FEATURES Sorcerers By Jacob Needleman


SORCERERS, by Jacob Needleman, is the story of a teenage boy growing up in 1950s Philadelphia who is swept into a world of mysterious powers and extraordi- nary human possibilities. On the threshold of maturity and yearning for something he cannot name, adoles- cent 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 conflict- ing forces—the compulsion to manipulate others and the need to discover the deep- er truths about his own nature.


Jacob Needleman: Jacob is a Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University, for- mer Visiting Professor at Duxx Graduate School of Business Leadership in Monterrey, Mexico and former Director of the Center of the Study of New Religions at the Graduated Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He was educated in philosophy at Harvard, Yale and the University of Freiburg, Germany. He has also served as a Research Associate at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, as a Research Fellow at Union Theological Seminary, as Adjunct Professor of Medical Ethics at the University of California Medical School and as guest Professor of Religious Studies at the Sorbonne, Paris. He is a successful author of multiple publications. In addi- tion to his teaching and writ- ing, he serves as a consultant in the fields of business, psychology, education, med- ical ethics and philanthropy, and is increasingly well known as an organizer and moderator of conferences in these Fields.


Paula Vail conducted this interview with him regarding his recently published book SORCERERS.


Paula: would love to begin with a little discussion. You have written many books about philosophy and the cri- sis of meaning in our present world but, what prompted you to write a novel about an adolescent boy and a club for teenage magicians.


Jacob: Well, I started my writing career quite young and 16 Interview By Paula Vail


I wrote a mammoth novel that was rejected by every publisher in the galaxy. And I always wanted to deal with stories - writing fiction but, when that did not seem to work out, there was teaching philosophy in one of the most dynamic areas in the world, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Shortly after my start there came to be a lot of new and indigenous movements there that influenced the whole world actually. And so I start- ed writing books about philosophy and about these new religious movements and about other things connected with that and with each book I wrote there was an element of the novelist in me as I wrote it - telling stories and so forth. After a cer- tain point, after a cou- ple of books, I decided to treat myself to writing the novel.


I was a teen-


age magician actually and I belonged to this club when I was fifteen years old or so and I think I am just going to tell my story and have fun writing the book - writing a yarn. And as I started writing this yarn about this teen- age boy going into this very interesting group of kids, a group of teenagers studying magic under an older young person with a mysterious woman in the background - a magic teacher in a magic shop. I


started writing about that and suddenly the book start- ed to become serious. It was still fun but something happened and the total meaning of the book turned into something deeply, deeply metaphysical, deeply mystical and the struggle between the ego and the spirit.


It became a novel about a young teenager strug-


gling between his wish for truth and his wish to become famous and well known and successful. That struggle, between those two parts of myself, became the theme of the whole novel, while still on the surface I wanted to make it enjoyable and entertaining and suspenseful. So, that is where I was. The novel, the magic,


the part of


my life when I was young and as I wrote this novel called SORCERERS, the story itself began to reflect my interest


Oracle 20/20 June 2016


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