Word: witchingly
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...only morally attractive character in the book. Jenny Gabriel, dies by becoming food, literally by being eaten by cancer, a practical virtue seems to have no place in Updike's Eastwick. Jenny is summed up and dismissed by a witch who says: "I guess she was one of those perfectly lovely people the world for some reason never finds...
...shining example of devotion to free speech, willing to protect and even nurture professors and students who admitted they had been communists? Or did Harvard, while erecting a facade of virtue through token acts and meaningless public statements, quietly pursue a private policy of caution and cooperation with the witch-hunters...
...once widespread practice by which fire or poison or some other divining element is used to determine a person's guilt or innocence, is the kick-to-test instinct applied to living subjects. It used to be a popular method for deciding whether or not someone was a witch, perhaps because what the practice lacked in fairness (the ancient Hindus tied a bag of cayenne pepper around the head of an accused witch, and suffocation was the only proof of innocence) it made up for in finality...
...would thus earn a short cut to heaven; charlatans were posing as "emperors" in order to win sexual favors from credulous country women. An epidemic of public rites of exorcism led to a series of grisly deaths. In one notorious incident, Party Member Liu Wenxue enlisted a self-styled witch to exorcise his wife, who had just received hospital treatment for heart disease. The witch proceeded to puncture the woman's nose with a knife, string her up to the ceiling and jerk her neck with a whip. Four days later, the patient died. Liu received only a mild official...
...keeps hoping Mazursky and Co-Scenarist Leon Capetanos will introduce some contrasting flavors. Until Vladimir encounters some afterthought muggers, everyone he meets is unfailingly helpful and kind; he has no difficulty finding jobs, an apartment, friends of both sexes. Yet every fairy tale needs to have a wicked witch; her broomstick is always useful as a lever to pry us upright in our seats and as a goad to keep us there. -By Richard Schickel