Parallax

59 essays originally contributed to MAGIC magazine from September 1991 to August 1996 and a final one in 2016.
(Missing the columns from December 1993 and May 1994.)
Book
2023
Written by Max Maven*
Work of Max Maven*
194 pages (Hardcover), published by Squash Publishing
No illustrations
Language: English
62 entries
This publication has been reviewed by
Cover photograph
Creators Title Comments & References Page Categories
Stephen Minch Sweet Bitterness
Max Maven* As I was Saying...
  • Banal Retentive (on banality of evil and magicians following instruction sheets)
  • Peering Out (on magicians buying books and not reading them)
  • Off the record (on Aldo Richiardi buying records so he’d make sure the music in his show was different from everything else)
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 1
Max Maven* Strangers on a Train of Thought
  • Ear of the beholder (The comedy magician who was not original)
  • Dim some (on Michael Jeffreys using parts of reviews out of context)
  • Proof positive that I have too much free time
  • Revisionist theory of the month
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 3
Max Maven* Ennui Are The World
  • Heresy for the nineties
  • No silver platters (on things not being handed to you)
  • Son of consumer guide
  • Original sin (the magician who plagiarized not the method, but the presentation from one of Max Maven’s routines)
  • Proof that at least some aspects of the sociology of magic are not unique
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 6
Max Maven* ‘Tis the Season
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 9
Max Maven* New Year's Grating
  • A rose (on spelling magicians’ names properly)
  • Lecture lecture (on lecturing about other magicians’ material)
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 13
Max Maven* Vintage Whine
  • Culinary Conjecture
  • Twenty Questions
  • Define Tuning ("which show did you see - the early show or the late show?")
  • Dictionary update of the month (Creativity: stealing from more than one source)
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 16
Max Maven* Forward, March
  • Down for Grabs (Theft in Magic and Bob Brown)
  • Schrodinger’s Magician
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 20
Max Maven* Taxing Times
  • Hospitality
  • Art or Tourette’s (on Jerry Sadowitz)
  • Meow Mix
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 23
Max Maven* Mayday! Mayday!
  • Divisive and Illusion (differences between how Magic and Circus professionals mingle or not with amateurs)
  • Solución
  • Meow Mix
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 27
Max Maven* Jejune Is Busting Out All Over
  • Ichi, Ni… (on the balance between Natural, Aesthetic, and Spiritual)
  • Meow Mix
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Variations
 30
Max Maven* July Detector
  • Scotchtape (again on Jerry Sadowitz)
  • Eros by any other name
  • Gaffed to the hilt
  • Dressing room etiquette: How to practice proper behavior when attending another magician’s performance
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 34
Max Maven* Time and Tied
  • Once upon a time
  • Terms used in my writings for this magazine during its first twelve months which were replaced at the request of the editor
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 37
Max Maven* Out of the Panning Fray
  • Provocateur of duty (on the topic of professional and amateur magicians, referencing the previous essay “Mayday! Mayday!”)
  • Meow Mix
  • Poetry Corner (on someone selling knockoff Origami Boxes)
  • Cinematopoeia (on Shakes the Clown and Killer Klowns from Outer Space)
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 40
Max Maven* Trick or Treatise
  • Dulphin (method vs. effect vs. purpose)
  • Watts in a name (on misspellings of Marvyn Roy)
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 45
Max Maven* High Tension Whyer
  • Cover charge (on diversity and sexism in magic and the absence of women in the previous fifteen covers of the magazine)
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 48
Max Maven* Scrooge et Noir
  • Here and Meow (Dubious achievements awards)
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 51
Max Maven* Thereby Angst a Tale
  • Theory of Relativity
  • Camera Obscura
  • What becomes a legend most? (on how Al Smith wrote “No More Heroes” for the November 21 issue of Abra)
  • Copywrong
  • Sign of the times
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 54
Max Maven* Febriferous
  • Auguste in winter
  • Extinguished fulfillment (Why are magicians afraid of mystery? Why do magicians get into magic?)
  • Meow mix
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 57
Max Maven* The Shadow of Your Simile
  • Catharthesis
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 60
Max Maven* April Moi, Le Déluge
  • French toast (One of the theories around April’s first being fools day; some errors in magic literature)
  • Little effete (Etymological background on the word patter)
  • Drinks are on me
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 63
Max Maven* Hope Springs External
  • Rotterdammerung (Bob Driebeeck watching Okito with binoculars)
  • Working for scale (Magicians neglecting the Why)
  • The silence of the shepherd
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 66
Max Maven* The Scrying Game
  • The origin of the specious (On originality)
  • Carper’s index (On David Copperfield’s XV special)
  • A different conundrummer
  • Word down (Doublets, a word game created by Lewis Carroll)
  • Dis solution
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 68
Max Maven* Neurotica
  • Paint-counterpaint (On Walter Keane and commerciality in magic; artist vs. entertainer)
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 71
Max Maven* A Midsummer Night’s Drone
  • Thermavolence
  • In a Trans
  • There’ll be Shoes There
  • Tapeworms (On people assuming they have the right to record performers or lecturers)
  • The evolution will not be televised
  • M.C. Grammar
  • Skeptrics
  • Poetry Corner (Krenzel Mechanical Reverse)
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 74
Max Maven* The Silver Scream
  • Verbalchemy (On the etymology of certain power words: abracadabra, hocus pocus, gabbatha, selah, alakazam, shazam, presto, sim-sala-bim, sarmoti)
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 77
Max Maven* Angst for the Memories
  • Obscuriosity (Linking Ring, Fred Keating)
  • Meow Mix
  • Hospitality
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 80
Max Maven* The And-Illusion Dogma
  • Order in the Sort (Subtleties, sleights, and gimmicks; Four types of methods: natural laws disguised, secret activity, secretly prepared materials, psychology)
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 83
Max Maven* Cold Lang Syne
  • Snow Koan (Max Maven meeting Francis Carlyle)
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 86
Max Maven* What Part of "Know" Don't You Understand?
  • Suspension of Disbelief, Indeed (George LaLondr getting stabbed by a farmer as he was about to saw a lady in half)
  • Past Pluperfect (Goldburg)
  • Let There be Lightbulbs
  • Meow Mix
  • Academic Validation
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 89
Max Maven* Monocular Regency
  • On Thin Eyes (On how magicians convince themselves that the flaws they see will not be seen by a lay person)
  • Heads or Tales (Relative lack of women in magic)
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 92
Max Maven* Vitriollie-Ollie-Infree
  • Root Bier (On what is not the etymology of the word “magic”)
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 95
Max Maven* Neuroses by Any Other Name
  • Loquacity Slicker
  • By the gram (On Chris Dugdale’s Magicgram column on the classic force)
  • Picture Perfect
  • Hard Copy (On originality)
  • In Decks (On why to not use jumbo index cards in performance)
  • Balleptomaine
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 98
Max Maven* Mystery Loves Company
  • How I Spent My Beltane Vacation (Jeff McBride’s Mystery School)
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 101
Max Maven* To Sense, Plain
  • Meow Mix
  • Give & Tech (On the recurring comment that advanced technology has replaced magic)
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 104
Max Maven* And a Partridge in a Despair Tree (Intro on identifying problems and offering solutions)
  • Contestosterone (On the issues with magic competitions and the fact that these evaluate performers as if in an athletic sport - solution to be proposed in the following month’s column)
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 107
Max Maven* The Camel's Chiropractor
  • Just Say Nomenclature
  • Just Say Noteworthy (Raising the standard of contestants)
  • Just say Nomography (On paying contest judges, the composition of judge panels, and judging methodology)
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 110
Max Maven* Picks & Trepans
  • Conundrub (A puzzle for the reader to match reviews with magicians)
  • Hi, Finance
  • The More Things Change (Answers to the previous puzzle)
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 116
Max Maven* Tales of Misery and Imagination
  • The Grift of the Magi (A tale of the devil visiting a magic dealer)
  • No Sexism, We’re British (On sexism and magicians’ assistants)
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 119
Max Maven* The Morbid the Merrier
  • Meta-Meow (On exposure)
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 122
Max Maven* Tempus Fuckit
  • Good for the Soul
  • Tempus Fugit (On spending time and Max’s year living in Rome)
  • Touch Tone (On physically touching spectators and how touching in perceived in different cultures; references Eugene Burger and Bob Reiss)
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 125
Max Maven* Ferally We Roll Along
  • Customized
  • Tyranny of the Minority (On whether magic is art or a minor art; Bob Parrish, Sam Sharpe)
  • In the Nick (On the number of women in magic)
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 128
Max Maven* Play It as It Malaise
  • Angstarap (On becoming a professional magician and what that means; “Prepare to starve. Prepare to live in an unstable existence. Prepare to be in a state of constant frustration.”, and “Gone are the days of formal apprenticeship.”; The Rising Rate of Expectations, racism and riots in America)
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 131
Max Maven* Ceci N'est Pas Une Pipedream
  • Firsthand Experience (On art and the meaning of a hand)
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 135
Max Maven* Depresstidigitation
  • Fao Pas (On Barbie coming out as a magician sawing Ken in half and the press reaction to that)
  • Push & Chauv (On nationalism in magic and elsewhere)
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 138
Max Maven* Better Desolate Than Never
  • The Play’s The Sting (On being successful vs. understanding success)
  • Wratings
  • Poll Bearer’s Renew
  • Metaphysical Meow
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 142
Max Maven* Gloominous Plaint
  • Youthless (On age and a news piece on David Blaine - then 22 years of age)
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 145
Max Maven* Tormentalism
  • Plus Ça Changebag (On magic vs. puzzles, the interaction with spectators who want to know the method, and how simplicity does not equate weakness)
  • Oy, Survey (on Marlo inventing Tilt)
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 147
Max Maven* I'll Build a Stairway to Paradox
  • Pimpromptu (On spontaneous requests for performance in informal situations; impromptu performances vs. formal performances)
  • Of Mice and Mentalism (On The Amazing Kreskin)
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 150
Max Maven* Shouting "Fire" in a Crowded Theory
  • Lesson is More (On Max’s first magic convention and Jack Chanin selling a trick for $5)
  • Poster Mortem (On stealing)
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 153
Max Maven* Iconoclast Call
  • Hello, Scaler (On whether art is autobiographical or a product of a community - or both)
  • Ipogram
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 156
Max Maven* Happy New Jeer
  • Going Bust
  • Screen Dour
  • Ashes to Ashes (On finding “a place to be bad” in order to grow, perspective, and Max Maven giving up smoking)
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 159
Max Maven* Brother, Can You Spare a Paradigm?
  • Jocular Ocular (On the meaning of “parallax” and the naming of this column)
  • Why there are more close-up workers than mentalists
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 162
Max Maven* Less Is Morose
  • Numb-er (On Fitzkee’s taxonomy of 19 basic conjuring effects)
  • And A Hardy Place (Etimology)
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 165
Max Maven* Nonsense and Nonsensibility
  • Wind in the Sales
  • Feverity
  • Oral Robbers (Helping a prisoner escape by slipping him a handcuff key)
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 168
Max Maven* Hippity-Hop Rabid
  • For Their Britches (On the set of the movie Big)
  • Outfitness
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 171
Max Maven* Hope Stings Eternal
  • Critical Mash (On criticism and The Books of Wonder)
  • Birth Right (On the birthday paradox)
  • Roomers
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 174
Max Maven* How I Spent My Summer Vexation
  • I of the needle (On the Destruction & Restoration plot; on the Gipsy Thread / Hindu Thread and versions by Peter Samelson, Eugene Burger, and Gaetan Bloom)
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 177
Max Maven* An Apartment in Samarra on Anne Gwynne at eighty-two years old and on the five years of this column
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 178
Max Maven* Cynicalculator written in 2016 and delivered as a live talk at MAGIC Live! - August 2016
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 184
Max Maven* Selected Works by Max Maven
191
Max Maven* About the Author
193
Data entered by José Castro, May 2024.