(This is part of the reason I tend to lean more toward non-fiction). A great deal of fiction has the problem of being contrived in order to reach its resolution it’s rare that a story manages to satisfy both narrative requirements and a sense of realism. But at the end of the book, they’re not only brought into the story, it’s done in such a way that their tiny tale gets a nice little bow on top. We’re introduced to the Kowalskis early on, and they look like nothing more than an object lesson for young Carter. It’s not just unresolved questions, either, it’s also thematic and character stuff. These questions tend to get resolved in the reverse order from which they appeared-Harding first and last, Mysterioso second and second-to-last, etc. A drawing of the amount of mystery contained in the text from start to finish would probably look just like a bell curve. As it progresses, we see several mysteries piled atop one another: television, Carter’s finances, Carter’s love life, the Secret Service, Borax Smith, Mysterioso. We start with a single, important mystery: the death of President Harding. It's a clever bit of misdirection, keeping the audience so intently focused on the first Sarah that we don’t realize that hey, people use stage names! The entirety of the novel contains similar formal magic. The first, and arguably best, trick that it pulls off is early in the novel, when Carter gets a crush on Sarah, whom he assumes he is supposed to wed, before the “real” Sarah is revealed. The Prestige does so explicitly, with narration at the beginning and end of the film, but Carter Beats The Devil might do it better.
Both stories use the process of magic as both the subject of their work and the structure of their plot. Rowan Kaiser: Reading Carter Beats The Devil reminded me of the film The Prestige, which came out a few years later (although the book came out a few years earlier).
Did you experience this book as magic, with all that attendant danger and unpredictability? Or is that suspense as much of an illusion as the Houdini escape that had Carter squirming? And therefore of the author as literary deity, controlling his created world, seeming to be at the mercy of other forces but perhaps being in control all along-or perhaps not. More than any other novel featuring magic that I've read, this one made me aware of the magician as theatrical deity, the author as magician-employing misdirection, stagecraft, drama, technology, and prestidigitation.
Of course, that really means I was concerned about what tricks author Glen David Gold had up his sleeve for me.
0 kommentar(er)
