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 Detransition, Baby (2021)

  But Katrina collects herself almost immediately. It’s impressive, actually. In the past Reese has brought over guests, perhaps those who have seen too much drag, who make the mistake of thinking that shade is an invitation to match Iris in her performance. Which is exactly the point at which Iris grows serious, while the interloper, still a step behind, bumbles alone through some embarrassing attempt at sassy. “Did Reese tell you why I’m here?” Katrina asks. “No...” Iris puts her fist under her chin in a pantomime of attentive listening. “But do tell.” “You don’t have to tell her anything,” Reese says to Katrina. “How dare you,” Iris says, but she doesn’t break her pose. “Oh my god, look at her,” Thalia says of Iris. “It’s like when a dog smells your food and freezes in a begging position.” “How dare you too,” Iris repeats, still refusing any lapse in the discipline of her pose. “lm going to take her into my room away from your prying,” Reese announces. “Actually,” Katrina says, “maybe a variety of opinions is the best. I mean, I came for trans etiquette advice, and here we are.” She makes a gesture around the kitchen. Iris sticks out her tongue at Reese in victory. “And I never knew Amy at all,” Katrina continues. “So I don’t know anything about Amy when he was trans, or even before he was trans when he was Ames the first time—” “James,” says Iris. “What?” “Her name the first time was James. Then Amy. Now Ames. She didn’t change back to her original name. Like, it’s as though she couldn’t fully bear to go back to being James after detransition, so she dropped the J and now she’s Ames.” Katrina glances at Reese to see if this is indeed true, and Reese confirms it with a little nod. “The way she picked her names is so psychologically indiscreet,” Iris complains, emphasizing the word “indiscreet” to indicate the height of gauche. “She just parades all her issues naked in the front window.” “See, this is good stuff!” Katrina says. “This is the kind of info that I can’t pull from Ames himself.” “Wait a minute”—Reese points a straw that Iris has left on the kitchen table at Katrina— “aren’t you the one who’s supposed to be giving us the lowdown on Ames tonight?”

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  And oh how they loved him for it.Just as Jesus promised, Brother Terrell never had to beg or plead for money again. Crowds went up and down, and sometimes we had to cut corners, but the bills were paid on time and the old desperation about money was gone. So were the ministers who sat on the platform that night. Others took their places, but over time they, too, left as Brother Terrell’s “revelations” led him further away from traditional church doctrine. After Brother Terrell’s one-on-one with Jesus, my mother immersed herself in the Bible, looking for scriptural backing for what she and Brother Terrell called the Revelation of Jesus Christ. What she found took on heightened significance in light of the Visitation.Scripture referred to Jesus as the firstborn of many brethren; that meant God was raising up a people who would be just like Jesus. Brother Terrell taught it was Jesus’s choices rather than his birthright that made him a son of God. The churches responded with charges of blasphemy and preachers issued not-so-veiled warnings about him in front of their congregants. And then Brother Terrell piled on the soggy straw that broke the camel’s back: He began to baptize in the name of Jesus, instead of the Trinity. Mainline Protestant preachers, always tepid supporters at best, stayed away. The Assemblies of God hierarchy officially withdrew its support, and he was banned from preaching in their pulpits. People said publicly the split was based on doctrine. Privately they said it was about Brother Terrell’s dalliances with women. All of that was true, but the real deal-breaker was money. When Brother Terrell came to town, church coffers dwindled. He responded to their disapproval by forming the New Testament Holiness Church, a taxfree nonprofit under which followers began to organize congregations based on his teachings. The men and sometimes women who headed those churches were subject only to Brother Terrell. Chapter ElevenBELIEVERS SAW THE COURT CASE OF DAVID TERRELL VS. RICHLAND COUNTY as a mythic battle. It was Moses vs. Pharaoh, David vs. Goliath, and Jesus vs. the Antichrist all rolled into one. Newspapers cast the struggle in less grandiose terms: EVANGELIST TOLD TO CURB NOISE; HEARING SLATED. The story was written up by the Associated Press in three-tofive-inch installments and carried on the inside pages of newspapers throughout the South and as far west as California. The two realities never came together, and the faithful still talk about the revival in Columbia, South Carolina, as, “That time Brother Terrell fought the devil and made front-page headlines across the world.”It began on opening night with Brother Terrell exhorting a smaller-than-average crowd to make up in volume what it lacked in size.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  7 A Machine for Jumping to Conclusions The great comedian Danny Kaye had a line that has stayed with me since my adolescence. Speaking of a woman he dislikes, he says, “Her favorite position is beside herself, and her favorite sport is jumping to conclusions.” The line came up, I remember, in the initial conversation with Amos Tversky about the rationality of statistical intuitions, and now I believe it offers an apt description of how System 1 functions. Jumping to conclusions is efficient if the conclusions are likely to be correct and the costs of an occasional mistake acceptable, and if the jump saves much time and effort. Jumping to conclusions is risky when the situation is unfamiliar, the stakes are high, and there is no time to collect more information. These are the circumstances in which intuitive errors are probable, which may be prevented by a deliberate intervention of System 2. Neglect of Ambiguity and Suppression of Doubt Figure 6 What do the three exhibits in figure 6 have in common? The answer is that all are ambiguous. You almost certainly read the display on the left as A B C and the one on the right as 12 13 14, but the middle items in both displays are identical. You could just as well have read them as A 13 C or 12 B 14, but you did not. Why not? The same shape is read as a letter in a context of letters and as a number in a context of numbers. The entire context helps determine the interpretation of each element. The shape is ambiguous, but you jump to a conclusion about its identity and do not become aware of the ambiguity that was resolved.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  invited him to join in an effort to map the boundary that separates the marvels of intuition from its flaws. He was intrigued by the idea and we went ahead with the project—with no certainty that it would succeed. We set out to answer a specific question: When can you trust an experienced professional who claims to have an intuition? It was obvious that Klein would be more disposed to be trusting, and I would be more skeptical. But could we agree on principles for answering the general question? Over seven or eight years we had many discussions, resolved many disagreements, almost blew up more than once, wrote many drafts, became friends, and eventually published a joint article with a title that tells the story: “Conditions for Intuitive Expertise: A Failure to Disagree.” Indeed, we did not encounter real issues on which we disagreed—but we did not really agree. Marvels and Flaws Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller Blink appeared while Klein and I were working on the project, and it was reassuring to find ourselves in agreement about it. Gladwell’s book opens with the memorable story of art experts faced with an object that is described as a magnificent example of a kouros, a sculpture of a striding boy. Several of the experts had strong visceral reactions: they felt in their gut that the statue was a fake but were not able to articulate what it was about it that made them uneasy. Everyone who read the book—millions did— remembers that story as a triumph of intuition. The experts agreed that they knew the sculpture was a fake without knowing how they knew—the very definition of intuition. The story appears to imply that a systematic search for the cue that guided the experts would have failed, but Klein and I both rejected that conclusion. From our point of view, such an inquiry was needed, and if it had been conducted properly (which Klein knows how to do), it would probably have succeeded. Although many readers of the kouros example were surely drawn to an almost magical view of expert intuition, Gladwell himself does not hold that position. In a later chapter he describes a massive failure of intuition: Americans elected President Harding, whose only qualification for the position was that he perfectly looked the part. Square jawed and tall, he was the perfect image of a strong and decisive leader. People voted for someone who looked strong and decisive without any other reason to believe that he was. An intuitive prediction of how Harding would perform as president arose from substituting one question for another. A reader of this book should expect such an intuition to be held with confidence.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  talked, they moved always rado, and was warned that if the pretty-boy poet dared to show up in the nearer and nearer, without mining town of Leadville, he would be hung from the highest tree. It was realizing that they had an invitation Wilde could not refuse. Arriving in Leadville, he ignored the moved. Then, at last, the impatient ones prevailed, hecklers and nasty looks; he toured the mines, drank and played cards, then and, with one irresistible lectured on Botticelli and Cellini in the saloons. Like everyone else, the impulse, the whole body miners fell under his spell, even naming a mine after him. One cowboy was cried out, "There is no use waiting. We will go today. heard to say, "That fellow is some art guy, but he can drink any of us under We will go now. We will the table and afterwards carry us home two at a time." go at once." And then in one unanimous mass they swept along, and in another moment were Interpretation. In a fable he improvised at dinner once, Oscar Wilde talked clinging fast to the magnet about some steel filings that had a sudden desire to visit a nearby magnet. on every side. Then the As they talked to each other about this, they found themselves moving magnet smiled— for the steel filings had no doubt closer to the magnet without realizing how or why. Finally they were swept at all but that they were in one mass to the magnet's side. "Then the magnet smiled—for the steel paying that visit of their filings had no doubt at all but that they were paying that visit of their own free will. own free will." Such was the effect that Wilde himself had on everyone — O S C A R W I L D E , AS QUOTED BY R I C H A R D LE GALLIENNE IN around him. HESKETH PEARSON, OSCAR Wilde's attractiveness was more than just a by-product of his character, WILDE: HIS LIFE AND WIT it was quite calculated. An adorer of paradox, he consciously played up his own weirdness and ambiguity, the contrast between his mannered appear-Now that the bohort ance and his witty, effortless performance. Naturally warm and sponta- [ impromptu joust] was over and the knights were neous, he constructed an image that ran counter to his nature. People were dispersing and each making repelled, confused, intrigued, and finally drawn to this man who seemed his way to where his impossible to figure out. thoughts inclined him, it chanced that Rivalin was Paradox is seductive because it plays with meaning. We are secretly op-heading for where lovely pressed by the rationality in our lives, where everything is meant to mean Blancheflor was sitting. something; seduction, by contrast, thrives on ambiguity, on mixed signals, Seeing this, he galloped up on anything that eludes interpretation. Most people are painfully obvious. to her and looking her in

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  Brother Terrell wrote songs and picked out tunes on a neighbor’s guitar early on. For a brief time during adolescence he harbored hopes of making it big on the Grand Ole Opry, but the visions kept coming and he realized that God would not let him go.Mama was a musical prodigy, further proof of God’s favor. Her story is that while picking at the notes on the piano in her daddy’s church one day, she was suddenly able to play a hymn straight through. From that moment she could play any song she wanted. When she was fifteen, she saw herself in a night vision playing a big pearly accordion. A night vision is a foretelling of the future, only the seer is asleep. People who have night visions often go on to full-fledged wide-awake visions. When Mama opened her eyes, she could still feel the heft of the instrument against her. She was meant to have an accordion. Her daddy said that might be true, but he didn’t have the money to buy one. Another teenage girl might have pleaded or thrown a fit. My mother fasted and prayed. In the early hours of what was to be her fourth day without food, a knock on the door awakened her daddy. He turned on the light and opened the door. There on his front porch stood a man he recognized but didn’t know well.“Preacher, I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve got to give you this.”He thrust a wad of bills at my grandfather and turned to go.“Wait. What is this? What’s it for?” My grandfather tugged at the man’s sleeve.The man shook him off. “Look, I haven’t been able to sleep for days. Something keeps telling me to bring you this money. I don’t know what it’s for. But you have to take it so I can get some sleep. ”Later that morning my grandfather went to town and ordered an accordion from Sears, Roebuck. My mother played it in church the day it arrived. She says she never hit a wrong note.By the time Brother Terrell came along, Mama needed a second chance to fulfill her destiny. She had blown the first one. Her mother had told her, “Honey, any woman can get married and have children. God has something better in mind for you.” Mama’s plan was to go to Bible school and become a missionary, but she ran away from home, or away from her controlling daddy, instead. My grandfather had the idea that his high-cheeked, leggy daughter was something of a wild girl and he was determined to rein her in. According to Mama, the last straw came when he dragged her out of a boy’s car at a local snack shack in “broad daylight” and whipped her with his belt. She was eighteen years old.She hopped a Greyhound bus to Los Angeles.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  “Oh, okay.” The tension in Thalia’s posture releases. “What an edgelord. Her and her transgender blues.” Thalia spits the word “transgender” derisively, with a hard g. “Who?” Katrina asks. “A trans punk singer.” Katrina hesitates, then decides to address the moment. “I’m sorry I pointed it out. I didn’t know it was a sore subject.” “It’s okay,” Reese says. “Thalia and I are both a bit raw today. Anyway, it’s not your fault. Signs are meant to be read. So people should be thoughtful of what they put on them.” Katrina gives a slight nod, relieved that the tension has trailed away. “Speaking as someone in marketing, it’s not what I’d have chosen. You have to imagine a high percentage of her audience is trans. Can you imagine a trans woman buying that book? I mean, what, is she going to read it on the subway? It’d be like holding up a label on herself. Or go into a bookstore and be like: ‘Hi, I’m looking for Tranny.” This observation endears Katrina to Reese with unexpected force. That Katrina has imagined a trans woman buying the memoir and reading it, and how that might feel, required a descent into empathy three or four flights deeper than even Reese herself had taken. In the apartment, Iris sits on a stool at the kitchen counter in panties and a tank top, sipping on white wine chilled with ice cubes. In a fig leaf of decency, she has at least tucked before Katrina’s arrival. She’s interrogating Thalia about the funeral, collecting information on who was there and what was said. She insouciantly dismisses those poor unfortunates on her years-long shit list with insults that make florid use of her abandoned English degree—insults being the only circumstance in which she puts it to use: Those Truvada libertines! Ugh, I cant stand a hooker with a financial advisor! Listening to that dickbag’s opinions is a form of self-harm! Her? She’s like Starbucks—any idiot can enjoy her and, two hours later, forget he did. Insults are Iris’s version of mourning. She and Thalia are putting on a show for Katrina’s benefit, while pretending indifference to her presence. Where do they get the energy? At certain moments, when Thalia has wrested back the stage for one of her own monologues, Reese catches Iris regarding Katrina with undisguised curiosity. Finally, Iris can no longer contain herself, and comments directly though obliquely to Katrina, “God, I wish I had subordinates to have affairs with me.” Katrina catches the inference and makes a face. Iris says, “Oh please. I’m Reese’s roommate and plus I have known Amy for as long as Reese has! Who else is she going to gossip with?” Why, Reese asks herself, has she not taken any one of the thousands of opportunities presented to her to smother Iris in her sleep?

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  D A N K W A R T A . R U S T O W , ED. , Lenin folklore; thousands of newborn girls were christened "Ninel," Lenin PHILOSOPHERS AND KINGS: spelled backwards. This cult of Lenin assumed religious proportions. STUDIES IN LEADERSHIP There all kinds of misconceptions about charisma, which, paradoxically, only add to its mystique. Charisma has little to do with an exciting physical "I had hoped to see the appearance or a colorful personality, qualities that elicit short—term interest. mountain eagle of our party, the great man, great Particularly in times of trouble, people are not looking for entertainment— physically as well as they want security, a better quality of life, social cohesion. Believe it or not, politically. I had fancied a plain-looking man or woman with a clear vision, a quality of single-Lenin as a giant, stately and imposing. Mow great mindedness, and practical skills can be devastatingly charismatic, provided it was my disappointment to is matched with some success. Never underestimate the power of success in see a most ordinary-looking enhancing one's aura. But in a world teeming with compromisers and man, below average height, fudgers whose indecisiveness only creates more disorder, one clear-minded in no way, literally in no way distinguishable from soul will be a magnet of attention—will have charisma. ordinary mortals. " One on one, or in a Zurich cafe before the revolution, Lenin had little — J O S E P H STALIN, ON MEETING or no charisma. (His confidence was attractive, but many found his strident LENIN FOR THE FIRST TIME IN manner irritating.) He won charisma when he was seen as the man who 1 9 0 5 , QUOTED IN RONALD W. CLARK, LENIN:THE MAN could save the country. Charisma is not a mysterious quality that inhabits BEHIND THE MASK you outside your control; it is an illusion in the eyes of those who see you as having what they lack. Particularly in times of trouble, you can enhance that illusion through calmness, resolution, and clear-minded practicality. It also helps to have a seductively simple message. Call it the Savior Syn- The Charismatic • 109 drome: once people imagine you can save them from chaos, they will fall in Tirst and foremost there love with you, like a person who melts in the arms of his or her rescuer. can be no prestige without mystery, for familiarity And mass love equals charisma. How else to explain the love ordinary Rus- breeds contempt. . . . I n sians felt for a man as emotionless and unexciting as Vladimir Lenin. the design, the demeanor and the mental operations of a leader there must always be a "something"

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  In the face of violence and brutality, these women made seduction a Oppression and scorn, thus, were and must have been generally the share of women in emerging societies; this state lasted in all its force until centuries of experience taught them to substitute skill for force. Women at last sensed that, since they were weaker, their only resource was to seduce; they understood that if they were dependent on men through force, men could become dependent on them through pleasure. More unhappy than men, they must have thought and reflected earlier than did men; they were the first to know that pleasure was always beneath the idea that one formed of it, and that the imagination went farther than nature. Once these basic truths were known, they learned first to veil their charms in order to awaken curiosity; they practiced the difficult art of refusing even as they wished to consent; from that moment on, they knew how to set men's imagination afire, they knew how to arouse and direct desires as they pleased: thus did beauty and love come into being; now the lot of women xx • Preface sophisticated art, the ultimate form of power and persuasion. They learned to work on the mind first, stimulating fantasies, keeping a man wanting more, creating patterns of hope and despair—the essence of seduction. Their power was not physical but psychological, not forceful but indirect and cunning. These first great seductresses were like military generals plan- ning the destruction of an enemy, and indeed early accounts of seduction often compare it to battle, the feminine version of warfare. For Cleopatra, it was a means of consolidating an empire. In seduction, the woman was no longer a passive sex object; she had become an active agent, a figure of power. With a few exceptions—the Latin poet Ovid, the medieval troubadours—men did not much concern themselves with such a frivolous art as seduction. Then, in the seventeenth century came a great change: men grew interested in seduction as a way to overcome a young woman's resistance to sex. History's first great male seducers—the Duke de Lauzun, the different Spaniards who inspired the Don Juan legend—began to adopt the methods traditionally employed by women. They learned to dazzle with their appearance (often androgynous in nature), to stimulate the imagination, to play the coquette. They also added a new, masculine ele- ment to the game: seductive language, for they had discovered a woman's weakness for soft words. These two forms of seduction—the feminine use of appearances and the masculine use of language—would often cross gender lines: Casanova would dazzle a woman with his clothes; Ninon de l'Enclos would charm a man with her words. At the same time that men were developing their version of seduction, others began to adapt the art for social purposes.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Reese scooped her skirt beneath her and sat beside Amy. The women on the blanket were playing a casual game, one of those conversational exercises that fritter away time among acquaintances with whom you want to give the impression of high-spirited openness, but with whom you can only risk it obliquely. The rules: Pick three items from your local CVS that would most upset the checkout clerk when rung up at the counter. A sample from that conversation: “A dog collar, those long balloons that you twist into animals at children’s parties, and a tub of Vaseline.” “Sudafed, a kitchen knife, and some twine.” “Condoms, a shovel, and a Styrofoam cooler.” “They don’t sell shovels at CVS.” “Yes they do!” “Where are you from? Like Montana? They don’t in New York City.” “A trowel then, one of those little shovels?” “No.” “Fine, then I'll walk in carrying a shovel, and buy those other two things.” “That’s not in the rules. If you’re allowed to bring things in, there’s stuff way more disturbing than a shovel.” When the game came around to Amy, she said, “I think we aren’t really taking advantage of the rules. Like, everything you all said hints at sex or murder, which, yeah, is upsetting in a generalized scandalous way. But I think if you can trigger someone to make them sad about their own life, it’s way more upsetting. I’d find the checkout person who looks the most tired and lonely, and then I’d buy a huge tub of chocolate-chip cookie dough ice cream, a bottle of diet pills, and whatever women’s magazine has the saddest headline, like: How to Get a Job that Isn’t Degrading, or How to Not Still Be Alone Years After Heartbreak, or Orgasms! Will You Ever Have One? You'd have to pick the right clerk, but if you did, it'd be devastating.” Oh yes, Reese thought, this girl is for me. When the conversation turned to a cadre of literary-type punk girls in whom Reese had zero interest, she allowed her attention to drift. When she tuned back in, Amy was pointing to a cluster of buildings to the south that rose visibly above the rim of green encircling the field. She lived in one of those buildings. Reese didn’t bother to ask what Amy did. She already knew the equation: white young trans woman plus apartment right beside the park equaled job in tech. Reese barely paid attention to Amy’s actual words. She had the same mannerisms as Sebastian, but her voice, the way she used it, was flat and Midwestern with none of Sebastian’s charismatic pauses and accented flourishes. The phantom of Sebastian disappeared from her as she spoke and rubber-banded back when she went silent. Then, suddenly, the conversation split. Iris and Felicity got up, hunting to see who might have brought beer in a backpack, and Amy and Reese sat alone.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  Kevin stared down the Colonel as he walked past, but in trying to stare, he forgot to watch his step and bumped his thigh against a desk. The Colonel laughed. One of the other guys, the one who was either a little fat or worked out too much, came in behind Kevin, sporting pleated khaki pants and a short-sleeve black polo shirt. As they sat down, I crossed through the appropriate squares on the Colonel’s diagram and handed it to him. Just then, the Old Man shuffled in. He breathed slowly and with great labor through his wide-open mouth. He took tiny steps toward the lectern, his heels not moving much past his toes. The Colonel nudged me and pointed casually to his notebook, which read, The Old Man only has one lung, and I did not doubt it. His audible, almost desperate breaths reminded me of my grandfather when he was dying of lung cancer. Barrel-chested and ancient, the Old Man, it seemed to me, might die before he ever reached the podium. “My name,” he said, “is Dr. Hyde. I have a first name, of course. So far as you are concerned, it is Doctor. Your parents pay a great deal of money so that you can attend school here, and I expect that you will offer them some return on their investment by reading what I tell you to read when I tell you to read it and consistently attending this class. And when you are here, you will listen to what I say.” Clearly not an easy A. “This year, we’ll be studying three religious traditions: Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism. We’ll tackle three more traditions next year. And in my classes, I will talk most of the time, and you will listen most of the time. Because you may be smart, but I’ve been smart longer. I’m sure some of you do not like lecture classes, but as you have probably noted, I’m not as young as I used to be. I would love to spend my remaining breath chatting with you about the finer points of Islamic history, but our time together is short. I must talk, and you must listen, for we are engaged here in the most important pursuit in history: the search for meaning. What is the nature of being a person? What is the best way to go about being a person? How did we come to be, and what will become of us when we are no longer? In short: What are the rules of this game, and how might we best play it?” The nature of the labyrinth, I scribbled into my spiral notebook, and the way out of it. This teacher rocked.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  In the 1850s a bohemian American actress, Adah Isaacs Menken, took the world by storm through her unbridled sexual energy, and her fearlessness. She would appear on stage half-naked, performing death-defying acts; few women could dare such things in the Victorian period, and a rather mediocre actress became a figure of cultlike adoration. An extension of your being uninhibited is a dreamlike quality in your work and character that reveals your openness to your unconscious. It was the possession of this quality that transformed artists like Wagner and Pi- casso into charismatic idols. Its cousin is a fluidity of body and spirit; while the repressed are rigid, Charismatics have an ease and an adaptability that show their openness to experience. The Charismatic • 101 Fervency. You need to believe in something, and to believe in it strongly enough for it to animate all your gestures and make your eyes light up. This cannot be faked. Politicians inevitably lie to the public; what distinguishes Charismatics is that they believe their own lies, which makes them that much more believable. A prerequisite for fiery belief is some great cause to rally around—a crusade. Become the rallying point for people's discontent, and show that you share none of the doubts that plague normal humans. In 1490, the Florentine Girolamo Savonarola railed at the immorality of the pope and the Catholic Church. Claiming to be divinely inspired, he be- came so animated during his sermons that hysteria would sweep the crowd. Savonarola developed such a following that he briefly took over the city, until the pope had him captured and burned at the stake. People believed in him because of the depth of his conviction. His example has more rele- vance today than ever: people are more and more isolated, and long for communal experience. Let your own fervent and contagious faith, in virtu- ally anything, give them something to believe in. Vulnerability. Charismatics display a need for love and affection. They are open to their audience, and in fact feed off its energy; the audience in turn is electrified by the Charismatic, the current increasing as it passes back and forth. This vulnerable side to charisma softens the self-confident side, which can seem fanatical and frightening. Since charisma involves feelings akin to love, you in turn must reveal your love for your followers. This was a key component to the charisma that Marilyn Monroe radiated on camera. "I knew I belonged to the Pub- lic," she wrote in her diary, "and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  Christian is leaning casually against the bar, drinking a glass of white wine. He’s dressed in his customary white linen shirt, black jeans, black tie, and black jacket. His hair is as tousled as ever. I sigh. I stand for a few seconds in the entrance of the bar, gazing at him, admiring the view. He glances, nervously I think, toward the entrance and stills when he sees me. Blinking a couple of times, he then smiles a slow, lazy, sexy smile that renders me speechless and all molten inside. Making a supreme effort not to bite my lip, I move forward, aware that I, Anastasia Steele of Clumsyville, am in high stilettos. He walks gracefully over to meet me. “You look stunning,” he murmurs as he leans down to briefly kiss my cheek. “A dress, Miss Steele. I approve.” Taking my arm, he leads me to a secluded booth and signals for the waiter. “What would you like to drink?” My lips quirk up in a quick, sly smile as I sit and slide into the booth. Well, at least he’s asking me. “I’ll have what you’re having, please.” See! I can play nice and behave myself. Amused, he orders another glass of Sancerre and slides in opposite me. “They have an excellent wine cellar here,” he says. Putting his elbows on the table, he steeples his fingers in front of his mouth, his eyes alive with some unreadable emotion. And there it is…that familiar pull and charge from him, it connects somewhere deep inside me. I shift uncomfortably under his scrutiny, my heart palpitating. I must keep my cool. “Are you nervous?” he asks softly. “Yes.” He leans forward. “Me, too,” he whispers conspiratorially. My eyes shoot up to meet his. Him? Nervous? Never. I blink, and he smiles his adorable lopsided smile at me. The waiter arrives with my wine, a small dish of mixed nuts, and another of olives. “So, how are we going to do this?” I ask. “Run through my points one by one?” “Impatient as ever, Miss Steele.” “Well, I could ask you what you thought of the weather today.” He smiles, and his long fingers reach down to collect an olive. He pops it in his mouth, and my eyes linger on his mouth—that mouth, that’s been on me…all parts of me. I flush. “I thought the weather was particularly unexceptional today.” He smirks. “Are you smirking at me, Mr. Grey?” “I am, Miss Steele.” “You know this contract is legally unenforceable.” “I am fully aware of that, Anastasia.” “Were you going to tell me that at any point?” He frowns. “You’d think I’d coerce you into something you don’t want to do, and then pretend that I have a legal hold over you?” “Well…yes.” “You don’t think very highly of me, do you?” “You haven’t answered my question.”

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  We talked about ghosts, about God, about the transmigration of souls, about Hell, about astronomy, about strange birds and fish, about the formation of precious stones, about rubber plantations, about methods of torture, about the Aztecs and the Incas, about marine life, about volcanoes and earthquakes, about burial rites and wedding ceremonies in various parts of the earth, about languages, about the origin of the American Indian, about the buffaloes dying out, about strange diseases, about cannibalism, about wizardry, about trips to the moon and what it was like there, about murderers and highwaymen, about the miracles in the Bible, about the manufacture of pottery, about a thousand and one subjects which were never mentioned at home or in school and which were vital to us because we were starved and the world was full of wonder and mystery and it was only when we stood shivering in the vacant lot that we got to talking seriously and felt a need for communication which was at once pleasurable and terrifying. The wonder and the mystery of life—which is throttled in us as we become responsible members of society! Until we were pushed out to work the world was very small and we were living on the fringe of it, on the frontier, as it were, of the unknown. A small Greek world which was nevertheless deep enough to provide all manner of variation, all manner of adventure and speculation. Not so very small either, since it held in reserve the most boundless potentialities. I have gained nothing by the enlargement of my world; on the contrary, I have lost. I want to become more and more childish and to pass beyond childhood in the opposite direction. I want to go exactly contrary to the normal line of development, pass into a superinfantile realm of being which will be absolutely crazy and chaotic but not crazy and chaotic as the world about me. I have been an adult and a father and a responsible member of society. I have earned my daily bread. I have adapted myself to a world which never was mine. I want to break through this enlarged world and stand again on the frontier of an unknown world which will throw this pale, unilateral world into shadow. I want to pass beyond the responsibility of fatherhood to the irresponsibility of the anarchic man who cannot be coerced nor wheedled nor cajoled nor bribed nor traduced. I want to take as my guide Oberon the nightrider who, under the spread of his black wings, eliminates both the beauty and the horror of the past; I want to flee toward a perpetual dawn with a swiftness and relentlessness that leaves no room for remorse, regret, or repentance. I want to outstrip the inventive man who is a curse to the earth in order to stand once again before an impassable deep which not even the strongest wings will enable me to traverse.

• From The Lover (1984)

  For some mysterious reason my mother used to show her children’s photographs to her family when she went home on leave. We didn’t want to go and see them. My brothers never met them. At first she used to take me, the youngest, with her. Then later on I stopped going, because my aunts didn’t want their daughters to see me any more on account of my shocking behavior. So my mother has only the photographs left to show, so she shows them, naturally, reasonably, shows her cousins her children. She owes it to herself to do so, so she does, her cousins are all that’s left of the family, so she shows them the family photos. Can we glimpse something of this woman through this way of going on? The way she sees everything through to the bitter end without ever dreaming she might give up, abandon—the cousins, the effort, the burden. I think we can. It’s in this valor, human, absurd, that I see true grace. When she was old, too, grey-haired, she went to the photographer’s, alone, and had her photograph taken in her best dark-red dress and her two bits of jewelry, the locket and the gold and jade brooch, a little round of jade sheathed in gold. In the photo her hair is done nicely, her clothes just so, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. The better-off natives used to go to the photographer’s too, just once in their lives, when they saw death was near. Their photos were large, all the same size, hung in handsome gilt frames near the altars to their ancestors. All these photographs of different people, and I’ve seen many of them, gave practically identical results, the resemblance was stunning. It wasn’t just because all old people look alike, but because the portraits themselves were invariably touched up in such a way that any facial peculiarities, if there were any left, were minimized. All the faces were prepared in the same way to confront eternity, all toned down, all uniformly rejuvenated. This was what people wanted. This general resemblance, this tact, would characterize the memory of their passage through the family, bear witness at once to the singularity and to the reality of that transit. The more they resembled each other the more evidently they belonged in the ranks of the family. Moreover, all the men wore the same sort of turban, all the women had their hair scraped back into the same kind of bun, and both men and women wore tunics with stand-up collars. And they all wore an expression I’d still recognize anywhere. My mother’s expression in the photograph with the red dress was the same. Noble, some would say. Others would call it withdrawn.

• From The Lover (1984)

  It is wonderful that the beloved be a Chinese man, and that the naked masculine body in Hiroshima, Mon Amour belongs to a Japanese man. Marguerite Duras honors the Asian male as sexy being, beautiful and worthy of art and love. I trust Marguerite Duras’s seeing and her listening. The lovers listen to the city outside their apartment: “The clatter of wooden clogs is earsplitting, the voices strident, Chinese is a language that’s shouted the way I always imagine desert languages are, it’s a language that’s incredibly foreign.” In the film: “The art of seeing has to be learned.” “You saw nothing in Hiroshima.” “I saw everything.” Here in Ho Chi Minh City, where Marguerite Duras lived when it was Saigon, I am meeting writers and poets, and hearing of soldiers carrying a poem on their hearts into battle. They say that the Americans wouldn’t have gone to war in Vietnam if they’d known this poem, this song, this myth. We reply that we wouldn’t have gone to war with them if we’d known that their soldiers were poets. This strange culture made up of many wars and of people from everywhere is Marguerite Duras’s ancestral place. In the end, Duras is the lover, and she shows us how to see and hear and love and leave Vietnam. MAXINE HONG KINGSTON Ho Chi Minh City March 1997 One day, I was already old, in the entrance of a public place a man came up to me. He introduced himself and said, “I’ve known you for years. Everyone says you were beautiful when you were young, but I want to tell you I think you’re more beautiful now than then. Rather than your face as a young woman, I prefer your face as it is now. Ravaged.” I often think of the image only I can see now, and of which I’ve never spoken. It’s always there, in the same silence, amazing. It’s the only image of myself I like, the only one in which I recognize myself, in which I delight.

• From The Lover (1984)

  Betty Fernandez. My memory of men is never lit up and illuminated like my memory of women. Betty Fernandez. She was a foreigner too. As soon as I say the name there she is, walking along a Paris street, she’s short-sighted, can’t see much, screws up her eyes to recognize you, then greets you with a light handshake. Hello, how are you? Dead a long time ago now. Thirty years, perhaps. I can remember her grace, it’s too late now for me to forget, nothing mars its perfection still, nothing ever will, not the circumstances, nor the time, nor the cold or the hunger or the defeat of Germany, nor the coming to light of the crime. She goes along the street still, above the history of such things however terrible. Here too the eyes are pale. The pink dress is old, the black wide-brimmed hat dusty in the sunlight of the street. She’s slim, tall, drawn in India ink, an engraving. People stop and look in amazement at the elegance of this foreigner who walks along unseeing. Like a queen. People never know at first where she’s from. And then they think she can only be from somewhere else, from there. Because of this she’s beautiful. She’s dressed in old European clothes, scraps of brocade, out-of-date old suits, old curtains, old oddments, old models, moth-eaten old fox furs, old otterskins, that’s her kind of beauty, tattered, chilly, plaintive and in exile, nothing suits her, everything’s too big, and yet it looks marvelous. Her clothes are loose, she’s too thin, nothing fits, yet it looks marvelous. She’s made in such a way, face and body, that anything that touches her shares immediately and infallibly in her beauty.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  sighed sadly, then excused himself for bed, leaving the czar to sleep on the lady and it was very this. He escorted the czar to a play on the themes of glory, honor, and seldom that he passed by empire; now, in later conversations, he could disguise his insinuations un- her house. . . . • The gentleman, being rather der the cover of discussing the play. Within a few weeks, the czar was more perceptive than the speaking to his ministers of a marriage alliance and a treaty with France as reverend friar, was not if they were his own ideas. exactly slow to appreciate the lady's cleverness, and Slips of the tongue, apparently inadvertent "sleep on it" comments, al- putting on a somewhat luring references, statements for which you quickly apologize—all of these sheepish expression, he have immense insinuating power. They get under people's skin like a poi- promised not to bother her son, and take on a life of their own. The key to succeeding with your in- any more. But after leaving the friar, he made his way sinuations is to make them when your targets are at their most relaxed or toward the house of the distracted, so that they are not aware of what is happening. Polite banter is lady, who was keeping often the perfect front for this; people are thinking about what they will say continuous vigil at a tiny little window so that she next, or are absorbed in their own thoughts. Your insinuations will barely would see him if he register, which is how you want it. happened to pass by. . . . In one of his early campaigns, John F. Kennedy addressed a group of And from that day forward, proceeding with veterans. Kennedy's brave exploits during World War II—the PT-109 inci- the maximum prudence dent had made him a war hero—were known to all; but in the speech, he and conveying the talked of the other men on the boat, never mentioning himself. He knew, impression that he was engaged in some other however, that what he had done was on everyone's mind, because in fact he business entirely, he became had put it there. Not only did his silence on the subject make them think of a regular visitor to the it on their own, it made Kennedy seem humble and modest, qualities that neighborhood. go well with heroism. In seduction, as the French courtesan Ninon de —GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO, THE l'Enclos advised, it is better not to talk about your love for a person. Let DECAMERON, TRANSLATED BY G . H . M C W I L L I A M your target read it in your manner. Your silence on the subject will have more insinuating power than if you had addressed it directly.

• From The Lover (1984)

  She entertained, Betty Fernandez, she had an “at home.” We went sometimes. Once Drieu La Rochelle was there. Clearly suffering from pride, he scarcely deigned to speak, and when he did it was as if his voice was dubbed, his words translated, stiff. Maybe Brasillach was there too, but I don’t remember, unfortunately. Sartre never came. There were poets from Montparnasse, but I don’t remember any names, not one. There were no Germans. We didn’t talk politics. We talked about literature. Ramon Fernandez used to talk about Balzac. We could have listened to him forever and a day. He spoke with a knowledge that’s almost completely forgotten, and of which almost nothing completely verifiable can survive. He offered opinions rather than information. He spoke about Balzac as he might have done about himself, as if he himself had once tried to be Balzac. He had a sublime courtesy even in knowledge, a way at once profound and clear of handling knowledge without ever making it seem an obligation or a burden. He was sincere. It was always a joy to meet him in the street or in a café, and it was a pleasure to him to greet you. Hallo how are you? he’d say, in the English style, without a comma, laughing. And while he laughed his jest became the war itself, together with all the unavoidable suffering it caused, both resistance and collaboration, hunger and cold, martyrdom and infamy. She, Betty Fernandez, spoke only of people, those she’d seen in the street or those she knew, about how they were, the things still left for sale in the shops, extra rations of milk or fish, good ways of dealing with shortages, with cold and constant hunger, she was always concerned with the practical details of life, she didn’t go beyond that, always a good friend, very loyal and affectionate. Collaborators, the Fernandezes were. And I, two years after the war, I was a member of the French Communist party. The parallel is complete and absolute. The two things are the same, the same pity, the same call for help, the same lack of judgment, the same superstition if you like, that consists in believing in a political solution to the personal problem. She too, Betty Fernandez, looked out at the empty streets of the German occupation, looked at Paris, at the squares of catalpas in flower, like the other woman, Marie-Claude Carpenter. Was “at home” certain days, like her.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  of appearances and the masculine use of language—would often cross EDITED BY MICHAEL FEHER gender lines: Casanova would dazzle a woman with his clothes; Ninon de l'Enclos would charm a man with her words. At the same time that men were developing their version of seduction, Much more genius is others began to adapt the art for social purposes. As Europe's feudal system needed to make love than of government faded into the past, courtiers needed to get their way in to command armies. court without the use of force. They learned the power to be gained by se- — N I N O N D E L ' E N C L O S ducing their superiors and competitors through psychological games, soft words, a little coquetry. As culture became democratized, actors, dandies, and artists came to use the tactics of seduction as a way to charm and win Menelaus, if you are really going to kill her, \ Then over their audience and social milieu. In the nineteenth century another my blessing go with you, great change occurred: politicians like Napoleon consciously saw them-but you must do it now, \ selves as seducers, on a grand scale. These men depended on the art of se-Before her looks so twist the strings of your heart \ ductive oratory, but they also mastered what had once been feminine That they turn your mind; strategies: staging vast spectacles, using theatrical devices, creating a charged for her eyes are like armies, physical presence. All this, they learned, was the essence of charisma—and \And where her glances fall, there cities burn, \ remains so today. By seducing the masses they could accumulate immense Until the dust of their power without the use of force. ashes is blown \ By her Today we have reached the ultimate point in the evolution of seduc-sighs. I know her, tion. Now more than ever, force or brutality of any kind is discouraged. All Men elans, \ And so do you. And all those who areas of social life require the ability to persuade people in a way that does know her suffer. not offend or impose itself. Forms of seduction can be found everywhere, — H E C U B A SPEAKING ABOUT blending male and female strategies. Advertisements insinuate, the soft sell HELEN OF TROY IN EURIPIDES, dominates. If we are to change people's opinions—and affecting opinion is THE TROJAN WOMEN, TRANSLATED BY NEIL CURRY basic to seduction—we must act in subtle, subliminal ways. Today no politi- Preface • xxi cal campaign can work without seduction. Since the era of John F. No man hath it in his Kennedy, political figures are required to have a degree of charisma, a fasci- power to over-rule the deceitfulness of a woman. nating presence to keep their audience's attention, which is half the battle. — M A R G U E R I T E OF NAVARRE