But Wineapple is a good storyteller and has created a vivid account of a highly interesting life; she has also managed to communicate, if not to resolve, the man's puzzling contradictions.
Yet, in a puzzling contradiction, Des Pres establishes the bardic voice of the poet in opposition to, "pushing back against," what he calls the "intrusion" of politics.
Even in the prosecution's best-known cases, there are puzzling contradictions.
That Americans can be so fiercely wedded to self-sufficiency yet still have a huge capacity for philanthropy is, depending on how you look at it, either a puzzling contradiction or unsurprising.
It seemed a puzzling and mysterious contradiction.
There seem to be puzzling contradictions in both Slow Food and Arcigola.
When tracked down, the Canadian denied having met her, the first of many puzzling contradictions.
Just in the last month, Government data and private-sector surveys have bristled with puzzling contradictions.
This leads to a puzzling contradiction when a society learns that it can benefit from technological change: scientific discovery becomes a kind of ritual.
At the same time, it proposes a puzzling contradiction: a mighty, physical presence that is meant to represent the intangible.