Anger

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 Anna Karenina (1877)

  Yes, it was the same thing over and over again. Everyone, his mother, his brother, everyone thought fit to interfere in the affairs of his heart. This interference aroused in him a feeling of angry hatred—a feeling he had rarely known before. “What business is it of theirs? Why does everybody feel called upon to concern himself about me? And why do they worry me so? Just because they see that this is something they can’t understand. If it were a common, vulgar, worldly intrigue, they would have left me alone. They feel that this is something different, that this is not a mere pastime, that this woman is dearer to me than life. And this is incomprehensible, and that’s why it annoys them. Whatever our destiny is or may be, we have made it ourselves, and we do not complain of it,” he said, in the word _we_ linking himself with Anna. “No, they must needs teach us how to live. They haven’t an idea of what happiness is; they don’t know that without our love, for us there is neither happiness nor unhappiness—no life at all,” he thought. He was angry with all of them for their interference just because he felt in his soul that they, all these people, were right. He felt that the love that bound him to Anna was not a momentary impulse, which would pass, as worldly intrigues do pass, leaving no other traces in the life of either but pleasant or unpleasant memories. He felt all the torture of his own and her position, all the difficulty there was for them, conspicuous as they were in the eye of all the world, in concealing their love, in lying and deceiving; and in lying, deceiving, feigning, and continually thinking of others, when the passion that united them was so intense that they were both oblivious of everything else but their love. He vividly recalled all the constantly recurring instances of inevitable necessity for lying and deceit, which were so against his natural bent. He recalled particularly vividly the shame he had more than once detected in her at this necessity for lying and deceit. And he experienced the strange feeling that had sometimes come upon him since his secret love for Anna. This was a feeling of loathing for something—whether for Alexey Alexandrovitch, or for himself, or for the whole world, he could not have said. But he always drove away this strange feeling. Now, too, he shook it off and continued the thread of his thoughts. “Yes, she was unhappy before, but proud and at peace; and now she cannot be at peace and feel secure in her dignity, though she does not show it. Yes, we must put an end to it,” he decided.

• From Querelle (1953)

  being identical, the fight had started out with a series of ridiculously hesitant attacks. Rather than wanting to fight they seemed to be backing away and avoiding each other with considerable success. Then things changed. Querelle stumbled, slipped and managed to grab hold of Robert's ankle. From that moment on it was an all-out brawl. Dede jumped to one side, wanting to prove to the full-fledged man within him, still • slumbering and germinating there, that nothing can be gained from interfering in a showdown between two men. The street was transformed into a passage from the B�ble in which two brothers, guided by two fingers of a single God, insult each other and fight to the death for two reasons which are really but one. For Dede, the city of Brest did not exist now, only this street. He was waiting for one soul to rise heavenwards from it. The two men fought in silence, their rage increasing in proportion to that very silence : it excited them, being punctuated only by the noise of their punches and counterpunches, their own huffing and puffing; increasing, too, as they felt themselves slowing down, which held the threat they might both go under, both resort to the one final dirty blow, delivered slowly, almost tenderly, that would wipe out the exhausted winner as well. Three dockers stood watching them, smoking. Silently they were placing bets with themselves, first on one, then on the other. It was hard to predict the outcome, the combatants were so equally matched; this impression was enhanc�d by their close resemblance to each other which made the fight look as balanced and harmonious as a dance. Dede stood and watched. Though he knew his friend's muscles in repose, he did not dare guess at their efficiency in a brawl-especially not one with Querelle whom he had never seen fight before. Suddenly Querelle bent over and rammed Robert in the stomach with his head, but was instantly knocked flat on his back. When he had decided to strike his brother, Robert had experienced an instant of sheer freedom, a very brief instant, hardly enough for any kind of decision. The sailor's cap fell to one side of the flailing pair, 121 I QUERELLE Robert's to the other. In order to gain the might of right, to justify his actions, Robert took it into his head to proclaim out loud, in the midst of battle, his scorn for his brother and its reasons. The first words that came to mind were : '·You dirty faggot." They came out as a hoarse, rattling sound. Then an entire confused discourse ran through his head, be�.rely audible under his breath : ,. "Let a brothel boss screw you, hey! You dirty swine! And so high and mighty, too. How does that make me look, hey, a brother whose asshole's for sale."

• From Querelle (1953)

  bunch. They had all ganged up on him. They were all excited by that swarm of flies, now dispersed in the sunshine, singing their lively airs. His anger looked for revenge : all the masons wo�ld have to die. Gil thought of setting fire to their q�arters. That idea did not last long. It was too slow for his rage and rancor. He had to express them in some act, and immediately, even if this might tum against him and ravage his insides. Thea went on : "\Veil, hell, you know? There's some who like it. They like taking in things through that hole." Gil's urge to piss grew even stronger. It was now about as powerful as the pressure in a steam engine. He would have to be quick about it. He realized, even if dimly, that all his courage, his audacity, would have to depend on speed and obedience toward a pressing obligation. He was now sitting on his bed with his feet on the floor, and the look in his eye grew more human as he slowly let it come to rest on Thea. "So you've really made up your mind now, Theo?'' He pursed his lips as he pronounced the name, and gave his head a slight toss : "Or haven't you? You've been giving me all this shit, and I'm tired of it." "Oh no I haven't, kiddo. I wish you'd shit a little less, though." 102 I JEAN GENET And when the rather shifty laughter this answer had caused to reverberate round each mason's head had died away : "Because there's times it seems you don't mind taking it, and for my part, I ain't saying I wouldn't enjoy giving it to you." Gil stood up. He had only his shirt on. In his stockinged feet he went across to Thea and then, turning to face him squarely, pale, icy, terrifying, he said : "You? Well, let's get on with it, and don't you back out of it now." And in a continuous movement he swiveled round, pulled up his shirt, bent over and held out his backside. The masons were watching. Only yesterday Gilbert had been a workman like the rest of them, neither more nor less than any of them. They felt no hatred for him, rather a faint sense of friendship. They could not see the desperation in the young man's face. They laughed. Gil straightened up again, looked at each and every one of them and said : "Having a good time, eh? You've decided to gang up on me. Well, who wants to take a shot at it?" The words were spoken in a loud, scathing voice. And Gil repeated his. performance in front of the masons, aggravating it by spreading his buttocks apart with both hands, and by shouting, in a pained voice directed down at the floor, as if through heavy fumes :

• From Querelle (1953)

  "So what have you got to lose? If you pull a stick-up job, and they catch you at it, that won't make any difference at aU. \\'hat's a stick-up compared to murder?" Quere11e no longer mentioned the murder of the sailor so as not to ca11 forth Gil's denials, not to rouse that sense of true justice that lives in everyone and that might cause him to go and give himself up. Coming from the outside world as he did, calm and co11ected, Querelle knew that the young mason dung to him with anguished intensity. His anxiety betrayed Gil, betrayed the slightest inner tremor and amplified it, played it out loud, like the needle passing over the grooves of a record. Querelle was able to register aU these shifts and fluctuations and made use of them. "If I wasn't just a sailor . . . but, that's what I am, and there's little I can do to help you. But there's one thing, I can give you some advice. And I believe you can do it." Gil listened, in silence. By this time it had become clear to him that the sailor would never bring him anything else but a chunk of bread, a can of sardines, a pack of cigarettes, but never any money. Hanging his head, his mouth bitter, he feU to pondering the notion of those two murders. An enormous weariness forced him to resign himself to them, to admit them, to admit that he would henceforth travel the high road to he11. Toward Querelle he felt great anger and at the same time he 224 I JEAN GENET had absolute confidence in him, though this was strangely intermingled with a fear that Querelle might "turn him in.'' "Soon as you got some dough and some new clothes you'll be ready to take the trip.'' It looked like a great adventure, and one that the murders had led up to. Thanks to them, Gil would have to dress smartly, more so than he had ever done in his life, not even on Sundays. Buenos Aires, here I come. "I can certainly hear what you're saying; '! sure would like to pull a job, make some dough. But where? Do you know?" "Right now, here in Brest, I know only one place, a simple breaking and entering scene. There's better ones elsewhere, but here in Brest that's the only thing I'm hep to. I'll go case the joint, and then, if you're ready, we can go do the job together. No sweat. I'll be right there with you." "I couldn't do it by myself? Perhaps that would be better?" "You crazy? Forget it. I want to go with you. First thne out, you need a buddy.''

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Darwin’s eureka moment was a gift from two terrible Thomases and one friendly Fred: Hobbes, Malthus, and Flintstone, respectively. By articulating a detailed (albeit erroneous) description of human nature and the sorts of lives humans lived in prehistory, Hobbes and Malthus provided the intellectual context for Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Unfortunately, their thoroughly Flintstoned assumptions are fully integrated into Darwin’s thinking and persist to the present day. The sober tones of serious science often mask the mythical nature of what we’re told about prehistory. And far too often, the myth is dysfunctional, inaccurate, and self-justifying. Our central ambition for this book is to distinguish some of the stars from the constellations. We believe that the generally accepted myth of the origins and nature of human sexuality is not merely factually flawed, but destructive, sustaining a false sense of what it means to be a human being. This false narrative distorts our sense of our capacities and needs. It amounts to false advertising for a garment that fits almost no one. But we’re all supposed to buy and wear it anyway. Like all myths, this one seeks to define who and what we are and thus what we can expect and demand from one another. For centuries, religious authorities disseminated this defining narrative, warning of chatty serpents, deceitful women, forbidden knowledge, and eternal agony. But more recently, it’s been marketed to secular society as hard science. Examples abound. Writing in the prestigious journal Science, anthropologist Owen Lovejoy suggested, “The nuclear family and human sexual behavior may have their ultimate origin long before the dawn of the Pleistocene [1.8 million years ago].”14 Well-known anthropologist Helen Fisher concurs, writing, “Is monogamy natural?” She gives a one-word answer: “Yes.” She then continues, “Among human beings…monogamy is the rule.”15 Many different elements of human prehistory seem to nest neatly into each other in the standard narrative of human sexual evolution. But remember, that Indian seemed to answer Cortés’s question, and it seemed indisputable to Pope Urban VIII and just about everyone else that the Earth remained solidly at the center of the solar system. With a focus on the presumed nutritional benefits of pair-bonding, zoologist and science writer Matt Ridley demonstrates the seduction in this apparent unity: “Big brains needed meat…[and] food sharing allowed a meaty diet (because it freed men to risk failure in pursuit of game)…[and] food sharing demanded big brains (without detailed calculating memories, you could easily be cheated by a free-loader).” So far, so good. But now Ridley inserts the sexual steps in his dance: “The sexual division of labor promoted monogamy (a pair bond now being an economic unit); monogamy led to neotenous sexual selection (by putting a premium on youthfulness in mates).” It’s a waltz, with one assumption spinning into the next, circling round and round in “a spiral of comforting justification, proving how we came to be as we are.”16

• From Querelle (1953)

  Roger went to see Gil every day. He brought him bread, butter, cheese, things he bought in a distant dairy close to the church of Saint-ivfartin, in a quarter where nobody knew him. Gil became more and more demanding. He knew that he was wealthy. His fortune, hidden close by, gave him sufficient authority to tyrannize Roger. He had finally become accustomed to his recluse existence, made himself comfortable in it, moved within its limits with total confidence. The day after his attack on the Lieutenant he tried to find out from Roger what the newspapers were saying. Querelle, however, had told him not to tell the young kid anything about these jobs. Not being able to tell him, nor to get anything out of him, Gil grew furious with Roger. Then he realized that the boy was withdrawing from him. "I've got to go now." ''Sure, sure. Now you're just dropping me!" "I am not dropping you, Gil. I come here every single day. But my old lady gives me a rough time whenever I come home 232 I JEAN GENET late. It wouldn't be so great if she decided to lock me up in the house." "Yeah, yeah, that's just bullshit. You know what I have to say about all that . . . But get me a liter of red wine tomorrow, all right?" "All right, I'll try." "I wasn't telling you to try. I told you to bring me a liter of the red." Roger did not feel in the least hurt by all this bullying. Like the pestiferous air in the cave, the bad temper emanating from Gil grew thicker every day, so that Roger was unable to distinguish the progression of its density. Had he still been in love, he would no doubt have found a vantage point from which to assess the changes in his friend's attitude, but now he just arrived there every evening like an automaton, obeying some kind of rite whose profound and imperious meaning has been forgotten. He did not even think of breaking out of this drudgery, he only thought about Robert's and ·Querelle's double countenance. He lived in the hope of one day encountering the brothers together. "I've seen Jo. He tells you not to worry. He said everything's hunky-dory. He'll come and. see you the next two or three days." "Where did you meet him?" "He was coming out of La Feria." "What the hell are you hanging out there for?" "I wasn't, I was just passing by . . . " "You've got no business there, it ain't even on your way. Maybe you're thinking of getting in with the tough guys, eh? That's no place for a little shitter like you, La Feria ain't." "I told you I just happened to walk past it, Gil." "Tell that to the Marines."

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “What? I’ll tell you what!” shouted the prince, waving his arms, and at once wrapping his squirrel-lined dressing-gown round him again. “That you’ve no pride, no dignity; that you’re disgracing, ruining your daughter by this vulgar, stupid matchmaking!” “But, really, for mercy’s sake, prince, what have I done?” said the princess, almost crying. She, pleased and happy after her conversation with her daughter, had gone to the prince to say good-night as usual, and though she had no intention of telling him of Levin’s offer and Kitty’s refusal, still she hinted to her husband that she fancied things were practically settled with Vronsky, and that he would declare himself so soon as his mother arrived. And thereupon, at those words, the prince had all at once flown into a passion, and began to use unseemly language. “What have you done? I’ll tell you what. First of all, you’re trying to catch an eligible gentleman, and all Moscow will be talking of it, and with good reason. If you have evening parties, invite everyone, don’t pick out the possible suitors. Invite all the young bucks. Engage a piano player, and let them dance, and not as you do things nowadays, hunting up good matches. It makes me sick, sick to see it, and you’ve gone on till you’ve turned the poor wench’s head. Levin’s a thousand times the better man. As for this little Petersburg swell, they’re turned out by machinery, all on one pattern, and all precious rubbish. But if he were a prince of the blood, my daughter need not run after anyone.” “But what have I done?” “Why, you’ve....” The prince was crying wrathfully. “I know if one were to listen to you,” interrupted the princess, “we should never marry our daughter. If it’s to be so, we’d better go into the country.” “Well, and we had better.” “But do wait a minute. Do I try and catch them? I don’t try to catch them in the least. A young man, and a very nice one, has fallen in love with her, and she, I fancy....” “Oh, yes, you fancy! And how if she really is in love, and he’s no more thinking of marriage than I am!... Oh, that I should live to see it! Ah! spiritualism! Ah! Nice! Ah! the ball!” And the prince, imagining that he was mimicking his wife, made a mincing curtsey at each word. “And this is how we’re preparing wretchedness for Kitty; and she’s really got the notion into her head....” “But what makes you suppose so?” “I don’t suppose; I know. We have eyes for such things, though women-folk haven’t. I see a man who has serious intentions, that’s Levin: and I see a peacock, like this feather-head, who’s only amusing himself.” “Oh, well, when once you get an idea into your head!...” “Well, you’ll remember my words, but too late, just as with Dolly.” “Well, well, we won’t talk of it,” the princess stopped him, recollecting her unlucky Dolly.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  The key is emotional granularity: having a wide and deep range of concepts (emotion, physical, or otherwise) to make sense of the onslaught of bodily sensations that are the hazards of the job. 5 7 Consider, for example, a judge faced with a defendant like James Holmes, who murdered twelve moviegoers and injured seventy more during a midnight screening of a Batman movie in Aurora, Colorado, in 2012. Such a judge might reasonably construct an experience of anger, but that feeling alone could be problematic; anger could prompt the judge to punish the defendant too harshly for the sake of retribution, threatening the moral order that the trial is founded on. To balance his view, some legal scholars argue, the judge could try to cultivate empathy for the defendant, who perhaps is insane or a victim of some sort himself. Anger is a form of ignorance; in this case, ignorance of the defendant’s perspective. Holmes clearly struggled with serious mental illness for years. He tried to kill himself for the first time when he was eleven years old, and has attempted suicide several times in jail. Empathy is extremely difficult to cultivate for someone who opens fire on innocents in a movie theater. Even remembering that the defendant is a human being, no matter how severe or gruesome the crime, might be a struggle at times, but this is when empathy might be most important. It may prevent a judge from going too far in punishing the offender during sentencing, and help to ensure the morality of penal decision-making and retributive justice. This is the type of emotional granularity that makes for wise use of emotion in the courtroom. 5 8 When it comes right down to it, the most useful emotions for a judge to feel depend on the judge’s goals during the trial. What, for example, is the goal of punishment? Is it retribution? Deterrence to avoid future harm? Rehabilitation? This depends on the law’s theory of the human mind. Whatever the goal, punishment must be enacted so that the defendant’s humanity is preserved, while the victim’s humanity is honored, even if the defendant commits an unspeakable act. To do otherwise puts the legal system itself in jeopardy. … Why is it that you can sue someone for breaking your leg but not for breaking your heart? The law considers emotional damage to be less serious than physical damage and less deserving of punishment. Think about how ironic this is. The law protects the integrity of your anatomical body but not the integrity of your mind, even though your body is just a container for the organ that makes you who you are—your brain. Emotional harm is not considered real unless accompanied by physical harm. Mind and body are separate.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Her face, disfigured by her emotion, was not a pretty sight as she stared at my legs and said: “The Haze woman, the big bitch, the old cat, the obnoxious mamma, the—the old stupid Haze is no longer your dupe. She has—she has …” My fair accuser stopped, swallowing her venom and her tears. Whatever Humbert Humbert said—or attempted to say—is inessential. She went on: “You’re a monster. You’re a detestable, abominable, criminal fraud. If you come near—I’ll scream out the window. Get back!” Again, whatever H.H. murmured may be omitted, I think. “I am leaving tonight. This is all yours. Only you’ll never, never see that miserable brat again. Get out of this room.” Reader, I did. I went up to the ex-semi-studio. Arms akimbo, I stood for a moment quite still and self-composed, surveying from the threshold the raped little table with its open drawer, a key hanging from the lock, four other household keys on the table top. I walked across the landing into the Humberts’ bedroom, and calmly removed my diary from under her pillow into my pocket. Then I started to walk downstairs, but stopped halfway: she was talking on the telephone which happened to be plugged just outside the door of the living room. I wanted to hear what she was saying: she canceled an order for something or other, and returned to the parlor. I rearranged my respiration and went through the hallway to the kitchen. There, I opened a bottle of Scotch. She could never resist Scotch. Then I walked into the dining room and from there, through the half-open door, contemplated Charlotte’s broad back. “You are ruining my life and yours,” I said quietly. “Let us be civilized people. It is all your hallucination. You are crazy, Charlotte. The notes you found were fragments of a novel. Your name and hers were put in by mere chance. Just because they came handy. Think it over. I shall bring you a drink.” She neither answered nor turned, but went on writing in a scorching scrawl whatever she was writing. A third letter, presumably (two in stamped envelopes were already laid out on the desk). I went back to the kitchen. I set out two glasses (to St. Algebra? to Lo?) and opened the refrigerator. It roared at me viciously while I removed the ice from its heart. Rewrite. Let her read it again. She will not recall details. Change, forge. Write a fragment and show it to her or leave it lying around. Why do faucets sometimes whine so horribly? A horrible situation, really. The little pillow-shaped blocks of ice—pillows for polar teddy bear, Lo—emitted rasping, crackling, tortured sounds as the warm water loosened them in their cells. I bumped down the glasses side by side. I poured in the whiskey and a dram of soda.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Never had the impossibility of his position in the world’s eyes, and his wife’s hatred of him, and altogether the might of that mysterious brutal force that guided his life against his spiritual inclinations, and exacted conformity with its decrees and change in his attitude to his wife, been presented to him with such distinctness as that day. He saw clearly that all the world and his wife expected of him something, but what exactly, he could not make out. He felt that this was rousing in his soul a feeling of anger destructive of his peace of mind and of all the good of his achievement. He believed that for Anna herself it would be better to break off all relations with Vronsky; but if they all thought this out of the question, he was even ready to allow these relations to be renewed, so long as the children were not disgraced, and he was not deprived of them nor forced to change his position. Bad as this might be, it was anyway better than a rupture, which would put her in a hopeless and shameful position, and deprive him of everything he cared for. But he felt helpless; he knew beforehand that everyone was against him, and that he would not be allowed to do what seemed to him now so natural and right, but would be forced to do what was wrong, though it seemed the proper thing to them. Chapter 21 Before Betsy had time to walk out of the drawing-room, she was met in the doorway by Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had just come from Yeliseev’s, where a consignment of fresh oysters had been received. “Ah! princess! what a delightful meeting!” he began. “I’ve been to see you.” “A meeting for one minute, for I’m going,” said Betsy, smiling and putting on her glove. “Don’t put on your glove yet, princess; let me kiss your hand. There’s nothing I’m so thankful to the revival of the old fashions for as the kissing the hand.” He kissed Betsy’s hand. “When shall we see each other?” “You don’t deserve it,” answered Betsy, smiling. “Oh, yes, I deserve a great deal, for I’ve become a most serious person. I don’t only manage my own affairs, but other people’s too,” he said, with a significant expression. “Oh, I’m so glad!” answered Betsy, at once understanding that he was speaking of Anna. And going back into the drawing-room, they stood in a corner. “He’s killing her,” said Betsy in a whisper full of meaning. “It’s impossible, impossible....” “I’m so glad you think so,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, shaking his head with a serious and sympathetically distressed expression, “that’s what I’ve come to Petersburg for.”

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Beauty was beside herself with frustration and anger. This was just what she had meant to do. She had imagined herself braving all dangers to do it. And now she was forced to watch as Squire Felix tormented the poor Prince. But to her surprise, Squire Felix was not merely tantalizing Prince Alexi. Squire Felix seemed quite in earnest. He was ravaging the organ with a regular rhythm and Beauty knew from the moans that Prince Alexi couldn't conceal he was now reaching the climax of his passion. His taut, cruelly bound body shuddered with one protracted groan after another, and then he lay still as Squire Felix drew back and moved into the shadows. It seemed he spoke to Prince Alexi then. Beauty leaned her head against the stone balustrade. After a little while, Squire Felix told Prince Alexi to wake, and he gave the organ those tormenting slaps again when it seemed reluctant, Squire Felix seemed fearful and became threatening. But Prince Alexi was deep asleep in his painful tethers, and Beauty was very pleased to see this. She turned and silently made her way back to the bedroom door when she realized that someone was near her. She was so frightened that she almost screamed, a mistake which would surely have destroyed her. But she covered her mouth, and lifting her eyes, she saw in the distant shadows the figure of Lord Gregory watching her. This was the gray-haired Lord who had wanted so to discipline her properly, who had called her spoilt. Yet he did not move. He stood still watching her. And when she stopped trembling, she rushed as quickly as she could back to the Prince's bed, and slipped under the coverlet beside him. He had never awakened. She lay in the dark waiting for Lord Gregory to come but he did not, and she soon realized he would not dream of waking the Prince, and then she was half dozing. She was thinking of Prince Alexi in a thousand ways, of the redness of his sore flesh after the paddle, of his beautiful brown eyes, and his strong, somewhat compact body. She was thinking of his glossy hair against her, the secret kiss he gave her thighs, and how, after this terrible humiliation, he had given her that smile which was so serene and affectionate. The torment between her legs was no worse than before, and no better. She dared not touch it with her fingers, lest she be discovered, and it was too shameful to think of such things, and she was sure the Prince would never allow it. THE SLAVES' HALL IT WAS late afternoon when Beauty awoke. She realized that the Prince and Lord Gregory were in an argument. Immediately, she was afraid, but as she lay still she perceived that Lord Gregory had obviously not told the Prince what he had seen.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “She’s young, you see, she’s pretty,” she went on. “Do you know, Anna, my youth and my beauty are gone, taken by whom? By him and his children. I have worked for him, and all I had has gone in his service, and now of course any fresh, vulgar creature has more charm for him. No doubt they talked of me together, or, worse still, they were silent. Do you understand?” Again her eyes glowed with hatred. “And after that he will tell me.... What! can I believe him? Never! No, everything is over, everything that once made my comfort, the reward of my work, and my sufferings.... Would you believe it, I was teaching Grisha just now: once this was a joy to me, now it is a torture. What have I to strive and toil for? Why are the children here? What’s so awful is that all at once my heart’s turned, and instead of love and tenderness, I have nothing but hatred for him; yes, hatred. I could kill him.” “Darling Dolly, I understand, but don’t torture yourself. You are so distressed, so overwrought, that you look at many things mistakenly.” Dolly grew calmer, and for two minutes both were silent. “What’s to be done? Think for me, Anna, help me. I have thought over everything, and I see nothing.” Anna could think of nothing, but her heart responded instantly to each word, to each change of expression of her sister-in-law. “One thing I would say,” began Anna. “I am his sister, I know his character, that faculty of forgetting everything, everything” (she waved her hand before her forehead), “that faculty for being completely carried away, but for completely repenting too. He cannot believe it, he cannot comprehend now how he can have acted as he did.” “No; he understands, he understood!” Dolly broke in. “But I ... you are forgetting me ... does it make it easier for me?” “Wait a minute. When he told me, I will own I did not realize all the awfulness of your position. I saw nothing but him, and that the family was broken up. I felt sorry for him, but after talking to you, I see it, as a woman, quite differently. I see your agony, and I can’t tell you how sorry I am for you! But, Dolly, darling, I fully realize your sufferings, only there is one thing I don’t know; I don’t know ... I don’t know how much love there is still in your heart for him. That you know—whether there is enough for you to be able to forgive him. If there is, forgive him!” “No,” Dolly was beginning, but Anna cut her short, kissing her hand once more.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I now wondered if Valechka (as the colonel called her) was really worth shooting, or strangling, or drowning. She had very vulnerable legs, and I decided I would limit myself to hurting her very horribly as soon as we were alone. But we never were. Valechka—by now shedding torrents of tears tinged with the mess of her rainbow make-up,—started to fill anyhow a trunk, and two suitcases, and a bursting carton, and visions of putting on my mountain boots and taking a running kick at her rump were of course impossible to put into execution with the cursed colonel hovering around all the time. I cannot say he behaved insolently or anything like that; on the contrary, he displayed, as a small sideshow in the theatricals I had been inveigled in, a discreet old-world civility, punctuating his movements with all sorts of mispronounced apologies ( j’ai demannde pardonne —excuse me— est-ce que j’ai puis —may I—and so forth), and turning away tactfully when Valechka took down with a flourish her pink panties from the clothesline above the tub; but he seemed to be all over the place at once, le gredin , agreeing his frame with the anatomy of the flat, reading in my chair my newspaper, untying a knotted string, rolling a cigarette, counting the teaspoons, visiting the bathroom, helping his moll to wrap up the electric fan her father had given her, and carrying streetward her luggage. I sat with arms folded, one hip on the window sill, dying of hate and boredom. At last both were out of the quivering apartment—the vibration of the door I had slammed after them still rang in my every nerve, a poor substitute for the backhand slap with which I ought to have hit her across the cheekbone according to the rules of the movies. Clumsily playing my part, I stomped to the bathroom to check if they had taken my English toilet water; they had not; but I noticed with a spasm of fierce disgust that the former Counselor of the Tsar, after thoroughly easing his bladder, had not flushed the toilet.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I was soon discouraged; but Lo kept following the scent of rich food ads, while I derived a not exclusively economic kick from such roadside signs as T IMBER H OTEL , Children under 14 Free . On the other hand, I shudder when recalling that soi-disant “high-class” resort in a Midwestern state, which advertised “raid-the-icebox” midnight snacks and, intrigued by my accent, wanted to know my dead wife’s and dead mother’s maiden names. A two-days’ stay there cost me a hundred and twenty-four dollars! And do you remember, Miranda, that other “ultrasmart” robbers’ den with complimentary morning coffee and circulating ice water, and no children under sixteen (no Lolitas, of course)? Immediately upon arrival at one of the plainer motor courts which became our habitual haunts, she would set the electric fan a-whirr, or induce me to drop a quarter into the radio, or she would read all the signs and inquire with a whine why she could not go riding up some advertised trail or swimming in that local pool of warm mineral water. Most often, in the slouching, bored way she cultivated, Lo would fall prostrate and abominably desirable into a red springchair or a green chaise longue, or a steamer chair of striped canvas with footrest and canopy, or a sling chair, or any other lawn chair under a garden umbrella on the patio, and it would take hours of blandishments, threats and promises to make her lend me for a few seconds her brown limbs in the seclusion of the five-dollar room before undertaking anything she might prefer to my poor joy. A combination of naïveté and deception, of charm and vulgarity, of blue sulks and rosy mirth, Lolita, when she chose, could be a most exasperating brat. I was not really quite prepared for her fits of disorganized boredom, intense and vehement griping, her sprawling, droopy, dopey-eyed style, and what is called goofing off—a kind of diffused clowning which she thought was tough in a boyish hoodlum way. Mentally, I found her to be a disgustingly conventional little girl. Sweet hot jazz, square dancing, gooey fudge sundaes, musicals, movie magazines and so forth—these were the obvious items in her list of beloved things. The Lord knows how many nickels I fed to the gorgeous music boxes that came with every meal we had! I still hear the nasal voices of those invisibles serenading her, people with names like Sammy and Jo and Eddy and Tony and Peggy and Guy and Patti and Rex, and sentimental song hits, all of them as similar to my ear as her various candies were to my palate.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I said she was to go upstairs and show me all her hiding places. It was a strident and hateful scene. I held her by her knobby wrist and she kept turning and twisting it this way and that, surreptitiously trying to find a weak point so as to wrench herself free at a favorable moment, but I held her quite hard and in fact hurt her rather badly for which I hope my heart may rot, and once or twice she jerked her arm so violently that I feared her wrist might snap, and all the while she stared at me with those unforgettable eyes where cold anger and hot tears struggled, and our voices were drowning the telephone, and when I grew aware of its ringing she instantly escaped. With people in movies I seem to share the services of the machina telephonica and its sudden god. This time it was an irate neighbor. The east window happened to be agape in the living room, with the blind mercifully down, however; and behind it the damp black night of a sour New England spring had been breathlessly listening to us. I had always thought that type of haddocky spinster with the obscene mind was the result of considerable literary inbreeding in modern fiction; but now I am convinced that prude and prurient Miss East—or to explode her incognito, Miss Fenton Lebone—had been probably protruding three-quarter-way from her bedroom window as she strove to catch the gist of our quarrel. “… This racket … lacks all sense of …” quacked the receiver, “we do not live in a tenement here. I must emphatically …” I apologized for my daughter’s friends being so loud. Young people, you know—and cradled the next quack and a half. Downstairs the screen door banged. Lo? Escaped? Through the casement on the stairs I saw a small impetuous ghost slip through the shrubs; a silvery dot in the dark—hub of bicycle wheel—moved, shivered, and she was gone. It so happened that the car was spending the night in a repair shop downtown. I had no other alternative than to pursue on foot the winged fugitive. Even now, after more than three years have heaved and elapsed, I cannot visualize that spring-night street, that already so leafy street, without a gasp of panic. Before their lighted porch Miss Lester was promenading Miss Fabian’s dropsical dackel. Mr. Hyde almost knocked it over. Walk three steps and run three. A tepid rain started to drum on the chestnut leaves. At the next corner, pressing Lolita against an iron railing, a blurred youth held and kissed—no, not her, mistake. My talons still tingling, I flew on. Half a mile or so east of number fourteen, Thayer Street tangles with a private lane and a cross street; the latter leads to the town proper; in front of the first drugstore, I saw—with what melody of relief!—Lolita’s fair bicycle waiting for her.

• From Querelle (1953)

  112 I JEAN GENET "\Vho is it you're talking about?" " 'Bout a dirty shit, if you want to know. Don't you worry. You'll see him. See for yourself. I'm telling you, he won't be no problem to us, no more." They went down the Rue du Sac and turned into the Rue B . . . Gil was heading for the bistro where he was sure to find Theo. They went in. As they heard the glass door opening, the patrons of the place turned their heads to look at them. As if in a cloud, and very far away from him, Gil saw the mason, alone in front of a glass and a liter bottle of wine, sitting at the table next to the door. Gil dug his hands deep into his pockets and said to Roger: - "You see that one? That's him." And to Th eo : "Hi there." He went up to him. Theo was smiling. "But aren't you going to ask us to join you in a glass, Theo? This here's my buddy." And, before he had done talking, he grabbed the bottle by the neck and with a motion swift as forked lightning broke it against the table. With the jagged bottleneck, twisting it like a drill, he stab bed the mason through the throat and yelled: "I told you, there's no longer any room for you!" By the time the patronne and the drinkers, stupefied, stupid, thought to interven-e, Gil was outside. He disappeared in the fog. Round about ten P.M. the police came to see Roger at his mother's house. They let him go again the following morning. A twin escutcheon of France and Brittany is the principal ornament of the majestic fa�de of the old penitentiary of Brest, whose architectural features derive from the days of sailing ships. Bracketed together, these two oval shields of stone are not Bat but convex, protuberant. They imply the presence of a sphere which the sculptor did not carve in its entirety, but

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Far too often, the debate over the nature of human sexuality seems like a proxy war between antagonistic politico-economic philosophies. Defenders of the standard narrative see Cain’s gain as Abel’s loss, period. “That’s just how life is, kid,” they’ll tell you. “It’s human nature. Self-interest makes the world go round, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, it’s a dog-eat-dog world and always has been.” This free-market vision of human mating hinges on the assumption that sexual monogamy is intrinsic to human nature. Absent monogamy (individual male “ownership” of female reproductive capacity), the I-win-you-lose dynamic collapses. As we outlined above, Buss and his colleagues get around the many glaring flaws in the theory (our extravagant sexual capacity, ubiquitous adultery in all cultures, rampant promiscuity in both our closest primate relatives, the absence of any monogamous primate living in large social groups) with pretzel logic and special pleading about Homo sapiens’ internally conflicted, self-defeating “mixed mating strategies.” Twist and stretch. Buss and his colleagues have conducted scores of cross-cultural studies designed to confirm that men and women experience jealousy differently from each other, in consistent gender-specific ways. These researchers claim to have confirmed two important assumptions underlying the standard narrative: that men are universally worried about paternity certainty (hence, his mate’s sexual fidelity is his main concern), while women are universally concerned with access to men’s resources (so a woman will feel more threatened by any emotional intimacy that might inspire him to leave her for another woman). These gender-specific manifestations of sexual jealousy would appear to strongly support the standard narrative. In a study typical of this research, Buss and his colleagues asked 1,122 people to imagine their partner becoming interested in someone else. They asked, “What would upset or distress you more: (a) imagining your partner forming a deep emotional (but not sexual) relationship with that person, or (b) imagining your partner enjoying a sexual (but not emotional) relationship with that person?” In studies like this conducted on college campuses around the United States and Europe, Buss and his colleagues consistently got more-or-less the same results. They found that men and women differed by roughly 35 percent in their responses, seeming to confirm their hypothesis. “Women continued to express greater upset about a partner’s emotional infidelity,” Buss writes, “even if it did not involve sex. Men continued to show more upset than women about a partner’s sexual infidelity, even if it did not involve emotional involvement.”8

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  They were just reaching the dammed-up stream on their way to the starting point. Several of the riders were in front and several behind, when suddenly Vronsky heard the sound of a horse galloping in the mud behind him, and he was overtaken by Mahotin on his white-legged, lop-eared Gladiator. Mahotin smiled, showing his long teeth, but Vronsky looked angrily at him. He did not like him, and regarded him now as his most formidable rival. He was angry with him for galloping past and exciting his mare. Frou-Frou started into a gallop, her left foot forward, made two bounds, and fretting at the tightened reins, passed into a jolting trot, bumping her rider up and down. Cord, too, scowled, and followed Vronsky almost at a trot. Chapter 25 There were seventeen officers in all riding in this race. The race course was a large three-mile ring of the form of an ellipse in front of the pavilion. On this course nine obstacles had been arranged: the stream, a big and solid barrier five feet high, just before the pavilion, a dry ditch, a ditch full of water, a precipitous slope, an Irish barricade (one of the most difficult obstacles, consisting of a mound fenced with brushwood, beyond which was a ditch out of sight for the horses, so that the horse had to clear both obstacles or might be killed); then two more ditches filled with water, and one dry one; and the end of the race was just facing the pavilion. But the race began not in the ring, but two hundred yards away from it, and in that part of the course was the first obstacle, a dammed-up stream, seven feet in breadth, which the racers could leap or wade through as they preferred. Three times they were ranged ready to start, but each time some horse thrust itself out of line, and they had to begin again. The umpire who was starting them, Colonel Sestrin, was beginning to lose his temper, when at last for the fourth time he shouted “Away!” and the racers started. Every eye, every opera-glass, was turned on the brightly colored group of riders at the moment they were in line to start. “They’re off! They’re starting!” was heard on all sides after the hush of expectation. And little groups and solitary figures among the public began running from place to place to get a better view. In the very first minute the close group of horsemen drew out, and it could be seen that they were approaching the stream in twos and threes and one behind another. To the spectators it seemed as though they had all started simultaneously, but to the racers there were seconds of difference that had great value to them.

• From Querelle (1953)

  139 I QUERELLE right. He was gnashing his teeth. In the presence of Dede, his brother, drunk with fury and none too quietly either, had addressed him with: ··You dirty bastard. You let Nona bugger you. \Vhy the hell did that shitty boat of yours ever bring you here, you bloody fucking shit!" Querelle, pale, stared Robert in the eye: ··rve done worse, buddy. And I do damn well as I please. And you better start making tracks, or I'll show you what shit is and what it tastes like." The young boy turned rigid. He was waiting for Robert to defend his sull ied honor until the blood flowed again. The big men would fight again. Nevertheless Querelle, as he went off to the right, was already thinking of ways to rub his brother's pale face into some of his own medicine, so that, once they were quit s in terms of their apparent (and real) hatred, he might rejoin him within himself. His head held high, straight, rigid, staring straight ahead, his lips but a narrow line, his elbows held close to the body-his entire bearing stiffer and more martinet like than usual, he directed his steps toward the city ramparts, more exactly, toward the old wall in which he had hidden his treasure. The closer he got to his destination, the less bitter he felt. He did not, now, exact ly remember the deeds of derring-do that had put him in possession of that treasure, but the jewels themselves-their mere proximity-were the effective proof of his co urage and of his existence. Arrived on the slope facing the holy wall, invisible in the fog, Querelle stopped and st ood still, legs wide apar t, hands in the pockets of his peacoat: he knew hi mself to be very close to one of the hearths he had lit on the surface of the globe, he was enveloped by their sweet radiance. As his wealth, to him, was a refuge where he could feel com forted by his sense of power, Querelle was already making his hated brother the heir to it. Only one thing still bothered and depressed him a little, the fa ct that Dcdc had been present at

• From Querelle (1953)

  176 I JEAN GENET it was, I had to be born. They can go to hell for all I care, they're just a couple of old shitheads." He tried to stay as long as possible in this state of sacrilegious fury, as it provided him with an armor of pride and rebellion, made him throw back his shoulders, raise his chin. He hoped it would become his habitual condition: to hate and despise his parents, so as not to be overwhelmed by sorrow in grieving for them. When he first entered into this experience, he allowed himself a few minutes of daydreaming in which he curled up, chin on his chest and hugging himself, to become the obedient and adored child of his parents again. Thus he undid the murder, fantasizing about a loving and simple life that did not include his crime. And then it was time to get back to the demolition job ag ain. "I wiped him out, and that was the right thing to do. If it had to be done again, I'd do it again.'' He made a great effort, killed (or wanted to kill) all feelings of compassion that were still menacing him. "Poor guy. He's a big bruiser, he's strong, but what has he ever done? Nothing. Goddamn greenhorn," he thought about Querelle. He was able to poke fun at him verbally, but there was a deep and inchoate feeling in him that caused him to respect the young salt whose calm manner, age, and standing in the "milieu" as well as his intact position in society served Gil as a kind of life-saver that held his head a little above the waves of despair. From his second visit on, Querelle had shown him self in a more relaxed mood. He had cracke� jokes about death, and Gil had gained the impression that the death of a man was of little importance to this sailor. "So you don't really think it was such a horrible thing to do, to snuff that sonofabitch?" ('When Roger wasn't there, Gil could let himself go a little. He didn't have to play the role of the man.) "What, me? Listen, buddy, that's not the kind of thing I lose any sie · ep over. Just think of it. He was bullying you. He was