Word: legerdemain
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...fifth novel, Author John Fowles again performs the sort of narrative legerdemain that made both The Magus (1966) and The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969) such popular puzzlers. He raises tantalizing and entertaining questions. Why, for openers, does he call this novel Mantissa and then provide a self-deprecatory definition of the word, "An addition of comparatively small importance, especially to a literary effort or discourse"? Does that mean readers seeking substantial fare should look elsewhere? Other queries quickly arise. Is this Erato who breaks into Miles' story real or a figment of his imagination? Wait a minute...
...Transkei and Bophuthatswana, regardless of where they happen to live. The plan, in depriving blacks of South African citizenship, ensures that whites will be the majority group within South Africa. But that still leaves the coloreds and the Asians, who cannot be disposed of so neatly under the legerdemain of apartheid...
...horror movie, the normality of Antonia's surroundings only heightens the terror prescribed by Dr. Miracle. The epilogue finds Hoffmann back in the tavern where he began the evening-drunken, disheveled and disabused of idealistic notions, but inspired to write his feverish tales. For all its legerdemain, the staging provides an unsentimental, clear-eyed view of the only serious opera by the man whom Rossini called the "Mozart of the Champs Elys...
With Jimmy Connors dynamoed-out, Roscoe Tanner permed-out, and Vitas Gerulaitis sped-out, Wimbledon hardly promises the stellar quality of tennis it has provided in the past two years. After all, Mac Attack was pressed to reveal his shot-making legerdemain because of the fierce competition provided by arch-rival Borg...
...Creative financing," which was pioneered in California, has doubtless led to some of the problems. This type of loan legerdemain encourages the use of medium-term borrowing and schemes such as variable rate mortgages and shared appreciation between the bank and the buyer. But creative financing has become necessary for many would-be homeowners, contends Willard Sprague, an economist at San Francisco's Wells Fargo Bank. Says he: "Only about 10% of California households can afford to buy the median-priced home [$105,800 in California] with conventional financing...