One is that New York exerts the magic power that everything dense and miniature holds over the imagination, and perhaps especially the imagination of the artist and the child.
Though on a much more modest scale, the plants in my own garden exert the same magic allure.
In Frayn's two novels in the sixth decade of that century, the lure of television is already beginning to exert its anti-magic.
Thanks to his Oscar-nominated title role in "Mr. Holland's Opus" -- the sleeper that exerted such feel-good magic behind the scenes that its cast spent their evenings bonding in Portland Ore .s karaoke bars -- it's come to that: he's an approachable everyman.
This is a novel centred on place, a spot in the Californian desert where three rock pinnacles rise up towards the sky to exert their new-age and old magic on all who pass.
This influence was exerted through many aspects of sympathetic magic, one of the most potent being the use of language.
Shakespeare's play of magic, illusion and music has exerted a sirenlike power over composers from Purcell to Sibelius, from Ligeti to Berio.
I remember once being told that the editorial policy of The Times of London was determined by "a committee that never meets," and Fairlie's experiences as a writer on that newspaper were certainly of help to him in charting the various intersecting magic circles that somehow managed to exert the real power behind the scenes.
Say what you like about the feuds of old, they exerted a dynastic thrust that made sense, whereas Leterrier's magic tricks are the foe of logic; for some reason, the scorpions wind up as friendly transport for our heroes, so why battle them in the first place?
Operating from a temple in the Malaysian jungle, and possessing abilities of hypnosis and voodoo-like dark magic, he is a master of physical disguise and exerts telepathic control over his estranged half-brother, Kyrano.
We know what it is, but we don't know why it exerts such a powerful hold on the imagination, or how it works its magic.
