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Tannen's most popular numbers are close-up effects, magic that can be done around coffee or conference tables. "Half and 20 centavo" ($12.50) turns a copper coin into a quarter—while the customer clutches it. "Chop-chop cups," little changed from the days of ancient Egypt, produce spheres from plum to orange size. "Spooky, the spirit handkerchief makes a ghost wander around under an empty little blanket of silk.
Even more popular than the effects is the vast array of magic literature. Some dozen magazines promise knowledge that only the ancients possessed. Perhaps the least savory is Chaos, a Canadian publication devoted to blue magic—a handkerchief under its direction can easily be folded into the shape of female genitalia. The most conscientious is the brilliantly edited monthly the Pallbearers Review. Despite its name, the Review is a shrewd, technical publication that separates the amateurs from the prose. Editor Karl Fulves has no patience with those who boast of occult powers, and specializes in explaining the mechanics of the beyond.
In the pages of such periodicals a pageant of figures appear, anonyms to the general public, but legends to the expanding magicians' fraternity: Derek Dingle, an air-conditioning engineer whom most magicians consider the greatest card manipulator extant; Percy Diaconis, a Harvard Ph.D. in statistics and inventor of more than 100 card sleights that have fooled professional gamblers; Martin Gardner, a science writer who can make the language of numbers appear as easy as pi (see box); Robert Hummer, a mathematical genius who would sleep on the floor rather than rearrange the cards on his bed.
Other American amateurs are better known: Will Rogers, who had a trick secreted in a pocket when his body was lifted from a plane crash; the late literary critic Edmund Wilson, who fooled his dinner guests with effects; Gary Grant, who likes to perform as the Great Carini at meetings at the Magic Castle.
Currently, the biggest name in the business is also the newest: Doug Henning. Dressed like a counterculture urchin, the possessor of a small voice and a stature that makes a pencil appear mesomorphic, Henning has proved that the magic boom is bankable—his show grosses some $60,000 per week. At 17, too young to perform in the nightclubs of his native Winnipeg, he flew to Barbados, where he acquired a motorcycle and a sign: MAGICIAN. HAVE RABBIT, WILL TRAVEL. He roamed the island, picking up work as he went. Seven years later, after earning a degree in psychology, he convinced the Canada Council that magic was an art form in need of further investigation. The council, which provides governmental funding for the arts, bankrolled his studies of legerdemain with Professor Dai Vernon at the Magic Castle. In three months, he had mastered the trade of the tricks. Two producers caught his act in Toronto and built a hit around him. Today, with a combination of optical illusions, paraphernalia and misdirection, Henning holds audiences in the palm of his sleight of hand.