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 Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  But it actually doesn’t matter if he or she sees you break down, because you don’t have to be friendly with that person anymore. That person is a jerk. You double up therapy sessions for a few weeks until you’re back in the saddle, and then you ask someone else; someone you like much better. If you know for sure that some smart and civilized person loves your work, you can ask that person if she would be willing to look at a part of your novel or your latest short story. If this person writes, too, ask if she would like you to take a look at her draft. If she says no to both offers, pretend to be friendly, so she won’t think less of you than she already does. Then you can move into a trailer park near your therapist’s house until you’re well enough again to ask someone else. The second question my students ask about a writing partner is this: what if someone agrees to read and work on your stuff for you, and you have agreed to do the same for him, say, and it turns out that he says things about your work, even in the nicest possible tone of voice, that are totally negative and destructive? You find yourself devastated, betrayed. Here you’ve done this incredibly gutsy thing, shown someone your very heart and soul, and he doesn’t think it’s any good. He says how sorry he is that this is how he feels. Well, let me tell you this—I don’t think he is. I think destroying your work gave him real pleasure, pleasure he would never cop to, pleasure that is almost sexual in nature. I think you should get rid of this person immediately, even if you are married to him. No one should talk to you like this. If you write a long piece, and it is your first, and you are wondering if it’s publishable, and it isn’t, even by a long shot, someone should be able to tell you this in a way that is gentle yet not patronizing, so that you are encouraged—maybe not to pursue publication, but to pursue writing. Certainly this person might suggest you get a second opinion. But if he is too strident or adamant, ditch the sucker. Would you stand for someone talking this way to your children—for instance, telling them that they are not very talented at painting and shouldn’t even bother? Or that their poetry is not very interesting? Of course not. You’d want to go pay this person a little visit with your flamethrower. So why, if someone says something like this to you, would you want anything further to do with him? Why waste what little time you may have left with such scum?

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  labios duro y forzado, y quiero ceder. El estrés y la preocupación han durado tanto y han sido tantas, y si puedo olvidar solo por un rato se sentiría muy bien. Agarrando mi trasero con ambas manos, me levanta, forzando mis piernas alrededor de su cintura, y caemos en la cama, bajando sobre mí. Sin embargo, algo me detiene. Como si estuviera de regreso en el parque de casas rodantes con mi papá y mi madrastra. Ellos no me ven. Cole no me ve. Podría ser cualquiera justo ahora. Aparto mi boca y lo empujo. ―Aléjate de mí. ―Nena, por favor. ―Besa mi cuello, y lo conozco lo suficientemente bien para conocer el sonido en su voz. Está molesto, también―. Solo sé una novia por esta noche. Solíamos divertirnos. Vamos a divertirnos. ―No. ―Sacudo la cabeza, tensándome―. Estoy enojada contigo. Necesito un poco de aire. Y me sentiré peor cuando esto termine. Sigue besándome, y gruño, empujándolo. Finalmente me suelta y cae en la cama junto a mí. Apenas titubea y entonces está de pie abriendo la puerta, saliendo de la habitación. En un momento, escucho el encendido del motor, las llantas despegar, y entonces se ha ido. Idiota. Pero parte de mí no puede evitar respirar más fácil ahora, también. Siento como si perteneciera más aquí cuando él no está. Nunca solía tratarme así. Las lágrimas llenan mis ojos, pero parpadeo, alejándolas. Levantándome de la cama, voy al soporte de la televisión y recojo la pila de facturas por pagar. Una factura de agua del antiguo apartamento, una factura del doctor todavía sin terminar de pagar, de cuando pensé que rompí mi tobillo el verano pasado, una factura de teléfono, y dos facturas de la tarjeta de crédito de Cole a punto de ir a la colección. No tengo seguro médico, y todos los días temo que me ocurra algo que me lleve al hospital por una visita a emergencias de veinte mil dólares. No tengo un auto que funcione, e incluso si lo tuviera, igualmente apenas puedo permitirme el seguro, el dinero extra del préstamo estudiantil, que tendré

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  ‘Let me get back to the point. I was about to tell you why Jankyn beat me up for meddling with his book. One evening the master of the house, as he liked to call himself, was sitting by the fire and reading. He read out to me the story of Eve, through whose wickedness all humankind was brought into woe. Only Jesus could save us, when He purchased our redemption with His holy blood. That is clear evidence, Jankyn told me, that a woman was responsible for the fall of mankind. It is an old argument. Then he read to me the tale of how Sampson lost his hair. It was cut off by his mistress, Delilah, while he slept. As a result, he was captured and blinded by the Philistines. Then he told me the story of Hercules and Deianira, and how the shirt she wove him consumed him in flames. Jankyn was thorough. He did not forget the trouble that the two wives of Socrates caused him. And how one of them, Xantippa, had thrown piss into his face. The poor innocent man stayed very still, as if he were dead, and then just wiped his face with a cloth. All he said was - “After the thunder comes the rain.” ‘As soon as he had finished that story, he told me all about Pasiphae, queen of Crete. He thought it was an excellent example of mad lechery and bestiality. I don’t want to think about it. It was all too horrible. She must have been mad. And there was Clytemnestra, who, for the sake of her adulterous lusts, murdered her husband. He read out her history with great pleasure. He lectured me about the reason Amphiorax of Argos met his death. He knew the whole story. He was betrayed by his wife, Eriphily, who for a brooch of gold led the Greeks to the place where her husband was hiding. As a result, he died at the siege of Thebes. He was very indignant with Livia, wife of Sejanus, and with Lucia, wife of Lucretius. One killed her husband out of love, and the other out of hate. Livia poisoned her man, late one night, because he had become her enemy. Lucia, on the other hand, was so lecherous that she prepared an aphrodisiac for her husband. It was meant to ensure that he was besotted with her. But it was too powerful. He drank it and died before morning. Whatever way you look at it, the husbands come off worse. I am so sorry for them.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Now, dear pilgrims, I will turn to perjury and the swearing of false oaths. That is another subject treated by the old books. Cursing is a great sin in itself, of course, but perjury is greater still. God Almighty has forbidden swearing of every kind. We know that on the authority of Matthew. Jeremiah also touched upon the subject. ‘Thou shalt swear in truth,’ he wrote, ‘in judgement and in righteousness.’ Profanity is a wretched thing. Do you recall the three commandments concerning the duties owed to the Almighty? The third of them is this - ‘Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain.’ This is more important than the taking of life or any other enormity. In order of significance it lies third. Every schoolboy knows that. I tell you plainly that violence and vengeance will not be strangers in the house of a blasphemer who cries out, ‘By Christ’s passion!’ or ‘By the nails on Christ’s cross!’ When he plays at dice he calls out to his opponent, ‘You have five and three. I need seven. By the blood of Christ, give me a seven!’ And then he exclaims, ‘By the bones of Christ, I will stab you to the heart if you play false with me!’ This is the fruit of the cursed dice - curses, anger, perjury and murder. So for the love of Christ, who died for us, forsake all oaths. Now I will get on with my story. These three young scoundrels, whom I mentioned at the beginning, were sitting in a low tavern long before daybreak. They were drinking together when suddenly they heard the chink of the handbell that announces the carriage of a coffin to the grave. One of them turned to his servant. ‘Go outside,’ he said, ‘and find out whose corpse it is. Try to remember the name.’ ‘Sir,’ the boy replied, ‘that isn’t necessary. I knew about it two hours ago. It is the body of an old comrade of yours. He was murdered last night, very suddenly, as he sat blind drunk upon the bench outside the tavern. A thief called Death sneaked up on him. Death is killing everyone around here. He took up his spear, pierced the drunk through the heart, and silently went on his way. He has killed another thousand during the recent plague. I think, master, that you should be careful not to come too close to him. It is better to beware such an adversary. That’s what my mother taught me. Death is the constant enemy.’ ‘Mother of God!’ the landlord said. ‘The boy is right. Death has killed thousands of people this year. Why, he has slain an entire village a mile or so away from here, with every man and woman and child gone into the ground. I am sure that he lives there. It would be wise to be wary of him, sirs. Forewarned is forearmed.’

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  When I bring it in, they pore over it like it is some kind of Rosetta stone. It is typed on paper that has become crisp with age. There are annotations, smudges, and rings left by coffee and by red wine. It strikes me as being a brave document, rather like the little engine who could on the morning after. How Do You Know When You’re Done?This is a question my students always ask. I don’t quite know how to answer it. You just do. I think my students believe that when a published writer finishes something, she crosses the last t, pushes back from the desk, yawns, stretches, and smiles. I do not know anyone who has ever done this, not even once. What happens instead is that you’ve gone over and over something so many times, and you’ve weeded and pruned and rewritten, and the person who reads your work for you has given you great suggestions that you have mostly taken—and then finally something inside you just says it’s time to get on to the next thing. Of course, there will always be more you could do, but you have to remind yourself that perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor. There’s an image I’ve heard people in recovery use—that getting all of one’s addictions under control is a little like putting an octopus to bed. I think this perfectly describes the process of solving various problems in your final draft. You get a bunch of the octopus’s arms neatly tucked under the covers—that is, you’ve come up with a plot, resolved the conflict between the two main characters, gotten the tone down pat—but two arms are still flailing around. Maybe the dialogue in the first half and the second half don’t match, or there is that one character who still seems one-dimensional. But you finally get those arms under the sheets, too, and are about to turn off the lights when another long sucking arm breaks free. This will probably happen while you are sitting at your desk, kneading your face, feeling burned out and rubberized.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  They’d been gone for a minute or two when I heard Brian weakly protesting. I went into Grandpa’s bedroom and saw Erma kneeling on the floor in front of Brian, grabbing at the crotch of his pants, squeezing and kneading while mumbling to herself and telling Brian to hold still, goddammit. Brian, his cheeks wet with tears, was holding his hands protectively between his legs. “Erma, you leave him alone!” I shouted. Erma, still on her knees, twisted around and glared at me. “Why, you little bitch!” she said. Lori heard the commotion and came running. I told Lori that Erma was touching Brian in a way she ought not to be. Erma said she was merely mending Brian’s inseam and that she shouldn’t have to defend herself against some lying little whore’s accusations. “I know what I saw,” I said. “She’s a pervert!” Erma reached over to slap me, but Lori caught her hand. “Let’s all calm down,” Lori said in the same voice she used when Mom and Dad got carried away, arguing. “Everybody. Calm down.” Erma jerked her hand out of Lori’s grasp and slapped her so hard that Lori’s glasses went flying across the room. Lori, who had turned thirteen, slapped her back. Erma hit Lori again, and this time Lori struck Erma a blow in the jaw. Then they flew at each other, tussling and flailing and pulling hair, locked together, with Brian and me cheering on Lori until we woke up Uncle Stanley, who staggered into the room and pushed them apart. Erma relegated us to the basement after that. A door in the basement led directly outside, so we never went upstairs. We weren’t even allowed to use Erma’s bathroom, which meant we either had to wait for school or go outside after dark. Uncle Stanley sometimes sneaked down beans he’d boiled for us, but he was afraid if he stayed talking, Erma would think he’d taken our side and get mad at him, too. The following week, a storm hit. The temperature dropped, and a foot of snow fell on Welch. Erma wouldn’t let us use any coal—she said we didn’t know how to operate the stove and would burn the house down—and it was so cold in the basement that Lori, Brian, Maureen, and I were glad we all shared one bed. As soon as we got home from school, we’d climb under the covers with our clothes on and do our homework there. We were in bed the night Mom and Dad came back. We didn’t hear the sound of the car pulling up. All we heard was the front door opening upstairs, then Mom and Dad’s voices and Erma beginning the long narrative of her grievances against us.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  Maybe it was because there was so little to do in Welch; maybe it was because life there was hard and it made people hard; maybe it was because of all the bloody battles over unionizing the mines; maybe it was because mining was dangerous and cramped and dirty work and it put all the miners in bad moods and they came home and took it out on their wives, who took it out on their kids, who took it out on other kids. Whatever the reason, it seemed that just about everyone in Welch—men, women, boys, girls—liked to fight. There were street brawls, bar stabbings, parking-lot beatings, wife slappings, and toddler whalings. Sometimes it was simply a matter of someone throwing a stray punch, and it would all be over before you knew it had started. Other times it would be more like a twelve-round prizefight, with spectators cheering on the bloody, sweating opponents. Then there were the grudges and feuds that went on for years, a couple of brothers beating up some guy because back in the fifties his father had beaten up their father, a woman shooting her best friend for sleeping with her husband and the best friend’s brother then stabbing the husband. You’d walk down McDowell Street, and half the people you passed seemed to be nursing an injury sustained in local combat. There were shiners, split lips, swollen cheekbones, bruised arms, scraped knuckles, and bitten earlobes. We had lived in some pretty scrappy places back in the desert, but Mom said Welch was the fightingest town she’d ever seen. Brian and Lori and Maureen and I got into more fights than most kids. Dinitia Hewitt and her friends were only the first in a whole line of little gangs who did battle with one or more of us. Other kids wanted to fight us because we had red hair, because Dad was a drunk, because we wore rags and didn’t take as many baths as we should have, because we lived in a falling-down house that was partly painted yellow and had a pit filled with garbage, because they’d go by our dark house at night and see that we couldn’t even afford electricity. But we always fought back, usually as a team. Our most spectacular fight, and our most audacious tactical victory—the Battle of Little Hobart Street—took place against Ernie Goad and his friends when I was ten and Brian was nine. Ernie Goad was a pug-nosed, thick-necked kid who had little eyes set practically on the sides of his head, like a whale. He acted as if it was his sworn mission to drive the Walls family out of town. It started one day when I was playing with some other kids on the tank parked next to the armory. Ernie Goad appeared and began throwing rocks at me and yelling that the Wallses should all leave Welch because we were stinking it up so bad.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  It might start with Mom mentioning how short we were on cash. Then Grandma would make a snide comment about Dad being shiftless. Dad would say something about selfish old crones with more money than they knew what to do with, and soon enough they’d be face-to-face in what amounted to a full-fledged cussing contest. “You flea-bitten drunk!” Grandma would scream. “You goddamned flint-faced hag!” Dad would shout back. “You no-good two-bit pud-sucking bastard!” “You scaly castrating banshee bitch!” Dad had the more inventive vocabulary, but Grandma Smith could outshout him; plus, she had the home-court advantage. A time would come when Dad had had enough and he’d tell us kids to get in the car. Grandma would yell at Mom not to let that worthless horse’s ass take her grandchildren. Mom would shrug and say there was nothing she could do about it, he was her husband. Off we’d go, heading out into the desert in search of another house for rent in another little mining town. Some of the people who lived in those towns had been there for years. Others were rootless, like us—just passing through. They were gamblers or ex-cons or war veterans or what Mom called loose women. There were old prospectors, their faces wrinkled and brown from the sun, like dried-up apples. The kids were lean and hard, with calluses on their hands and feet. We’d make friends with them, but not close friends, because we knew we’d be moving on sooner or later. We might enroll in school, but not always. Mom and Dad did most of our teaching. Mom had us all reading books without pictures by the time we were five, and Dad taught us math. He also taught us the things that were really important and useful, like how to tap out Morse code and how we should never eat the liver of a polar bear because all the vitamin A in it could kill us. He showed us how to aim and fire his pistol, how to shoot Mom’s bow and arrows, and how to throw a knife by the blade so that it landed in the middle of a target with a satisfying thwock. By the time I was four, I was pretty good with Dad’s pistol, a big black six-shot revolver, and could hit five out of six beer bottles at thirty paces. I’d hold the gun with both hands, sight down the barrel, and squeeze the trigger slowly and smoothly until, with a loud clap, the gun kicked and the bottle exploded. It was fun. Dad said my sharpshooting would come in handy if the feds ever surrounded us. Mom had grown up in the desert. She loved the dry, crackling heat, the way the sky at sunset looked like a sheet of fire, and the overwhelming emptiness and severity of all that open land that had once been a huge ocean bed. Most people had trouble surviving in the desert, but Mom thrived there.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  This man was the very flower of learning, as the old books tell us, and he managed to impart to his pupil all the lessons of civility. Nero then was compliant and obedient. He hid his vices very well. The teacher’s name was Seneca. He ruled over Nero with words rather than deeds. He did not punish him, but he reproved wrongdoing. ‘Sir,’ he would say, ‘a good emperor must love virtue and hate tyranny.’ What was his reward? Nero ordered that the wrists of Seneca should be slit as he lay in a bath. Nero hated any authority placed over him. In particular he always felt a grievance against Seneca. So the philosopher chose to die in the bath, his blood in the water, rather than endure any more grievous punishment. That is the way the emperor slaughtered him. There came a time, however, when Dame Fortune no longer favoured Nero. She detested his pride. And she knew, even though he was strong, that she was stronger. ‘I cannot allow this vicious man to glory in his power and wickedness. I will throw him from the emperor’s throne and, when he least expects it, he will suffer a great fall.’ One night the people of Rome rose up against him. When he learned of the revolt he ran out of the palace and looked for allies among his confederates. But their doors were closed to him. He knocked upon their gates, and cried for help, but they did not listen. He knew then that it was over. He stopped crying out, and went on his lonely way. The uproar of the people continued. There were shouts and oaths resounding through the streets, and Nero could hear them asking one another: ‘Where is that false tyrant? Where is Nero?’ He was almost out of his mind with fear. He prayed to his heathen gods for help, but of course they could not assist him. He knew that he was about to die, and he ran into a nearby garden to hide himself. There he found two peasants, sitting around a large bonfire. He begged and pleaded with these two men to kill him and to cut off his head. He did not want to be recognized and shamefully mutilated after his death. Then he killed himself in front of them. He had no choice. Dame Fortune looked down, and laughed at his fate. Holofernes Behold Holofernes, the general of Nebuchadnezzar. There was no king’s soldier more famous or more victorious. There was no one stronger in battle. There was no one more filled with pride and presumption. Fortune kissed him, fondled him and then led him to a place where his head was cut off. It happened before he knew it. For the sake of their wealth, and their liberty, men held him in fearful respect; he made his enemies renounce their faith. ‘Nebuchadnezzar is your god,’ he told them.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  The way I saw it, Dad owed me. I’d looked after his kids all summer, I’d kept him in beer and cigarette money, and I’d helped him fleece that miner Robbie. I figured I had Dad in my back pocket. When I got home from school that afternoon, Mom was still curled up on the sofa bed, a small pile of paperbacks next to her. Dad was sitting at the drafting table, rolling a cigarette. He beckoned to me to follow him into the kitchen. Mom watched us go. Dad closed the door and looked at me gravely. “Your mother claims you back-talked her.” “Yes,” I said. “It’s true.” “Yes, sir,” he corrected me, but I didn’t say anything. “I’m disappointed in you,” he went on. “You know damn good and well that you are to respect your parents.” “Dad, Mom’s not sick, she’s playing hooky,” I said. “She has to take her obligations more seriously. She has to grow up a little.” “Who do you think you are?” he asked. “She’s your mother.” “Then why doesn’t she act like one?” I looked at Dad for what felt like a very long moment. Then I blurted out, “And why don’t you act like a dad?” I could see the blood surge into his face. He grabbed me by the arm. “You apologize for that comment!” “Or what?” I asked. Dad shoved me up against the wall. “Or by God I’ll show you who’s boss around here.” His face was inches from mine. “What are you going to do to punish me?” I asked. “Stop taking me to bars?” Dad drew back his hand as if to smack me. “You watch your mouth, young lady. I can still whip your butt, and don’t think I won’t.” “You can’t be serious,” I said. Dad dropped his hand. He pulled his belt out of the loops on his work pants and wrapped it a couple of times around his knuckles. “Apologize to me and to your mother,” he said. “No.” Dad raised the belt. “Apologize.” “No.” “Then bend over.” Dad was standing between me and the door. There was no way out except through him. But it never occurred to me to either run or fight. The way I saw it, he was in a tighter spot than I was. He had to back down, because if he sided with Mom and gave me a whipping, he would lose me forever. We stared at each other. Dad seemed to be waiting for me to drop my eyes, to apologize and tell him I was wrong so we could go back to being like we were, but I kept holding his gaze. Finally, to call his bluff, I turned around, bent over slightly, and rested my hands on my knees. I expected him to turn and walk away, but there were six stinging blows on the backs of my thighs, each accompanied by a whistle of air.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  Mom thought it was superficial to worry about how you looked. She said God thought the same way, so she’d go to church in torn or paint-splattered clothes. It was your inner spirit and not your outward appearance that mattered, she said, and come hymn time, she showed the whole congregation her spirit, belting out the words in such a powerful voice that people in the pews in front of us would turn around and stare. Church was particularly excruciating when Dad came along. Dad had been raised Baptist, but he didn’t like religion and didn’t believe in God. He believed in science and reason, he said, not superstition and voodoo. But Mom had refused to have children unless Dad agreed to raise them as Catholics and to attend church himself on holy days of obligation. Dad sat in the pew fuming and shifting around and trying to bite his tongue while the priest carried on about Jesus resurrecting Lazarus from the dead and the communicants filed up to eat the body and drink the blood of Christ. Finally, when Dad was unable to stand it any longer, he’d shout out something to challenge the priest. He didn’t do it to be hostile. He hollered out his point in a friendly tone: “Yo, Padre!” he’d say. The priest usually ignored Dad and tried to go on with his sermon, but Dad persisted. He’d challenge the priest about the scientific impossibility of the miracles, and when the priest continued to ignore him, he’d get mad and yell out something about Pope Alexander VI’s bastard children, or Pope Leo X’s hedonism, or Pope Nicholas III’s simony, or the murders committed in the name of the Church during the Spanish Inquisition. But what could you expect, he’d say, from an institution run by celibate men who wore dresses. At that point the ushers would tell us we’d have to leave. “Don’t worry, God understands,” Mom said. “He knows that your father is a cross we must bear.” CITY LIFE WAS GETTING to Dad. “I’m starting to feel like a rat in a maze,” he told me. He hated the way everything in Phoenix was so organized, with time cards, bank accounts, telephone bills, parking meters, tax forms, alarm clocks, PTA meetings, and pollsters knocking on the door and prying into your affairs. He hated all the people who lived in air-conditioned houses with the windows permanently sealed, and drove air-conditioned cars to nine-to-five jobs in air-conditioned office buildings that he said were little more than gussied-up prisons. Just the sight of those people on their way to work made him feel hemmed in and itchy. He began complaining that we were all getting too soft, too dependent on creature comforts, and that we were losing touch with the natural order of the world. Dad missed the wilderness. He needed to be roaming free in open country and living among untamed animals.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  No one else must learn our secrets.’ So the silly priest obeyed him, got rid of the servant, and closed the door. Then they set to work. At the bidding of the false canon he put the crucible on the burning coals, and blew upon the fire with all his might. Then the canon sprinkled some white powder into the crucible. I don’t know what it was - chalk, powdered glass, something like that. Whatever it was, it was worthless. It was only there to fool the priest. The canon told him to pile up the coals. ‘In token of the great love I bear you,’ he said, ‘I will show you how your own two hands can work the miracle.’ ‘God save you! A thousand thanks!’ replied the priest, who was now busily stoking up the fire. While he was occupied, the false canon - this foul wretch, this servant of the devil - took out from his sleeve a piece of charcoal made of beechwood. A little hole had been drilled in the side of this coal, which the canon had filled up with metal filings; he had then sealed the hole with wax, so that none of the silver could escape. He had made this device a few hours before, and had brought it with him. I will tell you later what other tools he carried with him to deceive his victim. He wanted to rob the priest of everything before he left him. It angers me when I talk about him. I want to catch him. I want to trap him. But he is here and there and everywhere. He is so various. He is as fluid as quicksilver itself. Now listen carefully to what followed. He hid the hollow coal in his hand while the priest was bent over the fire. ‘Dear friend,’ he said, ‘you are doing

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  So, weeping like a child that has just been whipped, he crossed the street and made his way towards the shop of a blacksmith called Gervase. Gervase forged the equipment for ploughs - that sort of thing - and just at that moment was working on a ploughshare for one of the local farmers. So Absolon knocked on the door and called out, ‘Open the door, Gervase! Hurry up!’ ‘What? Who’s there?’ ‘It’s me. Absolon.’ ‘What in God’s name are you doing here so early? What’s the matter? Oh. I know. Some young madame has got you all excited. You rise early. You know what I mean.’ Absolon was not bothered by these sly insinuations. He had no time for joking. He had other matters on his mind. ‘I can see that hot blade in the corner of the chimney,’ he said to Gervase. ‘It’s for a ploughshare, isn’t it? Can I borrow it from you for a few minutes? I won’t need it for long.’ ‘Of course you can. I would do anything for an old friend like you. You could borrow it if it were made of gold or worth a sack of sovereigns. But what on earth do you need it for?’ ‘That depends. I’ll tell you all about it later.’ Then he picked up the blade - its handle was cool by now - and left the smithy. He made his way quickly to the carpenter’s house and stood outside the window once more. He coughed softly, just like before, and knocked. ‘Who’s there?’ Alison called out. ‘Are you a thief or what?’ ‘No, dear Alison,’ he said. ‘It is me again. Your darling Absolon. I’ve brought with me a gold ring. My mother gave it to me many years ago. It is of the purest gold, and engraved with a true love knot. I would like to give it you. In exchange for another kiss.’ Nicholas was out of bed and just about to take a piss. He thought that he could make the joke even funnier if he changed places with Alison and stuck his own arse out of the window. So he quickly went over to the window and thrust out his buttocks as far as he could. Absolon called out ‘Speak to me, my little bird. I can’t see you, sweetheart.’ And, at that, Nicholas let out a fart as loud as a peal of thunder. What a noise! What a smell! You can guess what Absolon did next. He steadied the hot blade, and thrust it right up Nicholas’s arse. Oh dear. He took the skin off that fundament, and all around the edges. Nicholas was in such pain that he thought he might die, and screamed out in agony like a madman, ‘Help! Water! For God’s sake! Water!’ Now his cries awoke the carpenter, and when he heard the exclamation ‘Water!’ he started up.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  “Only thing is, as I been telling you, he was a goddamn fake.” For years, every time Mom brought out Shakespeare’s plays, Dad would carry on about how they’d been written not by William Shakespeare of Avon but by a bunch of people, including someone named the Earl of Oxford, because no single person in Elizabethan England could have had Shakespeare’s thirty-thousand-word vocabulary. All this bunk about little Billy Shakespeare, Dad would say, the great genius despite his grammar-school education, his small Latin and less Greek, was a lot of sentimental mythology. “You’re helping perpetuate this fraud,” he told Lori. “Dad, it’s just a bust,” Lori said. “That’s the problem,” Dad said. He studied the sculpture, then suddenly reached over and smeared off Shakespeare’s mouth with his thumb. “What the hell are you doing?” Lori cried out. “It’s no longer just a bust,” Dad said. “Now it has symbolic value. You can call it Mute Bard .” “I spent days on that,” Lori shouted. “And you’ve ruined it!” “I elevated it,” Dad said. He told Lori he would help her write a paper that would demonstrate that Shakespeare’s plays had multiple authors, like Rembrandt’s paintings. “By God, you’ll set the literary world on edge,” he said. “I don’t want to set the world on edge!” Lori screamed. “I just want to win a stupid little scholarship!” “Goddammit, you’re in a horse race, but you’re thinking like a sheep,” Dad said. “Sheep don’t win horse races.” • • • Lori didn’t have the spirit to rework the bust. The next day she smushed the clay into a big glob and left it on the drafting table. I told Lori that if she hadn’t been accepted into an art school by the time she graduated, she should go to New York anyway. She could support herself with the money we’d saved up until she found a job, and then she could apply to a school. That became our new plan. Everyone was mad at Dad, which gave him a case of the sulks. He said he didn’t know why he even bothered to come home anymore, since he no longer got the slightest bit of appreciation for his ideas. He insisted he wasn’t trying to keep Lori from leaving for New York, but if she had the sense that God gave a goose, she would stay put. “New York is a sorry-ass sinkhole,” he said more than once, “filled with faggots and rapists.” She’d get mugged and find herself on the streets, he warned, forced into prostitution and winding up a drug addict like all those runaway teenagers. “I’m only telling you this because I love you,” he said. “And I don’t want to see you hurt.” One evening in May, when we’d been saving our money for almost nine months, I came home with a couple of dollars I’d made babysitting and went into the bedroom to stash them in Oz. The pig was not on the old sewing machine.

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  If gender differentiation follows upon the incest taboo and the prior taboo on homosexuality, then “becoming” a gender is a laborious process of becoming naturalized, which requires a differentiation of bodily pleasures and parts on the basis of gendered meanings. Pleasures are said to reside in the penis, the vagina, and the breasts or to emanate from them, but such descriptions correspond to a body which has already been constructed or naturalized as gender-specific. In other words, some parts of the body become conceivable foci of pleasure precisely because they correspond to a normative ideal of a gender-specific body. Pleasures are in some sense determined by the melancholic structure of gender whereby some organs are deadened to pleasure, and others brought to life. Which pleasures shall live and which shall die is often a matter of which serve the legitimating practices of identity formation that take place within the matrix of gender norms. 42 Transsexuals often claim a radical discontinuity between sexual pleasures and bodily parts. Very often what is wanted in terms of pleasure requires an imaginary participation in body parts, either appendages or orifices, that one might not actually possess, or, similarly, pleasure may require imagining an exaggerated or diminished set of parts. The imaginary status of desire, of course, is not restricted to the transsexual identity; the phantasmatic nature of desire reveals the body not as its ground or cause, but as its occasion and its object. The strategy of desire is in part the transfiguration of the desiring body itself. Indeed, in order to desire at all it may be necessary to believe in an altered bodily ego 43 which, within the gendered rules of the imaginary, might fit the requirements of a body capable of desire. This imaginary condition of desire always exceeds the physical body through or on which it works. Always already a cultural sign, the body sets limits to the imaginary meanings that it occasions, but is never free of an imaginary construction. The fantasized body can never be understood in relation to the body as real; it can only be understood in relation to another culturally instituted fantasy, one which claims the place of the “literal” and the “real.” The limits to the “real” are produced within the naturalized heterosexualization of bodies in which physical facts serve as causes and desires reflect the inexorable effects of that physicality. The conflation of desire with the real—that is, the belief that it is parts of the body, the “literal” penis, the “literal” vagina, which cause pleasure and desire—is precisely the kind of literalizing fantasy characteristic of the syndrome of melancholic heterosexuality. The disavowed homosexuality at the base of melancholic heterosexuality reemerges as the self-evident anatomical facticity of sex, where “sex” designates the blurred unity of anatomy, “natural identity,” and “natural desire.” The loss is denied and incorporated, and the genealogy of that transmutation fully forgotten and repressed.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Moviéndome a través de la multitud, camino por el pasillo vacío, llegando finalmente a la misma habitación en la que estaba llorando cuando la hice molestarse la última vez. Entrando por la puerta abierta, la veo de pie con las manos en las caderas y su cabeza inclinada hacia mí. —Preferiría comer en un contenedor de basura que tomar dinero de ti —dice mordazmente. Debería callarme. Pero Dios me ayude, no puedo. —Odio decírtelo, pero ya lo haces —le digo—. Vives en una casa donde no pagas alquiler, ni servicios públicos, señorita. —¡Cocino y limpio para ti! —grita, pero dudo que alguien pueda escucharnos aquí atrás y por encima de la música—. ¡Pago a mi manera, imbécil arrogante! —Está bien, está bien —gruño, parpadeando larga y duramente—. Tienes razón, ¿de acuerdo? Pero, Jordan, los hombres se harán ideas. Pensarán que tienen un pase libre y pueden tocar lo que le pertenece a mi hijo. Lo estás avergonzando. —¿Tu hijo? —se burla, riendo—. Bueno, no lo viste, en realidad. Ya me vio y no le importa, Pike. Pensó que me veía bien y luego se fue con sus amigos. ¡No le importa! —¡Bueno, a mí me importa! Las palabras salen de mi boca antes que pueda detenerlas y me congelo, casi demasiado asustado para respirar. Oh, mierda. ¿Que acababa de decir? Su boca se abre un poco, pero se calla, probablemente conmocionada por mi arrebato. Sus ojos permanecen fijos en los míos, sin pestañear, con una mezcla de confusión y sorpresa escrita por todo su bonito rostro. Pero en lugar de arrepentirme, mi temperamento vuelve a aumentar rápidamente. ¿Cómo diablos puede no importarle? ¿Y por qué a mí sí? Jesús, mierda. Es una adulta, ¿cierto? Y si a su novio no le importa, entonces ¿quién soy yo o cualquier otra persona para dar su opinión sobre sus decisiones? No me corresponde. No, no hay nada de malo con lo que hace su hermana para mantenerse a sí misma o en cómo Jordan está vestida esta noche. Se ve jodidamente hermosa. Simplemente no... quiero que su cuerpo sea para todos. —Eres especial, Jordan. —Me acerco un paso más hacia ella—. Lo sabes, ¿cierto? Sus ojos comienzan a brillar, su mirada vacila y mira hacia otro lado. Dios, ¿sabe lo increíble que es? Me permito observar su piel suave y resplandeciente y la curva de su cintura frente a mí que es perfecta para aferrarse a ella. Un hombre debería verla vestida así y debería ser un hombre que aprecie lo que tiene. —No hagas cosas fuera de tu naturaleza por dinero —le digo—. Eres perfecta como eres. No cambies. No quiero que cambies. —Es solo un corsé, Pike. —Sí y luego será un concurso de camisetas mojadas y un trabajo en The Hook, ¿cierto? —contrarresto.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  If you died tomorrow, I would not give him a second look. And tell me this. Why do you hide the keys to your chest? It is as much mine as yours. Do you think you are going to make a fool out of me? You are not going to get my body and my goods. You must be mad even to consider it. You can have one or the other. But not both. Think about it, old man. What is the point of spying on me, and questioning the servants? If you had your way, I would be locked up in that damned chest as well. What you should be saying is this. ‘Oh dear wife, please go wherever you like. Feel free. I won’t listen to any rumours about you. I know you, Dame Alice, to be a true and faithful wife.’ That is what you should say. We wives never like husbands who pry or who try to control us. We must be at liberty. That’s the truth of it. ‘“The best of all you men was that wise astrologer, Ptolemy. He was from Egypt, wasn’t he? He wrote down a proverb in one of his books that sums it all up. ‘The wisest man,’ he said, ‘is the one who minds his own business and does not worry about the conduct of the world.’ You understand what he meant by that, I suppose? If you have enough, or more than enough, why should you bother about the pleasures of other people? Let me tell you this, you old goat. You will get cunt enough at night. Only a miser would stop a man lighting a candle with the flame from his lantern. Do you understand me? You will still be able to see in the dark. Don’t worry. No one has stolen your flame. ‘“I’m sick to death of hearing you say that we women should ‘dress demurely and discreetly’ just as if we were still virgins. You love to quote from the Bible, don’t you? What is that text? ‘No woman should be apparelled in precious stones or walk abroad with braided hair. No woman should dress herself in pearls or gold or fine fabrics.’ What a load of nonsense. I can’t even be bothered to argue with you about it. ‘“What is that? I am like a cat, am I? You only have to singe my skin, and I will never roam from home? Is that what you think? But if the skin of a cat is sleek and shiny, then she will not stay in the house for half an hour. She will be on the tiles before daybreak, showing herself off and setting up such a caterwaul that every cat in the neighbourhood will know she’s on heat. Do you get my drift? If I am in the mood, I will stray. ‘“What good is it spying on me, you old fool?

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  Although Wittig herself is a “materialist,” the term has a specific meaning within her theoretical framework. She wants to overcome the split between materiality and representation that characterizes “straight” thinking. Materialism implies neither a reduction of ideas to matter nor the view of theory as a reflection of its economic base, strictly conceived. Wittig’s materialism takes social institutions and practices, in particular, the institution of heterosexuality, as the basis of critical analysis. In “The Straight Mind” and “On the Social Contract,”53 she understands the institution of heterosexuality as the founding basis of the male-dominated social orders. “Nature” and the domain of materiality are ideas, ideological constructs, produced by these social institutions to support the political interests of the heterosexual contract. In this sense, Wittig is a classic idealist for whom nature is understood as a mental representation. A language of compulsory meanings produces this representation of nature to further the political strategy of sexual domination and to rationalize the institution of compulsory heterosexuality. Unlike Beauvoir, Wittig sees nature not as a resistant materiality, a medium, surface, or an object; it is an “idea” generated and sustained for the purposes of social control. The very elasticity of the ostensible materiality of the body is shown in The Lesbian Body as language figures and refigures the parts of the body into radically new social configurations of form (and antiform). Like those mundane and scientific languages that circulate the idea of “nature” and so produce the naturalized conception of discretely sexed bodies, Wittig’s own language enacts an alternative disfiguring and refiguring of bodies. Her aim is to expose the idea of a natural body as a construction and to offer a deconstructive/reconstructive set of strategies for configuring bodies to contest the power of heterosexuality. The very shape and form of bodies, their unifying principle, their composite parts, are always figured by a language imbued with political interests. For Wittig, the political challenge is to seize language as the means of representation and production, to treat it as an instrument that invariably constructs the field of bodies and that ought to be used to deconstruct and reconstruct bodies outside the oppressive categories of sex.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  I threw a couple of rocks back and told him to leave me alone. “Make me,” Ernie said. “I don’t make garbage,” I shouted. “I burn it.” This was usually a foolproof comeback, making up in scorn what it lacked in originality, but on this occasion it backfired. “Y’all Wallses don’t burn garbage!” Ernie yelled back. “Y’all throw it in a hole next to your house! You live in it!” I tried to think of a comeback to his comeback, but my mind seized up because what Ernie had said was true: We did live in garbage. Ernie stuck his face in mine. “Garbage! You live in garbage ’cause you are garbage!” I shoved him good and hard, then turned to the other kids, hoping for backup, but they were easing away and looking down, as if they were ashamed to have been caught playing with a girl who had a garbage pit next to her house. • • • That Saturday, Brian and I were reading on the sofa bed when one of the windowpanes shattered and a rock landed on the floor. We ran to the door. Ernie and three of his friends were pedaling their bikes up and down Little Hobart Street, whooping madly. “Garbage! Garbage! Y’all are a bunch of garbage!” Brian went out on the porch. One of the kids hurled another rock that hit Brian in the head. He staggered back, then ran down the steps, but Ernie and his friends pedaled away, shrieking. Brian came back up the stairs, blood trickling down his cheek and onto his T-shirt and a pump knot already swelling up above his eyebrow. Ernie’s gang returned a few minutes later, throwing stones and shouting that they had actually seen the pigsty where the Walls kids lived and that they were going to tell the whole school it was even worse than everyone said. This time both Brian and I chased after them. Even though they outnumbered us, they were enjoying the game of taunting us too much to make a stand. They rode down to the first switchback and got away. “They’ll be back,” Brian said. “What are we going to do?” I asked. Brian sat thinking, then told me he had a plan. He found some rope under the house and led me up to a clearing in the hillside above Little Hobart Street. A few weeks earlier, Brian and I had dragged an old mattress up there because we were thinking of camping out. Brian explained how we could make a catapult, like the medieval ones we’d read about, by piling rocks on the mattress and rigging it with ropes looped over tree branches. We quickly assembled the contraption and tested it once, jerking back on the ropes at the count of three. It worked—a minor avalanche of rocks rained onto the street below.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  The Friar’s Prologue The Prologe of the Freres Tale That worthy man, that Friar, had been frowning and glowering at the Summoner all the time that the Wife had been speaking. He had not forgotten their argument. But, for the sake of decency, he had not said anything vicious. Now he spoke up. ‘Dame Alison,’ he said, ‘good Wife of Bath, God send you a long life! I swear that you have touched upon a matter for debate by scholars, and you have acquitted yourself very well. But, ma dame, while we are riding here together our only task is to entertain one another. There is no need to engage in moral discussion. Leave that to the priests in their pulpits. So, if the rest of the company are agreed, I will now tell you a funny story about a summoner. I think you will all admit that there is nothing good to be said about that profession. Summoners are the pits. Of course I am not referring to any individual here.’ He glanced at the Summoner before continuing. ‘A summoner is a jackal. He runs up and down with writs of arrest for fornication. And of course, consequently, he gets beaten up all the time.’ Harry Bailey, our Host, interrupted him. ‘Good Friar,’ he said, ‘please be polite. A man of the cloth ought to be courteous to others. We will have no arguments between ourselves. Get on with your story. And leave the Summoner alone.’ ‘Let him say what he likes,’ the Summoner replied. ‘It doesn’t worry me. When my turn comes, I will pay him back in kind. I will tell him all about friars, false flatterers as they are. I have a lot of dirty stories about them that I will keep in reserve. He will learn what it is to be a friar.’ ‘Peace. No more.’ Our Host put up his hand. ‘Now, good master Friar, will you please tell your story without more delay? It is getting late.’ The Friar cleared his throat.