I ordered it about a week back. My childhood copy had gone missing.
I love Paul Gallico’s writing. He’s probably known best these days for The Poseidon Adventure (1969), but I hope not. This one, The Man Who Was Magic (1966), remains one of my favorite books–not least for its portrayal of magic. My grandmother gave me my copy, back in the day. I vividly disliked the cover at the time, and consequently it was years before I actually opened it and read it. But from the first chapter, I was in love. I don’t think I slept until I’d finished it.
Gallico was a bestselling writer in his own day, and he’s one of those writer’s whose prolific output hasn’t served to cement his literary legacy. There is a tendency to dismiss him as a great “storyteller” rather than a writer, and certainly the archetypes in his narratives… could use some updating. But when he hits it, he really hits it. There is a description of a little girl’s uncomfortable spangled tights in this book–forty years after I first read that passage, it still has a special niche in my brain. There was an observed sympathy for her situation that Gallico understood, and I understood that he understood.
Gallico was a man who could write convincingly about human goodness, and human bravery. That’s a rare and under-rated talent in our culture.