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 On Beauty (2005)

  ‘The stupid thing is,’ continued Jerome, fiddling with a ring on his pinkie finger, ‘Kiki still loves him. It’s so obvious. I just don’t get that – how you can love someone who says no to the world like that – I mean, so consistently? It’s only when I’m away from home and I’m talking to non-family people that I can see how psychotic he is. The only music in the house now is, like, Japanese electro . Soon we’ll just have to tap on pieces of wood. This is a guy who wooed his wife by singing half of The Magic Flute outside her apartment . Now he won’t even let her have a painting she likes in the house. Because of some deranged theory in his head, everybody else has to suffer. It’s such a denial of joy – I don’t even know how you can stand living there.’ Through a straw, Levi blew bubbles in his Americano. He swivelled on his stool and, for the third time in fifteen minutes, checked the clock on the back wall. ‘Like I say, I’m out a lot. I don’t see how it goes down.’  the anatomy lesson ‘What I’ve really realized is Howard has a problem with gratitude,’ pressed Jerome, more to himself than to his brother. ‘It’s like he knows he’s blessed, but he doesn’t know where to put his gratitude because that makes him uncomfortable, because that would be dealing in transcendence – and we all know how he hates to do that . So by denying there are any gifts in the world, any essentially valuable things – that’s how he shortcircuits the gratitude question. If there are no gifts, then he doesn’t have to think about a God who might have given them. But that’s where joy is . I’m on my knees to God every day. And it’s amazing, Lee,’ he asserted, turning on his stool to look at Levi’s impassive profile, ‘it really is.’ ‘Cool,’ said Levi, with total equanimity, God being as welcome within the borders of Levi’s conversation as any other subject. ‘Everybody got they own way of getting through the day,’ he added truthfully and commenced picking the blueberries out of his second blueberry muffin. ‘Why do you do that?’ asked Zora, reclaiming her seat between her brothers. ‘I like blueberry flavour ,’ explained Levi, betraying a slight impatience; ‘I’m just not that into blue berries .’ Now Zora swivelled in her seat so that her back was to her younger brother and she might speak more privately with the elder. ‘S’funny you mention that concert . . . So you remember that guy?’ said Zora, tapping her fingers on the glass in a vague way meant to suggest that what she was about to say had only just occurred to her. ‘The concert guy – who thought I stole his thing – remember?’ ‘Sure,’ said Jerome. ‘So he’s in my class now. Claire’s class.’

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  There ensued a long and ear-splitting discussion of autobiography versus fiction, in which I mentioned Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Boswell, Proust, and James Joyce—all apparently to no avail. “You can damned well publish your filthy books posthumously,” Randy screeched, “if they contain a word about any character who ever remotely resembles me!” “And I assume that you are going to kill me so as not to delay publication.” “I mean after we die, not after you die.” “Is that an invitation to a beheading?” “Stuff your literary allusions up your ass. You think you’re so goddamned clever don’t you? Just because you were a grub and a grind and did well in school. Just because you’re ambitious and go fucking around with creepy intellectuals and phonies. I had as much talent to write as you and you know it, only I wouldn’t stoop to revealing myself in public the way you do. I wouldn’t want people to know my secret fantasies. I’m not a stinking exhibitionist like you, that’s all.... Now get the hell out of here! Get out! Do you hear me?” “This happens to be Jude’s and Daddy’s house—not yours.” “Get out! You’ve already given me a splitting headache!” Holding her temples, Randy ran into the bathroom. It was the old psychosomatic sidestep. Everyone in my family dances it at every opportunity. You’ve given me a splitting headache! You’ve given me indigestion! You’ve given me crotch rot! You’ve given me auditory hallucinations! You’ve given me a heart attack! You’ve given me cancer! Randy emerged from the bathroom with a pained look on her face. She had pulled herself together. Now she was trying to be tolerant. “I don’t want to fight with you,” she said. “Hah.” “No, really. It’s just that you’re still my little sister and I really think you’ve gotten off on the wrong track! I mean you really ought to stop writing and have a baby. You’ll find it so much more fulfilling than writing....” “Maybe that’s what I’m afraid of.” “What do you mean?” “Look, Randy, it may seem absurd to someone with nine children, but I really don’t miss having children. I mean I love your kids and Chloe’s and Lalah’s, but I’m really happy with my work for the moment and I don’t want any more fulfillment just now. It took me years to learn to sit at my desk for more than two minutes at a time, to put up with the solitude and the terror of failure, and the godawful silence and the white paper. And now that I can take it...now that I can finally do it...I’m really raring to go. I don’t want anything to interfere right now. Jesus Christ! It took me so long to get to this point....” “Is that really how you expect to spend the rest of your life?

• From On Beauty (2005)

  And what was the point, after all, of Elisha (whose area of expertise was the Blues) always asking him this and that about rap artists and rap history, when he had a brain in his head and a keyboard at his disposal? The first thing he sat down to write was a context card on Tupac Shakur. All he meant to do was write a thousand-word bio, as Elisha had asked him to, and then pass it on to her so that she could notate it with one of her mini-discographies and bibliographies, pointing students to further listening and related reading. He sat down at the computer at ten in the morning. By lunchtime he’d written five thousand words. And all this without even getting to the bit where teenage Tupac leaves the East Coast for the West. Elisha suggested that instead of taking whole people as subjects he could take one aspect of rap music in general, and make a note of all incidences of that aspect, so people could cross-reference. That didn’t help. Five days ago, Carl had elected the subject of crossroads . All mention of crossroads, imagery on album covers of crossroads, and raps based on the idea of a crossroads in someone’s life journey. Fifteen thousand words and counting. It was like suddenly he had a typing disease. Where was this disease when he was in school? ‘Knock, knock,’ said Zora pointlessly, as she stuck her head into his office and tapped his door. ‘Busy? I was just passing by, so.’ Carl pushed his cap off his face and looked up from his keyboard, annoyed by the disruption. Certainly, his intention was always to be nice to Zora Belsey, for she had always been nice to him. But she did not make it easy. She was the kind of person who never gave you enough time to miss her. She ‘passed by’ his office pretty much twice a day, usually with news of her campaign to keep him in Claire Malcolm’s poetry class. He hadn’t been able to tell her yet that he no longer gave a damn if he stayed in that class or not. ‘Hard at work – as always,’ she said and stepped into the room. He was taken aback by the large amount of cleavage he was confronted with, pushed up and together in a tight white top that could not quite contain the goods it had been entrusted with. There was also a silly shawl-like thing around her shoulders instead of a  On Beauty coat, and this Zora was forced to keep rearranging, as the left side slipped down her back. ‘Hello, Professor Thomas. Thought I’d pay you a visit.’ ‘Hey,’ said Carl, and instinctively pushed his chair a little further from the door. He took his earphones out. ‘You look kinda different.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  I never worry about making an impression on you. I tell you what I think.” “That’s a lie. Just yesterday you made a big deal about what a good lay I was when I wasn’t.” “You’re right.” That was fast. “But I know what you mean. We talk well. Without lumps and bumps. Esther goes into these long gloomy silences and I never know what she’s thinking. You’re open. You contradict yourself all the time, but I rather like that. It’s human.” “Bennett goes into long silences too. I’d almost rather he contradicted himself, but he’s too perfect. He won’t commit himself to a statement unless he’s sure it’s definitive. You can’t live that way—trying to be definitive all the time—death’s definitive.” “Let’s have another swim,” Adrian said. — “Why were you so angry at me?” Bennett asked later that evening. “Because I felt you treated me like a piece of property. Because you said you had no empathy for me. Because you never said you loved me. Because you’d never go down on me. Because you blamed me for all your unhappiness. Because you lapsed into these long silences and would never let me comfort you. Because you insulted my friends. Because you closed yourself off from any kind of human contact. Because you made me feel as if I were strangling to death.” “Your mother strangled you, not me. I gave you all the freedom you wanted.” “That’s a contradiction in terms. A person’s not free if their freedom has to be ‘given.’ Who are you to ‘give’ me freedom?” “Show me one person who’s completely free. Who? Is anyone? Your parents choked you—not me! You’re always blaming me for what your mother did to you.” “Whenever I criticize you in any way, you throw another psychoanalytic interpretation at me. It’s always my mother or my father—not something between us. Can’t we just keep it between us?” “I wish it worked that way. But it doesn’t. You’re always reliving your childhood whether you admit it or not—what the hell do you think you’re doing with Adrian Goodlove? He looks exactly like your father—or maybe you hadn’t noticed.” “I hadn’t noticed. He doesn’t look anything like my father.” Bennett snorted. “That’s a laugh.” “Look—I’m not going to argue with you about whether or not he looks like my father, but this is the first goddamned time you’ve ever showed any interest in me or acted as if you loved me at all. I have to bloody well fuck someone before your very eyes or you don’t give a damn about me. That’s pretty funny, isn’t it? Doesn’t your psychoanalytic theory tell you anything about that? Maybe it’s your Oedipal problem now. Maybe I’m your mother and Adrian resembles your father. Why don’t we all sit down and have a group grope about it? Actually, I think Adrian’s in love with you. I’m just the go- between.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘Look, I need an opening salvo,’ continued Claire. ‘I don’t want him to have the satisfaction of knowing I actually want to talk to him. What can I get him on?’ ‘He’s got a finger in every pie,’ said Howard, converting his personal desperation into anger. ‘Take your pick. State of Britain, state of the Caribbean, states of blackness, state of art, state of women, state of the States – you hum it, he’ll play it. Oh, and he thinks affirmative action is the work of the devil – he’s a charmer, he’s a . . .’  On Beauty Howard stopped. All the drink in his body had turned against him; his sentences were beginning to rush away from him like rabbits down their holes; soon neither the white tip of a thought nor the black hole into which it was vanishing would be visible to him. ‘Howie – you’re making yourself ridiculous,’ said Kiki precisely and bit her lip. Howard could see the battle going on inside her. He saw how determined she was. She would not scream, she would not cry. ‘He’s anti-affirmative action? That’s unusual, isn’t it?’ asked Claire, watching Monty’s nodding head. ‘Not really,’ replied Kiki. ‘He’s just a black conservative – thinks it’s demeaning for African-American kids to be told they need special treatment to succeed, etcetera. It’s terrible timing for Wellington, having him here – there’s an Anti-Affirmative Action bill working its way through the Senate and it’s gonna cause trouble. We need to stand firm on the issue right now. Well, as you know. You and Howard did all that work together.’ Kiki’s eyes widened at the end of this, taking in her own realization. ‘Ah . . .’ said Claire, twirling the stem of her empty wine glass. Small-scale politics bored her. She had served six months, a year and a half ago, as Howard’s titular deputy in Wellington’s Affirmative Action Committee – this was indeed how the whole thing between them had begun – but her interest had been minimal and her attendance patchy. She’d taken the job because Howard (desperate to avoid the appointment of another despised colleague) had begged her. Claire was only truly excited by the apocalyptic on the world stage: WMD, autocratic presidents, mass death. She detested committees and meetings. She liked to go on marches and to sign petitions. ‘You should talk to him about art – I mean, he’s a collector, apparently. Caribbean art,’ continued Kiki bravely. ‘I’m fascinated by the children too. They’re glorious.’ Howard snorted repulsively. He was desperately drunk now. ‘Jerome fell in love with the daughter briefly,’ explained Kiki tersely. ‘Last year. Her family freaked out a little – Howard made  kipps and belsey it all a hell of a lot worse than it needed to be. The whole thing was so stupid.’

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Absolutely.’ ‘Yes,’ said Monty, sensibly. ‘I don’t think there is any question of that.’ ‘Look, that painting is worth, what? About three hundred grand? Sterling?’ said Michael, for the Kippses, unlike the Belseys, had no horror of talking frankly about money. ‘Now there is absolutely no way, no way she would have let this fall out of the family . . . and what confirms it for me is that she’d already sort of mentioned, pretty recently – ’ ‘Giving it to us!’ squeaked Amelia. ‘As a wedding present!’ ‘As it happens, she had,’ agreed Michael. ‘Now you’re telling me she left the most valuable painting in the house to practically a stranger? To Kiki Belsey? I don’t think so.’ ‘Wasn’t there any other letter, anything else?’ asked Victoria bewilderedly.  on beauty and being wrong ‘Nothing,’ said Monty. He passed a hand over his shiny pate. ‘I can’t understand it.’ Michael whacked the arm of the chaise he sat upon. ‘Thinking of that woman taking advantage of somebody as ill as Mum – it’s disgusting.’ ‘Michael – the question is how should we deal with this?’ And now the practical hats of the Kippses were put on. The women in the room were not offered hats and instinctively sat back in their chairs as Michael and his father leaned forward with their elbows on their knees. ‘Do you think Kiki Belsey knows about this . . . note ?’ said Michael, barely allowing the last word the credence of its own existence. ‘This is what we don’t know. She’s certainly made no claims. As yet.’ ‘Whether she knows or not,’ flashed Victoria, ‘she can’t prove a thing, right? I mean she has no written evidence that would stand up in court or whatever. This is our birthright , for fuckssake.’ Victoria allowed sobs to take her again. Her tears were petulant. It was the first time death in any form had ever forced its way into the pleasant confines of her life. Running alongside the genuine misery and loss was livid disbelief. In every other walk of life when the Kippses were hurt they were given access to recourse: Monty had fought three different libel cases; Michael and Victoria had been brought up to fiercely defend their faith and their politics. But this – this could not be fought. Secular liberals were one thing; death was another. ‘I don’t want that language, Victoria,’ said Monty strongly. ‘You’ll respect this house and your family.’ ‘Apparently I respect my family more than Mum did – she doesn’t even mention us.’

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Howard stood up and took a step towards her. Zora put her arm out to stop him. ‘Defended,’ said Zora, opening her eyes very wide in amaze-ment, letting the tears course down. ‘Defended and defended and defended you .’ ‘Please, Zoor – ’ ‘Against Mom! I took your side !’ Howard took another step forward. ‘I’m standing here, asking for you to forgive me. It’s real mercy I’m asking for. I know you don’t want to hear my excuses ,’ said Howard, whispering. ‘I know you don’t want that.’ ‘When have you ever ,’ said Zora clearly, taking another step back from him, ‘given a fuck about what anyone wants?’ ‘That’s not fair. I love my family, Zoor.’ ‘ Do you. Do you love Jerome? How could you do this to him?’ Howard’s head shook mutely. ‘She’s my age . No – she’s younger than me . You’re fifty-seven years old, Dad,’ said Zora and laughed miserably. Howard covered his face with his hands. ‘IT’S SO BORING, DAD. IT’S SO FUCKING OBVIOUS .’ Zora now reached the top of the stairs leading down to the basement. Howard begged her for a little more time. There was no more time. Mother and daughter were already calling for each other, one running upstairs and one running down, each with her rich, strange news.  On Beauty  ‘What? What am I looking at exactly?’ Jerome directed his father to the relevant section of the letter from the bank that had been placed in front of him. Howard put his elbows either side of it and tried to concentrate. The air-conditioning was still not up to the job of summer in the Belsey house, so the sliding doors were pulled across and every window open, but only warm air circulated. Even reading seemed to bring on a sweat. ‘You need to sign there and there,’ said Jerome. ‘You have to do this stuff yourself. I’m late.’ A heavy smell lingered over the table: a putrid bowl of pears that had expired in the night. Two weeks earlier Howard had let go of Monique, the cleaner, describing her as an expense they could no longer afford. Then the heat came and everything began to rot and swelter and stink. Zora took a seat far from these pears rather than move the bowl herself.

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

  I try to imagine how my daughter, Sophia, might have learned emotion concepts when she was an infant, guided by the emotion words that my husband and I spoke to her intentionally. In our culture, one goal in “Anger” is to overcome an obstacle that someone blameworthy has put in your path. So, when a little friend would smack Sophia, sometimes she would cry and other times she’d swat back. When she didn’t like her food, sometimes she’d spit it out and other times she’d smile and tip the bowl onto the floor. These physical actions were accompanied by different facial movements, different changes in her body budget (to match her physical actions), and different interoceptive patterns. Within this ongoing stream of activity, her father and I would utter streams of sounds: “Sophie, sweetie, are you angry?” “Don’t be angry, honey.” “Sophie, you’re feeling angry.”34 At first, these noises must have been novel to Sophia, but over time, if my hypothesis is correct, she learned statistically to associate these diverse body patterns and contexts with the sounds “an-gry,” just like associating a squeaking toy with the sound “wug.” Eventually, the word “angry” invited my daughter to search for a way in which these instances were the same, even if on the surface they looked and felt different. In effect, Sophia formed a rudimentary concept whose instances were characterized by a common goal: overcoming an obstacle. And most importantly, Sophia learned which actions and feelings most effectively achieved this goal in each situation. In this way, Sophia’s brain would have bootstrapped the concept “Anger” into its neural architecture. When we first used the word “angry” with Sophia, we constructed her experiences of anger with her. We focused her attention, guiding her brain to store each instance in all its sensory detail. The word helped her to create commonalities with all the other instances of “Anger” already in her brain. Her brain also captured what preceded and followed those experiences. All of this became her concept of “Anger.”35 In our earlier encounter with Connecticut Governor Malloy, I described how viewers inferred his emotional state—intense sadness—by observing his movements and voice in a certain context. I think children learn to do the same thing. As they learn a concept such as “Anger,” they can predict and give meaning to other people’s movements and vocalizations—smiles, shrugs, shouts, whispers, tightened jaws, widened eyes, even motionlessness—as well as their own bodily sensations, to construct perceptions of anger. Or, they can focus on predicting and giving meaning to their own interoceptive sensations, along with sensations from the world, to construct an emotional experience. As Sophia grew older, she extended her concept of “Anger” to people who slam doors, adding to her population of instances. And when she encountered a sneezing person and said, “Mama, that man is angry,” and I corrected her, she honed her concept of “Anger” yet again. Her brain gave sensations meaning, using concepts that fit the situation, to construct an instance of emotion.36

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  bar, arreptum incipit trahere. Sed hortulanus prioris plagae vulnere prolapsum capite sanguinem deter- gens rursus deprecatur civilius atque mansuetius versari commilitonem, idque per spes prosperas eius orabat adiurans. “Nam et hic ipse"' aiebat “ Iners asellus et nihilo minus morbo detestabili caducus vix etiam paucos holerum manipulos de proxumo hortulo solet anhelitu languido fatigatus subvehere, nedum ut rebus amplioribus idoneus videatur gerulus.”’ 40 Sed ubi nullis precibus mitigari militem magisque in suam perniciem advertit effetari, iamque inversa vite de vastiore nodulo cerebrum suum diffindere, currit ad extrema subsidia, simulansque e re ad commo- vendam miserationem genua eius velle contingere, summissus atque incurvatus, arreptis eius utrisque pedibus sublimem elatum terrae graviter applodit, et statim qua pugnis, qua cubitis, qua morsibus, etiam de via lapide correpto totam faciem manusque eius et latera converberat | Nec ille ut primum humi supina- tus est, vel repugnare vel omnino munire se potuit sed plane identidem comminabatur, si surrexisset, sese concisurum eum machaera sua frustatim. Quo sermone eius commonefactus hortulanus eripit ei spatham eaque longissime abiecta rursum saevioribus eum plagis aggreditur: nec ille prostratus et prae- ventus vulneribus ullum repperire saluti quiens sub- sidium, quod solum restabat, simulat sese mortuum. Tune spatham illam secum asportans hortulanus inscenso me concito gradu recta festinat ad civitatem, nec hortulum suum saltem curans invisere, ad quem- piam sibi devertit familiarem, cunctisque narratis deprecatur periclitanti sibi ferret auxilium seque cum 464 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK IX

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  * Mi Luci,” ait “Sat Pol diu est quod intervisimus te, at Hercule exinde cum a Vestio! magistro digressi sumus. Quae autem tibi causa peregrinationis huius ? " * Crastino die scies :"' inquam “Sed quid istud? Voti gaudeo: nam et lixas et virgas et habitum prorsus magistratui congruentem in te video.” “ Annonam curamus," ait “Et aedilem gerimus, et si quid obsonare cupis, utique commodabimus.” Abnuebam, quippe qui iam cenae affatim piscatum prospexeramus : sed enim Pythias visa sportula, succussisque in aspectum planiorem piscibus, “At has quisquilias quanti parasti ?" * Vix” inquam * Piscatori extorsimus acci- 25 pere viginti denarios," Quo audito statim arrepta dextera postliminio me in forum cupidinis reducens * Et a quo” inquit * Istorum nugamenta haec com- parasti?" Demonstre seniculum : in angulo sedebat. Quem confestim pro aedilitatis imperio voce asperrima increpans * Iam iam " inquit * Nec amicis quidem nos- tris vel omnino ullis hospitibus parcitis, quod tam magnis pretiis. pisces frivolos indicatis et florem Thessalicae regionis ad instar solitudinis et scopuli edulium caritate deducitis? Sed non impune: iam 1 The name, whatever it is, has been corrupted in the MSS to Dstio. Other suggestions are Dositheo and Clytio, 42 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK I

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  My mother flatters me, idealizes me—or is that how she really sees me? I am pleased and I am puzzled. I am really the most beautiful girl in the world to her, aren’t I? Or aren’t I? Then what about my sisters? And what about the way she screams at me loud enough to make the roof fall in? My other mother never screams, and I owe everything I am to her. At thirteen I follow her through all the art museums of Europe, and through her eyes I see Turner’s storms and Tiepolo’s skies and Monet’s haystacks and Rodin’s monument to Balzac and Botticelli’s Primavera and da Vinci’s Madonna of the Rocks. At fourteen I get the Collected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay for my birthday, at fifteen e.e. cummings, at sixteen William Butler Yeats, at seventeen Emily Dickinson, and at eighteen my mother and I are no longer on speaking terms. She introduces me to Shaw, to Colette, to Orwell, to Simone de Beauvoir. She furiously debates Marxism with me at the dinner table. She gives me ballet lessons and piano lessons and weekly tickets to the New York Philharmonic (where I am bored and spend much time in the ladies’ room applying Revlon’s Powder Pink Lustrous Lipstick to my thirteen-year-old lips). I go to the Art Students League every Saturday and my mother painstakingly criticizes my drawings. She shepherds my career as if it were her own: I must learn cast and figure drawing in charcoal first, then still lifes in pastels, then finally oil painting. When I apply for the High School of Music and Art, my mother worries over my portfolio with me, takes me to the exam, and reassures me, as I worriedly recapitulate each part of it to her. When I decide I want to be a doctor as well as an artist, she starts buying me books on biology. When I start writing poetry, she listens to each poem and praises it as if I were Yeats. All my adolescent maunderings are beautiful to her. All my drawings, greeting cards, cartoons, posters, oil paintings presage future greatness to her. Surely no girl could have a more devoted mother, a mother more interested in her becoming a whole person, in becoming, if she wished, an artist. Then why am I so furious with her? And why does she make me feel that I am nothing but a blurred carbon copy of her? That I have never had a single thought of my own? That I have no freedom, no independence, no identity at all? Perhaps sex accounted for my fury. Perhaps sex was the real Pandora’s box. My mother believed in free love, in dancing naked in the Bois de Boulogne, in dancing in the Greek Isles, in performing the Rites of Spring.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  You can’t live that way—trying to be definitive all the time—death’s definitive.” “Let’s have another swim,” Adrian said. — “Why were you so angry at me?” Bennett asked later that evening. “Because I felt you treated me like a piece of property. Because you said you had no empathy for me. Because you never said you loved me. Because you’d never go down on me. Because you blamed me for all your unhappiness. Because you lapsed into these long silences and would never let me comfort you. Because you insulted my friends. Because you closed yourself off from any kind of human contact. Because you made me feel as if I were strangling to death.” “Your mother strangled you, not me. I gave you all the freedom you wanted.” “That’s a contradiction in terms. A person’s not free if their freedom has to be ‘given.’ Who are you to ‘give’ me freedom?” “Show me one person who’s completely free. Who? Is anyone? Your parents choked you—not me! You’re always blaming me for what your mother did to you.” “Whenever I criticize you in any way, you throw another psychoanalytic interpretation at me. It’s always my mother or my father—not something between us. Can’t we just keep it between us?” “I wish it worked that way. But it doesn’t. You’re always reliving your childhood whether you admit it or not—what the hell do you think you’re doing with Adrian Goodlove? He looks exactly like your father—or maybe you hadn’t noticed.” “I hadn’t noticed. He doesn’t look anything like my father.” Bennett snorted. “That’s a laugh.” “Look—I’m not going to argue with you about whether or not he looks like my father, but this is the first goddamned time you’ve ever showed any interest in me or acted as if you loved me at all. I have to bloody well fuck someone before your very eyes or you don’t give a damn about me. That’s pretty funny, isn’t it? Doesn’t your psychoanalytic theory tell you anything about that? Maybe it’s your Oedipal problem now. Maybe I’m your mother and Adrian resembles your father. Why don’t we all sit down and have a group grope about it? Actually, I think Adrian’s in love with you. I’m just the go-between. It’s you he really wants.” “It wouldn’t surprise me at all. I told you I think he’s queer.” “Why don’t we all sleep together and find out?” “No, thanks. But don’t let me stop you if that’s what you want.” “I won’t.” “Go ahead,” Bennett screamed with more passion than I had ever heard him muster. “Go off with him! You’ll never do any serious work again.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  What did Moses do for the Jews anyway by leading them out of Egypt and giving them the concept of one God, matzoh-ball soup, and everlasting guilt? Couldn’t he just have left them alone worshipping cats and bulls and falcons or living like the other primates (to whom—as my sister Randy always reminds me—they are so closely related)? Is it any wonder that everyone hates the Jews for giving the world guilt? Couldn’t we have gotten along nicely without it? Just sloshing around in the primeval slush and worshipping dung beetles and fucking when the mood struck us? Think of those Egyptians who built the pyramids, for example. Did they sit around worrying about whether they were Equal Opportunity Employers? Did it ever dawn on them to ask whether their mortal remains were worth the lives of the thousands upon thousands who died building their pyramids? Repression, ambivalence, guilt. “What—me worry?” asks the Arab. No wonder they want to exterminate the Jews. Wouldn’t anybody? Back in Beirut, we made plans to go home. Lalah and Chloe had a charter flight to New York, so they had to leave together, and I had my old Alitalia roundtrip from Beirut to Rome to JFK. I stopped in Rome as I’d planned and took one more week in Florence before going home to face the music with Charlie. Even in hot, crowded August, Florence remained one of my favorite cities in the world. There I took up with Alessandro again and this time we had an almost perfect, if loveless, six-day affair. At my request, he forsook his mania for dirty words, and we found a charming room at an inn in Fiesole where we could make love from one to four every afternoon (a very civilized lunch-hour custom). Maybe it was because of my fury at Charlie, or perhaps Pierre had really turned me on, but my lovemaking with Alessandro was inspired. It was the only time in my life when I was able to have exuberant, affectionate sex with someone without convincing myself that I was in love. A kind of six-day truce between my id and superego. When Alessandro went home to his wife in the evenings, I was on my own. I attended concerts at the Pitti, saw a few of the other characters from my previous visit and was hotly pursued once more by Professor “Michelangelo” (Karlinsky) of the flaming beard. Despite the heat and the motley assortment of boyfriends, I loved Florence and there were moments when I hardly wanted to leave at all. But a depressing teaching job and a Ph.D. program I hated were waiting for me in New York, and I was still too much of a superego-ridden schoolgirl not to choose something I hated over something I loved.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  The swearing policy in the Belsey house was not self-evident. They had nothing as twee or pointless as a swear jar (a popular household item among Wellington families), and swearing was, as we have seen, generally accepted in most situations. And yet there were several strange subclauses to this libertarian procedure, rules of practice neither written in stone nor particularly transparent. It was a question of tone and feeling, and, in this case, Levi had misjudged. Now his mother’s hand came down hard upon the side of his head, a blow that sent him stumbling back three steps into the kitchen table. He knocked a gravy boat of chocolate sauce over himself. In normal circumstances, faced with the smallest slight to himself or his character, and, in particular, his clothes, Levi would argue for justice for as long as he had breath in his body, even when – especially when – he was in the wrong. But on this occasion he left the room at once without a word. A minute later they heard his door downstairs slamming. ‘Good. Nice party,’ said Zora. ‘You wait till the guests arrive,’ murmured Howard. ‘I just want to teach him to . . .’ began Kiki. She felt exhausted.  On Beauty She sat down at the kitchen table and rested her head on its Scandinavian pine. ‘I’ll go out and cut you a switch, shall I? Bit of parenting, Florida style,’ said Howard, making a show of taking off his hat and his apron. In the family context, whenever Howard saw an opportunity to take the moral high ground he pretty much catapulted himself towards it. These opportunities had been rare recently. When Kiki lifted her head, he had already left the room. That’s right , thought Kiki, quit while you’re ahead . Just then Jerome came through the door and paused in the kitchen for a moment to mumble that the wine was in the hallway, before proceeding straight through the sliding doors to the back garden. ‘I don’t know why everybody in this house has to behave like a goddamn animal,’ said Kiki with sudden ferocity. She stood up and went to the sink to wet a cloth, returning to go to work on the spilled chocolate. She could not do distress. Anger was so much easier. And quicker and harder and better. If I start crying, I’ll never stop – you hear people say that; Kiki heard people say it all the time in the hospital. A backlog of sadness for which there would never be sufficient time. ‘I’m done with this,’ said Zora, swirling a spoon listlessly through the fruit punch she had helped to make. ‘I’m going to get changed or something.’ ‘Zoor,’ said Kiki, ‘do you know where I could find a pen and paper?’ ‘Eyeano. Drawer?’

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

  The polar ice caps are melting. You are suffering. Most of us devote a lot of time to relieving suffering. We often eat for pleasure or to soothe ourselves, rather than for the nutrients. I think drug addiction is often a misguided attempt to relieve the suffering from a body budget that’s chronically out of whack. 2 8 It’s tricky to distinguish discomfort and suffering in the moment. Are you feeling irritated or just having caffeine withdrawal? If you are a woman, you probably have ambiguous physical symptoms related to your menstrual cycle or during menopause, and you may categorize the sensations as having emotional meaning when they do not. I remember in 2010 when my whole lab was moving from one university to another, including twenty researchers and hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment. Everything seemed to be going wrong, plus I was about to leave for a two-week trip. Somehow I was holding myself together, extinguishing each fire as it ignited . . . and then my laptop died. I sank to the floor in the middle of my kitchen and started sobbing. At just that moment, my husband walked in, noticed my state, and asked innocently, “Are you premenstrual?” Oh. My. God. I lashed out at him, the goddamn sexist pig and how dare he be so smug when I’m barely holding my life together?? My fury shocked us both. And three days later, I discovered that he was right. With practice, you can learn to deconstruct an affective feeling into its mere physical sensations, rather than letting those sensations be a filter through which you view the world. You can dissolve anxiety into a fast-beating heart. Once you can deconstruct into physical sensations, then you can recategorize them in some other way, using your rich set of concepts. Perhaps that pounding in your chest is not anxiety but anticipation, or even excitement. Look around right now and find an object to focus on. Try recategorizing it not as a three-dimensional visual object but as the individual pieces of differently colored light that your perception is constructed from. Tough, isn’t it? Nevertheless, you can train yourself to do it. Pick the shiniest part of the object and try tracing its outlines with your eye. With a lot of practice, you can learn how to deconstruct objects like this. Great artists like Rembrandt could do it and realistically render objects in paint on a canvas. In a similar manner, you can deconstruct your emotions. Recategorization is a tool of the emotion expert.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  To my surprise I found her dressed. She was sitting on the edge of the bed in slacks and T-shirt, and was looking at me as if she could not quite place me. The frank soft shape of her small breasts was brought out rather than blurred by the limpness of her thin shirt, and this frankness irritated me. She had not washed; yet her mouth was freshly though smudgily painted, and her broad teeth glistened like wine-tinged ivory, or pinkish poker chips. And there she sat, hands clasped in her lap, and dreamily brimmed with a diabolical glow that had no relation to me whatever. I plumped down my heavy paper bag and stood staring at the bare ankles of her sandaled feet, then at her silly face, then again at her sinful feet. “You’ve been out,” I said (the sandals were filthy with gravel). “I just got up,” she replied, and added upon intercepting my downward glance: “Went out for a sec. Wanted to see if you were coming back.” She became aware of the bananas and uncoiled herself table-ward. What special suspicion could I have? None indeed—but those muddy, moony eyes of hers, that singular warmth emanating from her! I said nothing. I looked at the road meandering so distinctly within the frame of the window … Anybody wishing to betray my trust would have found it a splendid lookout. With rising appetite, Lo applied herself to the fruit. All at once I remembered the ingratiating grin of the Johnny nextdoor. I stepped out quickly. All cars had disappeared except his station wagon; his pregnant young wife was now getting into it with her baby and the other, more or less cancelled, child. “What’s the matter, where are you going?” cried Lo from the porch. I said nothing. I pushed her softness back into the room and went in after her. I ripped her shirt off. I unzipped the rest of her. I tore off her sandals. Wildly, I pursued the shadow of her infidelity; but the scent I travelled upon was so slight as to be practically undistinguishable from a madman’s fancy. 17Gros Gaston, in his prissy way, had liked to make presents—presents just a prissy wee bit out of the ordinary, or so he prissily thought. Noticing one night that my box of chessmen was broken, he sent me next morning, with a little lad of his, a copper case: it had an elaborate Oriental design over the lid and could be securely locked. One glance sufficed to assure me that it was one of those cheap money boxes called for some reason “luizettas” that you buy in Algiers and elsewhere, and wonder what to do with afterwards. It turned out to be much too flat for holding my bulky chessmen, but I kept it—using it for a totally different purpose.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Three – and this was the detail that had initially arrested Howard’s attention: a few feet from the door, sitting up tall in her chair, holding a notepad, apparently alert and interested, one Kiki Belsey. Howard forgot about his appointment with Smith. He went straight home and awaited his wife. In his rage, he sat on the couch holding Murdoch tightly on his lap, scheming upon the many ways he might open the coming conversation. He lined up a pleasing selection of cool, emotionally detached possibilities – but when he heard the front door open, sarcasm vanished. It was all he could do not to leap from his seat and confront her in the most vulgar way. He listened to her footsteps. She passed the doorway of the living room (‘Hey. You OK?’) and kept walking. Howard internally combusted. ‘Been at work?’ Kiki retraced her steps and stopped in the doorway. She was – like all long-married people – immediately alerted to trouble by a tone of voice. ‘No . . . Afternoon off.’  On Beauty ‘Have a nice time?’ Kiki stepped into the room. ‘Howard, what’s the problem here?’ ‘I think,’ said Howard, releasing Murdoch, who had grown tired of being partially strangled, ‘I would have been marginally – marginally – less surprised to see you at a meeting of . . .’ They began to speak at the same time. ‘Howard, what is this? Oh, God – ’ ‘. . . of the Klu Klux fucking Klan – no, actually, that would have made a bit more – ’ ‘Kipps’s lecture . . . Oh, Jesus Christ, that place is like Chinese whispers . . . Look, I don’t need – ’ ‘I don’t know what other neo-con events you’ve got planned – no, darling, not Chinese whispers, actually; I saw you, taking notes – I had no idea you were so taken with the great man’s work, I wish I’d realized, I could have got you his collected speeches, or – ’ ‘Oh, fuck you – leave me alone.’ Kiki turned to leave. Howard flung himself to the other end of the couch, knelt up and caught her by the arm. ‘Where are you going?’ ‘Away from here.’ ‘We’re talking – you wanted to talk – we’re talking.’ ‘This isn’t talking – this is you ranting. Stop it – let go of me. Jesus! ’ Howard had successfully twisted her arm, and therefore her body, moving her round the couch. Reluctantly she sat down. ‘Look, I don’t need to explain myself to you,’ said Kiki, but then immediately went on to do so. ‘You know what it is? Sometimes I feel it’s always the same viewpoint in this house.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Except I don’t,’ said Zora, tugging sadly at her man’s nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn’t be able to protect them from self-disgust. To that end she had tried banning television in the early years, and never had a lipstick or a woman’s magazine crossed the threshold of the Belsey home to Kiki’s knowledge, but these and other precautionary measures had made no difference. It was in the air , or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies – it seeped in with every draught in the house; people brought it home  On Beauty on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it. ‘I can’t face the mall today. I might go and see Carlene, actually.’ Zora swivelled round from her eggs. ‘Carlene Kipps?’ ‘I saw her Tuesday – she’s not too well, I think. I might take the lasagne in the icebox.’ ‘ You’re taking a frozen lasagne to Mrs Kipps,’ said Zora, pointing at Kiki with the wooden spoon in her hand. ‘I might do.’ ‘So you’re friends now?’ ‘I think so.’ ‘OK,’ said Zora dubiously and returned her attention to the stove. ‘Is that a problem?’ ‘I guess not.’ Kiki closed her eyes for a long beat and awaited the continuation. ‘I mean . . . I guess you know Monty is going for Dad real bad at the moment. He wrote another totally vile piece in the Herald . He wants to give his toxic lectures, and he’s accusing Howard of – get this – curtailing his right to free speech . It freaks me out to think about how much that man must just be torn up by self-hatred. By the time he’s done we won’t have any affirmative action policy at all , basically. And Howard’ll probably be out of a job.’ ‘Oh, I’m sure it’s not as serious as all that.’ ‘Maybe you were reading a different article.’ Kiki heard steel enter Zora’s voice. The strength of her daughter’s burgeoning will, the adolescent intensity of it, was something they were both discovering together, year on year. Kiki felt herself a whetstone that Zora was sharpening herself against. ‘I didn’t read it,’ said Kiki, flexing her own will. ‘I’m kind of trying to run with the idea that there’s a world outside Wellington.’ ‘I just don’t really see the point in taking a lasagne to someone who basically believes you’re going to burn in the fires of hell, that’s all.’ ‘No, you wouldn’t.’ ‘Explain it to me.’  the anatomy lesson Kiki conceded the ground with a sigh. ‘Let’s drop it, OK.’ ‘Dropped. Duly dropped. Down the big hole where everything gets dropped.’ ‘How are your eggs?’ ‘Spiffing,’ said Zora, in the tone of the Woosters and pointedly took a seat at the breakfast bar, her back to her mother.

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

  A few well-known examples are fibromyalgia, migraine headaches, and chronic back pain. Over 1.5 billion people suffer from chronic pain, including 100 million in the United States who collectively pay $500 billion per year for treatment. When you include lost productivity in the price tag, pain costs the United States $635 billion each year. It is also frustratingly hard to treat, as the currently prescribed pain medications, analgesics, are ineffective more than half the time. This worldwide epidemic of chronic pain is one of today’s great medical mysteries. 21 How and why do so many people experience ongoing pain when their bodies appear to have no physical damage? To answer that question, think about what would happen if your brain issued unnecessary predictions of pain and then ignored prediction error to the contrary. You would genuinely experience pain for no discernable reason. This is much like your experience when the blobby picture in chapter 2 became a bee, as you genuinely perceived lines that didn’t exist. Your brain ignored sensory input, maintaining that its predictions are reality. Apply this example to pain and the result is a plausible model of chronic pain: errant predictions without correction. Scientists now consider chronic pain to be a brain disease with its roots in inflammation. It’s possible that the brain of a chronic pain sufferer received intense nociceptive input sometime in the past, and as the injury healed, the brain didn’t get the memo. It keeps predicting and categorizing anyway, generating chronic pain. It’s also possible that predictions about inner-body movements are turning up the volume for nociceptive input as it heads from the body to the brain. 22 If you’re unlucky enough to suffer from chronic pain, then you’ve probably faced skeptics who don’t understand what you’re going through. They try to explain away your pain by saying, “It’s in your head,” by which they mean, “You have no tissue damage, so go see a psychiatrist.” I’m saying that you’re not crazy. There is something wrong with you. Your predictive brain, which is indeed located “in your head,” is generating authentic pain that continues past the point when your body has already healed. It’s similar to phantom limb syndrome, when an amputee can still feel his missing arm or leg because his brain keeps issuing predictions about it. 23 We already have intriguing evidence that some types of chronic pain work by prediction. Animals who have stress or injury early in life become more likely to develop persistent pain. Human infants who have surgery are more likely to have heightened pain in later childhood.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Howard and Erskine quickly made their way through the crowd to say hello to their fellow Oxonian. Kiki watched them go. She saw vulgar relief paint itself in broad  On Beauty strokes all over Howard’s face. It was the first time since they arrived at this funeral that he had been able to cease twitching, fiddling in his pockets, messing with his hair. For here was Zia Malmud, in and of himself nothing directly to do with the idea of death, and therefore able to bring welcome news of another world outside of this funeral, Howard’s world: the world of conversation, debate, enemies, newspapers, universities. Tell me anything but don’t talk of death. But the only duty you have at a funeral is to accept that somebody has died! Kiki turned away. ‘You know,’ she said in frustration, to no child in particular, ‘I’m getting really tired of listening to Erskine bad-mouth Caroline like that. All these men ever do is talk about their wives with contempt. With contempt . I am so sick of it!’ ‘Oh, Mom, he doesn’t mean it,’ said Zora wearily, as once again she was called upon to explain how the world works to her mother. ‘Erskine loves Caroline. They’ve been married for ever .’ Kiki restrained herself. Instead she opened her purse and began searching through it for her lip-gloss. Levi, who had resorted to kicking pebbles in his boredom, asked her who the guy with all the big gold chains was, with the guide dog. The Mayor, Kiki ventured, but couldn’t be sure. The Mayor of London? Kiki muttered assent but now turned again, getting up on tiptoe so she might see over the heads of the crowd. She was looking for Monty. She was curious about him. She wanted to see what a man who had so worshipped his wife looked like once he was deprived of her. Levi continued to badger her: Of the whole city? Like the New York Mayor? Maybe not, agreed Kiki tetchily, maybe the mayor of just this area. ‘Seriously . . . this is weird ,’ said Levi, and yanked his stiff shirt collar from his neck with a hooked finger. It was Levi’s first funeral, but he meant more than that. It did seem a surreal gathering, what with the strange class mix (noticeable even to as American a boy as Levi) and the complete lack of privacy that the two-foot perimeter brick wall afforded. Cars and buses went by incessantly; noisy schoolchildren smoked, pointed and whispered; a group of Muslim women, in full hijab, floated by like apparitions. ‘It’s pretty low rent,’ dared Zora.  on beauty and being wrong ‘Look, it was her church, I came here with her – she would have wanted the service in her church,’ insisted Jerome. ‘Of course she would,’ said Kiki. Tears pricked her eyes.