Street Magic by Paul Zenon Review
Street Magic by Paul Zenon
Price: $10.95
Available From: Your Favorite Dealer
This book is primarily aimed at beginners to the world of magic, with a focus on street magic tricks. Although I didn’t get this when I was first starting out, I was able to find a couple interesting bits and ideas that I think I can put to use. If you’ve been in magic for any length of time, you’re probably not going to find anything groundbreaking here.
For a beginner though, I think this would be a decent place to start. The book begins with the obligatory history of magic and a few self working tricks. There’s a section on coin magic that teaches a couple basic moves (classic palm, French drop) a couple tricks, and a bit of sleeving. He talks about a few basic gimmicks and some tricks using them, like a thumb tip, a nailwriter, and a pull. You’ll learn some basic card controls and sleights like the injog, break, and double lift, as well as quite a few tricks and flourishes.
There’s a section on mental magic, where you’ll learn the center tear, the one-ahead principle, and a magic square, among other things. Something that I found interesting and useful was the section on street scams, such as three-card monte, fast and loose, and the shell game. You don’t usually see that in beginner magic books (actually, not in any of the books I have) and it’s nice to have a print reference for it.
Finally, there are a few so-called “party tricks” that aren’t earth shattering, not overtly magical, but still something fun and entertaining to do at a party. This part has things like the voodoo ash trick, paper balls over the head, and the cup through the table. He also includes a version of Paul Curry’s Out of This World, one of my personal favorites (although I must admit I prefer Paul Harris’s version Galaxy) and a nice inclusion.
There’s also a glossary of magical terms, as well as a couple suggestions for magic websites, magazines, and dealers that the beginner may want to look into. As I said before, there’s probably nothing here you haven’t already seen because this is geared towards the beginner. However, if you are a beginner I think there would be a lot here for you, and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it.
Andster