Tractare

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Tractare

Postby Sexton Blake » Oct 18th, '08, 17:16



Tractare by R Shane

Cost

£15.99 from http://www.magicbox.uk.com


Difficulty

(1=easy to do, 2=No sleights, but not so easy, 3=Some sleights used,
4=Advanced sleights used, 5=Suitable for experienced magicians only)

1-3.


Description

“Sequel to 'Automata', from the author of 'Pentalogy'!

In Tractare (A Latin word that means "To Handle") we continue that exploration. Second of a three part series that started with 'Automata,' Tractare features magic that is easy to do, based on a subtlety or simple move, but nothing that really requires sleights or finger flinging. Here you are able to beguile your audiences while making them smile, laugh, engage and become PART of your show!”

Contents Include:

- Eyes, Ears, Nose, and...
- Irresistible Force
- Gypsy Remains
- Possibility Zilch
- Through With Things
- Something and Something
- Priceless Mystery
- Dishware Runs Amok
- Table Rasa...Yes and No
- The Little Things In Life
- Making Janus Jealous
- String and Things
- Non-Stop Flight

Pages 154 - Softbound

Review

First off, you can download a pdf sample of this book from http://www.leapinglizardsmagic.com/tractare_sample.pdf

Second off, don’t.

Well, you can if you want to – and, let’s face it, you’re doing so right now, aren’t you? Rebel that you are. But, really, you’re better off not doing it. I downloaded the free sample an age ago, and it convinced me not to buy the book. It was only later, having (I forget how now) fallen in love with R Shane from a different angle, that I ‘took the risk’. There are two problems with the sample. One if that it’s 31 pages but those include only one trick, ‘Eyes, Ears, Nose, and...’. The rest is introduction, foreword, a lengthy explanation of the nomenclature he’ll be using, adverts for other books, etc. This gives the impression that it’ll be very ‘theoretical’ with tricks themselves playing only a small part. Well, in reality, there is theory and thought – lovely theory and fabulous thought – but it’s always applied to specific effects; it’s not ‘general musing’; it’s beautiful thinking used practically to improve a presentation.

The other problem with the sample is that the trick it includes is one where you produce things from your mouth. Here’s my Seventh Rule of Close Up Magic: “Never produce anything from you mouth.” Why? I can’t believe you even have to ask. Because it’s revolting, that’s why. OK, I’ll make the qualification that, if you’re Pete Firman and your whole style is that sort of ‘Yuck, Ouch, Ugh’ magic then it’s all right. (Providing you’re good enough to carry it off in terms of personality and skill. Basically, ask yourself this question: “Am I Pete Firman?”) Otherwise, it does nothing but introduce spittle-laden unpleasantness which moves you from ‘magician’ to ‘horrible schoolboy’. Anyway, this mouth-based effect is, in fact, wholly uncharacteristic of the book. Shane does say that it’s not something he’d normally do, unless it were as a chat show stunt; but, reading only the sample pdf, you’re not to know that the entire rest of the book is intelligent magic – funny, scary, quirky, (a little) smutty, whatever: but always maintaining a spit-free level of charm and sophistication.

That out of the way, let quickly run through the effects.

- Eyes, Ears, Nose, and...
A number of small things – Tic-Tacs, say – are produced from your mouth, after having been thrust into other facial openings.

- Irresistible Force
A lovely, fair as fairies-looking force which you can use with various things. (The force is not Shane’s invention.) Some suggestions for how to use it.

- Gypsy Remains
A simple, old trick for turning a signed bill into an IOU under a spec-held hanky; the bill itself being found later in whatever ‘impossible location’ you fancy.

OK, let me pause here, because this is the thing that’s the gorgeous heart of Tractare. Irresistible Force and Gypsy Remains: an old (ish, but little known) force and a My First Magic Book-style effect. Shane takes these, invites you aboard his train of thought, and takes you to ‘A Shatter of Time’ – an effect where (to run through it rapidly) a pocket watch is given to a spec to examine and set to midnight; this is put in a hanky which the spec holds; the spec is asked to choose a photo of a clock/watch from a set that quite clearly has many different possibilities; now, while the spec’s still holding it and the magician isn’t touching anything, the glass face of the watch is heard to shatter and, when taken from the hanky (by the spec) is seen to have done so with its face now reading the same time as the watch/clock in the photo the spec selected.

Thus, throughout Tractare, Shane takes a relatively simple move/trick – many of which you’ll have come across before, probably early on in your magic life – muses on them; corrects their failings; enhances their good points; ponders on the rhythm of performance and how best to compose it; (often) then runs off in an unexpected direction, taking all this with him - and comes up with one (or, just as likely, several) effects based on it.

It’s a delight.

OK, back to the bald list.

- Possibility Zilch.
A Paul Curry prediction effect, Shaned into a presentation about phobias.

- Through With Things
Two penetration party tricks you’ll all know brought together and jiggled about.

- Something and Something
Variations on the ‘Sheep and Thieves’ coin trick.

- Priceless Mystery
Updating UF Grant’s $1,000,000 Mystery.

- Dishware Runs Amok
A pile of different cups and balls routines, not using cups and balls.

- Table Rasa...Yes and No
In which Shane pokes around with Anneman’s Psychic Writing.

- The Little Things In Life
Routines with, um, that thing where you put something in your pocket (but – shhh – you don’t, really).

- Making Janus Jealous
I’m not telling you. I don’t want anyone else to know this. Spooky fabness.

- String and Things
Ring and string stuff.

- Non-Stop Flight
A sort of cards across effect, but with the spec’s greatest worry moving from one signed and sealed envelope to another.

Overall

9/10. A marvellous book. Why not 10/10, then? Well, 10/10 is unimprovable perfection. Tractare isn’t perfection for me, because it contains some things that are not to my taste (the first effect, for example). I’m not going to criticise that, though, because I think most people relish a book with a wide variety of effects (not all cards or all coins tricks, say); but if you have variety there are always going to be things that are not for you. The cost of breadth is some stuff spilling outside your area of interest, and that’s a cost well worth paying, in my opinion.

However, more of an irk is that I did occasionally wish Tractare were a DVD. The moves can be difficult to understand, sometimes, from text alone (there are no pictures whatsoever). In fact, on page 31 there’s a bit – “just flick the thumb” – which is an important, discrete ‘move’, and I still don’t know quite what it means. It might even, I suspect, be a typo. Also, I feel Tractare does occasionally overstretch its claim that everything within is “Not quite a move. Less than a sleight.” Surely Han Ping Chien is a ‘move’, for example? Isn’t a false transfer a sleight? There are no very hard sleights or moves – and, certainly, the tricks are never ‘about’ the sleights – but it isn’t all merely at the ‘facing a deck’ level.

Those two little bits mean I can’t possibly give Tractare 10/10, but they are small niggles in what is a vastly interesting, engaging, thought-provoking and useful book.

Tonight, Matthew, I will be ‘A fourteen-year-old boy from somewhere in America at the Penguin wesbite’... “Three words: add to cart!!!!!”

(But don’t read Making Janus Jealous, or I’ll set fire to your house.)

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Sexton Blake
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