Customer Reviews

Dice: Deception, Fate, and Rotten Luck

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a thin hardbound volume, a collection of photographs and short
discourses about various aspects of dice, gambling, and fraud. Each
chapter is very short (just a few pages) and the entire book can be
read in less than thirty minutes. Both the photographs and the text
are fascinating, and left this reader wanting more. I hope that Mr.
Jay will be writing more books to share his voluminous and interesting
knowledge of magic, gaming, and cons with the world. (Jay's other
books: Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women and Jay's
Journal of Anomalies are also highly recommended.)

Though they may have passed the peak of their fad, fuzzy dice can still be seen hanging from the rear view mirrors of favored cars. They are an amusing bit of American folk surrealism, recalling the more official artworks of the fur-lined cup and saucer or the lobster telephone. The furry dice don't clack the way real dice do, and they are too huge and too rotund ever to be useful as mechanisms in games of chance. Yet they look strange enough that many people fancy them, and assembly lines somewhere are tuned up to produce them for enthusiasts. Conversely, there are real dice depicted in _Dice: Deception, Fate, & Rotten Luck_ (Quantuck Lane Press) by Ricky Jay, with photographs by Rosamond Purcell. But some of them are startlingly furry, and all of them are dying.

Ricky Jay is a magician, and a historian of magic, in addition to being a stage and movie actor. He has produced a couple of large books having to do with the history of magic and showmanship, but this is a small book, square like a face of a die, as are the color close-ups of the afflicted dice. "In the attempt to acquire empirical knowledge, I have accumulated thousands of dice over a period of decades," Jay explains. They are of all sorts of colors and patterns, but most of them are made of celluloid, the same celluloid whose decay has robbed us of countless early movies. Rosamond Purcell specializes in photographing the entropy that overcomes inanimate objects, like a book eaten by termites or rusting objects from the junkyard. Most of the large photographs here show the dice larger than life. The styles of their degeneration are diverse. The transparent ones show cracks through their mass, as if they have been dropped from a height. Some of the faces have crystallized, so that they look as if they have been sugared. Greenish mold seems to grow on some of them, while others seem to be bubbling from inside. Some of them have become as floppy as Dali's pocket watches, while others cleave crisply, leaving cubic fracture lines. Sometimes the spots are preserved, and sometimes it is the spots that have been attacked by time. They are certainly more interesting and more photogenic than they would have been when they were first manufactured.

It is to be expected that the text, in twelve small chapters numbered by pips on the dice, reflects Jay's wit and erudition. Here you can learn a lot of dice history, tales of loaded dice found in Pompeii, or of the conjuring dwarf who had no arms or legs, but manipulated dice in subtle ways. You can read about how God has struck down sacrilegious gamesters. Here is the legend of the Scandinavian kings throwing dice for territory, each throwing repeated boxcars until a surprising stroke (consistent with these pictures) gives a throw that beats a twelve. These are all good stories of the importance which many have felt for dice and their outcomes, and they are made poignant by the handsome photographs of just how chance and time have overtaken these humble cubes.

Ricky Jay, that connoisseur of all things shady, arcane, and marvelously odd, brings us yet another trip into the history of man's less than (ahem) socially respectable obsessions. With "Dice", he, in his ever unique style, tantalizes us with tales of one of the oldest gambling accessories known to man. And like the great magician and (very respectable) confidence artist that he is, he does it with smooth patter here, a bit of flashy historical anecdote there, while still never quite giving you all there is to know. Of course he keeps something hidden and to himself. It's in his blood and it makes you finish this slim volume wanting more, but in a good way. You'll go through this book in one sitting, but won't hesitate to reach back for it again and again -- or perhaps, to pick up a pair of dice and see what all this fuss over the centuries has been all about. Face it, pal, you've been sucked in, and you're in good (and bad) company.

Rosamund Wolff Purcell's beautiful color photographs of Jay's dice collection punctuate the text with amazing views and perspectives of the small and very much decaying bits of man's folly. They appear as ancient ruins, crumbling away with time, much in the manner of many a gentleman's fortune once he has found himself enticed by these small, six -sided devils. Marvelous art.

Both Jay and Purcell have rolled a natural with this one!

"Dice: Deception, Fate & Rotten Luck" is a collaboration between master slight-of-hand artist and scholar of peculiar human endeavor Ricky Jay and photographer Rosamond Purcell, whom Jay called upon to photograph his decaying dice collection. There are 21 photographs of dying dice, most full page, interspersed with Jay's spare text recounting the history of dice, from ancient civilization to the 20th century, through anecdotes about gamblers, the games they played, and, more often than not, how they cheated. From Jay's account, you might get the impression that historically more dice have been loaded than not. That is probably because the discussion is of the dice themselves, upon which cheating relies.

From the Persian woman who won the right to kill her enemy in a roll of the dice, to the 11th century King of Norway who won an island by a die that split in two mid-roll, through many an execution and suicide along the way, it's clear that dice have often been a matter of life and death. Now their own death is documented in Rosamond Purcell's strikingly beautiful photographs of misshapen, cracked, crystallized, and crumbling dice. As Jay explains in his final chapter "When a Die Dies", from the late 19th to mid-20th century, dice were typically made of cellulose nitrate, which decays rapidly after being stable for decades. These dice are more fascinating in their demise than in their prime. "Dice" is an intriguing little volume for fans of Ricky Jay, lovers of the game, and admirers of exquisite close-up photography.

This is a fun and unusual Coffee Table Book, but I would really have like it to have a better (any) bibliography. My interest in history is such that I would have liked to know more then just the small amount of information this book provided.

[...]

Ricky Jay once again finds an odd way to make an unexpected topic fascinating. His sense of humor adds to his expertise in the matter, with exquisite photos taken of otherwise simple images, beautifully captured by Rosamund Purcell.

this product was fairly priced, delivered when promised, and recieved as described.

just about perfectly

I couldn't disagree more with the first customer review. Rosamond Purcell's photographs of dice in various states of decay are lush and lyrical--all on their own, they are well worth the price of the book. The text, which is indeed brief, is both whimsical and erudite. A great, great stocking stuffer for anyone with a taste for beauty or chance.

Dice: Deception, Fate & Rotten Luck

What an abject waste of time and twelve or so bucks! The book is a few paragraphs of information on the history of using "false" dice in gambling. There are many arty photographs of celluloid dice in various stages of decomposition. Goofy - just goofy.