Word: odd
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...over Sinai before the captain sighted what he thought were Egyptian MIGs flying wingtip to wingtip with him. Actually, the planes were Israeli Phantoms alerted by radar. The Israelis were more sensitive than usual to any invasion of their air space that day, for two reasons. One was an odd rumor that Arab fedayeen were planning some sort of kamikaze raid on Israel using a disguised civilian airliner. The other was a more substantial report that a commando of trained Al-Fatah guerrillas was flying from Libya to Cairo en route to camps in Syria and Lebanon...
...analysis" of his visions. "Garfinkel said, 'Don't explain to me. You are a nobody. Just give it to me straight and in detail, the way it happened. The richness of detail is the whole story of membership.'" The abashed student spent several years revising his thesis, living pff odd jobs as taxi driver and delivery boy, and sent it in again. Garfinkel was still unimpressed. "He didn't like my efforts to explain Don Juan's behavior psychologically. 'Do you want to be the darling of Esalen?' he asked." Castaneda rewrote the thesis a third time...
...interest is in coins," he said in Beirut. "I care little for vases." He had really paid little attention to the calyx krater. The pieces had been in a hatbox from 1926, when his father died, until 1970, when he consigned the box to Hecht. There were some odd discrepancies in his story. The Met had said that Hecht only got an agent's 10% of the price. Sarrafian suggested otherwise. The Met said the vase had no missing parts. Sarrafian said there were pieces missing, some as large as a silver dollar...
Other characters seek refuge from anxiety in airless logic, superstition, nostalgic memories, magic or endeavors like Film Critic Mitchell Prettyplace's 18-volume study of King Kong. There is a plot of sorts. The antics of Pynchon's odd crew cover a conspiracy to build their own V rocket and fire it off. Aimed at what and for what purpose? Who knows? Making a rocket from scrounged parts seems to be like making a philosophical system or a mystic cult. It is something humans simply have...
Jack undergoes a complex metamorphosis. He adopts the appearances of normality, a hair cut and the most elegant Victorian dress. (We're in the 1950s, so if this seems a little odd, we can chalk it up to that tolerated margin.) Actually, Jack has come to believe that the year is 1888, the year of Jack the Ripper--the year of Jack Guerney, whose trick is to study given circumstance and manipulate it to fit with the new delusion...