Word: illusionistic
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Nothing could be more misleading. Henning is a master illusionist. Traditionally, he saws a woman in half, and the boxed halves are trolleyed on-and offstage during a good part of the evening. A man has a sword thrust through his middle. A woman is burned to a smoldering crisp. Instantaneously, a live dove becomes a live rabbit. At the whisk of a drape, a girl in a cage is transformed into a young cougar...
...been the preoccupation of French novelists of the nouveau roman-Alain Robbe-Grillet, Mark Saporta, et al.73151;to build their fictions exclusively from facts, objects, appearances, surfaces and the impressions of the moment. Even when the method works, the result is long-winded; but it can have the illusionist beauty of pointillism that only makes sense as the onlooker steps back...
...deal in illusion but not be dismissed as an illusionist is the nearly unsolvable problem of a writer like Julio Cortazar. For him the short story is the perfect form - a fine dazzle, then a quick curtain and nothing left but spots on the retina. But an entire collection of Cortazar's glittering tricky fiction invites the reader's eye to outguess the magician's hand. The mood that results is a profitless mixture of admiration and something not unlike contempt...
Item: Jean Anouilh, with his third play to be running on the boulevards this year, is the kind of illusionist who pretends to show the audience just how it's done. In Don't Wake Madame, he turns some show-business clichés upside down with his accustomed skill, but only to shake out the last sticky-sweet drops of sentimentality...
After a seance, an exhibition of "ESP," and a near-beheading. The World's Greatest Illusionist told an audience of 250 in the Quincy House dining hall last night that the dead do not return...