47 pages • 1 hour read
The Magician's Assistant
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Background
Authorial Context: Ann Patchett
Ann Patchett is arguably one of the most popular contemporary American authors, penning multiple best-selling and award-winning novels. She is also an advocate of independent bookstores and literacy and has appeared in this capacity on NPR, The Colbert Report, Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday, and The Martha Stewart Show. Her books explore themes relating to family dynamics, love, friendship, and identity. Her first novel, The Patron Saint of Liars, was published in 1992 and is the coming-of-age story of a pregnant woman at a home for unwed mothers. Her second novel, Taft (1994), tells the story of a former jazz musician who must reform his understanding of family and friendship. The Magician’s Assistant is Patchett’s third novel and was published in 1997.
Patchett’s fourth novel, Bel Canto (2001), received the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Orange Prize for Fiction, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Bel Canto is the novel that brought Patchett’s work to international prominence. Imbued with elements of the historical fiction genre and set in South America, Bel Canto tells the story of an opera singer and her wealthy and admiring audience, who are taken hostage by a paramilitary organization.
Patchett’s fifth novel, Run (2007), explores the dynamics between an ambitious father and his sons when a stranger in a snowstorm presents new possibilities. Her sixth novel, State of Wonder (2011), explores the moral and ethical grey areas of scientific exploration. In her seventh novel, Commonwealth (2017), the protagonists must deal with the aftermath of a divorce. In 2020, The Dutch House was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, and her most recent novel, Tom Lake (2023), follows the evolution of a mother as she reexamines her past during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, Patchett has written three nonfiction books, including her acclaimed memoir Truth & Beauty, which addresses her friendship with the writer Lucy Grealy. In 2023, United States President Joe Biden awarded Ann Patchett the National Humanities Medal for her contributions to American literature.
Historical Context: The AIDS Epidemic and Culture of the 1990s
In The Magician’s Assistant, the AIDS epidemic underlies the health issues, deaths, and secrets that inform certain character dynamics. Published in 1997 in the aftermath of the worst of the epidemic, Patchett’s novel addresses many of the issues that contemporary Americans dealt with as the disease took millions of lives worldwide.
AIDS, or, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, is the most advanced stage of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). HIV destroys infection-fighting cells in the human body, suppressing the human immune system. When left untreated, HIV advances into AIDS, which is deadly. In the 1980s, AIDS shocked the world with its massive spread. HIV can be sexually transmitted, and in the 1980s and 1990s, gay men were particularly susceptible to HIV due to the widespread lack of knowledge about the disease. Because of rampant anti-gay bias and misunderstanding about the nature of the disease, politicians and scientists alike villainized what they callously termed to be “sexual deviancy” as the reason for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. By 1994, AIDS became the leading cause of death for Americans aged 25 to 44.
By the time The Magician’s Assistant was published in 1997, an estimated 30 million people worldwide had contracted HIV. As a response to this massive health crisis, Patchett’s novel uses Phan’s death and Parsifal’s diagnosis to examine the social ostracization that gay men in the 1990s often faced. This tension becomes particularly apparent upon the revelation that Parsifal’s family had difficulty understanding and accepting his sexual orientation. However, to have been diagnosed with AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s would have been considered even more scandalous. Sabine, the highly empathetic and unconditionally loving protagonist of the novel, takes care of both Phan and Parsifal throughout their illnesses. She bears witness to the slow deterioration of Phan’s body to AIDS and provides a compassionate voice advocating for the victims of society’s ignorance about sexuality and health. Today, HIV is understood to be highly treatable, but an estimated 40 million people worldwide still deal with HIV or AIDS.
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