Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician

In 1998 Daniel Wallace hit the mother lode with his first novel, Big Fish, which has been translated into twenty-one languages and highlighted a number of best seller lists. In 2003 it was adapted for the screen and directed by Tim Burton. It was the ultimate fish tale.

Just as a fish tale dances around the truth, so does magic, which is based on illusions that seem to show something that may or may not be there. This multi-layered novel explores that conundrum through a simple device. We never hear directly from the protagonist, Henry Walker, the sometimes Negro magician. Rather, we hear his story as told to Rudy, the world's strongest man; JJ, the carnival barker; Jenny, the ossified girl; and Carson Mulvaney, the private investigator. How much truth remains in differing recollections; how much is misdirection?

Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician is superior to Wallace's considerable previous efforts, including Big Fish (1998), Ray in Reverse (2000) and The Watermelon King (2003). There is a coherent, but fantastical, story line that draws the reader along and maintains interest throughout. Henry Walker, who becomes the magician of the title, is a boy whose family has fallen on hard times. His mother has died and they (father, sister, and he) have fallen from riches to near penury, living in a hotel where his increasingly alcoholic father is the janitor. Then, one fateful day, the 10-year old Henry meets Mr. Sebastian, who turns out to be the devil. They strike a Faustian bargain so that Henry can become a serious magician. He makes his sister disappear - really disappear! (Wallace indicated at a recent talk that he did no research for this novel, and that all the tricks were conjured out of his mind.) For the rest of his life Henry is haunted by the bargain and Hannah's disappearance. His considerable and very real skills wither away. This loss of skill did not reduce Henry's appeal. Indeed, at the time of the novel in the Deep South, this was even better since "Watching a Negro fail was amusing. It was life-affirming … the crowds could not get enough of it."

We never meet the two characters of the title; we learn about them from the recollections of the friends of Henry Walker, the Negro magician, who was "tall, gaunt, doomed … A black man with green eyes." What we know about Mr. Sebastian comes almost entirely from their recollections of what Henry told them. But, we must take all of this with the proverbial grain of salt, for Walker's friends are carnival denizens, and they are known for shading the truth. These "freaks" are either born (Bambi Dextrous, so tiny she could curl up in a shoebox, or Whit the Stickman, so thin he "has to stand in the same place THREE TIMES to cast a shadow.") or made (Henry the Negro magician who took psoralen to change his skin color). As Mosgrove said "(E)very word he told Rudy was true-not factual, but true." What you see, or told you will see, is not always what you get. This cast of freaks brought to mind a small carnival I saw in the mid-1950s (the same time as that of this novel) in Southeastern North Carolina where I was able to pay my quarter and see, among the more traditional freaks, a man in an iron lung. The threat and reality of polio being very real at that time, this was a memento mori that has remained vivid in my mind all these years.

The journal of Jeremiah Mosgrove, owner of the Chinese Circus, also provides us with information about Henry. This "journal" has missing pages, some of which appear to have been lost or burned. Wallace said that when he got bored with a particular tack the journal was taking, he just stopped writing. As it turns out, that was a very useful literary device, propelling the plot through innumerable twists and turns and cliff-hangers, and leading to a surprising conclusion.

This is one of the three best novels about the carnival life I have read in the last year or so. Margaret Maron's Slow Dollar and Tim McLaurin's The Last Great Snake Show are also set in the South and explore serious subjects while touching on serious subjects-in this instance, the issue of racism in the 1950s. The argument that this issue is not fully developed cannot be supported. The characters who tell the story are not intellectual by any stretch. And, the setting is around 1954. They are true to their time and the persona created by the author, which is all we can ask of any character.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Daniel Wallace attended Emory University and the University of North Carolina. He now lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with his wife and son, and teaches writing at the University of North Carolina. His illustrations have appeared in the L.A. Times, Italian Vanity Fair and many other publications. He designed the cover for this novel. Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician was a number one pick for July by Booksense. Learn more about Wallace at www.danielwallace.org.