"Jay's Journal of Anomalies"
Jay's
Journal of Anomalies
As a magician, Ricky Jay is perhaps best known for his show "Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants," an Off-Broadway hit starring Jay and a deck of cards. As an actor, he's popped up in House of Games, Boogie Nights and Magnolia. As an author, he won a devoted cult audience for Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women, his survey of unlikely entertainments through the ages.
And then there's Jay's Journal of Anomalies. Published four times a year (or so) beginning in 1994, the journal ran six to 12 pages per issue, always consisting of one long, assiduously researched essay by Jay, mining a vein of material similar to Learned Pigs, plus supporting illustrations. A one-year subscription cost $90. Circulation, not surprisingly, was small. For nonsubscribers, distribution was pretty much limited to one rare-book shop, W&V Dailey in Los Angeles, which also served as the journal's publisher.
A few years ago I persuaded someone at that shop to send me one issue via mail, for $25. Vol. 3, No. 4 examined the methods of various bowling hustlers going back to the 16th century. Ten pages long, it was beautifully printed on heavy paper, illustrated with lovely old woodcuts and engravings, as well as a nice four-color reproduction of a sheet of "Rules and Instructions for Playing at Skittles" (a bowling precursor) from 1786. Despite the price, it was a fairly satisfying object, and I might even have bought a back issue or two, but none were available.
Last year Jay published the final edition of the journal, a project that was obviously motivated by something other than commercial potential. But now all 16 issues have been collected, along with follow-up material and a new batch of illustrations, in a book simply titled Jay's Journal of Anomalies. Though it's somewhat steeply priced at $40, that's a relative bargain when weighed against the per-issue cost. In any case, the availability of the full run to what will presumably be a somewhat larger audience is welcome news.
Flipping through these pages, it would be easy to conclude that Jay is simply interested in the weird — here are some pygmies, some enormously fat men (and boys), some freakishly thin ones, a "fantastic homunculus" and so on. But that assumption is not quite right. Jay is really interested in performance, either for the benefit of paying spectators or to the detriment of credulous marks. (Actually, the distinction between these two isn't always clear.) As Jay himself observed in an early issue: "Siamese twins, for instance, [are] worthy of discussion only if balanced on their heads, reciting Goliardic verse and providing their own accompaniment on violin and dulcimer." Exactly.
As it turns out, the bowling subterfuge issue was arguably the dullest topic in the journal's run: This collection is full of meditations on some of the more astonishing forgotten figures in the history of performance and flimflammery (again, often one and the same). A chapter called "Fact & Crucifixion" is a good example. It's about people who have been nailed to crosses, while a paying audience looks on. Tommy Minnock, for instance, not only appeared in this fashion before an enthusiastic crowd in a music hall in Trenton, N.J., in the final years of the 19th century, he sang, too. "Every night during the week," Jay quotes Minnock as having subsequently written, "with my hands pierced with nails ... I sang this song. As the strains of 'After the Ball' rolled out over the great audience the house went wild."
Well, why wouldn't they? Anyway, Jay explains that Minnock was "what was known in the trade as a 'horse,' a subject who could endure what for normal persons would be unbearable physical pain." What's more, he is not the only person who did this. That issue of the journal ran 10 pages, and I think if it's the one I'd gotten from that bookstore, I would have subscribed on the spot.
Other essays focus on flea circuses, nose amputation, levitation, a mysterious beast called the Bonassus, a chess-playing automaton, the links between dentistry and deceptive entertainment, the ability to walk on ceilings and the strange story of the "Aztec Lilliputians." Readers are the beneficiaries of Jay's almost unsettling fascination with such subjects, which do not seem to be easily researched; his end notes are full of references to old hand-dated playbills from personal collections, and books like Il Prestigiatore Moderno (Rome, 1894). It's actually tempting to believe that Jay, an illusionist after all, is simply making it up. What little I was able to check seemed legitimate enough, and maybe on some level it doesn't even matter if the whole thing is a hoax: If it is, Jay is perhaps even more talented than he appears (and also in need of some kind of help).
As much fun as the material is, Jay's somewhat precious writing style is likely to put some people off — he has a weakness for words like "opprobrious," and he's the sort of writer who will always skip a plain "start" in favor of the fussier "commence." But sometimes he turns a phrase that's truly irresistible, as when he casually notes the demise of one individual by way of "a peculiar death fandango attributable to a surfeit of pickled herrings." You get used to the language, and in some ways it works well with the pleasingly unmodern illustrations throughout.
Those illustrations, and the look of the book in general, are actually one of the selling points here — it's a beautiful volume, full of rare and colorful images, including a significant number of new ones Jay adds to the lengthy afterword in which he shares a good deal of supplemental information passed on to him by readers who seem as devoted to collecting this arcane knowledge as Jay must be. "I really do love this stuff," he confesses toward the end of the book, and on this point I'm sure the illusionist can be trusted.
This review appeared in the September 9, 2001, issue of Newsday.
