THE LABORIOUS OMG
The Amazing Life of Ormond McGill – Ormond McGill
You may recall that such was Kev’s amusement at my reading Ormond McGill’s exhaustive – and exhausting – “encyclopaedia” of stage hypnotism, that he trolled me with several more tomes penned by this most prolific of authors.
Kev’s haul included this humbly titled autobiography, The Amazing Life of Ormond McGill, which was published in 2003, when McGill – who I’m nicknaming ‘OMG’ – was at the grand old age of 90. In 400+ pages, split across a whopping 55 chapters (!), aaand six appendices (!), OMG regales us with his life as a stage hypnotist, magician, and hypnosis instructor.
Having previously read OMG’s suspiciously fictious-y account of a past-life regression as well as his “encyclopaedia”, I’ve come to anticipate an, at best, idiosyncratic, indulgent, stream-of-consciousness writing style from him. But, at worst, it’s superficial, laborious, and frequently irrelevant – which, surprisingly for an autobiography – this book often is.
OMG favours epic contents pages – The New Encyclopedia clocks in at 12 pages – and you’d assume that organising your nine decades on Planet Earth into 55 chapters (and six appendices, lest we forget) might lend itself to some form of structure or discipline. But no.
McGill – who was born in 1913 and died in 2005, and thus presumably experienced a great deal that might be of interest and note – simply cannot keep on point. An early chapter titled ‘School Days’, for instance, provides three paragraphs of trivia on the school he attended, before segueing into an anecdote about a favoured teacher’s odd death... and then devoting the rest of this ‘chapter’ to an Indian yogi whose work he found inspiring in later adult life.
Indeed, it reads very much how chatting to a nonagenarian magician must be like in real life. “I was born on a Sunday in Palo Alto, California... Once, when I was a boy, I was bitten by a chimpanzee... Anyway, here’s a magic trick! Before I became a magician and hypnotist, I thought about becoming an advertising man – I have a lot of thoughts on advertising... Magic trick! Oh, and time has no meaning and here are the secrets to enlightenment...”
I’d perhaps feel mean and ageist writing that if I didn’t already know that this is just OMG’s natural style, whatever his age. In many ways this book feels like a quaint monument to elder white US male hubris; OMG is unabashed in writing up whatever pops into his head, free of the constraints of such trifles as chronology, relevance, and story. To illustrate: at one point, he and his wife became interested in insects and ran an educational programme for schools, and so he wallops in a load of old testimonials. Similarly, one chapter is mostly just a list of people he knows and admires.
What does shine through is his love for his wife, Delight (her given name), who does, indeed, sound like a delight. As one half of a magic-and-hypnosis-themed life partnership myself, I did enjoy reading about their adventures, from their business importing and selling seashells to OMG’s inventor phase, during which he invented the ‘Love Clock’. At time of writing, he held an 18-year patent for this proud creation – a clock which says “I love you” on the hour instead of chiming the time.
Delight tragically died in the 1970s after the couple had been together for 33 years. One of McGill’s 30+ books includes The Book of Delight: Grieve No More Beloved, a book about grief and what, specifically and definitely, awaits you in the afterlife, as dictated to OMG by his late wife. I have threatened to dictate such a book to Kev in the event of my untimely death if he persists in buying me more books by McGill.
You may be wondering, of course, what you might learn of hypnosis from this book..? The answer is nothing; nada – zip. OMG reveals that he was inspired onto his performance path after seeing Danish hypnotist DeWaldoza perform at his high school. The task of explaining the show and how it was done causes OMG to forget to tell us his actual origins story, alas. He is similarly so enamoured by his business and performance nous that his time as ‘Dr Zomb’, mixing magic/mentalism and hypnosis in a ‘spook show’, is presented as still-relevant top tips for fellow performers rather than what could have been notable nostalgia for us all.
And so the book continues with such breadcrumbs – his being a psychology major, or his penchant for Indian mysticism – which somehow led him into hypnosis. But otherwise we’re just left with an assortment of self-hypnosis, self-help, and hypnotherapy scripts and remedies, alongside some absolute guff on what hypnosis is and does.
Ultimately, the most ‘amazing’ thing about OMG is that he didn’t feel able to include his SIX appendices in the body of this otherwise completely unstructured book. Despite significant content on yoga, transcendence, enlightenment, magic tricks, and life hacks, you’ll find entries on such topics as advancing your senses, anti-ageing, and not flailing your arms about, as well as a review of one of his stage shows (?), in the very back of the book.
I hereby rechristen this book The Unedited Life of Ormond MGill.
