Admiration

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 150 of 288 · 20 per page

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  However, people do seem to concern themselves unnecessarily over this question of identity. As a rule, the autobiography is not as popular as the novel, unless it is sensational. I think, on the other hand, that publishers are always fearful of autobiographies, because of the threat of libel and slander, or defamation of character suits. But then publishers, in the main, are a timid lot, full of fears of every sort. The wonderful thing about Erica Jong’s book is that she or Isadora is full of fear, all kinds, but makes no bones about it and makes us laugh over her tragic moments. The book is definitely therapeutic, not only for women but for men too. It should be read for one thing by every shrink, every psychiatrist, every psychologist. It should also be read by Jews. They take quite a drubbing in this book. It’s hard to call the book “anti-Semitic,” since the author herself is Jewish and knows whereof she speaks. In her biting humor and sarcasm she is merciless toward her own people. Of course she is not unique in this. One has only to think of Swift, O’Casey, Knut Hamsun, Shaw, Céline, and Henry Miller. Yet all of us were writers who loved their country. We merely despised our country’s inhabitants. Yes, I know that of all the peoples in the world the Jews are reputed to be foremost in their ability to make fun of themselves, acknowledge their short-comings. But if someone other than a Jew does this he is immediately called an anti-Semite. It’s silly to go on pretending that under the skin we are all brothers. The truth is more likely that under the skin we are all cannibals, assassins, traitors, liars, hypocrites, poltroons. Do not misunderstand. Erica Jong is far from being a misogynist or a misanthropist. I get the impression that she loves life, and people too. But her intelligence does not permit her to overlook their glaring faults. It is this gusto of hers which supplies us with some of the funniest and raciest passages. One is tempted to say—"She writes like a man"—only she doesn’t write like a man but like a 100% woman, a female, sometimes a “bitch.” In many ways she is more forthright, more honest, more daring than most male authors. That’s what I like about her. In short, she is a treat for sore eyes. Parenthetically, I wonder when or if Germaine Greer is going to give us a book on this order. Germaine Greer is another woman writer who tickles my fancy and elicits my admiration. Certainly, when I read her interview in Playboy , was it, I could scarcely believe my eyes. Men are no match for women of this sort.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Having spent over twenty summers living among the Minangkabau, Sanday says, “The power of Minangkabau women extends to the economic and social realms,” noting, for example, that women control land inheritance and that a husband typically moves into the wife’s household. The four million Minangkabau living in West Sumatra consider themselves to be a matriarchal society. “While we in the West glorify male dominance and competition,” Sanday says, “the Minangkabau glorify their mythical Queen Mother and cooperation.” She reports that “males and females relate more like partners for the common good than like competitors ruled by egocentric self-interest,” and that as with bonobo social groups, women’s prestige increases with age and “accrues to those who promote good relations….”16 As happens so often in trying to understand and discuss other cultures, wording trips up specialists. When they claim never to have found a “true matriarchy,” these anthropologists are envisioning a mirror image of patriarchy, a vision that ignores the differing ways males and females conceptualize and wield power. Sanday says that among the Minangkabau, for example, “Neither male nor female rule is possible because of [their] belief that decision-making should be by consensus.” When she kept asking people which sex ruled, she was finally told that she was asking the wrong question. “Neither sex rules…because males and females complement one another.”17 Remember this when some loudmouth at the bar declares that “patriarchy is universal, and always has been!” It’s not, and it hasn’t. But rather than feel threatened, we’d recommend that our male readers ponder this: Societies in which women have lots of autonomy and authority tend to be decidedly male-friendly, relaxed, tolerant, and plenty sexy. Got that, fellas? If you’re unhappy at the amount of sexual opportunity in your life, don’t blame the women. Instead, make sure they have equal access to power, wealth, and status. Then watch what happens. As with bonobos, where female coalitions are the ultimate social authority and individual females need not fear the larger males, human societies in which women are “sassy and confident,” as Barnes described the Mosuo girls—free to express their minds and sexuality without fear of shame or persecution—tend to be far more comfortable places for most men than societies ruled by a male elite. Maybe matriarchal societies are so difficult for Western male anthropologists to recognize because they expect a culture where men are suffering under the high heels of women—a reverse reflection of the long-standing male oppression of women in Western cultures. Instead, observing a society where most of the men are lounging about relaxed and happy, they conclude they’ve found yet another patriarchy, thereby missing the point entirely. The March of the Monogamous The idea of monogamy hasn’t so much been tried and found wanting, as found difficult and left untried. G. K. CHESTERTON

• From The Art of the Graphic Memoir: Tell Your Story, Change Your Life (2018)

  There’s the story of dad as an old guy, as a married man, as a young man in the army, my story as a young girl dealing with him as an army guy, my story of dealing with them as old people, my story of being a married person, I’m also dealing with being a mother to a child who is troubled… .” To organize it all, she resorted to charts and spreadsheets, even gridding out lines directly onto a tabletop and filling it with Post-it notes. But she goes even further: “I actually had to build furniture to deal with it. I got out the saw like old Dad. I built shelves to manage the pages and a long tilt table so I could see the pages laid out in sequence.” It becomes clear at this point that Tyler isn’t just trying to tell the story; she’s trying hard to climb out of it. “An ink army. Tyler is a tireless artist and a master technician. She amassed another army. Fifty-three colors of custom-mixed ink. I had to make maps so I could keep track of them.” In Soldier’s Heart, she tries an array of techniques—full-color paintings, pen and ink, simple cartoony lines, redrawn photographs, and on and on. And Tyler involved her ill mother, suffering from a stroke, in the making of the book. “I sat her down, and had her do a page. I said, ‘Do whatever you want.’“ Her mother painted five stars in bloom representing her children, one representing her firstborn daughter who died at two. That star is crying. Beneath the stars, she painted herself and Carol’s father as hearts, and wrote WWII at the base. She titled it, “Out of war, came our children.” I can’t think of another book that involves the participants in the story so fully and with such love and vulnerability. Throughout this book, which took Tyler ten years, she experienced incredible loss and trauma, and sometimes wasn’t sure how to keep going. She tells the story of traveling on a highway during the creation of it: “On the way to Mom and Dad’s once, this semitruck in front of me suddenly flipped up into the air vertically and flew over the guardrail. Frightening! So I pulled over to see if I could help. Just then the driver miraculously emerged from his upside-down cab, unscratched. “I thought, if he can survive that, I can survive this.” The book is a reflection on a life’s past but is also powerfully the product of a life lived and rendered in the now. This emotional and symbolic page was painted by the artist’s mother. MAUS and METAMAUS by Art Spiegelman PUTTING THE DEAD INTO LITTLE BOXES One look at the notebooks and sketches for Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus, as seen in the supplemental book MetaMaus, shows that it took a tremendous force to make the book.

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  (2) There are chapters 16-28. Luke had personal knowledge of much that is included in this section. When we read Acts carefully, we notice a strange thing. Most of the time, Luke's narrative is in the third-person plural; but in certain passages it changes over to the first-person plural, and `they' becomes `we'. The `we' passages are as follows: Acts 16:1017, 20:5-16, 21:1-18 and 2'7:1-28:16. On all these occasions, Luke must have been present. He must have kept a travel diary, and in these passages we have eyewitness accounts. As for the times when he was not present, many were the hours he must have spent in prison with Paul, and many were the stories Paul must have told him, There can have been no great figure Luke did not know, and in every case he must have got his story from someone who was there. When we read Acts, we may be quite sure that no historian ever had better sources or used those sources more accurately. 6The Letters of PaulThe Letters of Paul There is no more interesting body of documents in the New Testament than the letters of Paul. That is because, of all forms of literature, a letter is most personal. Demetrius, one of the ancient Greek literary critics, once wrote: `Everyone reveals his own soul in his letters. In every other form of composition it is possible to discern the writer's character, but in none so clearly as the epistolary' (Demetrius, On Style, 227). It is precisely because he left us so many letters that we feel we know Paul so well. In them, he opened his mind and heart to the people he loved so much; and in them, to this day, we can see that great mind grappling with the problems of the early Church, and feel that great heart throbbing with love for men and women, even when they were misguided and mistaken. The Difficulty of Letters At the same time, there is often nothing so difficult to understand as a letter. Demetrius (On Style, 223) quotes a saying of Artemon, who edited the letters of Aristotle. Artemon said that a letter ought to be written in the same manner as a dialogue, because it was one of the two sides of a discussion. In other words, reading a letter is like listening to one side of a telephone conversation. So, when we read the letters of Paul, we often find ourselves in difficulty. We do not possess the letter which he was answering, we do not fully know the circumstances with which he was dealing, and it is only from the letter itself that we can deduce the situation which prompted it. Before we can hope to understand fully any letter Paul wrote, we must try to reconstruct the situation that produced it. The Ancient Letters

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Please note that a good parent doesn’t criticize the other parent. Quite the opposite. They go out of their way to protect the child from feeling he needs to take sides or that there are sides. Nor do they tell the child that mom and dad are staying together to protect him and his siblings. Such martyrdom is not a gift. They’d be giving the child a painful and heavy burden; imagine feeling responsible for your parents’ years of unhappiness together just because you were born. As an aside here, I should mention that the “don’t criticize” rule of behavior given to parents after divorce—for example, if you don’t fight in front of the children, they will be spared further harm—is good advice but insufficient. It certainly helps children to not see their parents act out like marionettes in a Punch and Judy show. But fighting and taking sides after a divorce has a fundamentally different quality than fighting and taking sides within an intact marriage. After a divorce, open disagreements are normal and expected. The marriage is over and presumably you divorced because of serious differences. People need to try to get along, but tensions are inevitable. And the child has a right to know why his parents divorced. In an intact marriage, disagreements are also normal, but the structure of the marriage itself contains them and makes them safe. Arguments have a beginning, middle, and end—because the important goal is to protect the marriage. It’s a critical part of the child’s education to learn firsthand how arguments can be resolved without threatening the integrity of the family. By being honest with his son, Gary’s father presents the picture of an adult of high integrity who has struggled with an unhappy relationship and made the decision to remain in the marriage because of his remaining love for his wife and his commitment to his children. He conveys a world in which the values of honesty, patience, working at life’s problems, love, and loyalty shine like beacons. Gary is doubly blessed. He’s offered a candid picture of a marriage in crisis but overall mixed with sorrow and joy. And he’s offered the model of a father who struggles to protect his children and his wife despite his own serious disappointments. This is courage. There is no denial of the trouble, no sugarcoating of the recurrent crises. He levels with the boy in a way that is unforgettable.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Many have noted the strangely cavalier approach to food among foragers, who have nothing in the freezer. French Jesuit missionary Paul Le Jeune, who spent some six months among the Montagnais in present-day Quebec, was exasperated by the natives’ generosity. “If my host took two, three, or four Beavers,” wrote Le Jeune, “whether it was day or night, they had a feast for all neighboring Savages. And if those people had captured something, they had one also at the same time; so that, on emerging from one feast, you went to another, and sometimes even to a third and a fourth.” When Le Jeune tried to explain the advantages of saving some of their food, “They laughed at me. ‘Tomorrow’ (they said) ‘we shall make another feast with what we shall capture.’”12 Israeli anthropologist Nurit Bird-David explains, “Just as Westerners’ behaviour is understandable in relation to their assumption of shortage, so hunter-gatherers’ behaviour is understandable in relation to their assumption of affluence. Moreover, just as we analyze, even predict, Westerners’ behavior by presuming that they behave as if they did not have enough, so we can analyze, even predict, hunter-gatherers’ behaviour by presuming that they behave as if they had it made [emphasis added].”13 While farmers toil to grow rice, potatoes, wheat, or corn, a forager’s diet is characterized by a variety of nutritious plants and critters. But how much work is foraging? Is it an efficient way to get a meal? Archaeologist David Madsen investigated the energy efficiency of foraging for Mormon crickets (Anabrus simplex), which had been on the menu of the local native people in present-day Utah. His group collected crickets at a rate of about eighteen crunchy pounds per hour. At that rate, Madsen calculated that in just an hour’s work, a forager could collect the caloric equivalent of eighty-seven chili dogs, forty-nine slices of pizza, or forty-three Big Macs—without all the heart-clogging fats and additives.14 Before you scoff at the culinary appeal of Mormon crickets, give some thought to the frightening reality lurking within a typical chili dog. Another study found that the !Kung San (in the Kalahari desert, mind you) had an average daily intake (in a good month) of 2,140 calories and ninety-three grams of protein. Marvin Harris puts it simply: “Stone age populations lived healthier lives than did most of the people who came immediately after them.”15

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  thousands were fixed upon him as though hypnotized by his power." Once irresistible hero is worth again, it was the sound of the voice and the poetic connotations of the singling out, for it words that seduced the masses. Arguing that modern Italy should reclaim illustrates a curious change in our sensibility. Don the greatness of the Roman Empire, D'Annunzio would craft slogans for Juan did not become the audience to repeat, or would ask emotionally loaded questions for them irresistible to women until to answer. He flattered the crowd, made them feel they were part of some the Romantic age, and I drama. Everything was vague and suggestive. am disposed to think that it is a trait of the female The issue of the day was the ownership of the city of Fiume, just across imagination to make him the border in neighboring Yugoslavia. Many Italians believed that Italy's re- so. When the female voice ward for siding with the Allies in the recent war should be the annexation began to assert itself and even, perhaps, to dominate of Fiume. D'Annunzio championed this cause, and because of his status as in literature, Don Juan a war hero the army was ready to side with him, although the government evolved to become the opposed any action. In September of 1919, with soldiers rallying around women's rather than the man's ideal. . . . Don him, D'Annunzio led his infamous march on Fiume. When an Italian gen- Juan is now the woman's eral stopped him along the way, and threatened to shoot him, D'Annunzio dream of the perfect lover, opened his coat to show his medals, and said in his magnetic voice, "If you fugitive, passionate, daring. must kill me, fire first on this!" The general stood there stunned, then He gives her the one unforgettable moment, the broke into tears. He joined up with D'Annunzio. magnificent exaltation of When D'Annunzio entered Fiume, he was greeted as a liberator. The the flesh which is too often next day he was declared leader of the Free State of Fiume. Soon he was denied her by the real husband, who thinks that giving daily speeches from a balcony overlooking the town's main square, men are gross and women holding tens of thousands of people spellbound without benefit of loud- spiritual. To be the fatal speakers. He initiated all kinds of celebrations and rituals harking back to Don Juan may be the dream of a few men; but to the Roman Empire. The citizens of Fiume began to imitate him, particu- meet him is the dream of larly his sexual exploits; the city became like a giant bordello. His popu- many women. larity was so high that the Italian government feared a march on Rome, —OSCAR MANDEL,"THE which at that point, had D'Annunzio decided to do it—and he had the LEGEND OF DON JUAN," THE support of a large part of the military—might actually have succeeded; THEATRE OF DON JUAN

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Undaunted, Lenin went to work. Wherever he went, he repeated the same simple message: end the war, establish the rule of the proletariat, abolish private property, redistribute wealth. Exhausted with the nation's endless political infighting and the complexity of its problems, people began to listen. Lenin was so determined, so confident. He never lost his cool. In the midst of a raucous debate, he would simply and logically de-bunk each one of his adversaries' points. Workers and soldiers were im- 108 • The Art of Seduction No one could so fire others pressed by his firmness. Once, in the midst of a brewing riot, Lenin amazed with theif plans, no one his chauffeur by jumping onto the running board of his car and directing could so impose his will the way through the crowd, at considerable personal risk. Told that his ideas and conquer by force of his personality as this had nothing to do with reality, he would answer, "So much the worse for seemingly so ordinary and reality!" somewhat coarse man who Allied to Lenin's messianic confidence in his cause was his ability to or-lacked any obvious sources of charm. . . . Neither ganize. Exiled in Europe, his party had been scattered and diminished; in Plekhanov nor Martov nor keeping them together he had developed immense practical skills. In front anyone else possessed the of a large crowd, he was a also powerful orator. His speech at the First All-secret radiating from Lenin Russian Soviet Congress made a sensation; either revolution or a bourgeois of positively hypnotic effect upon people—I would government, he cried, but nothing in between—enough of this compro-even say, domination of mise in which the left was sharing. At a time when other politicians were them. Plekhanov was scrambling desperately to adapt to the national crisis, and seemed weak in treated with deference, Martov was loved, but the process, Lenin was rock stable. His prestige soared, as did the member-Lenin alone was followed ship of the Bolshevik party unhesitatingly as the only Most astounding of all was Lenin's effect on workers, soldiers, and peas-indisputable leader. For only Lenin represented that ants. He would address these common people wherever he found them—in rare phenomenon, the street, standing on a chair, his thumbs in his lapel, his speech an odd especially rare in Russia, of mix of ideology, peasant aphorisms, and revolutionary slogans. They would a man of iron will and listen, enraptured. When Lenin died, in 1924—seven years after single-indomitable energy who combines fanatical faith in handedly opening the way to the October Revolution of 1917, which had the movement, the cause, swept him and the Bolsheviks into power—these same ordinary Russians with no less faith in went into mourning. They worshiped at his tomb, where his body was himself. preserved on view; they told stories about him, developing a body of — A . N . P O T R E S O V , Q U O T E D I N

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  In a twist that should send many mainstream theorists into a tailspin, sexual relations are kept strictly separate from Mosuo family relations. At night, Mosuo men are expected to sleep with their lovers. If not, they sleep in one of the outer buildings, never in the main house with their sisters. Custom prohibits any talk of love or romantic relationships in the family home. Complete discretion is expected from everyone. While both men and women are free to do as they will, they’re expected to respect one another’s privacy. There’s no kissing and telling at Lugu Lake. The mechanics of the açia relationships, as they are referred to by Mosuo, are characterized by a sacred regard for each individual’s autonomy—whether man or woman.9 Cai Hua, a Chinese anthropologist and author of A Society without Fathers or Husbands, explains, “Not only do men and women have the freedom to foster as many açia relationships as they want and to end them as they please, but each person can have simultaneous relationships with several açia, whether it be during one night or over a longer period.” These relationships are discontinuous, lasting only as long as the two people are in each other’s presence. “Each visitor’s departure from the woman’s home is taken to be the end of their açia relationship,” according to Cai Hua. “There is no concept of açia that applies to the future. The açia relationship…only exists instantaneously and retrospectively,” although a couple may repeat their visits as often as they wish.10 Particularly libidinous Mosuo women and men unashamedly report having had hundreds of relationships. Shame, from their perspective, would be the proper response to promises of or demands for fidelity. A vow of fidelity would be considered inappropriate—an attempt at negotiation or exchange. Openly expressed jealousy, for the Mosuo, is considered aggressive in its implied intrusion upon the sacred autonomy of another person, and is thus met with ridicule and shame. Sadly, hostility toward this free expression of female sexual autonomy is not limited to narrow-minded anthropologists and thirteenth-century Italian explorers. Although the Mosuo have no history of trying to export their system or convincing anyone else of the superiority of their approach to love and sex, they have long suffered outside pressure to abandon their traditional beliefs, which outsiders seem to find threatening.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Nabokov’s responsiveness is characterized for me by the last evening of my first visit to Montreux in September 1966. During my two hours of conversation with the Nabokovs in their suite after dinner, Nabokov tried to imagine what the history of painting might have been like if photography had been invented in the Middle Ages; spoke about science fiction; asked me if I had noticed what was happening in Li’l Abner and then compared it, in learned fashion, with an analogous episode of a dozen years back; noted that a deodorant stick had been found among the many days’ siege provisions which the Texas sniper had with him on the tower; discoursed on a monstrous howler in the translation of Bely’s St. Petersburg; showed me a beautifully illustrated book on hummingbirds, and then discussed the birdlife of Lake Geneva; talked admiringly and often wittily of the work of Borges, Updike, Salinger, Genet, Andrei Sinyavsky (“Abram Tertz”), Burgess, and Graham Greene, always making precise critical discriminations; recalled his experiences in Hollywood while working on the screenplay of Lolita, and his having met Marilyn Monroe at a party (“A delightful actress. Delightful,” he said. “Which is your favorite Monroe film?”); talked of the Soviet writers he admired, summarizing their stratagems for survival; and defined for me exactly what kind of beetle Kafka’s Gregor Samsa was in The Metamorphosis (“It was a domed beetle, a scarab beetle with wing-sheaths, and neither Gregor nor his maker realized that when the room was being made by the maid, and the window was open, he could have flown out and escaped and joined the other happy dung beetles rolling the dung balls on rural paths”). And did I know how a dung beetle laid its eggs? Since I did not, Nabokov rose and imitated the process, bending his head toward his waist as he walked slowly across the room, making a dung-rolling motion with his hands until his head was buried in them and the eggs were laid. When Lenny Bruce’s name somehow came up, both Nabokov and his wife commented on how sad they had been to hear of Bruce’s death; he had been a favorite of theirs. But they disagreed about where it was that they had last seen Bruce; Mrs. Nabokov thought it had been on Jack Paar’s television show, while her husband—the scientist, linguist, and author of fifteen novels, who has written and published in three languages, and whose vast erudition is most clearly evidenced by the four-volume translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, with its two volumes of annotations and one-hundred-page “Note on Prosody”—held out for the Ed Sullivan show.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Body and adornment. If the voice must lull, the body and its adornment must dazzle. It is with her clothes that the Siren aims to create the goddess effect that Baudelaire described in his essay "In Praise of Makeup": "Woman is well within her rights, and indeed she is accomplishing a kind of duty in striving to appear magical and supernatural. She must astonish and bewitch; an idol, she must adorn herself with gold in order to be adored. She must borrow from all of the arts in order to raise herself above nature, the better to subjugate hearts and stir souls." A Siren who was a genius of clothes and adornment was Pauline Bonaparte, sister of Napoleon. Pauline consciously strove for a goddess effect, fashioning hair, makeup, and clothes to evoke the look and air of Venus, the goddess of love. No one in history could boast a more extensive and elaborate wardrobe. Pauline's entrance at a ball in 1798 created an astounding effect. She asked the hostess, Madame Permon, if she could dress at her house, so no one would see her clothes as she came in. When she came down the stairs, everyone stopped dead in stunned silence. She wore the headdress of a bacchante—clusters of gold grapes interlaced in her hair, which was done up in the Greek style. Her Greek tunic, with its gold-embroidered hem, showed off her goddesslike figure. Below her breasts was a girdle of burnished gold, held by a magnificent jewel. "No words can convey the loveliness of her appearance," wrote the Duchess d'Abrantes. "The very room grew brighter as she entered. The whole ensemble was so harmonious that her appearance was greeted with a buzz of admiration which continued with utter disregard of all the other women." The key: everything must dazzle, but must also be harmonious, so that no single ornament draws attention. Your presence must be charged, larger than life, a fantasy come true. Ornament is used to cast a spell and distract. The Siren can also use clothing to hint at the sexual, at times overtly but more often by suggesting it rather than screaming it—that would make you seem manipulative. Related to this is the notion of selective disclosure, the revealing of only a part of the body—but a part that will excite and stir the imagination. In the late sixteenth century, Marguerite de Valois, the infa- The Siren • 15 mous daughter of Queen Catherine de Médicis of France, was one of the first women ever to incorporate decolletage in her wardrobe, simply because she had the most beautiful breasts in the realm. For Josephine Bonaparte it was her arms, which she carefully always left bare.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Having spent over twenty summers living among the Minangkabau, Sanday says, “The power of Minangkabau women extends to the economic and social realms,” noting, for example, that women control land inheritance and that a husband typically moves into the wife’s household. The four million Minangkabau living in West Sumatra consider themselves to be a matriarchal society. “While we in the West glorify male dominance and competition,” Sanday says, “the Minangkabau glorify their mythical Queen Mother and cooperation.” She reports that “males and females relate more like partners for the common good than like competitors ruled by egocentric self-interest,” and that as with bonobo social groups, women’s prestige increases with age and “accrues to those who promote good relations….”16 As happens so often in trying to understand and discuss other cultures, wording trips up specialists. When they claim never to have found a “true matriarchy,” these anthropologists are envisioning a mirror image of patriarchy, a vision that ignores the differing ways males and females conceptualize and wield power. Sanday says that among the Minangkabau, for example, “Neither male nor female rule is possible because of [their] belief that decision-making should be by consensus.” When she kept asking people which sex ruled, she was finally told that she was asking the wrong question. “Neither sex rules…because males and females complement one another.”17 Remember this when some loudmouth at the bar declares that “patriarchy is universal, and always has been!” It’s not, and it hasn’t. But rather than feel threatened, we’d recommend that our male readers ponder this: Societies in which women have lots of autonomy and authority tend to be decidedly male-friendly, relaxed, tolerant, and plenty sexy. Got that, fellas? If you’re unhappy at the amount of sexual opportunity in your life, don’t blame the women. Instead, make sure they have equal access to power, wealth, and status. Then watch what happens. As with bonobos, where female coalitions are the ultimate social authority and individual females need not fear the larger males, human societies in which women are “sassy and confident,” as Barnes described the Mosuo girls—free to express their minds and sexuality without fear of shame or persecution—tend to be far more comfortable places for most men than societies ruled by a male elite. Maybe matriarchal societies are so difficult for Western male anthropologists to recognize because they expect a culture where men are suffering under the high heels of women—a reverse reflection of the long-standing male oppression of women in Western cultures. Instead, observing a society where most of the men are lounging about relaxed and happy, they conclude they’ve found yet another patriarchy, thereby missing the point entirely. The March of the Monogamous The idea of monogamy hasn’t so much been tried and found wanting, as found difficult and left untried. G. K. CHESTERTON

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  They would have been so much more than the snapshots I burned! Her overhead volley was related to her service as the envoy is to the ballade; for she had been trained, my pet, to patter up at once to the net on her nimble, vivid, white-shod feet. There was nothing to choose between her forehand and backhand drives: they were mirror images of one another—my very loins still tingle with those pistol reports repeated by crisp echoes and Electra’s cries. One of the pearls of Dolly’s game was a short half-volley that Ned Litam had taught her in California. She preferred acting to swimming, and swimming to tennis; yet I insist that had not something within her been broken by me—not that I realized it then!—she would have had on the top of her perfect form the will to win, and would have become a real girl champion. Dolores, with two rackets under her arm, in Wimbledon. Dolores endorsing a Dromedary. Dolores turning professional. Dolores acting a girl champion in a movie. Dolores and her gray, humble, hushed husband-coach, old Humbert. There was nothing wrong or deceitful in the spirit of her game—unless one considered her cheerful indifference toward its outcome as the feint of a nymphet. She who was so cruel and crafty in everyday life, revealed an innocence, a frankness, a kindness of ball-placing, that permitted a second-rate but determined player, no matter how uncouth and incompetent, to poke and cut his way to victory. Despite her small stature, she covered the one thousand and fifty-three square feet of her half of the court with wonderful ease, once she had entered into the rhythm of a rally and as long as she could direct that rhythm; but any abrupt attack, or sudden change of tactics on her adversary’s part, left her helpless. At match point, her second serve, which—rather typically—was even stronger and more stylish than her first (for she had none of the inhibitions that cautious winners have), would strike vibrantly the harp-cord of the net—and ricochet out of court. The polished gem of her dropshot was snapped up and put away by an opponent who seemed four-legged and wielded a crooked paddle. Her dramatic drives and lovely volleys would candidly fall at his feet. Over and over again she would land an easy one into the net—and merrily mimic dismay by drooping in a ballet attitude, with her forelocks hanging. So sterile were her grace and whipper that she could not even win from panting me and my old-fashioned lifting drive. I suppose I am especially susceptible to the magic of games. In my chess sessions with Gaston I saw the board as a square pool of limpid water with rare shells and stratagems rosily visible upon the smooth tessellated bottom, which to my confused adversary was all ooze and squid-cloud.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Kennedy's thousand days in office resonate as myth. and mythic— substance of the hero or heroine of the Kennedy's seduction of the American public was conscious and calculated. movies, and who in turn enriches this substance by It was also more Hollywood than Washington, which was not surprising: The Star • 125 Kennedy's father, Joseph, had once been a movie producer, and Kennedy his or her own contrib-himself had spent time in Hollywood, hobnobbing with actors and trying ution. When we speak of the myth of the star, we to figure out what made them stars. He was particularly fascinated with mean first of all the process Gary Cooper, Montgomery Clift, and Cary Grant; he often called Grant of divinization which the for advice. movie actor undergoes, a process that makes him the Hollywood had found ways to unite the entire country around cer- idol of crowds. tain themes, or myths—often the great American myth of the West. The —EDGAR MORIN, THE STARS, great stars embodied mythic types: John Wayne the patriarch, Clift TRANSLATED BY RICHARD the Promethean rebel, Jimmy Stewart the noble hero, Marilyn Monroe the HOWARD siren. These were not mere mortals but gods and goddesses to be dreamed and fantasized about. All of Kennedy's actions were framed in the conventions of Hollywood. He did not argue with his opponents, he confronted Age: 22, Sex: female, them dramatically. He posed, and in visually fascinating ways—whether Nationality: British, with his wife, with his children, or alone onstage. He copied the facial Profession: medical student " [ Deanna Durbin] became expressions, the presence, of a Dean or a Cooper. He did not discuss my first and only screen policy details but waxed eloquent about grand mythic themes, the kind idol. I wanted to be as that could unite a divided nation. And all this was calculated for television, much like her as possible, for Kennedy mostly existed as a televised image. That image haunted both in my manners and clothes. Whenever I was to our dreams. Well before his assassination, Kennedy attracted fantasies of get a new dress, I would America's lost innocence with his call for a renaissance of the pioneer spirit, find from my collection a a New Frontier. particularly nice picture of Deanna and ask for a dress Of all the character types, the Mythic Star is perhaps the most powerful like she was wearing. I did of all. People are divided by all kinds of consciously recognized categories— my hair as much like hers race, gender, class, religion, politics. It is impossible, then, to gain power on as 1 could manage. If I found myself in any a grand scale, or to win an election, by drawing on conscious awareness; an annoying or aggravating appeal to any one group will only alienate another. Unconsciously, how- situation . . . I found ever, there is much we share. All of us are mortal, all of us know fear, all of myself wondering what Deanna would do and

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  The dangers of political charm are harder to handle: your conciliatory, shifting, flexible approach to politics will make enemies out of everyone who is a rigid believer in a cause. Social seducers such as Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger could often win over the most hardened opponent with their personal charm, but they could not be everywhere at once. Many members of the English Parliament thought Disraeli a shifty conniver; in person his engaging manner could dispel such feelings, but he could not address the entire Parliament one-on-one. In difficult times, when people yearn for something substantial and firm, the political charmer may be in danger. As Catherine the Great proved, timing is everything. Charmers must know when to hibernate and when the times are ripe for their persuasive powers. Known for their flexibility, they should sometimes be flexible enough to act inflexibly. Zhou Enlai, the consummate chameleon, could play the hard-core Communist when it suited him. Never become the slave to your own powers of charm; keep it under control, something you can turn off and on at will. Charisma is a presence that excites us. It comes from an inner quality—s elf-confi- dence, sexual energy, sense of purpose, content- ment—t hat most people lack and want. This quality radiates outward, permeating the gestures of Charismatics, making them seem extraordinary and superior, and making us imagine there is more to them than meets the eye: they are gods, saints, stars. Charismatics can learn to heighten their charisma with a piercing gaze, fiery oratory, an air of mystery. They can seduce on a grand scale. Learn to create the charismatic illusion by radiating intensity while remain- ing detached. Charisma and Seduction Charisma is seduction on a mass level. Charismatics make crowds of people fall in love with them, then lead them along. The process of making them fall in love is simple and follows a path similar to that of a one-on-one seduction. Charismatics have certain qualities that are powerfully attractive and that make them stand out. This could be their self-belief, their boldness, their serenity. They keep the source of these qualities mysterious. They do not explain where their confidence or contentment "Charisma" shall be understood to refer to an comes from, but it can be felt by everyone; it radiates outward, without the extraordinary quality of a appearance of conscious effort. The face of the Charismatic is usually ani- person, regardless of mated, full of energy, desire, alertness—the look of a lover, one that is in- whether this quality is actual, alleged or stantly appealing, even vaguely sexual. We happily follow Charismatics presumed. "Charismatic because we like to be led, particularly by people who promise adventure or authority," hence, shall prosperity. We lose ourselves in their cause, become emotionally attached refer to a rule over men, to them, feel more alive by believing in them—we fall in love. Charisma whether predominately ex tern al or p redominately

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Darwin’s sense of the coy female wasn’t based only on his Victorian assumptions. In addition to natural selection, he proposed a second mechanism for evolutionary change: sexual selection. The central premise of sexual selection is that in most mammals, the female has a much higher investment in offspring than does the male. She’s stuck with gestation, lactation, and extended nurturing of the young. Because of this inequality in unavoidable sacrifice, Darwin reasoned, she is the more hesitant participant, needing to be convinced it’s a good idea—while the male, with his slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am approach to reproduction, is eager to do the convincing. Evolutionary psychology is founded on the belief that male and female approaches to mating have intrinsically conflicted agendas. The selection of the winning bachelor typically involves male competition: rams slamming their heads together, peacocks dragging around colorful, predator-attracting tails, men bearing expensive gifts and vowing eternal love over candlelight. Darwin saw sexual selection as a struggle between males for sexual access to passive, fertile females who would submit to the victor. Given the competitive context his theories assume, he believed “promiscuous intercourse in a state of nature [to be] extremely improbable.” But at least one of Darwin’s contemporaries disagreed. Lewis Henry Morgan To white people, he was known as Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881), a railroad lawyer with a fascination for scholarship and the ways in which societies organize themselves.24 The Seneca tribe of the Iroquois Nation adopted Morgan as an adult, giving him the name Tayadaowuhkuh, which means “bridging the gap.” At his home near Rochester, New York, Morgan spent his evenings studying and writing, trying to bring scientific rigor to understanding the intimate lives of people made distant by time or space. The only American scholar to have been cited by each of the other three intellectual giants of his century, Darwin, Freud, and Marx, many consider Morgan the most influential social scientist of his era and the father of American anthropology. Ironically, it may be Marx and Engels’s admiration that explains why Morgan’s work isn’t better known today. Though he was no Marxist, Morgan doubted important Darwinian assumptions concerning the centrality of sexual competition in the human past. This stance was enough to offend some of Darwin’s defenders—though not Darwin himself, who respected and admired Morgan. In fact, Morgan and his wife spent an evening with the Darwins during a trip to England. Years later, two of Darwin’s sons stayed with the Morgans at their home in upstate New York.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O X I Contrast between earth and heaven. Thomas, reading Dante’s thoughts, renews his discourse in order to remove certain difficulties, Providence raised up Francis and Dominic to succour the Church. From Assisi Francis rose sun-like, even as the sun in which Doctor and Poet are now discoursing rises to mortals from Ganges or elsewhere according to the place of their abode. His marriage with poverty. The founding and confirming of his order. He preaches to the Soldan, receives the stigmata, and dies commending his bride to his disciples. If he was such, what must Dominic have been, seeing that he was worthy to be his colleague. But almost all his followers are degenerate. INSENSATE care of mortals! Oh how false the arguments which make thee downward beat thy wings! One was following after law, and one aphorisms, 1 one was pursuing priesthood, and one dominion by violence or by quibbles, and another plunder, and another civil business, and one, tangled in the pleasures of the flesh, was moiling, and one abandoned him to ease; the whilst, from all these things released, with Beatrice up in heaven thus gloriously was I received. When each had come again to that point of the circle whereat he was before, he stayed him, as the taper in its stand. And within that light which first had spoken to me I heard smiling begin, as it grew brighter: “Even as I glow with its ray, so, gazing into the Eternal Light, I apprehend whence thou dost take occasion for thy thoughts. Thou questionest and wouldst fain discern, in such open and dispread discourse as may be level to thine understanding, my utterance wherein I said but now: Where is good fattening, and wherein I said: No second ever rose; and here we need to make precise distinction. 3 The providence which governeth the world,—with counsel wherein every creature’s gaze must stay, defeated, e’er it reach the bottom, — in order that the spouse of him, who with loud cries espoused her with the blessed blood, might go toward her delight, secure within herself and faithfuller to him, two Princes did ordain on her behalf, who on this side and that should be for guides. The one was all seraphic in his ardour, the other by his wisdom was on earth a splendour of cherubic light. 4 Of one will I discourse, because of both the two he speaketh who doth either praise, which so he will; for to one end their works. Between Tupino and the stream 5 that drops from the hill chosen by the blessed Ubaldo, 6 a fertile slope hangs from a lofty mount, wherefrom Perugia feeleth cold and heat through Porta Sole, 7 and behind it waileth Nocera, for the heavy yoke, and Gualdo. 8 From this slope, where most it breaks the steepness of decline, was born into the world a sun, even as is this some whiles from Ganges.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  "Who are they?" Beauty asked, but before he could answer, she added quickly, though trying to sound indifferent, "Is Prince Alexi one of those who is rebellious?" She could feel Leon's hand moving towards her buttocks, and now suddenly all those welts and sore places were brought to life as his fingers touched them. The oil burned slightly as Leon added droplets of it generously, and then those strong fingers commenced to work the flesh, with no regard for its redness. Beauty winced, but even this pain had its pleasure. She felt her buttocks shaped by his hands, lifted, separated, and then smoothed again. She blushed to think that it was Leon doing this who had been talking to her in such a civilized manner, and when his voice went on, she felt a new variant of agitation. "There is no end to it," she thought, "the ways of being humiliated." "Prince Alexi is the Queen's favorite," said Leon. "The Queen cannot bear to be separated from him for very long, and though he is a model of good behavior and devotion, he is, in his own way, relentlessly rebellious." "But how can that be?" Beauty asked. "Ah, you must put your mind on the pleasing of your Lords and Ladies," Leon said, "but I shall say this: Prince Alexi appears to have surrendered his will as a fine slave must, but there is a core in Prince Alexi that no one touches." Beauty was enthralled by this answer. She thought of Prince Alexi on his hands and knees, his strong back and the curve of his buttocks as he had been driven back and forth across the Prince's bedroom; she thought of the beauty of his face. "A core in him no one touches," she mused. But Leon had turned her over now, and when she saw him bending down, so close to her, she felt bashful and closed her eyes. He was rubbing the oil into her belly and into her legs, and she pressed her legs together and tried to turn to the side. "You'll become very accustomed to my ministrations, Princess," he said. "You will think nothing of being groomed in time." And firmly he pressed her shoulders to the pallet. His swift fingers smoothed the oil into her throat and into her arms. Beauty opened her eyes cautiously to see him intent on his work. His pale eyes moved over her without passion but with an obvious absorption. "Do you...derive pleasure from it?" she whispered, and was shocked to hear herself speak these words. He emptied some oil into the palm of his left hand, and putting the bottle down beside him, he rubbed the oil into her breasts, lifting them and squeezing them as he had done her buttocks. She closed her eyes again, biting her lip. She felt him roughly massaging her nipples.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  It had been difficult enough to “invent Russia and Western Europe,” let alone America, and at the age of fifty Nabokov now had to set about obtaining “such local ingredients as would allow me to inject a modicum of average ‘reality’ (one of the few words which mean nothing without quotes) into the brew of individual fancy. “What was most difficult,” he later told an interviewer, “was putting myself … I am a normal man, you see.” 16 Research was thus called for, and in scholarly fashion Nabokov followed newspaper stories involving pedophilia (incorporating some into the novel), read case studies, and, like Margaret Mead coming home to roost, even did research in the field: “I travelled in school buses to listen to the talk of schoolgirls. I went to school on the pretext of placing our daughter. We have no daughter. For Lolita, I took one arm of a little girl who used to come to see Dmitri [his son], one kneecap of another,” 17 and thus a nymphet was born. Perspicacious “research” aside, it was a remarkable imaginative feat for a European émigré to have re-created America so brilliantly, and in so doing to have become an American writer. Of course, those critics and readers who marvel at Nabokov’s accomplishment may not realize that he physically knows America better than most of them. As he says in Speak, Memory , his adventures as a “lepist” carried him through two hundred motel rooms in forty-six states, that is, along all the roads traveled by Humbert and Lolita. Yet of all of Nabokov’s novels, Lolita is the most unlikely one for him to have written, given his background and the rarefied nature of his art and avocations. “It was hardly foreseeable,” writes Anthony Burgess, “that so exquisite and scholarly an artist should become America’s greatest literary glory, but now it seems wholly just and inevitable.” 18 It was even less foreseeable that Nabokov would realize better than any contemporary the hopes expressed by Constance Rourke in American Humor (1931) for a literature that would achieve an instinctive alliance between native materials and old world traditions, though the literal alliance in Lolita is perhaps more intimate than even Miss Rourke might have wished. But to have known Nabokov at all personally was first to be impressed by his intense and immense curiosity, his uninhibited and imaginative response to everything around him. To paraphrase Henry James’s famous definition of the artist, Nabokov was truly a man on whom nothing was lost—except that in Nabokov’s instance it was true , whereas James and many American literary intellectuals after him have been so selfconscious in their mandarin “seriousness” and consequently so narrow in the range of their responses that they have often overlooked the sometimes extraordinarily uncommon qualities of the commonplace.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  brutish beasts, \ And men We rarely think before we talk. It is human nature to say the first thing that comes into our head—and usually what comes first is some-have lost their reason! Bear thing about ourselves. We primarily use words to express our own feelings, with me. \ My heart is in ideas, and opinions. (Also to complain and to argue.) This is because we are the coffin there with Caesar, \And I must pause till it generally self-absorbed—the person who interests us most is our own self. come back to me. . . . \ To a certain extent this is inevitable, and through much of our lives there is PLEBEIAN: Poor soul! his nothing much wrong with it; we can function quite well this way. In se-eyes are red as f i r e with weeping. \ PLEBEIAN: duction, however, it limits our potential. There's not a nobler man You cannot seduce without an ability to get outside your own skin and in Rome than Antony. \ inside another person's, piercing their psychology. The key to seductive PLEBEIAN: Now mark him. He begins again to language is not the words you utter, or your seductive tone of voice; it is a speak. \ ANTONY: But radical shift in perspective and habit. You have to stop saying the first thing yesterday the word of that comes to your mind—you have to control the urge to prattle and vent Caesar might \ Have stood your opinions. The key is to see words as a tool not for communicating against the world. Now lies he there, \ And none so true thoughts and feelings but for confusing, delighting, and intoxicating. poor to do him reverence. \ The difference between normal language and seductive language is like O masters! If I were the difference between noise and music. Noise is a constant in modern life, disposed to stir \ Your hearts and minds to something irritating we tune out if we can. Our normal language is like mutiny and rage, \ I should noise—people may half-listen to us as we go on about ourselves, but just as do Brutus wrong, and often their thoughts are a million miles away. Every now and then their ears Cassius wrong, \ Who, you all know, are prick up when something we say touches on them, but this lasts only until Use the Demonic Power of Words to Sow Confusion • 259 we return to yet another story about ourselves. As early as childhood we honorable men. \ I will not learn to tune out this kind of noise (particularly when it comes from our do them wrong. . . . \ But here's a parchment with the parents). seal of Caesar. \ I found it