DON ENGLAND’S PARADOX BOOK REVIEW BY DAVID SUTHERLAND
A consistent lesson gleaned from almost every lecture I attend is: READ YOUR BOOKS.
I’ll return from these lectures, immediately begin searching through my library and invariably discover much of this great material was already in my possession!
We all know there’s good stuff hidden throughout the works of Hilliard, Stanyon and Tarbell. I thought it would be interesting to take a look at some titles that aren’t always top of mind and have been sitting on my shelves for years without even a glance - to my disadvantage. Hopefully, we can all learn from my mistakes…
DON ENGLAND’S PARADOX BY KEVIN KELLY
BOOK DETAILS: 152 pages (Hardcover), Publisher Kevin T. Kelly, Published in 2001, Out of print.
Don England is an artist, magician, and entrepreneur from Illinois. His previous books include Don England’s T.K.O.’s (Technical Knock Outs) by John Mendoza, 1980 and Gaffed to the Hilt by Jon Racherbaumer, 1985.
He has had items published in Best of Friends by Harry Lorayne, Richard Kaufmann’s Almanac, Magic Manuscript, and Paul Harris’s Close-Up Fantasies. He also published and marketed at least 30 effects from 1978 to 2001, including Borrowed Cigarette Thru Card, Zig Zag Card, and Plastic Lady. Check your collection; I bet you have one of his creations.
Kevin Kelly’s two previous books were: Intermezzo and A Pasteboard Odyssey (for madmen only!)
Brother John Hamman heavily influenced Don’s work and the Forward is a copy of the original letter Hamman wrote to Don.
Paradox has five sections. The first entitled “Reflections” begins with a Copper-Silver effect wherein not only do the coins transpose between the performer’s hand and the spectator’s hand, but they grow in size as well! Next, are two routines called The Philosopher’s Stone and Thgiliwt. If you’ve ever worked on or performed Tayari Casel’s Twilight an effect with a pocket mirror and coins (popularized by Paul Harris), you may want to check out these variations which go a few steps further. Thgiliwt involves a larger mirror and jumbo coins and The Philosopher’s Stone ends with the coin actually seen to be within the mirror itself!
For those who want hard-hitting tricks sans gaffs, the second section is “Unplugged.” In it, you’ll find a Two in the hand, One in the pocket routine done with playing cards and a Cannibal Cards routine that carries the plot forward in a humorous way. There is a revised version of Phase 51 found in Don England’s T.K.O.’s wherein a selected card travels from the deck to the magician’s inside jacket pocket twice, then the deck changes colour and vanishes! (This effect was suggested by Bill Kalush to David Blaine for one of his early specials.) Immediately following this is another version where a selected card penetrates the table and lands in the spectator’s hands and the second time, the entire deck penetrates the table into the spectator’s hands leaving only the selected card on the table.
If you are looking for challenging material, Don has a version of James Lewis’s Inversion. In his variation, the deck turns face up and face down around a protruding selected card, twice! There is also a transposition effect of a single card on one side of the table with a pair of cards on the other side of the table.
The shortest section of the book is “The Roadless Travellers” which includes two variations of Open Travellers. One version ends with the Aces transforming into Queens and the other clarifies the effect of which card is travelling since it is done with an ace through four, instead of just a four of a kind.
In “The Mini Section”, you will find eight items that use miniature cards. Check out MicroWarp in which the warped card not only turns inside out, but shrinks as well! In The Eye Exam a card shrinks when looked at through a magnifying glass. The Shrink is so good I’m not even going to write about it, other than to say that Don killed with it at Fechter’s.
The fifth and final section is “Moonlight.” (I would have named it “Sunlight” because this is where Don’s expertise of creating and using gaffs really shines…but I digress.)
There are 17 tricks in this section and you’ll need to obtain or make gaffs for all of them. The gaffs range from easy to make by simply cutting, taping or pasting to more advanced gaffs that involve splitting. You may already have the necessary double facers or mis-pipped cards required for some of the tricks.
As much as I would like to provide a description of all 17 tricks since I think they are all worth knowing about, I will limit myself to four.
Had I not read about The Geiger Gaff, I most certainly would have been fooled by the use of it on a recent episode of Penn & Teller’s Fool Us. It’s very clever and appears very fair. If you just can’t master the Classic Force, (I’m still working on it) this might be for you.
Double Crossed takes The Impromptu Linking Card Effect from Harry Lorayne’s Quantum Leaps and adds another layer of deception which allows the spectator to keep the linked cards at the end.
There are two more versions of Card Warp. The first, called Warped and Single, uses a bill as in Bob McAllister’s Green Warp. You can borrow a deck of cards, wrap one card with a bill and have the card reverse itself after being pushed through the bill. However, when the card is removed it has changed into a Joker and the original card is discovered face-up in the middle of the deck! In the second, called d/Warp, the spectator peeks at a card and the card is pushed through the deck; as it passes, it turns over completely and the card is removed and handed to the spectator!
The Sympathy of Hearts, a matrix with four pieces of a card which fuse together as they assemble under a jumbo card, takes its inspiration from Derek Dingle’s Restoration Assembly. Don has streamlined the method in this case.
Kreskin, Eat Your Heart Out! blends a Hofzinser Transparent Card and a Marlo subtlety into a very different style of mental effect.
Ok, I snuck in a couple of additional descriptions. I wanted to add more.
Overall, this book is well written and clearly illustrated with appropriate photographs which will come in handy when constructing the gaffs. Interspersed between the tricks are images of original artwork created by Don as well as a few personal and insightful anecdotes.
Now that I’ve written my first book review, I’m going to read Jamy Ian Swiss’s review of Paradox in the January 2002 edition of Genii magazine. If you would like to read a professional’s take on this book and a review that is considerably more in depth (I’m guessing) then you should too.
Some of you may have noticed that this book is out of print, but if what I’ve described appeals to you then keep your eyes open for it. If both Marlo and Hamman consider the items in Paradox gems, it’s possible that you might as well.
Until next time… read your books.
