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 Querelle (1953)

  194 I JEAN GENET the course of action he had initiated, he would lose his special standing as a cop. All Querelle saw in him was a cop trying to spy on him. With a shrewdness he wasn't quite conscious of, Querelle decided to counter any suspicions of smuggling, or even theft (the only ones this cop might have come up with while visiting La Feria, maybe one of the girls had been gossip ing), by piling on the most tragic elements. He had to make the most out of this one simple opportunity, in order to hide the murder-the idea of which, however fleetingly, always is on a cop's mind. He had to provoke the detective in the lower regions, then to defend himself with bravura. Th us Querelle st arted out by appearing vulnerable in a certain way. He engaged Mario's attention by a thousand pyrotechnics: in the tone of his voice, the clenching of his jaws, his dark look, the furrows on his face. "Well ... Would you explain that?" Mario could have restored peace by simply saying something along the lines of "I just wanted to know if you had any goodies for me," but the strength he sensed in Querelle communicated itself to him and gave him, if no greater degree of physical vigor, more courage and a greater sense of purpose. Querelle's attitude, frightening in its unexpectedness, his resolute "cool" bespoke a manliness Mario welcomed, and fervently, as it pre vented him from just fading away on some noncommittal note of retreat. Querelle reinforced the cop in him. Looking Querelle straight in the eye, the sparks flying off his voice to mingle with those that had issued out of Querelle's mouth and �till hung in the air (as it were), Mario gave an answer: . "I said what I said." There was no immediate reaction to that from Querelle. Tight-lipped he stood there, breathing heavily through his nose, making the nostrils quiver. Mario thought how wonderful it would be to stick one's prick into such an angry tiger. Querelle allowed himself a few seconds to scrutinize Mario, to hate him a little more, and to limber up his physical and moral muscles

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  The subcommittee’s legal counsel asked Ben Weingart what would happen if any of the dummy corporations defaulted on his $112 million in FHA mortgages. Weingart said, “I will make the mortgages good.” The subcommittee counsel asked, “Then you will personally endorse the mortgages?” Weingart said angrily, “No, I will not.” 300 According to their Senate testimony, Louis Boyar and Ben Weingart made more than $2 million from constructing just two tracts of “mutual homes” under their interpretation of Section 213. They made another $1 million on each 600-acre section of empty land they sold to the nonprofit cooperatives they controlled. The three developers may have made as much as $12 million by the time they dissolved their corporation. 301 Louis Boyar died in 1976, after he had raised billions of dollars for Israel as a cofounder and chairman of Israel Bonds. He built a high school for gifted children in Jerusalem and named it for his wife. He built the Truman Center for the Advancement of Peace at Hebrew University. Ben Weingart died in 1980. The charitable foundation he and his wife set up in 1951 gave my city at least $12 million in cash grants and land. The foundation’s gifts came after Weingart had been declared incompetent by a judge, and after his business associates took control of his charitable foundation. Some of the foundation’s gifts came after Weingart was dead. Weingart’s foundation helped construct a community center, a senior citizens center, a library, and a new YMCA. Mark Taper died in 1994. Boyar is remembered at the synagogue in my city because his first contributions were to its building fund. Weingart is remembered because the city gratefully put his name on the community facilities his foundation financed. Taper is remembered for his gift of either a fish tank—or the fish—at the county library next to city hall. The librarians don’t know which. 302 Mark Taper’s charitable foundation donated $1.5 million toward the construction of one of the theaters in the Los Angeles County Music Center. Ben Weingart’s charitable foundation turned the El Rey Hotel on skid row into a shelter and rehabilitation center for the homeless. 303 In 1936, Miriam Clark, the wife of J. Ross Clark, provided the cost of construction for a church in the suburban development her nephew was building. The Montana Land Company provided the site on Arbor Road. She gave the church in memory of her son, Walter Clark, who had died on the Titanic . It was a nondenominational church. 304 Some of the men and women in my neighborhood had lived part of their childhood on the outskirts of cotton towns in tents provided by the federal Farm Security Administration. Some had lived in tarpaper shacks among the oil fields outside of Bakersfield. The shacks didn’t have indoor plumbing. Some had been the first of their family to graduate from high school. Okies who grew up in California learned to hide their border state twang.

• From Querelle (1953)

  He pronounced these words with a twisted sneer directed right at the landlubber, and with his face fixed in that expression he waited, hands in pockets, until the young man had turned and gone. Then, feeling good and even a little tougher than before, he continued on down the Rue de Siam. Arriving on board Quereiie instantly perceived an opportunity for the dispensation of rough justice. He was seized by sudden and violent fury on noticing that one of the sailors on the larboard deck was wearing his beret the very same way he thought Quereiie alone should wear it. He felt positively robbed, when he recognized that particular angle, that lock of hair sticking up like a flame, licking the front of the beret, the whole effect of it as legendary, now, as the white fur bonnet worn by Vacher, the kiiier of shepherds. Quereiie walked up, his cruel eyes fixed on those of the hapless sailor, and told him, in a matter-of.fact tone: "Put it on straight." The other one did not understand. A little taken aback, vaguely frightened, he stared at Quereiie without budging. With a sweep of his hand Querelle sent the beret flying down on to the deck, but before the sailor could bend down to pick it up, Querelle pounded his face with his fists, rapidly, and with a vengeance. Querelle loved luxury. It seems obvious that he had a feeling for the common beliefs, that he did glory in his Frenchness, to some extent, and in being a Navy man, suscepbole like any male to national and military pride. Yet we have to remember some facts of his early youth, not because these extend across the entire psyche of our hero, but in order to make plausible an 35 I QUERELLE attitude that does not boil down to a simple matter of choice. Let us consider his characteristic manner of walking. Querelle grew up among hoodlums, and that is a world of most studied attitudes, round about the age of fifteen-when you roll your shoulders quite ostentatiously, keep your hands thrust deep into your pockets, wear your pants too tight and turned up at the bottoms. Later on he walked with shorter steps, legs tight and the insides of his thighs rubbing against each other, but holding his arms well away from his body, making it appear that this was due to overdeveloped biceps and dorsals. It was only shortly after he committed his first murder that he arrived at a gait and posture peculiar to himself: he stalked slowly, both arms stiffly extended, fists clenched in front of his fly, not touching it; legs well apart.

• From Querelle (1953)

  "I'm fine, kiddo. Shipshape. That old fucker, he's out of it now. It won't take much. He better not mess around with me. I wasn't born yesterday, you know. He ain't no man, anyway, he's a faggot! A goddamn faggot! D'you hear me, Roger, a dirty faggot! Or a fairy, if you prefer. But us, we're buddies, we're like brothers. We can do as we damn well please. We have a right, being like brothers-in-law. It's all in the family. But that one, he's just a faggot!" He talked fast so as not to falter, he walked fast so as not to stumble. "Listen, Gil, haven't you had a few too many?" "Don't you worry, kid. Paid for 'em meself. Don't need his shitty dough. But like I said, now we're gonna have a drink. Come on." Roger smiled. He was happy. His neck felt proud under Gil's calloused and gentle hand. "No room for him, no more. He's a mosquito. I tell you, that's what he is, just a damn little skeeter. And I'll swat him." 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 Theo : "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 stabbed 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.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  When we walked in the counterman asked what we wanted and I remember answering with the casual sharpness which had become my habit: "We want a hamburger and a cup of coffee, what do you think we want?" I do not know why, after a year of such rebuffs , I so completely fa iled to anticipate his answer, which was, of course, "We don't serve Negroes here." This reply f . <iled to discompose me, at least for the moment. I made some sardonic comment about the name of the diner and we walked out into the streets. This was the time of what was called the "brown-out," when the lights in all American cities were very dim. When we re-entered the streets something happened to me which had the tcJrce of an optical illusion, or a nightmare. The streets were very crowded and I was fa cing north. People were mov ing in every direction but it seemed to me, in that instant, that all of the people I could see, and many more than that, were moving toward me, against me, and that everyone was white. I remember how their f . <ces gleamed. And I fe lt, like a physical sensation, a click at the nape of my neck as though NOTES OF A NATIVE SON 7 1 some interior string connecting my head to my body had been cut. I began to walk. I heard my friend call after me, but I ignored him. Heaven only knows what was going on in his mind, but he had the good sense not to touch me-l don't know what would have happened if he had-and to keep me in sight. I don't know what was going on in my mind, either; I certainly had no conscious plan. I wanted to do something to crush these white fa ces, which were crushing me. I walked fo r perhaps a block or two until I came to an enormous, glit tering, and fa shionable restaurant in which I knew not even the intercession of the Virgin would cause me to be served. I pushed through the doors and took the first vacant scat I saw, at a table fo r two, and waited. I do not know how long I waited and I rather wonder, until today, what I could possibly have looked like. Whatever I looked like, I frightened the waitress who shortly appeared, and the moment she appeared all of my fury flowed towards her. I hated her fo r her white fa ce, and fo r her great, astounded, frightened eyes.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Maybe I have. And do you know why? You’ll say again that I’m a reactionist, or some other terrible word; but all the same it does annoy and anger me to see on all sides the impoverishing of the nobility to which I belong, and, in spite of the amalgamation of classes, I’m glad to belong. And their impoverishment is not due to extravagance—that would be nothing; living in good style—that’s the proper thing for noblemen; it’s only the nobles who know how to do it. Now the peasants about us buy land, and I don’t mind that. The gentleman does nothing, while the peasant works and supplants the idle man. That’s as it ought to be. And I’m very glad for the peasant. But I do mind seeing the process of impoverishment from a sort of—I don’t know what to call it—innocence. Here a Polish speculator bought for half its value a magnificent estate from a young lady who lives in Nice. And there a merchant will get three acres of land, worth ten roubles, as security for the loan of one rouble. Here, for no kind of reason, you’ve made that rascal a present of thirty thousand roubles.” “Well, what should I have done? Counted every tree?” “Of course, they must be counted. You didn’t count them, but Ryabinin did. Ryabinin’s children will have means of livelihood and education, while yours maybe will not!” “Well, you must excuse me, but there’s something mean in this counting. We have our business and they have theirs, and they must make their profit. Anyway, the thing’s done, and there’s an end of it. And here come some poached eggs, my favorite dish. And Agafea Mihalovna will give us that marvelous herb-brandy....” Stepan Arkadyevitch sat down at the table and began joking with Agafea Mihalovna, assuring her that it was long since he had tasted such a dinner and such a supper. “Well, you do praise it, anyway,” said Agafea Mihalovna, “but Konstantin Dmitrievitch, give him what you will—a crust of bread—he’ll eat it and walk away.” Though Levin tried to control himself, he was gloomy and silent. He wanted to put one question to Stepan Arkadyevitch, but he could not bring himself to the point, and could not find the words or the moment in which to put it. Stepan Arkadyevitch had gone down to his room, undressed, again washed, and attired in a nightshirt with goffered frills, he had got into bed, but Levin still lingered in his room, talking of various trifling matters, and not daring to ask what he wanted to know. “How wonderfully they make this soap,” he said gazing at a piece of soap he was handling, which Agafea Mihalovna had put ready for the visitor but Oblonsky had not used. “Only look; why, it’s a work of art.”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Stepan Arkadyevitch went upstairs with his pocket bulging with notes, which the merchant had paid him for three months in advance. The business of the forest was over, the money in his pocket; their shooting had been excellent, and Stepan Arkadyevitch was in the happiest frame of mind, and so he felt specially anxious to dissipate the ill-humor that had come upon Levin. He wanted to finish the day at supper as pleasantly as it had been begun. Levin certainly was out of humor, and in spite of all his desire to be affectionate and cordial to his charming visitor, he could not control his mood. The intoxication of the news that Kitty was not married had gradually begun to work upon him. Kitty was not married, but ill, and ill from love for a man who had slighted her. This slight, as it were, rebounded upon him. Vronsky had slighted her, and she had slighted him, Levin. Consequently Vronsky had the right to despise Levin, and therefore he was his enemy. But all this Levin did not think out. He vaguely felt that there was something in it insulting to him, and he was not angry now at what had disturbed him, but he fell foul of everything that presented itself. The stupid sale of the forest, the fraud practiced upon Oblonsky and concluded in his house, exasperated him. “Well, finished?” he said, meeting Stepan Arkadyevitch upstairs. “Would you like supper?” “Well, I wouldn’t say no to it. What an appetite I get in the country! Wonderful! Why didn’t you offer Ryabinin something?” “Oh, damn him!” “Still, how you do treat him!” said Oblonsky. “You didn’t even shake hands with him. Why not shake hands with him?” “Because I don’t shake hands with a waiter, and a waiter’s a hundred times better than he is.” “What a reactionist you are, really! What about the amalgamation of classes?” said Oblonsky. “Anyone who likes amalgamating is welcome to it, but it sickens me.” “You’re a regular reactionist, I see.” “Really, I have never considered what I am. I am Konstantin Levin, and nothing else.” “And Konstantin Levin very much out of temper,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling. “Yes, I am out of temper, and do you know why? Because—excuse me—of your stupid sale....” Stepan Arkadyevitch frowned good-humoredly, like one who feels himself teased and attacked for no fault of his own. “Come, enough about it!” he said. “When did anybody ever sell anything without being told immediately after the sale, ‘It was worth much more’? But when one wants to sell, no one will give anything.... No, I see you’ve a grudge against that unlucky Ryabinin.”

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  “You have always been angry,” she said. “You have always been angry at me. Hated me. Even when you were little. You’ve always been mad.” “This is ridiculous,” I said. “How can a baby be mad? It’s just a baby and this is all just about flowers.” Even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t just about flowers. This was about something else. Something that at twenty-two, I could feel moving underneath me, but I couldn’t see. I could feel it shaking the places where I stood, where I sat, and where I lay down. But I could not name it. My words made her eyelids twitch. She wasn’t looking at me. Her jaw clenched and released. Clenched and released. I opened the door and got out. For the rest of the day, I vibrated with my mother’s rage, which hung over us until I left to go back to Minneapolis and finish planning my wedding. We had real flowers—hydrangeas and roses. I now know that the moment in the SUV, between the smell of our greasy burgers and the swish of the watery Coke left in our Styrofoam cups, was the world of my mother’s anger. A vast world that involved many small pains and even more large ones, grief, anxiety, and the secrets tucked in between. Her mother was there too, looming somewhere underneath the stack of white napkins or the straw wrappers on the floor. I can only guess at what else was there—her own marriage, her own fears and private losses. She had nowhere else for them to go, so here they came, tumbling out in a conversation about fake and real, hydrangeas and roses. “WHY ARE YOU SO ANGRY?” A BOYFRIEND DEMANDED OF ME once. He listened to Korn and Metallica, raging with his music as it blared in his dorm room; I loved to blast out Green Day’s “Minority” screaming out, “I don’t need your authority / down with the moral majority!” He had thought it was funny and quaint even: my rage on a playlist was cute. My rage in his face when he made fun of the Vagina Monologues was not. “Whatever happened to you, it’s not enough for you to be this pissy,” he said. We broke up the next week. Years later, someone would email me after reading an article I wrote. “Whatever you are mad at,” the emailer explained, “someone else has it worse. Why are you so mad? You don’t get to be mad.” Anger is always reserved for someone else. And yet, I’ve been in a room with a woman who escaped a war, who lost her father in ethnic cleansing, whose mother burned her hair, whose cousin raped her. “What right do I have to be angry, when I am alive?” she said. Anger is the privilege of the truly broken, and yet, I’ve never met a woman who was broken enough that she allowed herself to be angry.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Then another sitting at the table spoke and said: “In faith you say true, neither yet do they spare or favour the living. For I know one not far hence that was cruelly handled by them and hath suffered much with all manner of cutting of his face"; whereat all the company laughed heartily, and looked upon oné that sat apart at the board's end, who being amazed at all their gazing and angry withal, T9 21 LUCIUS APULEIUS obstinatione confusus indigna murmurabundus cum vellet exsurgere, “ Immo mi Thelyphron” Byrrhaena inquit * Et subsiste paulisper et more tuae urbanitatis fabulam illam tuam remetire, ut et filius meus iste Lucius lepidi sermonis tui perfruatur comitate." — At ille ** Tu quidem domina " ait * In officio manes sanctae tuae bonitatis: sed ferenda non est quorundam insolentia." Sic ille commotus ; sed instantia Byrrhaenae, quae eum adiuratione suae salutis in- gratis cogebat effari, perfecit ut vellet, ac sic aggeratis in cumulum stragulis et effultus in cubitum sub- erectusque in torum porrigit dexteram, et ad instar oratorum conformat articulum duobusque infimis conclusis digitis ceteros eminus porrigens et infesto pollice subrigens infit Thelyphron : *Pupillus ego Mileto profectus ad spectaculum Olympicum, cum haec etiam loca provinciae fami- gerabilis adire cuperem, peragrata cuncta Thessalia fuscis avibus Larissam accessi. Ac dum singula pererrans, tenuato admodum viatico, paupertati meae fomenta conquiro, conspicor medio foro procerum quendam senem: insistebat lapidem claraque voce praedicabat, si qui mortuum servare vellet, de pretio liceretur; et ad quempiam praetereuntium ‘Quid hoc’ inquam ‘comperior? Hicine mortui solent aufugere?' ‘Tace’ respondit ille, ‘Nam oppido 80 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK II murmured somewhat and would have risen from the table had not Byrrhaena spoken to him and said: * [| pray thee, friend Thelyphron, sit still, and accord- ing to thy accustomed courtesy declare unto us thy story, to the end that my son Lucius may be de- lighted with the pleasantness of thy tale." To whom he answered: * Ah dame, you are always the same in the office of your bounty and thoughtfulness, but the insolence of some is not to be supported." This he said very angrily, but Byrrhaena was earnest upon him and conjured him by her own life that he should, how unwilling soever, tell his tale, whereby he was enforced to declare the same: and so (lapping up the end of the table-cloth into an heap) he leaned with his elbow thereon, and sat up upon the couch and held out his right hand in the manner of an orator, shutting down the two smaller fingers and stretching out the other three, and pointing up with his thumb a little, and said :

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  And when they were all crept crouching into the house, and we fast tied with strong halters at the door, they began to chide with an old woman there, crooked with age, who had the government and rule of all those young men, and said : “ How is it, old 153 LUCIUS APULEIUS vitae dedecus primum et Orci fastidium solum, sic nobis otiosa domi residens lusitabis, nec nostris tam magnis tamque periculosis laboribus solacium de tam sera refectione tribues? Quae diebus ac noctibus nil quicquam rei quam merum saevienti ventri tuo soles aviditer ingurgitare," Tremens ad haec et stridenti vocula. pavida sic anus: “ At vobis, fortissimi fide- ' lissimique mei hospitatores iuvenes, affatim cuncta suavi sapore percocta pulmenta praesto sunt, panis numerosus, vinum probe calicibus exfricatis affluenter immissum, et ex more calida tumuituario lavacro vestro praeparata." In fine sermonis huius statim sese de- vestiunt, nudatique et flammae largissimae vapore recreati calidaque perfusi et oleo peruncti mensas dapibus largiter instructas accumbunt. 8 Commodum cubuerant, et ecce quidam longe plures numero iuvenes adveniunt alii, quos incunctanter adaeque latrones arbitrarere, nam et ipsi praedas aureorum argentariorumque nummorum ae vascu- lorum vestisque sericae et intextae filis aureis in- vehebant: hi simili lavacro refoti inter toros sociorum sese reponunt. Tunc sorte ducti ministerium faciunt: estur ac potatur incondite pulmentis acervatim, pani- bus aggeratim, poculis agminatim ingestis; clamore ludunt, strepitu cantillant, conviciis iocantur, ac iam cetera semiferis Lapithis evantibus ! Centaurisque similia. Tunc inter eos unus, qui robore ceteros antistabat, * Nos quidem" inquit «Milonis Hypa- tini domum fortiter expugnavimus. Praeter tantam ! Nic. Heinsius' ingenious emendation for the meaningless ebcinibus or tebainibus of the MSS, — 154 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK IV witch, old trot, that art the shame of life and rejected of very death, that thou sittest idly all day at home, and (having no regard to our perilous labours) hast provided nothing for our suppers thus late, but sittest doing nought but swilling wine into that greedy belly of thine from morning to night ?” Then the old woman trembled and began to say in a terrified and harsh voice: “ Behold, my puissant and faithful masters, you shall have meat and pottage enough by and by, cooked with a sweet savour. Here is first store of bread, wine plenty, filled in clean rinsed pots, likewise hot water prepared to bathe you hastily after your wont." Which when she had said, they put off all their garments and refreshed themselves by a great fire, and after that they were washed with the hot water and anointed with oil, they sat down at the table garnished with all kinds of dainty meat.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Possibly it does not pay,” answered Sviazhsky. “That merely proves either that I’m a bad manager, or that I’ve sunk my capital for the increase of my rents.” “Oh, rent!” Levin cried with horror. “Rent there may be in Europe, where land has been improved by the labor put into it, but with us all the land is deteriorating from the labor put into it—in other words they’re working it out; so there’s no question of rent.” “How no rent? It’s a law.” “Then we’re outside the law; rent explains nothing for us, but simply muddles us. No, tell me how there can be a theory of rent?...” “Will you have some junket? Masha, pass us some junket or raspberries.” He turned to his wife. “Extraordinarily late the raspberries are lasting this year.” And in the happiest frame of mind Sviazhsky got up and walked off, apparently supposing the conversation to have ended at the very point when to Levin it seemed that it was only just beginning. Having lost his antagonist, Levin continued the conversation with the gray-whiskered landowner, trying to prove to him that all the difficulty arises from the fact that we don’t find out the peculiarities and habits of our laborer; but the landowner, like all men who think independently and in isolation, was slow in taking in any other person’s idea, and particularly partial to his own. He stuck to it that the Russian peasant is a swine and likes swinishness, and that to get him out of his swinishness one must have authority, and there is none; one must have the stick, and we have become so liberal that we have all of a sudden replaced the stick that served us for a thousand years by lawyers and model prisons, where the worthless, stinking peasant is fed on good soup and has a fixed allowance of cubic feet of air. “What makes you think,” said Levin, trying to get back to the question, “that it’s impossible to find some relation to the laborer in which the labor would become productive?” “That never could be so with the Russian peasantry; we’ve no power over them,” answered the landowner. “How can new conditions be found?” said Sviazhsky. Having eaten some junket and lighted a cigarette, he came back to the discussion. “All possible relations to the labor force have been defined and studied,” he said. “The relic of barbarism, the primitive commune with each guarantee for all, will disappear of itself; serfdom has been abolished—there remains nothing but free labor, and its forms are fixed and ready made, and must be adopted. Permanent hands, day-laborers, rammers—you can’t get out of those forms.” “But Europe is dissatisfied with these forms.” “Dissatisfied, and seeking new ones. And will find them, in all probability.” “That’s just what I was meaning,” answered Levin. “Why shouldn’t we seek them for ourselves?” “Because it would be just like inventing afresh the means for constructing railways. They are ready, invented.”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Kitty saw that her father had meant to make fun of Varenka, but that he could not do it because he liked her. “Come, so we shall see all your friends,” he went on, “even Madame Stahl, if she deigns to recognize me.” “Why, did you know her, papa?” Kitty asked apprehensively, catching the gleam of irony that kindled in the prince’s eyes at the mention of Madame Stahl. “I used to know her husband, and her too a little, before she’d joined the Pietists.” “What is a Pietist, papa?” asked Kitty, dismayed to find that what she prized so highly in Madame Stahl had a name. “I don’t quite know myself. I only know that she thanks God for everything, for every misfortune, and thanks God too that her husband died. And that’s rather droll, as they didn’t get on together.” “Who’s that? What a piteous face!” he asked, noticing a sick man of medium height sitting on a bench, wearing a brown overcoat and white trousers that fell in strange folds about his long, fleshless legs. This man lifted his straw hat, showed his scanty curly hair and high forehead, painfully reddened by the pressure of the hat. “That’s Petrov, an artist,” answered Kitty, blushing. “And that’s his wife,” she added, indicating Anna Pavlovna, who, as though on purpose, at the very instant they approached walked away after a child that had run off along a path. “Poor fellow! and what a nice face he has!” said the prince. “Why don’t you go up to him? He wanted to speak to you.” “Well, let us go, then,” said Kitty, turning round resolutely. “How are you feeling today?” she asked Petrov. Petrov got up, leaning on his stick, and looked shyly at the prince. “This is my daughter,” said the prince. “Let me introduce myself.” The painter bowed and smiled, showing his strangely dazzling white teeth. “We expected you yesterday, princess,” he said to Kitty. He staggered as he said this, and then repeated the motion, trying to make it seem as if it had been intentional. “I meant to come, but Varenka said that Anna Pavlovna sent word you were not going.” “Not going!” said Petrov, blushing, and immediately beginning to cough, and his eyes sought his wife. “Anita! Anita!” he said loudly, and the swollen veins stood out like cords on his thin white neck. Anna Pavlovna came up. “So you sent word to the princess that we weren’t going!” he whispered to her angrily, losing his voice. “Good morning, princess,” said Anna Pavlovna, with an assumed smile utterly unlike her former manner. “Very glad to make your acquaintance,” she said to the prince. “You’ve long been expected, prince.” “What did you send word to the princess that we weren’t going for?” the artist whispered hoarsely once more, still more angrily, obviously exasperated that his voice failed him so that he could not give his words the expression he would have liked to.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  As she came nearer and nearer to the familiar breeding places there was more and more earnestness in Laska’s exploration. A little marsh bird did not divert her attention for more than an instant. She made one circuit round the clump of reeds, was beginning a second, and suddenly quivered with excitement and became motionless. “Come, come, Stiva!” shouted Levin, feeling his heart beginning to beat more violently; and all of a sudden, as though some sort of shutter had been drawn back from his straining ears, all sounds, confused but loud, began to beat on his hearing, losing all sense of distance. He heard the steps of Stepan Arkadyevitch, mistaking them for the tramp of the horses in the distance; he heard the brittle sound of the twigs on which he had trodden, taking this sound for the flying of a grouse. He heard too, not far behind him, a splashing in the water, which he could not explain to himself. Picking his steps, he moved up to the dog. “Fetch it!” Not a grouse but a snipe flew up from beside the dog. Levin had lifted his gun, but at the very instant when he was taking aim, the sound of splashing grew louder, came closer, and was joined with the sound of Veslovsky’s voice, shouting something with strange loudness. Levin saw he had his gun pointed behind the snipe, but still he fired. When he had made sure he had missed, Levin looked round and saw the horses and the wagonette not on the road but in the marsh. Veslovsky, eager to see the shooting, had driven into the marsh, and got the horses stuck in the mud. “Damn the fellow!” Levin said to himself, as he went back to the carriage that had sunk in the mire. “What did you drive in for?” he said to him dryly, and calling the coachman, he began pulling the horses out. Levin was vexed both at being hindered from shooting and at his horses getting stuck in the mud, and still more at the fact that neither Stepan Arkadyevitch nor Veslovsky helped him and the coachman to unharness the horses and get them out, since neither of them had the slightest notion of harnessing. Without vouchsafing a syllable in reply to Vassenka’s protestations that it had been quite dry there, Levin worked in silence with the coachman at extricating the horses. But then, as he got warm at the work and saw how assiduously Veslovsky was tugging at the wagonette by one of the mud-guards, so that he broke it indeed, Levin blamed himself for having under the influence of yesterday’s feelings been too cold to Veslovsky, and tried to be particularly genial so as to smooth over his chilliness. When everything had been put right, and the carriage had been brought back to the road, Levin had the lunch served.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  At the time when the racers had to go to the pavilion to receive the prizes, and all attention was directed to that point, Vronsky’s elder brother, Alexander, a colonel with heavy fringed epaulets, came up to him. He was not tall, though as broadly built as Alexey, and handsomer and rosier than he; he had a red nose, and an open, drunken-looking face. “Did you get my note?” he said. “There’s never any finding you.” Alexander Vronsky, in spite of the dissolute life, and in especial the drunken habits, for which he was notorious, was quite one of the court circle. Now, as he talked to his brother of a matter bound to be exceedingly disagreeable to him, knowing that the eyes of many people might be fixed upon him, he kept a smiling countenance, as though he were jesting with his brother about something of little moment. “I got it, and I really can’t make out what _you_ are worrying yourself about,” said Alexey. “I’m worrying myself because the remark has just been made to me that you weren’t here, and that you were seen in Peterhof on Monday.” “There are matters which only concern those directly interested in them, and the matter you are so worried about is....” “Yes, but if so, you may as well cut the service....” “I beg you not to meddle, and that’s all I have to say.” Alexey Vronsky’s frowning face turned white, and his prominent lower jaw quivered, which happened rarely with him. Being a man of very warm heart, he was seldom angry; but when he was angry, and when his chin quivered, then, as Alexander Vronsky knew, he was dangerous. Alexander Vronsky smiled gaily. “I only wanted to give you Mother’s letter. Answer it, and don’t worry about anything just before the race. _Bonne chance,_” he added, smiling and he moved away from him. But after him another friendly greeting brought Vronsky to a standstill. “So you won’t recognize your friends! How are you, _mon cher?_” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, as conspicuously brilliant in the midst of all the Petersburg brilliance as he was in Moscow, his face rosy, and his whiskers sleek and glossy. “I came up yesterday, and I’m delighted that I shall see your triumph. When shall we meet?” “Come tomorrow to the messroom,” said Vronsky, and squeezing him by the sleeve of his coat, with apologies, he moved away to the center of the race course, where the horses were being led for the great steeplechase.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Levin, who had meanwhile been putting his gun away in the cupboard, was just going out of the door, but catching the merchant’s words, he stopped. “Why, you’ve got the forest for nothing as it is,” he said. “He came to me too late, or I’d have fixed the price for him.” Ryabinin got up, and in silence, with a smile, he looked Levin down and up. “Very close about money is Konstantin Dmitrievitch,” he said with a smile, turning to Stepan Arkadyevitch; “there’s positively no dealing with him. I was bargaining for some wheat of him, and a pretty price I offered too.” “Why should I give you my goods for nothing? I didn’t pick it up on the ground, nor steal it either.” “Mercy on us! nowadays there’s no chance at all of stealing. With the open courts and everything done in style, nowadays there’s no question of stealing. We are just talking things over like gentlemen. His excellency’s asking too much for the forest. I can’t make both ends meet over it. I must ask for a little concession.” “But is the thing settled between you or not? If it’s settled, it’s useless haggling; but if it’s not,” said Levin, “I’ll buy the forest.” The smile vanished at once from Ryabinin’s face. A hawklike, greedy, cruel expression was left upon it. With rapid, bony fingers he unbuttoned his coat, revealing a shirt, bronze waistcoat buttons, and a watch chain, and quickly pulled out a fat old pocketbook. “Here you are, the forest is mine,” he said, crossing himself quickly, and holding out his hand. “Take the money; it’s my forest. That’s Ryabinin’s way of doing business; he doesn’t haggle over every half-penny,” he added, scowling and waving the pocketbook. “I wouldn’t be in a hurry if I were you,” said Levin. “Come, really,” said Oblonsky in surprise. “I’ve given my word, you know.” Levin went out of the room, slamming the door. Ryabinin looked towards the door and shook his head with a smile. “It’s all youthfulness—positively nothing but boyishness. Why, I’m buying it, upon my honor, simply, believe me, for the glory of it, that Ryabinin, and no one else, should have bought the copse of Oblonsky. And as to the profits, why, I must make what God gives. In God’s name. If you would kindly sign the title-deed....” Within an hour the merchant, stroking his big overcoat neatly down, and hooking up his jacket, with the agreement in his pocket, seated himself in his tightly covered trap, and drove homewards. “Ugh, these gentlefolks!” he said to the clerk. “They—they’re a nice lot!” “That’s so,” responded the clerk, handing him the reins and buttoning the leather apron. “But I can congratulate you on the purchase, Mihail Ignatitch?” “Well, well....” Chapter 17

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  This split-personality relationship with our true sexual nature is anything but news to entertainment corporations, who have long reflected the same fractured sensibility between public pronouncement and private desire. In 2000, under the headline “Wall Street Meets Pornography,” The New York Times reported that General Motors sold more graphic sex films than Larry Flynt, owner of the Hustler empire. Over eight million American subscribers to DirecTV, a General Motors subsidiary, were spending about $200 million a year on pay-perview sex films from satellite providers. Similarly, Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Fox News Network and the nation’s leading conservative newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, was pulling in more porn money through a satellite company than Playboy made with its magazine, cable, and Internet businesses combined.5 AT&T, also a supporter of conservative values, sells hard-core porn to over a million hotel rooms throughout the country via its Hot Network. The frantic sexual hypocrisy in America is inexplicable if we adhere to traditional models of human sexuality insisting that monogamy is natural, marriage is a human universal, and any family structure other than the nuclear is aberrant. We need a new understanding of ourselves, based not on pulpit proclamations or feel-good Hollywood fantasies, but on a bold and unashamed assessment of the plentiful scientific data that illuminate the true origins and nature of human sexuality. We are at war with our eroticism. We battle our hungers, expectations, and disappointments. Religion, politics, and even science square off against biology and millions of years of evolved appetites. How to defuse this intractable struggle? In the following pages, we reassess some of the most important science of our time. We question the deepest assumptions brought to contemporary views of marriage, family structure, and sexuality—issues affecting each of us every day and every night. We’ll show that human beings evolved in intimate groups where almost everything was shared—food, shelter, protection, child care, even sexual pleasure. We don’t argue that humans are natural-born Marxist hippies. Nor do we hold that romantic love was unknown or unimportant in prehistoric communities. But we’ll demonstrate that contemporary culture misrepresents the link between love and sex. With and without love, a casual sexuality was the norm for our prehistoric ancestors. Let’s address the question you’re probably already asking: how can we possibly know anything about sex in prehistory? Nobody alive today was there to witness prehistoric life, and since social behavior leaves no fossils, isn’t this all just wild speculation? Not quite. There’s an old story about the trial of a man charged with biting off another man’s finger in a fight. An eyewitness took the stand. The defense attorney asked, “Did you actually see my client bite off the finger?” The witness said, “Well, no, I didn’t.” “Aha!” said the attorney with a smug smile. “How then can you claim he bit off the man’s finger?” “Well,” replied the witness, “I saw him spit it out.”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The feeling of jealousy, which had tortured him during the period of uncertainty, had passed away at the instant when the tooth had been with agony extracted by his wife’s words. But that feeling had been replaced by another, the desire, not merely that she should not be triumphant, but that she should get due punishment for her crime. He did not acknowledge this feeling, but at the bottom of his heart he longed for her to suffer for having destroyed his peace of mind—his honor. And going once again over the conditions inseparable from a duel, a divorce, a separation, and once again rejecting them, Alexey Alexandrovitch felt convinced that there was only one solution,—to keep her with him, concealing what had happened from the world, and using every measure in his power to break off the intrigue, and still more—though this he did not admit to himself—to punish her. “I must inform her of my conclusion, that thinking over the terrible position in which she has placed her family, all other solutions will be worse for both sides than an external _status quo_, and that such I agree to retain, on the strict condition of obedience on her part to my wishes, that is to say, cessation of all intercourse with her lover.” When this decision had been finally adopted, another weighty consideration occurred to Alexey Alexandrovitch in support of it. “By such a course only shall I be acting in accordance with the dictates of religion,” he told himself. “In adopting this course, I am not casting off a guilty wife, but giving her a chance of amendment; and, indeed, difficult as the task will be to me, I shall devote part of my energies to her reformation and salvation.”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  For an instant she had a clear vision of what she was doing, and was horrified at how she had fallen away from her resolution. But even though she knew it was her own ruin, she could not restrain herself, could not keep herself from proving to him that he was wrong, could not give way to him. “I never said that; I said I did not sympathize with this sudden passion.” “How is it, though you boast of your straightforwardness, you don’t tell the truth?” “I never boast, and I never tell lies,” he said slowly, restraining his rising anger. “It’s a great pity if you can’t respect....” “Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be. And if you don’t love me any more, it would be better and more honest to say so.” “No, this is becoming unbearable!” cried Vronsky, getting up from his chair; and stopping short, facing her, he said, speaking deliberately: “What do you try my patience for?” looking as though he might have said much more, but was restraining himself. “It has limits.” “What do you mean by that?” she cried, looking with terror at the undisguised hatred in his whole face, and especially in his cruel, menacing eyes. “I mean to say....” he was beginning, but he checked himself. “I must ask what it is you want of me?” “What can I want? All I can want is that you should not desert me, as you think of doing,” she said, understanding all he had not uttered. “But that I don’t want; that’s secondary. I want love, and there is none. So then all is over.” She turned towards the door. “Stop! sto-op!” said Vronsky, with no change in the gloomy lines of his brows, though he held her by the hand. “What is it all about? I said that we must put off going for three days, and on that you told me I was lying, that I was not an honorable man.” “Yes, and I repeat that the man who reproaches me with having sacrificed everything for me,” she said, recalling the words of a still earlier quarrel, “that he’s worse than a dishonorable man—he’s a heartless man.” “Oh, there are limits to endurance!” he cried, and hastily let go her hand. “He hates me, that’s clear,” she thought, and in silence, without looking round, she walked with faltering steps out of the room. “He loves another woman, that’s even clearer,” she said to herself as she went into her own room. “I want love, and there is none. So, then, all is over.” She repeated the words she had said, “and it must be ended.” “But how?” she asked herself, and she sat down in a low chair before the looking-glass.

• From Querelle (1953)

  71 I QUERELLE funeral rites and interment. Norbert turned the key in the lock of the door. It was a big, shiny key, and it was reflected in the mirror opposite the door. "Take your pants down." The brothelkeeper's tone was indifferent. Already he had ceased to have any feelings for a guy who interfered with the laws of chance. Querelle remained standing in the middle of the room, his legs wide apart. The idea of women had never bothered him much. Sometimes, at night, in his hammock, his hand would mec hanically seek out his prick, caress it, jack off quietly. He watched Nono unbuttoning. There was a moment's silence, and his gaze became fixed on the boss's finger as he was prying one of the buttons out of its buttonhole. "We11, have you made up your mind?" Querelle smiled. He began, desultorily, to undo the flap of his sailor's pants. He said: "You'll take it easy, you hear? They say you can get hurt." "Well, hell, it won't be the first time ... " Norbert sounded dry, almost mean. A flash of anger ran through Querelle's body: he looked extremely beautiful now, with his head held up, shoulders motionless and tense, buttocks tight, hips very straight (drawn in by the strain in the legs that was raising the buttocks), yet of a slimness that enhanced the overall impression of cruelty. Unbuttoned, his flap fell forward over his thighs, like a child's bib. His eyes were glittering. His face, even his hair seemed to be gleaming with hatred. "L isten, buddy, I'm telling you it's the first time all right. So don't you try any monkey business." Norbert, struck by this sudden outburst as by a whiplash, felt his wrestler's muscles tense for action, ready to recoil, and answered right back: "Don't come on so high and mighty. That don't wash with me. You don't think I'm some kind of hick, do you now? I saw you, man. You cheated." And, with the force of his bodily mass added to the force of

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “No one has declared war, but people sympathize with their neighbors’ sufferings and are eager to help them,” said Sergey Ivanovitch. “But the prince is not speaking of help,” said Levin, coming to the assistance of his father-in-law, “but of war. The prince says that private persons cannot take part in war without the permission of the government.” “Kostya, mind, that’s a bee! Really, they’ll sting us!” said Dolly, waving away a wasp. “But that’s not a bee, it’s a wasp,” said Levin. “Well now, well, what’s your own theory?” Katavasov said to Levin with a smile, distinctly challenging him to a discussion. “Why have not private persons the right to do so?” “Oh, my theory’s this: war is on one side such a beastly, cruel, and awful thing, that no one man, not to speak of a Christian, can individually take upon himself the responsibility of beginning wars; that can only be done by a government, which is called upon to do this, and is driven inevitably into war. On the other hand, both political science and common sense teach us that in matters of state, and especially in the matter of war, private citizens must forego their personal individual will.” Sergey Ivanovitch and Katavasov had their replies ready, and both began speaking at the same time. “But the point is, my dear fellow, that there may be cases when the government does not carry out the will of the citizens and then the public asserts its will,” said Katavasov. But evidently Sergey Ivanovitch did not approve of this answer. His brows contracted at Katavasov’s words and he said something else. “You don’t put the matter in its true light. There is no question here of a declaration of war, but simply the expression of a human Christian feeling. Our brothers, one with us in religion and in race, are being massacred. Even supposing they were not our brothers nor fellow-Christians, but simply children, women, old people, feeling is aroused and Russians go eagerly to help in stopping these atrocities. Fancy, if you were going along the street and saw drunken men beating a woman or a child—I imagine you would not stop to inquire whether war had been declared on the men, but would throw yourself on them, and protect the victim.” “But I should not kill them,” said Levin. “Yes, you would kill them.” “I don’t know. If I saw that, I might give way to my impulse of the moment, but I can’t say beforehand. And such a momentary impulse there is not, and there cannot be, in the case of the oppression of the Slavonic peoples.” “Possibly for you there is not; but for others there is,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, frowning with displeasure. “There are traditions still extant among the people of Slavs of the true faith suffering under the yoke of the ‘unclean sons of Hagar.’ The people have heard of the sufferings of their brethren and have spoken.”