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.

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• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  For Plutarch, sexual fidelity was advised on pragmatic grounds. Plutarch reminded a bride not to lose her modesty with her clothes off; he counseled the groom to make the bedroom a “school of orderly behavior.” But nothing is more likely to render a stilted view of Roman marriage than exclusive focus on the stern counsels of the moralists. Viewed in isolation, the moralizing literature on marital sex is too easily construed as a step toward a more repressed future, as though the conjugalization of sex might already achieve by boredom and grim routine half of what the preachers and prudes would later seek to control by religious command. Nothing could be further detached from the original soil of Roman marriage. The advice complex sprang from a culture where companionate marriage and erotic investment were intertwined as never before. 86 A pessimistic view of the Roman marriage couch has become surprisingly entrenched. It is not impossible to find indications that sex was muddled, perfunctory, and embarrassed. In what age could a diligent search not return indications of the most varied sensual experiences? The truth is that many a Roman of the high empire would not recognize his experience in the pages of some modern treatments that deemphasize the charged eroticism of Mediterranean culture in the Roman world. Nothing gives the lie to the myth of the pent-up pagan couple like the artistic tastes of the imperial era. Erotic art flourished in the Roman Empire, in both commercial and domestic contexts. Indeed, the stark ubiquity of sex as a preferred aesthetic theme has even made the identification of ancient “brothels” a vexing challenge; what modern cultures might regard as obscene or pornographic was an ordinary part of bourgeois and elite domesticity. No one was shielded from the facts of life in Roman antiquity. Men, women, and children were surrounded by lush paintings of venereal acts in various stages of consummation. Truly elite villas, like the Villa Farnesina, often placed sensual art in bedrooms. At other times the placement was more public. Some of the most important specimens of Roman domestic art survive, of course, in the mural frescoes buried under the ashes of Vesuvius, long sequestered in the Pornographic Cabinet of the Naples Museum. Among the more striking examples of Roman erotic art is a beautiful painting from the house of a banker, Caecilius Iucundus, the son of a freed slave who built a successful enterprise offering financial services in the bustling port city. He commissioned the painting, in the portico of his villa’s garden, of a man and woman nude in bed, attended by a slave.

• From The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 4: Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700) (1984)

  In this respect, too, he was typical as well as influential, for during his time Latin theology was working out the reinterpreted Augustinism that was, and to a considerable degree still is, the orthodox consensus of Western Chris tianity about the catholic tradition. Gregory spoke for that consensus when he called his own writings "chaff" compared with the "wheat" in those of Augustine; his biographer has suggested that "perhaps there has never been an author who owed more to the writings of an other." The great prestige of the works of Boethius and Gregory served only to enhance still further the unique eminence of Augustinism as the official way of stating Christian doctrine in the West. It is perhaps too much to say of Gregory that "almost everything in him has its roots in Augustine, and yet almost nothing is genuinely Augustinian"; but to understand Gregory as a theologian Orthodox Catholicism in the West 35* Ildei.Vir.ill.i (PL 96:198) Kelly (1964) 80-81 Symb.Ath. 13-14 (Schaff 2:67) Aug.Trin.5.8.9; 8.1.2 (CCSL 50:215; 269) Symb.Ath.34-36 (Schaff 2:69) Symb.Ath.42 (Schaff 2:69) Kelly (1964) 119 and to relate the seventh, eighth, and ninth century to him it is necessary to see his formulations of doctrine as Augustinian traditionalism. When, a generation after his death, he was celebrated by Ildefonso as wiser than Augustine, more eloquent than Cyprian, and more pious than Antony, this too had the effect of leading medieval theology through Gregory to Augustine—or, at any rate, to the Augustinism which, thanks to the Synod of Orange and Gregory, had spared Augustine the fate of Origen. A convenient and authoritative compendium of the catholic consensus in the West seems to have come into existence at about this time: the so-called Athanasian Creed, for which the first unquestionable testimony comes from Caesarius of Aries. The theology of the Athanasian Creed has been called "codified and condensed Augustin- ianism . . . traditional, almost scholasticized Augustinian- ism." Here the trinitarian argumentation of Augustine was given creedal form. The affirmation of the Athanasian Creed that "the Father is omnipotent, the Son is omnipotent, and the Holy Spirit is omnipotent; yet there are not three omnipotents, but one omnipotent" was taken almost verbatim from Augustine's On the Trinity, where such statements had occurred more than once. In its christological paragraphs, the Athanasian Creed was directed chiefly against the Nestorian version of the the ology of the indwelling Logos and against the Nestorian criticism of the doctrine of the hypostatic union. The declaration near the end of the creed that all men would "have to give account for their own works" could perhaps be interpreted as Semi-Pelagian polemic against Augus tine, but there were many similar formulations in Augustine himself.

• From The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 4: Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700) (1984)

  Yet genius is not so rare as all that—and, more importantly, The Paradox of Grace 293 not so pertinent as all that to the history of the develop ment of Christian doctrine as that which the church be lieves, teaches, and confesses on the basis of the word of God. It was, however, characteristic of this genius that, more perhaps than any other theologian deserving of that am biguous designation, he was also a teacher of the church in his private writings and individual speculations, and this in at least two ways. The theological opinions of Augustine were stated in the matrix of the doctrines of the church. In his most speculative formulation of Chris tian thought, On the Trinity, he was determined to speak in the name of catholic orthodoxy: "This is also my faith, Aug.Trin. 1.5.7 {CCSL 50:36) inasmuch as this is the catholic faith." Even when they exceed the limits of the development that had preceded him, some of these opinions (for example, the Filioque, the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son rather than only from the Father) went on to set the lines for the doctrinal history that was to follow him. Other theories (for example, his doctrine See pp. 327-29 below of double predestination) were repudiated in later gen erations, but even the repudiation was formulated in Augustinian terms. In a manner and to a degree unique for any Christian thinker outside the New Testament, Augustine has determined the form and the content of church doctrine for most of Western Christian history. The role of Augustine in the evolution of Christian thought and teaching affected the history of every doc trine and was not confined to the issue of nature and grace, which has been so inseparably associated with his name. Augustine's City of God is the logical treatise with which to conclude any study of the history of early Chris tian apologetics, for in it he caught up most of the themes of his Greek and Latin predecessors and synthesized them into a grand historical design. Although his trinitarian speculations, especially the Filioque, represented any thing but a dogma of the universal church, they do form so integral a part of the history of the doctrine of the Trinity in Christian antiquity that any narrative of that history is obliged to deal with them repeatedly. And his reflections on the person and work of Jesus Christ sig nificantly shaped the entire Western christological method and thus contributed to the dogmatic settlement at Chalcedon. Almost anywhere one touches the history NATURE AND GRACE 294 of early Christian doctrine, Augustine is there either as a synthesizer or as a creator or as both. Almost no doctrinal emphasis was alien to him. Yet the Latin church was correct when it designated him not only a "doctor of the church," but specifically the "doctor of grace."

• From The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 4: Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700) (1984)

  But he did NATURE AND GRACE 292 Aug.Nupt.et concup.2.29.51 (CSEL 42:308) Prosp.C0//.9.3 (PL 51:237-38) Aug.Pecc.merit.3.3.6 {CSEL 60:132) Aug.Pe/rfg.4.12.32 (CSEL 60:568) invoke a doctrine of original sin to account for a practice about whose apostolic credentials and sacramental validity he had no question whatever. Augustine, who learned from Ambrose to draw the anthropological implications of the doctrine of the virgin birth, learned from Cyprian—and specifically from the epistle just quoted, which he called Cyprian's "book on the baptism of infants"—to argue that infant baptism proved the presence in infants of a sin that was inevitable, but a sin for which they were nevertheless held respon sible. "The uniqueness of the remedy" in baptism, it could be argued, proved "the very depth of evil" into which mankind had sunk through Adam's fall, and the practice of exorcism associated with the rite of baptism was liturgical evidence for the doctrine that children were in the clutches of the devil. Cyprian's teaching showed that this view of sin was not an innovation, but "the an cient, implanted opinion of the church." On the basis of Cyprian's discussion of infant baptism and of Ambrose's interpretation of the virgin birth, Augustine could claim that "what we hold is the true, the truly Christian, and the catholic faith, as it was handed down of old through the Sacred Scriptures, and so retained and preserved by our fathers and to this very time, in which these men have attempted to overthrow it." This faith he expressed in his theology of grace. The Paradox of Grace In Augustine of Hippo Western Christianity found its most influential spokesman, and the doctrine of grace its most articulate interpreter. It has been said that although he may not have been the greatest of Latin writers, he was almost certainly the greatest man who ever wrote Latin. In any history of philosophy he must figure promi nently; no history of postclassical Latin literature would be complete without a chapter on him; and there is prob ably no Christian theologian—Eastern or Western, an cient or medieval or modern, heretical or orthodox— whose historical influence can match his. Any theologian who would have written either the Confessions or the City of God on On the Trinity would have to be counted a major figure in intellectual history. Augustine wrote them all, and vastly more. He was a universal genius.

• From The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 4: Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700) (1984)

  To cite one of the earliest writers, Clement of Rome ended an extensive catena of biblical quotations about the humility and patience of Christ with the exhortation: "You see, beloved, what the example is that has been given us." Christ as example and Christ as teacher were constant and closely related doctrinal themes, but pre cisely because salvation, however it may have been de fined, was the fundamental truth of the gospel, the imita tion of Christ as example and the obedience to Christ as teacher must be seen in their close connection with it. Where that connection is not noted, the doctrines of Christ as teacher and Christ as example can be inter preted as evidence of a moralism bereft of the idea of salvation. For one critic of First Clement, "It is difficult to see any place for Christ in the Christian salvation beyond that of a preacher of the 'grace of repentance.' " "The most astonishing feature" of all the apostolic fathers, he states in summary, "was the failure to grasp the significance of the death of Christ." Even more open to this criticism were the apologists. "Only Justin pro vides anything resembling an answer. . . . Undoubtedly the principal purpose of the incarnation, when he views the matter as a philosopher, strikes him as having been didactic." Some of the other apologists did not even make much of a point of that. Bent as they were upon proving that Christianity was the fulfillment of the intuitions and expectations of all the nations, not only of the Jews, the apologists represented Christ as God's answer to the ideas and aspirations of the Greek phi losophers. In their treatises, therefore, salvation could be equated with the gift of this answer. But it is a mis take to read their treatises in isolation from what the church was believing, teaching, and confessing. As one of the most influential and most critical of the inter preters of Justin pointed out, "It is equally certain that Justin's own faith was nourished more by that which the congregation confessed and taught concerning Christ its Lord than by that which he himself interpreted in a theoretical way." He was, after all, ready to lay down his life for Christ; and his martyrdom speaks louder, even doctrinally, than does his apologetics. The writings of the apologists, even those of Justin, were addressed to readers on the outside. Is there any THE FAITH OF THE CHURCH CATHOLIC 144 Loofs (1930) 357-74 Iren.fiWr.

• From The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 4: Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700) (1984)

  What they had already grasped of the ultimate nature of reality he called a slender spark, capable of being fanned into flame, a trace of wisdom, and an impulse from God. He chided them for being satisfied with a religious outlook that pictured deity as their religions did, while their philosophical outlook had far transcended these crude pictures. Their representa tions of Zeus were "an image of an image," but the true image of God was in the Logos; therefore the authentic "image of the image" was the human mind itself, not the crude statues whose inadequacy their philosophers had taught them to recognize. He portrayed in glowing terms the intellectual and moral superiority of the Christian way to anything that even the noblest paganism had been able to discover. For "that which the chief of philosophy only guessed at, the disciples of Christ have both appre hended and proclaimed." Therefore he appealed to them, The Triumph of Theology 41 Clem. Pr ot. 11.113.1-2 (GCS 12:79) Clem.Str.4.22.144.2 (GCS' 52:312) Clem.57*\4.3.9.4 (GCS 52:252) Clem.57f.4.3.12.5 (GCS 52:253-54) Clem.P^.ii.111.2 (GCS 12:78-79) Grillmeier (1965) 160-61 blending Scripture and Homer: "Philosophy is a long- lived exhortation, wooing the eternal love of wisdom, while the commandment of the Lord is far-shining, 'en lightening the eyes.' Receive Christ, receive sight, receive your light, 'in order that you may know well both God and man/ " Clement did not feel obliged to refute the charges of immorality and irrationality still being directed against Christian life and doctrine. He wrote as an evangelist among the Greeks. The importance of philosophy for his doctrine is not to be sought primarily in his complimentary remarks about the persons or even about the ideas of the philos ophers, especially about Socrates and Plato, but rather in the influence of Middle Platonism upon his thinking about such crucial Christian doctrines as the nature of man and the person of Christ. Man he pictured as a dual being like the centaur of classical myth, made up of body and soul; it was the lifelong task of the Christian "philosopher gnostic" to cultivate the liberation of the soul from the chains of the body, in preparation for the ultimate liberation, which was death. This conception appeared even in Clement's profoundest statements of the Christian doctrine of man as creature and sinner, and was reflected in his accommodations to the Platonic doc trine of the preexistence of the soul. A similar ambiva lence was evident in his christology. He repeatedly affirmed the historicity of the incarnation and the reality of the flesh of Jesus; but because his definition of what constituted true humanity labored under the handicaps just described, his christological statements frequently came to formulations that sound docetic. It seems evident that Clement was not in fact a docetist, but he did blur the distinction between the Logos and the soul in a way that could lead in that direction.

• From Naked Ambition

  [pages flapping] [gentle music] [pleasant music] ♪ I started out to go to Cuba ♪ I landed in Miami Beach ♪ It's not so very far from Cuba ♪ ♪ And oh what a rumba they teach ♪ [upbeat music] [Larry] My first national talk show started in Miami. From the sun and fun capital of the world, this is "The Larry King Show." Miami Beach fermented everything for me. Bunny Yeager came on my show a few times, I interviewed her. She was special. [pleasant music] How many beautiful girls do you know who could have been a major model, movie star? How many do you know would be a photographer of pinup girls? - She didn't really get the credit she deserved. - She was so far ahead of her time. - The work that she did paved the way for me to be able to do what I do now. - In photographing herself, she found incredible empowerment. - She should be woven into the narrative of art history because she deserved to be. [pleasant music] [pleasant music continues] [pleasant music continues] [pleasant music continues] [pleasant music continues] [bright music] - [Sarahjane] In the 1940s, Bunny Yeager starts out as a model. - [Dian] She was photographed by a lot of photographers, she got into all the magazines. But then she got an interest in taking pictures herself. - [Christie] She thought men are getting paid for this, so why shouldn't I? - [Ed] And for whatever reason, right from the beginning, she was shooting great work. [upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] Bunny used to work every year with a guy named Roy Penny. - [Carlos] He was the one that identified her as the world's prettiest, most beautiful photographer. [upbeat music] - [Ed] And that storyline became the cover of "US Camera" in 1953. - [Sarahjane] She was also one of the world's hardest working photographers, one of the world's most successful photographers, one of the world's most daring photographers. And one of the things that I think really is classic Bunny is that she took it, and she ran with it. [upbeat music] - [Dita] I really love the pictures of Bunny Yeager as a model when she was super platinum blonde. I love those pictures. I think it's so important that she was like a bombshell pinup girl. It really made all the difference in how she photographed other people. - [Sarahjane] There's always been lots of different ways to take a photograph. There's photographs that are about showing you on your best day, and then a tiny bit better. That's what Bunny's photographs were. [pleasant music] - She could take a relatively plain looking young woman, and she'd get the greatest photo she ever took in her life. She just would transform them. - Everything in Bunny's photographs was pretty much calculated. - [Bunny] Her hair and complexion were so delicate, it was difficult to control the lighting ratio in the sun.

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  “You’ve taught me a great lesson tonight. I never cared for younger men, but I think **you’ll make an exceptional teacher.**” “Me?” He pulled out, his soft cock flopping against my lower back. I turned around. “Yes, you.” … **“You’ve taught me about what being a Daddy—something that once repulsed me—means.** Tonight showed me how much I can learn from my boy.”

• From Naked Ambition

  - [Carlos] Like she said, there was a reason to her madness. - [Bunny] I wanted to shoot her this way because in a natural setting, she would be far more outstanding. - [Carlos] She will take notes prior to assembling a story for a photograph. - She had incredibly high standards, and she worked incredibly fast. - That's one of my favorite things about working with former models that are also photographers. They know how they wanna be seen. They know that they wanna be shown in their best light and their most beautiful, their most sexy. They want their flaws disguised, they want their assets amplified. [pleasant music] - [ASL Interpreter] I remember watching my mom mimic the face poses that she wanted the models to have. It was fascinating. - If her model could arch her back in a specific way, she was gonna arch her back to 110%. - What better homework could there be than Bunny Yeager being a pinup model herself? So she could say like, "Yeah, I know that's killing your back right now, yes, I know it feels unnatural, but we are gonna get a beautiful shot." That's something that not just anybody can convey. - [Ed] She had just this incredible skill for finding models, and convincing them to work with her. 'Cause that's, you know, that's the key, especially when you're doing nude photography. [pleasant music] - If a man or woman walked around a neighborhood, knocked on a door today and said, "Hey, hi, I'm so and so, I am a photographer, would you pose nude? They'd slam the door and call the police? - Look, Terry, let me talk frankly with you. You and I could make a lot of money together. - You mean by me posing nude for you? - What's wrong with that? You've seen my pictures. - But Bunny specifically picks people because they have a sparkle in their eyes, because they have something in their personality that she thinks she can get across. - Bunny always knew how to identify a particular face, a Bunny girl like Bruce Weber used to say, "I can spot a Bunny girl in the supermarket." - She has that swagger, you know? She has that life in herself, you know? That kind of fearless, like, I don't care what you think of me, I'm just being myself. - I won the scholarship to Cornett Model Agency, and that's how I started modeling for Burdines in the tea room. I modeled for Emilio Pucci, who's very famous now, he's dead, but... I think we got something like $25, or $30 for a fashion show, and like $12 for the fitting. You had to go, you know, before and fit into your clothes. My first shoot with Bunny, I was living on Rivo Alto Island, and I think we went somewhere in my neighborhood.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  Dad let Brian and me help him work on the Prospector. We’d go out behind the house, and I’d hold the nails while Dad hit them. Sometimes he let me start the nails, and then he’d drive them in with one hard blow from the hammer. The air would be filled with sawdust and the smell of freshly cut wood, and the sound of hammering and whistling, because Dad always whistled while he worked. In my mind, Dad was perfect, although he did have what Mom called a little bit of a drinking situation. There was what Mom called Dad’s “beer phase.” We could all handle that. Dad drove fast and sang really loud, and locks of his hair fell into his face and life was a little bit scary but still a lot of fun. But when Dad pulled out a bottle of what Mom called “the hard stuff,” she got kind of frantic, because after working on the bottle for a while, Dad turned into an angry-eyed stranger who threw around furniture and threatened to beat up Mom or anyone else who got in his way. When he’d had his fill of cussing and hollering and smashing things up, he’d collapse. But Dad drank hard liquor only when we had money, which wasn’t often, so life was mostly good in those days. Every night when Lori, Brian, and I were about to go to sleep, Dad told us bedtime stories. They were always about him. We’d be tucked in our beds or lying under blankets in the desert, the world dark except for the orange glow from his cigarette. When he took a long draw, it lit up just enough for us to see his face. “Tell us a story about yourself, Dad!” we’d beg him. “Awww. You don’t want to hear another story about me,” he’d say. “Yes, we do! We do!” we’d insist. “Well, okay,” he’d say. He’d pause and chuckle at some memory. “There’s many a damned foolhardy thing that your old man has done, but this one was harebrained even for a crazy sonofabitch like Rex Walls.” And then he’d tell us about how, when he was in the air force and his plane’s engine conked out, he made an emergency landing in a cattle pasture and saved himself and his crew. Or about the time he wrestled a pack of wild dogs that had surrounded a lame mustang. Then there was the time he fixed a broken sluice gate on the Hoover Dam and saved the lives of thousands of people who would have drowned if the dam had burst. There was also the time he went AWOL in the air force to get some beer, and while he was at the bar, he caught a lunatic who was planning to blow up the air base, which went to show that occasionally, it paid to break the rules. Dad was a dramatic storyteller. He always started out slow, with lots of pauses.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  Thanks to academic feminists, such as I soon became, and our promotion of previously ignored women authors, Anaïs gained a genuine self-confidence she had lacked. She was finally, and within her lifetime, recognized for what she had intuitively known from childhood: that she was the foremost diarist of the twentieth century. Her belated success proved to her that she had been right in sticking to the callings of her heart and soul, reaffirming her faith in women’s intuition and subjectivity; while I, at the same time, was being trained in grad school to accept only supportable, documented objectivity. Despite the many accusations from critics that a woman who published her diary had to be a narcissist, Anaïs, unlike most people who achieve fame, proved a better person for it. She became more centered, generous, and kind—and happier because she didn’t have to lie to her husbands as much. She now had money from her royalties to pay for her coast-to-coast flights, as well as a lecture agent who booked appearances for her alternately on either coast. What a relief for her to have this help with the trapeze! It was glorious to see Anaïs in these days of her fulfillment. Hugo made few demands on her because he was now completely dependent on her financially, while Rupert leapt to play the handsome young consort to her elegant priestess. She kept her friends “in the know” close, holding Chablis-and-cheese parties for us at the Silver Lake house. Anaïs would still panic when one or the other husband overheard something incriminating, and although I remained as tightlipped as a CIA agent, every time I traveled east to visit my godmother, Anaïs would phone to ban me from speaking about her to Lenore or seeing Hugo. After my failure to prevent Rupert’s middle-of-the-night phone call to Hugo years before, she never again entrusted me to guard her trapeze, which was fine with me as long as I remained her confidante. The responsibility of collecting Hugo’s mail and intercepting his calls fell to a ditzy pair of middle-aged women—“the twins”—friends of Renate who dressed alike and accepted little cash gifts for their services. I now had a different function in Anaïs’s life. Since I was getting my PhD in English literature at UCLA, my new assignment was to legitimize her published Diaries and novels within the university, for while the coeds of America celebrated her, the academic establishment still held her in contempt. Anaïs knew that her lasting literary reputation depended upon young feminist scholars, such as myself, teaching and writing about her work. I reveled in my reflected glory as Anaïs’s protégée and would have liked to tell everyone. However, Renate advised me to downplay the personal relationship, so I’d receive fewer difficult-to-answer questions and would be taken more seriously as an Anaïs Nin scholar.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  If she wanted to know more she’d have to go to the public library and reserve a copy of the book. Maybe she would. The train swerved, causing Christina to drop a stitch. She rested her knitting on her lap and looked over at Mrs. Osner, who sat with Fern. She didn’t get why they let Fern drag that cowboy bunny everywhere, and even worse, let her tell people he had no penis. In Christina’s family Fern would get her mouth washed out with soap just for saying that word out loud. Mrs. Osner was wearing her mink coat and alligator pumps. She carried a matching alligator pocketbook. A small mink hat was perched on top of her short blond hair. Her nails were perfectly manicured. She used just a touch of makeup to accent her eyes and a bit of rouge to give her a healthy glow. Christina couldn’t help imagining Mrs. Osner’s underwear. She’d grown up playing on the floor of her mother’s shop, Nia’s Lingerie, with the packing boxes from the girdles and brassieres as her toys. She’d watched as her mother had gently guided excess flesh into boned and padded girdles, lifted sagging breasts into brassiere cups, telling each customer to take a big breath and hold it as she hooked the bottoms of the brassieres into the tops of the girdles. But Mrs. Osner was trim and probably wore just a panty girdle, bra and slip. No bones or hooks for her. She shifted in her seat and picked up her knitting. She felt bloated. She’d doubled her pads, sprinkled them with baby powder, and neatly pinned them to her sanitary belt. Her mother had forbidden her to use Tampax until after she was safely married. “It could spoil you,” Mama said. Christina got the message. It’s good her mother didn’t know how far she’d already gone with Jack. —EVERY YEAR their first stop in the city was lining up to see the Christmas windows at Lord & Taylor, followed by the viewing of the huge, beautiful tree at Rockefeller Center and the skaters in the rink below. Christina sometimes skated on the frozen pond in Warinanco Park, but she had never worn a velvet skating skirt or learned to twirl with her head tilted back. Then it was time for lunch at Lindy’s. Christina had learned to order a hot turkey platter, something she could eat with a knife and fork, instead of one of their signature sandwiches piled high with corned beef and pastrami. She was glad she’d taken Daisy’s advice and worn the sweater set Mrs. Osner had given her on her last birthday. Mrs. Osner was pleased to see it. “That style suits you, Christina. And I like the collar.” “My grandmother embroidered it for me.” All the girls at school were envious of Christina’s collar collection. Yaya embroidered them with tiny flowers to match her sweaters. “An elegant touch,” Mrs. Osner said. She wasn’t sure Mrs.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  Then she ardently addressed the entire audience, making each person there feel as if she or he had the most intimate connection with her of all. She presented the persona they had come to see: the sensual, independent, liberated woman she’d invented in editing her Diary. She embodied the myth that her readers had embraced as a goddess of love, intimacy, kindness, generosity, romantic idealism, surrealist imagination, and sexual abandon. I saw her that night in all her glory as the consummate woman artist: a practitioner of performance art before it had a name, a visionary of life itself as imaginative theater. I had seen packed auditoriums in a frenzy of adoration, and with this smaller group she likewise played her artist/goddess role to the hilt, quoting herself in her French lullaby rhythm, dropping the names of political friends such as Eugene McCarthy and literary associates such as Rebecca West and Lawrence Durrell, encouraging the women before her to value their individuality, throw off their inheritance of guilt, and live their dreams as she had! My students eagerly asked questions about her diary writing, which she answered with practiced phrases: “I write to taste life twice,” and “It is a thousand years of womanhood I am recording, a thousand women.” Some of the young women from my class made passionate personal testimonials to the liberating impact of having read her Diary. One twenty-year-old proclaimed, “You are the mother of us all!” Everyone present looked dazzled, as if they had been touched in a tent revival and received a genuine miracle. Everyone except Clara, that is. She’d been leaning against the wall distancing herself from my students. Now Clara came forward, flipping a hand upward for Anaïs to spot her. Seeing how beautiful Clara was with her corona of fiery curls, Anaïs offered her most appreciative smile, but Clara did not return it. She said, “At the end of the second volume of your Diary, you tell us you left Paris because your husband was recalled to the US. But until then there was no mention of you having had a husband. Why is that?” “My publisher—” Anaïs began, but Clara interrupted her. “Nowhere do you tell us how you got money for your free life. Yet economic self-sufficiency is the first requirement for woman’s freedom, wouldn’t you agree?” Anaïs straightened to her full 5’5” height. Her singsong French accent became more pronounced when she answered, “Economic self-sufficiency is essential for woman, but it is not the only ingredient necessary for her freedom. Americans, in particular, are oppressed by the punishing assumptions of Puritanism.” She looked into receptive faces as she spoke, settling on Don’s. “America’s sexual Puritanism must also be examined and dispensed with.” There was a murmur of assent in the room.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  And after church I was always glad I hadn’t done it, because I knew that Mr. Bolger would see through me and be disgusted. Chuck never turned on me. In his drunkest, darkest rages he hurt only himself. That was my good luck. Chuck was bullishly built, thickset and chesty. I wouldn’t have stood a chance against him. Other boys left him in peace and he left them in peace, which he was inclined to do anyway. Except with himself he was gentle—not as his father was, with that least suggestion of effort dignified men give to their gentleness, but as his mother was. He looked like her, too. Milky skin with a wintry spot of red on each cheek. Yellow hair that turned white in sunshine. Wide forehead. He also had his mother’s pale blue eyes and her way of narrowing them when she listened, looking down at the floor and nodding in agreement with whatever you said. Everyone liked Chuck. Sober, he was friendly and calm and openhanded. When I admired a sweater of his he gave it to me, and later he gave me a Buddy Holly album we used to sing along with. Chuck liked to sing when he wasn’t in church. It was hard to believe, seeing him in the light of day, that he had spent the previous night throwing himself against a tree. That was why the Bolgers had so much trouble coming to terms with his wildness. They saw nothing of it. He lingered over meals in the main house, talked with his father about the store, helped his mother with the dishes. His little sisters fawned on him like spaniels. Chuck seemed for all the world a boy at home with himself, and at these times he was. It wasn’t an act. So when the other Chuck, the bad Chuck, did something, it always caught the Bolgers on their blind side and knocked them flat. ONE NIGHT PSYCHO and Huff came over to play cards. They were as broke as I was, so I joined the game. We drank and played for matchsticks until we got bored. Then we decided that it would be a great idea to drive over to Bellingham and back. Chuck didn’t have enough gas for the trip but said he knew where we could get some. He collected a couple of five-gallon cans and a length of hose, and the four of us set off across the fields. It had rained heavily that day. A fine spray still fell through the mist around us. The ground, just ploughed for sowing, was boggy. It pulled at our shoes, then let them go with a rich mucky gasp. Psycho was wearing loafers, and he kept coming out of them. Finally he gave up and turned back. The rest of us pushed on. Every few steps we could hear Psycho shout with rage behind us. We walked a good half mile before we got to the Welch farm.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  It is my faith, based on experience, that if one’s heart is pure, calamity brings in its train men and measures to fight it. I had at that time four Indians in my office Sjts. Kalyandas, Maneklal, Gunvantrai Desai and another whose name I cannot recollect. Kalyandas had been entrusted to me by his father. In South Africa I have rarely come across anyone more obliging and willing to render implicit obedience than Kalyandas. Fortunately he was unmarried then, and I did not hesitate to impose on him duties involving risks, however great Maneklal I had secured in Johannesburg. He too, so far as I can remember, was unmarried. So I decided to sacrifice all four call them clerks, co-workers or sons. There was no need at all to consult Kalyandas. The others expressed their readiness as soon as they were asked. ‘Where you are, we will also be’, was their short and sweet reply. Mr. Ritch had a large family. He was ready to take the plunge, but I prevented him. I had not the heart to expose him to the risk. So he attended to the work outside the danger zone. It was a terrible night – that night of vigil and nursing. I had nursed a number of patients before, but never any attacked by the black plague. Dr. Godfrey’s pluck proved infectious. There was not much nursing required. To give them their doses of medicine, to attend to their wants, to keep them and their beds clean and tidy, and to cheer them up was all that we had to do. The indefatigable zeal and fearlessness with which the youths worked rejoiced me beyond measure. One could understand the bravery of Dr. Godfrey and of an experienced man like Sjt. Madanjit. But the spirit of these callow youths! So far as I can recollect, we pulled all the patients through that night. But the whole incident, apart from its pathos, is of such absorbing interest and, for me, of such religious value, that I must devote to it at least two more chapters. 95THE BLACK PLAGUE - IIThe Town Clerk expressed his gratitude to me for having taken charge of the vacant house and the patients. He frankly confessed that the Town Council had no immediate means to cope with such an emergency, but promised that they would render all the help in their power. Once awakened to a sense of their duty, the Municipality made no delay in taking prompt measures. The next day they placed a vacant godown at my disposal, and suggested that the patients be removed there, but the Municipality did not undertake to clean the premises. The building was unkempt and unclean. We cleaned it up ourselves, raised a few beds and other necessaries through the offices of charitable Indians, and improvised a temporary hospital. The Municipality lent the services of a nurse, who came with brandy and other hospital equipment. Dr. Godfrey still remained in charge.

• From When Breath Becomes Air (2016)

  As for me, I would choose neurosurgery as my specialty. The choice, which I had been contemplating for some time, was cemented one night in a room just off the OR, when I listened in quiet awe as a pediatric neurosurgeon sat down with the parents of a child with a large brain tumor who had come in that night complaining of headaches. He not only delivered the clinical facts but addressed the human facts as well, acknowledging the tragedy of the situation and providing guidance. As it happened, the child’s mother was a radiologist. The tumor looked malignant—the mother had already studied the scans, and now she sat in a plastic chair, under fluorescent light, devastated. “Now, Claire,” the surgeon began, softly. “Is it as bad as it looks?” the mother interrupted. “Do you think it’s cancer?” “I don’t know. What I do know—and I know you know these things, too—is that your life is about to—it already has changed. This is going to be a long haul, you understand? You have got to be there for each other, but you also have to get your rest when you need it. This kind of illness can either bring you together, or it can tear you apart. Now more than ever, you have to be there for each other. I don’t want either of you staying up all night at the bedside or never leaving the hospital. Okay?” He went on to describe the planned operation, the likely outcomes and possibilities, what decisions needed to be made now, what decisions they should start thinking about but didn’t need to decide on immediately, and what sorts of decisions they should not worry about at all yet. By the end of the conversation, the family was not at ease, but they seemed able to face the future. I had watched the parents’ faces—at first wan, dull, almost otherworldly—sharpen and focus. And as I sat there, I realized that the questions intersecting life, death, and meaning, questions that all people face at some point, usually arise in a medical context. In the actual situations where one encounters these questions, it becomes a necessarily philosophical and biological exercise. Humans are organisms, subject to physical laws, including, alas, the one that says entropy always increases. Diseases are molecules misbehaving; the basic requirement of life is metabolism, and death its cessation.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  When demonstrators spoke of their union, they used the term “racially integrated couple.” During Betty’s ongoing memorial, I also learned how Synanon had adopted the ritual of cutting off all its members’ hair. It had started with a bakery and a steel beam built too low. When Chuck inspected the new building, he banged his head on the metal when he walked under the beam. Outraged, he demanded to know which idiot had made such a stupid mistake, and he immediately called for the man who’d created such a poor design to step forward, claim responsibility and have his head shaved. Men who fell into disfavor with the founder or a VIP shaved their heads as punishment. Woman who offended wore a stocking cap. A few men took responsibility for the shoddy design and shaved down; however, others who had been on the construction crew also believed the low beam was their fault. Before long the whole crew had shaved heads. Other men in the community who had nothing to do with the construction decided they, too, ought to stand by their brothers. Within a matter of days, all the men had shaved their heads. Until then, the massive head-shaving extravaganza had been a cleansing camaraderie for the men, yet when the women discussed doing the same, many of the men were appalled and spoke out against it. But once the first woman had started it, the rest followed. The children were next; however, they weren’t such willing participants. Adults had to run after them and bring them, kicking and screaming, to the grooming stations. With my peers, I watched one of the many home movies that depicted the first wave of head shavings amid a party-like atmosphere. One man shaved only half his head and beard, turning from side to side and laughing before taking all the hair off. Newly bald men and women danced to live music, which provided a jubilant backdrop to the mayhem of head shavings. Further into the film, three lean, slick, shiny-headed women, one of them Betty, call a meeting. They giggle garishly, banging their hands on a table to get the attention of their equally bald audience. We went over and over the same information: Betty’s courageous, fierce personality and the love she and Chuck had for each other. Tears. Poems. Movies again and again. This went on for weeks. Although I never met Betty, I began to envision her as a kind of angelic figure. In Theresa’s letters, she expressed a high regard for Betty, who had inspired my mother through regular written correspondence to keep faith in bringing me to Synanon. “She always responded when I wrote to her,” Theresa told me. The passion and fervor of Theresa’s feelings toward Betty seemed to spill from the pages of her letters. Yes, I decided, Betty had been a special woman. My young mind marinated in images and talks of her saintliness; I wished I could have met her.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  An invigoratingly candid memoir from a giant of women’s rights.” —Kirkus Reviews “ ‘If you want people to listen to you,’ iconic women’s rights activist Steinem underscores in this powerfully personal yet universally appealing memoir, ‘you have to listen to them.’ And that’s exactly what she’s done for the past four decades.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “My Life on the Road is a personal, beautiful look at the deceptively radical act of travel and how it formed one of our most important voices for human rights. By delving deeper into her own thrilling story, Steinem shows us that we all have a fighter inside us—we need only pack our bags and follow her.” —Lena Dunham “Gloria Steinem’s new book is a lightning rod to the head and heart: stimulating, no, shocking us to get up out of our easy chairs and do something meaningful with our lives—to hit the road. Women will read My Life on the Road, but men must. ” —James Patterson “It’s amazing to have a lifelong heroine who is also one of my favorite writers. Gloria Steinem is a deeply revolutionary woman. She steered us through the contentious years of the women’s movement without losing her humanity or her wonderful sense of humor. She changed America in a fundamental way without being damaged by it, or losing her joy. My Life on the Road is filled with beautifully told stories of the people she has spoken with and listened to, been changed by, helped organize, got radicalized by, could get lost in, could get found in. It is soul material, human and political, funny and touching, deeply spiritual. I began it again the day after I finished.” —Anne Lamott “Countless times, I had to put Gloria Steinem’s new book down and allow an explosive truth she had just revealed to roll through me. And they all arrived—page after page—in the most personal, unexpected ways. I won’t be the same person after having read My Life on the Road. ” —Jane Fonda “Rarely do women have the opportunity to travel as Steinem has done—living a life full of radical adventure. Everywhere she goes, she carries with her the vitality of democracy, of freedom for women and men, and her profound love of justice. Now she offers us the good fortune of journeying with her. My Life on the Road is an inspiring work, a call for action. Steinem shares her life as a global freedom fighter, inviting readers to continue the journey—and the struggle.” —bell hooks “Gloria Steinem’s lightness of being combined with complete seriousness, her love for words and her call for actions, reminds us to celebrate her as one of the most important women of our time.” —Diane von Furstenberg “Nomad, Mystic, Sage, and Friend—Gloria Steinem is all to all, and My Life on the Road reveals why. Wisdom falls from every page as she reveals the extraordinary in ordinary life.

• From What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire (2013)

  "'Look at all the barriers! Look at all the obstacles! But that isn't what amazes me.' She was a fastidious scientist who chose to surround herself with surfaces of barely adorned cinder block, to spend her days in an almost monk-like cell, to avoid pronouncements, to let her data speak for itself. Now, though, she ignored the scientific restraints. 'Those barriers are a testament to the power of the drive itself. It's a pretty incredible testament. Because the drive must be so strong to override all of that.'"

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  "I eat here every day," says Linh with pride. "Sometimes twice a day." An old man grills morsels of pork and pork meatballs over a small, homemade charcoal grill (the cha) on the sidewalk, turning the meat with bamboo splints, small plumes of smoke issuing from the glowing coals as juice from the meat strikes them. Just inside an open-to-the-street storefront, his wife ladles out bowls of a room-temperature mixture of vinegar, nuoc mam, green papaya juice, sugar, pepper, garlic, and chili, with sliced cucumber at the bottom. The still-sizzling meat hits the table with a bowl of the "soup," accompanied by a plate of lettuces, sweet basil, mint, cilantro, and raw vegetables; side plates of sliced red chilies, salt, pepper, and lime; and a big plate of cold rice noodles. First you drop some pork into the soup, the meat issuing a thin slick of juice into the liquid; then, grabbing a bit of green and herb and a healthy ball of cold noodles, you dunk and slurp. The place is dark and grim, the floor streaked with charcoal and littered with the detritus of Vietnamese post-lunch-rush papers, cigarette butts, empty beer bottles. (Vietnamese litter with abandon, but then clean up scrupulously afterward.) The cooking equipment is rudimentary, the chopsticks look decades old, but the bun cha is an amazement: sweet, sour, meaty, crunchy, forceful yet clean-tasting and fresh, with just the right amount of caramelization and flavor from the low-temperature grilling. The cold rice noodles separate perfectly when dipped in the liquid, as they should in any good bun cha, I'm told. The proprietor puts down two more plates, fried spring rolls and puffy fried shrimp cakes, also good to dip when the pork runs out. I begin to understand Linh's passion for the place and why, on his lunch hour, he travels across town to eat here.