Magic by William Goldman

© 1976 by William Goldman



First, let me say, the commercial for the movie version of this novel seriously creeped me out as a kid.

Second, to this day I have never seen this movie version. It stars a pre-Hannibal Lecter Anthony Hopkins.

Solely based on the first point above, I picked up Goldman’s novel in a $1 used book bin a few months ago. While I was a huge horror fan – reading close to a hundred books by King, Koontz, Barker, and others in the 80s and 90s – I’ve tempered off considerably in the past ten, fifteen years, reading horror only around October for old times’ sake. So, on a whim, looking for a quick and easy read and a change of pace, I cracked it open last Saturday.

And finished it that Sunday.

You know what? The book is just as creepy as the commercial.

Similar to clowns, ventriloquist dummies (and sometimes ventriloquists themselves) have this inherent capability of scaring the hell out of certain individuals. This is what Goldman taps into, and I think he does it effectively. Effectively for me meaning, a story tight and compact, with all the right words and not a single extra one thrown in, using flashbacks appropriately to the best illuminative effect, to highlight a man – a magician on the cusp of nationwide success – suffering from severe mental illness to the lethal detriment of others. No need to include spoilers; suffice it to say that the dummy takes on a life of its own, and that several murders are involved in its overprotective dominance of the magician.

Since the majority of the novel takes place in one of the most basic settings of the horror novel, the cabin in the woods, all the ingredients for a scary tale are thusly present. There’s the ventriloquist dummy, that cabin in the woods, knives (one of the victims is a knife salesman, natch), and a “trick” ending. But this is before all those ingredients became clichés, became horror staples. All together, they work. Surprisingly, I felt very touched reading the last two pages, something I’d never expect from a novel like Magic.

But even better, and perhaps the best accolade I can give, is the layers of intricacies in the plot. Corky – the ventriloquist –acting not entirely under his own free will, thanks to the dummy, “Fats” – increasingly slips deeper and deeper into difficulties, those like you might find in a classic mystery novel, and our poor magician has to juggle missing victims, dead bodies, incriminating clues, spider webs of spoken lies, a heavier and heavier load, in ever-burdensome attempts to shift blame and suspicion and somehow stop the madness that is eating him inside out.

I bestow upon Magic the Hopper Seal of Approval: an A. It ain’t Dostoevsky (or maybe it is, come to think of it – editor), but it does what it sets out to do with lethal single-mindedness: an increasingly eerie tale that brings you in and keeps the pages turning.