Tohby Riddle
IRVING THE MAGICIAN
Penguin, $24.95 hb,
32 pp, 0670896497
The
show-stopping trick
within the jacket sleeves
of this book is not
the failed disappearance
of Aunty Irma at the
climax of Irving's living-room
magic show but how the
author, Tohby Riddle,
bewitches us with the
quotidian.
One
day Irving was watching
the world from his window
when a man in the street
below gave out a sigh
…
'Where's the magic?'
said the man.
Irving - who lived with
his aunt, Irma, in a
part of town that not
many people visited
- thought about the
words of the man in
the street below.
Irving's
town is New York, and
a very contemporary
tension between experience
and innocence animates
each page. The frontispiece
shows Irving looking
out from his brownstone
window over a shimmering
curtain of ticker tape.
He is one of those children
who resembles a wise
old man. You can read
a lot of expression
into those little blank
lines for eyes. What
is Irving actually seeing?
Is it ticker tape …
or debris?
'Where's the magic?'
Irving asked the shopkeeper
at the corner store.
'Well, it's not around
here.'
'Where's the magic?'
Irving asked a passerby.
'Magic? There's no
such thing!'
Irving's
determination to take
the idiomatic at face
value propels him on
a quest for an alternative
- of what, the reader
is never quite sure.
His wandering introduces
his neighbourhood and
a small group of adults
that surround him, a
lost-in-time émigré
community whose eyes
are perpetually wide
open: realistic but
unseeing. Eventually,
he returns to his Aunt's
house where: 'On the
shelf above the sideboard,
next to a dusty violin,
was a book. And on its
spine were the words:
THE INCREDIBLY MARVELLOUS
WORLD OF MAGIC. Irving
climbed onto the sideboard
to reach for it.'
From
this moment, Irving
the Magician begins
to articulate and explore
a mimetic double vision.
Although it takes its
what-iffery seriously,
the decision to enter
the revivifying kingdom
of magic literally, through
feats of prestidigitation,
is a delightful sleight-of-hand.
It forces Irving's acquisition
of magic 'tricks' into
relation with 'the magic'
of the book's narrative.
Readers embark on a journey
during which they feel
amazement while retaining
an awareness of being
tricked. In essence, the
story's narrative is forced
along allegorical, rather
than dramatic, lines:
'Irving opened with the
Beads of Wu Fan. The audience
gasped. He demonstrated
the Chinese Linking Rings.
"A mystery from China,
ladies and gentleman,
as old as magic itself
…"'
Patrolling the border
of the two literary
domains is belief, or
the worked suspension
of it. In this, the
choice of theatre as
the structuring look-and-feel
of the book is inspired.
It offers a middle layer
for exploring how reality
may abut fiction, and
how illusion may present
as solid.
The
attention to design is
profound. The playbill-like
cover of the book has
Irving resembling a half-prepared
master of ceremonies,
pushed out before the
curtain to make some introductory
remarks. Throughout the
book, interiors have depth
and substance, while exteriors
are produced with controlled,
contrasting light and
flat surfaces: that quality
of unreality you associate
with a matinee performance
because you know the world
outside is harsh and bright.
There is something rueful
about this showbiz world,
perhaps because of all
the hard work involved.
The book lay open where
he had left it - a light
breeze through the window
slowly turning its pages.
Irving wanted to return
it to its dusty shelf.
He went to close it, but
the book said believe.The
clouds, in particular,
broke my heart.
So where's the magic?
Some picture books slice
and dice their images.
In Irving the Magician,
the classic form is preserved.
The art and text maintain
integral domains but alter
one another as we search
for mutuality in them,
only to find points of
uncertainty. It's these
shifting expectations
that are the key. Why
is Irving living with
his Aunt? Who owned the
violin and piano? Was
Irving's magic wand formerly
a conductor's baton? In
the smoke-coloured motifs
that pepper the left-hand
side of the pages, evocatively
shaped dust rises from
a book. Later, the dust
becomes a bird. The wings
of the bird are then picked
up and echoed in the curved
line of a hand patting
Irving's head. That hand
becomes a punch-bowl ladle,
before finally disappearing
in a puff of smoke. In
the book's penultimate
full-page image, the group
of adults brought together
by Irving are singing
around a piano. Their
hungry eyes have changed,
replaced with Irving-style
cartoon dots and dashes.
These windows of the soul
have been made less vulnerable
to the world outside.
It is art's power to affirm
mystery and transform
that protects us, never
the substance of the transformations
themselves.
So
there's the magic: a simple
story artfully told. The
movement from the final
page to the back cover
has the book receding
into the distance. The
revels may have ended,
but even now you're holding
a tiny corner of this
incantatory kingdom in
your hands.
