Sorcerers
An enthralling blend of sorcery, religion and philosophy, from which Jacob Needleman creates a brilliant moral fable for our times.
Sorcerers is the story of a teenage boy growing up in 1950s Philadelphia who is swept into a world of mysterious powers and extraordinary human possibilities. On the threshold of maturity and yearning for something he cannot name, adolescent Eliot Appleman is welcomed into the Sorcerer's Apprentices, a club of young stage magicians, and is soon drawn into a perilous clash between two conflicting forces—the compulsion to manipulate others and the need to discover the deeper truths about his own nature.
As Reflected in the Questions of the Heart
What ought we to do?
Am I alone in the universe?
“The womb of magic conceives but once and then withers away,” it said. “You must seek the seed and bend all your efforts to nourish it when it appears. Amid the artifices of the stage magician, amid the trappings and techniques, there will appear the reality beyond all artifice. Be quick to recognize it. It is in you. It is beyond you. Cultivate your professional style, your persona, and then, and only then, you may find your true self.”
Why do we suffer?
What can we hope for?
It now dawned on Eliot that Max favored anything that could bring him a sense of remorse about himself—not guilt, not regret, not passionate vows to do better next time, all of which Max dismissed in no uncertain terms. Only remorse about what he was, with no possibility of doing anything about it, but only feeling it more and more.