“The Houdini Box” by Brian Selznick is the story of a boy who idolizes Harry Houdini and wants to be a magician too. Victor tries to do the great feats that he reads Houdini can do—escape from a locked trunk, hold his breath for five thousand seconds, or walk through a brick wall—but he never succeeds.
One day he meets Houdini and the magician asks for Victor’s address. Some days later he receives a letter from Houdini that says “A thousand secrets await you. Come to my house…”. When Victor arrives he is greeted by Houdini’s wife. He hands her the letter. She goes upstairs and comes back with a box, hands it to Victor, and shows him out. Crying as she closes the door she says “Houdini died today”.
The ensuing passage reads:
That night, while he was trying to open the lock on the box with pins and pens and all the small keys from suitcases and clocks around the house, Victor found the owner’s initials engraved on the bottom:
E.W.
This wasn’t Houdini’s box at all! The owner was some E. W. There could be no secrets in here.
Imagine, as you read this, how it would feel if you had one dream, one hope, one mysterious wish, and then saw it disappear into thin air. That’s how Victor felt… (he) buried (the box) forever at the bottom of his closet… (and) made this promise: “Houdini is gone. I will never think about him again or try to do any of his tricks. Cross my heart and hope to die.”
Excuse me, but WHAT THE F*CK?!?!? This kid gives up because he sees two letters scrawled on the front of the box? That’s proof that the box isn’t Houdini’s and has NOTHING to do with him? What nine-year-old knows what initials are? What human being in their right mind would suddenly believe with complete assurance that a small wooden box from the attic of a magician’s house tearfully handed to him by the man’s widow on the day of his death would have ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE of containing ANYTHING REMOTELY RELATED to Harry Houdini? Did God suddenly reach inside Victor’s head and TURN HIM INTO AN IDIOT?!?!?
The story goes on: the box is forgotten for years, until Victor comes upon Houdini’s grave while playing catch with his own son, and sees that Houdini’s real name is Ehrich Weiss. E.W.!
You can probably guess at the remainder of the story: Victor rushes home, digs up the box, and finally learns Houdini’s secrets.
So manufactured is the exciting twist on which the entire book depends—the twist that every good mystery story needs. The problem is that this twist is so unbelievable it is insulting. What a joke.
It seems the author decided he wished to write an intriguing, suspenseful book, and, before bothering to write a story that is at all intriguing or suspenseful, began mocking up the book’s cover and contacting publishing agents and engaging pertinent social media networks. As he read about Houdini, made beautiful pencil chiaroscuro drawings, and photographed each step of the process for his website, he overlooked the task of writing a story—assuming, I’m sure, that he’d “sort that part out later”. And once everything was in place, the publishing contract signed, and the book cover designed, he hastily pulled the crux of his story out of his you-know-what. After all, it’s a kid’s book—they won’t understand anyway!
This air-headed method of creating media reminds me of some Hollywood movies I’ve seen recently—crudely cobbled together around an image or an idea that has everything to do with the target audience and absolutely nothing to do with the story. They’re like advertisements stretched out into two-hour events.
Perhaps people think that truth and reality are no longer important, and that what really matters is how it all looks—how well it matches some agreed-upon and accepted model, e.g. “mystery”, “action movie”, etc. As long as there are “x” number of shots of Nicole Kidman looking outdoorsy and dressed in perfect period attire, nobody will care what actually happens or if the story makes a whit of sense.
After consuming trash so crassly created, one feels rather empty. After reading “The Houdini Box”, I felt especially cheated, as I’d read it over two half-hour sessions with a fourth-grade student, and I was ecstatic to have found a book that held his attention. The illustrations are marvelous, the writing is simple and clear, and the content is spread out to avoid any intimidating blocks of text. Then we reached the passage quoted above, and I felt the wind go out of my sails.
I couldn’t tell how much it affected my reading partner, as his reading comprehension is rather limited, and unfortunately we were never able to finish the book together thanks to absurd testing requirements imposed upon fourth-graders these days. I can’t help but think, however, that if there’d been a twist more carefully composed—something that sneaks up on you and in the end is obvious and had been hiding in plain sight all along—he might’ve gotten a little thrill out of it. And this little thrill would have been something he’d created as much in his own imagination as the author did in his, and maybe he’d get the itch to seek out more thrills like this in the pages of more books. Instead, he’d have been better off watching a movie.
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