Word: odd
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...first book, a collection of 13 short stories, Walter Kirn demonstrates a flair for opening sentences. He understands the allure of the odd: "The whole way down to Phoenix in the car, my job was to tranquilize the dog." He knows firearms are likely to arouse interest: "Luckily, I had a gun hidden away." And he senses that puzzlements invite curiosity: "He'd always liked motels even better than sleeping at home -- they provided the essentials and left a man to himself; but in New York City they'd only have hotels, and Clarence Dahlgren felt confused...
...odd students who attended the meeting, most said they are opposed to U.S. intervention in the Middle East. However, the discussion ended without settling on what, if any, specific U.S. actions the group should advocate...
...undergraduate seminar I was shopping this week, the professor explained to the 20-odd students in the room how she planned to cut the class down to its 15-person maximum: "Since this is a course where class discussion is very important, I am going to take only upperclassmen...
...Bicker in the late 1950s, as Wolff describes it, was a positively hellish experience. "The institution of Bicker is too perversely odd for my fancy to have fabricated," Wolff writes in the author's note. Sophomores register themselves in "Preferentials," groups of students who want to join the same club. The Preferentials go everywhere together--to meals, to tour the various clubs--but for the most part just wait for the upper-class club members to visit them and ask trite questions meant to discriminate between the gentlemen and the well-not-our-kinds...
Clay is not wholly anything--he is half Jewish, half Gentile. His WASP grandparents reject him completely, never having forgiven his father for marrying a Jew. He is the odd third of an otherwise perfect Preferential. His two roommates, Booth Tarkington Griggs and Pownall Hamm, are purebred patricians who breeze into the most exclusive club...