Ricky Jay: Well it doesn’t happen a lot, but there are emotions that make you incredibly excited to be a performer, and I would say that somebody being so emotional, or crying, or someone reaching over and kissing you, or someone who really laughs—those are the reactions I’m looking for.

Magic is kind of a wonderful art, that you never know what it’s going to touch, and I’ve had people throw punches at me, throw glasses at me, grab rosary beads and run screaming out of clubs, you never know how it’s going to affect someone.

You have an immense collection of historic texts and documents about magic and sideshow art. There was a play on Broadway, Sideshow, that just closed, and a sideshow theme on the show American Horror Story—why do you think that topic is so interesting right now?

For myself, I have always been captivated by the curious and the strange and the unusual. And clearly I’m not alone. It’s intrigued people for years and years. I think we’re past the concept that freaks exist because of maternal imprinting—that a person is short because a pregnant wife was frightened by a group of short people. That’s no longer a part of our popular imagery. I think the whole idea of political correctness often refuses to reflect the opinions of the people themselves, people who are naturally, unusually endowed, I find “freaks” a rather pejorative term, even though it is frequently used in the profession. These people should be allowed to make a living in a way that they chose, and that people continue to be surprised and amazed by them.

You’ve written a few books about famous sideshow acts, including Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women. Are you working on another?

At the moment I’m writing a book about my favorite character of all time, who was a magician born in 1674, who was also an incredible magician and did trick shots with bowling, and darting a sword to a target, and firing a pistol, and he did extraordinary calligraphy and beautiful magic—and he was 29 inches tall and had no arms or legs. How amazing is that! His name was Matthew Buchinger. His calligraphy is literally extraordinary. He kind of held the pen between the two unarticulated stumps and did this absolutely extraordinary calligraphy, and micrography—miniature calligraphy—which couldn’t be read with the human eye, without magnification.

One of his most famous pieces is a self-portrait that he did, he’s wearing a wig (as most people did in that period), but if you look closely, within the wig are seven psalms and the lord’s prayer, and you need a magnifying glass to read them. He was an extraordinary talent. And of all the people I’ve met and written about, and my mentors, and I’ve written a half a dozen books about unusual entertainers—this is my favorite guy. I still find him utterly remarkable.

When did cutting a sexy lady assistant in half start?

You could say on some level that it’s the first-stage effect. It’s attributed to an Egyptian performer named Dedi who performed for King Cheops in ancient Egypt. The illusion he’s said to have performed in front of the pharaoh was taking a duck and having its head cut off, and the head of the duck and the body were in different places and the body would walk toward the head and reunite, and he then did this on larger animals, like an ox. He apparently wouldn’t do it with a human being, thinking that that was sacrilegious, but hundreds of years’ of magicians afterwards have not such a noble concept of the art. It started being done a lot. Sawing a woman became a craze in the 1920s.