HUNGER ARTISTS AND MAGICIANS.

HUNGER ARTISTS AND MAGICIANS. I wrote here about the popularity of hunger artists in Europe a hundred years ago and about the technical problem they faced in proving they were really fasting. Adam Gopnik had an article (link unavailable) about magicians in the New Yorker for March 17 in which he discusses how the magician David Blaine is testing the limits of what the human body can endure. Blaine’s next performance will be to stay awake for a million seconds (11.57 days). He has already stood on a pole for 35 hours and claims the record for the longest time spent underwater by a mammal (excluding whales). There is still an audience for the equivalent of the hunger artist. What was entertainment in the past is still entertainment today. But what about the problem of showing that it is not all a trick? What does it mean when a professional magician becomes a hunger artist?