Word: houdini
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...reading ads for Screw in The Crimson today, tomorrow, or anytime in the near future. With a slight-of-hand worthy of Houdini himself, a majority of The Crimson has managed to begin to dismantle the First Amendment--all in the name of a greater good...
...awkward way. Doctorow's skill nearly carries it off, but it is a charade. Like his subject, it shows more form than content: mystical images without context, crackling plot without mystery. He manipulated us with Ragtime, made us believe what we saw. In reality, Doctorow is just another Houdini, a conjurer of words...
...verse on what programs he will cut and by how much, his balanced-budget pledge is no more than a pious hope. It's a little cruel to call this voodoo economics, as George Bush apparently did. I'd call it Indian-rope-trick economics or Houdini economics...
...certain that any of the mysteries Mailer touches upon are worth this huge effort. Still, his mastery of detail is superb. The story has its startling, bizarre touches: Gilmore's father, it seems, was the illegitimate son of Houdini. Gilmore himself remains a punk, though a moderately interesting one. He spent more than half of his life in jail, and, like other intelligent prisoners, had a routine. He could con intellectuals and other innocents on the outside who tend to be fascinated by violent criminals-literate ones-in the same way that Gladstone was fascinated by prostitutes. Gilmore used...
...both the music and text were upstaged by the magic. Several of Houdini's feats, including his water-can escape, were authentically and grippingly duplicated by Mark Mazzarella, a 19-year-old college sophomore. But the cost of going for such theatrical pizazz was a loss of psychological depth. Houdini offered almost no plot, almost no human interplay. Throughout the evening, a large portrait of the magician stared out at the performers from the ear of the stage, as if challenging them to account for his mysterious driven nature. The tricks, the career, the public appropriation...