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 Fear of Flying (1973)

  Throughout all of history, books were written with sperm, not menstrual blood. Until I was twenty-one, I measured my orgasms against Lady Chatterley’s and wondered what was wrong with me. Did it ever occur to me that Lady Chatterley was really a man? That she was really D. H. Lawrence? Phallocentric. The trouble with men and also the trouble with women. A friend of mine recently found this in a fortune cookie: THE TROUBLE WITH MEN IS MEN, THE TROUBLE WITH WOMEN, MEN. Once, just to impress Bennett, I told him about the Hell’s Angels initiation ceremony. The part where the initiate has to go down on his woman while she has her period and while all the other guys watch. Bennett said nothing. “Well, isn’t that interesting?” I nudged. “Isn’t that a gas?” Still nothing. I kept nagging. “Why don’t you buy yourself a little dog,” he finally said, “and train him.” “I ought to report you to the New York Psychoanalytic,” I said. — The medical building of the University of Vienna is columned, cold, cavernous. We trudged up a long flight of steps. Upstairs, dozens of shrinks were milling around the registration desk. An officious Austrian girl in harlequin glasses and a red dirndl was giving everyone trouble about their credentials for registration. She spoke painstakingly schoolbook English. I was positive she must be the wife of one of the Austrian candidates. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five but she smiled with all the smugness of a Frau Doktor. I showed her my letter from Voyeur Magazine, but she wouldn’t let me register. “Why?” “Because we are not authorized to admit Press,” she sneered. “I am so sorry.” “I’ll bet.” I could feel the anger gather inside my head like steam in a pressure cooker. The Nazi bitch, I thought, the goddamned Kraut. Bennett shot me a look which said: calm down. He hates it when I get angry at people in public. But his trying to hold me back only made me more furious. “Look—if you don’t let me in I’ll write about that, too.” I knew that once the meetings got started I could probably walk right in without a badge—so it really didn’t matter. Besides, I scarcely cared all that much about writing the article. I was a spy from the outside world. A spy in the house of analysis. “I’m sure you don’t want me to write about how the analysts are scared of admitting writers to their meetings, do you?” “I’m zo sorry,” the Austrian bitch kept repeating. “But I really haff not got za ausority to admit you....” “Just following orders, I suppose.” “I haff instructions to obey,” she said. “You and Eichmann.” “Pardon?” She hadn’t heard me.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  The disparity between your life and your work turns out to be as great as ever. And the people seduced by your work are usually seduced for all the wrong reasons. Or are they the right reasons? Do all the nuts in the world really have your number? And not just your telephone number either. “I thought we really had a good thing going,” Adrian said, “but it’s over now, because you’re so bloody terrified. I’m really disappointed in you.... Well, I guess it won’t be the first time I’ve been disappointed in a woman. That first day, when I saw you arguing at registration, I thought: that really is one splendid woman—a real fighter. She doesn’t take life lying down. But I was wrong. You’re no adventuress. You’re a princess. Forgive me for trying to upset your safe little marriage.” He turned the key in the ignition and started the car for emphasis. “Fuck you, Adrian.” It was lame but it was all I could think of. “Don’t fuck me—go home and fuck yourself. Go back to being a safe little bourgeois housewife who writes in her spare time.” That was the unkindest cut of all. “And what do you think you are—a safe little bourgeois doctor who plays existentialist in his spare time?” I was almost shouting. “Go ahead and scream, ducks, it doesn’t bother me at all. I don’t have to account to you for my life. I know what I’m doing. You’re the one who’s so bloody indecisive. You’re the one who can’t decide whether to be Isadora Duncan, Zelda Fitzgerald, or Marjorie Morningstar.” He raced the engine dramatically. “Take me home,” I said. “Gladly, if you’ll just tell me where that is.” We sat for a while without speaking. Adrian kept racing the motor but made no move to pull out, and I just sat there in silence being torn apart by my twin demons. Was I going to be just a housewife who wrote in her spare time? Was that my fate? Was I going to keep passing up the adventures that were offered to me? Was I going to go on living my life as a lie? Or was I going to make my fantasies and my life merge if only for once? “What if I change my mind?” I asked. “It’s too late. You’ve already ruined it. It will never be the same. I don’t know now whether I want to take you, quite honestly.” “You really are a hard man, aren’t you? One little moment of indecision and you give up on me. You expect me to give up everything—my life, my husband, my work—without a moment’s hesitation and just follow you across Europe in accordance with some half-baked Laingian idea of experience and adventure.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  I nursed my beer. As soon as I looked up, a man at a nearby table caught my eye. He had that swaggering look which says, I know what you want, baby…. It was the same flirtatiousness that I had fallen for in Adrian, but now it sickened me. All I saw in it at this point was bullying and sadism. It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps 90 percent of the men who displayed it were really concealing impotence. I didn’t care to test that hypothesis either. I furrowed my brows and looked down. Couldn’t he see I didn’t want anyone? Couldn’t he see I was tired and dirty and beat? Couldn’t he see I was clinging to my beer glass as if it were the Holy Grail? Why was it that whenever you refused a man, refused him sincerely and wholeheartedly, he persisted in believing you were being coquettish? I thought back to my days of having fantasies of men on trains. It’s true that I never did anything about these fantasies and wouldn’t have dared to. I wasn’t even brave enough to write about them until much later. But suppose I had approached one of these men, and suppose he had rejected me, looked away, shown disgust or revulsion. What then? I would have immediately taken the rejection to heart, believed myself in the wrong, blamed myself for being an evil woman, a whore, a slut, a disturber of the peace…. More to the point, I would have immediately blamed my own unattractiveness, not the man’s reluctance, and I would have been destroyed for days by his rejection of me. Yet a man assumes that a woman’s refusal is just part of a game. Or, at any rate, a lot of men assume that. When a man says no, it’s no. When a woman says no, it’s yes, or at least maybe. There is even a joke to that effect. And little by little, women begin to believe in this view of themselves. Finally, after centuries of living under the shadow of such assumptions, they no longer know what they want and can never make up their minds about anything. And men, of course, compound the problem by mocking them for their indecisiveness and blaming it on biology, hormones, premenstrual tension. Suddenly—with the leering eyes of that strange man on me—I knew what I had done wrong with Adrian and why he had left me. I had broken the basic rule. I had pursued him. Years of having fantasies about men and never acting on them—and then for the first time in my life, I live out a fantasy. I pursue a man I madly desire, and what happens? He goes limp as a waterlogged noodle and refuses me.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘I think that’s enough now,’ said Jerome firmly to Carl. ‘I’m going to take Zoor home. You’ve upset her enough as it is.’ Of all the things he had been accused of so far, this reasonably voiced charge struck Carl as the most unfair. ‘This was not me, man,’ said Carl adamantly, shaking his head. ‘I did not do this. Damn!’ He kicked a step hard. ‘You people don’t behave like human beings, man – I ain’t never seen people behave like you people. You don’t tell the truth , you deceive people. You all act so superior, but you’re not telling the truth! You don’t even know a thing about your own father, man. My daddy’s a worthless piece of shit too, but at least I know he’s a worthless piece of shit. I feel sorry for you – you know that? I really do.’ Zora wiped her nose and cut her eyes at Carl imperiously. ‘Carl, please don’t talk about our father. We know about our father. You go to Wellington for a few months, you hear a little gossip and you think you know what’s going on? You think you’re a Wellingtonian because they let you file a few records? You don’t know a thing about what it takes to belong here. And you haven’t got the first idea about our family or our life, OK? Remember that.’ ‘Zoor, please don’t – ’ cautioned Jerome, but Zora took a step  On Beauty forward and felt a pool of water seep into her toeless shoes. She bent down and removed her heels. ‘I ain’t even talking about that,’ whispered Carl. Everywhere around them in the darkness the trees dripped. In the main road, far off from this one, the splatter and screech of wheels speeding through puddles. ‘Well, what are you talking about?’ said Zora, using her shoes to gesticulate. ‘You’re pathetic. Leave me alone.’ ‘I’m just saying,’ said Carl darkly, ‘you think everybody you know is so pure, so perfect – man , you don’t know anything about these Wellington people. You don’t know how they do.’ ‘That’s enough ,’ insisted Jerome. ‘You can see the state she’s in, man. Have a little pity. She doesn’t need this. Please, Zoor, let’s go find the car.’ But Zora wasn’t finished yet. ‘I know that the men I know are grown-ups . They’re intellectuals – not children. They don’t act like hound-dog teenagers every time some cute piece of ass comes shimmying up to them.’ ‘Zora,’ said Jerome, his voice cracking, for the thought of his father and Victoria had begun to overwhelm him. There was a very real possibility that he was going to be sick here in the street. ‘Please! Let’s just get in the car! I can’t do this! I need to be home .’

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  As rigidly self-serving as the Social Darwinists of the Victorian Era. “But women are always the power behind the throne,” my last analyst had said when I tried to explain how dishonest I felt for always using seductiveness to get what I wanted from men. It was just a few weeks before the trip to Vienna that we had our final blow-up. I’d never quite trusted Kolner anyway, but I’d kept on going to see him on the assumption that that was my problem. “But don’t you see,” I shouted from the couch, “that’s just the trouble! Women using sex appeal to manipulate men and suppressing their rage and never being open and honest—” But Dr. Kolner could only see anything which vaguely smacked of Women’s Lib as a neurotic problem. Any protestation against conventional female behavior had to be “phallic” and “aggressive.” We had haggled over these issues for a long time, but it was his “power behind the throne” pitch which finally showed me how I’d been taken. “I don’t believe what you believe,” I yelled, “and I don’t respect your beliefs and I don’t respect you for holding them. If you can honestly make a statement like that about the power behind the throne, how can you possibly understand anything about me or the things I’m struggling with? I don’t want to live by the things you live by. I don’t want that kind of life and I don’t see why I should be judged by its standards. I also don’t think you understand a thing about women.” “Maybe you don’t understand what it means to be a woman,” he countered. “Oh God. Now you’re using the final ploy. Don’t you see that men have always defined femininity as a means of keeping women in line? Why should I listen to you about what it means to be a woman? Are you a woman? Why shouldn’t I listen to myself for once? And to other women? I talk to them. They tell me about themselves—and a damned lot of them feel exactly the way I do—even if it doesn’t get the Good Housekeeping Seal of the American Psychoanalytic.” We went back and forth like that for a while, both of us shouting. I was hating myself for sounding so damned much like some sort of tract and for being forced into simplemindedly polarized positions. I knew I was neglecting the subtleties. I knew that there were other analysts—my German analyst, for instance—who didn’t pull this misogynous routine. But I was also hating Kolner for his narrowness and for wasting my time and money with warmed-over clichés about woman’s place. Who needed that? You could get that out of a fortune cookie. And it didn’t cost $40 for fifty minutes either. “If you really feel that way about me, I don’t know why you don’t quit right now,” Kolner spat out. “Why stick around and take this shit from me?” That was Kolner exactly.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  “Thank you,” I said, reaching for my purse. But he walked past me without acknowledging this. “You will be alone?” he asked ambiguously. It wasn’t clear whether he meant “do you want to be alone?” or “will you be alone?” Then he began pulling down all the shades. How kind of him, I thought. He wants to show me how to keep other people from disturbing me, how to have the compartment to myself. Just when you were about to give up on people, someone appeared and did you a favor out of the blue. He was pushing the armrests up to make a bed for me. Then he ran his hand along the seats to indicate that this was a place to lie down. “I really don’t know if this is fair to the other people,” I said, feeling suddenly guilty to be hogging a whole compartment. But he hadn’t understood me and I couldn’t explain myself in French. “You are seule?” he asked again, flattening his palm on my belly and pushing me down toward the seat. Suddenly his hand was between my legs and he was trying to hold me down forcibly. “What are you doing?” I screamed, springing up and pushing him away. I knew very well what he was doing, but it had taken a few seconds to register. “You pig!” I spat out. He smiled crookedly and shrugged his shoulders, as if to say “no harm in trying.” “Cochon!” I yelled, translating for his benefit. He laughed weakly. He wasn’t exactly about to rape me, but neither did he understand my outrage. After all, I was alone, wasn’t I? With a burst of energy I leaped up on the seat and grabbed my suitcase, nearly bringing it down on my own head. I stormed out of the compartment while he just stood there smiling his crooked smile and shrugging. I was furious with myself for my credulity. How could I have thanked him for his consideration when any idiot would have known that he planned to grab me by the snatch as soon as the shades were drawn? I was really a fool—despite all my pretensions to worldliness. I was about as worldly as a goddamned eight year old. Isadora in Wonderland. The eternal naif. “Boy, are you stupid,” I said to myself as I stepped down the corridor in search of another compartment. I wanted a crowded one this time. One with nuns, or a family of twelve, or both. I was wishing I’d had the nerve to belt him one. If only I were one of those wise women who carry aerosol cans of Mace or study karate. Or maybe I needed a guard dog. A huge dog trained for every sort of service. It was likely to come in handier than a man.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  No more than I would accept a vote on whether a man might be allowed to cut out my tongue – a vote is completely irrelevant in this context.’ Jack looked hopelessly at Howard. ‘Opinions from the floor?’ suggested exasperated Howard. ‘Yes . . .’ said Jack, with great relief. ‘Opinions from the floor? Elaine – did you want to say something?’ Professor Elaine Burchfield pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘Is Howard Belsey really suggesting,’ she said with patrician disappointment, ‘that Wellington is such a terribly delicate institution that it fears the normal cut and thrust of political debate within its halls? Is the liberal consciousness (which it pleases Professor Kipps to ridicule) really so very slight that it cannot survive a series of six lectures that come from a perspective other than its own? I find that prospect very alarming.’ Howard, glowing with anger now, addressed his answer to a high spot on the back wall. ‘I’m obviously not making myself clear. Professor Kipps is on record , alongside his ‘‘kindred spirit’’ Justice Scalia, denouncing homosexuality as an evil – ’ Monty sprang from his seat once more. ‘I object to that characterization of my argument. In print I defended Justice Scalia’s view that it is within the right of committed Christian people to hold such an opinion of homosexuality – and furthermore that it is an infringement of the rights of Christian people when their personal objection to gay people, which they hold to be a moral principle, is  on beauty and being wrong translated into the legal category of ‘‘discrimination’’. That was my exact case.’ Howard watched with satisfaction as Burchfield and Fontaine shrank in distaste at this clarification. Which made it all the more astonishing to Howard when Fontaine now raised her infamous lesbian baritone to say: ‘We may find these views objectionable, even repulsive – but this is an institution that defends intellectual discussion and debate.’ ‘Jesus Christ – Gloria, this is the opposite of thought!’ cried the head of the Social Anthropology Department. Thus began a verbal ping-pong, which collected more players as the argument ranged the room and continued without the need for Howard as umpire. Howard sat down. He listened to his argument get lost in accounts of other cases, some similar, some tediously irrelevant. Erskine, meaning well, gave a long and exhaustive history of the civil rights movement, the point of which seemed to be that given Kipps’s rigid views of the constitution, Kipps himself would have never voted with the majority on Brown v. Board of Education. It was a good point, but it got lost in Erskine’s emotional delivery. Half an hour passed this way. At last Jack brought the debate under control.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Another jolt I remember is connected with a little burg we were traversing at night, during our return journey. Some twenty miles earlier I had happened to tell her that the day school she would attend at Beardsley was a rather high-class, non-coeducational one, with no modern nonsense, whereupon Lo treated me to one of those furious harangues of hers where entreaty and insult, self-assertion and double talk, vicious vulgarity and childish despair, were interwoven in an exasperating semblance of logic which prompted a semblance of explanation from me. Enmeshed in her wild words (swell chance … I’d be a sap if I took your opinion seriously … Stinker … You can’t boss me … I despise you … and so forth), I drove through the slumbering town at a fifty-mile-per-hour pace in continuance of my smooth highway swoosh, and a twosome of patrolmen put their spotlight on the car, and told me to pull over. I shushed Lo who was automatically raving on. The men peered at her and me with malevolent curiosity. Suddenly all dimples, she beamed sweetly at them, as she never did at my orchideous masculinity; for, in a sense, my Lo was even more scared of the law than I—and when the kind officers pardoned us and servilely we crawled on, her eyelids closed and fluttered as she mimicked limp prostration.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  A commotion was going on by the stage. The next act was waiting for Doc Brown to finish his introduction. The group was huge. Nine, ten boys? They were the kind of boys who make three times as much noise as their actual number. They jostled each other, shoulder to shoulder, on the way up the steps, and struggled to reach a collection of five or so microphones on stands in front of them – there would not be enough for all. One of them was Levi Belsey. ‘Looks like your brother’s up,’ said Claire, poking Zora lightly in the back. ‘Oh, God,’ said Zora, peeking through a gap in her fingers. ‘Maybe we’ll get lucky – maybe he’s just the hype man.’ ‘Hype man?’ ‘Like a cheerleader. But for rap,’ explained Daisy helpfully. Finally all the boys were on the stage. The band was dismissed.  On Beauty This group had their own tape: a heavy Caribbean beat and jangly keyboards over the top. They all began to speak at once in a loud Creole. That wasn’t working. Further jostling decided that one guy should begin. A skinny guy in a hoodie came forward and gave it his all. The language barrier had an interesting effect. The ten boys were clearly eager that their audience understand what was being said; they jumped and whooped and leaned into the crowd, and the crowd could not help but respond, although most understood nothing bar the beat. Levi was indeed the hype man, picking up his microphone every few bars and shouting ‘YO!’ into it. Some of the younger black kids in the audience rushed the stage in response to the sheer energy of this performance, and here Levi came into his own, encouraging them in English. ‘Levi doesn’t even speak French,’ said Zora frowning at the performance. ‘I don’t think he has any idea what he’s hyping.’ But then came the chorus – sung by everyone together, including Levi, in English: ‘AH-RIS-TEED, CORRUPTION AND GREED, AND SO WE ALL SEE, WE STILL AIN’T FREE!’ ‘Nice rhymes,’ said Chantelle, laughing. ‘Nice and basic.’ ‘Is this political ?’ asked Daisy with distaste. After two outings, the chorus thankfully dropped back into the manic Creole of the verse. Claire struggled to simultaneously translate for her class. She soon gave it up under the weight of too many unfamiliar terms. Instead, she paraphrased: ‘They seem to be angry about America’s involve-ment in Haiti. The rhymes are very . . . crude, is the best way to put it.’ ‘We have something to do with Haiti?’ asked Hannah. ‘We have something to do with everywhere,’ said Claire. ‘And how does your brother know those guys?’ asked Daisy. Zora widened her eyes. ‘I have absolutely no idea.’ ‘I can’t hear myself think,’ said Ron, and got up to go to the bar.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Slowly Chantelle pulled back. Levi patted her gently on the shoulder. She was the kind of girl you wanted to look out for, one way or another. ‘Are you going to the cemetery? Do you want to come along with us?’ Chantelle sniffed and wiped her eyes. ‘No – thank you, ma’am – I’m gonna go home. I mean – to the hotel. I was staying at Sir Monty’s house,’ and she said this very carefully, emphasizing the oddity of the title to the American ear and tongue. ‘But now . . . well, I leave tomorrow anyhow, like I said.’  on beauty and being wrong ‘Hotel? A London hotel? Sister, that’s crazy!’ cried Kiki. ‘Why don’t you stay with us – with our friends? It’s only one night – you can’t pay all that money.’ ‘No, I’m not – ’ began Chantelle, but then stopped. ‘I have to go now,’ she said. ‘Nice meeting all of you – I’m sorry about . . . Zora, guess I’ll see you in January. Nice to see you. Ma’am.’ Chantelle nodded goodbye to the Belseys and hurried away towards the church gates. The Belseys followed at a slower pace, looking around themselves all the time for Howard. ‘I do not believe this. He’s gone! Levi – give me your cell.’ ‘It doesn’t work here – I ain’t got the right contract or whatever.’ ‘Me neither,’ said Jerome. Kiki ground her court heels into the gravel. ‘He’s crossed a line today. This was somebody else’s day, this was not his day. This was somebody’s funeral . He has just got no borders at all.’ ‘Mom, calm down. Look, my cell works – but who’re you going to call, exactly?’ asked Zora, sensibly. Kiki phoned Adam and Rachel, but Howard was not in Hampstead. The Belseys got into a minicab the practical Kippses had thought to call, one of a long line of foreign men in foreign cars, windows down, waiting.  Twenty minutes earlier, Howard had walked out of the churchyard, turned left and kept on walking. He had no plans – or at least, his conscious mind told him he had none. His subconscious had other ideas. He was heading for Cricklewood. By foot he completed the final quarter-mile of a journey he had started by car this morning: down that changeable North London hill, which ends in ignominy with Cricklewood Broadway. At various points along this hill, areas are known to fall in and out of gentrification, but the two extremes of Hampstead and Cricklewood do not change. Cricklewood is beyond salvation: so say the estate agents who drive by the derelict bingo halls and the trading estates  On Beauty

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O X X V I IThe Poet’s ear and eye drink for a space of the glory of Paradise and afterwards, amid deep silence, first the light of Peter glows red with indignation, as he denounced the doings of Pope Boniface VIII; then all heaven is suffused with the same glow and Beatrice’s cheek flushes as at a tale of shame, while Peter pursues his denunciation, including Clement the Gascon and John of Cahors in its sweep and then promises redress and bids Dante bear the news to earth. The triumphant spirits, like flashes of flame, rain upwards into the higher heaven, and Beatrice bids Dante look down upon the earth. Dante is in Gemini and the Sun in Aries, with Taurus between, and therefore the half of the earth illuminated by the sun does not correspond with the half that the Seer commands. He sees the earth as we see the moon when she is past the full. The illuminated portion stretches from far west of Gibraltar to the shore of the Levant; and the darkened portion stretches further east. Turning back with renewed longing to Beatrice Dante sees her yet more beautiful and rises with her to the Primum Mobile. Beatrice expounds to him how time and space take their source and measure from this sphere, and have no relevancy to aught that lies beyond it. It is girt (how, God only understandeth) not by space but by the Divine light and love. Then, with deep yearning, Beatrice turns her thoughts back to the besotted world wherein faith and innocence find refuge only in the hearts and lives of infants, and where humanity blackens from its birth. And all this not because of any inherent degeneracy but because there is none to rule. But ere the hundredth of a day by which the Julian exceeds the Solar year shall by its accumulations have made January cease to be a Winter month! the course shall be reversed. [image file=image_rsrcA5N.jpg] ALL PARADISE took up the strain, “To the Father, to the Son, to the Holy Spirit, glory!” so that the sweet song intoxicated me. Meseemed I was beholding a smile of the universe; wherefore my intoxication entered both by hearing and by sight. O joy! O gladness unspeakable! O life compact of love and peace! O wealth secure that hath no longing! Before my eyes the four torches stood enkindled, and the one which had first approached me began to grow more living; and such became in semblance as would Jupiter if he and Mars were birds and should exchange their plumage.1 The providence which there assigneth function and office had imposed silence on the blessed choir on every side, when I heard: “If I transform my hue, marvel thou not; for, as I speak, thou shalt see all of these transform it too. He who usurpeth upon earth my place, my place, my place, which in the presence of the Son of God is vacant,2

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  There exist novelists and poets, and ecclesiastic writers, who deliberately use color terms, or numbers, in a strictly symbolic sense. The type of writer I am, half-painter, half-naturalist, finds the use of symbols hateful because it substitutes a dead general idea for a live specific impression. I am therefore puzzled and distressed by the significance you lend to the general idea of “red” in my book. When the intellect limits itself to the general notion, or primitive notion, of a certain color it deprives the senses of its shades. In different languages different colors were used in a general sense before shades were distinguished. (In French, for example, the “redness” of hair is now expressed by “roux” meaning rufous, or russet, or fulvous with a reddish cast.) For me the shades, or rather colors, of, say, a fox, a ruby, a carrot, a pink rose, a dark cherry, a flushed cheek, are as different as blue is from green or the royal purple of blood (Fr. “pourpre”) from the English sense of violet blue. I think your students, your readers, should be taught to see things, to discriminate between visual shades as the author does, and not to lump them under such arbitrary labels as “red” (using it, moreover, as a sexual symbol, though actually the dominant shades in males are mauve—to bright blue, in certain monkeys).… Roses may be white, and even black-red. Only cartoonists, having three colors at their disposal, use red for hair, cheek and blood. See Orange … and Emerald for further remarks on color. Miss Phalen: from the French phalène: moth. For the entomological allusions, see John Ray, Jr.. CHAPTER 13friable: easily crumbled or pulverized. parkled: H.H.’s coinage. safely solipsized: see solipsism. An important phrase (see second half of not human, but nymphic). The verbal form of solipsist is of course H.H.’s coinage—a most significant portmanteau suggesting that Lolita has been reduced in more than size, as H.H. comes to realize. Although H.H.’s “moral apotheosis” is expressed at the end of Lolita, hints of it are fleetingly glimpsed early on, shortly, when H.H. addresses the nymphet’s solipsized condition: “What I had madly possessed was not she, but my own creation, another, fanciful Lolita—perhaps, more real than Lolita; overlapping, encasing her; floating between me and her, and having no will, no consciousness—indeed, no life of her own.” corpuscles of Krause: after the German anatomist: minute sensory particles occurring in the mucous membranes of the genitalia. An author’s error has been corrected (s in Krause instead of z in the 1958 edition). seraglio: the portion of a Moslem house reserved for the wives and harem. Drew his .32: the revenge murder of Lolita which doesn’t take place; see here. CHAPTER 14loan God: from a cultural sequence (e.g., Greek-Roman, Hebrew-Christian); “lone” in the first mass paperback edition, and thus an “existential image” to one critic. Dr. Quilty: the “playwright” is his nephew (or cousin), Clare Quilty. For a summary of Quilty allusions, see Quilty, Clare.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  “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.” He kept taking the Drome cigarette apart and munching bits of it. “I am willing to try,” he said. “You are either Australian, or a German refugee. Must you talk to me? This is a Gentile’s house, you know. Maybe, you’d better run along. And do stop demonstrating that gun. I’ve an old Stern-Luger in the music room.” I pointed Chum at his slippered foot and crushed the trigger. It clicked. He looked at his foot, at the pistol, again at his foot. I made another awful effort, and, with a ridiculously feeble and juvenile sound, it went off. The bullet entered the thick pink rug, and I had the paralyzing impression that it had merely trickled in and might come out again. “See what I mean?” said Quilty. “You should be a little more careful. Give me that thing for Christ’s sake.” He reached for it. I pushed him back into the chair. The rich joy was waning. It was high time I destroyed him, but he must understand why he was being destroyed. His condition infected me, the weapon felt limp and clumsy in my hand. “Concentrate,” I said, “on the thought of Dolly Haze whom you kidnaped—” “I did not!” he cried. “You’re all wet. I saved her from a beastly pervert. Show me your badge instead of shooting at my foot, you ape, you. Where is that badge? I’m not responsible for the rapes of others. Absurd! That joy ride, I grant you, was a silly stunt but you got her back, didn’t you? Come, let’s have a drink.” I asked him whether he wanted to be executed sitting or standing. “Ah, let me think,” he said. “It is not an easy question. Incidentally—I made a mistake. Which I sincerely regret. You see, I had no fun with your Dolly. I am practically impotent, to tell the melancholy truth. And I gave her a splendid vacation. She met some remarkable people. Do you happen to know—” And with a tremendous lurch he fell all over me, sending the pistol hurtling under a chest of drawers. Fortunately he was more impetuous than vigorous, and I had little difficulty in shoving him back into his chair. He puffed a little and folded his arms on his chest.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Then the white bird the Gull, which swims on the waves of the water, flew toward the Ocean sea, where he found Venus washing and bathing her selfe: to whom she declared that her son was burned and in danger of death, and moreover that it was a common brute in the mouth of every person (who spake evill of all the family of Venus) that her son doth nothing but haunt harlots in the mountain, and she her self lasciviously use to ryot in the sea: wherby they say that they are now become no more gratious, pleasant nor gentle, but incivile, monstrous and horrible. Moreover, that marriages are not for any amity, or for love of procreation, but full of envy, discord, and debate. This the curious Gul did clatter in the ears of Venus, reprehending her son. But Venus began to cry and sayd, What hath my sonne gotten any Love? I pray thee gentle bird that doest serve me so faithfully, tell me what she is, and what is her name that hath troubled my son in such sort? whether shee be any of the Nymphs, of the number of the goddesses, of the company of the Muses, or of the mistery of the Graces? To whom the bird answered, Madam I know not what shee is, but this I know that she is called Psyches. Then Venus with indignation cried out, What is it she? the usurper of my beauty, the Vicar of my name? What did he think that I was a bawd, by whose shew he fell acquainted with the maid? And immediately she departed and went to her chamber, where she found her son wounded as it was told unto her, whom when she beheld she cries out in this sort. Is this an honest thing, is this honourable to thy parents? is this reason, that thou hast violated and broken the commandement of thy mother and soveraign mistresse: and whereas thou shouldst have vexed my enemy with loathsom love, thou hast done otherwise? For being of tender and unripe yeares, thou hast with too licentious appetite embraced my most mortall Foe, to whome I shall bee made a mother, and she a Daughter.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  My Egyptian’s conversational interests, however, went beyond noses. He looked down at a copy of Time Magazine which had lain open (and unread) on my lap during the storm, pointed to a picture of (then) UN Ambassador Goldberg, and said historically: “He’s Jewish.” That was all he said, but his tone and look implied that that was all he had to say. I looked at him very hard (over my Polish nose), and for two cents I would have said, “Me too,” but nobody offered me two cents. Just then our Italian pilot announced the descent into Beirut Airport. I was still shaking from that little interchange when I spotted a hugely pregnant Randy behind the glass barricade in the airport. I’d expected the worst going through customs, but there was no trouble at all. My brother-in-law, Pierre, seemed to be best friends with all the airport personnel and I was whisked through like a VIP. It was 1965 and things were not as spastic in the Middle East as they became after the Six Day War. As long as you didn’t come via Israel, you could travel in Lebanon as if it were Miami Beach—which, in fact, it somewhat resembles, down to the abundance of yentas. Randy and Pierre drove me from the airport in the hearse-black, air-conditioned Cadillac which they’d shipped over from the States. On the road to Beirut, we passed a refugee camp where people were living in packing boxes and lots of dirty children were walking around half-naked sucking their fingers. Randy immediately made some high-handed comment about what an eyesore it was. “An eyesore? Is that all?” I asked. “Oh, don’t be such a goddamned liberal do-gooder,” she snapped. “Who do you think you are—Eleanor Roosevelt?” “Thanks for the compliment.” “I just get sick and tired of everyone bleeding about the poor Palestinians. Why don’t you worry about us instead?” “I do,” I said.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  So blue and green. I knew the sun shone because my ignition key was reflected in the windshield; and I knew it was exactly half past three because the nurse who came to massage Miss Opposite every afternoon was tripping down the narrow sidewalk in her white stockings and shoes. As usual, Junk’s hysterical setter attacked me as I rolled downhill, and as usual, the local paper was lying on the porch where it had just been hurled by Kenny. The day before I had ended the regime of aloofness I had imposed upon myself, and now uttered a cheerful homecoming call as I opened the door of the living room. With her cream-white nape and bronze bun to me, wearing the yellow blouse and maroon slacks she had on when I first met her, Charlotte sat at the corner bureau writing a letter. My hand still on the doorknob, I repeated my hearty cry. Her writing hand stopped. She sat still for a moment; then she slowly turned in her chair and rested her elbow on its curved back. Her face, disfigured by her emotion, was not a pretty sight as she stared at my legs and said: “The Haze woman, the big bitch, the old cat, the obnoxious mamma, the—the old stupid Haze is no longer your dupe. She has—she has ...” My fair accuser stopped, swallowing her venom and her tears. Whatever Humbert Humbert said—or attempted to say—is inessential. She went on: “You’re a monster. You’re a detestable, abominable, criminal fraud. If you come near—I’ll scream out the window. Get back!” Again, whatever H.H. murmured may be omitted, I think. “I am leaving tonight. This is all yours. Only you’ll never, never see that miserable brat again. Get out of this room.” Reader, I did. I went up to the ex-semi-studio. Arms akimbo, I stood for a moment quite still and self-composed, surveying from the threshold the raped little table with its open drawer, a key hanging from the lock, four other household keys on the table top. I walked across the landing into the Humberts’ bedroom, and calmly removed my diary from under her pillow into my pocket. Then I started to walk downstairs, but stopped halfway: she was talking on the telephone which happened to be plugged just outside the door of the living room. I wanted to hear what she was saying: she canceled an order for something or other, and returned to the parlor. I rearranged my respiration and went through the hallway to the kitchen. There, I opened a bottle of Scotch. She could never resist Scotch. Then I walked into the dining room and from there, through the half-open door, contemplated Charlotte’s broad back. “You are ruining my life and yours,” I said quietly. “Let us be civilized people. It is all your hallucination. You are crazy, Charlotte.

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

  Your control network helps select between emotion and non-emotion concepts (is this anxiety or indigestion?), between different emotion concepts (is this excitement or fear?), between different goals for an emotion concept (in fear, should I escape or attack?), and between different instances (when running to escape, should I scream or not?). When you’re watching a movie, your control network might favor your visual and auditory systems, transporting you into the story. At other times it might background the traditional five senses in favor of more intense affect, resulting in an experience of emotion. Much of this tinkering happens outside your awareness.18 Some scientists refer to the control network as an “emotion regulation” network. They assume that emotion regulation is a cognitive process that exists separately from emotion itself, say, when you’re pissed off at your boss but refrain from punching him. From the brain’s perspective, however, regulation is just categorization. When you have an experience that feels like your so-called rational side is tempering your emotional side—a mythical arrangement that you’ve learned is not respected by brain wiring—you are constructing an instance of the concept “Emotion Regulation.”19 Your control network and interoceptive network, as you’ve now seen, are critical for constructing emotion. Moreover, these two core networks together contain most of the major hubs for communication throughout the entire brain. Think about the world’s largest airports that serve multiple airlines. A traveler in JFK International Airport in New York can switch between American Airlines and British Airways because the two airlines overlap there. Likewise, information can pass efficiently between different networks in your brain via the major hubs in the interoceptive and control networks.20 These major hubs help to synchronize so much of your brain’s information flow that they might even be a prerequisite for consciousness. If any of these hubs become damaged, your brain is in big trouble: depression, panic disorder, schizophrenia, autism, dyslexia, chronic pain, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are all associated with hub damage.21 The major hubs in your interoceptive and control networks make possible what I describe in chapter 4, that your everyday decisions are driven by your body-budgeting regions—your inner, loudmouthed, mostly deaf scientist who views the world through affect-colored glasses. You see, your brain’s body-budgeting regions are major hubs. Through their massive connections, they broadcast predictions that alter what you see, hear, and otherwise perceive and do. That’s why, at the level of brain circuitry, no decision can be free of affect. … I’ve said several times that the brain acts like a scientist. It forms hypotheses through prediction and tests them against the “data” of sensory input. It corrects its predictions by way of prediction error, like a scientist adjusts his or her hypotheses in the face of contrary evidence. When the brain’s predictions match the sensory input, this constitutes a model of the world in that instant, just like a scientist judges that a correct hypothesis is the path to scientific certainty.

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

  If you live in a Western culture, you’d likely feel angry. Your brain would issue numerous predictions of “Anger” simultaneously. One prediction might be to pound your fist on the desk and yell at your boss. Another is to stand up and walk slowly across the room toward your boss, leaning in menacingly to whisper, “You will regret this.” Or you could sit quietly in your chair as you scheme to undermine your boss’s career.1 These diverse predictions of “Anger” have similarities, such as the boss, the lost promotion, and the common goal to exact vengeance. They also have plenty of differences, because yelling, whispering, and silence require different sensory and motor predictions. Your action also is different in each case (pounding, leaning, sitting), so your inner-body changes are different, as are the consequences for your body budget, and therefore the interoceptive and affective consequences are different as well. Ultimately, through a process we’ll discuss shortly, your brain selects a winning instance of “Anger” that best fits your goal in this particular situation. The winning instance determines how you behave and what you experience. This process is categorization. The scenario with your boss could play out differently, however. You could be angry with a different goal, like changing your boss’s mind, or maintaining social relations with the coworker who got the promotion in your place. Or you could construct an instance of a different emotion such as “Regret” or “Fear,” or a non-emotion like “Emancipation,” or a physical symptom like a “Headache,” or a perception that your boss is an “Idiot.” In each case, your brain follows a similar process, categorizing to best fit the entire situation and your internal sensations, based on past experience. Categorization means selecting a winning instance that becomes your perception and guides your action.2 It takes a rich set of concepts to construct emotion, as you read in the preceding chapter. Now you’ll learn how your brain acquires and uses your conceptual system from your earliest moments as an infant. Along the way, you’ll also learn the neural basis for several important topics you’ve seen previously: emotional granularity, population thinking, why emotions feel triggered rather than constructed, and why your body-budgeting regions can affect every decision and action you make.* When taken as a whole, these explanations hint at a unifying framework for how the brain makes meaning: one of the most extraordinary mysteries of the human mind. … The infant brain is missing most of the concepts that we have as adults. Babies don’t know what telescopes are, or sea cucumbers, or picnics, let alone purely mental concepts like “Whimsy” or “Schadenfreude.” A newborn is experientially blind to a great extent. Not surprisingly, the infant brain does not predict well. A grown-up brain is dominated by prediction, but an infant brain is awash in prediction error. So babies must learn about the world from sensory input before their brains can model the world. This learning is a primary task of the infant brain.

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

  For centuries, laws in the United States have been shaped by the classical view of emotion, steeped in the essentialist view of human nature. Judges, for example, attempt to set emotion aside to render a decision by pure reason, a belief that assumes emotion and reason are distinct entities. Violent defendants plead that they were hijacked by their anger, assuming that anger is one single, unitary cauldron that, when unconstrained by clear thought, bubbles over to unleash a torrent of aggression. Juries look for remorse in a defendant, as if remorse had a single, detectable expression in the face and body. Expert witnesses testify that a defendant’s bad behavior was caused by one errant brain blob, an example of baseless blob-ology. The law is a social contract that exists in a social world. Are you responsible for your actions? Yes, says the essentialist view of human nature, as long as you haven’t been commandeered by your emotions. Are other people responsible for your actions? No, you are an individual with free will. How do you determine what a defendant is feeling? By detecting his or her emotions in expressions. How do you make a just, moral decision? By setting your emotions aside. What is the nature of harm? Physical harm, that is, tissue damage, is worse than emotional harm, which is considered to be separate from the body and less tangible. All of these assumptions—born of essentialism—are baked into the law at its deepest levels, driving verdicts of guilt and innocence and gauging punishments on a massive scale, even as neuroscience has been quietly debunking them as myths. 2 Simply put, some people are punished undeservedly, and others escape punishment, based on an outdated theory of the mind that is rooted in belief rather than science. In this chapter, we’ll explore some common myths about emotion in the legal system and ask whether a biologically richer theory of the mind, especially one that is grounded in realistic neuroscience, can improve society’s pursuit of justice. … As every budding adolescent discovers, freedom is great. You can decide to stay out past midnight with your friends. You can decide not to do your homework. You can choose to eat cake for dinner. But as we all learn, choices come with consequences. The law is founded on the simple idea that you can choose to treat others well or badly. Choice bestows responsibility. If you treat others badly and consequently they suffer some harm, then you must be punished, particularly if you intended that harm. This is how society shows its respect for you as an individual. Your value as a human being, some legal scholars say, is rooted in the fact that you choose your actions and are responsible for them.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  After that I began a long rationalizing speech about marriage and my sexual needs and how I was a poet not a secretary. I stood at the lectern and ranted at the audience. Mrs. McIntosh looked soberly disapproving. Then I was picking my way down the steep steps, half crouching and terrified of falling. I looked into the sea of faces and suddenly realized that I had forgotten to take my scroll. In a panic I knew that I had forfeited everything: graduation, my fellowship grant, my harem of three husbands. The final dream I remember is strangest of all. I was walking up the library steps again to reclaim my diploma. This time it was not Mrs. McIntosh at the lectern, but Colette. Only she was a black woman with frizzy reddish hair glinting around her head like a halo. “There is only one way to graduate,” she said, “and it has nothing to do with the number of husbands.” “What do I have to do?” I asked desperately, feeling I’d do anything. She handed me a book with my name on the cover. “That was only a very shaky beginning,” she said, “but at least you made a beginning.” I took this to mean I still had years to go. “Wait,” she said, undoing her blouse. Suddenly I understood that making love to her in public was the real graduation, and at that moment it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. Very aroused, I moved toward her. Then the dream faded. EIGHTEENBlood Weddings or Sic Transit The real trouble about women is that they must always go on trying to adapt themselves to men’s theories of women. —D. H. Lawrence Iawakened at noon to find the blood welling up between my legs. If I parted my thighs even a little, the blood would gush down and stain through to the mattress. Foggy and half-dazed as I was, I knew to keep my legs together. I wanted to get up to search for a Tampax, but it was hard to get out of that sagging bed without parting my legs at least a little. I stood suddenly and blackish-red rivulets began to inch their way down the inside of my thighs. A dark spot of blood glistened on the floor. I ran to my suitcase leaving a trail of glistening spots. I felt that heavy and familiar pull in my lower belly. “Fuck,” I said, fumbling for my glasses so I could see to rummage for a Tampax. But I couldn’t even find my goddamned glasses. I thrust my hand into my suitcase and began feeling around. In exasperation, I started tossing the clothes out onto the floor. “Damn it to hell,” I screamed. The floor was beginning to look like the aftermath of a car wreck. How was I ever going to clean up all that blood? I wasn’t. I was going to beat it out of Paris before the management got wise.