I daresay the majority of close-up magicians will readily improve their standard of work by adopting just one selection from Mr. Wind’s professional repertoire; adopt two or three such pieces and you will drive yourself toward matching standards that might well serve to raise the caliber of your work for the rest of your life.
Jamy Ian Swiss
Silvan’s performing record as a “general practitioner” reflects a tremendously accomplished career, including as the author of a dozen books for both magicians and the public, not to mention the sale of more than a million magic kits for beginners.
“How do you even begin to review The Magic of Johnny Thompson Volumes I and II? First, I suppose, you drive down to the word store and load up on superlatives. Every aspect of these books is first rate, and their contents constitute a graduate course in close-up and platform magic.”—STEVE BRYANT
We are pleased to announce that, with the sell-out success of The Magic of Johnny Thompson, Magicana is now preparing a second printing of this historic book.
What accounts for the longevity of this classic? A recent survey has been touted that suggests that the public supposedly dislikes the classics of magic. The results of this survey mean—well, absolutely nothing to me, because the survey simply measures participants’ preconceived notions about magic. I, for one, have no interest in creating art based on random surveys or focus groups; I’ll leave that to lousy summer blockbuster movies.
Believe it or not, we are just a couple of copies away from selling out of The Magic of Johnny Thompson!
Louis Tannen, the founder and original proprietor of Tannen’s Magic in Manhattan, was the first person to teach me sleight of hand. He taught me sponge balls when I was about ten or eleven years old, and later dice stacking, and the Chop Cup. By the time I was about 13 I was performing the Chop Cup for my parents’ friends at home cocktail parties, behind our four-stool home bar....
The Magic of Johnny Thompson—the epic 663-page, two-volume slipcased set featuring seventy-eight routines with nearly 1,100 images, drawn from a lifetime of magic—is finally bound and sealed … and now signed.
Why get The Paradigm Shift Vol. 1 & 2? Because they are “filled to the brim with theory, technique, effects, history, perspective, experience, and a distinctive creator’s voice. What more do you want...?”