Word: peculiar
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German culture, too, is vital, promising and socially oriented. While taking delight in piercing the pretensions of German materialism, Günter Grass (The Tin Drum), Heinrich Böll (The Clown) and Uwe Johnson (Speculations About Jakob) have dealt perhaps more effectively than any other writers with the peculiar poignancy of the human condition in the postwar world. Karlheinz Stockhausen and Hans Werner Henze have emerged as composers of worldwide status, and a younger group of West Berliners is experimenting with "post-pop realism." Just about every West German town of any size has opera and repertory theater. And for those...
...have his ancestor's name deleted from the title, and Judge Max Leboulanger quickly agreed. "Damaging to the family's good name," ruled the magistrate. So, thanks to the Comte Xavier de Sade, an eminently proper gentleman farmer from Condé-en-Brie, the name of his peculiar forebear, the Marquis de Sade, was ordered removed from the billboards advertising the Paris production of Marat Sade. Protested Producer Tony Azzi: "Real sadism...
...psych is the commuter carefully tallying his "compatibility quotient" in a newspaper quiz ("Do you resist asking directions in a strange town?"). It is the applicant for a new job checking True or False on a personality test ("I have strange and peculiar thoughts." "I have never seen a vision"). Pop-psych is found in heavy-breathing advice to the lovelorn, warning girls to beware of their father fixations. It is in the domestic-advice columns telling the anxious mothers of bed-wetters that the children are resenting their "free-flowing" permissiveness. The "psychosomatic" cold and eating to "compensate" have...
...first, sophisticated Angelenos were horrified by Tommy's rumpled appearance and taciturnity ("I am," he admitted, "the oratorical equivalent of a blocked punt"). But they quickly fell in love with his peculiar, devil-take-the-hindmost brand of football. "We'll try to do the unexpected," he promised, "the things nobody would dream that we'd be stupid enough...
...doubt there is more in the novel than meets the eye. Most of the important events take place offstage, but what does go on is baffling enough. Is Nellie head of a spirtualist cell or a covin? It is certainly one of the most peculiar books ever written by a novelist of undoubtedly great talents...