Magic challenges our sense of what's real; Houdini wanted to challenge the ultimate reality of death, by risking it over and over. That risk, he later wrote, is what "attracts us to the man who paints the flagstaff on the tall building, or to the 'human fly,' who scales the walls of the same building. […]
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 08:24PM on March 23, 2020