Do You Believe in Magic?

The Night Circus
By Erin Morgenstern

The science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke famously wrote, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." People who write about the tech industry are very fond of this quote, but in our technology-driven age, it doesn't feel true to me. I remember the feeling of trying out an iPhone for the first time. It felt wonderful, but it didn't feel like magic. It felt like an advanced technology. Magic should feel not just like something that doesn't exist yet, but like something that can't exist.

I wrote recently about how I've been rereading the Harry Potter books with my 8-year-old, and he loves them, especially the depictions of magic that are make sense within the life of a child: the pranks and the quidditch games and so on. I love the way magic shows up in the middle of mundane tasks like washing dishes. JK Rowling doesn't need to tell us how it works. She just needs to give us enough to rest our imagination on.

Recently, I read an interview with Lev Grossman, the critic and author of "The Magicians" and its sequels, in which he remarked on how C.S. Lewis mostly avoids explaining how the magic works in his Narnia books. Grossman notes that some fantasy writers today are so concerned with making their magical worlds believable that they fail to give their readers the sense of wonder that should accompany depictions of magic. I liked how Grossman framed it: If a spell obeys Newton's laws of thermodynamics, it isn't really magic.

One thing I liked about "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern is the way it leaves its magic mostly unexplained.

"The Night Circus" begins with a scene of an eerily beautiful, black and white circus tent appearing to pop up out of nowhere in a field somewhere. Guests pay their admission and enter the strange "Cirque des Reves," the Circus of Dreams, where they experience illusions, see trapeze artists, animal trainers and many of the usual circus attractions, but with a surrealistic flourish.

The novel then introduces us to the creators of the circus and we learn that the performances don't just look magical, they are are augmented by actual magic, as two magicians use their skills in ways seen and unseen. Cleverly, they use actual engineering to conceal what they are doing, so that the audience will believe they are seeing exceptional examples of the usual tricks and misdirection, instead of actual magic.

I like that idea. I don't know about you, but when I see a fantasy movie where I know all the special effects are done through computer imagery, the experience is often ho-hum, but when I see a movie where I know the special effects were at least partly achieved through forced perspective and other visual trickery, I find the experience, well, magical. I imagine if I was at the circus, it would feel almost disappointing to know that magic was behind it all. Paradoxically, it feels more magical to think, "How did they do that?"

Jumping back and forth in time, Morgenstern reveals that the circus is the venue of a challenge between the two magicians, Celia and Marco, each of whom was raised from a young age to compete with each other in a contest they don't really understand, but cannot escape. Their competition creates a wonderful experience for the circus audience, and makes them fall in love with each other.

There are scenes in "The Night Circus" where the lovers' desire for each other intensifies their magic, and it's wonderfully romantic and sexy. I didn't like everything about this novel, but I loved that part. Desire is another kind of magic, one that is all the more thrilling to read about because it is familiar to most of us.