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 Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Nothing unnerved rural black settlements more than rumors about nearby Klan activity. For a hundred years, any sign of black progress in the South could trigger a white reaction that would invariably invoke Confederate symbols and talk of resistance. Confederate Memorial Day was declared a state holiday in Alabama at the turn of the century, soon after whites rewrote the state constitution to ensure white supremacy. (The holiday is still celebrated today.) When black veterans returned to the South after World War II, Southern politicians formed a “Dixiecrat” bloc to preserve racial segregation and white domination out of fear that military service might encourage black veterans to question racial segregation. In the 1950s and 1960s, civil rights activism and new federal laws inspired the same resistance to racial progress and once again led to a spike in the use of Confederate imagery. In fact, it was in the 1950s, after racial segregation in public schools was declared unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education, that many Southern states erected Confederate flags atop their state government buildings. Confederate monuments, memorials, and imagery proliferated throughout the South during the Civil Rights Era. It was during this time that the birthday of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, was added as a holiday in Alabama. Even today, banks, state offices, and state institutions shut down in his honor. At a pretrial hearing, I once argued against the exclusion of African Americans from the jury pool. In this particular rural Southern community, the population was about 27 percent black, but African Americans made up only 10 percent of the jury pool. After presenting the data and making my arguments about the unconstitutional exclusion of African Americans, the judge complained loudly. “I’m going to grant your motion, Mr. Stevenson, but I’ll be honest. I’m pretty fed up with people always talking about minority rights. African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans...When is someone going to come to my courtroom and protect the rights of Confederate Americans?” The judge had definitely caught me off guard. I wanted to ask if being born in the South or living in Alabama made me a Confederate American, but I thought better of it. — I stopped in the prison yard to take a closer look at the truck. I couldn’t help walking around it and reading the provocative stickers. I turned back toward the front gate of the prison, trying to regain my focus, but I couldn’t make myself indifferent to what I perceived were symbols of racial oppression. I had been to this prison often enough to be familiar to many of the correctional officers, but as I entered I was met by a correctional officer I’d never seen before. He was a white man of my height—about six feet tall—with a muscular build. He looked to be in his early forties and wore a short military haircut. He was staring coldly at me with steel-blue eyes.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  PROCEDURE AND PLACE OF THE JUDGMENTWe are not to suppose that judicial examination will be required in order that the judge may receive information, as is the case in human courts; for “all things ate naked and open to His eyes,” as we are told in Hebrews 4:13. The examination is necessary for the purpose of making known to each person, concerning himself and others, the reasons why each is worthy of punishment or of glory, so that the good may joyfully acknowledge God’s justice in all things and the wicked may be roused to anger against themselves. Nor should we imagine that this examination is to be conducted by oral discussion. Endless time would be required to recount the thoughts, words, and deeds, good or evil, of each person. Therefore Lactantius was deceived when be suggested that the day of judgment would last a thousand years. Even this time would scarcely be enough, as several days would be required to complete the judicial process for a single man in the manner proposed. Accordingly the divine power will bring it about that in an instant everyone will be apprised of all the good or evil he has ever done, for which he is to be rewarded or punished. And all this will be made known to each person, not only about himself, but also about the rest. Hence, wherever the good is so much in excess that the evil seems to be of no consequence or vice versa, there will seem, to human estimation, to be no conflict between the good and the evil. This is what we meant when we said that such persons will be rewarded or punished without examination. Although all men will appear before Christ at that judgment, the good will not only be set apart from the wicked by reason of meritorious cause, but will be separated from them in locality. The wicked, who have withdrawn from Christ in their love of earthly things, will remain on earth; but the good, who have clung to Christ, will be raised up into the air when they go to meet Christ, that they may be made like Christ, not only by being conformed to the splendor of His glory, but by being associated with Him in the place He occupies. This is indicated in Matthew 24:28: “Wheresoever the body shall be, there shall the eagles also (by which the saints are signified) be gathered together.” According to Jerome [In Evangelium Matthaei, IV], instead of “body” the Hebrew has the significant word “joatham,” which means corpse, to commemorate Christ’s passion, whereby Christ merited the power to judge, and men who have been conformed to His passion are admitted into the company of His glory, as we are told by the Apostle in 2 Timothy 2:12: “If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him.”

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Secondly, one kills another by word of mouth. This is done by giving counsel to anyone against another by provocation, accusation, or detraction: “The sons of men whose teeth are weapons and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword” [Ps 56:5]. Thirdly, by lending aid, as it is written: “My son, do not go with them... for their feet run to evil, and they rush to shed blood” [Prov 1:15-16]. Fourthly, by consent: “They are worthy of death, not only they who do such things, but they also who consent to those who do them” [Rm 1:32]. Lastly, one kills another by giving a partial consent when the act could be completely prevented: “Deliver those who are led to death” [Prov 24:11]; or, if one can prevent it, yet does not do so through negligence or avarice. Thus, St. Ambrose says: “Give food to him that is dying of hunger; if you do not, you are his murderer.” We have already considered the killing of the body, but some kill the soul also by drawing it away from the life of grace, namely, by inducing it to commit mortal sin: “He was a murderer from the beginning” [Jn 8:44], that is, in so far as he drew men into sin. Others, however, slay both body and soul. This is possible in two ways: first, by the murder of one with child, whereby the child is killed both in body and soul; and, secondly, by commiting suicide. THE SIN OF ANGERWhy We Are Forbidden to Be Angry.—In the Gospel of St. Matthew (ch. 5) Christ taught that our justice should be greater than the justice of the Old Law. This means that Christians should observe the Commandments of the law more perfectly than the Jews observed them. The reason is that greater effort deserves a better reward: “He who sows sparingly, shall also reap sparingly” [2 Cor 9:6]. The Old Law promised a temporary and earthly reward: “If you are willing and will listen to Me, you shall eat the good things of the land” [Is 1:19]. But in the New Law heavenly and eternal things are promised. Therefore, justice, which is the observance of the Commandments, should be more generous because a greater reward is expected. The Lord mentioned this Commandment in particular among the others when He said: “You have heard that it was said to them of old: You shall not kill.... But I say to you that anyone who is angry with his brother, shall be in danger of the judgment” [Mt 5:21-22]. By this is meant the penalty which the law prescribes: “If any man kills his neighbor on set purpose, and by lying in wait for him; you shall take him away from My altar, that he may die” [Ex 21:14].

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Many Negroes feel this; there is no way not to feel it. Alas, we know our countrymen, municipalities, judges, politicians, policemen and draft boards very well. There is more than one way to skin a cat, and more than one way to get bad niggers otT the streets. No one in Harlem will ever believe that The Harlem Six are guilty-God knows their guilt has certainly not been proved. Harlem knows, though, that they have been abused and possibly de stroyed, and Harlem knows why-we have lived with it since our eyes opened on the world. One is in the impossible po sition of being unable to believe a word one's countrymen say. "I can't believe what you say," the song goes, "because I sec what you do"-and one is also under the necessity of escaping the jungle of one's situation into any other jungle whatever. It is the bitterest possible comment on our situation now that the suspicion is alive in so many breasts that America has at last found a way of dealing with the Negro problem. ((They don't JVant us-pe1'iod!" The meek shall inherit the earth, it is said. This presents a very bleak image to those who live in occupied territory. The meek Southeast Asians, those who remain, shall have their fr ee elections, and the meek American Negroes-those who survive-shall enter the Great Society. The Na tion, July 11, 1966 Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because Th ey )re Anti-Wh ite W HEN we were growing up in Harlem our demoralizing series of landlords were Jewish, and we hated them. We hated them because they were terrible landlords, and did not take care of the building. A coat of paint, a broken window, a stopped sink, a stopped toilet, a sagging floor, a broken ceiling, a dangerous stairwell, the question of garbage dis posal, the question of heat and cold, of roaches and rats-all questions of life and death for the poor, and especially for those with children-we had to cope with all of these as best we could. Our parents were lashed down to futureless jobs, in order to pay the outrageous rent. We knew that the land lord treated us this way only because we were colored, and he knew that we could not move out. The grocer was a Jew, and being in debt to him was very much like being in debt to the company store. The butcher was a Jew and, yes, we certainly paid more for bad cuts of meat than other New York citizens, and we very often carried insults home, along with the meat. We bought our clothes fr om a Jew and, sometimes, our secondhand shoes, and the pawnbroker was a Jew-perhaps we hated him most of all.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  There is no pres sure on the butcher to be honest: if he can sell bad meat at a profit, why should he not do so? buying cheap and selling dear is what made this country great. If the storekeeper can sell, on the installment plan, a worthless "bedroom suite" for six or seven times its value, what is there to prevent him from doing so, and who will ever hear, or credit, his customer's complaint? in the unlikely event that the customer has any notion of where to go to complain. And the ghetto is a gold mine for the insurance companies. A dime a week, for fi\·e or ten or twenty years, is a lot of money, but rare indeed is the funeral paid for by the insurance. I myself do not know of any. Some member of my family had been carrying insurance at a dime a week for years and we finally persuaded her to drop it and cash in the policy-which was now worth a little over two hundred dollars. And let me state candidly, and I know , in this instance, that I do not speak only for myself, that every time I hear the black people of this country referred to as "shiftless" and "lazy," every time it is implied that the blacks deserve their condition here (look at the Irish! look at the Poles! Yes. Look at them.) I think of all the pain and sweat with which these greasy dimes were earned, with what trust they were given, in order to make the difficult passage some what easier for the living, in order to show honor to the dead, and I then have no compassion whatever for this country, or my countrymen. Into this maelstrom, this present elaboration of the slave quarters, this rehearsal for a concentration camp, we place, armed, not for the protection of the ghetto but for the pro- + H NO NAME IN THE STREET tection of American investments there, some blank American boy who is responsible only to some equally blank elder pa triot-Andy Hardy and his pious father. Richard Harris, in his �C\\' Yorker article, The Turning Point, observes that "Back in 1969, a survey of three hundred police departments around the country had revealed that less than one percent required any college training. Three years later, a pilot study ordered by the President showed that most criminals were mentally below average, which su ggested that that policemen who failed to stop or find them might not be much above it."

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Wan dering along the countryside, Billie suddenly sees, on the road just before her, grieving black people, and a black body hang ing from a tree. The best that one can say for this moment is that it is mistaken, and the worst that it is callously false and self-serving-which may be a rude way of saying the same thing: luckily, it is brief. The scene operates to resolve, at one stroke, several problems, and without in the least involving or intimidating the spectator. The lynch scene is as remote as an THE DEVIL FINDS WORK Indian massacre, occurring in the same landscape, and eliciting the same response: a mixture of pious horror, and gratified reassurance. The ubiquitous Ku Klux Klan appears, marching beside the bus in which the band is riding. The band is white, and they attempt to hide Billie, making, meanwhile, fr iendly gestures to their marching countrymen. But Billie, because of the strange fruit she has just seen hanging, is now beside herself� and deliberately makes herself visible, cursing and weeping against the Klan: she, and the musicians, make a suf ficiently narrow, entirely cinematic escape. This scene is pure bullshit Hollywood-American fable, with the bad guys robed and the good guys casual: as a result, anyway, of all this unhealthy excitement, this understandable (and oddly reas suring) bitterness, Billie finally takes her first fix, and is im mediately hooked. This incident is not in the book: for the very good reason, certainly, that black people in this country are schooled in adversity long before white people are. Blacks perceive danger far more swiftly, and, however odd this may sound, then at tempt to protect their white comrade fr om his white brothers: they know their white comrade's brothers tar better than the comrade does. One of the necessities of being black, and knowing it, is to accept the hard discipline of learning to avoid useless anger, and needless loss of life: every mother and his mother's mother's mother's brother is needed. The off-screen Billie faced down white sheriffs, and laughed at them, to their faces, and faced down white managers, cops, and bartenders. She was much stronger than this film can have any interest in indicating, and, as a victim, infinitely more complex. Otherwise, she would never have been able to tell us, so simply, that she sang "Strange Fruit" for her father, and got hooked because she tell in love. The film cannot accept-because it cannot use-this sim plicity. That victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he, or she, has become a threat.

• From The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (2023)

  Klein’s most challenged book was It’s OK if You Don’t Love Me , according to a count put together by Arizona State University professor Ken Donelson and published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1990. Donelson tallied up protests against books as reported by the Office for Intellectual Freedom between 1952 and 1989. His list included a number of familiar, widely celebrated titles along with the supplied justifications for their removal from public spaces. Judith Guest’s Ordinary People was described by a woman in West Virginia as “absolutely filthy, dirty, vulgar.” In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a school board member said of Vonnegut’s “book of dirty language” Slaughterhouse-Five : “I’ve been told the author is a great writer. He may have boo-booed on this one.” (The earnestness of this phrasing—ha!) Claude Brown, a Black writer who published the autobiographical novel Manchild in the Promised Land about growing up in Harlem, was subjected to a particularly memorable critique. In Old Town, Maine, a member of a school committee objected to the book as well as the elective course it was being taught in, called “The Nature of Prejudice.” The protestor noted that because there were no Black people in Old Town, “prejudice was no problem.” Topping Donelson’s list was J. D. Salinger, with The Catcher in the Rye challenged seventy-one times. Blume followed with fifty-seven objections against a number of her books: Forever led the pack with eighteen challenges, followed by Deenie ; Then Again, Maybe I Won’t ; Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret ; Blubber ; and It’s Not the End of the World . Steinbeck came in third with forty-seven total complaints, mostly against Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath . “There’s an obvious drop-off after Steinbeck,” Donelson wrote. “Whatever authors we add beyond, the point is clear—Salinger and Blume and Steinbeck lead all the rest by a wide margin.” Donelson also argued that Blume, not Salinger, deserved the top spot “since several of Blume’s books are on the hit parade… while Salinger has only one.” He mused that the book banners were actually undermining their own agendas by keeping Salinger’s book front and center. “How many adolescent readers would read about Holden Caulfield’s life if they weren’t frequently reminded by censors how dreadful and immoral Catcher is?” Go Ask Alice was the subject of thirty-one incidents—ironic, as the tragic diary was eventually revealed to be a cautionary tale fabricated by a staunchly anti-drug Mormon homemaker named Beatrice Sparks. Norma Klein had been called out fourteen times, mostly for It’s OK if You Don’t Love Me but also for Mom, The Wolf Man, and Me , along with a handful of other titles. In “On Being a Banned Writer,” Klein took the high ground when it came to anybody’s issues with her own books, but also expressed real concerns about living in a world where demonizing the written word was considered fair game.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Charlie and I broke up soon after our reunion. It seems I could never forgive his ambivalence, though, in fact, I now see it was very like my own, and perhaps I should have been more understanding. Alessandro kept writing from Florence with talk of “divorzio,” but I had seen too many Italian movies to believe him. “Michelangelo” turned up once and looked so much worse in the polluted sunlight of New York that I hadn’t the heart to continue. The brown and amber shades of Florence had done wonders for him—as any E. M. Forster fan can readily understand. September and October were grim and dreary. I went out with a depressing assortment of divorcés, mama’s boys, neurotics, psychotics, and shrinks. I was only able to keep my spirits up by describing them all in bitchy detail in my letters to Pia. Then, in November, Bennett Wing waltzed into my life looking like the solution to all my problems. Silent as the Sphinx and very gentle. Savior and psychiatrist all in one. I fell into marriage the way (in Europe) I had fallen into bed. It looked like a soft bed; the nails were underneath. FIFTEENTravels with My Antihero I want! I want! —William Blake Itold Adrian everything. My whole hysterical history of searching for the impossible man and finding myself always right back where I started: inside my own head. I impersonated my sisters for him, my mother, my father, my grandparents, my husband, my friends…. We drove and talked and drove and talked. “What’s your prognosis?” I asked, ever the patient in search of the perfect doctor. “You’re due for a bit of a reshuffle, ducks,” Adrian kept saying. “You have to go down into yourself and salvage your own life.” Wasn’t I already doing that? What was this crazy itinerary if not a trip back into my past? “You haven’t gone deep enough yet,” he said. “You have to hit rock bottom and then climb back up.” “Jesus! I feel like I already have!” Adrian smirked his beautiful smirk with the pipe tucked between his curling pink lips. “You haven’t hit rock bottom yet,” he said, as if he knew some of the surprises in store. “Are you going to take me there?” I asked. “If you insist, love.” It was his magnificent indifference which infuriated me, turned me on, made me wild with frustration. Despite his cuddling and ass-grabbing, Adrian was so cool. I used to stare and stare at that beautiful profile wondering what in the world was happening in his head and why I couldn’t seem to fathom it. “I want to get inside your head,” I said, “and I can’t. It’s driving me crazy.” “But why do you want to get inside my head? What do you think that will solve?” “It’s just that I want to really feel close to someone, united with someone, whole for once. I want to really love someone.” “What makes you think love solves anything?”

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  I felt like I’d been socked in the jaw. It was like being six and having your bicycle smashed by your supposed best friend. It was the worst betrayal I could think of. “You mean you sat there the whole time talking about freedom and unpredictability and you knew you had plans to meet Esther? I’ve never met such a hypocrite!” Adrian began laughing. “What’s so goddamned funny?” “Your fury.” “I’d like to kill you,” I screamed. “I’ll bet you would.” And with that I began swinging at him and pummeling him. He grabbed me by the wrists and held me. “I only wanted to give you something to write about,” he laughed. “You bastard!” “Doesn’t this make the perfect end to your story?” “You really are a pig.” “Come on, love, don’t take it so hard. The moral of the story is the same anyway, isn’t it?” “Your morals are like roads through the Alps. They make these hairpin turns all the time.” “I seem to have heard that somewhere before too,” he said. “Well, I’m going with you.” “Where?” “Cherbourg. We’ll just have to drive through Brittany à cinq. We’ll all have to fuck each other and not make any silly moral excuses—as you said way back in Vienna.” “Nonsense, you’re not going.” “I am too.” “You are not. I won’t permit it.” “What do you mean you won’t permit it? What kind of shit is that? You flaunted everything in front of Bennett. You encouraged me to shake up my life and go off with you and now you’re busy keeping your safe little household intact! What kind of shit do you think I’ll stand for? You were the one who sold me a bill of goods about honesty and openness and not living in a million contradictions. I’m damn well going to Cherbourg with you. I want to meet Esther and the kids and we’ll all just play it by ear.” “Absolutely not. I won’t take you. I’ll physically throw you out of the car if need be.” I looked at him in disbelief. Why was it so hard for me to believe that he would be so callous? It was clear he meant what he said. I knew he would throw me out of the car if need be. And perhaps even drive off laughing. “But don’t you care about being a hypocrite?” The tone of my voice was tinged with pleading as if I already knew I’d lost. “I refuse to upset the kids that way,” he said, “and that’s final.” “Obviously you don’t mind upsetting me.” “You’re grown up. You can take it. They can’t.”

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  “What makes you think I got married out of fear?” I was indignant because he was right. “Oh, probably you found yourself fucking too many guys, not knowing how to say no, and even liking it some of the time, and then you felt guilty for having fun. We’re programmed for suffering, not joy. The masochism is built in at a very early age. You’re supposed to work and suffer—and the trouble is: you believe it. Well, it’s bullshit. It took me thirty-six years to realize what a load of bullshit it is and if there’s one thing I want to do for you it’s teach you the same.” “You have all kinds of plans for me, don’t you? You want to teach me about freedom, about pleasure, you want to write books with me, convert me…. Why do men always want to convert me? I must look like a convert.” “You look like you want to be saved, ducks. You ask for it. You turn those big myopic eyes up at me as if I were Big Daddy Psychoanalyst. You go through life looking for a teacher and then when you find him, you become so dependent on him that you grow to hate him. Or else you wait for him to show his weakness and then you despise him for being human. You sit there the whole time keeping tabs, making mental notes, imagining people as books or case histories—I know that game. You tell yourself you’re collecting material. You tell yourself you’re studying human nature. Art above life at all times. Another version of the puritanical bullshit. Only you have a new twist to it. You think you’re a hedonist because you take off and run around with me. But it’s the bloody old work ethic all the same because you’re only thinking you’ll write about me. So it’s actually work, n’est-ce pas? You can fuck me and call it poetry. Pretty clever. You deceive yourself beautifully that way.” “You really are a great one for unloading two-bit analyses, aren’t you? A real television shrink.” Adrian laughed. “Look, ducks, I know about you from myself. Psychoanalysts play the same game. They’re just like writers. Everything’s at one remove, a case history, a study. Also, they’re terrified of death—just like poets. Doctors hate death: that’s why they go into medicine. And they have to stir things up all the time and keep bloody busy just to prove to themselves they’re not dead. I know your game because I play it myself. It’s not such a mystery as you think. You’re really quite transparent.” It infuriated me that he saw me more cynically than I saw myself. I always think I’m protecting myself against other people’s views of me by taking the most jaundiced view of myself possible. Then suddenly I realize that even this jaundiced view is self-flattering. When wounded, I lapse into high-school French: “Vous vous moquez de moi.”

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  By four o’clock, we were on the Strassenbahn bound for the University of Vienna to register for the Congress. The day had turned out to be clear with blue skies and absurdly fluffy white clouds. And I was clumping along the streets in my high-heeled sandals, hating the Germans, and hating Bennett for not being a stranger on a train, for not smiling, for being such a good lay but never kissing me, for getting me shrink appointments and Pap smears and IBM electrics, but never buying me flowers. And not talking to me. And never grabbing my ass anymore. And never going down on me, ever. What do you expect after five years of marriage anyway? Giggling in the dark? Ass-grabbing? Cunt-eating? Well at least an occasional one. What do you women want? Freud puzzled this and never came up with much. How do you ladies like to be laid? A man who’ll go down on you when you have your period? A man who’ll kiss you before you brush your teeth in the morning and not say Yiiich? A man who’ll laugh with you when the lights go out? A stiff prick, Freud said, assuming that their obsession was our obsession. Phallocentric, someone once said of Freud. He thought the sun revolved around the penis. And the daughter, too. And who could protest? Until women started writing books there was only one side of the story. Throughout all of history, books were written with sperm, not menstrual blood. Until I was twenty-one, I measured my orgasms against Lady Chatterley’s and wondered what was wrong with me. Did it ever occur to me that Lady Chatterley was really a man? That she was really D. H. Lawrence? Phallocentric. The trouble with men and also the trouble with women. A friend of mine recently found this in a fortune cookie: the trouble with men is men, the trouble with women, men. Once, just to impress Bennett, I told him about the Hell’s Angels initiation ceremony. The part where the initiate has to go down on his woman while she has her period and while all the other guys watch. Bennett said nothing. “Well, isn’t that interesting?” I nudged. “Isn’t that a gas?” Still nothing. I kept nagging. “Why don’t you buy yourself a little dog,” he finally said, “and train him.” “I ought to report you to the New York Psychoanalytic,” I said. — The medical building of the University of Vienna is columned, cold, cavernous. We trudged up a long flight of steps. Upstairs, dozens of shrinks were milling around the registration desk. An officious Austrian girl in harlequin glasses and a red dirndl was giving everyone trouble about their credentials for registration. She spoke painstakingly schoolbook English. I was positive she must be the wife of one of the Austrian candidates. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five but she smiled with all the smugness of a Frau Doktor.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘Mom, I don’t understand what’s going on. What is that?’ Then came the sound of the front door clicking and opening. Kiki leaped to her feet and left the room, leaving Jerome to stare at the naked brown woman surrounded by her Technicolor flowers and fruit. He heard screaming and yelling from upstairs. ‘OH, REALLY – OH, REALLY – NOTHING GOING ON!’ ‘LET GO OF ME!’ They were coming down the stairs, Kiki and Levi. Jerome went  on beauty and being wrong to the door and saw Kiki smack Levi round the head harder than he’d ever seen. ‘Get in there! Get your ass in there!’ Levi fell into Jerome and then both of them almost fell on to the painting. Jerome steadied himself and pulled Levi aside. Levi stood dumbfounded. Even his powers of rhetoric could not obscure the evidence of a five-foot oil painting hidden underneath his own bed. ‘Oh, shit , man,’ he said simply. ‘WHERE DID THIS COME FROM?’ ‘Mom,’ tried Jerome quietly, ‘you need to calm down.’ ‘Levi,’ said Kiki, and both boys recognized her coming on ‘all Florida’, which was the same thing, in Kiki terms, as ‘going postal’, ‘you’d better open your mouth with some kind of explanation or I am gonna strike you down where you stand , as God is my witness, I will wear your ass out today.’ ‘Oh shit .’ They heard the front door open and slam again. Levi looked in that direction hopefully, as if some intervention from upstairs might save him, but Kiki ignored it, yanking him by his sweatshirt to face her. ‘Because I know no son of mine steals ANYTHING – no child I ever raised took it into his head to steal ANYTHING FROM ANYBODY. Levi, you better open your mouth!’ ‘We didn’t steal it!’ managed Levi. ‘I mean, we took it, but it ain’t stealing.’ ‘ We? ’ ‘This guy and me, this . . . guy.’ ‘Levi, give me his name before I break your neck. I am not playing with you today, young man. There ain’t no games here today.’ Levi squirmed. From upstairs came the noise of shouting. ‘What’s . . . ?’ he said, but that was never going to work. ‘Never mind what’s going on up there – you better start worrying about what’s going on down here . Levi, tell me the name of this man now .’ ‘Man . . . it’s like . . . I can’t do that. He’s a guy . . . and he’s a  On Beauty

• From On Beauty (2005)

  He’s just not petty ,’ she said, and here stopped herself, under the aegis of a new resolution not to criticize her husband in front of her children. ‘Do we have to go to all that other stuff ?’ asked Levi and was ignored. ‘I mean – what the hell was he thinking ?’ demanded Kiki suddenly. ‘How can you walk out of somebody’s funeral? What goes on in his head? How is that a way to . . .’ she stopped herself again. She took a deep breath. ‘And where in the hell is Zora?’ Holding hands with both her boys, Kiki walked the edge of the wall. They found Zora by the church doors talking to a shapely black girl in a cheap navy suit. She had a flapper’s helmet of ironed hair, a kiss curl glued to her cheek. Both Levi and Jerome perked up at this attractive prospect. ‘Chantelle’s Monty’s new project,’ Zora was explaining. ‘I knew it was you – we’re in poetry class together. Mom, this is Chantelle, who I’m always telling you about?’ Both Chantelle and Kiki looked surprised by this. ‘New project?’ asked Kiki. ‘Professor Kipps,’ said Chantelle, barely audible, ‘attends my church. He asked me to intern for him here over the holidays.  On Beauty Christmas is the busiest time – he has to get all the contributions to the islands that need them before Christmas Day – it’s a real good opportunity . . .’ added Chantelle, but looked miserable. ‘So you’re in Green Park,’ said Jerome, stepping forward as Levi hung back, for even this much acquaintance had confirmed for both that this girl was not for Levi. Despite her name and other appearances to the contrary, she was from Jerome’s world. ‘Excuse me?’ said Chantelle. ‘Monty’s office – in Green Park. With Emily and all those guys.’ ‘Oh, yeah, that’s right,’ said Chantelle, her lip trembling so violently that Jerome at once regretted bothering her with the question. ‘I’m just helping out a little, really . . . I mean I was going to help with that . . . but now it looks like I’m going home tomorrow.’ Kiki reached out and touched Chantelle’s elbow. ‘Well, at least you’ll be home for Christmas.’ Chantelle smiled painfully at this. One sensed that Christmas in Chantelle’s house was a thing best avoided. ‘Oh, honey – it must have been a shock . . . coming here, and now this awful thing happens . . .’ It was just Kiki being Kiki, offering the simple empathy her children were so used to, but for Chantelle it was exactly too much of what she needed. She burst into tears. Kiki at once put her arms around her and brought her into her bosom. ‘Oh, honey . . . oh . . . it’s OK. It’s OK, honey. There you are . . . you’re fine. There’s no problem . . . it’s OK.’

• From On Beauty (2005)

  same grounds that I stand before you this morning, with one key difference. It is not my habit or to my taste to ban speakers of different political colours from my own from this campus, which is why I am not requesting such a ban outright but rather asking to see the text of these lectures so that they may be considered by this faculty – with the view that any material that appears to us, as a community, to contravene the internal ‘‘hate laws’’ of this institution – as laid out by our own Equal Opportunities Commission of which I am the chair – can be excised. I have asked Professor Kipps, in writing, for a copy of his text – he has refused. I ask again, today, at the very least, for an outline of the lectures he intends to give. My grounds for concern are two: first, the reductive and offensive public statements the Professor has made about homosexuality and race and gender throughout his career. Second, his lecture series ‘‘Taking the Liberal Out of the Liberal Arts’’ shares a title with an article he recently published in the Wellington Herald , which itself contained sufficient homophobic material to convince the Wellington LesBiGay group to picket and obstruct any lectures that the Professor might give at this college. For those of you who missed that article, I have photocopied it – I believe Lydia will give these out to anyone who wishes to read it at the end of our session. So, to conclude,’ said Howard, folding his papers in half, ‘my proposal to Professor Kipps himself is as follows: that we will be given the text of the lectures; that, failing this, we will be given a proposed outline of these lectures; or, failing that, we shall be told this morning what the intention of the lectures is.’ ‘Is that . . . ?’ queried Jack, ‘That’s the meat of your . . . so, I suppose we must turn to the Professor and . . . Professor Kipps, could you possibly . . .’ Monty stood and held the back of the chair in front of him, leaning into it as if it were a lectern. ‘Dean French, it would be a pleasure . How entertaining all that was. I love liberal fairytales! So restful – they put no undue strain  on beauty and being wrong

• From On Beauty (2005)

  She has arguments. That’s not the same thing.’ ‘She believes,’ said Jack, using his deepest, most presidential, commencement day timbre, ‘that she is being kept from this class for . . . personal reasons that are outside the proper context of academic or creative assessment.’ ‘ What? What are you talking about, Jack? You’re talking to me like a management manual? This is insane.’ ‘I’m afraid she went as far to intimate that she believed this was a ‘‘vendetta’’. An inappropriate vendetta.’ Claire was quiet for a minute. She too had spent much time in universities. She understood the power of the inappropriate. ‘She said that? Are you serious? Oh, no, this is such a crock, Jack. Do I have a vendetta against the other hundred kids who didn’t get in the class this semester? Is this serious ?’ ‘She seems willing to take the matter on to the advisory board. As a case of personal prejudice, if I understand her correctly. She  the anatomy lesson would be referring, of course, to your relations . . .’ said Jack, and allowed his ellipsis to do the rest. ‘What a piece of work!’ ‘I think this is serious, Claire. I wouldn’t bring it to your attention if I thought otherwise.’ ‘But Jack . . . the class has already been posted. What’s it going to look like when Zora Belsey’s name is added at the last minute?’ ‘I think a minor embarrassment now is worth a far larger, possibly costly embarrassment further down the line before the advisory board – or even in court.’ Every now and then Jack French could be admirably succinct. Claire stood up. She was so tiny that even standing she was only just the equal to Jack’s reclining pose. But her small proportions bore no relation to the force of Claire Malcolm’s personality, as Jack well knew. He drew his head back a little in preparation for the assault. ‘What happened to supporting the faculty, Jack? What happened to privileging the decision of a respected faculty member over the demands of a student with a pretty glaring chip on their shoulder? Is that our policy now? Every time they cry wolf we run screaming?’ ‘Please, Claire . . . I need you to appreciate that I have been placed in an extremely invidious situation in which – ’ ‘ You’re in a situation – what about the situation you’re putting me in?’ ‘Claire, Claire – sit down for a moment, will you? I haven’t explained myself well, I see that. Sit down for one moment.’ Claire lowered herself slowly into her chair, tucking one leg nimbly underneath her bottom like a teenager. She blinked at him warily. ‘I looked at the boards today. Three of the names in your class I did not recognize.’ Claire Malcolm did a double-take at Jack French.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  The Fieschi were Counts of Lavagna, and derived their title from a little river of that name, which flows into the Gulf of Genoa between Sestri Levante and Chiavari, The words (“Know that I was a successor of Peter”) are spoken in Latin, as the official language of the Church and Popes.Adrian’s niece, Alagia, was the wife of Moroello III Malaspina (for whom see Canto viii, note 5). One of her sisters, Fiesca, married Alberto, belonging to a different branch of the Malaspina family; and the other, Jacopina, was the wife of Obizzo II of Este (see the tables on pp. 611, 617, 619 and 620).9. The Sadducees, having told Jesus of a woman who had married seven brothers in succession, and asked him: “Therefore in the resurrection whose wife shall be of the seven? for they all had her.” Jesus answered and said unto them, “Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven” (Matt. xxii. 23-30; Mark xii. 18-25; Luke xx. 27-35). The passage is usually taken to refer specifically to the Pope as the spouse of the Church (cf. Inf. xix; Purg. xxiv). But surely it may be taken with a wider reference. Marriage is regarded as the closest instance of special relations which have some legal or official sanction over and above the purely personal relations on which they are based, or which spring out of them. All such relations are abolished in the spirit world (cf. Par. vi and other passages).10. The fruit of repentance.C A N T O X XUnwilling to break short his conference, but more unwilling yet further to trespass on the courteous forbearance of his interlocutor, Dante passes among the weeping souls, through whose eyes that curse of all the world is distilling itself away! When will He come who shall chase the wolf of avarice from earth? Dante hears one of the prostrate souls rehearse examples of generous poverty, and learns that he is the ancestor of the royal line of France, the root of that evil tree that darkens all the Christian lands with its shadow. Comparatively harmless in its earlier generations, this house had gathered evil as it gathered strength; hero and saint alike have been its victims; it couched the lance of Judas against Florence; its own flesh and blood and the sacred orders of chivalry are alike regarded by it as things to coin; and the very person of the Vicar of Christ has been crucified by it while thieves were left alive. At such deeds wrath would torture the divine peace itself were it not soothed by the prospect of vengeance. Warning examples of avarice uttered at night balance the daily recitation of the virtuous counterparts.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  on beauty and being wrong ‘You’re right – I am scared of fascistic loons – I’m – my mind is boggling – Kiki, this man wants to destroy Roe v. Wade. That’s just for starters. This man – ’ Kiki stood up and started shouting. ‘That is not what this is about – I don’t give a rat’s ass about Monty Kipps. I’m talking about you – you’re terrified of anyone who believes anything – look how you treat Jerome – you can’t even look at him, because you know he’s a Christian now – we both know it – we never talk about it. Why? You just make jokes about it, but it’s not funny – it’s not funny to him – and it just seems like you used to have some idea of what you . . . I don’t know . . . what you believed and what you loved and now you’re just this – ’ ‘Stop shouting.’ ‘I’m not shouting.’ ‘You’re shouting. Stop shouting.’ A pause. ‘And I don’t know what on earth Jerome has to do with any of this – ’ With two bunched fists Kiki thumped the sides of her legs in frustration. ‘It’s all the same thing, I’ve been thinking about all of this – it’s part of the same . . . just, veil of doom that’s descended on this house – we can’t talk about anything seriously, everything’s ironic, nothing’s serious – everyone’s scared to speak in case you think it’s cliche´d or dull – you’re like the thought police. And you don’t care about anything, you don’t care about us – you know, I was sitting there listening to Kipps – OK, so he’s a nutcase half the time, but he’s standing up there talking about something he believes in – ’ ‘So you keep saying. Apparently it doesn’t matter what he believes in, as long as it’s something . Will you listen to yourself ? He believes in hate – what are you talking about? He’s a miserable, lying – ’ Kiki stuck a finger right in Howard’s face. ‘I don’t think you want to talk about lies, OK? I do not think you want to sit there and dare talk to me about lies. If he’s nothing else, that man is a more honourable man than you will ever be – ’ ‘You’ve lost your mind,’ muttered Howard. ‘ Don’t do that! ’ screamed Kiki. ‘Don’t undermine me like that. God – it’s like . . . you can’t even . . . I don’t feel I even know you  On Beauty any more . . . it’s like after / when you sent that ridiculous e-mail round to everybody about Baudry, Bodra – ’ ‘Baudrillard. He’s a philosopher. His name is Baudrillard.’

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  He grabbed me by the wrists and held me. “I only wanted to give you something to write about,” he laughed. “You bastard! ” “Doesn’t this make the perfect end to your story?” “You really are a pig. ” “Come on, love, don’t take it so hard. The moral of the story is the same anyway, isn’t it?” “Your morals are like roads through the Alps. They make these hairpin turns all the time.” “I seem to have heard that somewhere before too,” he said. “Well, I’m going with you.” “Where?” “Cherbourg. We’ll just have to drive through Brittany à cinq. We’ll all have to fuck each other and not make any silly moral excuses—as you said way back in Vienna.” “Nonsense, you’re not going.” “I am too.” “You are not. I won’t permit it.” “What do you mean you won’t permit it? What kind of shit is that? You flaunted everything in front of Bennett. You encouraged me to shake up my life and go off with you and now you’re busy keeping your safe little household intact! What kind of shit do you think I’ll stand for? You were the one who sold me a bill of goods about honesty and openness and not living in a million contradictions. I’m damn well going to Cherbourg with you. I want to meet Esther and the kids and we’ll all just play it by ear.” “Absolutely not. I won’t take you. I’ll physically throw you out of the car if need be.” I looked at him in disbelief. Why was it so hard for me to believe that he would be so callous? It was clear he meant what he said. I knew he would throw me out of the car if need be. And perhaps even drive off laughing. “But don’t you care about being a hypocrite? ” The tone of my voice was tinged with pleading as if I already knew I’d lost. “I refuse to upset the kids that way,” he said, “and that’s final.” “Obviously you don’t mind upsetting me.” “You’re grown up. You can take it. They can’t.” What answer could I make to that? I could scream and yell that I was a baby too, that I’d fall apart if he left me, that I’d crack up. Maybe I would. But I wasn’t Adrian’s child, and it wasn’t his business to rescue me. I was nobody’s baby now. Liberated. Utterly free. It was the most terrifying sensation I’d ever known in my life. Like teetering on the edge of the Grand Canyon and hoping you’d learn to fly before you hit bottom. — It was only after he’d left that I was able to gather my terror in my two hands and possess it. We did not part enemies.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Incidentally: if I ever commit a serious murder … Mark the “if.” The urge should be something more than the kind of thing that happened to me with Valeria. Carefully mark that then I was rather inept. If and when you wish to sizzle me to death, remember that only a spell of insanity could ever give me the simple energy to be a brute (all this amended, perhaps). Sometimes I attempt to kill in my dreams. But do you know what happens? For instance I hold a gun. For instance I aim at a bland, quietly interested enemy. Oh, I press the trigger all right, but one bullet after another feebly drops on the floor from the sheepish muzzle. In those dreams, my only thought is to conceal the fiasco from my foe, who is slowly growing annoyed. At dinner tonight the old cat said to me with a sidelong gleam of motherly mockery directed at Lo (I had just been describing, in a flippant vein, the delightful little toothbrush mustache I had not quite decided to grow): “Better don’t, if somebody is not to go absolutely dotty.” Instantly Lo pushed her plate of boiled fish away, all but knocking her milk over, and bounced out of the dining room. “Would it bore you very much,” quoth Haze, “to come with us tomorrow for a swim in Our Glass Lake if Lo apologizes for her manners?” Later, I heard a great banging of doors and other sounds coming from quaking caverns where the two rivals were having a ripping row. She has not apologized. The lake is out. It might have been fun.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  My grounds for concern are two: first, the reductive and offensive public statements the Professor has made about homosexuality and race and gender throughout his career. Second, his lecture series ‘‘Taking the Liberal Out of the Liberal Arts’’ shares a title with an article he recently published in the Wellington Herald , which itself contained sufficient homophobic material to convince the Wellington LesBiGay group to picket and obstruct any lectures that the Professor might give at this college. For those of you who missed that article, I have photocopied it – I believe Lydia will give these out to anyone who wishes to read it at the end of our session. So, to conclude,’ said Howard, folding his papers in half, ‘my proposal to Professor Kipps himself is as follows: that we will be given the text of the lectures; that, failing this, we will be given a proposed outline of these lectures; or, failing that, we shall be told this morning what the intention of the lectures is.’ ‘Is that . . . ?’ queried Jack, ‘That’s the meat of your . . . so, I suppose we must turn to the Professor and . . . Professor Kipps, could you possibly . . .’ Monty stood and held the back of the chair in front of him, leaning into it as if it were a lectern. ‘Dean French, it would be a pleasure . How entertaining all that was. I love liberal fairytales! So restful – they put no undue strain  on beauty and being wrong upon one’s mind.’ A nervous giggle from the faculty. ‘But, if you don’t mind, I will stick to fact for a moment and answer Dr Belsey’s concerns as directly as I possibly can. In answer to his requests I fear I must decline all three, given the free country I stand in and the freedoms of speech I claim as my inalienable right. I will remind Dr Belsey that neither of us is in England any more.’