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 My Life on the Road (2015)

  Because New Hampshire was “a hawk state.” We recovered enough to protest that his opposition to the Vietnam War was the source of his appeal, especially to kids all over the country who were volunteering to work in New Hampshire, even cutting their long hippie hair and adopting the motto “Clean for Gene.” Finally, he agreed that we could include Vietnam, but only if we put it right next to his support for veterans’ benefits. By the end, he reminded me of the executive at Household Finance who used to listen to my father’s plea for a loan, lean back, put his fingertips together in a steeple, and say, “No.” —FOLLOWING MC CARTHY’S SURPRISING SHOWING in New Hampshire, Bobby Kennedy announced that he would run for president after all. Also LBJ, a sitting president embarrassed by this little-known senator from Minnesota, stunned the country by announcing that he wouldn’t run again. Now that Bobby Kennedy was the only other major outside contender, the McCarthy campaign set out to portray him as an opportunist for not having braved “the snows of New Hampshire.” His absence from that primary nullified all virtue, just as McCarthy’s presence in New Hampshire nullified all faults. In the upstairs McCarthy headquarters where I was still volunteering, it was no longer enough to be for McCarthy as a candidate; one also had to be against Kennedy as a man. Bitter social divisions broke out among people who otherwise agreed on issues. Friends no longer spoke to friends, common goals were forgotten, and gossip about who had switched to whom politically was suddenly as juicy as who was having an affair with whom—but less tolerant. Four decades later, I would be reminded of this painful tension when the followers of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama fell into a similar division. Though those two presidential candidates were far more the same on issues than were McCarthy and Kennedy—and though they actually liked each other, unlike McCarthy, who had contempt for Bobby Kennedy and considered him a bad Catholic—Obama became the face of the future, just as McCarthy had done after New Hampshire, and Hillary Clinton supposedly became a part of the past for sharing a political name, just as Bobby Kennedy had done. Of course, this parallel was imperfect. Bobby Kennedy was not the “past” to the big majority of black and Hispanic voters who supported him as a symbol of hope, and McCarthy’s constituency for the “future” was overwhelmingly white and not poor. Also, neither McCarthy nor Kennedy embodied a huge and historic breakthrough, as did both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Everything about her was of the same exasperating impenetrable order—the strength of her shapely legs, the dirty sole of her white sock, the thick sweater she wore despite the closeness of the room, her wenchy smell, and especially the dead end of her face with its strange flush and freshly made-up lips. Some of the red had left stains on her front teeth, and I was struck by a ghastly recollection—the evoked image not of Monique, but of another young prostitute in a bell-house, ages ago, who had been snapped up by somebody else before I had time to decide whether her mere youth warranted my risking some appalling disease, and who had just such flushed prominent pommettes and a dead maman , and big front teeth, and a bit of dingy red ribbon in her country-brown hair. “Well, speak,” said Lo. “Was the corroboration satisfactory? ” “Oh, yes,” I said. “Perfect. Yes. And I do not doubt you two made it up. As a matter of fact, I do not doubt you have told her everything about us.” “Oh, yah?” I controlled my breath and said: “Dolores, this must stop right away. I am ready to yank you out of Beardsley and lock you up you know where, but this must stop. I am ready to take you away the time it takes to pack a suitcase. This must stop or else anything may happen.” “Anything may happen, huh?” I snatched away the stool she was rocking with her heel and her foot fell with a thud on the floor. “Hey,” she cried, “take it easy.” “First of all you go upstairs,” I cried in my turn,—and simultaneously grabbed at her and pulled her up. From that moment, I stopped restraining my voice, and we continued yelling at each other, and she said unprintable things. She said she loathed me. She made monstrous faces at me, inflating her cheeks and producing a diabolical plopping sound. She said I had attempted to violate her several times when I was her mother’s roomer. She said she was sure I had murdered her mother. She said she would sleep with the very first fellow who asked her and I could do nothing about it.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Why? Because the peasants are just as much slaves as they ever were, and that’s why you and Sergey Ivanovitch don’t like people to try and get them out of their slavery,” said Nikolay Levin, exasperated by the objection. Konstantin Levin sighed, looking meanwhile about the cheerless and dirty room. This sigh seemed to exasperate Nikolay still more. “I know your and Sergey Ivanovitch’s aristocratic views. I know that he applies all the power of his intellect to justify existing evils.” “No; and what do you talk of Sergey Ivanovitch for?” said Levin, smiling. “Sergey Ivanovitch? I’ll tell you what for!” Nikolay Levin shrieked suddenly at the name of Sergey Ivanovitch. “I’ll tell you what for.... But what’s the use of talking? There’s only one thing.... What did you come to me for? You look down on this, and you’re welcome to,—and go away, in God’s name go away!” he shrieked, getting up from his chair. “And go away, and go away!” “I don’t look down on it at all,” said Konstantin Levin timidly. “I don’t even dispute it.” At that instant Marya Nikolaevna came back. Nikolay Levin looked round angrily at her. She went quickly to him, and whispered something. “I’m not well; I’ve grown irritable,” said Nikolay Levin, getting calmer and breathing painfully; “and then you talk to me of Sergey Ivanovitch and his article. It’s such rubbish, such lying, such self-deception. What can a man write of justice who knows nothing of it? Have you read his article?” he asked Kritsky, sitting down again at the table, and moving back off half of it the scattered cigarettes, so as to clear a space. “I’ve not read it,” Kritsky responded gloomily, obviously not desiring to enter into the conversation. “Why not?” said Nikolay Levin, now turning with exasperation upon Kritsky. “Because I didn’t see the use of wasting my time over it.” “Oh, but excuse me, how did you know it would be wasting your time? That article’s too deep for many people—that’s to say it’s over their heads. But with me, it’s another thing; I see through his ideas, and I know where its weakness lies.” Everyone was mute. Kritsky got up deliberately and reached his cap. “Won’t you have supper? All right, good-bye! Come round tomorrow with the locksmith.” Kritsky had hardly gone out when Nikolay Levin smiled and winked. “He’s no good either,” he said. “I see, of course....” But at that instant Kritsky, at the door, called him.... “What do you want now?” he said, and went out to him in the passage. Left alone with Marya Nikolaevna, Levin turned to her. “Have you been long with my brother?” he said to her. “Yes, more than a year. Nikolay Dmitrievitch’s health has become very poor. Nikolay Dmitrievitch drinks a great deal,” she said. “That is ... how does he drink?” “Drinks vodka, and it’s bad for him.” “And a great deal?” whispered Levin.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Yes, yes, marvelous!” Golenishtchev and Anna assented. In spite of the excited condition in which he was, the sentence about technique had sent a pang to Mihailov’s heart, and looking angrily at Vronsky he suddenly scowled. He had often heard this word technique, and was utterly unable to understand what was understood by it. He knew that by this term was understood a mechanical facility for painting or drawing, entirely apart from its subject. He had noticed often that even in actual praise technique was opposed to essential quality, as though one could paint well something that was bad. He knew that a great deal of attention and care was necessary in taking off the coverings, to avoid injuring the creation itself, and to take off all the coverings; but there was no art of painting—no technique of any sort—about it. If to a little child or to his cook were revealed what he saw, it or she would have been able to peel the wrappings off what was seen. And the most experienced and adroit painter could not by mere mechanical facility paint anything if the lines of the subject were not revealed to him first. Besides, he saw that if it came to talking about technique, it was impossible to praise him for it. In all he had painted and repainted he saw faults that hurt his eyes, coming from want of care in taking off the wrappings—faults he could not correct now without spoiling the whole. And in almost all the figures and faces he saw, too, remnants of the wrappings not perfectly removed that spoiled the picture. “One thing might be said, if you will allow me to make the remark....” observed Golenishtchev. “Oh, I shall be delighted, I beg you,” said Mihailov with a forced smile. “That is, that you make Him the man-god, and not the God-man. But I know that was what you meant to do.” “I cannot paint a Christ that is not in my heart,” said Mihailov gloomily. “Yes; but in that case, if you will allow me to say what I think.... Your picture is so fine that my observation cannot detract from it, and, besides, it is only my personal opinion. With you it is different. Your very motive is different. But let us take Ivanov. I imagine that if Christ is brought down to the level of an historical character, it would have been better for Ivanov to select some other historical subject, fresh, untouched.” “But if this is the greatest subject presented to art?” “If one looked one would find others. But the point is that art cannot suffer doubt and discussion. And before the picture of Ivanov the question arises for the believer and the unbeliever alike, ‘Is it God, or is it not God?’ and the unity of the impression is destroyed.” “Why so? I think that for educated people,” said Mihailov, “the question cannot exist.”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “What am I saying it for? what for?” he went on, as angrily. “That you may know that since you have not carried out my wishes in regard to observing outward decorum, I will take measures to put an end to this state of things.” “Soon, very soon, it will end, anyway,” she said; and again, at the thought of death near at hand and now desired, tears came into her eyes. “It will end sooner than you and your lover have planned! If you must have the satisfaction of animal passion....” “Alexey Alexandrovitch! I won’t say it’s not generous, but it’s not like a gentleman to strike anyone who’s down.” “Yes, you only think of yourself! But the sufferings of a man who was your husband have no interest for you. You don’t care that his whole life is ruined, that he is thuff ... thuff....” Alexey Alexandrovitch was speaking so quickly that he stammered, and was utterly unable to articulate the word “suffering.” In the end he pronounced it “thuffering.” She wanted to laugh, and was immediately ashamed that anything could amuse her at such a moment. And for the first time, for an instant, she felt for him, put herself in his place, and was sorry for him. But what could she say or do? Her head sank, and she sat silent. He too was silent for some time, and then began speaking in a frigid, less shrill voice, emphasizing random words that had no special significance. “I came to tell you....” he said. She glanced at him. “No, it was my fancy,” she thought, recalling the expression of his face when he stumbled over the word “suffering.” “No; can a man with those dull eyes, with that self-satisfied complacency, feel anything?” “I cannot change anything,” she whispered. “I have come to tell you that I am going tomorrow to Moscow, and shall not return again to this house, and you will receive notice of what I decide through the lawyer into whose hands I shall intrust the task of getting a divorce. My son is going to my sister’s,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, with an effort recalling what he had meant to say about his son. “You take Seryozha to hurt me,” she said, looking at him from under her brows. “You do not love him.... Leave me Seryozha!” “Yes, I have lost even my affection for my son, because he is associated with the repulsion I feel for you. But still I shall take him. Good-bye!” And he was going away, but now she detained him. “Alexey Alexandrovitch, leave me Seryozha!” she whispered once more. “I have nothing else to say. Leave Seryozha till my ... I shall soon be confined; leave him!” Alexey Alexandrovitch flew into a rage, and, snatching his hand from her, he went out of the room without a word. Chapter 5

• 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 Anna Karenina (1877)

  It always happened with Levin that when his first shots were a failure he got hot and out of temper, and shot badly the whole day. So it was that day. The snipe showed themselves in numbers. They kept flying up from just under the dogs, from under the sportsmen’s legs, and Levin might have retrieved his ill luck. But the more he shot, the more he felt disgraced in the eyes of Veslovsky, who kept popping away merrily and indiscriminately, killing nothing, and not in the slightest abashed by his ill success. Levin, in feverish haste, could not restrain himself, got more and more out of temper, and ended by shooting almost without a hope of hitting. Laska, indeed, seemed to understand this. She began looking more languidly, and gazed back at the sportsmen, as it were, with perplexity or reproach in her eyes. Shots followed shots in rapid succession. The smoke of the powder hung about the sportsmen, while in the great roomy net of the game bag there were only three light little snipe. And of these one had been killed by Veslovsky alone, and one by both of them together. Meanwhile from the other side of the marsh came the sound of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s shots, not frequent, but, as Levin fancied, well-directed, for almost after each they heard “Krak, Krak, _apporte_!” This excited Levin still more. The snipe were floating continually in the air over the reeds. Their whirring wings close to the earth, and their harsh cries high in the air, could be heard on all sides; the snipe that had risen first and flown up into the air, settled again before the sportsmen. Instead of two hawks there were now dozens of them hovering with shrill cries over the marsh. After walking through the larger half of the marsh, Levin and Veslovsky reached the place where the peasants’ mowing-grass was divided into long strips reaching to the reeds, marked off in one place by the trampled grass, in another by a path mown through it. Half of these strips had already been mown. Though there was not so much hope of finding birds in the uncut part as the cut part, Levin had promised Stepan Arkadyevitch to meet him, and so he walked on with his companion through the cut and uncut patches. “Hi, sportsmen!” shouted one of a group of peasants, sitting on an unharnessed cart; “come and have some lunch with us! Have a drop of wine!” Levin looked round. “Come along, it’s all right!” shouted a good-humored-looking bearded peasant with a red face, showing his white teeth in a grin, and holding up a greenish bottle that flashed in the sunlight. “_Qu’est-ce qu’ils disent_?” asked Veslovsky. “They invite you to have some vodka. Most likely they’ve been dividing the meadow into lots. I should have some,” said Levin, not without some guile, hoping Veslovsky would be tempted by the vodka, and would go away to them. “Why do they offer it?”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “But I don’t care to know!” she almost shrieked. “I don’t care to. Do I regret what I have done? No, no, no! If it were all to do again from the beginning, it would be the same. For us, for you and for me, there is only one thing that matters, whether we love each other. Other people we need not consider. Why are we living here apart and not seeing each other? Why can’t I go? I love you, and I don’t care for anything,” she said in Russian, glancing at him with a peculiar gleam in her eyes that he could not understand. “If you have not changed to me, why don’t you look at me?” He looked at her. He saw all the beauty of her face and full dress, always so becoming to her. But now her beauty and elegance were just what irritated him. “My feeling cannot change, you know, but I beg you, I entreat you,” he said again in French, with a note of tender supplication in his voice, but with coldness in his eyes. She did not hear his words, but she saw the coldness of his eyes, and answered with irritation: “And I beg you to explain why I should not go.” “Because it might cause you....” he hesitated. “I don’t understand. Yashvin _n’est pas compromettant_, and Princess Varvara is no worse than others. Oh, here she is!” Chapter 33 Vronsky for the first time experienced a feeling of anger against Anna, almost a hatred for her willfully refusing to understand her own position. This feeling was aggravated by his being unable to tell her plainly the cause of his anger. If he had told her directly what he was thinking, he would have said: “In that dress, with a princess only too well known to everyone, to show yourself at the theater is equivalent not merely to acknowledging your position as a fallen woman, but is flinging down a challenge to society, that is to say, cutting yourself off from it forever.” He could not say that to her. “But how can she fail to see it, and what is going on in her?” he said to himself. He felt at the same time that his respect for her was diminished while his sense of her beauty was intensified. He went back scowling to his rooms, and sitting down beside Yashvin, who, with his long legs stretched out on a chair, was drinking brandy and seltzer water, he ordered a glass of the same for himself. “You were talking of Lankovsky’s Powerful. That’s a fine horse, and I would advise you to buy him,” said Yashvin, glancing at his comrade’s gloomy face. “His hind-quarters aren’t quite first-rate, but the legs and head—one couldn’t wish for anything better.” “I think I will take him,” answered Vronsky.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Instead, there is the understanding that pleasure is doubled when sex is freely chosen and mutual. So why don’t we admit that the men who create the global sex industry are those addicted to domination? Why do we normalize the abnormal? I trust the insights from survivors of prostitution themselves. Rachel Moran, who sold herself as a homeless teenager in Ireland and survived years in the sex trade, explains the denial of the realities of prostitution this way: “The first thing we humans do in any intolerable, inescapable situation is erase our subjective reality. We evade and avoid accepting the nature of the situation itself.”5 Somewhere I hope there are prostituted women—and men—who can refuse customers, get along with no pimp or brothel owner, and govern their own lives, but that is not what the sex industry is all about. It is about selling dominance. Wherever selling other people’s bodies is legal, demand soon outstrips the number of people who want to be prostituted, and trafficking results. There are plenty of examples, including women from Africa and impoverished East European countries who are trafficked into Germany and Holland. An addiction to dominance also sexualizes the helplessness of children, and child prostitution and child sexual abuse result. But a male-dominated culture keeps trying to addict men to dominance. It’s a secret in plain sight. IV.I always imagined that prisons were the biggest secret in this country, and that distance or lack of empathy was the reason. Unlike the poor, who can be blameless, the very word offenders sets people in prison apart by what they did. But then I realized that prisons in the United States should be less of a secret than anywhere in the world. Why? Because with only 5 percent of the world’s population, this country has nearly a quarter of its prisoners. Symbolically speaking, one in thirty-one adults could be somewhere in the system—in prison or on probation or on parole. To ignore what’s going on in our prisons is to ignore a big determinant of our national behavior, economics, and social order. Prisons are us. We didn’t always top the global list for incarcerating people. In the days of apartheid, South Africa took that prize. But we have our own apartheid. African American men are six times more likely—and African American women are three times more likely—to be imprisoned than are their white counterparts. Even after arrest and conviction, race influences who gets bail money, private lawyers, plea-bargaining, probation, community service, ankle bracelets, and other paths to freedom. Class influences all that, too. When was the last time you saw a rich person on death row? More than half of low-income defendants are convicted, but less than a third of high-income defendants are. Since the economic damage done by white-collar crime far exceeds that done by all burglaries, robberies, larcenies, and auto thefts combined, this punishes us all. Even the harm we do to ourselves is treated unequally.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I repeated my question; but she kept up a burlesque babble, discoursing on her unhappiness with me and announcing plans for an immediate divorce. “ Mais qui est-ce? ” I shouted at last, striking her on the knee with my fist; and she, without even wincing, stared at me as if the answer were too simple for words, then gave a quick shrug and pointed at the thick neck of the taxi driver. He pulled up at a small café and introduced himself. I do not remember his ridiculous name but after all those years I still see him quite clearly—a stocky White Russian ex-colonel with a bushy mustache and a crew cut; there were thousands of them plying that fool’s trade in Paris. We sat down at a table; the Tsarist ordered wine; and Valeria, after applying a wet napkin to her knee, went on talking— into me rather than to me; she poured words into this dignified receptacle with a volubility I had never suspected she had in her. And every now and then she would volley a burst of Slavic at her stolid lover. The situation was preposterous and became even more so when the taxi-colonel, stopping Valeria with a possessive smile, began to unfold his views and plans. With an atrocious accent to his careful French, he delineated the world of love and work into which he proposed to enter hand in hand with his child-wife Valeria. She by now was preening herself, between him and me, rouging her pursed lips, tripling her chin to pick at her blouse-bosom and so forth, and he spoke of her as if she were absent, and also as if she were a kind of little ward that was in the act of being transferred, for her own good, from one wise guardian to another even wiser one; and although my helpless wrath may have exaggerated and disfigured certain impressions, I can swear that he actually consulted me on such things as her diet, her periods, her wardrobe and the books she had read or should read. “I think,” he said, “she will like Jean Christophe? ” Oh, he was quite a scholar, Mr. Taxovich. I put an end to this gibberish by suggesting Valeria pack up her few belongings immediately, upon which the platitudinous colonel gallantly offered to carry them into the car. Reverting to his professional state, he drove the Humberts to their residence and all the way Valeria talked, and Humbert the Terrible deliberated with Humbert the Small whether Humbert Humbert should kill her or her lover, or both, or neither. I remember once handling an automatic belonging to a fellow student, in the days (I have not spoken of them, I think, but never mind) when I toyed with the idea of enjoying his little sister, a most diaphanous nymphet with a black hair bow, and then shooting myself.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I felt my life needed a shake-up. There was another thing, too: moth holes had appeared in the plush of matrimonial comfort. During the last weeks I had kept noticing that my fat Valeria was not her usual self; had acquired a queer restlessness; even showed something like irritation at times, which was quite out of keeping with the stock character she was supposed to impersonate. When I informed her we were shortly to sail for New York, she looked distressed and bewildered. There were some tedious difficulties with her papers. She had a Nansen, or better say Nonsense, passport which for some reason a share in her husband’s solid Swiss citizenship could not easily transcend; and I decided it was the necessity of queuing in the préfecture , and other formalities, that had made her so listless, despite my patiently describing to her America, the country of rosy children and great trees, where life would be such an improvement on dull dingy Paris. We were coming out of some office building one morning, with her papers almost in order, when Valeria, as she waddled by my side, began to shake her poodle head vigorously without saying a word. I let her go on for a while and then asked if she thought she had something inside. She answered (I translate from her French which was, I imagine, a translation in its turn of some Slavic platitude): “There is another man in my life.” Now, these are ugly words for a husband to hear. They dazed me, I confess. To beat her up in the street, there and then, as an honest vulgarian might have done, was not feasible. Years of secret sufferings had taught me superhuman self-control. So I ushered her into a taxi which had been invitingly creeping along the curb for some time, and in this comparative privacy I quietly suggested she comment her wild talk. A mounting fury was suffocating me—not because I had any particular fondness for that figure of fun, Mme Humbert , but because matters of legal and illegal conjunction were for me alone to decide, and here she was, Valeria, the comedy wife, brazenly preparing to dispose in her own way of my comfort and fate. I demanded her lover’s name.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Forgive I cannot, and do not wish to, and I regard it as wrong. I have done everything for this woman, and she has trodden it all in the mud to which she is akin. I am not a spiteful man, I have never hated anyone, but I hate her with my whole soul, and I cannot even forgive her, because I hate her too much for all the wrong she has done me!” he said, with tones of hatred in his voice. “Love those that hate you....” Darya Alexandrovna whispered timorously. Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled contemptuously. That he knew long ago, but it could not be applied to his case. “Love those that hate you, but to love those one hates is impossible. Forgive me for having troubled you. Everyone has enough to bear in his own grief!” And regaining his self-possession, Alexey Alexandrovitch quietly took leave and went away. Chapter 13 When they rose from table, Levin would have liked to follow Kitty into the drawing-room; but he was afraid she might dislike this, as too obviously paying her attention. He remained in the little ring of men, taking part in the general conversation, and without looking at Kitty, he was aware of her movements, her looks, and the place where she was in the drawing-room. He did at once, and without the smallest effort, keep the promise he had made her—always to think well of all men, and to like everyone always. The conversation fell on the village commune, in which Pestsov saw a sort of special principle, called by him the “choral” principle. Levin did not agree with Pestsov, nor with his brother, who had a special attitude of his own, both admitting and not admitting the significance of the Russian commune. But he talked to them, simply trying to reconcile and soften their differences. He was not in the least interested in what he said himself, and even less so in what they said; all he wanted was that they and everyone should be happy and contented. He knew now the one thing of importance; and that one thing was at first there, in the drawing-room, and then began moving across and came to a standstill at the door. Without turning round he felt the eyes fixed on him, and the smile, and he could not help turning round. She was standing in the doorway with Shtcherbatsky, looking at him. “I thought you were going towards the piano,” said he, going up to her. “That’s something I miss in the country—music.” “No; we only came to fetch you and thank you,” she said, rewarding him with a smile that was like a gift, “for coming. What do they want to argue for? No one ever convinces anyone, you know.” “Yes; that’s true,” said Levin; “it generally happens that one argues warmly simply because one can’t make out what one’s opponent wants to prove.”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  When they rose from the table and the ladies had gone out, Pestsov did not follow them, but addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch, began to expound the chief ground of inequality. The inequality in marriage, in his opinion, lay in the fact that the infidelity of the wife and the infidelity of the husband are punished unequally, both by the law and by public opinion. Stepan Arkadyevitch went hurriedly up to Alexey Alexandrovitch and offered him a cigar. “No, I don’t smoke,” Alexey Alexandrovitch answered calmly, and as though purposely wishing to show that he was not afraid of the subject, he turned to Pestsov with a chilly smile. “I imagine that such a view has a foundation in the very nature of things,” he said, and would have gone on to the drawing-room. But at this point Turovtsin broke suddenly and unexpectedly into the conversation, addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch. “You heard, perhaps, about Pryatchnikov?” said Turovtsin, warmed up by the champagne he had drunk, and long waiting for an opportunity to break the silence that had weighed on him. “Vasya Pryatchnikov,” he said, with a good-natured smile on his damp, red lips, addressing himself principally to the most important guest, Alexey Alexandrovitch, “they told me today he fought a duel with Kvitsky at Tver, and has killed him.” Just as it always seems that one bruises oneself on a sore place, so Stepan Arkadyevitch felt now that the conversation would by ill luck fall every moment on Alexey Alexandrovitch’s sore spot. He would again have got his brother-in-law away, but Alexey Alexandrovitch himself inquired, with curiosity: “What did Pryatchnikov fight about?” “His wife. Acted like a man, he did! Called him out and shot him!” “Ah!” said Alexey Alexandrovitch indifferently, and lifting his eyebrows, he went into the drawing-room. “How glad I am you have come,” Dolly said with a frightened smile, meeting him in the outer drawing-room. “I must talk to you. Let’s sit here.” Alexey Alexandrovitch, with the same expression of indifference, given him by his lifted eyebrows, sat down beside Darya Alexandrovna, and smiled affectedly. “It’s fortunate,” said he, “especially as I was meaning to ask you to excuse me, and to be taking leave. I have to start tomorrow.” Darya Alexandrovna was firmly convinced of Anna’s innocence, and she felt herself growing pale and her lips quivering with anger at this frigid, unfeeling man, who was so calmly intending to ruin her innocent friend. “Alexey Alexandrovitch,” she said, with desperate resolution looking him in the face, “I asked you about Anna, you made me no answer. How is she?” “She is, I believe, quite well, Darya Alexandrovna,” replied Alexey Alexandrovitch, not looking at her. “Alexey Alexandrovitch, forgive me, I have no right ... but I love Anna as a sister, and esteem her; I beg, I beseech you to tell me what is wrong between you? what fault do you find with her?” Alexey Alexandrovitch frowned, and almost closing his eyes, dropped his head.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  I ask myself, “What would Tom do?” III.One day in early 1971, I get an emergency call from Johnnie Tillmon, a leader of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO). A single mother herself, she is a fierce advocate for increasing welfare benefits. Should she be unable to raise her own small children, as she points out, the government would spend much more on institutional or foster care for them; yet actual mothers don’t receive a fraction of that outlay. For the first issue of Ms . magazine, she has written a lethal and funny analysis of the welfare system, comparing it to an all-powerful husband who looks under your bed for other men’s shoes, controls your life with endless paperwork, and doles out an allowance too small to live on.2 In other words, she has done the first feminist analysis of social policy. On the phone, Johnnie explains that Nevada, the only state in which brothels are legal and licensed, has come up with a double whammy. Since prostitution is now described as “sex work” by a new combination of a few academics and prostituted women tired of being arrested, some Nevada welfare officials are telling welfare mothers they must accept this legal work of prostitution or lose their welfare or unemployment checks. Some welfare mothers are being directed to the Mustang Ranch, the first licensed brothel in Nevada, just east of Reno. Johnnie is mad as hell that the state is trying to save money by cutting welfare payments and turning welfare mothers into a sexual tourist attraction. She is organizing a protest outside the brothel and a massive march in Las Vegas. This is why Flo Kennedy and I find ourselves holding signs outside the Mustang Ranch, a place we never expected to be. Local reporters tell us that, inside each of the double-wide trailers, women line up, for customers to choose from. The sexual services on offer are listed on a printed menu. As if to prove that sexism and racism always go together, a woman is not allowed to refuse any man—unless, of course, he is black. Then she may trade off with another woman who “doesn’t mind.” Flo and I just look at each other. You can’t make this stuff up. When Joe Conforte, the brothel owner, arrives, he tells reporters that it’s insulting for his hardworking girls to be compared to lazy welfare mothers who are living on handouts. The next day in Las Vegas we march on the strip, even barging into and out of fancy casinos and hotels, shouting slogans and disrupting gamblers. I have to say there is something satisfying about bringing reality into windowless rooms full of neon and slot machines. When Flo and I celebrate that night by dancing with our NWRO friends in a rare black-owned motel, we feel as if we’ve been let out of a timeless hell. From Jane Fonda to civil rights lawyer William Kunstler, more people fly in to march with the NWRO women.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  He cocked his head, looking more pleased than ever . “Guess again, Punch.” “Ah,” said Punch, “so you have not come to bother me about those long-distance calls?” “You do make them once in a while, don’t you?” “Excuse me?” I said I had said I thought he had said he had never— “People,” he said, “people in general, I’m not accusing you, Brewster, but you know it’s absurd the way people invade this damned house without even knocking. They use the vaterre , they use the kitchen, they use the telephone. Phil calls Philadelphia. Pat calls Patagonia. I refuse to pay. You have a funny accent, Captain.” “Quilty,” I said, “ do you recall a little girl called Dolores Haze, Dolly Haze? Dolly called Dolores, Colo.?” “Sure, she may have made those calls, sure. Any place. Paradise, Wash., Hell Canyon. Who cares?” “I do, Quilty. You see, I am her father.” “Nonsense,” he said. “You are not. You are some foreign literary agent. A Frenchman once translated my Proud Flesh as La Fierté de la Chair . Absurd.” “She was my child, Quilty.” In the state he was in he could not really be taken aback by anything, but his blustering manner was not quite convincing. A sort of wary inkling kindled his eyes into a semblance of life. They were immediately dulled again. “I’m very fond of children myself,” he said, “and fathers are among my best friends.” He turned his head away, looking for something. He beat his pockets. He attempted to rise from his seat. “Down!” I said—apparently much louder than I intended. “You need not roar at me,” he complained in his strange feminine manner. “I just wanted a smoke. I’m dying for a smoke.” “You’re dying anyway.” “Oh, chucks,” he said. “You begin to bore me. What do you want? Are you French, mister? Woolly-woo-boo-are? Let’s go to the barroomette and have a stiff— ” He saw the little dark weapon lying in my palm as if I were offering it to him. “Say!” he drawled (now imitating the underworld numbskull of movies), “that’s a swell little gun you’ve got there. What d’you want for her?” I slapped down his outstretched hand and he managed to knock over a box on a low table near him. It ejected a handful of cigarettes. “Here they are,” he said cheerfully. “You recall Kipling: une femme est une femme, mais un Caporal est une cigarette? Now we need matches.” “Quilty,” I said. “I want you to concentrate. You are going to die in a moment. The hereafter for all we know may be an eternal state of excruciating insanity. You smoked your last cigarette yesterday. Concentrate. Try to understand what is happening to you.”

• From Querelle (1953)

  "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 7l I JEAN GENET his anger at finding himself defied, he came close enough to Querelle to touch him with the whole of his body, from brow to knee. Quere11e stood his ground. In a still deeper voice, Norbert went on, impassively : "And I think that's enough of that. Don't you? It wasn't me who asked you. Get ready." That was a command such as Querelle had never before received. It came from no recognized, conventional and detached authority, but from an imperative that had issued from within himself. His own strength and vitality were ordering him to bend over. He felt like punching Norbert in the mouth. The muscles of his body, of his arms, thighs, calves were ready for action, contracted, flexed, taut, almost on tiptoes. Speaking right into Norbert's teeth, into his very breath, Querelle said : "Man, you're mistaken. It's your old lady I was after." "And what else is new." Norbert grabbed him by the shoulders and tried to swing him around. Querelle wanted to push him away, but his pants had star_ted gravitating toward hi� ankles. To retain them, he opened his legs a bit wider. They glared at each other. The sailor knew he was the stronger one, even in spite of Norbert's athletic build. Nevertheless he yanked up his pants and stepped back a pace. He relaxed his face muscles, raised his eyebrows, frowned a little, then shook his head lightly, to indicate resignation : "All right," he said. Both men, still facing each other, relaxed and simultaneously put their hands behind their backs. This perfectly synchronized double gesture surprised both of them. There was an element of understanding, there. Querelle grinned, looking pleased. "So you've been a sailor." Norbert snorted, then answered, testily, in a voice still somewhat shaken by anger: "Zephir." Querelle was struck by the exceptional quality of the man's voice. It was solid. It was, at one and · the same time, a marble 73 I QUERELLE column issuing out of his mouth, holding him up, and against which he rested. It was, above all, to this voice that Querelle had submitted. "What's that?" "Zephir. The Battalion, if you prefer."

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “I begged, I implored you not to go, I knew it would be unpleasant....” “Unpleasant!” she cried—“hideous! As long as I live I shall never forget it. She said it was a disgrace to sit beside me.” “A silly woman’s chatter,” he said: “but why risk it, why provoke?...” “I hate your calm. You ought not to have brought me to this. If you had loved me....” “Anna! How does the question of my love come in?” “Oh, if you loved me, as I love, if you were tortured as I am!...” she said, looking at him with an expression of terror. He was sorry for her, and angry notwithstanding. He assured her of his love because he saw that this was the only means of soothing her, and he did not reproach her in words, but in his heart he reproached her. And the asseverations of his love, which seemed to him so vulgar that he was ashamed to utter them, she drank in eagerly, and gradually became calmer. The next day, completely reconciled, they left for the country. PART SIX Chapter 1 Darya Alexandrovna spent the summer with her children at Pokrovskoe, at her sister Kitty Levin’s. The house on her own estate was quite in ruins, and Levin and his wife had persuaded her to spend the summer with them. Stepan Arkadyevitch greatly approved of the arrangement. He said he was very sorry his official duties prevented him from spending the summer in the country with his family, which would have been the greatest happiness for him; and remaining in Moscow, he came down to the country from time to time for a day or two. Besides the Oblonskys, with all their children and their governess, the old princess too came to stay that summer with the Levins, as she considered it her duty to watch over her inexperienced daughter in her _interesting condition_. Moreover, Varenka, Kitty’s friend abroad, kept her promise to come to Kitty when she was married, and stayed with her friend. All of these were friends or relations of Levin’s wife. And though he liked them all, he rather regretted his own Levin world and ways, which was smothered by this influx of the “Shtcherbatsky element,” as he called it to himself. Of his own relations there stayed with him only Sergey Ivanovitch, but he too was a man of the Koznishev and not the Levin stamp, so that the Levin spirit was utterly obliterated. In the Levins’ house, so long deserted, there were now so many people that almost all the rooms were occupied, and almost every day it happened that the old princess, sitting down to table, counted them all over, and put the thirteenth grandson or granddaughter at a separate table. And Kitty, with her careful housekeeping, had no little trouble to get all the chickens, turkeys, and geese, of which so many were needed to satisfy the summer appetites of the visitors and children.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Either the local welfare officials are embarrassed by the media coverage or they are worried that marches are disrupting tourists. People go to Las Vegas to escape reality, and welfare mothers are definitely reality. Finally thousands are restored to the welfare rolls, including women who had been pushed toward the Mustang Ranch. Flo and I feel victorious. A federal audit reveals that state officials have falsely accused many women of welfare fraud, and NWRO women remain convinced that this was a way of saving government money while increasing prostitution to attract tourists. I am discovering that words have consequences, a very practical secret. If prostitution is “sex work,” a job like any other, then women can be required to do it. Men, too. Besides, as Flo says, “Sex shouldn’t be work.” Thinking about the weight of words makes us realize that the label prostitute conceals a whole person, too. Flo and I begin to say prostituted woman to keep the person and the process visible. In this country, the average age of entry into prostitution is said to be between twelve and thirteen. That means there is probably yet another secret inside the average prostituted woman: a prostituted child. Though it was invented as cosmetic or rebellion, it turns out that the forces of capitalism and patriarchy love the term sex work . By 2005 I read in a newspaper that a twenty-five-year-old former waitress in Berlin is losing her unemployment benefits. Brothels have been legalized in Germany and this young woman has turned down a job providing sexual services. Though she is an information technology professional by training, she was willing to take a job as a waitress—just not “work” that requires vaginal, oral, and anal body invasion. However, she may have to. “Under Germany’s welfare reforms,” the news article explains, “any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job—including in the sex industry—or lose her unemployment benefits.” Even a woman brothel owner quoted in this article has no sympathy. The owner feels she has a right to expect government job centers to provide her with prostitutes because “I pay my taxes just like anybody else.”3 The debate about whether or not to legalize prostitution usually rests on whether legality better protects the prostituted person—supposing that person has a choice of not being prostituted, a big if —but the secret is this: if body invasion is work like any other, then some can be forced to do it. —IT TURNS OUT THAT legalization is what the pimps, brothel owners, and traffickers want because it sets this multibillion-dollar industry free. Some prostituted people want it, too, because it seems to be the only alternative to being arrested and needing pimps and traffickers to get them out—a choice between two prisons—or because they just want a little dignity. At the other extreme, criminalizing is supported for all kinds of reasons.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  “Dirty criminals!” This is flung at a young black couple. “I crush you!” This threat is for a bicycle messenger in a Jamaican T-shirt. “Please stop yelling,” I say. This only causes him to add “black” to his epithets, and make it even more clear why he is yelling. I think: Okay, I’m not going to change him between here and Newark, but if I don’t call him on this bullshit, I’m saying it’s okay. On the other hand, if I really get angry, I’ll cry, and that’s embarrassing. “You know, some people here think bad things about immigrants from Russia, too, and they’re wrong—” “You crazy?” he explodes. “I from Ukraine, no Russia! Ukraine good place. Everybody white! No dirty peoples!” Clearly, calling him a Russian is almost as bad as saying he has anything in common with the people he’s yelling at. I begin again: “Since there are no black or brown people in Ukraine, how can you know—?” “Bitch!” he breaks in. “You know nothing! Black peoples ruin this fucking country!” I’m a person who can admit only on Friday that I was angry on Monday, yet this time I get up the courage to tell him that he’s giving Ukraine a bad name—but then, suddenly, he’s screaming at a young black woman with a stroller, as if she were crossing the street just to get in his way, “Fucking bitch!” Her startled face is the last straw. I hurl at him a few words dangerously close to “Go home to Russia where you belong,” and think, I mean Ukraine. I get out in the middle of traffic and slam the door. The drama of my exit is marred when he starts yelling for a cop to arrest me. I realize I haven’t paid my fare. I’m reduced to the ignominy of throwing money in his window and standing there while he counts every bill and coin. My only comfort is seeing the stroller woman give him the finger. After throwing myself on the mercy of another taxi driver, I manage to get to Newark, run through the airport until my lungs hurt, and make my plane—barely. All the way to San Francisco, I think of devastating things I should have said. Mots d’escalier become mots d’avion. The next day, I learn that Howard Stern has blown himself out of the water—if not off the air—with his horrific comments. They were too much even for his fans and his boss is forced to apologize for him. Somehow I feel this is a defeat for the taxi driver, too. I have a happy fantasy that anger plus overweight will do him in. I add up the score: I’ve seen the racist bullshit that still goes on in the streets. I’ve learned that Russia and Ukraine are not the same country. I’ve expressed anger at the time I was feeling it—and I didn’t cry. Not bad for one taxi ride.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O V I I I Before reaching the high tower, the Poets have observed two flame-signals rise from its summit, and another make answer at a great distance; and now they see Phlegyas, coming with angry rapidity to ferry them over. They enter his bark; and sail across the broad marsh, or Fifth Circle. On the passage, a spirit, all covered with mud, addresses Dante, and is recognized by him. It is Filippo Argenti, of the old Adimari family; who had been much noted for his ostentation, arrogance, and brutal anger. After leaving him, Dante begins to hear a sound of lamentation; and Virgil tells him that the City of Dis (Satan, Lucifer) is getting near. He looks forward, through the grim vapour; and discerns its pinnacles, red, as if they bad come out of fire. Phlegyas lands them at the gates. These they find occupied by a host of fallen angels, who deny them admittance. I SAY continuing, 1 that, long before we reached the foot of the high tower, our eves went upwards to its summit, Because of two flamelets, that we saw put there, and another from far give signal back, so far that the eye could scarcely catch it. And I turned to the Sea of all intelligence; I said: “What says this? and what replies yon other fire? And who are they that made it?” And he to me: “Over the squalid waves, already thou mayest discern what is expected, if the vapour of the fen conceal it not from thee.” Never did cord impel from itself an arrow, that ran through the air so quickly, as a little bark which I saw come towards us then through the water, under the guidance of a single steersman, who cried: “Now art thou arrived, fell spirit?” “Phlegyas, Phlegyas,” said my Lord, “this time thou criest in vain; thou shalt not have us longer than while we pass the wash.” As one who listens to some great deceit which has been done to him, and then sore resents it: such grew Phlegyas in his gathered rage. My Guide descended into the skiff, and then made me enter after him; and not till I was in, did it seem laden. Soon as my Guide and I were in the boat, its ancient prow went on, cutting more of the water than it is wont with others. 2 Whilst we were running through the dead channel, there rose before me one 3 full of mud, and said: “Who art thou, that comest before thy time?” And I to him: “If I come, I remain not; but thou, who art thou, that hast become so foul?” He answered: “Thou seest that I am one who weep.” And I to him: “With weeping, and with sorrow, accursed spirit, remain thou!