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Steven Galloway’s ‘The Confabulist’ Reimagines the Legend of Harry Houdini and Explores the True Power of Magic..

Steven Galloway’s ‘The Confabulist’ Reimagines the Legend of Harry Houdini and Explores the True Power of Magic..

By Morgan Ribera for Bustle..

Magic: the art of illusion, the masterful practice of sleight of hand and deceit, the tools through which magicians can make others believe, if only temporarily, in something they know to be impossible. Such magic, and its evolution in the early 20th century, is the subject of Steven Galloway’s latest novel The Confabulist (Riverhead). In it, he explores the veracity of memory, the fictionalization of identity, and the role of magic and illusion in our everyday lives through the story of infamous illusionist Harry Houdini.

The novel opens with narrator Martin Strauss, a magic enthusiast and rather ordinary man whose story is told alongside Houdini’s in alternating chapters. Strauss is Galloway’s fictional version of the real life fan who allegedly punched Houdini in the stomach at a Montreal theater in 1926. In this opening chapter we find Strauss in a therapy session…

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Johnny Depp in Negotiations to Star as Houdini in Lionsgate Film (Exclusive)

Johnny Depp in Negotiations to Star as Houdini in Lionsgate Film (Exclusive)

Is Johnny Depp looking to pull a vanishing act?

The actor is in negotiations to star as famed magician Harry Houdini in The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero for Lionsgate’s Summit label. Dean Parisot (Red 2) is directing.

The story, which is said to be in the vein of Indiana Jones, recasts Houdini as not just a master escape artist but an investigator of the world of the occult. Noah Oppenheim wrote the screenplay, which is based on William Kalush and LarrySloman’s book of the same name…

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Hot Docs: James Randi, the original mythbuster..

Hot Docs: James Randi, the original mythbuster..

By Graham Slaughter for TheStar.com

A white-bearded man in a black cloak glides across the lawn. It’s a warm morning at the University of Toronto, and the dark figure moves past the castle-like buildings, measuring each step with a cane. A green feather peeks from his hat.

If you didn’t know better, you might mistake him for a wizard. But that’s the furthest from the truth.

For decades, James Randi, now 85, has been the world’s foremost debunker of anyone who claims supernatural powers — psychics, mystics, faith healers. Before that he was best known as a magician, having appeared on stages worldwide as The Amazing Randi. Some considered him the best escape artist since Harry Houdini…

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Steven Galloway interlaces history, imagination around Houdini’s death..

Steven Galloway interlaces history, imagination around Houdini’s death..

 In-depth article by Marsha Lederman for The Globe and Mail..

Master of the escape, conqueror of chain-wrapped contraptions, self-liberator from handcuffs and jail cells – and from his own humble roots – the great American magician Harry Houdini met his match on Canadian soil: blows to the stomach – in the dressing room of the Princess Theatre in Montreal – that, the story goes, killed him a few days later.

It is the beginning of Houdini’s end that forms the basis of novelist Steven Galloway’s much-anticipated followup to his 2008 novel, The Cellist of Sarajevo. The Confabulist reimagines the life and death of one of the world’s most sensational illusionists. And in alternating chapters, it tells the story of Martin Strauss, a character Galloway invents as the thrower of the Montreal punches that became the stuff of legend

“Houdini’s death has always really interested me,” Galloway explains during an interview in his book-filled office at the University of British Columbia, where he is acting chair of the Creative Writing program. Even more intriguing to the novelist: “What would it be like to be the guy who punched Harry Houdini in the stomach?”

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