website at TheMagicBookPodcast.com, plus a blog post with a summary, time stamps, and a list of the books Neil mentioned. If you have a question about anything we discussed 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.
Adrian Tennant [:Until next time. Goodbye.
