The Literature of Conjuring: Cards and Tricks

Annemann's Card Magic, Ted Anneman (Dover)
This reprints a couple of books from the 1940s. It is especially good for flashy effects that would work well on stage: multiple volunteers and props like flash paper and cap guns etc. In fact I would love to maybe finish a card act with "Dead Man's Hand," which Annemann attributes to Henry Christ: you're telling to story of how Wild Bill Hickock got shot as you deal the cards, and then...a shot rings out. There are also a lot of good effects with gaffed cards.

The Magic of Ascanio Volume 2: Studies of Card Magic, compiled and written by Jesus Etcheverry, trans. Rafael Benatar (Paginas)
There is a Spanish "school" of card handling associated with Juan Tamariz and the late Arturo Ascanio. I think of Giobbi as well as a member of this school. Very gentle tricks, emphasizing packets, that unfold in a series of stages: you have to pay attention to see the magic, but when you do, you really have. Ascanio relies on an arsenal of subtle, beautiful moves, often for the purpose of displaying two cards as one: most famously, the Ascanio spread, taught beautifully here with variations. As important but less known are Ascanio's laydowns, which make it seem impossible that you are working with double cards. There is meticulous attention to patter and misdirection. I'm working on his "Oil and Water": it's a kind of card ballet. There seem to be four volumes of this bad boy, which would be great if they didn't cost like sixty bucks a pop. The first is Ascanio's structural and theory material; the third another volume of card magic; and the fourth (I think) non-card effects.
from denny

Phantoms of the Card Table, David Britland and Gazzo (Four Walls Eight Windows)
One of the first things I bought when I started messing with cards, with no idea what it was, was an ancient sheaf of yellow paper called "The Phantom of the Card Table." It seems to be the mimeo of a typescript, and was written by one Eddie McGuire, in the 1930s, to tout and describe the work of Walter Scott, supposedly more or less the greatest card cheat ever known. There was a lot of crazy hype, but also extremely clear and excellent descriptions of bottom and second deals. Scott became famous in magic circles when, introduced by McGuire, he flabbergasted the world's best card handlers (including Cardini and Max Holden) with his work. They shuffled the deck, handed it to him, and he immediately dealt himself four aces, etc. This book here is essentially the story of that encounter, along with a history of expert card handling from before Erdnase. One amazing feature: Gazzo found Scott in the early nineties in a retirement home. He learned his deals, marks, peeks etc. Gazzo himself suffered a stroke that disabled him from performing the work, but he recorded interviews. The handling is discussed at the end of this book concisely and clearly, and was almost lost forever. But it's not primarily an instruction book but a kind of cult of the cards celebration, complete with a host of cool and problematic characters, such as McGuire himself (an impossible con man, always on the make), Dai Vernon, Cardini, and Scott himself. I like devoured the thing at every spare moment till it was gone; now I can work on the indetectible peek etc. The work in the mimeo or this book on the second deal is not that surprising: the real conclusion would be that Scott just had an incredible, though fairly conventional, strike second.

Card Control, Arthur Buckley (Dover)
Any book enshrined by Dover in a reprint is a standard, because people can buy it. I have misgivings here, however. There is a lot of good material; I especially like the manipulation material, and there is a lot of all sorts of sleight-of-hand here in a small package. But Buckley has no gift of description: the instructions are very sketchy and at times nearly incomprehensible. To give you an idea of how bad it can be, *Ed Marlo* (who also knew Buckley, I believe), often says things like I was sitting around the other day, trying to puzzle out what he could possibly mean in Card Control when he says... If Marlo can't figure it out, good luck to the rest of us.I'm also not in love with the tone: "This is another of those unique pieces of artistry in card manipulation. Like many other methods herein described, it is only for the fellow who wants to do things correctly." But I am that rare fellow that wants to do everything incorrectly.

carneycopia, by john carney
the book of secrets, by john carney
carney is a beautiful craftsman of effects. his material builds misdirection intrinsically in logical and lovely routines. this is pure sleight of hand, building beautifully on the fundamentals of vernon and john ramsay. the material is...difficult and pointedly visual; carney says that he hates "pick a card" tricks, and he's likelier to work a routine around a series of color changes, for example. there is also much material here on coins etc, as well as a lot of what's called in the magic lit "theory": almost anything that's not a trick. what i like most about it is that at its essence he says: capacity for work is the only talent. "carneycopia" is earlier, but i believe i'd start with "book of secrets."
order from john carney

the encyclopedia of playing card flourishes, by gerald p. cestkowski (printmeister)
a "flourish," as opposed to a "sleight" is a non-deceptive trick with playing cards: a pure display of dexterity that is exactly what it appears to be: a fan, a spread, a fancy shuffle, a one-handed triple-cut. this book is by far the best treatment this subject has ever had. it is voluminous, and will teach anyone flourishes they have never seen. it is illustrated with 2,800 beautifully clear photographs. it is well-written and the instructions are no-bullshit clear. i've already got some version of most of the fans and armspreads and catches. this motha costs 75 bucks. if you're into this kind of thing, it is so obviously worth it. you're not going to find it on amazon. contact flourish man

Exhibition Card Fans, Godlette Dodson (Haines House of Cards)
I fan cards well, and I learned to fan from this book. I actually more or less reject the pressure fan and think fanning powder is usually otiose (though I use it for, e.g., arm spreads); these are dodson dogmas. If you actually ran through the material in this booklet, it'd be a pretty sedate performance, though no doubt lovely if done well. These days flourish specialists (like Cestowski, "De'vo Vom Schattenreich", and brian tudor ) have a very rock 'n roll approach. No doubt "Exhibition Card Fans" has been superseded, and Cestowski's treatment in "The Encyclopedia of Playing Card Flourishes" considers and edits and expands on Dodson. On the other hand, that book costs 75 bucks. This thing is more like 5.

The Paper Engine, Aaron Fisher (Hermetic Press) This book seems very fresh to me; for sure it is enthusiastic. Fisher runs through a number of sleights (the most explored being the "gravity half pass") that either are quite new or were previously pretty obscure and are now improved. I enjoyed working through the sleights, some of which are lovely, and others of which struck me as a trifle...precious, a bit overcomplicated. Also I would say the repertoire of sleights is more valuable than Fisher's application of them in tricks, which sometimes seem almost perfunctory. On the other hand, I can understand that, as someone who obsessively practices sleights but am sometimes stumped for a single actual trick.

Card Magic, John Northern Hilliard (Carl W. Jones)
This is the almost 600 pp of Hilliard's classic Greater Magic devoted to cards. Hilliard, who ghost-wrote the Art of Magic for T. Nelson Downs, was Howard Thurston's advance man, and knew every magician of note, probably in the world. He is also a very lively and funny writer: "A comparative study of card sharping and card conjuring wpiuld be enlightening, and disturbing! So long have magicians arrogated to themselves all plume for the basic sleights and the shrewdest expedients of their craft, it would jolt them out of their Boeotian complacency to find out how plumply beholden they are to the Knights of the Black Star for the choicest tools of their trade. In sooth, my masters, that which was sown in dishonor has been reaped in rectitude!" There is an embarrassment of wealth here: a lovely little section on the early history of engraved playing cards, an excellent small section on card fanning, important work on stacked decks and gaffed and prepared cards, etc.

Revolutionary Card Technique, Ed Marlo, ed Elliot Cutler (Magic Inc.)
This large tome was originally published as a series of booklets over many years. Marlo was an utterly obsessive "cardician" (his preferred term), and i doubt that anyone ever has or will know more about card handling. this is not a complete instruction manual but rather an advanced course in a series of important sleights. easily the best treatment i've ever seen of the side slip orthe table palm etc. you can see the intensity behind this: when marlo treats the side slip he describes at least ten ways to do it, each treated in almost excruciating detail. but like i say: it's as good as you're going to see. the chapter on dealing bottoms, seconds, and middles is definitive and ridiculous: dozens of false deals. one advantage of this approach is that you can rummage around looking for what suits your hands and skills. someday i'll have a perfect faro swhuffle and when i do, i'll be all over that chapter, etc.
from denny

The Expert at the Card Table, S.W. Erdnase (Dover)
This book was first self-published by the author in 1902. It is hard not to notice that "Erdnase" is rather an odd surname, and that backwards we get E.S. Andrews. I suggest to you that this is a sleight, and that the man who was erdnase had a friend or enemy by that name. This book revealed many cheating strategies for card games for the first time in print, and described those as well as some already published with very excellent detail. The second half of the book is about card magic, essentially using the same range of sleights. The book set the vocabulary of card cheating and conjuring forevermore, and has been studied by every card worker for a century. Indeed it has gained a kind of Talmudic meta-literature, having been published in its entirety accompanied by commentaries by Darwin Ortiz and the great Dai Vernon (perhaps the greatest sleight-of-hand artist of the 20th century). It is delightful reading, perhaps the best-written magic book ever published (perhaps by far). No one, I believe, has convincingly proven who erdnase was. Martin Gardner interviewed the book's illustrator and came up with a candidate, who ended up in an extremely sordid murder-suicide. No dice if you ask me: his writing in correspondence sucked and he was most of a foot too tall. The magician and all-around good guy David Alexander came up with a new approach (profiling) and a new candidate in the pages of Genii magazine: the scion of a Colorado mining magnate. Very ingenious, but I'm not feeling Sanders either: just not enough evidence. You are looking for a professional gambler and a professional writer and an amateur conjuror. People have suggested Mark Twain: he was about 30 years too old. I say Ambrose Bierce, but then he was maybe twenty years too old. Eventually I'm gonna solve this thing and write a book. Here is the preface, entire: "In offering this book to the public the writer uses no sophistry as an excuse for its existence. The hypocritical cant of reformed (?) gamblers, or whining, mealymouthed pretensions of piety, are not foisted as a justification for imparting the knowledge it contains. To all lovers of card games it should prove interesting, and as a basis of card entertainment it is practically inexhaustible. It may caution the unwary who are innocent of guile, and it may inspire the crafty by enlightenment on artifice. It may demonstrate to the tyro that he cannot beat a man at his own game, and it may enabled the skilled in deception to take a post-graduate course in the highest and most artistic branches of his vocation. But it will not make the innocent vicious, or transform the the pastime player into a professional; or make the fool wise, or surtail thae annual crop of suckers, but whatever the result may be, if it sells it will accomplish the primary motive of its author, as he needs the money."

The Annotated Erdnase, Darwin Ortiz (mike caveney's magic words)
If anyone is as obsessive as Marlo, it's Darwin Ortiz. What we have here is Talmud to Erdnase's Torah, and it's extremely worthwhile. Erdnase developed a vocabulary for describing sleights ("seize the deck between the thumb at the inner end..."), which is a very difficult exercise: Ortiz supplements every move with his own description and nuances, as well as photographs. Then he sets out on the history: the origin of the sleight, and its progress through the twentieth century's parallel worlds of card hustlers and conjurors. What I don't understand is that Dai Vernon's Revelations, which is his own commentary on the ur-text, is out of print. But as important as that juxtaposition of thinkers was, no one could match Ortiz's prodigious research in every aspect of card handling in the Erdnase tradition.
at denny

Card College, (in five volumes), Robert Giobbi (Hermetic Press)
With all due respect to Teller and the Royal Road, I find Giobbi's stuff clearer. Incredibly well-thought-out and thorough descriptions of each sleight are accompanied by admirably clear line drawings. It's systematic, and I think it covers every major sleight, as well as stuff like gambling demonstrations, three-card monte, etc. It's pricey as hell (5 x $35), but worth it if you are really going to get into card work. I did a 4-day "card clinic," summer 2005, taught by Giobbi and Jamy Ian Swiss. Giobbi has a beautiful persona: a truly lovable human being. What is most remarkable about his own card work is the extreme attention to non-sleight detail: incredibly delightful patter: every movement and gesture rehearsed and perfect, but appearing to be spontaneous. His stage craft is remarkable, and it is worth paying attention to the sections of Card College where he treats of such things. at denny

Expert Card Technique: Close-Up Table Magic, Jean Hugard and Frederick Braue, Card Manipulations and More Card Manipulations (reprinted as "Card Tricks and Stunts") (Dover)
Sometimes it just blows your brain thinking how hard people have thought for decades about something as fundamentally useless as card handling. These classic books, kept in print inexpensively by Dover, could provide half a lifetime of work and delight. Hugard has a gift for clear exposition of complex positions and moves: it's always possible to get it right if you really read carefully. There are a million strong sleights here and a million great tricks, originating in most of the great card-handlers of the mid-20th c: Vernon, Zingone, Merlin, Charlie Miller, Anneman, to begin with. My copies are beginning to fall apart, but still it seems I find something new or that I'd completely forgotten about every time I open them.

The Royal Road to Card Magic, Jean Hugard and Frederick Braue (Dover)
Teller told me this is the greatest self-instruction book on magic ever written, and maybe the best instruction book ever written on any subject. Extremely high praise. But he has a point; I got almost nowhere with cards until I started into this. It's extremely good because it takes you from simple to difficult sleights, at every stage providing tricks you can perform with your current arsenal. Hugard wrote many books on card conjuring, and they are uniformly excellent, but this is the one to start with.

The Magician and the Cardsharp, Karl Johnson (Holt): my review from the latimes, 12.12.05.

The Card Magic of Le Paul, Paul Le Paul (D. Robbins/EZ Magic)
I admire the aesthetic of Le Paul: the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. The tricks here are quite beautiful, mostly traditional effects (like the color-changing deck; here, "how closely can you watch?"), achieved with the simplest possible means, and basic sleights are taught and applied here with real clarity. The essay "Simplicity - the Key to Good Magic" is often quoted, and there is a whole school of lepaulian card handlers who, among other things, are often "anti-flourish" (I'll get you an essay on this issue one day.) at denny

Close-Up Card Magic Harry Lorayne (D. Robbins)
Lorayne is a one-off: hilarious, opinionated, breezy, with a penchant for getting extremely strong effects by the simplest means. He's more fun to read than the average trickster. This book is a classic: there are professional card men whose reptoire is essentially to run through this book. Every trick is performable, and maybe actually fun to perform. Lorayne has collected and revised this and four other books as the classic collection. at denny

Darwin Ortiz at the Card Table, Darwin Ortiz (Kaufman & Co)
This book begins with probably my favorite quote on card handling: "I have found that if one wants to convey an impression of great skill it is advantageous actually to possess great skill." Some of the intense magic in this book is fairly doable for a shall we say intermediate card handler (I like "The Vegas Shuffle," for example). But some, and in particular some of the gambling-themes material, is diabolically difficult. Try performing a riffle shuffle, without pausing, in which you hold four cards back with the left hand and three with the right. Now try doing this *without looking at the deck*. I don't think enough time remains for me on earth to perfect such a thing. There is a shitload of great ideas here, though. Ortiz's three-card monte is beautifully thought out (well, so is more or less everything Ortiz has published). at kaufman and company

The Thompson Pass, Frank Thompson
This is lovely. Quite the invisible little "tilt" pass, elaborately described. from meir yadid

Dai Vernon's Inner Card Trilogy, compiled and photographed by Lewis Ganson (L&L Publishing)
A shipment of classic material, from treatments of palming and color changes (the "no palm" color change is particularly magical in my book, though I haven't got them all), to gambling demonstrations and thread work. "Think of a Card," "The Trick that Cannot be Explained," "Twisting the Aces": these are names to conjure with, as well as tricks of great ingenuity and beauty, always informed by Vernon's trademark "naturalness": there is a reason for every gesture. One might wish that Lewis Ganson was both a clearer and a more stylish writer, however.