READING GREEK

Many years ago when I studied classical Greek as a student, the textbooks used were the set by the Joint Association of Classical Teachers (JACT). At first, using them was a combination of ease and yet feeling lost at times. You see, these were nothing like the previous textbooks I had seen and tried to use. An example, which is a good book but perhaps not for beginners, is Primer of Greek Grammar by Abbott and Mansfield. What undoubtedly terrifies someone new to the subject when they flick through the two hundred and twenty pages of this book is that it is mostly tables of grammatical data and small paragraphs of grammatical rules. That style of throwing an avalanche of grammatical data at a student (and little else) is from the age that the book was written in, the nineteenth century. In that century, even the books trying to provide a simple way to learn classical Greek still began with fifty to a hundred pages or so of grammatical tables. That is how it had been done for who knows how long. The latter part of the twentieth century saw many institutions trying new ways of teaching classical languages. One of those was and still is by JACT.

JACT wanted to do things differently. Instead of bombarding a student with a torrent of grammar in the hope that an understanding of the language would sink in via a monumental process of memorisation, and considering much of what was traditionally to be memorised would not even be used at a beginner’s level, they chose a core amount of grammar and vocabulary which could be learned in a different way – so that a beginner could learn to read classical Greek fairly quickly. And that is perhaps the simplest way of summing up the course: Reading Greek – which is also the name of course. The student learns the grammar and vocabulary of classical Greek by reading Greek from the very first lesson onwards. There is no need to learn a whole book of grammatical tables first or metaphorically swallow a dictionary of classical Greek. With each lesson the student is introduced to a small amount of grammar and a handful of Greek words to learn. They then translate a passage of Greek, which clearly illustrates and practises the particular grammar and vocabulary for that lesson. 

Yes, I know this sounds very similar to many language courses available today but that is only because of the brief description I have given. There are significant differences. One is the speed of learning in the sense of how quickly a student can start making use of what they have learned. The course has twenty sections with anywhere from five to ten lessons in each section. By section five, the student is reading extracts from a comedy by Aristophanes whilst learning about Socrates. I have yet to see any equivalent in a modern language course for beginners, French for example, where less than quarter of the way through the course the student is expected to read the original French of one of the plays of Albert Camus whilst learning about the ideas of Jean Paul Sartre.  Usually by one quarter of the way through a course of French the student has only become proficient in how to introduce themselves, order coffee, ask for directions, book a taxi, and so on. 

And that sums up another difference – the course teaches the student about ancient Greek culture and history in order to aid learning the language.  Unlike other language courses, it does not do this in a trivial way; one of the books (The World of Athens) is a history book written especially for the course. 

After I completed my course in my student days, I still kept my copies of Reading Greek although they were superseded by more advanced level books and I referred to them now and then whenever I needed some clarification of points from those more challenging books on the subject. Since then, JACT has produced a second edition which I was told was a significant improvement on the first edition. Over the years my temptation to examine the second edition and compare it to the first edition has come and gone and come again in a sort of circular torment. I finally gave in to that urge recently when the opportunity arose to put the two editions side by side and take a really good look. In one way, nostalgia encouraged me to be biased towards the first edition. In another way, nostalgia had to admit defeat because the second edition is genuinely far better. 

The second edition uses the same methodology as the first but is different in two ways by the revising and redesigning the main books of the course - Reading Greek: Text and Vocabulary, Reading Greek: Grammar and Exercises, An Independent Study Guide to Reading Greek  – to make using them easier. 

Firstly, the books are bigger and the design of the text has been laid out in a way easier to read and study. It may not sound like much but compared to the first edition it makes a big difference. 

Secondly, the first edition for some reason was designed with a notion that the student had a prior grasp of Latin and therefore some aspects of classical languages were not approached in a gentler way for the beginner; the second edition dispenses with that notion altogether and is written as if the student is learning any foreign language for the first time. Consequently, a lot more space is given at the beginning of the course to acquaint the reader with relevant terminology of grammar (in English) before explaining the equivalent grammar in Greek.     

In line with all this, the opportunity was taken to revise and update the history book, The World of Athens: An Introduction to Classical Athenian Culture (Reading Greek), into a second edition and for it to be published in a format matching the other books. JACT have also retired their single tape cassette for the course by recording a newer version which is a two CD set, Speaking Greek CD (Reading Greek). 

As a student, when I used the first edition, I was very glad of its existence. Now, having seen the second edition, I wish it had existed when I was student. But it did not; so hard luck on me.  

Second Hand Book Inquiries

This is just a brief blog post regarding people who contact my website, or myself directly, wanting to sell me second hand books for my bookshop.  For some reason, I do not know why, there has been a recent increase in such inquiries from the general public and it is becoming unmanageable. And so, to reduce such inquiries, please note that I only ever buy books from authorised suppliers and not from the general public. 

The contact page of my website will be updated with a similar request. 

New Publication Dates

These are the new publication dates for these books:

The Art of Iugling by S.R. - 31st May 2011

Hocus Pocus Junior - 1st of July 2011

The Persians by Aeschylus - 1st of August 2011

Pre-orders will be fulfilled first on all titles.

An update on the previous blog entry:
Well, looking into one situation led to discovering other problems elsewhere that have to be dealt with that made the first one look insignificant. But solutions have been provided and it's all being dealt with bit by bit. Phew! A big thank you to Amazon and others for their help. That's all that can be said for now. 

Round the Square

Magic squares have a reputation of being the least appealing form of magic because there is a mathematical principle seen to be involved. To be honest, when I have read ideas for magic squares the information given usually does live up to a promise of dullness. The problem tends to be a complete lack of regard for performance. The best card trick in the world becomes lack lustre when thought and preparation regarding performance is missing.

Al Smith’s book, Round the Square, focuses on the very need - the very aspect of how to incorporate a magic square into a performance. The end result is magic. It can be presented as mentalism, psychic phenomena, an experiment in superhuman mental agility or plain old magic. In some of the tricks, any aspect of calculation appears to be hindered or impossible on the part of the magician and yet the magician succeeds in bringing about a magical conclusion. Al Smith cleverly creates a situation where the audience believes that what has happened involves far more than any mere mathematical principle and calculation. And they would be right. We all know that if you choose any line of numbers in a magic square it will add up to the same number on that magic square. But how is it possible for the magician to predict, in an envelope sealed before the performance, what that number will be when it is a volunteer randomly choosing the numbers that will fill a grid to form a magic square? After all, how can a magician know what numbers will be chosen prior to the trick being performed?

The book does not simply list and describe tricks; it teaches the principles involved, step by step, before explaining tricks such as Origeightor which received a lot of attention back in 1992 when Al Smith published it in Abra and Paul Daniels adapted it for use in one of his television shows. After explaining Origeightor Smith improves on it and then goes through many of what are seen as the weaknesses of magic squares and provides easy, workable solutions to aid performance. If you want to add a different form of mental magic to your repertoire then Smith’s book is more than worth a look. It will inspire your own ideas and improvements. For those who are interested, details on how to buy a copy can be obtained by emailing albertesmith@myway.com

The Essential Dai Vernon and other things

My copy of this book arrived today; nice, new and shrink-wrapped. It is a very commendable asset to any magician or researcher in that it gathers together many of Vernon’s books into one handy volume. However, there are some disappointments as a book collector. Considering the large amount of photographs in this book, those of Vernon illustrating how sleights are done and the section of extra photographs, the paper chosen should have been of a better quality than that used. Mike Caveney’s Magic Words got it very right in the quality of paper for Revelation by Dai Vernon. Because of that, the photographs reproduced in that book have fantastic tonal quality and detail. Comparing my first edition of The Dai Vernon Book of Magic published by Harry Stanley in 1957 with its counterpart in L&L Publishing’s Essential Dai Vernon, the printed quality of photographs is better in the Harry Stanley edition simply through a better choice of paper. Oh well, we cannot have everything and the fact that The Essential Dai Vernon even exists is a boon not to be overshadowed by nitpicking.

Another worthy book that arrived today is The Notebook edited by Will Houstoun. It is a bit of a must for anyone interested in the history of magic and collecting or researching old magic books. Houstoun, a member of the Magic Circle, was shown a handwritten notebook in the Magic Circle’s library by the Executive Librarian Peter Lane. The notebook dates to the early nineteenth century. The unknown author of the notebook collects together eighty conjuring tricks, some by well known magicians of that period. Houston has provided a facsimile of the notebook with a transcription of the text, along with some helpful notes. I have read only one negative review of The Notebook and the author of that completely missed the point of the book as a social text and historical document. The book is not without flaws but no book exists that does not. If Houstoun reprints the book then, as with all books, the errors will be expunged.

On a completely different subject, my main website is still in the process of being overhauled. One hurdle not yet successfully leapt is programming a shopping cart and checkout for the site. This will make it possible for people to buy books directly on the site instead of going to one of my other three internet outlets. The advantage to this is mostly for UK customers. I have become dissatisfied with the increase in cost of postage and packaging being charged to UK customers by a company that I was going to use for mail order distribution. They want to charge customers a flat rate of £4.75 to deliver a single copy of A Briefe And Pleasaunt Treatise, Entituled, Naturall and Artificiall Conclusions by Thomas Hill anywhere in the UK. I have therefore decided that I will handle distribution in the UK and the postage and packaging for the book will be free to UK customers. While I get the checkout sorted on my main website, I have put some copies of Thomas Hill’s book for sale on my Ebay shop. The price is £10 and postage and packaging is, as stated above, free within the UK.

Unsung Hero, Unsung Villain?

Thomas Hill lived and wrote during the Sixteenth Century. Other than the titbits he mentions about himself in his books, we know very little about him. He is, it could be argued, an unsung hero. He was the first writer to include in a book published in the English language some conjuring tricks that his readers could try for themselves. ‘So what?’ some might say. ‘What’s the big deal with a few parlour tricks?’ Well, Hill was not living in the most politically or religiously tranquil of times. Hill lived to see the Royal Crown pass from Henry VIII to Edward VI to Mary I to Elizabeth I; all of which was a period of turmoil, sometimes bloody, regarding Britain’s official religion. It was during the reign of Elizabeth I that Hill published A Briefe and Pleasaunt Treatise, Entituled, Naturall and Artificiall Conclusions (In his excellent book Old Conjuring Books, Trevor Hall dates the earliest known edition as being published in 1567).

So, during a century where the topic of religion had more than a tinge of danger to it, Hill had the nerve to include in his book what must have been two controversial items amongst the tricks. They were easily recognisable as being two of the miracles of Christ - changing water to wine and walking on water – and practical, workable methods were given for both. Usually, we the modern public associate the name of James I, the successor to Elizabeth I, with the ‘witch craze’ where just about anyone could be accused and executed as a witch; in fact, it was Elizabeth I who brought in the legislation regarding witchcraft. And so by 1584, during the reign of Elizabeth, a Justice of the Peace named Reginald Scot wrote and published a book called The Discoverie of Witchcraft. Scot not only casts doubt on the power of witches but also laments how innocent people, including conjurors performing the likes of the cups and balls, had been tried and condemned for witchcraft. Imagine being tried and condemned as a witch for performing a few card tricks! So what would the public’s reaction be to Hill’s two marvels that, through practical methods, imitate the power of Christ?

Hill’s courage to publish such items might be associated with the downside to the argument regarding his character. Courage usually has a motivation and in Hill’s case it may simply have been money and the quest for fame through notoriety. We can judge this by looking at some of the other items in his book. Along with some tricks he gives experiments on subjects ranging from husbandry to metallurgy to the plain weird – such as supposedly getting an egg to climb up to the top of an upright spear by filling it with morning dew and then waiting for the sunrise. Yep, Hill decided to put a good amount of outlandish claims in the book in order to help it sell. Because then, just as now, such books sell and sell well. The evidence of that can be seen in two ways. Firstly, that Hill’s book continued to be reprinted for a number of centuries; secondly, in how Hill’s book was mercilessly plagiarised by other writers for the next two to three centuries and the bits they stole were the conjuring tricks and the whacky experiments that sounded great but could not possibly work.

So Hill was, sort of, a bit of a hero for being the first person to have the courage to publish conjuring tricks in English at a time when it was not wise to do so – even copies of Reginald Scots’ book were later burned by Royal edict – and Hill was also a bit of a villain in that his intentions were probably grossly selfish and part of some attempt to gain fame or to be noticed by his contemporaries. He was certainly noticed by Reginald Scot, who wrote of one of Hill’s later books as being of ‘follie and vanitie’.

I have edited Hill’s book for publication as a paperback and it is being released in August. The details are below. You can reserve a copy or ask about payment options by sending an email to sales@johnhelvin.net

A Briefe And Pleasaunt Treatise, Entitutled, Naturall and Artificiall Conclusions by Thomas Hill, the text of 1581, with the original illustrations.

The text given in this book uses the original spelling.

Contents:
Editor's Preface
The text of A Briefe and Pleasaunt Treatise, Entituled, Naturall and Artificiall Conclusions
Notes by the Editor
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Size: 9 inches (height) by 6 inches (width)
Pages: 88
Illustrations: reproduces five illustrations from the edition of 1581 and a portrait of Thomas Hill from the frontispiece of one of his other books.
Price: £10.00
ISBN: 978-1-872175-05-8

Tying Together Loose Ends

It has been a busy number of weeks for me; however, some of the main tasks have been completed or are near completion. One task was redesigning my main website to give it a few extra sections which would bring together various items on the web related to me. There are now sections on art, photos and videos. They do not contain everything that is on the web to do with me, just a reasonable selection making it easier to view things without going to the trouble of visiting a list of sites to see what is new. There is a new section on books. This is not been fully added yet and only lists some of the books available from one of my internet bookshops. When it is complete, there will be books listed there which are not available in my other shops and which can only be purchased through the main site. I am being encouraged to do the same with some artwork but I am against the idea at present.

I have received some questions asking why I have not posted any more videos of art on YouTube since last month. I have reached the stage on the Magicians project where I am now working on paintings as well as drawings. I am not making time lapse videos of the paintings and so there is nothing to post on YouTube or my main site. I still have a list of drawings to do and videos of those will be posted on the net as usual as and when they are done. Something that should be kept in mind is that all the videos pertaining to the Magicians project will be removed from my YouTube channel and my main site shortly after the project is completed. Once again I would to thank the people that have been kind enough to contact me and write nice things about my art. It is very much appreciated.

Another task which is nearly complete is the corrections to text and cover of A Briefe and Pleasaunt Treatise of Naturall and Artificiall Conclusions by Thomas Hill, the text of 1581. The proof copy of this book highlighted errors which had been missed at the editing stage and so I have been glad of the opportunity to deal with them and finally get ready to put the book on sale.

Thomas Hill was a compiler of books on various matters such as dreams, gardening and almanacs. One book stands out however and that is his Naturall and Artificiall Conclusions. It was, as far as we know at present, the first book in English to include some conjuring tricks. Aha, some of you might be saying, is not Reginald Scots’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft the book that has claim to that accolade? It was, until someone pointed to Hill’s book as having an earlier date of publication. Trevor Hall, a magician and bibliographer, researched the matter carefully and showed that Hill’s text predates Scot’s not merely by a few years but by several decades (for more on that, read Hall’s book Old Conjuring Books).

For some people, however, magic is not the sole interest of Hill’s book. The book includes items in many fields of interest amongst which are metallurgy, chemistry, botany, biology, and crackpotology. Yes, that is right, crackpotology. Hill includes a number of crackpot items that even he probably did not believe and some he certainly knew could not possibly be true. The book has relevance to the history of all these areas and even to the history of religion in the United Kingdom. Hill’s book was published during the turbulent century of the beginnings of the English Reformation and two of the items in his book may therefore have been very controversial: how to walk on water and how to change water into wine. Both are literal attempts at each task, showing that each can be done by non-miraculous means.