Customer Reviews

Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women: Unique, Eccentric and Amazing Entertainers: Stone Eaters, Mind Readers, Poison Resisters, Daredevils, Singing Mice, etc.

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You've come to the right place. Buy _Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women_ if you want amazing stories, incredible histories, unbelievable accounts of some of the best acts of the last few centuries.

If I didn't know Ricky Jay's fine reputation as a magic historian, I'd think this book was a joke. The people and acts described are too outlandish, too impressive to be true. But I trust Jay to strike awe into me, and he does so repeatedly and without fail in this book.

The book's illustrations and photographs are marvelous supplements to Jay's smoothly written histories of performers--memory artists, dwarf magicians without arms or legs, women who walk into ovens. This is the quintessential introduction to this bizarre world.

In Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women, Ricky Jay takes on the history of oddball performers: men who claimed to cram their entire bodies into quart jars, armless ladies who could paint miniatures holding a brush between their teeth, gentlemen whose specialty was to enter large ovens accompanied by raw meat and exit (unharmed) with fully-cooked steaks, as well as mind readers of all sorts and species (human, pig, and horse).

Organized into chapters by skill by oddball skill, Jay is sometimes able to document such performers back into the 1700s by tracking newspaper reports, handbills, etc., many of which are reproduced in color plates and black-and-white photographs.

Ricky Jay occupies an engaging hole in intellectual space between enthusiast and academic. He is comprehensive in the extreme, but his writing style is anecdotal and he does not go for any elaborate sociological explanation of why such performers exist or what they `mean' to society. He just wants you to have fun, and perhaps to freak you out just a wee bit.

The book is also very nicely designed; its large wide pages lie flat and there are loads of remarkable illustrations. Definitely worth a look!

As a magician and card wielder Ricky Jay is fascinating to watch as well as listen to. As a writer Mr. Jay also brings his own fascination at the work of others to play and writes a truly well-written, very interesting and enlightening book about the arcane world of many sometimes downright odd entertainers.

Thorough in his presentation of details Mr. Jay's book is well-researched and his appreciation and awe for these unique people makes us quite enthralled as we read page after page about performers such as Le Petomaine, with his unusual ability to produce sounds of musical quality from a most unusual source on his body.

Ricky Jay, besides being fascinating to watch, is also fascinating to read.

A celebration of the strange in performance, by a man who has made a career out of amassing the most comprehensive collection of stage and vaudeville arcana imaginable. Jay isn't just a brilliant performer: his writing crackles with desert-dry wit, and deep affection -- never, and this is important, condescension -- for his subjects, even for the crackpots and con artists. This is a glorious celebration of performing artists who are wonderful in their sheer oddness, and a paean to all that is uniquely human, and humanly unique. Marvelous; it's one of my favorite books of all time, and more than stands up to multiple re-readings.

Ricky Jay, card virtuoso, has collecting a fascinating volume dealing with all manner of unusual, exotic, and bizarre performers. It is written with style, wit and humor: a thoroughly engaging work of scholarship. If you are unacquainted with Ricky Jay, let this book be your intro. if you are a fan, you will treasure every moment that you spend reading this remarkable book.

This wonderful book profiles some of the most unusual entertainers of all times: calculating pigs and acrobatic horses, stone eaters, poison resisters, daredevils, and mind readers. The contents of this meticulously researched and lovingly presented book often boggle the mind, inducing, at times, a wonderment that is nearly stupefying. Profusely illustrated with contemporary broadsides, lithographs, and photographs, the book is also enlivened by JayÕs seemingly inexhaustible knowledge of each performerÕs antecedents, biography, and critical reception. Engrossing from start to finish, but particularly notable for JayÕs account of the controversial career and bizarre death of mind reader Washington Irving Bishop, whose story beggars imagination. Also not to be missed is the final chapter on Joseph Pujol, whose career as Le Pˇtomane was based on his ability to create music and sound effects with the least reputable of bodily orifices. A treasure

Loaded with photos and Mr. Jay's learned commentary, this book must be the best of it's kind, a celebration of what individuals can do, even under the toughest of circumstances. Yes, some of these may seem like "Freak Shows" in circus/carnivals of old,but still these performances are awe-inspiring even today,sometimes hundreds of years later. The most incredible is the severely handicapped Matthew Buchinger, master engraver/artist, who had neither hands nor feet, perhaps neglected among art historians, but revived thanks to Mr. Jay. There are many others here as well, perhaps equally interesting and unusual, but you can be sure that Mr. Buchinger's story is worth the price of admission here!!

This review is a precis of Adam Bresnick's comments in Forbes Magazine, Feb. 22, '99. Ricky Jay is one of the more engaging figures in American entertainment - a cunning vaudellian, a resourceful actor and a delightful writer. But is is Jay's prose that may prove his most delightful contribution to civilization. Farrar, Straus & Giroux has just reissued Jay's Learned Pigs & Firproof Women, a beautifully crafted homage to some of the most pointlessly gifted individuals the stage has ever seen. "The Man Who Grows," was able to stretch his body from 5 feet, 10 inches, to 6 foot, 4 in front of astonished audiences. Blind Tom, an African-American idiot savant of the 19th century, had no formal musical education, yet upon hearing a song, he could immediately duplicate it on the piano. Read about these and more - this book is a masterful performance itself and is sure to beguile even the most skeptical reader with its unremiting weirdness.

Anything written by Ricky Jay is a wonderful read.
This book has so much great detail and is written so well that it is hard to put down. The fun reading this book kept me going from beginning to end. Don't pass this book up.

This has been one of my favorite books through the years. I have often 'dug it out' to show friends that I am not making this stuff up.
This is a delightful tome that gives in-dept details of the rise and fall of some of our past unusual `performers and artists'. This is an account of some of the most fascinating and compelling novelty shows in show business history.

The writing is first rate and the author's enthusiasm for this arena is clear on each page. The reader is guaranteed to not have to suffer a single boring page. Moreover, the book is laid out in a easily grouped way that makes the journey of this book even more enjoyable.

If you have a curious or eccentric relative or friend, this would make a perfect gift. I would suggest you hurry as the price of this book continues to rise. I saw one for sale at $349! And while I don't recommend this to anyone, the color plates in the middle section would make great art for your home once they are matted and framed. Simply beautiful and unique.

I hope you find my opinion helpful.

Michael L. Gooch, SPHR
Author of Wingtips with Spurs