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Books: One-Man Circus

PRICKSONGS & DESCANTS, by Robert Coover. 256 pages. Dutton. $5.95.

In each and every one of his novels, The Origin of the Brunists and The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop., the one and only Robert Coover performed brilliant literary acrobatics in the center ring. Now, with sleights of hand, desperate feints, chills and thrills, he impersonates the fat man and the thin lady, the magician pulling himself from a hat, the juggler, ringmaster, hall of mirrors.

Read this series of short stories and cringe in terror as a rusty poker turns into a man, into a prince, into a male...

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President BARACK OBAMA, at NATO talks involving over 50 world leaders, describing the withdrawal of 130,000 combat troops from Afghanistan, planned for the end of 2014
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