The Collected Works Of Alex Elmsley Vol 2. By Stephen Minch

When I first sat down and con­sid­ered the value of the first vol­ume of this col­lec­tion I said:

There are many accepted clas­sic texts in card magic and this is almost cer­tainly one of them.

I’ll now take this state­ment fur­ther and say that vol­ume 2 has to be one of the 10 most impor­tant books on magic ever writ­ten. I have by no means read every magic book writ­ten, but I’ve seen enough to know qual­ity when I see it. This, the sec­ond and final vol­ume in Mr Elm­s­leys col­lected works, is qual­ity and cer­tainly deserves its place in my own per­sonal top ten.

It dif­fers from the first vol­ume, not in its focus on card magic, but in the prin­ci­ples employed and again there will be some­thing for every­one here. This vol­ume should pro­vide you with years of mate­r­ial and inspi­ra­tion for your own work. As with the first vol­ume the text is a col­lec­tion of mate­r­ial sub­mit­ted by Mr. Elm­s­ley along with records and notes kept by his col­leagues and close friends. Stephen Minch has done an expert job of select­ing and describ­ing the effects as well as pro­vid­ing obser­va­tions that give you a real sense of what Mr. Elm­s­ley was about.

Flour­ishes are a mat­ter of style and per­son­al­ity. For me to make rules to gov­ern another’s style would be impu­dence.
Alex Elm­s­ley (1993)

Above is one of my favourite Elm­s­ley quotes, and has become my default XCM defense. This is where this vol­ume begins; with a small num­ber of flour­ishes for card, coin and bil­liard ball. Next is a series of men­tal­ism effects using a vari­ety of meth­ods and pre­sen­ta­tion styles. Some of these are very strong, and at the very least the prin­ci­ples out­lined could be used in any num­ber of effects.

The next two sec­tions are a selec­tion of card effects includ­ing Mr. Elm­s­leys clas­sic Point of Depar­ture, Dia­mon Cut Dia­mond, En Voy­age and Between Your Palms among many oth­ers which you will recog­nise as the basis for many rework­ings. The next sec­tion pro­vides coin work­ers with a solid set of coin based effects includ­ing a very nice coin/card gim­mick which is worth play­ing with.

The next sec­tion pro­vides a mas­sive selec­tion of effects based on the faro shuf­fle as well as guid­ance on the sleight itself. From my other read­ing this is gen­er­ally accepted as the best work on the faro shuf­fle cur­rently in print, and you can see why. Hav­ing read this sec­tion you’ll want to get your decks out and start per­fect­ing that faro.

The penul­ti­mate sec­tion takes you through the stay-stack which was inde­pen­dently invented by Mr Elm­s­ley along with oth­ers. This pro­vides a sequence of great effects based on this prin­ci­ple. As with the faro, I am not a great fan of deck stacks but you can’t help but be impressed with the scope of the effects that can be achieved. Bikes at the ready.

Finally, the reader is taken through a full descrip­tion of Mr. Elm­s­leys Daz­zle Act with which he toured the US in 1975. Daz­zle by name and daz­zle by nature. This is a les­son in rou­tin­ing and you can under­stand why most magi­cians of that time remem­ber that lec­ture tour with great fondness.

Again despite the price of £34 this book is actu­ally cost effec­tive as it con­tains 103 effects. For the eco­nom­i­cally chal­lenged thats just less than 34 pence an effect, and this is a strong col­lec­tion from a deep mag­i­cal thinker.

Stephen Minch has done an out­stand­ing job of col­lect­ing together and pre­sent­ing the think­ing of Mr. Alex Elm­s­ley. If you’ve moved on from begin­ner and actu­ally want to start study­ing your art, I can’t think of a bet­ter place to start than both of these out­stand­ing vol­umes. For those who are inter­ested in buy­ing this vol­ume, can I advise to get it quickly as it is going out of print, and mag­ic­books­by­post was the last place which had them in the UK.

Over­all:
A clas­sic must have text for card magicians.

this review was also pub­lished on the Talk­magic forum

Related posts:

1. The Col­lected Works Of Alex Elm­s­ley Vol 1. By Stephen Minch