Word: tarot
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Idea: a novel in which all of the characters have been struck mute. The only way they can communicate is through the pictures and symbols on a pack of tarot cards. That seems the borrowed inspiration of a green writer who has been rifling Borges or Nabokov-a novelist who depends on conjury, not creativity. Yet the tarot notion comes from Italian Fabulist Italo Calvino, 53, who has been producing such chimerical conceptions in his books for over 30 years. What is more important, he has consistently fleshed them out in original, whimsical and unsettling ways...
...host presents a tarot pack, the set painted by Bonifacio Bembo for Milanese nobility in the 15th century. (The book includes eight color reproductions of the cards and a running marginal commentary of black-and-white illustrations.) Each guest seeks his story in the 78-card deck - an allegorical pageant of wands, coins, swords, clubs and human figures. As the cards are turned face up, some famous identities make their entrances...
...tarot cards are necessary to make these predictions. The description fits both Democratic Congressman William J. (for Joseph) Green III and Republican Congressman H. (for Henry) John Heinz III, now locked in a close and increasingly bitter contest for the seat of retiring Minority Leader Hugh Scott. Each combatant finds the circumstantial similarities irksome as he tries to establish his own independent identity. In fact, there is no shortage of differences in personality or policy...
Theosophist Kenneth Buzby predicted that war will become a thing of the past, that cancer will be cured and pollution overcome. But most prophets were decidedly gloomier. Several foresaw an end of the American presidency, perhaps by the year 2025. Tarot Card Reader Johanna Okovic predicted an earthquake in New York City in 1978 and a war between 2011 and 2016. Astrologer Leah O'Leary, Michael's wife, forecast a "naval conflict" in 1979, floods on both the East and West coasts and a "nuclear mishap...
...your fingers do the walking and these days they stumble at almost every step over yoga parlors, t'ai chi ranches, Scientology centers, Subud temples, Sufi congregations, TM ashrams, Hare Krishna missions, Zen monasteries, astrology academies and tarot prophets. The flyways from East to West are dense with flocks of migratory swamis who come bearing wisdom and go lugging gold. A bazaar of the bizarre if ever there was one, and its most exotic merchandise, the pearl beyond price, is something known as brahmacaryam, samadhi, marafat or, in plain English, the mystical experience...