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 From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity (2004)

  ©2004 The Teaching Company. 59 A. The Martyrdom of Polycarp comes to us, again, in the form of a letter, this time from the Christians of Smyrna to those of another town, Philomelium. B. The author of the letter indicates that he wants to show how Polycarp’s martyrdom was “in conformity with the Gospel.” 1. Even though this is an eyewitness account, it is difficult to separate historical fact from theological fiction here. 2. This is principally because the story is told in a way to emphasize the similarities of Polycarp’s death to the death of Jesus in many of its details. For example, Polycarp predicts his death, he is betrayed by one of his own, the officer opposed to him is named Herod, he rides into town on a donkey, and so on. C. Still, there is a historical kernel to this intriguing account, and it can be used to help us understand a bit more about why and how non-Christians opposed the followers of Christ in the early centuries of the church. 1. The account stresses that others were tortured to death before Polycarp. 2. It then goes on to detail the burning desire of the pagan crowds to have the leader of the Christians arrested and put on trial. 3. The arresting officials try to persuade Polycarp to acknowledge the divinity of the Roman gods, but he refuses. 4. When brought into the arena before the Roman proconsul, Polycarp is again urged to acknowledge the divinity of the emperor and to reject the “atheists” (that is, the Christians, who are “atheists” in that they do not accept the worship of the gods). 5. When Polycarp steadfastly refuses, the proconsul urges him to persuade the masses. 6. But Polycarp remains firm, despite threats of torture, because, as he says, the brief sufferings awaiting him pale in comparison with the eternal torments reserved for those who reject Christ. 7. The crowds are incensed and urge his death. Polycarp is then burned at the stake. The narrator indicates that before his

• From The Case for God (2009)

  15 Americans were wary of intellectualism and, appalled by the French Revolution, had used Christianity to promote social reform. But Germans were inspired by the French Revolution, which had translated the intellectual ideals of the Enlightenment into a program for justice and equity. The social and political situation in Germany ruled out revolutionary activity, and after the experience of France, it seemed better to try to change the way people thought than resort to violence and terror, so during the 1830s, an anti-establishment intellectual cadre had emerged in the universities. Many of these revolutionary intellectuals were theologically literate. In Germany, theology was an advanced and progressive discipline: two out of every five graduates had a theological degree and knew that they were in the vanguard of religious change. At the end of the eighteenth century, German scholars such as Johann Eichhorn (1752-1827), Johann Vater (1771-1826), and Wilhelm DeWette (17801849) had pioneered a new method of reading the Bible, applying to scripture the modern historical-critical methodology used to study classical texts. As a result, they had discovered that the Pentateuch had not been authored by Moses but was composed of at least four different sources, and were beginning to look at revelation and religious truth in an entirely different way. Other young men became disciples of Schleiermacher and Hegel and were eager to accelerate the dialectical progress that Hegel had described by abolishing reactionary ideologies and institutions. They were particularly incensed by the social privileges of the clergy and regarded the Lutheran Church as a bastion of conservatism. The new European atheism was a product of this hunger for radical social and political change. As part of the corrupt old regime, the churches had to go, together with the God who had supported the system. 16 As modernization intensified, rapid industrialization and population growth during the 1840s led to severe social deprivation. Food riots were brutally suppressed. It was in this climate that Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–72), pupil of Schleiermacher and Hegel, published The Essence of Christianity (1841), which was avidly read, not simply as a theological statement but as a revolutionary tract. Feuerbach had taken Hegel’s call for a God and religion of this world to its logical conclusion. 17 If the idea of a remote, external God was so alienating, why not get rid of him altogether? God, Feuerbach argued, was simply an oppressive human construct. People had projected their own human qualities onto an imaginary being that was merely a reflection of themselves. So “man’s belief in God is nothing other than his belief in himself. … In his God he reveres and loves nothing other than his own being.” 18 Hegel had been right.

• From From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity (2004)

  anything like ancient tradition if it was a recent innovation? Well, Christians were compelled to argue that, in fact, the religion was ancient. In fact, that it was older than any of the pagan religions, and that it was older, even, than Judaism. How can they possibly claim, though, that Christianity was older than anything in paganism, and older than anything in Judaism, if it had just started? Well, Christians had an argument, and they pushed it quite hard. Christians argued that their religion, in fact, was the true fulfillment of the Jewish Scriptures, that Moses and the prophets had predicted Christ; that from the foundations of the Earth, it was the Christians, and the Christians alone who had the truth. We asked earlier: Why would the Christians want to claim the Jewish Bible as their own if they didn’t keep its laws? Because by claiming that they were the true fulfillment of the Jewish Bible, they, in fact, had traditions supporting their religion to go back all way to Moses. Moses, by the way, lived 400 years before Homer, the author of the //iad and the Odyssey. He lived 800 years before Plato, the great Greek philosopher. If you want to claim antiquity for your religion, and you can claim hold of Moses, then, in fact, you have antiquity. That’s one of the reasons why Christians held onto the Jewish Scriptures, because it provided them witha means of legitimation in the face of opposition. At the same time, this stance toward the Old Testament, the stance that we saw, for example, in both Justin Martyr and the Epistle of Barnabas, in which Christianity claims it as its own, naturally led to heightened antagonisms with Jews, who were still around, and who still claimed the Scriptures as their own, and who actually kept the laws and customs outlined in the Scriptures. They could also point out that the Christians, in fact, did not do so. In order to protect themselves from these attacks from Jews, who would say, “You don’t even keep the Laws, so how can you claim these are your Scriptures?”, Christians went on the counterattack and portrayed Jews as advocating a false religion. Therefore, we have seen some of the comments already in Justin and in Barnabas. The kinds of comments we saw in Justin and Barnabas were obviously inflammatory toward Jews. We find it even more exaggerated in vitriolic polemic, when we come to the writings of a later figure in the conflict between Jews and Christians, a Christian bishop whose name was Melito. He was the bishop of a town in Asia Minor called Sardis, and so this person is commonly known as Melito of Sardis.

• From City of Night (1963)

  “I’ll give you an example of what weakness can do!” he shouts as if to blot out his own guilty thoughts. “The Example! My own father!... He was weak!... But my—... mother!” He flung the word out with infinite revulsion. “—that—woman!—that loathsome despicable woman with her hatred of the body—... I couldnt go barefoot! I even had to take a bath in the dark!... That woman!— she knew. She was strong—and she used that strength, and she used my father’s weakness—” He twisted his hands as if wringing out a piece of cloth. “—and she twisted and drained and twisted. And then he—my father—that weak man—would take it out on me—hit me. ” He flayed himself with the thick belt he had removed from the dark pants. “But I showed him I was a Man! I wouldnt run away from him!... And he hit me and hit me and hit me with his belt—until I'd pass out.” Whack! —again the belt against his thigh. He didn’t flinch. “And then I wouldnt even faint any more,” he said. “I’d just—... let him.... And yet,” he whispered as if in a trance, “and yet—do you know?—that weak, dreadful man—my father—he—... He wore boots! Boots! —a symbol of the strength he’d given away so easily, without a fight! That pitiful man — dominated by my mother — had the guts to wear Boots! ... And then I found the Answer—Strength!... And when I found that out, I—... You want to know what my first gesture of—of Freedom!—from him and that woman—was?” He threw back his head and roared with pained laughter. He continued as if hypnotized by the remembrance of that ugly past: “I had gone to the movies—secretly because I wasnt even allowed to do that! It was a period picture.... And the hero—a strong, handsome, masculine man (everything my father wasnt!)—he was wearing Boots too. But on him they were Right: No woman would have dominated him! ... I sat through that movie several times especially for a scene in which that magnificent man was sitting in bed, putting on his Boots! He looped his fingers about the inside straps—and he slipped the boots on! I held my breath.... That night, when my father was asleep, I went into his bedroom. I stood looking at him: Even asleep he looked weak and dominated.... And staring at my—... father!—asleep—I hated him more than ever. I found his boots under the bed. I took them to my room. I got my mother’s scissors. And I snipped the straps off the insides of his boots!” He formed two fingers into a V and closed them with finality. He looked worn out. The studded costume he wore seemed like a ponderous burden on him. His face dropped toward his hands. Dispassionately, lifelessly, he echoed: “I snipped those straps from the insides of his boots. I cut them off, I stamped on them, I spit on them, I—I—...” And then he shouted:

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  Like Lazarius, Jerome is highly intolerant of individuals, especially black ones, who transgress established (hetero)sexual boundaries. Upon discovering that Renay has left him, not for another black man but for a white lesbian, he confronts her derisively, even referring to her and Terry in derogatory sexual terms. His reaction to Renay's same-gender loving relationship illustrates not only his extremely heterosexist and homophobic attitude, but also his intensely violent condemnation of homosexuality. Rather than accept same-gender loving within a black context, he articulates a willingness even to resort to murder as an extreme corrective for black sexual difference. In this case, Jerome, as the author intends, typifies the sexuality-based fears and hostilities of some nationalists and the general American public, as well as castigatory stances toward individuals whose "infractions" threaten established communal standards and cultural norms. Jerome's reaction-as well as his subsequent assertion that he will "whip the pure black shit out of [Renay's] yellow ass"-reflects his insecurities and inadequacies as a man, and problematically suggests that Renay is not "pure" or authentically black (131). For, Renay's having left him in general, and for a woman (and a white one at that), not only emasculates him but, far worse in his estimation, undermines his role as a (black) man since, within the nationalist project, women's sexuality is regulated through men who have orchestrated control over female bodies and sexuality.48 Jerome's desire to beat Renay evidences, then, his need to recover both dominion over Renay and his "lost" manhood. Renay's response to Jerome's violent reaction evidences the ways black women refuse to capitulate or subscribe to marginalizing nationalist and larger societal proscriptions for women. In challenging heterosexist relationships privileged in nationalist constructions of family-and dictates of women having to "inspire" their men on multiple levels-these women delegitimize the function of the "black man" as they resolutely assert themselves. Renay, aware of Jerome's false sense of security and feelings of masculinity, boldly challenges Jerome's threats: Yes.... You want to beat me, to trample on me, see me grovel because you despise what you can't change. A man should be able to control his woman-especially a black man who can't control anything else. But do you really want to know why you hate me? Because I've survived your male deterioration. [...] Survived. Through the muck and slime you've [...] put me through, I've come out of itour battle of wills. But, you, you're in it and can't get out because you're stuck! You're too weak to struggle. It's easier to stay in. And you can't stand the idea that I've left the dirt and you, and you can't push me back. (131-32)

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  In other words, throughout the day a steady rain of pigeon poop would fall on Woodell’s hair, shoulders, desktop. But Woodell would simply dust himself off, casually clear his desk with the side of his hand, and continue with his work. He also kept a piece of company stationery carefully draped over his coffee cup at all times, to ensure it was only cream in his joe. I tried often to copy Woodell’s Zen monk demeanor. Most days, however, it was beyond me. I boiled with frustration, knowing that our pair count could have been so much higher if not for our constant problems with supply. People were crying out for our shoes, but we just couldn’t get them out on time. We’d traded Onitsuka’s capricious delays for a new set of delays, caused by demand. The factories and Nissho were doing their jobs, we were now getting what we ordered, on time and intact, but the booming marketplace created new pressures, making it harder and harder to correctly allocate what we got. Supply and demand is always the root problem in business. It’s been true since Phoenician traders raced to bring Rome the coveted purple dye that colored the clothing of royals and rich people; there was never enough purple to go around. It’s hard enough to invent and manufacture and market a product, but then the logistics, the mechanics, the hydraulics of getting it to the people who want it, when they want it—this is how companies die, how ulcers are born. In 1973 the supply-and-demand problems facing the running-shoe industry were unusually knotty, seemingly insoluble. The whole world was suddenly demanding running shoes, and the supply wasn’t simply inconsistent, it was slowing to a sputter. There were never enough shoes in the pipeline. We had many smart people working on the problem, but no one could figure out how to significantly boost supply without taking on huge inventory risks. There was some consolation in the fact that Adidas and Puma were having the same problems—but not much. Our problems could tip us into bankruptcy. We were leveraged to the hilt, and like most people who live from paycheck to paycheck, we were walking the edge of a precipice. When a shipment of shoes was late, our pair count plummeted. When our pair count plummeted, we weren’t able to generate enough revenue to repay Nissho and the Bank of California on time. When we couldn’t repay Nissho and the Bank of California on time, we couldn’t borrow more. When we couldn’t borrow more we were late placing our next order. Round and round it went. Then came the last thing we needed. A dockworkers’ strike. Our man went down to Boston Harbor to pick up a shipment of shoes and found it locked tight. He could see it through the locked fence: boxes and boxes of what the world was clamoring for. And no way to get at it.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Most of them believed that they were there by mistake, or that they deserved their punishment and would benefit by the work and study they were prescribed. Even those who had been physically forced into the RPF were not inclined to leave. Despite federal laws against human trafficking and unlawful imprisonment, the FBI never opened the door on the RPF again. Jesse Prince, one of the very few black members of the Sea Org, was among those being punished. He had been attracted to Scientology by the beautiful girls and the promise of superhuman powers. He recalls being told he would learn to levitate, travel through time, control the thoughts of others, and have total command over the material universe. In 1976, when he signed up for the Sea Org, Scientology had just purchased the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, part of the real-estate empire that the church was acquiring in Hollywood, along with the Château Élysée and the old Wilcox Hotel, which functioned as Sea Org berthing. The hospital was a mess; there were leftover medical devices and body parts in laboratory jars; there was even a corpse in the basement morgue. The Sea Org crew slaved to convert the hospital into a dormitory and offices. One night Prince was awakened after an hour of sleep and ordered to report to a superior, who chewed him out for slacking off. Prince had had enough. “Fuck you, I’m outta here,” he said. His superior told him he wasn’t going anywhere. “He snapped his fingers and six people came and put me in a room,” Prince recalled. “I was literally incarcerated.” It was March 1977. Prince was placed in the RPF with two hundred other Sea Org members, doing heavy labor and studying Hubbard’s spiritual technology. He would be held there for eighteen months. “They told me the only way to get out is to learn this tech to a ‘T’ and then be able to apply it.” The question posed by Prince’s experience in the RPF is whether or not he was brainwashed. It is a charge often leveled at Scientologists, although social scientists have long been at war with one another over whether such a phenomenon is even possible. The decade of the 1950s, when Scientology was born, was a time of extreme concern—even hysteria—about mind control. Robert Jay Lifton, a young American psychiatrist, began studying victims of what Chinese Communists called “thought reform,” which they were carrying out in prisons and revolutionary universities during the Maoist era; it was one of the greatest efforts to manipulate human behavior ever attempted. In 1949, a number of Americans and Europeans who had been imprisoned during the Maoist revolution emerged from their cells apparently converted to Communism.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  13, 1980. 46 “He wanted a head”: Interview with Denise (Larry) Brennan. 47 “She was a sweet”: Interview with Jim Dincalci. 48 “You got to be kidding”: Interview with John Brousseau. 49 “It was a do or die”: Interview with Jesse Prince. 50 “We had fallen in love”: David Yonke, “Scientology Story Sparks Heated Response,” Toledo Blade, July 2, 2005. 51 “core sense of identity”: Tony Ortega, “Scientology’s Crushing Defeat,” Runnin’ Scared (blog), Village Voice, June 24, 2008. 52 An undercover campaign: Affidavit of Vicki Aznaran, June 29, 1993. 53 “I was followed”: William W. Horne, “The Two Faces of Scientology,” American Lawyer, July/August 1992. 54 setting up his son: Affidavit of Vicki Aznaran, June 29, 1993. 55 fifteen hundred Scientologists: “Scientologists Scramble to Keep Secrets,” Los Angeles Times [via the San Francisco Chronicle], Nov. 7, 1985. 56 “A major cause of”: Joel Sappell and Robert Welkos, “Scientologists Rush to Protect Basic Beliefs Released by Judge,” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 5, 1985. 57 Julie Christofferson Titchbourne: John McCoy and S. L. Sanger, “Travolta and Other Scientologists Swarm into Portland to Protest,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 21, 1985. 58 “bull-baiting”: John Painter, “Witness Describes Scientology Drills,” Oregonian, July 25, 1979. 59 The jury awarded her: Tony Ortega, “Scientology’s Crushing Defeat,” Runnin’ Scared (blog), Village Voice, June 24, 2008. 60 “I don’t care if I get the chair”: Interview with Dan Garvin. 61 As many as 12,000: Affidavit of Andre Tabayoyon, Aug. 19, 1994. 62 Stevie Wonder: www.forum.exscn.net/showthread.php?16875-The-Battle-of-Portland. 63 “I’ve been something of an ostrich”: Nancy Collins, “Sex and the Single Star,” Rolling Stone, Aug. 18, 1983. 64 “Once in a while”: Holly Danks, “Film Star Joins in Scientology Verdict Protest,” Oregonian, May 21, 1985, www.forum.exscn.net/showthread.php?16875-The-Battle-of- Portland. 65 He ruled that Christofferson Titchbourne’s: Atack, A Piece of Blue Sky, p. 349. 66 “If you had an automobile”: Hubbard, “Death,” lecture, July 30, 1957. 67 “between-lives”: Hubbard, Scientology: A History of Man, pp. 109–10. 68 “The baby takes”: Hubbard, “Death,” lecture, July 30, 1957. 69 Contrarily, when a body: According to Karen de la Carriere, these instructions were part of Hubbard’s secret directives. He also opposed autopsies because the thetan might still be inhabiting the body at the time of the procedure. 70 “It’s very confused”: Hubbard, “Aberration and the Sixth Dynamic,” lecture, Nov. 13, 1956. 71 he had been pronounced dead: “L. Ron Hubbard, biographical cover note, ‘Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science,’ ” 1972. Hubbard, “Case Analysis—Rock Hunting,” lecture, Aug. 4, 1958, question and answer period. 72 “death assist”: Reitman, Inside Scientology, p. 144. 73 who received $1 million: Hubbard, Amended Trust Agreement, Jan. 23, 1986. 74 “Let’s get this over with!”: Interview with Steve “Sarge” Pfauth. 75 “I’ll be scouting the way”: Hubbard, “The Sea Org & the Future,” Flag Order 3879, Jan. 19, 1986. 76 Dr. Denk had given him: Tommy Davis told New Times that Hubbard took the medication for allergies. Colin Rigley, “L. Ron Hubbard’s Last Refuge,” New Times, May 28, 2009.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Much more important is the recent discovery and publication (in 1851) of one of his works themselves, and that no doubt the most valuable of them all, viz. the Philosophumena, or Refutation of all Heresies. It is now almost universally acknowledged that this work comes not from Origen, who never was a bishop, nor from the antimontanistic and antichiliastic presbyter Caius, but from Hippolytus; because, among other reasons, the author, in accordance with the Hippolytus-statue, himself refers to a work On the All, as his own, and because Hippolytus is declared by the fathers to have written a work Adversus omnes Haereses.1426 The entire matter of the work, too, agrees with the scattered statements of antiquity respecting his ecclesiastical position; and at the same time places that position in a much clearer light, and gives us a better understanding of those statements.1427 The author of the Philosophumena appears as one of the most prominent of the clergy in or near Rome in the beginning of the third century; probably a bishop, since he reckons himself among the successors of the apostles and the guardians of the doctrine of the church. He took an active part in all the doctrinal and ritual controversies of his time, but severely opposed the Roman bishops Zephyrinus (202–218) and Callistus (218–223), on account of their Patripassian leanings, and their loose penitential discipline. The latter especially, who had given public offence by his former mode of life, he attacked without mercy and not without passion. He was, therefore, if not exactly a schismatical counter-pope (as Döllinger supposes), yet the head of a disaffected and schismatic party, orthodox in doctrine, rigoristic in discipline, and thus very nearly allied to the Montanists before him, and to the later schism of Novatian. It is for this reason the more remarkable, that we have no account respecting the subsequent course of this movement, except the later unreliable tradition, that Hippolytus finally returned into the bosom of the catholic church, and expiated his schism by martyrdom, either in the mines of Sardinia or near Rome (A. D. 235, or rather 236, under the persecuting emperor Maximinus the Thracian).

• From Educated (2018)

  From what I could tell, when Emily had gone to Stokes that afternoon to buy groceries, she had returned home with the wrong crackers for Peter. Shawn had exploded. “How can he grow if you can’t buy the right food!” he had screamed, then he’d gathered her up and flung her from their trailer, into a snowbank. She’d pounded on the door, begging to be let in, then she’d run up the hillside to the house. I stared at her bare feet as she said this. They were so red, they looked as if they’d been burned. My parents sat with Emily on the sofa, one on each side of her, patting her shoulders and squeezing her hands. Richard paced a few feet behind them. He seemed frustrated, anxious, as if he wanted to explode into action and was only just being held in check. Kami was still seated at the piano. She was staring at the group huddled on the couch, confused. She had not understood Emily. She did not understand why Richard was pacing, or why he paused every few seconds to glance at Dad, waiting for a word or gesture—any signal of what should be done. I looked at Kami and felt a tightening in my chest. I resented her for witnessing this. I imagined myself in Emily’s place, which was easy to do—I couldn’t stop myself from doing it—and in a moment I was in a parking lot, laughing my high-pitched cackle, trying to convince the world that my wrist wasn’t breaking. Before I knew what I was doing I had crossed the room. I grasped my brother’s arm and pulled him with me to the piano. Emily was still sobbing, and I used her sobs to muffle my whispers. I told Kami that what we were witnessing was private, and that Emily would be embarrassed by it tomorrow. For Emily’s sake, I said, we should all go to our rooms and leave it in Dad’s hands. Kami stood. She had decided to trust me. Richard hesitated, giving Dad a long look, then he followed her from the room. I walked with them down the hallway then I doubled back. I sat at the kitchen table and watched the clock. Five minutes passed, then ten. Come on, Shawn, I chanted under my breath. Come now. I’d convinced myself that if Shawn appeared in the next few minutes, it would be to make sure Emily had made it to the house—that she hadn’t slipped on the ice and broken a leg, wasn’t freezing to death in a field. But he didn’t come. Twenty minutes later, when Emily finally stopped shaking, Dad picked up the phone. “Come get your wife!” he shouted into it. Mother was cradling Emily’s head against her shoulder. Dad returned to the sofa and patted Emily’s arm.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  1978 Strasser was our five-star general, and I was ready to follow him into any fray, any fusillade. In our fight with Onitsuka his outrage had comforted and sustained me, and his mind had been a formidable weapon. In this new fight with the Feds he was doubly outraged. Good, I thought. He stomped around the offices like a pissed- off Viking, and his stomps were music to my ears. We both knew, however, that rage wasn’t going to be enough. Nor was Strasser alone. We were taking on the United States of America. We needed a few good men. So Strasser reached out to a young Portland lawyer, a friend of his named Richard Werschkul. I don’t remember ever being introduced to Werschkul. I don’t remember anyone asking me to meet him or hire him. I just remember suddenly being aware of Werschkul, extremely conscious of his presence, all the time. The way you’re aware of a big woodpecker in your front yard. Or on your head. For the most part Werschkul’s presence was welcome. He had the kind of go-go motor we liked, and the credentials we always looked for. Stanford undergrad, University of Oregon Law. He also had a compelling personality, a presence. Dark, wiry, sarcastic, bespectacled, he possessed an uncommonly deep, plummy baritone, like Darth Vader with a head cold. Overall he gave the impression of a man with a plan, and the plan didn’t include surrender or sleep. On the other hand, he also had an eccentric streak. We all did, but Werschkul had what Mom Hatfield might have called a “wild hair.” There was always something about him that didn’t quite... fit. For instance, though he was a native Oregonian, he had a baffling East Coast air. Blue blazers, pink shirts, bow ties. Sometimes his accent suggested summers in Newport, rowing for Yale—a string of polo ponies. Surpassing strange in a man who knew his way around the Willamette Valley. And while he could be very witty, even silly, he could change on a dime and become scary serious. Nothing made him more serious than the topic of Nike vs. U.S. Customs. Some inside Nike worried about Werschkul’s seriousness, fearing it bordered on obsession. Fine by me, I thought. Obsessives were the only ones for the job. The only ones for me. Some questioned his stability. But when it came to stability, I asked, who among us will throw the first stone? Besides, Strasser liked him, and I trusted Strasser. So when Strasser suggested that we promote Werschkul, and move him to Washington, D.C., where he’d be closer to the politicians we’d need on our side, I didn’t hesitate. Neither, of course, did Werschkul. ABOUT THE SAME time we dispatched Werschkul to Washington, I sent Hayes to Exeter to check on things at the factory, and to see how Woodell and Johnson were getting along. Also on his agenda was the purchase of something called a rubber mill.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  He threw a fit, of course. And he plotted. Days later he and Hayes came to work in coats and ties. But preposterous coats and ties. Stripes and plaids, checks with polka dots, all of it rayon and polyester—and burlap? They meant it as a farce, but also as a protest, a gesture of civil disobedience, and I was in no mood for two fashion Gandhis staging a dress-in. I disinvited them both from the next Buttface. Then I ordered them both to go home and not to come back until they could behave, and dress, like adults. “And—you’re fined again!” I yelled at Strasser. “Then you’re fucked!” he yelled back. Just then, at that exact moment, I turned. Coming toward me was Nelson, dressed worse than the lot of them. Polyester bell-bottoms, a pink silk shirt open to his navel. Strasser and Hayes were one thing, but where the heck did this new guy get off protesting my dress code? After I’d just hired him? I pointed at the door and sent him home, too. From the confused, horrified look on his face I realized he wasn’t protesting. He was just naturally unstylish. My new head of apparel. I retreated that day to my baseball-mitt chair and stared out the window for a long, long time. Sports things. I knew what was coming. And, oh, it came. A few weeks later Nelson stood before us and made his formal presentation of the first-ever line of Nike apparel. Beaming with pride, grinning with excitement, he laid all the new clothes on the conference table. Soiled workout shorts, ragged T-shirts, wrinkled hoodies—each putrid item looked as if it had been donated to, or pilfered from, a Dumpster. The topper: Nelson pulled each item from a dirty brown paper bag, which looked as if it also contained his lunch. At first we were in shock. None of us knew what to say. Finally, someone chuckled. Strasser, probably. Then someone haw-hawed. Woodell, maybe. Then the dam burst. Everyone was laughing, rocking back and forth, falling out of their chairs. Nelson saw that he’d goofed, and in a panic he started stuffing the clothes back into the paper bag, which ripped apart, which made everyone laugh harder. I was laughing, too, harder than anyone, but at any moment I felt as if I might start sobbing. Shortly after that day I transferred Nelson to the newly formed production department, where his considerable accounting talents helped him do a great job. Then I quietly shifted Woodell to apparel. He did his typically flawless job, assembling a line that gained immediate attention and respect in the industry. I asked myself why I didn’t just let Woodell do everything. Including my job. Maybe he could fly back east and get the Feds off my back.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Calmly I said that Blue Ribbon might increase its sales if we could order more shoes, and we might order more shoes if we had more financing, and our bank might give us more financing if we had more security, meaning a longer contract with Onitsuka. Again he waved his hand. “Excuses,” he said. I raised the idea of funding our orders through a Japanese trading company, like Nissho Iwai, as I’d mentioned in my wire months before. “Baah,” he said, “trading companies. They send money first—men later. Take over! Work way into your company, then take over.” Translation: Onitsuka was only manufacturing a quarter of its own shoes, subcontracting the other three-quarters. Kitami was afraid that Nissho would find Onitsuka’s network of factories, then go right around Onitsuka and become a manufacturer and put Onitsuka out of business. Kitami stood. He needed to go back to his hotel, he said, have a rest. I said I’d have someone drive him, and I’d meet him for a cocktail later at his hotel bar. The instant he was gone I went and found Woodell and told him what had happened. I held up the folder. “I stole this from his briefcase,” I said. “You did what ?” Woodell said. He started to act appalled, but he was just as curious as I was about the folder’s contents. Together we opened it and laid it on his desk and found that it contained, among other things, a list of eighteen athletic shoe distributors across the United States and a schedule of appointments with half of them. So there it was. In black and white. Some people say. The “some people” damning Blue Ribbon, poisoning Kitami against us, were our competitors. And he was on his way to visit them. Kill one Marlboro Man, twenty more rise up to take his place. I was outraged, of course. But mostly hurt. For seven years we’d devoted ourselves to Tiger shoes. We’d introduced them to America, we’d reinvented the line. Bowerman and Johnson had shown Onitsuka how to make a better shoe, and their designs were now foundational, setting sales records, changing the face of the industry—and this was how we were repaid? “And now,” I said to Woodell, “I have to go meet this Judas for cocktails.” First I went for a six-mile run. I don’t know when I’ve run harder, or been less present in my body. With each stride I yelled at the trees, screamed at the cobwebs hanging in the branches. It helped. By the time I’d showered and dressed and driven to meet Kitami at his hotel, I was almost serene. Or maybe I was in shock. What Kitami said during that hour together, what I said—no memory. The next thing I remember is this. The following morning, when Kitami came to the office, Woodell and I ran a sort of shell game.

• From Educated (2018)

  I wrote that children of bipolar parents are hit with double risk factors: first, because they are genetically predisposed to mood disorders, and second, because of the “stressful environment and poor parenting of parents with such disorders.” In class I had been taught about neurotransmitters and their effect on brain chemistry; I understood that disease is not a choice. This knowledge might have made me sympathetic to my father, but it didn’t. I felt only anger. We were the ones who’d paid for it, I thought. Mother. Luke. Shawn. We had been bruised and gashed and concussed, had our legs set on fire and our heads cut open. We had lived in a state of alert, a kind of constant terror, our brains flooding with cortisol because we knew that any of those things might happen at any moment. Because Dad always put faith before safety. Because he believed himself right, and he kept on believing himself right—after the first car crash, after the second, after the bin, the fire, the pallet. And it was us who paid. I visited Buck’s Peak the weekend after I submitted my paper. I had been home for less than an hour when Dad and I got into an argument. He said I owed him for the car. He really only mentioned it but I became crazed, hysterical. For the first time in my life I shouted at my father—not about the car, but about the Weavers. I was so suffocated by rage, my words didn’t come out as words but as choking, sputtering sobs. Why are you like this? Why did you terrify us like that? Why did you fight so hard against made-up monsters, but do nothing about the monsters in your own house? Dad gaped at me, astonished. His mouth sagged and his hands hung limply at his sides, twitching, as if he wanted to raise them, to do something. I hadn’t seen him look so helpless since he’d crouched next to our wrecked station wagon, watching Mother’s face bulge and distend, unable even to touch her because electrified cables were sending a deadly pulse through the metal. Out of shame or anger, I fled. I drove without stopping back to BYU. My father called a few hours later. I didn’t answer. Screaming at him hadn’t helped; maybe ignoring him would. When the semester ended, I stayed in Utah. It was the first summer that I didn’t return to Buck’s Peak. I did not speak to my father, not even on the phone. This estrangement was not formalized: I just didn’t feel like seeing him, or hearing his voice, so I didn’t. —I DECIDED TO EXPERIMENT with normality. For nineteen years I’d lived the way my father wanted. Now I would try something else. I moved to a new apartment on the other side of town where no one knew me. I wanted a new start.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  And when the shipments from Onitsuka did finally arrive? They often contained the wrong number of shoes. Often the wrong sizes. Sometimes the wrong models. This kind of disarray clogged our warehouse and rankled our sales reps. Before I left Japan Mr. Onitsuka and Kitami assured me that they were building new state-of-the-art factories. Delivery problems would soon be a thing of the past, they said. I was skeptical, but there was nothing I could do. I was at their mercy. Johnson, meanwhile, was losing his mind. His letters, once mumbly with angst, were becoming shrill with hysteria. The main problem was Bowerman’s Cortez, he said. It was simply too popular. We’d gotten people hooked on the thing, turned them into full-blown Cortez addicts, and now we couldn’t meet the demand, which created anger and resentment up and down the supply chain. “God, we are really screwing our customers,” Johnson wrote. “Happiness is a boatload of Cortez; reality is a boatload of Bostons with steel wool uppers, tongues made out of old razor blades, sizes 6 to 6 ½.” He was exaggerating, but not much. It happened all the time. I’d secure a loan from Wallace, then hang fire waiting for Onitsuka to send the shoes, and when the boat finally docked it wouldn’t contain any Cortezes. Six weeks later, we’d get too many Cortezes, and by then it was too late. Why? It couldn’t just be Onitsuka’s decrepit factories, we all agreed, and sure enough Woodell eventually figured out that Onitsuka was satisfying its local customers in Japan first, then worrying about foreign exports. Terribly unfair, but again what could I do? I had no leverage. Even if Onitsuka’s new factories ended all delivery problems, even if every shipment of shoes hit the water right on time, with all the correct quantities of size 10s, and no size 5s, I’d still face problems with Wallace. Bigger orders would require bigger loans, and bigger loans would be harder to pay off, and in 1970 Wallace was telling me that he wasn’t interested in playing that game anymore. I recall one day, sitting in Wallace’s office. Both he and White were working me over pretty good. Wallace seemed to be enjoying himself, though White kept giving me looks that said, “Sorry, pal, this is my job.” As always I politely took the abuse they dished out, playing the role of meek small business owner. Long on contrition, short on credit. I knew the role backward and forward, but I remember feeling that at any moment I might cut loose a bloodcurdling scream. Here I’d built this dynamic company, from nothing, and by all measures it was a beast—sales doubling every year, like clockwork—and this was the thanks I got? Two bankers treating me like a deadbeat?

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  All the way home on the train I thought of Dad and the terrible mistake I had made. I’d thought that to heal my great hurt, I should flee to the wild. It was what people did. The nature books I’d read told me so. So many of them had been quests inspired by grief or sadness. Some had fixed themselves to the stars of elusive animals. Some sought snow geese. Others snow leopards. Others cleaved to the earth, walked trails, mountains, coasts and glens. Some sought wildness at a distance, others closer to home. ‘Nature in her green, tranquil woods heals and soothes all afflictions,’ wrote John Muir. ‘Earth hath no sorrows that earth cannot heal.’ Now I knew this for what it was: a beguiling but dangerous lie. I was furious with myself and my own unconscious certainty that this was the cure I needed. Hands are for other human hands to hold. They should not be reserved exclusively as perches for hawks. And the wild is not a panacea for the human soul; too much in the air can corrode it to nothing. And by the time I got home I’d worked out, too, why Mabel had been behaving so strangely. She’d grown heavy with muscle over our weeks on the hill, and though she was flying at a higher weight than before, over this last week she’d got too low. She was hungry. Hunger had made her aggressive. I was furious with myself when I realised that first great error on the train. But this second realisation brought self-hatred. I’d been so blind, so miserable, I’d not seen my hawk was miserable too. I’d not seen her at all. I remembered the man I’d fallen for after my father died. I’d hardly known him, but it didn’t matter. I’d recruited him to serve my loss, made him everything I needed. No wonder he had run away. And now I’d made the same mistake again. I’d fled to become a hawk, but in my misery all I had done was turn the hawk into a mirror of me. The next evening, weak with relief and the sense that something huge, something tectonic, had shifted in my world, I gave Mabel a whole dead pigeon to eat in the grey, cool evening. We sat on a chair under the apple tree, listening to blackbirds chinking in the hedge. The house didn’t seem unfriendly any more. The kitchen window threw a soft square of light into the garden. Huge frosty piles of pigeon feathers accumulated on the lawn. And then she ate. Every last scrap. When it was finished her crop was so full she could hardly stand.

• From Educated (2018)

  After Grandma slid the first batch into the oven, I went to the bathroom. I passed through the hallway, with its soft white carpet, and felt a stab of anger when I remembered that the last time I’d seen it, I’d been with Tyler. The bathroom felt foreign. I took in the pearly sink, the rosy tint of the carpet, the peach-colored rug. Even the toilet peeked out from under a primrose covering. I took in my own reflection, framed by creamy tiles. I looked nothing like myself, and I wondered for a moment if this was what Tyler wanted, a pretty house with a pretty bathroom and a pretty sister to visit him. Maybe this was what he’d left for. I hated him for that. Near the tap there were a dozen pink and white soaps, shaped like swans and roses, resting in an ivory-tinted shell. I picked up a swan, feeling its soft shape give under pressure from my fingers. It was beautiful and I wanted to take it. I pictured it in our basement bathroom, its delicate wings set against the coarse cement. I imagined it lying in a muddy puddle on the sink, surrounded by strips of curling yellowed wallpaper. I returned it to its shell. Coming out, I walked into Grandma, who’d been waiting for me in the hall. “Did you wash your hands?” she asked, her tone sweet and buttery. “No,” I said. My reply soured the cream in her voice. “Why not?” “They weren’t dirty.” “You should always wash your hands after you use the toilet.” “It can’t be that important,” I said. “We don’t even have soap in the bathroom at home.” “That’s not true,” she said. “I raised your mother better than that.” I squared my stance, ready to argue, to tell Grandma again that we didn’t use soap, but when I looked up, the woman I saw was not the woman I expected to see. She didn’t seem frivolous, didn’t seem like the type who’d waste an entire day fretting over her white carpet. In that moment she was transformed. Maybe it was something in the shape of her eyes, the way they squinted at me in disbelief, or maybe it was the hard line of her mouth, which was clamped shut, determined. Or maybe it was nothing at all, just the same old woman looking like herself and saying the things she always said. Maybe her transformation was merely a temporary shift in my perspective—for that moment, perhaps the perspective was his, that of the brother I hated, and loved. Grandma led me into the bathroom and watched as I washed my hands, then directed me to dry them on the rose-colored towel. My ears burned, my throat felt hot. Dad picked me up soon after on his way home from a job. He pulled up in his truck and honked for me to come out, which I did, my head bent low. Grandma followed.

• From City of Night (1963)

  Now she grinds her squirming butt against my pelvis and goes on: “I wanna tell you, Miss Chi-Chi: that dike was so dam butch if Ah wahnt such a lady muhself, why, I wouldda turned straight for huh.... Why, they are gettin butchuh and butchuh each yeah—those dam buildikes. And Ah don mine tellin you Ah personally think it is ob-see-an: girls dressed like men!” “Dikes gotta live too,” Chi-Chi growled hostilely at Echoes and Encores. “But, oh, me-oh-my!” shrieks Echoes and Encores, reaching out delightedly to touch Chi-Chi’s massively muscled arm. “Nevuh you mine about girls!... Ah just wanna ask you , Chi-Chi: Where did you get those Shoulders? And those Muscles—I swan! Rippling—thats what they are!... Honey, you just take off that dress and that paint and I’ll marry you!” “Cut the low camp, bitch!” Chi-Chi barked furiously at Echoes and Encores, shoving the queen’s hand roughly away from her shoulder. “Im as much of a Lady as you are—and dont you forget it... Now swish your goddam nelly ass away and leave us alone!” To me, as if to reassure me that she is a queen: “Stick around till this mob clears, babe; I’ll party you like you never been partied before.” At the top of her voice—in order to be heard over the paroxysmal roar of the crowd—and safely away from Chi-Chi, who, because of her enormous size, would have had to struggle for minutes through the crowd to reach her—a startled Echoes and Encores confided to another queen: “That big queen over there—I swear, she must be a Mr America in drag!” “I saw her!” said the other, hollering too. “She might be the vice squad—you never know what those bastards will pull.” “Do you know?” hollers Echoes and Encores, forgetting about Chi-Chi “Those tourists over there thought I was A Real Woman!” “Thats nothing, honey,” said the other. “I was sitting in a car the other day with a daddy whod left his ole tired wife at the Roosevelt Hotel to be With Me—and we were necking up a storm—and a vice cop saw us and he says—guess what he says to your sister—he says: ‘A Pretty Young Lady like yourself ought to be at home this late in the evening, Miss!’” Seizing advantage of a break in the mob, I wrested myself from the bar. At the door, I saw Chi-Chi aim the fuck-you cigarette holder once more at the crowds outside, and I heard her roar loudly: “Hey, world!”

• From Educated (2018)

  I wrote that children of bipolar parents are hit with double risk factors: first, because they are genetically predisposed to mood disorders, and second, because of the “stressful environment and poor parenting of parents with such disorders.” In class I had been taught about neurotransmitters and their effect on brain chemistry; I understood that disease is not a choice. This knowledge might have made me sympathetic to my father, but it didn’t. I felt only anger. We were the ones who’d paid for it, I thought. Mother. Luke. Shawn. We had been bruised and gashed and concussed, had our legs set on fire and our heads cut open. We had lived in a state of alert, a kind of constant terror, our brains flooding with cortisol because we knew that any of those things might happen at any moment. Because Dad always put faith before safety. Because he believed himself right, and he kept on believing himself right—after the first car crash, after the second, after the bin, the fire, the pallet. And it was us who paid. I visited Buck’s Peak the weekend after I submitted my paper. I had been home for less than an hour when Dad and I got into an argument. He said I owed him for the car. He really only mentioned it but I became crazed, hysterical. For the first time in my life I shouted at my father—not about the car, but about the Weavers. I was so suffocated by rage, my words didn’t come out as words but as choking, sputtering sobs. Why are you like this? Why did you terrify us like that? Why did you fight so hard against made-up monsters, but do nothing about the monsters in your own house? Dad gaped at me, astonished. His mouth sagged and his hands hung limply at his sides, twitching, as if he wanted to raise them, to do something. I hadn’t seen him look so helpless since he’d crouched next to our wrecked station wagon, watching Mother’s face bulge and distend, unable even to touch her because electrified cables were sending a deadly pulse through the metal. Out of shame or anger, I fled. I drove without stopping back to BYU. My father called a few hours later. I didn’t answer. Screaming at him hadn’t helped; maybe ignoring him would. When the semester ended, I stayed in Utah. It was the first summer that I didn’t return to Buck’s Peak. I did not speak to my father, not even on the phone. This estrangement was not formalized: I just didn’t feel like seeing him, or hearing his voice, so I didn’t. —I DECIDED TO EXPERIMENT with normality. For nineteen years I’d lived the way my father wanted. Now I would try something else. I moved to a new apartment on the other side of town where no one knew me. I wanted a new start.

• From City of Night (1963)

  Buzz nods. “Look, boy,” the squat man says, “I’ll tell you straight: I need a small slender guy something like you—some of these creeps prefer them; theyre pretty weird; you cant tell what they want...” Hes trying to indicate that he himself is uninterested, disassociating himself from “these creeps”; indicating that hes outside of the scene; that this, to him, is a business. I wonder how Buzz can take it.... Several times the squat man twisted a wedding band on his finger, to bring attention to it. As usual, I react negatively to being appraised that coldly, to being, if only by implication, talked about as if Im not around. Suddenly, from somewhere beyond this room, theres a shout. The squat man disappeared. We followed him into the lounge. I heard excited voices coming from the cubicles—snatches of talk: “Ive warned you—not so loud!” the squat man is saying. A man emerged from one of the cubicles, going to the head. His nose is bleeding profusely. As he passes us, I see on his oddly smiling face—which he doesnt bother to cover with a hand or a towel—an unmistakable look of pained satisfaction.... Back in the room with the toweled shelves, the squat man says to me: “Well?” “Well what?” I glare at him, strangely filled with hatred for him. “I believe youve got it all wrong,” he says coldly. “I run a legitimate business. Sometimes things get out of hand. But the cops dont disturb me. It’s just that these guys—” again contemptuously “—theyre ‘strange’—and they like different types around them.” Im still staring at him, enjoying seeing him put on this way. Then I walked toward the door, to leave. “You—” he started and broke off abruptly. “I dont think I’d hire you, you wouldnt do very well here,” he said, opening the door—attempting to beat me to the gesture. Feeling the perversity seething inside me, I shot back at him, aiming at what I knew would be his weakest spot: “Im not your type,” I said, watching him blanch. Outside, Buzz said: “Why did you play square? You wanted to bug him, didnt you?” It wasnt asked in annoyance—almost, instead, in amusement. “You knew the scene. You kept putting him on.” “I hope I didnt screw up anything for you.” “Hell, no. Wanna know something? I kind of dug seeing you put him down. Hell, most of the people hes got there—I got for him. When he needs someone, he calls me. He’d called me that he needed someone—well—you know—your type—to replace that kid that left.” “The skinny one,” I laughed. “Why did you play square?” he repeated. In my mind I could still see clearly the delirious face of that man with the bleeding nose. “I don’t know,” I said. Throughout the time I will be in San Francisco, I wont see Buzz again. I’ll hear a few days later that he was busted for “harboring” two youngmen involved in a robbery....