Penn and Teller have a routine called “Liftoff for Love,” where Teller is put into a cabinet, the cabinet is broken into sections and moved across the stage, the head section is opened to reveal Teller’s head still inside, and it’s reassembled again. It’s the sort of illusion that used to turn up on TV when there wasn’t anything else on. Then they do it again, with a transparent set, and you watch Teller shooting through trapdoors, scooting back and forth beneath the stage, popping his head up once again, like a man in a maniacal ballet, and it becomes utterly magical—the energy, the deviousness, the work that goes into the illusion is more impressive than the illusion itself.

This book is like that.

This book of essays is not a book for people who want to know How It Was Done, as much as it is a book for those who want to know Why Anyone Would Want to Do It in the First Place. It’s a book about the joy of the chase. This is Steinmeyer at his best, on the trail of a long-forgotten illusion the secret of which an Edwardian magician took to his grave, figuring one clue out from the writings of someone who looked without seeing or wrote without thinking, another clue from half-an-anecdote in a book of reminiscences, taking his knowledge of the history and technology of magic, and then making the process of the illusion, the backstage stuff with half-bricks and pipes and gaffer tape, become even more magical than the illusion itself.

With Hiding the Elephant Steinmeyer took the public on a journey through the history of theatrical magic. Art and Artifice is a backstage tour; it’s the perfect book for those who appreciate detective work and the thrill of the chase, those of us who are excited by the description of Devant’s Mascot Moth or Morritt’s Donkey and wish we could have been there then to marvel and exult and to wonder how the hell it was done. The descriptions are clear, the mysteries excellently unraveled. Steinmeyer’s combination of enthusiasm and erudition is a joy.

Every now and again my copy of Art and Artifice, the one Jules Fisher gave me, has disappeared, which means that several times in the last decade I’ve discovered how very hard it is to get a new copy. (Each time I’d given up my original copy surfaced again. I have stopped wondering where it goes when it’s not on my shelves. I probably wouldn’t like the answer.) It’s one of many reasons that I’m delighted Art and Artifice is being republished for a wider audience. Enjoy.

My introduction to Art and Artifice: And Other Essays on Illusion by Jim Steinmeyer, 2006.

The Moth: An Introduction

I was given a list of all the things the organizers wanted me to do at the PEN World Voices Festival in New York. Everything seemed straightforward except for one thing.

“What’s the Moth?” I asked. It was April 2007.