Word: oddness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...main reason for this odd and often frustrating approach probably lies in Miller's view of his masterwork, Death of a Salesman. Although what lingers with many spectators is the play's powerful naturalistic evocation of family mistrust and disappointment, Miller emphasizes its nonrealistic side, the scenes of recollection and hallucination taking place in the haunted mind of its title character. His goal when creating Salesman, he says, was to "cut through time like a knife through a layer cake or a road through a mountain revealing its geologic layers, and instead of one incident in one time-frame succeeding...
These melancholy accounts ought to signify a collective failure. Yet as Manic Power shows, the four men found an odd consolation in catastrophe, savoring their roles as the Bards Damned by Their Gifts, perennial favorites since the abbreviated days of Byron, Shelley and Keats. The tragedy of Lowell and his circle is not that they were martyrs to an unfeeling society, but that they played their parts too fervently. As each man drew closer to his finale, he discovered too late that it was impossible to remove the mask...
...mistake," said Ginsburg, withdrawing. Conversely, Columnist Tom Wicker, in a biting critique of the phony moralism and "sudden piety" of Ginsburg's attackers, felt compelled to preface his remarks about marijuana smokers by assuring his readers that "I am not now and never have been one of them." An odd credential to flash. It undermines Wicker's premise that in the conduct of public affairs (which includes public debate) one's marijuana history is an irrelevancy...
...rifles, many others went into battle bare chested and armed with nothing more than sticks and rocks. These warriors were following the orders of a 27-year-old self-styled "priestess" known as Mama Alice, who was trying to overthrow the government of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni with an odd mixture of Christian theology and African witchcraft. Believers in her Holy Spirit Movement, she told followers, could ward off enemy bullets by coating themselves with the oil of a local tree and could lob stones that would magically explode like grenades in battle...
...idea that a person is responsible for another's depression is a little odd, anyway. Life has its problems, and everyone has to deal with them. Like the man said, "We're all alone out there, and tomorrow we're going out there again...