Word: tuba
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...night was moonless, the kind of darkness that pilots liken to flying into a black hole. On the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lieut. John ("Tuba") Gadzinski inched the F-14 Tomcat forward so a deck crewman could hook it to the catapult that would hurl the fighter skyward at 260 km/h. In the Tomcat's backseat, radar-intercept officer Lieut. (j.g.) Kristin ("Rosie") Dryfuse glanced out the cockpit to another deckhand holding a lighted box that flashed "66,000 lbs.," (30 metric tons) the plane's weight. Dryfuse circled her flashlight to signal that the weight was correct...
...Tuba powered up the engines and made one last scan of his panel. Tonight they would practice intercept maneuvers over the Adriatic Sea with the carrier's F/A-18 Hornets. Rosie grabbed a bar over her instrument panel and tensed every muscle in her body. Launch...
...Tomcat jumped like a bucking bronco. One second. Two seconds. That's all the time Tuba and Rosie have to decide if the jet has enough power to lift off. If not, they would have to eject in a half- second, plunge into the ocean and hope the Eisenhower wouldn't run over them...
...Tomcat dipped slightly as it flew off the bow, then rose. "Two-one-one airborne," Dryfuse radioed the ship, indicating the tail number of their plane. Tuba and Rosie flew off to work...
...somehow don't hang together as a novel. Chabon seems to be winking at friends: Look, here's a ridiculous bit in which Tripp gets the dean of students pregnant. And here's Miss Sloviak, the transvestite, and here's Tripp's car with a dead dog and a tuba in the trunk. Some of this is worth a smile, some a raised eyebrow, but let's agree with Chabon's publisher that he has actually written his third book. Now, about that fourth: well, maybe an old guy, far out in the Gulf Stream, who catches this huge fish...