Initial Resposne; Houdini's Box

Feeling like I'm criticizing all the essays, maybe it's the essay format I don't like, but there are quite a few essays I enjoy, especially Aldous Huxley and Nietszche. The Nietsche essay in here is good. I don't see the difference really between essays and short stories. At the beginning of one of the essays or maybe the author bio, I can't remember which one, they said "short-story styled essay. Initial response: "what?" Speaking of initial responses, I'm not even actually finished with Houdini's Box...hold on...okay, done.
The intro anecdote is awesome. It reminds me of Dostoyevsky's little play dramas where characters seem to be obvious symbols but in the end there's no clear message.
Maybe they're saying...nevermind.
I like this essay, actually. I didn't halfway through, I read it too fast, too much caffeinne from work (I work at Moxie Java).
I like over-analyzation. If you look at mancala, just like he initially looks at hide-and-seek, you could find some deep meaning in the mathematical, but 'chaotic' movement of the stones controlled by some unknown hand.
Edit:
This part I wrote as I read through a second time. I guess he's just trying to relate to Houdini's concept of escape with the initial story about the girl, but through the "psycho-lese" as I call it, "Freud-talk" maybe...his link between the two is not too obvious, maybe he doesn't even have one. I'm not sure.
I like the concept of "personal religion," the way he phrases it. Saying Houdini's idol or god was the performances he did, not himself.
Sttrange when he notes that Houdini's performances were literally death-defying. I picture Houdini flipping off the grim reaper and running away.
Typically over-psycho-analyitically he reads too much into the metamorphasis, a neat trick that almost instantly comes to mind when thinking of accessible "magic tricks", at least for me. The person swap comes to my mind and it seems like the person would obviously be his wife because most people would probably think Houdini's crazy, and as they said this was the trick that made him famous, so he wouldn't have much credibility to work with.
There may be some unconcious sexual thing working around in the brain when watching him tie up his wife, but analyzing a random crowd of people from the past watching a show seems pointless.
Sidenote: re-reading my writing, try to avoid quotes.
This part about myths and their origins is really good, I applied it to a few different popular myths and found it true except for soem of the Hawaiian and japanese myths.
Houdini's quotes are probably the best part of the essay, which leads me to believe Houdini is one of those peoplle who makes anything about them, even written about them, seem interesting. The best quote, my favorite anyway, is "Eventually, one sinks slowly into the habits of the country in which one lies, and I know my work suffers."
I hardly trust historical texts and biographies, it seems like if you dig through someone's life or the past and present pieces ou can make them into anything you want. Hellen Keller was a socialist but no one knows it.
So you have to knowt he author, its hard to meet the author, so you have to read their work, maybe even their bio? But who writes an author's bio? Probably friends, colleagues, who can hardly be trusted. Oh, and this essay is way too long. He chose the topic well, but it unravels really slowly.