Multiple illusions

Steven Galloway’s imaginative recreation of the death of the world’s greatest magician, Harry Houdini, stretches our credibility, writes Steve Walker.

TheConfabulist A CONFABULIST is a storyteller. By extension, it also implies a weaver of several narratives at the same time. Another meaning is a liar, one who is unable to differentiate truth from imagination. Lastly, it is a psychological term for someone who creates imaginary tales then believes in them, in consequence of or compensation for memory loss.

All four of these meanings are central to Steven Galloway’s imaginative recreation of the death of the world’s greatest magician, Harry Houdini. Its narrator is one Martin Strauss, who caused the death of Houdini, not once but twice! He suffers from dementia, is unable to remember key events or people from his own life and struggles to unravel the narrative thread of his past.

The real Houdini was a master of stage illusion, or ‘‘magic’’. His real skill was not the magic but the misdirection that underlies it. We watch the magician’s face as he attempts to escape the handcuffs and not his hands that are passing the key to the lock. All stage magic relies on the audience believing the trick. Houdini’s tricks included escaping from underwater chains or multiple handcuffs. Escaping imminent death was his forte. And he does it again.

Houdini was also a debunker of spiritualism. He ironically loathed the tricksters of the seance and made many enemies in the course of exposing their fraud. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was one such antagonist.

Martin Strauss believes he was the one who delivered the punch that ruptured Houdini’s appendix, causing his death from peritonitis. The death resulted in a huge payout from Houdini’s life insurance policy. In Galloway’s narrative, Strauss as an old man attempts to sort out his own role in the death and its subsequent cover-up. The injured Houdini thrust a book into Strauss’ pocket. This book, written in code, holds the secret to Houdini’s exposure of the evil spiritualists. That much is all historically true, with a name change of the actual assailant.

Galloway has undertaken some impressive research into Houdini’s life. In particular, he understands well the illusionism behind Houdini’s tricks.

There are, essentially, three illusions being perpetrated here. The first is the stage tricks of the magician. The second is the artifice of the seance. The third is the craft of the novelist himself. All three create stories and illusions around their subjects.

Galloway, author of the bestseller, The Cellist of Sarajevo, takes the people and events of history and creates an illusion of plausibility around his fabulation.

His problem is that he extends our credibility beyond the limits. It is a known fact that Conan Doyle was a spiritualist and that he and Houdini fell out. The events of Houdini’s life and most of his death are here given the appeal of history. But then Galloway asks us to believe that Houdini was also an international spy, for both the British and American secret police, and that he faked his own death – the ultimate illusion? Further, that it was the same man responsible for both deaths, the fake and the real. History here descends into farce.

Galloway’s misdirection of the reader is like a Houdini trick gone wrong. We read about Houdini’s death but are redirected on to Strauss’ dementia, which is an inadequate cover for Galloway’s manipulation. The weaver of several narratives is revealed as a liar.