Word: odd
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Marital dry rot in suburbia. A clinging mama and her growing-up boy. An alcoholic advertising salesman in search of himself. These are three of the whitest elephants in the attic of contemporary fiction-and Author Richard Yates, 50, has devoted a tight, pellucid novel to each one. An odd but not inconsiderable literary achievement, particularly in an age so helplessly smitten with the new. Yates' work brands him as a traditionalist in the strictest sense: he is a writer who feels dutybound to tell familiar stories in conventional ways...
...almost certainly the first abstract picture painted in France by a Frenchman. Born in 1885, a few years after Braque and Picasso, he tended to be conventionally pigeonholed by art historians as one of their more gifted epigones. And yet, as one can plainly see from the 140-odd paintings, drawings, prints and reliefs that make up the exhilarating Delaunay retrospective organized by French Art Historian Michel Hoog at the Orangerie in Paris this summer, the man belonged to no movement. His rainbow-hued paintings shared very little with cubism. "But they're painting with cobwebs!" was his reaction...
...Khazars chose Judaism, an odd historical fact that Koestler and others are at pains to explain satisfactorily. According to one ancient Jewish legend, the Khazar king, Bulan, was in the market for a monotheism to replace his old tribal idolatry. He asked the emissary from Christian Byzantium which faith he would choose if the only option was between Judaism and Islam. The Christian chose Judaism because the Jews -though sinners-at least worshiped the same...
...other clip to the engine block. He slammed the hood and jumped in, put a cautious foot on the gas, and felt the engine pull itself to life. He began to back out, concentration on the rear view mirror and not looking at the window where the voice said, "Odd hate to hafta git mah gun." He was halfway down the drive before his uncle, an ex-Marine sharpshooter and lifetime member of the NRA (at a cost of $200) began blasting away with his ninehundred dollar 25-06 deer rifle. A tire went fwooo, and Bell clunked along...
Reagan's aides insist that the strategy will pay off before the convention. Campaign Manager Sears argued that the plan all along was to spend the first week after the Schweiker announcement just explaining the odd coupling. In an implicit admission that the Reagan cause only days earlier had seemed lost, he claimed: "People are saying, 'Now we really can't tell who's going to win.' " Sears seemed to be hearing voices inaudible to almost everyone else...