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 The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  “ Thus she complained, and immediately departed and went to, her golden chamber, where she found her son wounded, as it was told unto her; whom when she beheld she stood at the door and cried out very loudly in this sort: ‘Is this an honest thing? Is this honourable to thy parents and to thine own good name? Is this reason that thou hast first vio- lated and broken the commandment of thy mother and sovereign mistress? And whereas thou shouldest have vexed my enemy with a loathsome and base love, thou hast done contrary: for (being but of tender and unripe years) thou hast with too licen- tious appetite embraced her, that my most mortal foe shall be made a daughter unto me; Thou pre- sumest and thinkest (thou trifling boy, thou varlet, and without all love) that thou art alone my true child, and that I am not able by reason of mine 1 Zit. “not yet clothed as a man.” 243 30 LUCIUS APULEIUS generosum, nec me iam per aetatem posse concipere : velim ergo scias multo te meliorem filium alium genituram ; immo, ut contumeliam magis sentias, aliquem de meis adoptaturam vernulis eique dona- turam istas pinnas et flammas et arcum et ipsas sagittas etomnem meam supellectilem, quam tibi non ad hos usus dederam : nec enim de patris tui bonis ad instructionem istam quicquam concessum est. Sed male prima pueritia inductus es et acutas manus habes et maiores tuos irreverenter pulsasti totiens et ipsam matrem tuam, me inquam ipsam parricida denudas cotidie et percussisti saepius et quasi viduam utique contemnis, nec vitricum tuum fortissi- - mum illum maximumque bellatorem metuis. Quidni? Cui saepius in angorem mei paelicatus puellas pro- pinare consuesti. Sed iam faxo te lusus huius pae- niteat et sentias acidas et amaras istas nuptias. Sed nunc irrisui habita quid agam? Quo me conferam ? Quibus modis stelionem istum cohibeam ? . Petamne auxilium ab inimica mea Sobrietate, quam propter huius ipsius luxuriam offendi saepius? At rusticae squalentisque feminae colloquium prorsus horresco. Nec tamen vindictae solacium undeunde spernendum est: illa mihi prorsus adhibenda est nec ulla alia, quae castiget asperrime nugonem istum, pharetram explicet et sagittas dearmet, arcum enodet, taedam deflammet, immo et ipsum corpus eius acrioribus remediis coerceat. Tunc iniuriae meae litatum credi- derim, cum eius comas, quas istis manibus meis 244 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK V

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  “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. I’m the only person in your life who’s held you together this long—but go ahead and leave! You’ll screw yourself up so thoroughly that you’ll never do anything worthwhile again.” — “How can you expect to have anything interesting to write about if you’re so afraid of new experiences?” Adrian asked. I had just told him that I wouldn’t go with him but had decided to return home with Bennett instead. We were sitting in Adrian’s Triumph, parked on a back street near the university. (Bennett was at a meeting on “Aggression in Large Groups.”) “I plunge into new experiences all the time. That’s just the trouble.” “Bullshit. You’re a scared little princess. I offer you an experience that could really change you, one you really could write about, and you run away. Back to Bennett and New York. Back to your safe little marital cubbyhole. Christ—I’m glad I’m not married anymore if this is what it leads to. I thought you had more guts than this. After reading all your ‘sensual and erotic’ poems—in inverted commas—I thought better of you than this.” He gave me a disgusted look. “If I spent all my time being sensual and erotic, I’d be too tired to write about it,” I pleaded. “You’re a fake,” he said, “a total fake. You’ll never have anything worthwhile to write about if you don’t grow up. Courage is the first principle. You’re just scared.” “Don’t bully me.” “Who’s bullying you? I’m just leveling with you. You’ll never know fuck-all about writing if you don’t learn courage.”

• From On Beauty (2005)

  And that’s true. This stuff is close . It’s recent.’ ‘As long as we encourage a culture of victimhood,’ said Monty, with the rhythmic smoothness of self-quotation, ‘we will continue to raise victims. And so the cycle of underachievement continues.’ ‘Well,’ said Kiki, holding on to a fence-post so she could hop heavily over a big puddle, ‘I don’t know . . . I just think it stinks of a kind of, well, a kind of self-hatred when we’ve got black folks arguing against opportunities for black folks. I mean – we don’t need to be arguing among ourselves at this point. There’s a war on! We got black kids dying on the front line on the other side of the world, and they’re in that army ’cos they think college has got nothing to offer them. I mean, that’s the reality here.’ Monty shook his head and smiled. ‘Mrs Belsey – are you informing me that I am to let unqualified students into my classes to prevent them from joining the United States Army?’ ‘Call me Kiki – well, OK, maybe that’s not the argument I want to pursue – but this self-hatred . When I look at Condoleezza, and Co -lin – God! I want to be sick – I see this rabid need to separate themselves away from the rest of us – it’s like ‘‘We got the opportunity and now the quota’s full and thank you very much, adios.’’ It’s that right-wing black self-hatred – I’m sorry if I offend you by saying that, but I mean . . . isn’t that a part of it? I’m not even talking politics now, I’m talking about a kind of, of, of psychology .’ They had reached the top of Wellington Hill and now heard the various church bells ring in the midday. Laid out beneath them, tucked up in its bed of snow, was one of the most peaceful, affluent, well-educated and pretty towns in America. ‘Kiki, if there’s one thing I understand about you liberals, it’s how much you like to be told a fairytale. You complain about  on beauty and being wrong creation myths – but you have a dozen of your own. Liberals never believe that conservatives are motivated by moral convictions as profoundly held as those you liberals profess your selves to hold. You choose to believe that conservatives are motivated by a deep self-hatred, by some form of . . . psychological flaw . But, my dear, that’s the most comforting fairytale of them all!’  Zora Belsey’s real talent was not for poetry but persistence. She could dispatch three letters in an afternoon, all to the same recipient.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  I explored Heidelberg like a spy, finding all the landmarks of the Third Reich which were deliberately not mentioned in the guidebooks. I found the place where the synagogue had stood before it was burned down. After I learned to drive, I was able to go even farther afield and I found an abandoned railroad siding and an old freight car with REICHSBAHN lettered on its flank. (All the shiny new trains were labeled BUNDESBAHN.) I felt like one of those fanatical Israelis who tracks down Nazis in Argentina. Only I was tracking down my own past, my own Jewishness in which I had never been able to believe before. What infuriated me most, I think, was the way the Germans had changed their protective coloration, the way they talked peace and humanitarianism, the way they all claimed to have fought on the Russian Front. It was their hypocrisy I abhorred. At least if they’d come out openly and said: We loved Hitler, one might have weighed their humanity with their honesty and perhaps forgiven them. In the three years I lived in Germany I only met one man who admitted that. He was a former Nazi and he became my friend. Horst Hummel ran a printing business out of a tiny office in the old town. His desk was piled high with books, papers, and all kinds of junk, and he was always on the telephone or always shouting directions to the three cowering Assistenten who worked for him. He was about five feet tall, very paunchy, and wore thick amber-tinted glasses which accentuated the rings under his eyes. After meeting him for the first time, Bennett always referred to him as the Gnome. For the most part, Herr Hummel (as I called him in the beginning) spoke English well, but he made occasional howlers which compromised all his previous fluency. One day when I told him that I had to go home and make dinner for Bennett, he said: “If your Mann is hungry, then you must go home and cook him.” Hummel printed everything from menus to advertising flyers to The Heidelberg Officers’ Wives’ Club Newsletter—a glossy four-page tabloid studded with typographical errors, doggerel about the plight of an army wife, and pictures of army matrons decked out in flowered hats, orchid corsages, and rhinestone-glinting harlequin glasses. They were always accepting awards from each other for various public services. For his own amusement, Hummel also printed a weekly pamphlet called Heidelberg Alt und Neu. It consisted mostly of advertising for restaurants and hotels, train schedules, movie programs, and the like.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  He disliked and feared conversations with his children that concerned race, as he suspected this one would. ‘And don’t be telling me I’m paranoid,’ snapped Levi, slinging his damp vest on the table. ‘I just don’t want to live here any more, man . . . all everybody does is stare.’ ‘Has anyone seen the cream?’ said Kiki, appearing from behind the door of the fridge. ‘ Not the canned, not the single, not the half and half – the double English. It was on the table.’ She spotted Levi’s vest. ‘ Not there, young man. In your room – which , by the way, is an absolute disgrace . If you want to move out of that basement any day soon, you’re going to have to make some changes. I’d be ashamed to have your room where anybody could see it!’ Levi frowned and continued speaking to his father. ‘And then some crazy old lady on Redwood started asking about my mom.’ ‘Levi,’ said Kiki, walking over to him, ‘are you here to help or what?’ ‘How do you mean? About Kiki?’ asked Howard with interest, taking a seat at the table. ‘This old lady on Redwood – I was minding my business – and she’s looking at me, looking at me, all the way down the street, like everybody in this town – she stops me, speaking to me – she looked like she was trying to work out if I was gonna kill her.’ This of course was not true. But Levi had a point to make, and he would have to bend the truth to make it. ‘And then she started talking about my mom this, my mom that. Black lady.’ Howard made a noise of objection, but was overruled. ‘No, no, but that don’t make no difference. Any black lady who be white enough to live on Redwood thinks ’ zackly the same way as any old white lady.’ ‘Who is white enough,’ corrected Zora. ‘It’s the worst kind of pretension, you know, to fake the way you speak – to steal somebody else’s grammar. People less fortunate than you. It’s grotesque.  On Beauty You can decline a Latin noun, but apparently you can’t even – ’ ‘The cream – anybody? It was right here .’ ‘I think you might be overreacting just a tad,’ said Howard, exploring the fruit bowl with his fingers. ‘Where was this?’ ‘On Redwood . How many times, yo? This crazy old black lady.’ ‘I don’t know how come it is that I put down something and five minutes later it . . . Redwood? ’ asked Kiki sharply. ‘How far down Redwood?’ ‘Just on the top corner, before the nursery.’ ‘A black old lady? No one like that lives on Redwood.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Then she lifted her hands and brought them down hard on the arms of the chair. ‘And? What are you saying?’ ‘Who, for example,’ said Jack, glancing at a sheet of paper on his desk, ‘is Chantelle Williams?’  On Beauty ‘She’s a receptionist, Jack. For an optician, I believe. I don’t know which optician. What’s your point?’ ‘A receptionist . . .’ ‘She also happens to be one of the most exciting young female talents I’ve come across in years,’ announced Claire. ‘Claire, it still remains that she is not a student registered at this institution,’ said Jack quietly, neatly meeting hyperbole with sobriety. ‘And therefore not strictly speaking eligible for – ’ ‘Jack, I can’t believe we’re doing this . . . it was agreed three years ago that if I wanted to take on extra students, above and beyond my requirements, then that was under my discretion. There are a lot of talented kids in this town who don’t have the advantages of Zora Belsey – who can’t afford college, who can’t afford our summer school, who are looking at the army as their next best possibility, Jack, an army that’s presently fighting a war – kids who don’t – ’ ‘I am well aware,’ said Jack, a little tired of being lectured by highly strung women this morning, ‘of the educational situation for economically disadvantaged young people in New England – and you know I have always supported your sterling attempts . . .’ ‘Jack – ’ ‘. . . to offer your impressive abilities . . .’ ‘Jack, what are you saying?’ ‘. . . to young people who would not otherwise have these opportunities . . . but the bottom line here is that people are asking questions about the fairness of classes being open to non-Wellington – ’ ‘Who’s asking? English Department people?’ Jack sighed. ‘Quite a few people, Claire. And I redirect those questions. Have done for a while. But if Zora Belsey is successful in bringing a lot of unwelcome attention to your, shall we say, selective admissions process – then I don’t know if I will still be able to continue redirecting those questions.’ ‘Is it Monty Kipps? I heard he ‘‘objected’’,’ said Claire bitterly, and made her fingers quote, unnecessarily, Jack felt, ‘to Belsey’s Affirmative Action Committee working on campus. God, he hasn’t  the anatomy lesson even been here a month! Is he the new authority around here now or something?’ Jack blushed. He could blackmail with the best of them, but he could not involve himself very deeply in personal conflict.

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

  I set the oven to the same temperature. I count the number of sprays of water I spritz into the oven to make the bread crusty. It’s all very systematic, and yet, the result is sometimes lighter, sometimes heavier, sometimes sweeter. That’s because baking has additional context that the recipe doesn’t mention, like the amount of force I use in kneading, the humidity in the kitchen, and the precise temperature at which the dough rises. Holism explains why bread baked in my home in Boston is never as tasty as bread baked at my friend Ann’s house in Berkeley, California. The Berkeley loaf has a superior flavor because of the different yeasts floating naturally in the air and the elevation above sea level. These additional variables can dramatically impact the end product, and expert bakers know this. Holism, emergent properties, and degeneracy are the very antithesis of fingerprints. 21 After bodily and neural fingerprints, the next core assumption of the classical view we discard is how emotions evolved. The classical view proposes that we have a gift-wrapped animal brain—ancient emotion circuits passed down from ancestral animals, wrapped in uniquely human circuitry for rational thought—like icing on an already-baked cake. This view is often touted as “the” evolutionary theory of emotion, when in reality it is just one evolutionary theory. Construction incorporates the latest scientific findings about Darwinian natural selection and population thinking. For example, the many-to-one principle of degeneracy—many different sets of neurons can produce the same outcome—brings about greater robustness for survival. The one-to-many principle—any single neuron can contribute to more than one outcome—is metabolically efficient and increases the computational power of the brain. This kind of brain creates a flexible mind without fingerprints. 22 The final major assumption of the classical view is that certain emotions are inborn and universal: all healthy people around the world are supposed to display and recognize them. The theory of constructed emotion, in contrast, proposes that emotions are not inborn, and if they are universal, it’s due to shared concepts. What’s universal is the ability to form concepts that make our physical sensations meaningful, from the Western concept “Sadness” to the Dutch concept Gezellig (a specific experience of comfort with friends), which has no exact English translation. By analogy, think about cupcakes and muffins. These two types of baked goods have the same shape and are based on the same set of ingredients: flour, sugar, shortening, and salt. Both have similar accompanying ingredients such as raisins, nuts, chocolate, carrots, and bananas. You cannot distinguish a muffin from a cupcake by its chemistry, in the way you can easily distinguish flour from salt, or a bee from a bird. And yet, one is a breakfast food while the other is a dessert. Their major distinguishing feature is the time of day at which they are eaten.

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

  And as an ideology, the classical view has wasted billions of research dollars and misdirected the course of scientific inquiry for over a hundred years. If people had followed evidence instead of ideology seventy years ago, when the Lost Chorus pretty solidly did away with emotion essences, who knows where we’d be today regarding treatments for mental illness or best practices for rearing our children. 3 9 … Every scientific journey is a story. Sometimes it’s a story of gradual discovery: “Once upon a time, people didn’t know very much, but we learned more and more over the years, and today we know lots of stuff.” Other times, it’s a tale of radical change: “Everyone used to believe something that seemed correct, but boy were we wrong! Now the fascinating truth is here.” Our journey is more of a story within a story. The inner story is how emotions are made, wrapped in an outer story of what it means to be human. “For two thousand years, people believed something about emotions, despite abundant counterevidence all around us. The human brain, you see, is wired to mistake its perceptions for reality. Today, powerful tools have yielded a more evidence-based explanation that’s almost impossible to ignore . . . yet some people still manage.” The good news is that we’re in a golden age of mind and brain research. Many scientists are now on a path forged by the data, rather than ideology, to understand emotion and ourselves. This new, data-driven understanding leads to innovative ideas about how to live a fulfilling and healthful life. If your brain operates by prediction and construction and rewires itself through experience, then it’s no overstatement to say that if you change your current experiences today, you can change who you become tomorrow. The next few chapters delve into these implications in the areas of emotional intelligence, health, law, and our relationships with other animals. 4 0 1 The Search for Emotion’s “Fingerprints” O nce upon a time, in the 1980s, I thought I would be a clinical psychologist. I headed into a Ph.D. program at the University of Waterloo, expecting to learn the tools of the trade as a psychotherapist and one day treat patients in a stylish yet tasteful office. I was going to be a consumer of science, not a producer. I certainly had no intention of joining a revolution to unseat basic beliefs about the mind that have existed since the days of Plato. But life sometimes tosses little surprises in your direction.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  age to have another son; but this I could do, and thou shouldest well understand that I would bear a more worthier than thou: but to work thee a greater despite, I do determine to adopt one of my servants, and to give him these wings, this fire, this bow and these arrows, and all other furniture which I gave to thee, though not for this purpose ; for of all this nothing came to thee from thy father to thy furnishment. But first thou hast been evil brought up and instructed in thy youth : thou hast thy hands ready and sharp: thou hast often most rudely struck and beaten thy ancients, and especially thy own mother, myself I say, thou hast robbed me daily, thou very parricide, and hast pierced me with thy darts, thou contemnest me as a widow, neither dost thou regard thy valiant and invincible stepfather, but to anger me more thou settest him after wenches that [ may be jealous: but I will eause that thou shalt shortly repent thee of this sport, and that this marriage shall be bitter to thee and dearly bought. To what a public scorn am I now driven? What shall I do? Whither shall I go? How shall I repress this beast? Shall I ask aid of mine enemy Sobriety, whom I have often offended because of thy wantonness? But I hate to seek for counsel from so poor and rustical a woman. No, no, how- beit I will not cease from my veng&ance, whence- soever it cometh; to her must I have recourse for help, and to none other (I mean to Sobriety) who may correct sharply this trifler, take away his quiver, deprive him of his arrows, unbend his bow, quench his fire, and subdue his body with punishment still more bitter ; and when that she hath razed and eut off this his hair, which I have dressed with mine own hands and made to glitter like gold, and when 245 LUCIUS APULEIUS subinde aureo nitore perstrinxi, deraserit; pinnas, quas meo gremio nectarei fontis infeci, praetoton- derit."

• From On Beauty (2005)

  I’m just not going to do it.’ ‘ A young man ,’ bellowed Monty, ‘who works here without references, without qualifications, without anybody knowing anything whatsoever about him – never in my long academic life have I EVER experienced anything as incompetent, as slap-dash, as – ’ ‘How do you know that this young man is responsible? What evidence do you have?’ barked Claire, but seemed terrified of hearing the answer. ‘Now, please, please ,’ said Jack, gesturing towards Zora. ‘We have a student here. Please. Surely it behoves us to . . .’ But Jack wisely thought better of this digression and returned to his main  On Beauty theme. ‘Zora – Dr Malcolm and Dr Jegede have explained to us that you are close to this young man. Did you happen to see him yesterday evening?’ ‘Yes. He was at a party I was at.’ ‘Ah, good . And did you happen to notice what time he left?’ ‘We had a . . . we kind of argued and we both . . . we both left quite early – separately. We left separately.’ ‘At what time ?’ asked Monty in the voice of God. ‘At what time did the boy leave?’ ‘Early. I’m not sure.’ Zora blinked twice. ‘Maybe nine thirty?’ ‘And was this party far from here?’ asked Erskine. ‘No, ten minutes.’ Now Jack sat down. ‘Thank you, Zora. And you have no idea where he is now?’ ‘No, sir, I don’t.’ ‘Thank you. Liddy will let you out.’ Monty banged Jack French’s desk with his fist. ‘Now one minute please!’ he boomed. ‘Is that all you intend to ask her? Excuse me, Miss Belsey – before you cease to grace us with your presence could you tell me what kind of young man – in your estimation – is this Carl Thomas? Did he strike you, for example, as a thief ?’ ‘Oh, my God !’ complained Claire. ‘This is really repulsive. I don’t want any part of this.’ Monty glared at her. ‘A court might find you party to this matter whether you liked it or not, Dr Malcolm.’ ‘Are you threatening me?’ Monty put his back to Claire. ‘Zora, could you answer my question, please? Would it be an unfair description to describe this young man as from the ‘‘wrong side of the tracks’’? Are we likely to find a criminal record?’ Zora ignored Claire Malcolm’s attempt to catch her eye. ‘If you mean, is he a kid from the streets, well, obviously he is – he’d tell you that himself. He’s mentioned being in . . . like, trouble before, sure.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  modi flagitia perastutula tenacissimis amplexibus expeditum hominem dolio, quod erat in angulo semiobrutum sed alias vacuum, dissimulanter abscon- dit, et patefactis aedibus adhuc introeuntem maritum aspero sermone accipit: * Siccine vacuus et otiosus insinuatis manibus ambulabis mihi nec obito consueto labore vitae nostrae prospicies et aliquid cibatui parabis? At ego misera pernox et per diem lanificio nervos meos contorqueo, ut intra cellulam nostram saltem lucerna luceat. Quanto me felicior Daphne vicina, quae mero et prandio matutino saucia cum 6 suis adulteris volutatur!" Sic confutatus maritus ** Et quid istic est?” ait “Nam licet forensi negotio officinator noster attentus ferias nobis fecerit, tamen hodiernae cenulae nostrae prospexi. Vides istud dolium, quod semper vacuum frustra locum detinet tantum et revera praeter impedimentum conversa- tionis nostrae nihil praestat amplius? Istud ego quinque denariis cuidam venditavi; et adest, ut dato pretio secum rem suam ferat. Quin itaque prae- cingeris mihique manum tantisper accommodas, ut exobrutum protinus tradatur emptori" E re nata fallacia, mulier temerarium tollens cachinnum * Magnum" inquit “Istum virum ac strenuum negotiatorem nacta sum, qui rem, quam ego mulier et intra hospitium contenta. iamdudum septem denariis vendidi, minoris distraxit." Additamento pretii laetus maritus “Et quis est ille," ait « Qui tanto praestinavit?" At illa « Olim, inepte," inquit 408 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK IX

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  This proclamation was the cause that put all doubt from Psyches, who was scantly come in the sight of the house of Venus, but one of her servants called Custome came out, who espying Psyches, cried with a loud voyce, saying: O wicked harlot as thou art, now at length thou shalt know that thou hast a mistresse above thee. What, dost thou make thy selfe ignorant, as though thou didst not understand what travell wee have taken in searching for thee? I am glad that thou art come into my hands, thou art now in the golfe of hell, and shalt abide the paine and punishment of thy great contumacy, and therewithall she tooke her by the haire, and brought her in, before the presence of the goddesse Venus. When Venus spied her, shee began to laugh, and as angry persons accustome to doe, she shaked her head, and scratched her right eare saying, O goddesse, goddesse, you are now come at length to visit your husband that is in danger of death, by your meanes: bee you assured, I will handle you like a daughter: where be my maidens, Sorrow and Sadnesse? To whom (when they came) she delivered Psyches to be cruelly tormented; then they fulfilled the commandement of their Mistresse, and after they had piteously scourged her with rods and whips, they presented her againe before Venus; then she began to laugh againe, saying: Behold she thinketh (that by reason of her great belly, which she hath gotten by playing the whore) to move me to pitty, and to make me a grandmother to her childe. Am not I happy, that in the flourishing time of al mine age, shall be called a grandmother, and the sonne of a vile harlot shall bee accounted the nephew of Venus: howbeit I am a foole to tearm him by the name of my son, since as the marriage was made betweene unequall persons, in the field without witnesses, and not by the consent of parents, wherefore the marriage is illegitimate, and the childe (that shall be borne) a bastard; if we fortune to suffer thee to live so long till thou be delivered. When Venus had spoken these words she leaped upon the face of poore Psyches, and (tearing her apparell) tooke her by the haire, and dashed her head upon the ground. Then she tooke a great quantity of wheat, of barly, poppy seede, peason, lintles, and beanes, and mingled them altogether on a heape saying: Thou evil favoured girle, thou seemest unable to get the grace of thy lover, by no other meanes, but only by diligent and painefull service, wherefore I will prove what thou canst doe: see that thou separate all these graines one from another, disposing them orderly in their quantity, and let it be done before night. When she had appointed this taske unto Psyches, she departed to a great banket that was prepared that day.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  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 in their decorated Mini Coopers. They are mistaken. To appreciate Cricklewood you have to walk its streets, as Howard did that afternoon. Then you find out that there is more charm in a half-mile of Cricklewood’s passing human faces than in all the double-fronted Georgian houses in Primrose Hill.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  But what a way to go! For fifteen years these two men had been moving in similar circles; passing through the same universities, contributing to the same journals, sometimes sharing a stage – but never an opinion – during panel discussions. Howard had always disliked Monty, as any sensible liberal would dislike a man who had dedicated his life to the perverse politics of right-wing iconoclasm, but he had never really hated him until he had heard the news, three years ago, that Kipps too was writing a book about Rembrandt. A book that, even before it was published, Howard sensed would be a hugely popular (and populist) brick designed to sit heavily atop the New York Times bestseller list for half a year, crushing every book beneath it. It was the thought of that book, and of its likely fate (compared to Howard’s own unfinished work, which, in the best of all possible worlds, could only ever end up in the bookshelves of a thousand art history students), that had pushed to him to write that terrible letter. In front of the entire academic community Howard had picked up some rope and hanged himself. Outside Kilburn Station Howard found a phone-box and called directory inquiries. He gave the Kippses’ full address and received in return a phone number. For a few minutes he hung about,  On Beauty examining the prostitutes’ cards. Strange that there should be so very many of these ladies-of-the-afternoon, tucked away behind the Victorian bay windows, reclining in post-war semis. He noticed how many were black – many more than in a Soho phone-box, surely – and how many, if the photos were to be believed (are they to be believed?), were exceptionally pretty. He picked up the handset again. He paused. In the past year he had grown shyer of Jerome. He feared the new adolescent religiosity, the moral seriousness and silences, always somehow implicitly critical. Howard took courage and dialled. ‘Hello?’ ‘Yes, hello.’

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  “Give it back,” she pleaded, showing the marbled flush of her palms. I produced Delicious. She grasped it and bit into it, and my heart was like snow under thin crimson skin, and with the monkeyish nimbleness that was so typical of that American nymphet, she snatched out of my abstract grip the magazine I had opened (pity no film had recorded the curious pattern, the monogrammic linkage of our simultaneous or overlapping moves). Rapidly, hardly hampered by the disfigured apple she held, Lo flipped violently through the pages in search of something she wished Humbert to see. Found it at last. I faked interest by bringing my head so close that her hair touched my temple and her arm brushed my cheek as she wiped her lips with her wrist. Because of the burnished mist through which I peered at the picture, I was slow in reacting to it, and her bare knees rubbed and knocked impatiently against each other. Dimly there came into view: a surrealist painter relaxing, supine, on a beach, and near him, likewise supine, a plaster replica of the Venus di Milo, half-buried in sand. Picture of the Week, said the legend. I whisked the whole obscene thing away. Next moment, in a sham effort to retrieve it, she was all over me. Caught her by her thin knobby wrist. The magazine escaped to the floor like a flustered fowl. She twisted herself free, recoiled, and lay back in the right-hand corner of the davenport. Then, with perfect simplicity, the impudent child extended her legs across my lap.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  I had no doubt. All she’d had left for me was a single dose of Benadryl in the foil blister, a one-inch square containing two measly antihistamines. I picked it up in disbelief and shut the door to the cabinet. My face in the mirror startled me. I leaned in and looked to see if it had shifted anymore since Dr. Tuttle’s weird assessment. I did look different. I couldn’t put my finger on how, but there was something that hadn’t been there before. What was it? Had I entered the new dimension? Ridiculous. I opened the cabinet again. The pills had not magically reappeared. I’d never known Reva to be so bold. Maybe I’d tried to hide the pills from myself, I thought. I started opening drawers and cabinets in the hallway, in the kitchen. I hoisted myself up and stood on the counter, looking into the back reaches of the shelves. There was nothing there. I looked in the bedroom, in the drawer of my bedside table, under my bed. I pulled everything out of the closet, found nothing, and piled everything back in. I sifted through my drawers. I went back into the living room and unzipped the cases of the sofa cushions. Maybe I’d stuffed the pills inside the frame, I thought. But why would I do that? I found my phone charging in the bedroom and called Reva. She didn’t answer. “Reva,” I said into her voice mail. She was a coward, I thought. She was an idiot. “Are you a medical doctor? Are you some kind of expert? If my shit isn’t back in that medicine cabinet by tonight, we are done. Our friendship is over. I will never want to see you again. That is, if I’m even alive. Did it occur to you that you might not know the whole story behind my condition? And that there would be harmful consequences if I just all of a sudden stopped taking my medicine? If I don’t take it, I could go into seizures, Reva. Aneurysms. Neurotic shock. OK? Total cellular collapse! You’d feel pretty sorry if I died because of you. I don’t know how you’d live with yourself then. How much puke and StairMaster would it take to get over something like that, huh? You know that killing someone you love is the ultimate self-destructive act. Grow up, Reva. Is this a cry for help? It’s pretty fucking pathetic, if it is. Anyway, call me back. I’m waiting. And honestly, I don’t feel very well.” I took the two Benadryl, sat back down on the sofa and turned on the television. “In a sweeping vote of one hundred to zero, the Senate has confirmed Mitch Daniels as director of the White House Office of Management and Budget for the freshly minted Bush administration. Fifty-one-year-old Daniels has been a senior vice president for Eli Lilly and Company, the Indianapolis-based pharmaceutical giant.”

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The administration, increasingly, can rule only by fear: the fears of the people who elected them, and the fear that the administration can inspire. In spite of the tear gas, mace, clubs, heli copters, bugged installations, spies, provocateurs, tanks, machine guns, prisons, and detention centers, this is a shaky foundation. And they have helped to create a new pan theon of black heroes. Black babies will be born with new names hereafter and will have a standard to which to aspire new in this country, new in the world. The great question is what this will cost. The great effort is to minimize the dam age. While I was on the Coast, Eldridge Cleaver and Bobby Scale and David Hilliard were still free, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were still alive. Now, every day brings a new set back, frequently a bloody one. The government is absolutely determined to wipe the Black Panthers from the face of the earth: which is but another way of saying that it is absolutely determined to keep the nigger in his place. But this merciless and bloody repression, which is carried out, furthermore, with a remarkable contempt for the sensibilities and intelligence of the black people of this nation-f or who can believe the police rcports?-causcs almost all blacks to realize that neither the government, the police, nor the populac e arc able to distin guish between a Black Panther, a black school child, or a black lawyer. And this reign of terror is creating a great problem in prisons all over this country. "Now , look," said a harassed prison official to Bobby Scale, "you got a lot of notoriety. We don't want no organizing here, or nothing else. We ain't got no Panthers, we ain't got no Rangers, we ain't got no Mus lims. All we got is in- mates." All he's got is trouble. All he's got is black people who know why they're in prison, and not all of them can be kept in solit ary. These blacks have unfor giving relatives, to say nothing of unforgiving children, at every level of American lif e. The government cannot afford to trust a single black man in this country, nor can they pen ctrate any black's disguise, or apprehend how devious and te nacious black patience can be, and any black man that they NO NAME IN THE STREET appear to trust is useless to them, for he will never be trusted by the blacks. It is true that our weapons do not appear to be very formidable, but, then, they never have. Then, as now, our greatest weapon is silence. As black poet Robert E. Hay den puts it in his poem to Harriet Tubman, "R unagate, Run agate": Mean mean mean to be free. I first met Huey in San Francisco, shortly before his fateful encounter with Officers Frey and Heanes.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  I cannot say that these acrobatics suc ceeded. It began to seem that the machinery of the organi zation I worked for was turning over, day and night, with but one aim: to eject me. I was fired once, and contrived, with the aid of a friend from New York, to get back on the payroll; was fired again, and bounced back again. It took a while to fire me for the third time, but the third time took. There were no loopholes anywhere. There was not even any way of get ting back inside the gates. That year in New Jersey lives in my mind as though it were the year during which, having an unsuspected predilection for '70 NO TES OF A NA TIVE SON it, I first contracted some dread, chronic disease, the un failing symptom of which is a kind of blind fever, a pounding in the skull and fire in the bowels. Once this disease is contracted, one can never be really carefree again, for the fever, without an instant's warning, can recur at any moment. It can wreck more important things than race relations. There is not a Ne gro alive who does not have this rage in his blood--one has the choice, merely, of living with it consciously or surrender ing to it. As for me, this fever has recurred in me, and does, and will until the day I die. My last night in New Jersey, a white friend from New York took me to the nearest big town, Trenton, to go to the movies and have a few drinks. As it turned out, he also saved me from, at the very least, a violent whipping. Almost every detail of that night stands out very clearly in my memory. I even re member the name of the movie we saw because its title im pressed me as being so patly ironic al. It was a movie about the German occupation of France, starring Maureen O'Hara and Charles Laughton and called This Land Is Mine. I re member the name of the diner we walked into when the movie ended: it was the "American Diner. " When we walked in the counterman asked what we wanted and I remember answering with the casual sharpness which had become my habit: "We want a hamburger and a cup of coffee, what do you think we want?" I do not know why, after a year of such rebu ffs, I so completely failed to anticipate his answer, which was, of course, "We don't serve Negroes her e." This reply f. <iled to discompose me, at least for the moment.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The Negro vote has no power in the state, and the governor of Georgia-that "third-rate NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME 207 man," Atlantans call him-makes great political capital out of keeping the Negroes in their place. When six Negro ministers attempted to create a test case by ignoring the segregation ordinance on the buses, the governor was ready to declare martial law and hold the ministers incommunicado. It was the mayor who prevented this, who somehow squashed all pub licity, treated the ministers with cvciy outward sign of respect, and it is his office which is preventing the case from coming into court. And remember that it was the governor of Arkan sas, in an insane bid for political power, who created the pres ent crisis in Little Rock-against the will of most of its citizens and against the will of the mayor. This war between the Southern cities and states is of the utmost importance, not only for the South, but for the nation. The Southern states arc still very largely governed by people whose political lives, insofar, at least, as they arc able to con ceive of life or politics, arc dependent on the people in the rural regions. It might, indeed, be more honorable to try to guide these people out of their pain and ignorance instead of locking them within it, and battening on it; but it is, admit tedly, a difficult task to tiy to tell people the truth and it is clear that most Southern politicians have no intention of at tempting it. The attitude of these people can only have the effect of stiffening the already implacable Negro resistance, and this attitude is absolutely certain, sooner or later, to create great trouble in the cities. When a race riot occurs in Atlanta, it will not spread merely to Birmingham, for example. (Bir mingham is a doomed city.) The trouble will spread to cve1y metropolitan center in the nation which has a significant Ne gro population. And this is not only because the tics between Northern and Southern Negroes arc still vc1y close. It is be cause the nation, the entire nation, has spent a hundred years avoiding the question of the place of the black man in it. That this has done terrible things to black men is not even a question. "Integration," said a vc1y light Negro to me in Alabama, "has always worked very well in the South, after the sun goes down." "It's not miscegenation," said another Ne gro to me, "unless a black man's involved." Now, I talked to many Southern liberals who were doing their best to bring integration about in the South, but met scarcely a single 208 NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME Southerner who did not weep for the passing of the old order.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  The StepmotherLISA’S STORY ILLUSTRATES the many dilemmas that can arise between children and stepmothers. When Lisa’s father met Machiko, he was immediately smitten by her sense of humor, her gentleness, and her good looks. She made him feel wonderful, sexy, alive, and wanted. In yet another example of how an adult unconsciously believes in the trickle-down theory of family happiness, he never questioned that his child would share his judgment. With the best intentions in the world, he expected Lisa to feel immediate affection for Machiko and after a brief period to accept her as a parent in situ. In reality, neither the child nor the woman had an easy time developing their relationship. Machiko asserted her claim to be a bride, to come first as she and her husband built their life together. At the same time, Lisa was in crisis. Her family had evaporated. Her mother was depressed. Her beloved father had moved out and gotten involved with a stranger who took all his attention. Moreover, this new rival for her father’s love was usurping her mother’s place. This is the stuff of fairy tales and it is the stuff of modern life in America—with one difference. In fairy tales, the little girl is taken out into the deep dangerous forest where she is saved by a compassionate woodsman. In modern America, all the people stay together in the two households and life is ripe for conflict. In its early stages, the strife is not related to how nice or evil the stepmother is or to how well behaved or naughty the child is. The conflict is in the nature of the drama itself. There is one exalted king (the man), one princess (the child), one long and dark shadow (the ex-wife), and one usurper (the stepmother), who quite rightly wants the opportunity to enjoy her marriage. Such dramas play out differently in different families but they are never without travail. In Lisa’s case, the stepmother shooed the little girl away and forbade her to sit in her father’s lap. This was clearly a mistake that Machiko soon realized but Lisa never forgot or forgave. Nevertheless, in time the stepmother and stepdaughter did get to know each other, to like each other, and eventually to love and respect each other very much. Other scenarios do not have happy endings. The stepmother, as many do, says: “I want the man, not the child.” If the stepmother does not take the time and effort to cultivate a separate relationship with the child, the antagonism persists. Indeed, such rivalries tend to worsen as children move into adolescence and become angrier about the divorce or maintain covert plans to bring the biological parents back together. It’s not unusual for a stepmother to say, “I cannot control this child. He hates me. You have to choose.” The father’s decision can go either way. Many second marriages (or live-in relationships) break up because of the jealousy between a stepparent and stepchild.