Word: magic
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...civic duty. There he was in front of city hall, amiably lying on a plank supported by two chairs, while a magician hovered nearby. Then the magician slowly removed each chair, leaving the Mayor apparently suspended in midair. The reason for all the levity was an "Academy of Magical Arts" day, proclaimed to promote the cause of magic in L.A. Sam certainly rose to the occasion. "There's often a need for magic in politics," he said. "Why, as mayor, you have to have the ability to be suspended in midair in order to balance the budget...
...Eliot and Pound, what began as a mere esthetic experiment-the mixing of time and place, vulgar anecdote and ancient legend, ethics and pop songs, classical gods and modern nonheroes-became a great work. A kind of miracle happened: the ferule of the teacher became the poet's magic wand...
...Sleepy Magic. In both drawings and watercolors, Levine is that rare man among artists: one who does not deny his forebears. His caricatures, whether of Bertrand Russell looking like a stately pelican or D. H. Lawrence with two female legs kicking orgiastically from beneath his shaggy forelock, acknowledge their indebtedness to Sir John Tenniel and Sir Max Beerbohm. Much of Levine's bite and humor are caused by the juxtaposition of dated technique and contemporary subject. When it comes to watercolors, his style is equally traditional, and he finds it most unfair that critics who admire his caricatures turn...
...heart. A Brooklyn boy, Levine often visited his father's dress factory, and his deft, murkily lit watercolors of those scenes show that he remembers them fondly and well. He also spent many happy hours at Coney Island, and his sparkling yet dreamily poetic sketches recapture the sleepy magic of glinting waves, roller coasters and bulging bathers...
Unliterary Acquaintance. Even with symbolism and cold-war politics set aside, the book presents some special difficulties, especially for American readers. No country has had more secondhand exposure to sickroom scenarios than the U.S. It is not, as one might expect, recollections of The Magic Mountain or nostalgia for Arrow smith that lends a slight feeling of familiarity to some of Cancer Ward's harrowing episodes. It is an unliterary acquaintance with those romans-fleuves of the air waves, TV's medical melodramas. Most Americans have seen it all already-the devoted old doctor who sees the symptoms...