Sunday, June 3, 2007

Improving Erdnase

In case you fair readers haven't noticed, I have a small obsession with Erdnase. Recently I have been approached or rather reprimanded for encouraging the use of "dated" techniques. The problem is those "improved" techniques are not improvements at all. They are garbage, disgusting excuses for technique. I quickly jumped to the realization that the techniques being shown or recommended to me are not improvements but rather they are easier to acquire proficiency in than those brilliant methods presented by Erdnase.
Those techniques associated with the bottom deal come to mind. There is little doubt in my mind that Erdnase was a bottom dealer. His praise for techniques related to the bottom deal, these include but are not limited to, the bottom palm, the replacement, the bottom deal itself, etc. coupled with his mention of flaw in other techniques or restrictions, such as the requirement of marked cards in utilizing the second deal all lead one to believe Erdnase enjoyed his dealing from the bottom of the deck. The bottom deal is for another post. The point being, the bottom deal has to be one of the most "improved" techniques or Erdnase's.
How and why would anyone dream of attempting to improve such a seminal text on a topic and technique which the author is clearly an expert, an innovator and a polished professional. Before people try to improve Erdnase, why not learn the techniques correctly, become as good as you can at them, then once you have reached a level of mastery that "borders on the wonderful" you can attempt (and that is all it will be, an attempt) to improve the masters work.
I don't think any artist in his right mind would improve Van Gogh's self-portrait, or Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, perhaps a touch of realism in Monet's impressionist work? Or someone might want to correct Mona Lisa's smile. That is of course because you are an expert of such unmatched skill and care that you are greater than those who came before you, even if you can't do what they did, with lower quality tools.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The problem with your final analogy is the confusion of a work of art with an art technique. While I will concede that Erdnase cannot be improved upon as an early twentieth century book on card magic, I'm not satisfied that the same exalted status may be applied to the techniques themselves. While Erdnase himself was an expert, to ignore the limitations of some of his methods, finger flash with the bottom deal for example, is not an act of respect, rather it detracts from the true value of the text by making it to be more than it is.