Jay's Journal of Anomalies - Softcover

Jay, Ricky

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1593720009 ISBN 13: 9781593720001

Publisher: Quantuck Lane Pr & the Mill rd, 2003

Synopsis

One of the New York Times's "Notable Books" and a Los Angeles Times "Best Book of the Year": Ricky Jay's brilliant excursion into the history of bizarre entertainments. Ingesters of stones, stoats, and swords have long compelled my attention. Signor Hervio Nano, the fantastic homunculus, defied conventional taxonomy. The well-trained flea has shown sufficient rationality to drive a chariot, impersonate Napoleon, or reenact the siege of Antwerp. Note the enduring popularity of severing from the head its most protuberant organthe nose. The Bonassus, advertised as unique, was in 1821 the most numerous hoofed quadruped on the face of the earth. In an era rich in examples of animal scholarship, Munito was a star. The multitalented Ricky Jay (sleight-of-hand artist, actor, author, and scholar of the unusual) wrote and published a unique and beautifully designed quarterly called Jay's Journal of Anomalies. Already coveted collector's items, the sixteen issues are now gathered here in a complete set, with significant new material and illustrations. A brilliant excursion into the history of bizarre entertainments, the journal was described in The New York Times as "beautiful and elegant...a combination of rigorous scholarship and personal rumination." In a delectably deadpan and winning style, Jay conveys his admiration and affection for the offbeat that characterized his best-selling Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women. The journal covers such subjects as dogs stealing acts from other dogs, an anthropological hoax involving the only survivors of a caste of ancient Aztec priests, and the ultimate diet: eating nothing at all. Jay explains how wags since the sixteenth century have cheated at bowling; he explores the ancient relationship between conjuring and dentistry; and he chronicles the exploits of ceiling walkers and human flies. Crammed full of illustrations drawn from the author's massive personal archives, Jay's Journal of Anomalies will baffle, instruct, and, above all, delight. 150 illustrations.

About this title

About the Author:

Ricky Jay is the author of Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women, and Dice: Deception, Fate, & Rotten Luck, with photographs by Rosamond Purcell (Quantuck Lane, 2002). Considered one of the world's greatest sleight-of-hand artists, he is the former curator of the Mulholland Library of Conjuring and the Allied Arts. His heralded one-man shows, "Ricky Jay & His 52 Assistants" and "Ricky Jay: On the Stem" were both directed by David Mamet, in whose films Jay has also appeared.

From Publishers Weekly:

Author and actor Ricky Jay (Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women) gathers four years of his quarterly Jay's Journal of Anomalies in one volume of the same name. An expert on the improbable, Jay trains his curiosity on unusual forms of entertainment and recorded history, and entries include "A Compendium of Giant Children" and "A Verbally Challenging Bestiary." He has unearthed gems like an advertisement for "Miss Silvia, Skandenavian Ceiling Walker" and a centuries-long fascination with the public spectacle of nose amputation. Jay's new one-man show, Ricky Jay on Broadway, opening this spring, and his role in Mamet's forthcoming movie Heist promise publicity for this witty and bizarre collection. Color illus.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Quantuck Lane Pr & the Mill rd
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1593720009
• ISBN 13: 9781593720001
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 202