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Hypnotic Control: Reflections on the Nature of Staged Influence

By: John-Ivan Palmer
Publisher: Whistling Shade Books
Publication Date: May 11, 2025
ISBN: 978-0982933510
Reviewed by: Lily Andrews
Review Date: May 2, 2025

John-Ivan Palmer’s Hypnotic Control: Reflections on the Nature of Staged Influence is a sharply intelligent, unsettling, and darkly humorous meditation on the practice and implications of stage hypnotism, grounded in memoir, cultural criticism, and philosophical inquiry, and drawing from decades of his experience as a stage hypnotist. The book isn’t, however, just about stage hypnosis; it’s about what happens when control, identity, performance, and vulnerability collide under the harsh lights of a nightclub stage—and how the real hypnosis might be happening in our daily lives, far offstage.

The book is divided into three parts—Trance, Self, and Culture—and each explores a different angle of influence. In the opening chapters, Palmer details the strange world of stage hypnotism with unnerving clarity. He’s blunt about how easy it is to override someone’s rational mind, to turn them into a braying donkey or a sobbing child with just a few words and the right tone. And he doesn’t flinch from describing the dark side of that power—subjects who fail to awaken, who spiral into panic, or who end up hospitalized. There’s a streak of dark humor in how he tells these stories, but never at the expense of the people involved. He knows the consequences are real as he has seen them first-hand.

Then, in the middle section, the book turns inward—and this is where it absolutely sings. The section features “Lounge Act Poet Blown Away,” which is a heart-wrenching, poetic recollection of Palmer’s life on the road, where he lived between poems and strip clubs, trying to survive in a world that had no real place for either his art or his ethics. He tells stories of women he lived with on the circuit: Jenny Private, sweet and naive, obsessed with penguins and musicals; and Veronica Vixen, a whip-smart, heroin-addicted dancer who spoke in poetry and read Elizabeth Bishop while slowly unraveling. These portraits are stunning—raw, empathetic, and aching with unsaid things. Palmer doesn’t just recount what happened; he feels it all over again on the page.

The final section zooms out to examine the culture we live in through the lens of hypnotic influence. Palmer draws fascinating connections between trance states and political rhetoric, cult behavior, and conspiracy theories. His chapter on “Trump and the Q Trick” is one of the most daring in the book, not because it’s controversial, but because it’s so calmly persuasive. Here, he shows the reader how mass suggestion doesn’t require swinging watches—it just needs repetition, spectacle, and the right kind of narrative bait.

What makes Hypnotic Control so powerful is Palmer’s voice. He’s literary but unpretentious, sharp but never cruel. His sentences move from hilarious to heartbreaking in a breath and one can readily feel the weight of a lifetime behind every observation—of someone who’s been both master and victim of suggestion, who once believed he could control people and later realized how much the job controlled him. This is a book that resists simple answers. It doesn’t come with a redemptive arc or a final conclusion wrapped in a bow. But that’s part of its brilliance. Palmer’s not trying to hypnotize readers—he’s trying to wake them up to the ways they’re influenced every day, to the absurdity they accept as normal, to the strange masks they wear because someone told them to. His writing is sharp, literary, and deeply personal—but also weirdly funny in a way that sneaks up on you. He’s got this mix of academic polish and back-alley grit; one minute he’s quoting obscure philosophers, and the next he’s telling a jaw-dropping story about sewing hypnotized people together with carpet thread in a dive bar.

Quill says: Hypnotic Control: Reflections on the Nature of Staged Influence is a rare kind of memoir—one that entertains, yes, but also interrogates its own existence. It’s for anyone who’s ever been seduced by the spotlight, or repelled by it, for people who have laughed at something and then wondered why they were laughing, as well as readers who like nonfiction that reads like a story. It’s also for fans of dark humor as well as artists, poets, performers, and anyone who’s ever stood on a stage. If you read this book, prepare to be moved, disturbed, and maybe even changed a little. It’s not just about hypnotism—it’s about being human.

For more information about Hypnotic Control: Reflections on the Nature of Staged Influence, please visit the author's website at: john-ivanpalmer.com