The Right Way to Do Wrong

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Authors: Harry Houdini

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PRAISE FOR HARRY HOUDINI

“He was the wonder of the world in an old world hungry for wonders … He was the embodiment of something incredible … He came to represent the sum of all amazements.”

—
THE GUARDIAN

“To follow his early life among the East Side cabarets and the dime museums is to be stirred as one can always be stirred by the struggle of a superior man to emerge from the commonplaces, the ignominies and the pains of the common life.”

—
EDMUND WILSON

“Whatever the methods by which Harry Houdini deceived a large part of the world for nearly four decades, his career stamped him as one of the greatest showmen of modern times. In his special field of entertainment he stood alone.”

—
THE NEW YORK TIMES

“He seemed to express in his whole being and in his whole deportment: ‘I am who I am. I am the greatest. I am Harry Houdini.” '

—
E.L. DOCTOROW

“He had that something that no one can define that is generally just passed off under the heading of showmanship. But it was in reality, Sense, Shrewdness, Judgment, unmatched ability, Intuition, Personality, and an uncanny knowledge of people.”

—
WILL ROGERS

“He remains a mystery. His naiveté and his shrewdness, his shyness and his exhibitionism, his kindness and his unforgiving antagonisms proclaim a complicated and unknowable man.”

—NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

“A master of cunning and endurance.”

—
NPR

THE RIGHT WAY TO DO WRONG

HARRY HOUDINI
(1874–1926) was born Erik Weisz in Budapest, Hungary, the son of a rabbi. The family moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, when he was four, and changed their name from Weisz to Weiss, and Erik to Ehrich. To help support the family, Houdini first performed on stage in a trapeze act at the age of nine. After moving to New York at age 12, he became interested in magic, and concocted a stage name: ‘Harry' was an Americanized version of his nickname, Ehrie, and ‘Houdini' was inspired by magician Robert Houdin. Houdini's big break came in 1899 when he was offered a contract to perform on the best vaudeville stages in the US. Now known as the “Handcuff King,” Houdini toured Europe for five years, and upon returning to the U.S. began to perform the death-defying stunts that would make him one of the most famous people in the world, and one of the most popular early movie stars. He published
The Right Way to Do Wrong
in 1906 and edited
Conjurers' Monthly Magazine
in 1906–7. Towards the end of his life he famously dedicated himself to debunking spiritualists, even having an intense public feud with spiritualist-believer Arthur Conan Doyle. In 1926, after a performance in Montreal, an admirer visiting him backstage punched an unprepared Houdini in the stomach to test his famous muscle control. Houdini's appendix ruptured and, after peritonitis set in, he died—after one last performance in Detroit—at age 52.

TELLER
has been the quieter half of magic duo Penn & Teller since 1975. He has written five books and enjoyed successful runs on Broadway, sold-out world tours, starring roles in TV series, and the longest-running headline act in Las Vegas. He is an Emmy, Writers Guild Award, Obie and Drama Critics Circle winner.

THE NEVERSINK LIBRARY

I was by no means the only reader of books on board the
Neversink.
Several other sailors were diligent readers, though their studies did not lie in the way of belles-lettres. Their favourite authors were such as you may find at the book-stalls around Fulton Market; they were slightly physiological in their nature. My book experiences on board of the frigate proved an example of a fact which every book-lover must have experienced before me, namely, that though public libraries have an imposing air, and doubtless contain invaluable volumes, yet, somehow, the books that prove most agreeable, grateful, and companionable, are those we pick up by chance here and there; those which seem put into our hands by Providence; those which pretend to little, but abound in much
.

—
HERMAN MELVILLE,
WHITE JACKET

THE RIGHT WAY TO DO WRONG

Harry Houdini published the first edition of
The Right Way to Do Wrong
in 1906. This Melville House edition compiles the best of that book with pieces from
Conjurers' Monthly Magazine
, a magazine edited by Houdini between 1906 and 1907; chapters from
Magical Rope Ties and Escapes
, 1920; and chapters from
Miracle Mongers and Their Methods
, 1920.

This edition © Melville House 2012
Introduction © Teller, 2012

First Melville House printing: September 2012

Melville House Publishing
145 Plymouth Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201

www.mhpbooks.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the paperback edition as follows:
Houdini, Harry, 1874-1926.
  The right way to do wrong / Harry Houdini.
     p. cm.
  eISBN: 978-1-61219-167-6
 1. Criminology. 2. Swindlers and swindling. I. Title.
   HV6251.H6 2012
   364.16′3–dc23

2012029424

v3.1

INTRODUCTION
BY TELLER

Houdini knew marketing. He called himself “The Great Self-Liberator, World's Handcuff King, and Prison-Breaker.” That was the brand he hammered home to the public as he built his career. And it stuck.

When we think of Houdini, we picture a defiant little muscle man with penetrating blue eyes; we see a prisoner naked except for manacles bundled in front of his crotch; baffled police returning to a prison cell from which Houdini has inexplicably vanished; a handcuffed madman stripped to shorts and plummeting from a bridge to certain death in a river; a human sacrifice, straitjacketed, hanging by his ankles upside down over a mobbed metropolitan street as he writhes and thrashes, rips himself free, then drops the straitjacket into the sea of upturned faces and extends his arms for applause like an inverted Jesus.

But as with any good brand, the image oversimplifies the product. The public's invulnerable jock superhero had an intellectual side. One Houdini autograph reads, “My brain is the key that sets me free.” Houdini revered learning (his father was a rabbi) and was pained by his limited education (he went to school only till the sixth grade).
But Houdini made a specialty of steamrolling obstacles. As he built his career, he invested most of his fortune in books. His collection filled his home from basement to attic. He employed a librarian and once boasted to a correspondent, “You know, I actually live in a library.” When he died in 1926, his books were valued at half a million dollars, the equivalent of more than $6 million today. A portion of Houdini's collection is one of the treasures of the Library of Congress.

Houdini also aspired to be a writer. His expertise was in deception, both legitimate (magic) and illegitimate (crime), and he turned out fascinating books, pamphlets, and newspaper articles. You are about to read some of his liveliest and least known writings.

You'll notice two contrasting voices in Houdini's style. One is brash and sounds like a tough little street-fighter. That's raw Houdini, the sixth-grade-educated self-made man braying out his very definite views. The other style is all curlicued and upholstered, with ten-dollar Latinate words, complex sentences, and quotations from classical literature. The content is Houdini's, but translated from sideshow to lecture hall by ghostwriters who made him sound like the literate individual his rabbi father might have admired.

In the raw Houdini category, we've unearthed choice selections from
Conjurers' Monthly Magazine
, a trade journal Houdini put out filled with news, history, and advice for brother magicians. Here he talks nuts and bolts about magical performance. Houdini worked in an age before electronic amplification, when stage stars needed voices like opera singers. Houdini teaches you how you, too, can launch your consonants to the cheap seats.

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The Right Way To Do Wrong
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