Word: swallowable
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...MAGICIAN OF LUBLIN, by Isaac Bashevis Singer (246 pp.; Noonday; $3.50), is a tender, philosophical tale about Yasha Mazur, who makes his living in the circuses and theaters of 19th century Poland. He can skate on the high wire, eat fire, swallow swords, open any safe or lock (if Yasha had chosen crime, they said in Lublin, no one's house would be safe), and, above all, charm any woman. Blithely, he considers himself neither Jew nor gentile: there is a Supreme Being, he decides, but one who reveals himself to no one and gives no indication of what...
...American Shakespearean actor is short on breath, long on Method and nil on tradition, despite the dimly remembered glories of Booth and Barrymore. Too many U.S. actors either singsong like walking metronomes or chop up the lines and speak blank prose. As for acting, Method-mad U.S. actors swallow a character like medicine and then release him through their pores in involuntary shudders. They are nonetheless eager to try the roles that all agree are the touchstones of an actor's skill and imagination. What is needed is the continuity of acting tradition that comes mainly through repertory groups...
Thorough Annoyance. This was hard for anybody, let alone a touchy Argentina, to swallow. Argentines got the feeling that not only had their sovereignty been flouted in the eyes of the world, but that Israel was treating them like gullible fools. Nor were they pleased by a gratui tous reference in the Israeli note to "numerous Nazis" living in Argentina. It is true that ex-Dictator Juan Peron had granted asylum to many Nazis; the present government does not enjoy being reminded of the sins of its predecessors...
...follows the rigid conventions of historical melodrama. The land he describes contains no skinny women or frail men: all sexual union is of seismic intensity, heroes rise to wealth and power but pay with fearsome personal tragedy. Once these are accepted-and they are not really much harder to swallow than Moliere's convention that all husbands are cuckolds, or Homer's that all heroes above the rank of lieutenant colonel enjoy godly guidance -Robinson's book is entertaining enough. Obviously the author, who wrote a much-admired exegesis of Finnegans Wake (with Joseph Campbell) as well...
...effort to enjoy the privileges of the club without paying dues. But to those who longed for the day when a united Europe would stretch from Belfast to Berlin, the sight of Britain beginning to budge even a little was as welcome as spring's first swallow...