Word: spells
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Much of Levitation presents Ozick in the role of a woman wonder-rabbi spreading paradox and fantasy. She tries too hard. Fantasy requires a softer touch and more control than are found in these stories. Some of Ozick's figurative language is spell-breaking. The phrase "suckled the Nazi boot" seems to have dropped from a punk rock lyric. A "transient mirage" that teases the "medulla oblongata" is not only overwrought but inappropriate for this part of the brain...
Danger is an integral part of vaulting and the possibility of injury is always in the back of a vaulter's mind. There are over 100 different steps involved in a single vault, and a slip up in any one of these motions could spell disaster. The greatest threat to the vaulter is that be won't quite make it over the bar and will return from whence he came, as they say. The floor on which he makes his approach is hard and there are no pads to cushion his fall...
Everywhere, Warner casts her spell, literally. Her mother's ritual for boiling an egg becomes just that. In a piece on folk recipes-a pint of warm beer stirred with a hot poker will cure backache, a slab of raw beef will rub away a wart-the reporter edges deliciously close to magic herself. Even the inventory of the purple velvet handbag of Mme. Houdin, ten-year-old Sylvia's French tutor, becomes a litany of talismans to ward off disaster: smelling salts, two thimbles, a photograph of M. Houdin, the number of madame's life-insurance...
There was, however, a short speech delivered by mayoral contender Alfred E. Vellucci--a speech that may well spell the beginning of the end of the mayoral standoff...
...mysteriously hard to drop. They float down so softly, and with so little spin, says former Bengal Wide Receiver Chip Myers, "I was able to pick out the laces on the ball." Anderson's running ability is so good that Giants Coach Ray Perkins thinks it may spell the difference between the two closely matched Super Bowl teams. And in the N.F.L., where a quarterback may face 35 or 40 different defensive patterns in a single game, Anderson's ability to decode and react in nanoseconds is legendary. One result: he is the least intercepted quarterback...