Word: enchantment
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Fiction within fiction is an old form, predating Chaucer, Boccaccio and perhaps even Scheherazade, who provided the first law of storytelling: enchant or perish. Author Wain seems familiar with the rewards and risks of laminating two tales. Wain may not achieve the iridescences of Vladimir Nabokov, modern master of the technique, but he moves from one story to the other without draining color from either. One reason is Giles' ability to regard himself as a character. His comments when both he and his fictional doppelgänger love and lose: "He had been able to contemplate the story...
...best work being offered by this company, which has been gathered from all over China for this tour, has deftness and precision that can be awesome even to one who is not familiar with the traditions that inform the performers. At times their pure skill is sufficient to enchant the viewer and take the chill out of the air. But in the end, it is not enough...
...make them much worse." His thoughts become increasingly aphoristic: "The bureaucrat is bound to his fellow workers by incurable resentment." In the end, his rambling monologue amounts to a masterly disquisition on the vanity-and the necessity-of human wishes. Konrád's novel may not enchant, but it educates...
...stories in Charleston are flatter in tone and more realistic. Yet Donoso's themes of youthful magic and distorted middle-aged passions are still evident. Children have the power to enchant and destroy; dogs and cats provide unusual escapes for the trapped and the lonely. Donoso balances lean, graceful prose with a sense of the psychological arabesque. It is a fine combination for modern ghost stories in which the reader may recognize phan toms of himself. R.Z. Sheppard
...eminent scholars of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America raise though-provoking questions that would enchant any professor composing an exam on the Carroll Oeuvre. On Alice: "In what sense is Alice funny?," "What poem does the Duchess' song parody?," "How have illustrators other than Tenniel approached Alice?." On Carroll: "How can he be considered a Pre-Raphaelite?," "Why did he adopt a pseudonym?" and, predictably, "What about all those pre-pubescent little girls?." Intriguing, as exam essays...