A Magical Library

 

Ricky Jay (again)

  I have written often about libraries and now this is the third time I will produce something about Ricky Jay. He is the author of Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women: A History of Unique, Eccentric & Amazing Entertainers. That should be enough to get your attention, but, if not, he is also the author of, Matthias Buchinger: The Greatest German Living. Mr. Jay passed away in 2018 and information about his passing and from his website is found here. 

  Apart from practicing magic and writing books, Jay collected them and also gathered all the magical memorabilia he could find. That is why he is again our subject. His lovely and very understanding wife is removing from their home some of the material he collected. There is enough stuff to warrant this article in the New York Times: "The Curious, Astounding Collection of the Magician Ricky Jay: Illusionists, Cardsharps, Charlatans and Human Cannonballs Enliven a Trove of Rare Books, Posters and Ephemera Now Going to Auction at Sotheby's," Dan Barry, Oct. 19. Apart from his legacy as a magician, he also left more than 10,000 rare books, posters, broadsides, handbills and ephemera, a vast collection that transformed his Beverly Hills home into a research library dedicated to the human desire to be fooled — to slip the cuffs of reality and believe, if only briefly, the unbelievable. He knew every item, could recite passages from ancient texts, and incorporated the material into his performances. His collection lived.

    

   When the folks from Sotheby's arrived at the Jay-Verges home, tucked into a hillside off Mulholland Drive, they were taken aback by the size and breadth of the idiosyncratic collection. 

 You will likely be taken aback as well when you view Sotheby's, The Ricky Jay Collection. You have about one week to make your bid for items such as this: Madam Yucca; The Female Hercules.

It is estimated to be sold for between $2000 -3000. If your budget is limited, you can sort the 600+ items from lowest to highest. 

   

RICKY JAY

     Ricky Jay died in Los Angeles on Nov. 24th.  I knew little about him until I did a post about this book which he wrote: Matthias Buchinger: 'The Greatest German Living'. He (Jay) was a very interesting person and you can learn about him quickly by reading this article by Anita Gates: "Ricky Jay, Gifted Magician, Actor and Author, is Dead at 70," New York Times, Nov. 25, 2018. I have also pasted below the biographical information available on his website since it will probably disappear. In some of the interesting articles about him there is mention of the Mulholland Library of Conjuring and the Allied Arts, which should itself be worth a post-or-two.

Ricky Jay: the Serious Bio While Ricky Jay has long been considered one of the world’s great sleight-of-hand artists, his career is further distinguished by the remarkable variety of his accomplishments as an author, actor, historian, and consultant.  His one man show Ricky Jay & His 52 Assistants was directed by David Mamet and garnered for Mr. Jay the Lucille Lortel and Obie Awards for Outstanding Achievement. Subsequent productions were staged at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater, the Melbourne International Arts Festival, the Tiffany Theater in Los Angeles, The Spoletto Festival in Charleston and the Old Vic in London. His most recent show, Ricky Jay: On the Stem, also directed by Mr. Mamet, just closed a seven-month critically acclaimed run in New York City.

As an actor, Mr. Jay debuted in the Joseph Papp production of Midsummer Night's Dream at the New York Shakespeare Festival. He has appeared in David Mamet's films: House of Games, Homicide, Things Change, Spanish Prisoner, State and Main, and Heist. He can be seen in many other films including Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and the James Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies. He also starred in the heralded episode of the X-Files, "The Great Maleeni."  A serious student of his art, he has been elected to membership in the American Antiquarian Society for whom he authored Many Mysteries Unraveled: Conjuring Literature in America 1786-1874. He is a contributor to The Cambridge Guide to American Theater and has defined the terms of his art for the Encyclopædia Britannica. Mr. Jay’s book, Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women was published to critical and popular acclaim and was voted one of the outstanding books of the year by the Theater Library Association and one of the "Notable Books of the Year" by The New York Times Book Review, which hailed his work in a rave front page review. As a writer and speaker on subjects as varied as conjuring literature, con games, sense perception and unusual entertainments, Jay has authored numerous articles and has delivered many lecture/ demonstrations. Among his presentations are:  "Sleight and Shadow: at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. November 22, 2005;  “Belknap Visitor in the Humanities” at Princeton University speaking on the relationship between magicians and mediums on November 21, 2005;  "Doing Likewise: Imitation, Emulation, and Mimesis at the New York Institute of Humanities, hosted by Jonathan Miller;  "Hocus Pocus in Perfection: Four Hundred Years of Conjuring and Conjuring Literature," the Harold Smith Memorial Lecture at Brown University; "Splendors of Decaying Celluloid" with Errol Morris, Rosamond Purcell and Bill Morrison at the New York Institute for the Humanities.  "The Origins of the Confidence Game",for the conference of Police Against Confidence Crime;  "Chirosophi: Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Conjuring Literature," at the Henry E. Huntington Library in San Marino, California;  "Fast and Loose: The Techniques and Literature of Cheating" at the William Andrew Clark Memorial Library, UCLA;  "The Mystery of Fasting Impostors," and "The Avant Garde Art of Armless Calligraphers" at Amherst College;  "Sense, Perception, & Nonsense" at the University of Rhode Island Festival of the Arts;  and the keynote address at the International Design Conference in Aspen on "Illusion as Truth." He has spoken on "Prose & Cons: The Early Literature of Cheating" in the Pforzheimer Lecture Series on the book arts at the New York Public Library and at the Chicago Humanities Festival, and on "Magic & Science" for the T.E.D. Conference (Technology, Entertainment, & Design) in Monterey, California.  Mr. Jay is a founder of the biennial Conference on Magic History and is the former curator of the Mulholland Library of Conjuring and the Allied Arts. He is the author and co-designer of The Magic Magic Book, an illustrated history of the earliest trick conjuring books, published in the Writers and Artists Series of the Whitney Museum of American Art. His book Jay's Journal of Anomalies, based on his fine press periodical of the same name, was recently named one of the "Notable Books of the Year" by the New York Times and one of the "Best Books of the Year" by the Los Angeles Times. His most recent book, with photographs by Rosamond Purcell, is Dice: Deception, Fate & Rotten Luck.  Mr. Jay's consulting firm Deceptive Practices has provided expertise on projects as diverse as the film Forrest Gump and the Broadway production of Angels in America: Perestroika. He was a consultant on the Devices of Wonder exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum, and was the guest curator for an exhibition on conjuring at the Harvard Theatre Collection.  He has written and hosted his own television specials for CBS, HBO, and the BBC, and was the host and narrator of the first documentary mini- series on conjuring, "The Story of Magic," for the A&E network. He presented of a series of films on con games for Turner Classic Movies and in March of 2003 he debuted as a weekly essayist on the National Public Radio station, KCRW, in Los Angeles.