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Is magic fantasy, theory, science or lunacy? SUSAN WANDS' Arcana Oracle Series. MAGICIAN and FOOL, HIGH PRIESTESS and EMPRESS

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 Is magic fantasy, theory, science or lunacy? I was entranced by  M agician and Fool,  the first fantasy novel in Susan Wands' Arcana Oracle Series (Spark Press.) I recently   finished   High Priestess and Empress (april), the second novel and look forward to the third. Though not a regular reader of fantasy novels nor ones about magic, it's the history, characters and sheer imaginative leaps that I enjoy in this work.   The series, projected to cover the creation of the entire deck, is a challenge. History is the bedrock for this series, enriching the fantasy with depth and plausibility. Then there's the characters, who would be fascinating in any time.  Pamela Coleman Smith (1878-1951) is the artist who created the famous Rider-Waite tarot deck, perhps the most used in the world. Her inspired designs are on display in the collection at NYC's Whitney Museum of Art, as her colored prints of ocean waves with female spirits. The real Coleman Smith attended Pratt School o

PERESTROIKA & The "Plays Are Literature Campaign." Collected plays by LUCY WANG, JON SPANO, BARBARA ALFARO

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TCG, Theatre Communications Group, published Tony Kushner's  PERESTROIKA , the second part of Angels of America in 1994 .  Would   book reviewers mention a book of this play, a huge cultural breakthrough?  As a book publicist and playwright, I was excited about this idea, as was the publisher, who created The "Plays are Literature Campaign." Packages of books with materals supporting this book as literature were sent. A couple weeks later, I began my follow-up. Was the exclusion of published playscripts arbitrary? "Everyone knows,  plays are only reviewed  in performance." But in England, play scripts in books are reviewed.  Some are reviewed both IN PERFORMANCE and when the book is published. Why? Playscripts are accepted, like poetry, as a form of  LITERATURE!  The   Plays are Literature Campaign  showed Angels in America was a  unique literary achievement published in two books.   Perestroika was a worthy exception to an arbitrary editorial rule. Why this pl

From WINSLOW HOMER to FASHIONED by SARGENT- Artists pursuing the Fabulous in Nature and Humanity

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  The World of Winslow Homer   ( Time Life  Library  of Art, 1966 ) by John Thomas Flexner shows unpeopled sea and landscapes, humans battling nature with revelatory emotion and technique. A favorite of mine is the watercolor of the  artist's studio, both specific and abstract.  Winslow Homer (1836-1910) was part of The Hudson River School but he also stood apart. Many of these self-taught "Yankee" painters, like Cole, an Englishman, came to paint the pure luminous light of the New World with unknown seasons. Cole, a portrait peddlar, knocked on doors with canvas and art supplies strapped to his back, until he quit to "learn from nature." Homer,  apprenticed to a printer, learned to produce in-depth black and white illustration. After his freedom, he became a  master of watercolors and taught himself to paint "what he saw" in oils.  Surprising to him,  the work sold.   New England light contrasted to a brutal environment, where men  and women fought st

Is "Happily Ever After" a destination, a phantom or beside the point of life? MY TWO AND ONLY by CARLA MALDEN, THE SPINDLE by ASHLEY GRIFFIN, tales of transformation for adults

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Is "Happily Ever After" a destination, a phantom or beside the point of life?  Carla Malden's My Two and Only  (Rare Bird Books)and Ashley Griffin's The Spindle   (Oaklea Books) address this question from points of view human and otherworldly.  Carla Malden's novel is a deceptively quiet book about adults in Los Angeles' middle class, distanced from the media drumbeats of apocalypse--climate disaster, homelessness, nuclear war. (There is no mention of AI).  The environment, business are topics but the real concern is family--what makes one?  How do you keep the heart, that most essential pulse of people's lives, beating when your most essential human dies?  Dysfunction here is less about psychology, than the crucial adjustment a human being makes when their "One and Only" dies. When it happens in an accident both everyday and strange, it leaves much to the imagination. For twelve years Charlotte lives with the "what ifs." Yet she's

Where does fact meet fantasy in a history of the information age, FANCY BEAR GOES PHISHING by SCOTT J SHAPIRO and in a fantasy novel of magical systems, MAGICIAN AND FOOL by SUSAN WANDS

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  Where does fact meet fantasy in a history of the information age, and in a fantasy novel of  magical systems? Fancy Bear Goes Phishing:The Dark History of the Information Age in Five Extraordinary Hacks by Scott J. Shapiro (Macmillan) confirmed my suspicions that the online world is more chaotic and dangerous than I expected. What happened to computer science, once a visionary frontier of knowledge? In the beginning academia and the defense industry fostered the new area.  The idea was thinking machines would enable human advancement and make our nation safer. With unique access to talent and technology, computer science departments were galvanized for an exciting future. So where did the hackers come in? Author Shapiro (Professor of Law and Philosophy at Yale and Director of the Yale Center for Law and Philosophy, as well as Yale's Cyber Security Lab) explains how "hacker" was once a complimentary term, meaning a rare creative thinker able to write code to make somethi

Unexpected surprising books: OTHER PLACES, OTHER TIMES stories by Robert Wexelblatt, NOT TOO LATE, essays edited by Solnit, Lutunatabua, WOMAN ON THE RUN poetry by Carla Sarett, THE PLEASURE PLAN memoir by Laura Zam

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Other Places, Other Times by Robert Wexelblatt  (Pelekinesis)  is a collection of twenty-six short historical fictions. Thirteen of the stories are about Chen Hsi-wei, an imaginary peasant-poet of the Sui period, circa 600 C.E. As a boy, he  served the emperor and turned down material rewards for an education. He became a poet (though nobility found an educated peasant as implausible as a flying pig), Hsi-wei travelled the empire making verses, along with straw sandals for customers.  He often set up a sign for sandals in marketplaces, before looking for a corner to sleep in an inn or stable.  Often Hsi-wei's curiosity about people and places led him to incongruous events and mysteries. The poem,  The Madness of Nowa   sums up a strange murder he resolved for a skeptical magistrate. At a seasonal festival, a chance meeting inspired rare insight about time, nature and men. U nknown truths, injustices, fateful sorrow inspired poems.  After some years, his reputation preceded his trav