Word: magicianly
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...magician uses sleights of hand to create his fiction; the writer uses sleights of mind. Edgar Allan Poe, whose stories and poems have put generations of readers into a gothic trance, took time out to satirize the tricks of the literary trade. His Eureka uses metaphysical doubletalk to "explain" philosophy. The patter creates credibility, leading Poe to conclude elsewhere that "pleased at comprehending, we often are so excited as to take it for granted that we assent." In "Diddling: Considered as One of the Exact Sciences," he offers the ingredients of a good con: "Minuteness, interest, perseverance, ingenuity, audacity, nonchalance...
...make something out of nothing, to fashion possibilities out of dead ends, is to be literally creative. Negotiation is one of the serious arts of the imagination. The deeper resources of wisdom must collaborate with the nimblest reflexes: the gambler's touch, the athlete's tuning, the magician's tricks, the gentleman's equilibrium...
...Hall and Harvard Squre--now rivals San Francisco as the street entertainment capital of the nation. Acts like the Back Alley troupe pass through Cambridge on cross-country jaunts "just to be able to say we've played the Square--it's quite a big deal," says Van Alstyne. Magician Peter Sosna, who insists he's the only guy in town who can perform Houdini's identity-switching act on the street, points out that some people rank New York's Washington Square Park ahead of Cambridge. "No way. They don't know what they're talking about...
...small talk was enlightening compared with the shenanigans of the story-starved stars of the morning shows. At various times during the week, David Hartman of ABC played cricket, Willard Scott of NBC frolicked in the fountain at Trafalgar Square, and Joan Lunden of ABC toured London with a magician...
Gardner saves his liveliest derision for gullible scientists and science writers -particularly those who lauded Israeli Magician Uri Geller and his "unearthly ability" to bend spoons with the power of his mind. In a dazzling chapter, Gardner, an amateur prestidigitator, demonstrates a dozen methods for deceiving the credulous, including sleight of hand, palmed magnets and misdirection. Yet even these instructions are offered more in fun than in malice. For early on, the skeptic's skeptic acknowledges that the most obvious evidence of fraud will not budge the True Believer. Instead, Gardner writes for those who agree with the 1920s...