The
Face of War |
Reviews and comments
"Uri Geller's claim to fame - bending spoons - might seem outlandish and a ruse. But Jonathan Margolis is not so sure. The British journalist had his own sort of conversion experience after watching a spoon bend in the presence of Uri Geller...without Geller touching it. He includes the compelling account of Geller's early life. It might not convince you of Geller's abilities, but Lev says this is a great read."
Lev's
Book Reccomendations
(Lev Raphael is a noted author and offers book suggestions.
Lev reviews books for The Washington Post and The Jerusalem Post.)
"Superstitious
atheists will find this book toxic. Jonathan Margolis clearly spooked
himself writing it and I got an attack of the creeps one night just
reading it."
- Evening Standard
"Uri's
ability to perform amazing feats of mental wizardry is known the world
over...Uri is not a magician. He is using capabilitie that we all
have and can develop with exercise and practice."
- Dr. Edgar Mitchell,
Apollo 14 Astronaut and sixth man to walk on the moon
"I
think Uri is a magician, but I don't particularly believe that he
is using trickery. I believe there are psychic abilities. They don't
accord with any science we have at the moment, but maybe some future
science will back them up with theories."
- Brian Josephson,
Professor of Physics, University of Cambridge,
Winner
of the Nobel Prize for Physics, 1973
"Uri
bent a spoon for me. The first time he did, I thought there must be
a trick. The second time I was stunned - completely, completely stunned
and amazed. It just bent in my hand. I;ve never seen anything like
it. It takes a lot to impress me. Uri Geller is for real and anyone
who doesn't recognise that is either deluding himself, or he is a
very sad person."
- David Blaine
"Geller
has bent my ring in the palm of my hand without ever touching it.
Personally, I have no scientific explanation for the phenomenon."
- Werner Von Braun
"I
came to this book a rationalist and a skeptic. Yet, open-mindedness
requires me to report that Jonathan Margolis' carefully researched,
scrupulously detailed and even-handed exploration of Uri Geller's
paranormal capacities suggests some of our current scientific understandings
will need radical revision in the next century."
- The Jewish Chronicle
August
15, 1999
The Sunday Mercury
Is Uri Geller really a psychic who can bend spoons and send messages by telepathy? Or is he the greatest illusionist the world has ever seen?
Jonathan Margolis started out as a sceptic and was gradually overwhelmed by the evidence as he researched and wrote Uri Geller - Magician or Mystic? (Orion £6.99).
He is not alone because this book seems to he littered with scoffing conjurors and sneering scientists who have gradually changed their tune about a man whose gifts even attracted the interest of the CIA. The point is that nobody can prove or disprove his claims, while even Geller himself despairs of explaining how or why it happens. Suggestions that he might he controlled by an alien power don't do his credibility much good. But there is nothing we like better than a mystery, especially if there is something supernatural to set our nerves tingling.
You don't have to believe in Geller to be intrigued by a book that takes an exhaustive lock at his extraordinary life but can't find any signs of cheating.
The
Sunday Telegraph,
August 1, 1999
Uri
Geller by Jonathan Margolis
Orion, ú6.99
URI GELLER has been bending spoons since the age of three, and reading minds for almost as long. Is he a genuine mystic, seer and paranormalist, or simply the greatest showman since Houdini, a brilliant fraud who has duped the world for more than 30 years? Jonathan Margolis started his Uri Geller biography from a position of considerable scepticism, but discovered what he regards as compelling evidence that Geller may indeed be what his supporters claim. This reviewer approached Margolis's marvellously readable volume from a position of extreme scepticism but is now a convert - well, almost.
London
Jewish News
18th December, 1998
Let's face it, anyone writing a review of Uri Geller or even a review of a book about Uri Geller has to be slightly wary. Don't be surprised if this review starts to bend in your hand.
After two years of intensive study into the Geller phenomenon, Johnathan Margolis' book Uri Geller, Magician or Mystic ? does nothing whatsoever to allay one's fears. It seems that whenever the author began to write something uncomplimentary about the great man, his word processor would unaccountably fail, or his clock would fall to the ground.
What this does for an objective view of Uri is anyone's guess. The book does seem to offer a balanced portrayal of both the myth and the man. But then, nothing is what it seems.
The book hinges on two polarised perspectives of Geller as seen by paranormalists and sceptics. Either he is a mystic, the real McCoy - in which case our wolrd view must alter immeasurably - or he is the world's greatest magician, and, by turns, a liar. Scientists, friends, magicians are ranged on tboth sides, but curiously, it is often the sceptics, who appear irrational. Uri has apparently never conclusively been filmedbending a spoon, but the fact Uri could have made more money exposing himself as a fraud and his intrinsic honesty 50 years on offer compelling evidence as to the existence of something out of the ordinary.
But then is that really so shocking ? At the end of his fascinating and well-researched book, Margolis, perhaps fearful of psychic reprisals, remains non-committal : "Uri Geller may merely be paranormal."
Whatever the case, Uri Geller is proof that God has a sense of humor.(JK)
From Kirkus Reviews
A
mostly credulous look at the famous Israeli who claims to be able to bend
spoons with his mind. Margolis (Cleese Enconters, 1992) first met and
befriended Uri Geller in 1996. Margolis decided that he would do a biography
of the mentalist, with his cooperation but examining all viewpoints. The
result reads somthing like an E! Television documentary: friends and schoolmates
(including ``where are they now'' information) recollect Geller's childhood.
These accounts are presented to refute the claim by his opponents that
Geller createdhis show in his early 20s. The picture these accounts paint
is that of a colorful and turbulent childhood, spent first in Tel Aviv,
then Cyprus, and back to Israel for military service. It is in Tel Aviv
as a child that Geller reports his first experience with the unknown.
This takes the form of an encounter with ``a ball of light'' in a city
garden. A short time after this, the spoons start bending. Gellers family
moves to Cyprus when he is 11; there he is remembered for playing mischief
by moving the hands of the clocks in the classroomsand always being able
to make the difficult shots in basketball. This, Gellercontends, is due
to his psychokinetic abilities. During his military service,machine gun
parts are mysteriously transported from one location to another (and back
again), ostensibly via the same method. The author also credits Geller
with numerous happenings during the writing of the book, including clocks
that fall off the wall in strange ways, laptops that stop working, and,
of course, distorted cutlery. There are even parties where anyone can
learn how to bend spoons with their mind, with a little help from their
hands. An obviously wowed author presents a mostly sympathetic view of
the life and times of Uri Geller. (16 photos, not seen)
-- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
URI GELLER:
Magician or Mystic?
Jonathan Margolis. Welcome Rain [532 LaGuardia Place, New York, N.Y. 10012], $24.95 (304p) ISBN 1-56649-025-1
"Scoffing at the paranormal seemed perfectly normal," writes British journalist, biographer (Cleese Encounters, etc.) and one-timeskeptic Margolis. But his own conversion experience - a private demonstrationof Geller's reputed spoon-bending and mind-reading powers - assuaged his doubts about Geller's psychic abilities and the paranormal in general. After compelling opening chapters on the Geller family's departure from Europe during WWII and Geller's Israeli childhood, Margolis becomes an advocate, even for some of the stranger claims made on Geller's behalf: of a high school knack for never missing a shot in basketball, of an ability to teleport metal objects and himself, of intelligence work and undocumented high-level meetings with diplomats and even President Carter. Margolis does raise some questions, particularlyabout long-time Geller associate Andrija Puharich, a scientist and paranormalresearcher. But even after establishing Puharich's paranoia and occasional deceptions, he refuses to dismiss his theories of alien contact. Similarly, Margolis insists that occasional "cheating" (use of sleight-of-hand rather than ofpsychic power) to get through off-days does not undermine Geller's claims to authenticity. It may take a conversion experience on the order of Margolis's for die-hard skeptics to relent, but others will find Margolis's account one ofthe best yet to appear on Geller. Still, it is difficult to suspend disbeliefwhen Margolis grows as grandiose (even if his tongue is a bit in his cheek) as the flamboyant Geller himself: "if it should turn out in the future that Uriwas, indeed, a Jesus figure, I should be a little surprised, but delighted. It will have meant, for one thing, that I have accidentally written the New Testament." (Sept.)
Library
Journal
USA
September
1999
Geller has attracted considerable attention - and inspired considerable skepticism - because of his evident abilities to bend metal, read minds, and find things. In his authorized biography of Geller, Margolis, a European contributor to Time and the author of biographies like Cleese Encounters, sets out to discover whether Geller is a magician performing through sleight of hand and misdirection or genuinely a man of mysticism and paranormal powers. He thoroughly traces Geller's life - from his birth in Tel-aviv, through childhood in Israel, to his adulthood, all over the world - and draws on interviews with prominent magicians, illusionists, and skeptics to assess Geller's feats. In the final chapter, Margolis comes to some conclusions but offers nothing decisive about the source of Geller's powers. Engagingly written, thisbook will be a popular addition to public library collections.
The
Mail on Sunday
29th
November 1998
Uri
Geller. Magician or Mystic? by Jonathan Margolis
Orion £18.99 (£15-99)
Is it possible to be sensible about Uri Geller? Jonathan Margolis has done his best to be so. Say what you like, Geller has survived everything from a deprived childhood in Cyprus, to being wounded as a soldier in the Seven Days War - so the scornful sallies on his spoon-bending must feel like mere gnat bites. Margolis Approached his subject with total scepticism but was won over, partly after realising that you can't just dismiss Geller because he has the personality of ashowman, and partly after realising the poor quality of Geller's critics. A fascinating, unjaded, open-minded account of a great modern puzzle. Garth Morris
From The Mirror, books fact and fiction 27th November 1998
URI
GELLER: MAGICIAN OR MYSTIC?by Jonathan Margolis (Orion, £18.99)
Magician,
Mystic Or Con Man, should have been the title of this biography. Margolis
had his doubts about Geller's ability, but after talking to Geller's friends
and family, and studying Geller's top secret work for the CIA and Mossad,
he began to change his opinion. Geller even bent aspoon for him. But if
Geller really is as clever as he says, why doesn't he channel his skills
into more than just cutlery mutilation?
New
Statesman
27th November 1998
MARTYN BEDFORD
What a bender
URI
GELLER: MAGICIAN OR MYSTIC?
Jonathan
Margolis Orion Books, 296pp, £16.99
A
funny thing didn't happen to me on the way to this review. Three funny
things, to be precise. I left a coin overnight on my bedside table to
see ifit would change position or flip from tails to heads - it didn't.
I placed a teaspoon over the dustjacket photo of Uri Geller in the hope
that it would bend- it didn't. And I followed the DIY guide to spoon bending
on page 261 without success. Now that's weird. Weird because the journalist
and celebrity writerJonathan Margolis was plagued by bizarre incidents
while writing this appraisal of the Geller phenomenon. Crashed computers,
broken clocks, telepathic wake-up calls, camera malfunctions, the destruction
of two tape recorders ... and by the end he was bending spoons himself
as though they were made of Plasticine. A nice party piece, but scant
consolation for the loss of so much expensivegadgetry.
So
what does it prove, all this anecdotal paranormality? A lot, or a little,
depending on our receptivity to second-hand evidence, this being one of
Margolis's themes: the extent to which belief or disbelief in apparently
irrational events relies on hard, scientific, rational proof. In Uri Geller
he has the perfect subject. After three decades of international fame,
close scrutiny in front of the world's television cameras, countless claims
affirming or refuting his psychic capability, and despite tests under
laboratory conditions, lay people and experts alike remain divided on
whether or not the man is a fake. Geller is a bit like God, you either
believe in him or you don't.
Margolis
began this book as a sceptic. Indeed, this is as much a work of investigative
journalism as it is of biography, although he is adept at mapping out
Geller's fascinating path from childhood in Israel and Cyprus to a superstar
lifestyle in the US and Britain, as well as undercover work for the CIA
andMossad.
It
was an encounter with a mysterious bright light in a garden in Tel Aviv
which, Geller believes, gave him his paranormal powers. He started with
feats for friends and family - altering watches without touching them
and, of course, the stuff with the Cutlery - before developing more sophisticated
powers such as telepathy, hypnotism, teleportation, dowsing and prescience.
By his earlytwenties he had himself an act. Private parties at first,
then professional shows. All the amazing wizardry of a stage magician,
but with one crucial difference: he claims his "tricks" aren't tricks
at all; they are the real thing.
This
claim irritates magicians. To them, illusionism is an honest deceit, the
creation of a semblance of the supernatural through sleight of hand, audience
misdirection and cunningly designed props. Uri Geller, they allege, is
a charlatan. Several conjurors base their acts on replicating his demonstrations
and one prominent Canadian magician, has obsessively
attempted to expose him. Margolis gives space to this chorus of disapproval.
That
this is such an even-handed and assiduously researched work is due, inpart,
to Geller himself. Having agreed to cooperate with what is in effect anauthorised
biography, he gave its author free rein to cull opinions and evidence
across the spectrum. The result is something close to a definitive assessment.
And Margolis's verdict? Well, he is clearly impressed by the logically
inexplicable Gellerisms he witnessed for himself, as well as those he
unearthed during scores of interviews. Reading them, it is hard not to
be won over. It may be that this man is the greatest illusionist of all
time. Or that science is simply not yet able to account, rationally, for
what he does. Or perhaps he is genuinely blessed with supernatural powers.
Whichever of these is true, Margolis argues with some justification that
Uri Geller is an exceptionally gifted and charismatic phenomenon. What
a pity, then, that in terms of popular perception he is destined to go
down in history as that bloke who bent spoons.
Martyn
Bedford's third novel, " The Houdini Girl ", is about a magician. It is
published by Viking in February
Evening Standard
London 30th November 1998
BOOKS edited by David Sexton
A
journey through the cutlery drawer
URI
GELLER:
MAGICIAN
OR MYSTIC?
by Jonathan Margolis
(Orion,
£18.99)
ANDREW
BILLEN
SUPERSTIOUS atheists will find this book toxic. Jonathan Margolis clearly spooked himself writing it and I got an attack of the flesh-creeps one night just reading it. If a cabaret act from Cyprus really can make metal bend just by willing it, if he can read minds and foretell the future, then so much for the knowable universe. The louder Jonathan Margolis spoke of Uri's honour, the faster I counted my spoons - or checked them for kinks.
Margolis, a distinguished feature writer and author of intelligent biographies of comedians, embarked on his biography of the paranormal joker Uri Gellersceptically, annoyed that David, his teenage son, was taking an interest in aSeventies has-been he assumed had been definitively exposed. Fatally, however, he then witnessed Geller perform one of his perfunctory miracles at his homein Reading. Geller placed a spoon on David's hand, where it bent "spontaneously and rather graciously" arching "like the Loch Ness monster".
"We gasped," Margolis says, and he never stops gasping, not in all the 22 flights taken, 11,000 miles driven, 44 books read ("and often re-read") and 75 interviews conducted in order to reach the conclusion that Geller is almost certainly for real.
The labour results in a well-witnessed account of a showman's progress, butit is pretty much beside the point. It is the one chapter in three that narrates the author's personal journey from cynicism to belief that is fascinating.As remarkable as any contortion of a spoon is the way Margolis's natural scepticism bends 180 degrees and becomes intolerant of scepticism itself. The fraud-buster J.R. emerges as a much more suspect figure than Geller, Margolis forgetting that J.R., who, whatever else, has the known laws of the universe batting for him, really does not need to prove anything.
Geller has much to prove and is offended when non-believers (why should we be otherwise?) ask him to do so. Even Margolis admits the "consummate weakness" in his case is that he refuses to bend cutlery without touching when a camera is around. Until he does, I suggest we need not take too seriously his otherclaims. which include an unaided aerial flight across New York, the materialisation of a massage sage machine in his bedroom and encounters with space aliens.
I desperately hoped Margolis was going to pull out of his nose dive towardscredulity. Instead he crash-lands by learning to bend spoons himself. The description of this remarkable session with a Californian therapist is, however, strangely uninvolved, almost as if he is recalling a dream. Reprinting a transcript of his Californian tutor's spiel, he writes: "I suggest you use the instructions with a light teaspoon and progress through the cutlery drawer." Margolis demonstrates how suggestible the human mind can be.
Nevertheless, for most of the book his tone is so reasonable, his agnosticism so painstaking and his uncovering of believers within government, intelligence and science so startling, that the normal perspective of common sense is hard to achieve. At times I felt as vulnerable as the husband in the Thurber cartoon: "All right, have it your way - you heard a seal bark/saw a spoon bend."Any moment I might look up and see, if not a seal, at least a clock fall off a wall
Fortunately, the darkest night of my beleaguered scepticism was cured by eight hours' sleep. The universe that reassembled in the morning was the usual one. My spoons were present and correct. The phenomenon of the self-bending cutlery surely resembles that of Nessy in more ways than one.
'A brilliant book - nine out of ten'
CHANNEL 4
'A fascinating, unjaded, open-minded account of a great modern puzzle'
MAIL ON SUNDAY
'An even-handed and assiduously researched work. . . something close to a definitive assessment'
NEW STATESMAN
'Superstitious atheists will find this book toxic. JonathanMargolis clearly spooked himself writing it and I got an attack of the flesh-creeps one night just reading it'
EVENING STANDARD
Bigmouth
Liverpool
January 1999
This was never going to be a straightforward interview: Uri Geller's name is synonymous with bent cutlery and all manner of things allegedly paranormal that scientists and sceptics can neither agree about nor explain; he has been aworldwide celebrity phenomenon for decades; he has been at the centre of controversy for most of those years and he has been accused of being the biggest fraud since the tailor who made the emperor's new clothes.
And Jonathan Margolis - writer, journalist and self-avowed sceptic, who almost accidentally embarked upon the quest of discovering once and for all the truth in his unauthorised biography 'Uri Geller - Magician or Mystic?', and whose inflammatory piece about Liverpool, entitled 'Self-pity city', appeared in The Sunday Times just after the James Bulger case in 1993, which did not endear him greatly to the majority of Liverpudlians. Both of them, together, in Liverpool to promote Jonathan's book...
I like to think of myself as being reasonably open-minded but with enough healthy scepticism to figure out if I'm being conned. Being a mere rookie rather than a hardened journo-hack would I stand firm in the corner of rational thought or be swayed by the paranormal claim as easily as one of Uri's spoons? Would Uri and Jonathan even be talking to each other? After all, the biography was unauthorised, yet Uri consented to be interviewed by Jonathan over two years and had agreed at the outset to accompany Jonathan on his publicity tour. IfJonathan had succeeded in debunking Uri, the deal would have been the same. And Jonathan - would he be in disguise to escape the wrath of vengeful Scousers?
It was with some anticipation then that photographer Mike Slade and I mooched around the lobby of the hotel cracking crass jokes about the fact that theywere a bit late and would they be sending us a telepathic message to explain why? However, when they did arrive preconceptions were swept aside in an avalanche of warm apologies, volubility and engaging openness - and that was just Jonathan. Uri's entrance was quieter but in many ways far more emphatic. He possesses a remarkably youthful presence which somehow manages to be quite calming at the same time as being energetic and it gives him, at first glance, the appearance of a teenager rather than a 50-something, making him paradoxically ageless. He is so friendly and disarming that you are left wondering exactly why people are so keen to disprove him.
Margolis says: "Uri didn't need to be psychic to know that my hope really was that I would produce the ultimate de-bunking book, because I think I would have a much more saleable book actually - to have the final final word on Uri Geller being a fraud. But the evidence ain't there. It just doesn't exist. It's a fiction, its a fantasy on behalf of the sceptics."
Hang on - you mean you set out to prove he's a fake, took 22 flights, drove11,000 miles on three continents, read (and often re-read) 44 books, had 75 interviews with Geller's friends and enemies and eventually you've come to the conclusion he's not?
"I think I've got my conclusion. My conclusion is that I think he is the real thing. But perhaps on occasion has massaged things... if you've got 2,000 people paying you need to know how to make it work." He draws a lovely analogy in the book: "...all sorts of professionals have a few tricks of the trade forbad days and Diego Maradona could really play football despite the odd handball into goal..."
Whatever Uri Geller is in terms of the credibility of his powers, heis, of course, first and foremost a person, albeit a highly unusual one, and it has been easy to forget this. What Jonathan Margolis' biography doesinterestingly and enjoyably, alongside its serious assessment of Geller, is to tell the story of his life as that person, rather than as the persona. It isa fascinating life-story told with a mixture of warmth, wit and objectivity that is testament both to Margolis' writing and the friendship that unfolded between the two men.
Although they do have their disagreements - Jonathan's inclusion in the book of Uri's work with the CIA and Mossad being one of them: "One of my problemswith the book is about how I used my powers and what I did with them... I used to reveal certain things to very few people, what I've done with Mossad and what I've done with the CIA, which today I have to deny in order to protect mywell-being and existence. But he found those people and unfortunately for me they talked to him..."
But if scientists, magicians and sceptics alike have puzzled for decades over the validity of Geller's powers (although no scientist who's ever done tests on him has ever disputed his validity) and Jonathan Margolis only 'thinks' he's got a conclusion after two years of extensive research, where does the manhimself believe his powers come from?
"That's where I disagree with Jonathan. Because I'm such an open-minded person, because I believe in everything and anything... I'm mostly a great believer in extra-terrestrial life and alien civilisation elsewhere, so many a time I attach my powers to some higher intelligence rather than it coming from my mind directly and something that we all have and we don't use. Although I do write 'how to' books on the subject - how to be positive and optimistic and how to trigger the powers of the mind and change your life for the better. But at the same time parallel to that, somewhere inside my heart, I smile and I say 'Well, is it coming from us?' ... maybe it's a gift or something to do with a higher intelligence..."
Is he referring to God? "Yeah, when I say it's a gift, I'm a religious man,I believe in God, so sometimes I say 'Yeah, its a gift. Maybe it is from God.' But I don't talk about that because the sceptics would say 'Oh he's now trying to say he's Jesus number two'."
Whilst realising that in the old school of journalism objectivity is supposed to be key and personal opinions should be kept out, being a rookie and seeing as how every single person I've bumped into since I interviewed Uri Geller has asked "Is he for real?", I'm going to break all those rules and attempt toanswer the question.
He did what he is probably most famous for - he made an ordinary random hotel spoon bend in front of me simply by rubbing it gently. It carried on bending after he put it down and even when he put it into my hand - it just curled up to an angle of 90 degrees. But that isn't what made me believe he is genuine. The belief comes from that deep place within that makes up your mind whetheryou trust someone, where your instinct comes from. Totally unobjective, totally unscientific, I know. You can be wrong about people sometimes but whatever he's got, I'll have a pint of what Uri's having.
pictures by mike slade.
The Daily Telegraph
Arts & books
Sceptic, suspend your disbelief
Two lucid accounts of extraordinary powers entrance Kathryn Hughes
Mesmerized: Powers of Mind In Victorian Britain
by Alison Winter. Chicago UP, £23-95
Uri Geller: Magician or Mystic?
by Jonathan Margolis. Orion, £18-99
THE EARLY Victorians had a passion for putting one another in a trance. From 1830 to 1860 it sometimes seemed as if everyone was under the influence of someone else. Doctors hypnotised patients, and married couples practised on each other, while domestic servants proved to be the best subjects of all, happy to oblige at a moment's notice with a glassy stare.
Far from being a coherent practice, Mesmerism rested on a jumble of confused and tentative assumptions. Some enthusiasts believed that the trance state allowed them to see the future, others thought they could contact the dead, andLord Morpeth was convinced he could cure breast cancer. Out of Mesmerism's rich stock the modern - and divergent - practices of psychoanalysis, stage hypnotism and spiritualism all emerged.
In her clever, thoughtful book, Mesmerized, Alison Winter argues that, far from being a fairground joke imposed by fakes and showmen on the witless, Mesmerism seeped into the best intellectual and social circles, from where it managed to unsettle some very steady minds. Indeed, Winter goes further, showing that Mesmerism's all-pervasiveness makes a mockery of the idea that, Victorian culture was organised around a stable, authorised centre, from which anything "marginal" - a key word for social historians - had been anxiously banished.
In this deft, revisionary analysis the medical "Establishment" turns out tobe no such thing. Early Victorian doctors were actually a disparate and variegated tribe, still uncertain of their authority and the boundaries of their discipline. For this reason John Elliotson, Professor of Medicine at University College, could embrace Mesmerism as an essential diagnostic and anaesthetic tool, while others, equally respected, could dismiss it as spooky nonsense.
Nowhere does Winter better demonstrate the slippery power of her subject than when she describes how Mesmerism transformed the spaces in which it operated. When Elliotson invited the public to watch him putting his prize patient into a trance, he turned the theatre at University College into something resembling a music hall. Polite drawing rooms likewise morphed into laboratories as amateur truth-seekers tried to establish the link between trance, clairvoyanceand mediumship. Private sickrooms, too, were turned into non-conformist chapels of the most enthusiastic kind, as Mesmeric practitioners worked hard to produce miracle cures.
Many of the issues which Winter explores surface in Jonathan Margolis's excellent new biography, Uri Geller. The accusation that Geller is nothingmore than a clever stage hypnotist who manages to bend his audience's mind, as well as their spoons, is one of many charges which the book unpicks. Others include the possibility that he is simply a brilliant sleight-of-hand magician, or a tricky chemist with an advanced formula for bending metal, or else an advanced alien who has somehow fetched up in human form.
While academic historians talk about the way in which language structures reality, Margolis describes in journeyman English how this actually works. TakeIsraeli culture, which produced the young Geller. Awash as it is with exaggeration, paranoia and jealousy, it is easy to see not only how spiteful debunking stories about Geller's early career could be produced, but also how Geller himself might construct narratives which fail to translate well into a British or American context. In particular, his long-held claim that at the age of five he was visited by aliens in the back garden of his mother's flat in Tel Avivhas always embarrassed Western Geller-philes who are otherwise well-disposed towards this strangely powerful yet harmless man.
Margolis, like Alison Winter, is skilled at showing how polarities which once seemed hard and fast - true/false, fake/real, sceptic/fool break down in the face of the paranormal.
For instance, while Geller swears that he has never used sleight-of-hand magic during laboratory testings, Margolis leaves it open as to whether he mightoccasionally have used it to "bump up" stage performances on a day when his psychic batteries were low. Likewise, Margolis shows how stage magicians often use intuitive powers during their performances, yet shy away from making any such claim for fear of detracting from their earthly skills. And in the most compelling section of the book, debunking sceptics, such as the vituperative J.R., are shown to be as gullible, closed and prone to fantasy as the most ecstatic believer.
9th January 1999
The Spectator
Bender
or bent?
John
Michell
URI GELLER: MAGICIAN OR
MYSTIC?
by Jonathan Margolis
Orion, £18-99, pp. 296
If you want to start an argument among friends, just mention the name Uri Geller. Everyone knows about him, but some know that he is a genuine miracle worker while others recognise him as a fraud, a clever conjuror. If you wantto enter this argument from an informed rather than a prejudiced position, you should read this book. Jonathan Margolis is a journalist, sceptically inclined but fair-minded. He has done a good, thorough job in researching Geller, his personal background, public career and controversial abilities, asking the right questions and offering his own honest conclusions.
Uri was born in 1946 in Tel Aviv, the first surviving child (his mother hadeight previous abortions) of a rather strange Hungarian couple, a handsome young father of rabbinical ancestry and gypsy blood whose wife was a Miss Freud,distantly related to the great psychoanalyst. The strangeness in Uri's life began when he was four years old and encountered a mysterious ball of light which left him unharmed but psychically altered. Family and school friends soughtout by Margolis say that he then became the focus of weird, poltergeist-type events - objects moving around and instruments breaking down or coming to lifein his presence - and that he seemed able to read and influence people's minds. He was, by all accounts, a tricky, attention-seeking child, and this reputation stayed with him after the father left home and he, his mother and her newman moved to Cyprus, where he received the good English education available there at that time.
Fame and fine women beckoned. As a brash young Israeli, Uri was uninhibitedin exploiting his talents and his plausible personality. In America he becamea media star, catering for a New Age audience with his spoon-bending, mind-reading act and dating the pretty starlets. One of his admirers was Muncy, the beautiful young wife of Mexico's President Portillo. She made him the court favourite, scandalising the nation but, as she claimed, to its benefit. Geller's talents were not just for spoon-bending and love-making. He had the dowser's ability to locate treasure, including the resources of oil, gold and precious metals that Mexico needed. Seeing his success in this field, other companies engaged him, and the reason why Uri Geller is now so rich and happy, why he can enjoy the luxury of his family mansion on the Thames near Reading, is that thebig boys in the oil and mineral business have paid millions of pounds for hisservices. That is the most concrete testimony to his psychic abilities.
Other testimonies come from the worlds of science and espionage. Mossad, the Israeli secret service, made early use of his talents, and in Americathe CIA employed him in their programme of 'remote viewing'. It is well established that, during the Cold War, both the Americans and the Soviets used psychics to visualise and describe each other's installations, and in that business Geller was found highly adept. In scientific tests, conducted in the most prestigious laboratories under the most stringent conditions, he has performed acts of telepathy and telekinesis beyond the abilities of any trickster, and itis rarely doubted by those who have met him that he actually does affect minds and objects around him. His enemies and detractors are largely in three categories: professional conjurors jealous of his actualising of their illusions, dogmatic materialists for obvious reasons, and religious people who think he must be in league with the devil. In my experience Uri is a very pleasant, rather simple man with a weakness for showing off and impressing other people, andwith no idea about the source and meaning of his shamanic gifts, whether theyare from God or from UFO extraterrestrials. I entirely agree with Margolis inhis conclusion: 'Uri Geller is no swindler; everything points to the fundamental truth that he can do what he says he can, and that is what matters.' Therehave always been shamans and mediums, and why should not Geller be one of them? I recognise, of course, that he is also a clever conjuror, but so they all are, also.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY URI
GELLER:
Magician
or Mystic?
5th July 1999
Jonathan Margolis. Welcome Rain [532 LaGuardia Place, New York, N.Y. 10012], $24.95 (304p) ISBN 1-56649025-1
"Scoffing at the paranormal seemed perfectly normal," writes British journalist, biographer (Cleese Encounters, etc.) and one-time skeptic Margolis. But his own conversion experience - a private demonstration of Geller's reputed spoon-bending and mind-reading powers - assuaged his doubts about Geller's psychic abilities and the paranormal in general. After compelling opening chapters on the Geller family's departure from Europe during WWII and Geller's Israeli childhood, Margolis becomes an advocate, even for some of the stranger claims made on Geller's behalf: of a high school knack for never missing a shot in basketball, of an ability to teleport metal objects and himself, of intelligence work and undocumented high-level meetings with diplomats and even President Carter. Margolis does raise some questions, particularly about long-timeGeller associate Andrija Puharich, a scientist and paranormal researcher. Buteven after establishing Puharich's paranoia and occasional deceptions, he refuses to dismiss his theories of alien contact. Similarly, Margolis insists that occasional "cheating" (use of sleight-of-hand rather than of psychic power) to get through off-days does not undermine Geller's claims to authenticity. Itmay take a conversion experience on the order of Margolis's for die-hard skeptics to relent, but others will find Margolis's account one of the best yet toappear on Geller. Still, it is difficult to suspend disbelief when Margolis grows as grandiose (even if his tongue is a bit in his cheek) as the flamboyantGeller himself: "if it should turn out in the future that Uri was, indeed, a Jesus figure, I should be a little surprised, but delighted. It will have meant, for one thing, that I have accidentally written the New Testament." (Sept.)
17th
July 1999
Evening
Argus (Brighton)
THE
DESTROYER OF CUTLERY -
URI
GELLER-
MAGICIAN
OR MYSTIC?
By
Jonathan Margolis
Orion, £6.99
PERHAPS I'm wrong, but I hope I make the point that I have a decently jaundiced eye.
So says author Jonathan Margolis, who is a sceptic and a regular contributor to both the London Evening Standard and the Guardian.
He has written dismissive accounts of fortune tellers and works for Time Magazine debunking UFOs.
So why on earth would he undertake two years of research including work on three continents, and 75 interviews to catalogue the life of a man who he had already written off as a fraud?
No scientist in 30 years, after running tests on Geller, has been able to dispute the man's paranormal powers and upon meeting the sceptical author, Geller, who has been bending spoons since the age of three, read his mind and replicated a drawing by Margolis' son with his back turned.
Intrigued, Margolis began to wonder if there was a story here.
In the opening chapter, Margolis writes: "What follows is partly a biography of Geller, partly a journalistic investigation, and partly an account of my own wary journey for discovery into regions I had never previously visited; mysterious underworlds inhabited by paranormalists, psychic readers, magicians -and scientists."
Magician or Mystic was written with Geller's exclusive co-operation, and Margolis had full access to Geller's friends and family, as well as equal time spent with his enemies and detractors.
It is a thorough account of the man, the phenomenon, and the friendship that grew between author and subject through two years of close research.
Upon reaching the end of the journey with Margolis and Geller, however, onewould have to agree with the author that, while the evidence for Uri Geller is utterly compelling, it's not completely conclusive.
Neither is this book.
Back to main page