Marco Pusterla: Professional Magician, Historian, and Publisher
In the third episode of The Magic Book Podcast, Adrian Tennant interviews Marco Pusterla, a professional magician, historian, and publisher. We explore his journey from Italy to the UK, his passion for collecting magic books, and interest in history. Marco shares insights on founding the quarterly Ye Olde Magic Mag, and organizing The Magic Circle History Day for the past three years. We also discuss Marco's upcoming projects, including what promises to be the definitive biography of Chefalo.
Transcript
Coming up in this episode of The Magic Book Podcast.
Marco Pusterla:Everybody knows Professor Hoffmann's Modern Magic or The Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scott, but there is much more magic mentioned in other books and in a social context. And this is not being studied sufficiently enough.
Adrian Tennant:You're listening to The Magic Book Podcast, conversations about classic and contemporary books that teach, illuminate, and celebrate the art of magic. I'm your host, Adrian Tennant, a lifetime student of magic and mentalism, occasional performer, and longtime book collector. Thanks for joining me. Welcome to the third episode of The Magic Book Podcast. Today, my guest is Marco Pusterla, an Associate of The Inner Magic Circle with Silver Star, a professional magician, historian, book publisher, and collector. Born in Turin, Italy, Marco moved to England in 1998. Today, Marco's magic library boasts more than 5,000 volumes and he is the leading expert on Italian magician and illusionist Ralph Chefalo. Marco is also the founder and publisher of the quarterly magazine, Ye Olde Magic Mag, which is dedicated to magic history and collecting. Marco, welcome to The Magic Book Podcast!
Marco Pusterla:Thank you, Adrian. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here and, to share some of my thoughts about books and, magic books in particular.
Adrian Tennant:Well, let's start at the beginning. Marco, what sparked your interest in magic?
Marco Pusterla:Well, that's quite an unusual answer that, essentially, I met a magician. My father is an artist. He makes ceramic statues, and he was commissioned by the Turin Magic Club, one of the 2 magic clubs that we have in Turin, to do a portrait of Bartolomeo Bosco, you know, the famous Italian magician, for some competition that they had. So we had magicians from the club coming to see the work, to give the commission, and I was quite young then. And so they showed me some tricks, and I just was hooked. I remember being taught the French drop on that very first day and spending all night just practicing in front of the mirror out to get to the coin and make it disappear. So that that that is where it all started. And it is it's not from a magic box.
Marco Pusterla:I mean, I had the magic box when I was young - one of the Silvan magic boxes - when I was very young, probably in preschool. And then, I read some magic books when I was a child, but I never really had much of a passion for magic until my teenage years with this fateful encounter. The magician that I met, his name was Pocher, like the game, the card game, but with a 'ch' rather than the 'k.' And he was the president of one of the Turin magic clubs, and he passed away just a couple of years ago. He was well in his nineties by then. It was him that basically inspired me to pick up magic as a hobby.
Adrian Tennant:Among the magic books you read early on, so thinking about those teen years, which influenced you the most, would you say?
Marco Pusterla:Well, I think that there are two books. One that triggered my love for magic history, and the other that really put me on the road towards the performance. The magic history book was Arte Magica that translates as Magical Arts by Silvan. Silvan is the greatest contemporary Italian magician. That was given to my father so that he could look how Bartolomeo Bosco look like for his job. And when I was there, I read it all and it's an introduction to magic history from ancient ages to the 1970s, essentially. But, of course, starting magic, the passion was performance. And, probably the book that influenced me most at the time was Patrick Page's The Big Book of Magic, back that was translated in Italian, as Il grande libro Illusionismo, magia, giochi di prestigio - The Big Book of Magic essentially. And, I still think today that is probably one of the best books for a beginner to learn about magic because it covers every aspect of magic from close-up to manipulation to stage performances to illusions.
Marco Pusterla:It's very well, written in a simple way and as some wonderful, drawings that really brighten up your imagination.
Adrian Tennant:Absolutely. You and I have discussed in the past how illustrations can really fire the imagination when you see them in a magic book.
Marco Pusterla:Yeah. I have a very visual approach to life and to to magic, especially magic, and I collect also some, some magic. And what I tended to collect is the image of magic. I'm interested in seeing how magic is representable for the general public and also for teaching. And so that is what I look for. And, of course, the drawings, in, Pat Page's book were by Eric Mason that I never unfortunately never met, but I think was he he was one of the best artists for magic books. I have his other book stuff, and then I have a couple of other tricks that he put out. And, and then, of course, Pabular, because he illustrated also Pabular.
Marco Pusterla:He's a was a great magical artist. That is not very well known now. It's been a little bit forgotten.
Adrian Tennant:Mhmm. Marco, how did growing up in Italy influence your magical journey?
Marco Pusterla:Well, Italy is probably [a] different approach than what I had - a different approach than what I would have done had I grown up in England or in the [United] States. Because Italy, at the time - I'm a child of the Eighties - did not have many magic shops. They were start to come up, but there were probably 2 or 3 in the whole country. So I did not really have much of an opportunity to acquire material. And there were also quite a low number of magic books. Most magic books in Italian at that time came from the 1930s. So the Carlo Rosetti Magia delle Carte, the Magic With Cards, and the Trucco c'e ... ma non si vede that is about general magic. And so they were perhaps a little bit dated.
Marco Pusterla:Then in general magic in the Eighties, in Italy was still a little bit dated. We did not have much foreign influences. Then I was living in a small village, essentially, so the possibility to interact with other magicians were quite low. I was lucky because the guy living next door from me was a professional magician, and that there was a small group of 3 or 4 magicians there in the surroundings of my village that I met, and, from whom I got, magic lessons and I learned some tricks. In Italy, at the time, there was magic on television, so that was essentially the only way to see some professional magic. We had the 3 great magicians that were active in the seventies and eighty one. Silvan, that I've already mentioned, and Tony Binarelli that passed away not long ago, and Alexander that was from Turin, actually. And they had a lot of television coverage, and they actually inspired me on picking up magic and on trying to, in a way, to imitate them without much success.
Marco Pusterla:Because I did, I really did not have many other input sources. And I have to say that by the time I became friends with all of them, and I had the the opportunity to talk at length with all of them about magic and then how much I admired them for for what they did.
Adrian Tennant:That's lovely. When did you start collecting magic books?
Marco Pusterla:Well, I always had a passion in reading. I remember, reading essentially every day. I mean, was taking long magic books out of the library in the morning, read them all through the day, and take them back. So I started to collect magic books immediately. My collection at the time was not big because, of course, I started to acquire Italian magic books. There there were not many, about a dozen, I would say. But, having a passion in magic gave me the incentive to learn foreign languages as to so I learned French and I learned English. And so I started to purchase books from abroad, especially from France - that was close to us - and there was this big magic dealer that was publishing - they were publishing books, and then they started to sell also tricks, and, so was started to get, books from them.
Marco Pusterla:And then, of course, the collection has expanded through the years now. I've been doing magic for more than 40 years now. And so at the moment, I have a huge collection in a different name because I read Spanish. I read, of course, French, English, Italian, a bit of German, and so I managed to acquire books in all these languages and some more that I don't read as well.
Adrian Tennant:That's fascinating. So you could say that the desire to read magic books in foreign languages actually motivated you to learn those languages?
Marco Pusterla:Yeah. That definitely, definitely. I remember the first foreign book that I bought was Gellerism Revealed by Ben Harris. As soon as it came out, now it has been republished, and now I did this coffee table book with a lot of nice photos. And, it is all of, of course, on the Uri Geller methods, so how to bend spoons and keys. And I started to translate it for myself because, of course, there were a lot of words that I did not know at the time. Then another lovely book that I got, was a book on illusions by Eugene Poinc.
Marco Pusterla:And also that one, I started to translate some of illusions. Never built any of that. I did some illusions in my times, but really, no one out of that book that some of them were a little bit pie in the sky thinking. The illusions are like the vanish of the shark and transformation into a woman. So I would like to see somebody perform that.
Adrian Tennant:Well, Marco, you're known as the leading authority on Italian illusionist, Ralph Chefalo. What drew you to research his life and career specifically?
Marco Pusterla:I had heard about Chefalo from Silvan's book that presented a few paragraphs about his life and the picture of a poster that now actually sits here in front of me while I'm talking to you, the one with the rays from the the eyes. But other than that, I really did know nothing about him. I think it was about the year 2000 that they bought secondhand, of course, the Val Andrews book about Chefalo. And I did not like it because from the book, it came out that Chefalo was a very popular magician, and indeed he was. But, Val Andrews only met him for a short time of his life when he was already in the declining years of his career and made a lot of assumptions on his tricks and his life. And then I told myself, "Well, I think this magician needs some more research. Was he really the greatest Italian magician of the 20th century?" So I started there to research his life, and I think, "Yes, probably we can say he was certainly the most popular Italian magician of the 20th century. Maybe not the greatest, depending on what we use to define greatness in magic, but he was definitely the most popular Italian magician of the 20th century."
Adrian Tennant:Can you share some original discoveries you've made about Chefalo?
Marco Pusterla:Well, we only have about an hour - so that is difficult! I mean, I what I did of Chefalo, I managed to discover a lot of, of his tricks, where he got them from, how he made them, where his his innovation at. I discovered, for example, the manuscripts for the published tricks that Will Goldston also was supposed to publish in one of the locked books, and then that Cheflao had him pull. So that that was quite interesting because that were the actual tricks that Chagall was using in his show. I discovered that it was surprised me quite, quite a big discovery as well that he accumulated during the war years, and, allowed him to buy a huge mansion in Holland. And there is all a story about that that because the house, then he had the problem because he was, Italian, so was a persona non grata after the war. So he had a lot of problems, but that's a very long story.
Marco Pusterla:I realized how many issues he had after the war because of some decision that he did both before and after the war. The type of things that are actually never said, never talked about any magician. So we don't really know what, his contemporaries like Dante, like Raymond, and others thought politically. I managed to discover what Chefalo thought - that maybe it's not strictly related to magic, but it's important to understand the person. And I feel the person behind the magician is sometimes more important than the magician himself.
Adrian Tennant:When we were preparing for this interview, you mentioned to me that you own Chefalo's copy of Exclusive Magical Secrets, the first of the three locked books by Will Goldston. How did you track it down?
Marco Pusterla:That's again another interesting story. Now Will Goldston is being advertised the publication of Exclusive Magical Secrets. That, for our listeners that don't know, it was published in 1912, and it's a thick book with a padlock, is closed with a padlock, and that you had to sign a document where you said that you were not going to lend the book out, sell the book, explain the trick, show the tricks described in there. Goldston had been working on this book for quite a few years. He managed to get by hook or crook methods of tricks by the great magician of the times that they did not give him. So he's he apparently stole these methods. We're talking about Maskelyne. We are talking about Chung Ling Soo. We are talking about other great magicians from the early years of the century.
Marco Pusterla:And in their publicity around the coming of the book, he said that "I have already put away the first copies, the first numbered copies ..." because that were only 1,000 numbered copies ... "for my friends and collaborators." Copy number 1 was for Houdini, and this is another story because it went down to the American Museum of Magic and was then stolen. But that's another story. The second copy was given to George Weston. George Weston was the facilitator, let's put it in his way, for some of the tricks. The third one to Chung Ling Soo and so on. Copy number 6 was assigned to Chefalo because Chefalo has quite a few number of tricks in the book. And I suspected all my life that he may have lost the book maybe during the war or may have donated to a friend.
Marco Pusterla:And this donation to a friend made me try to connect with the friends that he may have given the book to. And, of course, they had all passed away by the time I came on, but I had quite an idea on who this person may have been. So I managed to contact the estate, and eventually the book, a copy of Exclusive Magical Secrets was found in this magician's estate, and it was copy number 6. Now this book - generally Exclusive Magical Secrets has the name of the owner inscribed on the cover. This doesn't. But this doesn't have another thing: it doesn't have the photo of the Buatier De Kolta apparatus. There is a photo with that shows the tool with which Buatier De Kolta built these tricks, and this is this is the place for the illusion of The Expanding Die.
Marco Pusterla:And so I'm actually thinking that the Goldston had a little printing problem that the page was missing. So what it does is say, "Okay, well, I'm gonna give these defective copies to my friends because, anyway, they don't mind." Again, that one to Chefalo, copy number six to Chefalo.
Adrian Tennant:Wow. That's quite some detective work right there, Marco!
Marco Pusterla:It took me ... it has really taken me years to to find this, this volume, but, you know, I'm really happy with myself.
Adrian Tennant:If you're enjoying this episode of The Magic Book Podcast, please consider leaving a rating on Spotify or a review on Apple Podcasts. You can also follow The Magic Book Podcast page on Facebook. Thank you. Marco, you moved to the UK in 1998. Can you describe your experience of becoming a member of The Magic Circle?
Marco Pusterla:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I actually visited the UK the previous year, in '97, because I came up actually to interview Uri Geller for a magic magazine that I was collaborating with at the time, and I went to visit The Magic Circle. When I moved to the area - I'm in the East of England - I was not aware of the Ipswich Magic Society or the Pentacle Club in Cambridge. The only magic club in England that I knew was The Magic Circle.
Marco Pusterla:At the time, you could still drive down to London. And I went down. I had a couple of magician friends, members of the Circle that I knew, and they introduced me. I did my exam. When I was in Italy, I was a member of the Magic Club in Milan, so I wanted to keep being a member of the Magic Club also in the UK. And I passed my exam and become a member there. I think the following year, I performed in the Close-up Magician of the Year competition. I was the runner-up.
Marco Pusterla:I was behind Richard Pinner, and I think the top one was John Van de Put, that is now known as Piff the Magic Dragon. Then a few years later, I think about 10 years ago now, I was made Associate to the Inner Magic Circle with Silver Star for performance. I love the Magic Circle. It's I think, it's a great club. It's a great way to mingle with really like-minded people and of very high quality, very high caliber. When I joined the Circle, the mentors and people that I met there were the like of Alex Elmsley, of Bobby Bernard, Michael Vincent, and David Berglas. To walk into a room and have these people standing around you was just unbelievable, or somebody can be from a village in Italy.
Adrian Tennant:I can imagine, and I actually have some of Bobby Bernard's books in my own library. In 2006, you published Hauntiques: The Magic of Christian Chelman. Marco, how did this project come about?
Marco Pusterla:Being a friend of Christian for many, many years, and, I met met Christian Chelman when he was in, was working in Brussels in Belgium. We met, I studied with him, and we socialized. And he always told me - at the time he had published Capricornian Tales, and he was going to publish Légendes Urbaines that is in French. And, he always told me as I got this book, this draft for another book, that is what he will use for the Légendes Urbaines in French that Richard Kaufman of Genii, and they will publish it. And then Kaufman never published it. And then eventually, one day, Richard Kaufman offered the rights for the book on the Genii Forum. So I said, "Well, I think I may be able to publish Christian Chelman's book," contacted Richard.
Marco Pusterla:We negotiated to acquire the rights. And they sent me all the manuscripts and everything. And at this point, as I had invested in purchasing the rights, I had to publish the book, and it was a great experience publishing.
Adrian Tennant:I'm curious. Were there any challenges in bringing this book to publication?
Marco Pusterla:Well, there are there there were challenges because, Christian Chelman is very much into having a book rich with images. So not just a plain classical magic book. There are stories. You have to have the pictures of the objects, and, the writing is more concentrated on the story rather than the methods rather than the techniques. So the book was very expensive to publish. We're talking 2006 where, yeah, we already had the digital printing, but I did not want to use digital printing because the quality of the standard printing for color printing was and, still is, higher. Then, I did it all by myself. I don't have I had published a couple of booklets, I'll let you know, self-printed before, but printing 1,000 books with a cover dust jacket, it was a lot of experience.
Marco Pusterla:I'm actually very grateful, and I want just to mention his name briefly. I'm very grateful to Martin Breese that, I think you know, who at the time was already unwell, but he really spent a lot of time to guide me on what to do and what not to do, especially as a book publisher. Martin Breese, of course, had a very long career and knowledge in book publishing. I don't think I could have had any better, mentor in the book publishing than, than Martin Breese. So I was really really pleased and magical to remember him.
Adrian Tennant:Indeed. Well, you mentioned that the book was very well received by the magic community. So did publishing Hauntiques change your perspective on magic or publishing in any way?
Marco Pusterla:Well, probably not much of magic because as I said, I was and still am a friend with Christian Chelman, so I'm familiar with his magic and the way he does it. The thing is that I probably learned a lot how the magic market works, and the way you have to advertise to keep the the ball rolling, to keep the interest. I was very lucky that, I managed to sell 1,000 copies of the books in 9 months. That is quite a record for a niche product like Bizarre Magic. I had, of course, Murphy's Magic that got most of them and shifted them around to magic shops all over the world. And I was invested to see the book in catalogs, in the the the web catalogs, of course, of magic shops in America, in, Asia, in Australia, in France, of course, as well in Italy. And, the book actually has done really, really well. And now it's really expensive trying to buy second-hand.
Marco Pusterla:Actually, I haven't got any copy. Sometimes I have people asking me, "Have you got a copy of Hauntiques?" No. I only got my own copy, copy number 1, as we were talking before about the numbered copy. Copy number 1, for me and no other copies I have.
Adrian Tennant:Just a reminder that you can be notified when new episodes of this podcast are published by subscribing to the email alerts. You'll find all the details on the podcast website at The Magic Book Podcast.com. Since 2014, you've been publishing Ye Olde Magic Mag. It's a quarterly publication now in its 10th volume. What originally inspired you to start it?
Marco Pusterla:I've always been passionate about magic history. As I said, my first serious magic book was Silvan's Arte Magica. And from then, I have always read and studied the history of magic. And I also have quite a large, let's say, library of magazines. And I can see that between the 1950s to the 1990s, there were on the market a few magic history, magic collecting magazines, which I have files in my library, but this was no longer the case by 2014. Of course, we have Gibecière by Bill Kalush that is of course, the Conjuring Art Research Center. That is a great publication, but is a journal.
Marco Pusterla:It's where you publish more in-depth researches. And then there is, of course, Magicol - that now is headed by the lovely Julie Eng that you had on this interview recently. That, at the time, was published a little bit erratically, and, was dedicated more to smaller researches without having an eye on the market, the live situation of magic collecting was going on. What I wanted to do was to have a a magazine that could be contemporary. So a magazine itself with current stories, also because I I was noticing I always been following a magic auction on the Internet. I was noticing that on eBay, for example, or other places, there were some wonderful, rare, or unique magic objects that sold, and after 90 days, they are removed from the eBay catalog, eBay archive. There is no trace of that. So, for years, magicians have lost the history of some objects that have gone in there.
Marco Pusterla:So one of the things that I wanted to do was log at least these objects so that maybe in 20 years' time, 30 years' time, people will look at the file of Ye Olde Magic Mag, and will see, okay, yeah, this is when the, I don't know, the Houdini box was sold. It was sold there, and I also tend to present small research on, on the object as much as I can. And the other thing was I know many people also from Italy, from Europe, from the States that maybe do some small researches, and then they keep them on their own risk. The researcher is not in-depth enough to warrant an article in Gibecière, or maybe the author doesn't feel that they've completed the research. That's fine. Ye Olde Magic Mag is the right venue for that because it allows you to put your research in print.
Marco Pusterla:So we have a record. And your research, however small it is, can be of use to somebody else. I always think that we should - I mean, magic historian, magic, collector, so people interested in history of magic - should share our knowledge as much as we can. And I think I wanted to have a a vehicle, Ye Old Magic Mag, to allow this sharing. That that essentially is what inspired me to create the magazine.
Adrian Tennant:Well, looking back over the last 10 years, which articles or features in Ye Olde Magic Mag are you most proud of and why?
Marco Pusterla:You know, there are many, many, many, many. I cannot ... I think I can probably tell you half a dozen straight away. Probably the one that I'm most proud of is my discovery of the first card stack in history. That is from, about 1536. That means it is 90 years before the Galasso - Galasso is what is now known as Si Stebbins. And that was in an English manuscript that has been ignored for years.
Marco Pusterla:I studied it, and I was lucky to publish it in volume 2. It was the very early year. Then another thing was Ye Olde Magic Mag is the first magazine that has revealed who Erdnase of The Expert at the Card Table was. Of course, everybody can think, "No, it was not him." You know what I mean? And that's absolutely fine, and this was just like last year. And then, Genii republished the article. For example, the first full publication of Don Alan's controversial lecture where he named the names of dealers, as I said, that were not really respecting between them, in quotes, respecting magic. Talking back, of Chefalo, I published all the known and the unknown Chefalo tricks in 7 issues between volume 4 and 5, a few tricks per issue.
Marco Pusterla:Just two issues ago, I published and dedicated the cover to the only portrait painting of Giuseppe Pinetti, the, you know, the Italian magician from the late 1700s, that had just come out on the market after more than 200 years. Or, personally, I also like very much the story of Yank Hoe. Yank Hoe was an Italian magician and a juggler from the about 1880s, 1890s, that is actually forgotten, but was more influential that we know because lot of his magic has been misattributed in this now standard, like the passing of the coins through the handkerchief, one of the early matrix. And the French magic manuscript, for example, from 1579 that is playing some magic tricks, including some that are not explained elsewhere. So I've got so many things. I mean, Ye Olde Magic Mag is, I think is go is becoming an important resource for the record of magic history. And then, of course, there is the columns that I have in every issue like, Auction Action, which covers the most significant magic, objects, magic memorabilia sold in the past 3 months and maybe Chewing the Magic Fat that quite like the the title where I just rant away or present little stories that, on the run may be nothing. But if you take them in the context if you take the idea in the context, they may open the way to more research.
Marco Pusterla:For example, from there, I published my theory on how tall Erdnase was, and that has inspired Chris Wasshuber that you had only recently on this podcast to do a research and to confirm that his candidate - which I don't think is the the right one, but that's a different story! - was as tall as I postulated it. So a lot of things.
Adrian Tennant:Great. Marco, I also appreciate that you've made Ye Olde Magic Mag very affordable. I mean, any collectors can buy the entire 10 year set and still have change out of $300.
Marco Pusterla:Yeah. My my idea was to have at first, I wanted to have the magazine only in digital format and only for a low price, and selling for about £5, that is about, I think, $6 or $7 per issue in digital format. There were a lot of collector that said, "Can I can I have a paper copy? I don't mind paying more, but I want the paper copy." So, I started to print a limited number. I print only just over a 100 paper copies and because people buying them and they keep them, and, actually, I buy in all bound. I wanted to keep it affordable so that I could encourage the younger generation to learn, to study, to like, magic history. $5 every 3 months is nothing.
Marco Pusterla:And the information in there, some of the information in there is very, very important. Actually, I'm quite impressed and humbled in seeing how many times Eddie Dawes mentioned the magazine, the articles in the magazine in his Rich Cabinet [articles for The Magic Circular], especially for the the last since 2014, Eddie had the full set, I believe. Many of his recent articles from the last 10 years mention items that he found in Ye Olde Magic Mag, which is humbling. It's really humbling. I think it's I'm doing something right, actually.
Adrian Tennant:I agree. Well, you're an organizer. In 2017, you organized the European Magic History Conference in Turin. I know you've also organized an event in Italy earlier this year, and of course you also co organized The Magic Circle History Day held in London this past June which is the third time that you've done so. For History Days, do speakers approach you with topics or do you go to them? How does that work?
Marco Pusterla:It actually works both ways because, especially for the History Day, Ian Keable and myself have, a list of speakers that we know have some interesting talks, and so we may approach some of them and, invite them. Every year, we welcome them to have talks submitted or the at least the title and the abstract submitted so that we can consider it for inclusion. We do the same in Italy. The Italian event is I think we have 6 editions now. Of course, it's in Italian, so it's a little bit smaller. And we have, unfortunately, a smaller pool of speakers to invite, but also the same every year. Every edition, we invite people to present their talks for the following edition. One thing that we're doing in Italy and we are trying to do in the UK with the Magic Circle History Day is to involve lecturers or students from university to try to move magic magic history outside of the amateur historian that is generally a magician into the academic world.
Marco Pusterla:But in Italy, it's going quite well. In England, we are not there yet. It's something that we are really working on.
Adrian Tennant:Mmm. It's interesting. Are there any areas of magic history that you feel are underexplored?
Marco Pusterla:Well, yes. And I realized that by attending magic talks and magic history conventions and reading an awful lot of magic history - more than what is healthy for any person! - I think that we have not studied enough the social impact of magic, what magician did for society to society and why magic, is still an interesting and a live pastime. There are lot of other artistic forms that have basically died out. Magic is still going on. Again, another thing that is not studied enough is, for example, the research of magic in no magical records in non-magical books. Of course, everybody knows Professor Hoffmann's Modern Magic or The Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scott, but there is much more magic mentioned, not described, but mentioned in other books and in a social context. And this is not being studied sufficiently enough.
Marco Pusterla:And that goes back, of course, to the social impact of magic. Why do you have the image of the magician or the witch or the fairy or the wizard? The these figures come from the way the society would understand magic. So this, I don't think is studied enough. On the contrary, there are a lot of things that are many other fields that are over explored, I think. I think spiritualism and magic, yes. We had the Houdini that went on the anti-spiritualistic crusade, and that seems to have trigger a flurry of magicians doing the same. And also studies about spiritualism, the Davenport Brothers, and what, these meant for society. So it's been this is a field that has been over and over studied and could probably do with the rest.
Marco Pusterla:And I'm sorry if I just bent on, but I'm passionate about these things.
Adrian Tennant:Well, this is The Magic Book Podcast. And as someone with over 5,000 volumes yourself, Marco, what advice would you give to someone interested in starting a magic book collection?
Marco Pusterla:That's a very good question. Because I think that at first, you should understand what you, the collector, want from a book. Do you want to learn new tricks? Do you want to learn about the history of magic? Do you want to learn theory on how to improve your magic, etcetera? And I think that your collection should have books that talk to you. So books that are relevant to you, books with which you find some sort of affinity. Otherwise, there is the risk that you only accumulate books. You can decide that, okay, I see this book. I just want it. They never open it.
Marco Pusterla:Don't even open it as I know many collectors do, because I'm just there waiting for the new one or looking the new one or, receiving the new one. Also, don't concentrate on the classics. The classics are, like, I was saying, often The Discoverie of Witchcraft or so on. Because if you're looking for information, the classics are unavailable online in a a digital form from one place or another. If the classics talks to you, then yes, by all means, have a have a collection of classics. And also, the other thing is that you can, of course, have a collection of antiquarian books. It is absolutely great, and you're more than welcome. But just make sure that the books are relevant for you because I think you have to take pleasures from the books that you have.
Adrian Tennant:That's great advice. When we were exchanging emails about this podcast, you mentioned that you're currently working on two-and-a-half book projects. Marco, could you preview them for us?
Marco Pusterla:Well, the main one that I have a lot of people asking about is the definitive biography of Chefalo. It is a very challenging book to write because I have so much information, and I want really to stuff it in the in the book! I've already got all the years between his birth and 1939 completed, but I still have the other second half of his life to write. But there are so many words, and especially I have so many pictures that is not gonna be a book, not even - this is going to probably end up being an encyclopedia. And at this point, it's not very commercially clever. So that is the first project. The other one is something that I'm publishing as MP Magic for an author. This is more for the general public as it covers the life and the legend of a magician.
Marco Pusterla:It's something that we've been working on for a couple of years, and I hope we may take to the market next year. But for the moment, we're just gonna keep shush on that, not to spoil the surprise.
Adrian Tennant:Okay. That's two projects. You also have another half a project as you described it to me. What's that one?
Marco Pusterla:Well, the other half would be a volume of the best of Ye Olde Magic Mag. I wanted to publish it for the tenth anniversary, so theoretically, it should be the end of the year. But, I've not - I've started to work on it in a very general way, theoretical way. What I would like to do anyway is publish a volume in a bigger format so that I can reproduce the focus better in the larger format with some of the best articles that I published in the magazine for the past 10 years, plus a couple maybe of new stories. I don't know if it will be the 1st 10 years, maybe the 1st 12 years. I don't know. It's that that is still is still on the drawing board. Also because I really have to estimate the commercial availability. I'm not keen of doing a print-on-demand because the quality, nowadays, is much better, that is still miles behind a proper, for color printing.
Marco Pusterla:So, there is this technical question hanging over me. What do I do?
Adrian Tennant:In your own library, what's your most cherished book and why?
Marco Pusterla:You cannot ask me that because books are like children! You cannot ask me to choose which one is my favorite child. Okay. Well, if I had to ... I don't know. If I had to select one book, I would probably say that the one that I cherish most is actually Will Goldston's Exclusive Magical Secrets. Not much for the tricks inside them, not much for the fact that was Chefalo's copy, but for the idea behind the book. The I don't think there is anything more magical than a book with a padlock. That is just the supreme demonstration of in here we contain secrets that should be protected.
Marco Pusterla:That is why, I like it then. If you were to ask me for sentimental reason, which book I may prefer, I would say probably Arte Magica by Silvan that I already mentioned a couple of times because it opened the door for me towards magic history. And I actually collaborated with Silvan. He republished, reviewed, and, made corrections to it during COVID, and, I collaborated with him, did some consultancy. And, if you were to ask me which book would you prefer for professional materials or workers book, I think that in my opinion, that is a book that, few people now will, remember or will know that is the The Commercial Magic of J.C. Wagner that, is mostly card magic and, close-up, and is the book that for which I've taken out a lot of of my professional repertoire in my my younger years. So this I said the three books rather than just 1, but the other books are, again, like children. You cannot choose one over the other.
Adrian Tennant:Three very different choices. Thank you for sharing. And, of course, we'll include links to those on the page for this episode. Marco,
Adrian Tennant:How can the listener learn more about you, your blog - which we didn't even mention - which is, of course, The Ephemeral Collector, or subscribe to your magazine, Ye Olde Magic Mag?
Marco Pusterla:Well for me, I have a website that is mpmagic.co.uk. "MP," of course, stands for Marco Pusterla, which is a professional website that probably even need updating be in the photos, I have a lot more hair. The Ephemeral Collector is the granddaddy of Ye Olde Magic Mag. The Ephemeral Collector is actually smallmagicollector.wordpress.com. I started it years ago before doing the magazine by publishing my research on the interesting objects from my magazine. So for example, I have, a notebook by one of the first MI6 spies, a person of whom not even a photo existed. That's quite interesting. It's all told in there about I have articles about Linga Singh of whom I have acquired a large collection of posters.
Marco Pusterla:I have an article about the locked books by Will Goldston, and a lot of other interesting things. There is only free. That one, you can read it out. Unfortunately, I don't update it as much as I would like because, of course, most of my material now goes in the in the magazine. And Ye Olde Magic Mag is yeoldemagicmag.com. We probably put the link so it's easier, Where in there, you can see all the old issues. You can purchase the individual issue. Again, some of them are still have a few copies in print.
Marco Pusterla:Otherwise, you can subscribe either in digital for issues or in print again. For issues you can start the subscription anytime. And if you subscribe to the print edition, please just make sure that you select the correct country because, postage costs are just killing me. So that's I think you're gonna put the links in the that this this podcast.
Adrian Tennant:Absolutely will do. Marco, thank you so much for being my guest on The Magic Book Podcast!
Marco Pusterla:Okay. Thank you, Adrian, for having me. And just keep up with this great podcast and bye bye to all the all our friends, our listeners.
Adrian Tennant:Thank you. You've been listening to The Magic Book Podcast. In this episode, we've learned how Marco's early experiences in Italy shaped his interest in Ralph Chefolo and collaboration with leading Italian magician, Silvan. Marco also shared what motivated him to create Ye Olde Magic Mag, and he offered some practical advice on establishing a collection of magic books. I hope you enjoyed hearing about Marco's contributions to preserving magic history as much as I did discussing them with him. You'll find a transcript plus timestamps, images, and links to the resources mentioned in this episode on our website at TheMagicBookPodcast.com. If you have a question or would like to suggest a topic for a future episode, please contact me: adrian@themagicbookpodcast.com. You can also leave a voicemail on the website's contact page.
Adrian Tennant:Thank you for listening to The Magic Book Podcast. I've been your host, Adrian Tennant. Until next time, goodbye.
