The Genii Forum

Volume 2 arrived here Friday.

Richard Kaufman wrote:That's nice to hear. (And it's nice they read the Forum, too.)

We do read the forum and talk about the comments (good and bad).

I just got off the phone with Louis and there are less than 40 copies of Volume 2 left, so I would anticipate this volume being gone by the end of the month.

The second volume seems much thinner. Don't have them side by side, though. What's the page count on each?

Volume 2 weighs in at 263 pages.

Volume 1?

409 pages in Volume one.

Volume One has 3 notebooks and Volume Two has only 2 notebooks, which is why Volume 2 in thinner.

James Patton explains the reasoning behind this in his introduction to Volume Two....basically that they wanted the books to be uniform in size and adding an extra notebook to Vol. 2 would make it too large. Another reason, of course, is they wanted to keep the price the same.

There are 100 fewer pages in volume 2, yet it still costs $200. Patton's explanation makes no sense whatsoever. They want to produce four volumes rather than three and make more money.

Although I am by no means, nor do I pretend to be, knowledgeable in the book printing and binding profession, it is my understanding that books are bound in signatures. The standard signature consists of 32 pages. Signatures can be made smaller but must always be, of necessity, of a number that is divisible by eight.
The Castle Notebooks consist of 32 page signatures. Had notebook Six been included in volume Two, owing to the 32 page signature format, a substantial number of BLANK pages would have resulted. This was not desirable to either Linda or L&L Publishing.
Of course, the blank pages could have been padded with photos, etc. in order to flesh out content. This option was also eliminated as a possibility for what should be obvious reasons. Another possibility was to go with a larger font. This would have been an all too glaring example of page juggling as well as being an effrontery to the intelligence of the purchaser.
The goal was to present the maximum number of pages of original notebook text as was logistically possible.
With these considerations in mind, Linda and L&L made the decision not to include notebook Six in the second volume.
As a matter of style, I decided not to overburden my introductory remarks in volume Two with this sort of minutiae and technical explication. So, yes......as I stated in my introduction to volume Two, had notebook Six been included in volume Two, the overall page count would have been greater than volume One......albeit with substantially more blank pages.....

JP

My understanding of "uniform in size" includes a third dimension.

Jim, you shouldn't write about publishing since you have no experience in the area.

While a full signature in a book is 32 pages, any division of 8 can be included. I fail to see why the second volume, which is 100 pages shorter, is the same price as the first. And why shouldn't volume 2 have had a few more pages than volume 1? For $200, by retail only, that would seem fair. Or do I need to do the math again: $200 x 500 copies = $100,000. Deduct $10,000 for printing and you have a profit of $90,000. I would think another $2,000 to $3,000 could have been spent on that extra 100 pages. Then the profit would have "only" been $87,000. And there would need to be no more than 7 blank pages if an 8-page signature was used.

I was also puzzled by your remark in the introduction regarding Jennings' "Peripatetic Coins," which you manage, in an off-handed way, to suggest might be Bruce's routine simply because he put an alternate handling for the last coin in his notes. You go out of the way to say you're not making any attribution about it, but merely by bringing it up, and phrasing it the way you have, it suggests that Jennings stole the routine from Bruce, which is something even Bruce never suggested in his life--and he suggested a lot.

As I mentioned in my opening remarks in my reply, I am, self admittedly, strictly a tyro in the publishing profession. My reply should be taken strictly in that light.... As to the math on profit margins, this is none of my business,as I am not a principal in the undertaking.
As to the LJ Peripatetic Coins ending I have no doubt whatsoever that the routine is LJs....My remark in the introduction to Volume Two was directed to those who may believe that the in the spectators hand ending is LJs..in fact, they might absolutely insist that it is...The notebooks indicate that the idea is Bruce's, though I don't recall that he ever laid claim to it during our many conversations. His marginalia annotations don't reflect the accustomed "mine" or "LJ". Come to think of it, I don't recall LJ claiming the idea either. And, as you know, Larry and I had countless conversations over the years. In fact, LJ was the first to show the idea to me circa '73. I am certain that he didn't say it was his idea...nor did he mention Bruce's name in connection with it.
It certainly was not my intention to denigrate Larry or his memory by intimating that he had "stolen" it from Bruce. LJ was a friend as was Bruce. I hold both of them in the highest esteem.

JP

According to a previous post on this thread, L&L have said that there will be four volumes of the Castle Notebooks.

Two volumes have now been published, covering notebooks 1-5, leaving eight notebooks to go.

Jim Patton says, in his Introduction to Volume 2, that the later notebooks are "greater in size" than the earlier ones.

How, then, will L&L publish the remaining eight (supposedly larger) notebooks in only two volumes while retaining a "uniform size"???

Does this mean that purchasers who want the "full set" will have to purchase more than four volumes?

Dave Jones

Why did the relationship become soo bad between Larry Jennings and Bruce Cervon during the later years? I thought they were the best of friends when The Magic Castle started.

Jennings met Cervon at a magic convention in the early 1960s and they became friends. Jennings moved out to Los Angeles to be near Dai Vernon in 63 or 64. Jennings became fast and close friends with Vernon. Jennings told Cervon he should come out to LA because Vernon was there. So Cervon did. And he slept on Jennings' couch before he had a place to live.

Jennings couldn't spell and didn't enjoy writing, so he asked Bruce to start taking notes on all the things he and Vernon were coming up with nightly at The Castle, and thus was born the Castle Notebooks. An idea of Larry Jennings.

At first, Vernon despised Cervon (who even his friends will have to admit was an extremely arrogant man) and wouldn't have much to do with him. So Jennings would go to Bruce's, or call Bruce on the phone, and relate all the things Vernon had told him and Bruce would write it down in his notebook.

Eventually Vernon warmed up to Bruce and they also became friends. But Vernon was a sadist, and he like to pit Bruce and Larry against each other, baiting each of them with ideas the other one was coming up with. Bruce was also an opportunist; Jennings was also a drunk. Eventually Cervon came to loathe Jennings. Jennings did not hate Cervon, but he felt badly at the way things turned out.

Here's a story about an incident that was witnessed by a friend of mine who sometimes posts here. He has told it a number of times to different people, so if any of them are reading this, they will recognize him. I won't give his name since it has to be his choice to go public with it. Now remember that this isn't something someone else told him: he saw it. This was in the 1980s, I believe. Cervon was working at the Castle and Vernon was in the audience. After the show, Vernon offered Cervon some advice, and Cervon yelled at him something along the lines of, "You're just an old man--you don't know anything."

Says a lot about Cervon, and his relation to Vernon.

Jim Patton wrote:Of course, the blank pages could have been padded with photos, etc. in order to flesh out content. This option was also eliminated as a possibility for what should be obvious reasons.

Those reasons are not obvious to me.

Joneseymagic wrote:Jim Patton says, in his Introduction to Volume 2, that the later notebooks are "greater in size" than the earlier ones.
How, then, will L&L publish the remaining eight (supposedly larger) notebooks in only two volumes while retaining a "uniform size"?

That's what I was wondering, too, when I read this.

Denis

Richard Kaufman wrote:
Jennings couldn't spell and didn't enjoy writing, so he asked Bruce to start taking notes

given Cervon's spelling in the notebooks, this line is rather funny!

Jennings always kept anything he wrote out of sight except from his closest friends because he was embarrassed about his spelling, which is far far worse than Cervon's. FAR worse. If I was helping Larry sell stuff at the end of a lecture and people wanted something signed, he would constantly ask me how to spell "wishes" just to be sure he didn't misspell it in someone's book.

Some people who didn't like Larry, and those who didn't know him well, thought he was illiterate. But of course that wasn't true--he was an avid reader (science-fiction novels) and extremely articulate. He had a really poor education in the public schools in rural Georgia and Detroit.

Hmmm! That being said, I wonder if Mr. Jennings suffered from dyslexia? It occurs, in varying degrees, in about 10% of the population. Poor spelling is one of the symptoms.

I just spoke with Louis and Volume 2 is now sold out. The last one was sold a little while ago.

No details on Volume 3 yet, but you'll have a few months to work through V2.

In the Castle Notebooks volume 3 on p85 is a reference to Bill Gusias' "double ended bug".
I have to plead ignorance.
can anyone enlighten me about bugs - and the value of a double ended bug in particular?

Thanks

A bug is a device for secretly holding a card prior to it being palmed and introduced into play. I would assume a double-ended bug holds two cards.

thank you!

Over a decade on, did these books prove to be the priceless gems they were marketed as?

eBay and the lack of any mention of them would suggest not.

PapaG wrote:Over a decade on, did these books prove to be the priceless gems they were marketed as?

eBay and the lack of any mention of them would suggest not.

eBay?...... I don't think that means a thing!. I have the set and if you take the time to decipher the notes, which can be hard, there is some truly wonderful material.

Christopher1979 wrote:

PapaG wrote:Over a decade on, did these books prove to be the priceless gems they were marketed as?

eBay and the lack of any mention of them would suggest not.

eBay?...... I don't think that means a thing!. I have the set and if you take the time to decipher the notes, which can be hard, there is some truly wonderful material.

Care to elaborate?

The Castle Notebooks were an information dump. They were literally dumped on the market, without the care and work necessary for readers to appreciate what's in them. They were grotesquely overpriced to begin with, so that colors people's perception of their value.
Are they worth it? Absolutely. But you have to dig hard to get the information, an ability that most people no longer have.

After spending $800 on the set and spending many MANY hours reading between the lines I think the only elaboration I can give is...... Buy a set and do the same!. The Castle Notebooks are not for everyone. If you want to grab a quick trick then the set is not for you... like anything.. you reap what you sow!

Richard Kaufman wrote:The Castle Notebooks were an information dump. They were literally dumped on the market, without the care and work necessary for readers to appreciate what's in them. They were grotesquely overpriced to begin with, so that colors people's perception of their value.
Are they worth it? Absolutely. But you have to dig hard to get the information, an ability that most people no longer have.

Totally agree!

Richard Kaufman wrote:The Castle Notebooks were an information dump. They were literally dumped on the market, without the care and work necessary for readers to appreciate what's in them. They were grotesquely overpriced to begin with, so that colors people's perception of their value.
Are they worth it? Absolutely. But you have to dig hard to get the information, an ability that most people no longer have.

I agree about the dump and cash-grab.

Unfortunately I am one of those people who gave up trying to decipher the jottings. Life's too short.

I just find it extraordinary that nothing seems to have been brought to the surface, in any media. Unless the content, once deciphered, has been deemed too precious to even mention. I'm not talking about disclosure, simply awareness.

One would have thought that, given the fastidious application of some in the magic community, the Notebooks' legendary status would have been elevated, not forgotten.

(It's just an observation Brad, no need to go the usual 10 rounds...)

I have hopes that the Cervon video project will be more accessible.

It will be. And it contains many gems. Linda wants it to be the best possible tribute to Bruce. That takes time.

Those that are working hard paging thru the Notebooks and deciphering great material aren't going to share it. There's no reason to give away the harvest that required time and hard work to plant and grow. In hindsight maybe it was a good idea to release the books raw. Many of its secrets continue to stay hidden.

The question I'm asking is that very one: are people deciphering great material?

I'm not asking for the secrets to be revealed.

I'd say, yes, there is great material.
But to make sense of it, you need to know a lot about close up magic; Vernon, Daley, Baker etc.
It is not a short-cut to the 'inner secrets'.

Yes, there are lots of people deciphering it. But they're not talking about it.

What kind of things have you dug up?

Don't forget that much of the material that appeared in The excellent 'Vernon Chronicles' series came from the Cervon notebooks, so if you want a painless introduction to them, you should get these.

El Mystico wrote:It will be. And it contains many gems. Linda wants it to be the best possible tribute to Bruce. That takes time.

That is terrific to hear, and I think it's great that folks are taking the time to do it up right! Very excited! Thanks!