Steve Martin On Showmanship for Magicians

Here's an excerpt from Born Standing Up, Steve Martin's book about his career as a stand-up comic:

Showmanship for Magicians is a handbook meant to turn amateurs into professionals. Its subtitle is Complete Discussions of Audience Appeals and Fundamentals of Showmanship and Presentation. I held my first copy and solemnly turned the pages, reading each sentence so slowly that it's a miracle I could remember what the verb was. The cover was plain-faced -- like a secret manifesto that should be hidden under your mattress -- and the pages were as thick as rags. Fitzkee starts by denigrating the current state of magic, saying it is old-fashioned. Though published in 1943, this statement contains an enduring truth. All entertainment is or is about to become old-fashioned. There is room, he implies, for something new. To a young performer, this is a relief. My references were all in the past, and in just one chapter, these roots were severed, or at least choked. Fitzkee then goes on to break down a show into elements such as Music, Rhythm, Comedy, Sex Appeal, Personality, and Selling Yourself, and he concludes that atention to each is vital and necessary. Why not throw everything in the book at the audience, like an opera does? Costumes, lights, music, everything? He also talks about something that was to land on me with a thud six years later: the importance of originality. "So what," I thought at the time. "Who cares?"