out-of-joint

And yet, one returns to Jacobs not out of nostalgia but from a curiosity to see how this man of prodigious talent, now shorn of the infrastructure of self-enlargement, is faring in a time out-of-joint.

As the locals’ recruiting rankings stall or drop, the Ducks continue to take players from underneath their out-of-joint nose, building that rare Pac-12 Conference team that could actually outmuscle a Big Ten Conference hulk.

And for a few ecstatic moments, theatergoers can pretend that this crazy, out-of-joint universe is their palpable, personal plaything.

Fountain isn’t a showy writer, but there’s a fever-dream quality to his account of those five minutes that “made the earth ring like a bell” that captures the hallucinogenic oddness of a world off-kilter, out-of-joint, suddenly uncooperative.

This was the logical climax of the whole misbegotten day, this whole out-of-joint term at Devon.