Word: occultism
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...Alchemist runs smoothly, on an elegant set whose only drawback is that it's such a good suggestion of serious occult mystery that you almost forget how much of a con game The Alchemist is. Mosca's direction is quick, sure, and creative, though the first act only smolders. The Alchemist isn't the kind of cosmically reconciling play that Shakespeare's best comedies are, but it offers its own kind of delights. Most of them come through in this production...
...portrait not of a legend, but of a man, both brilliant and stubbornly dogmatic. Roazen's Freud shows a sense of humor as well as a vindictive determination to humiliate former pupils whose loyalty wavered, a longing for scientific respectability mixed with a periodic fascination with the occult. Freud never seems less than a genius, but he becomes a very human, vulnerable genius and less of a school of thought...
...judge from many a bookstore's religion shelf today, most of the U.S. reading public is variously interested in the occult (Edgar Cayce books; The Exorcism Series), pop piety (Joey Adams' The God Bit), sensationalized biblical "research" (The Jesus Party) or some aspect of esoteric Eastern religion...
...Bill, has always been research; and this quasi-scientific model demands a candor about means and ends in each painting or sculpture. Every painting of Bill's is in some way a demonstration of its own making. There are no "occult" design systems; everything can be deduced from a simple grid and from serial repetition. So in Construction from a Theme from 1946 (1967), the five main colors make their appearance in turn: first a stripe of blue pushing out the black at the top, then a lavender stripe displacing the blue at the left, then a red behind...
...healthy exercise for newsmen to write fiction. It keeps it out of their stories, and preserves their sanity. Whitten seems to have a strong background in alchemy and other occult sciences, so he should continue to let off his steam in literature. It may not be the best way to the philosopher's stone, but at least it may help Whitten find a modest pot of gold...