Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  “Say!” he drawled (now imitating the underworld numbskull of movies), “that’s a swell little gun you’ve got there. What d’you want for her?” I slapped down his outstretched hand and he managed to knock over a box on a low table near him. It ejected a handful of cigarettes. “Here they are,” he said cheerfully. “You recall Kipling: une femme est une femme, mais un Caporal est une cigarette? Now we need matches.” “Quilty,” I said. “I want you to concentrate. You are going to die in a moment. The hereafter for all we know may be an eternal state of excruciating insanity. You smoked your last cigarette yesterday. Concentrate. Try to understand what is happening to you.” He kept taking the Drome cigarette apart and munching bits of it. “I am willing to try,” he said. “You are either Australian, or a German refugee. Must you talk to me? This is a Gentile’s house, you know. Maybe, you’d better run along. And do stop demonstrating that gun. I’ve an old Stern-Luger in the music room.” I pointed Chum at his slippered foot and crushed the trigger. It clicked. He looked at his foot, at the pistol, again at his foot. I made another awful effort, and, with a ridiculously feeble and juvenile sound, it went off. The bullet entered the thick pink rug, and I had the paralyzing impression that it had merely trickled in and might come out again. “See what I mean?” said Quilty. “You should be a little more careful. Give me that thing for Christ’s sake.” He reached for it. I pushed him back into the chair. The rich joy was waning. It was high time I destroyed him, but he must understand why he was being destroyed. His condition infected me, the weapon felt limp and clumsy in my hand. “Concentrate,” I said, “on the thought of Dolly Haze whom you kidnaped—” “I did not!” he cried. “You’re all wet. I saved her from a beastly pervert. Show me your badge instead of shooting at my foot, you ape, you. Where is that badge? I’m not responsible for the rapes of others. Absurd! That joy ride, I grant you, was a silly stunt but you got her back, didn’t you? Come, let’s have a drink.” I asked him whether he wanted to be executed sitting or standing. “Ah, let me think,” he said. “It is not an easy question. Incidentally—I made a mistake. Which I sincerely regret. You see, I had no fun with your Dolly. I am practically impotent, to tell the melancholy truth. And I gave her a splendid vacation. She met some remarkable people. Do you happen to know—” And with a tremendous lurch he fell all over me, sending the pistol hurtling under a chest of drawers. Fortunately he was more impetuous than vigorous, and I had little difficulty in shoving him back into his chair. He puffed a little and folded his arms on his chest.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Immediatelie as she was going away came Juno and Ceres, demaunding the cause of her anger. Then Venus answered, Verily you are come to comfort my sorrow, but I pray you with all diligence to seeke out one whose name is Psyches, who is a vagabond, and runneth about the Countries, and (as I thinke) you are not ignorant of the brute of my son Cupid, and of his demeanour, which I am ashamed to declare. Then they understanding the whole matter, endeavoured to mitigate the ire of Venus in this sort: What is the cause Madam, or how hath your son so offended, that you shold so greatly accuse his love, and blame him by reason that he is amorous? and why should you seeke the death of her, whom he doth fancie? We most humbly intreat you to pardon his fault if he have accorded to the mind of any maiden: what do you not know that he is a young man? Or have you forgotten of what yeares he is? Doth he seeme alwayes unto you to be a childe? You are his mother, and a kind woman, will you continually search out his dalliance? Will you blame his luxury? Will you bridle his love? and will you reprehend your owne art and delights in him? What God or man is hee, that can endure that you should sowe or disperse your seed of love in every place, and to make restraint thereof within your owne doores? certes you will be the cause of the suppression of the publike paces of young Dames. In this sort this goddesse endeavoured to pacifie her mind, and to excuse Cupid with al their power (although he were absent) for feare of his darts and shafts of love. But Venus would in no wise asswage her heat, but (thinking that they did rather trifle and taunt at her injuries) she departed from them, and tooke her voiage towards the sea in all haste. In the meane season Psyches hurled her selfe hither and thither, to seeke her husband, the rather because she thought that if he would not be appeased with the sweet flattery of his wife, yet he would take mercy on her at her servile and continuall prayers. And (espying a Church on the top of a high hill) she said, What can I tell whether my husband and master be there or no?

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  10 “His editis involat eam vestemque plurifariam diloricat, capilloque discisso et capite conquassato gra- viter affligit, et accepto frumento et hordeo et milio et papavere et cicere et lente et faba commixtisque acervatim confusis in unum grumulum sic ad illam : * Videris enim mihi tam deformis ancilla nullo alio sed tantam sedulo ministerio amatores tuos promereri: iam ergo et ipsa frugem tuam periclitabor. Discerne seminum istorum passivam congeriem singulisque granis rite dispositis atque seiugatis ante istam ves- peram opus expeditum approbato mihi.’ Sic assig- nato tantorum seminum cumulo ipsa cenae nuptiali concessit. Nec Psyche manus admolitur inconditae 262 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VI delivered Psyche to be cruelly tormented. They fulfilled the commandment of their mistress, and after they had piteously scourged her with whips and had otherwise tormented her, they presented her again before Venus. Then she began to laugh again, saying : ‘ Behold, she thinketh that by reason of her great belly, which she hath gotten by playing the whore, to move me to pity, and to make me a happy grandmother to her noble child. Am not I happy, that in the flourishing time of all mine age shall be called a grandmother, and the son of a vile harlot shall be accounted the grandson of Venus. Howbeit I am a fool to term him by the name of a son, since as the marriage was made between unequal persons, in no town, without witnesses, and not by the consent of their parents, therefore the marriage is illegitimate, and the child (that shall be born) a bastard, if indeed we fortune to suffer thee to live till thou be delivered.’ « When Venus had spoken these words, she leaped upon poor Psyche, and (tearing everywhere her apparel) took her violently by the hair, and dashed her head upon the ground, Then she took a great quantity of wheat, barley, millet, poppy-seed, pease, lentils, and beans, and mingled them all together on a heap, saying: ‘Thou art so evil-favoured, girl, that thou seemest unable to get the grace of thy lovers by no other means, but only by diligent and painful service : wherefore I will prove what thou canst do; see that thou separate all these grains one from another, disposing them orderly in their quality, and let it be done to my content before night.’ When she had appointed this heap of seeds unto Psyche, she departed to a great banquet for a marriage that was prepared that day. But Psyche went not about to 263 LUCIUS APULEIUS

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Jerome sat in the front seat next to the taxi-driver because the trip was Jerome’s treat and Jerome’s idea; Levi, Zora and Kiki were in the second row of this people-carrier, and Howard lay flat on his back with a row to himself. The Belsey family car was at the mechanics’, having its twelve-year-old engine replaced. The Belseys themselves were on their way to hear Mozart’s Requiem performed on Boston Common. It was a classic family outing, proposed at the moment when all the members of the family had never felt less familial. The black mood in the house had been building these past two weeks, ever since Howard learned the news of Monty’s appointment. He saw it as an unforgivable betrayal on the part of the Humanities Faculty. A close personal rival invited on to campus! Who had supported it? He made angry calls to colleagues, trying to uncover the Brutus – with no success. Zora, with her  kipps and belsey creepily expert knowledge of college politics, poured poison in his ear. Neither paused to recall that Monty’s appointment might affect Jerome too. Kiki held her temper, waiting for the two to think of someone other than themselves. When this didn’t happen, she exploded. They were only just recovering from the family row that ensued. The sulking and door slamming would have continued indefinitely had not Jerome – ever the peacemaker – thought up this trip as an opportunity for everybody to be nice to each other. Nobody much wanted to go to a concert, but it was impossible to deter Jerome when he was resolved upon a good deed. So here they were, a protesting silence filling the car: against Mozart, against outings generally, against having to take a taxi, against the hour’s drive from Wellington into Boston, against the very concept of quality time. Only Kiki supported it. She believed she understood Jerome’s motivation. The word on the college grapevine was that Monty was bringing his family, which meant the girl was coming. Jerome must behave as if nothing had happened. They must all do that. They must be united and strong. She struggled forward now and reached over Jerome’s shoulder to turn the radio up. It was not loud enough, somehow, to drown out the collective sulk. She stayed in this position for a minute and squeezed her son’s hand. They had escaped outer Boston’s network of cement and traffic at last. It was a Friday night. Single-sex clusters of Bostonians made their boisterous way through the streets, hoping to collide with their opposite numbers. As the Belsey taxi passed by a nightclub, Jerome squinted after the many girls in few clothes lining up before it, like the tail of something marvellous that did not exist. Jerome turned away. It hurts to look at what you can’t have. ‘Dad – get up, we’re almost there,’ said Zora. ‘Howie, you got any money? I can’t find my wallet, I don’t know where it is.’

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘Wow,’ she whispered, bringing one hand up to her forehead as a visor, ‘this one really can’t believe her eyes. Check it out – she’s having some kind of cognitive failure. She’s going to malfunction.’ ‘Huh?’ ‘Thank you! Yes, move along now – he lives here – yes, that’s right – no crime is taking place – thank you for your interest!’ Levi turned round and saw the blushing woman Zora was yelling at, now scurrying by on the other side of the street. ‘What’s wrong with these people exactly?’ Zora put both feet on the ground and pulled off her gardening gloves. ‘She watching me? Same one from before?’  On Beauty ‘No, different woman. And don’t you talk to me – you were meant to be here two hours ago.’ ‘Party don’t even start till eight!’ ‘Starts at six, asshole – and you have once again failed to be of any help whatsoever .’ ‘Zoor, man,’ sighed Levi, and walked past her, ‘you know when you’re just not in the mood?’ He pulled off his Raiders vest as he went, winding it into a ball in his hand. His naked back, so broad at the top and so narrow at the bottom, blocked Zora’s path. ‘You know, I wasn’t really in the mood to stuff three hundred tiny little vol-au-vent cases with crab paste,’ she said, following her brother through the open front door. ‘But I guess I just had to put aside my little existential crisis and get on with it.’ The hallway smelled amazing. Soul food has a scent that fills you up even before your mouth gets near any of it. The sweet dough of the pastries, the alcoholic waft of a rum punch. In the kitchen, many dishes, covered for the moment with Saran Wrap, were laid out along the main table, and, on two small card tables brought up from the basement, a great pile of plates and concentric circles of glasses. Howard stood amidst all this, holding a brandy glass filled with red wine and smoking a baggy roll-up. He had several stray pieces of tobacco stuck to his bottom lip. He was dressed in his traditional ‘cooking’ costume. This outfit – a kind of protest against the very concept of cooking – Howard constructed by donning all the discarded cook-wear clothes Kiki had purchased over the years and never used. Today Howard wore a chef ’s coat, an apron, an oven mitt, several dishcloths tucked into his waistband and one tied in a jaunty fashion around his neck. An improbable quantity of flour covered all this. ‘Welcome! We’re cooking ,’ said Howard. He put his mitted fingers to his lips and then tapped his nose twice. ‘And drinking ,’ said Zora, removing the glass of red from his hand and taking it to the sink. Howard appreciated the rhythm and comedy of this move and pushed on in the same vein. ‘And how was your day, John Boy?’

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Howard’s e-mail in-box this morning was full of missives from outraged colleagues and students pledging their support. An army rushing to fight behind a general who could barely get on his horse. ‘It’s just a small question,’ said Victoria, shrinking a little from all the student eyes upon her. ‘I was just – ’ ‘No, go on, go on,’ said Howard, over her attempts to speak. ‘Just . . . what time is the class?’ Howard sensed the relief in the room. At least she hadn’t asked anything clever. He could tell that the class as a whole could not abide prettiness and cleverness. But she had not tried to be clever. And now they approved of her practicality. Every pen was poised. This was all they really wanted to know, after all. The facts, the time, the place. Vee too had her pen on the page and her head low, and now she flicked her eyes up to meet Howard’s, a glance somewhere between flirtation and expectancy. Lucky for Jerome, thought Howard, that he had finally agreed to go back to Brown. This girl was a dangerous commodity. And now Howard realized that he’d been looking at her so absorbedly he’d neglected to answer her question. ‘It’s three o’clock, Tuesday, in this room,’ said Smith from behind Howard. ‘The reading list is on the website, or you can find a copy of it in the cubbyhole outside Dr Belsey’s office. Anybody needs their study cards signed, bring ’em to me and ah’ll sign ’em. Thank you for coming, people.’ ‘Please,’ said Howard above the noise of scraping chairs and the packing of bags, ‘please only – only – put your names down if you’re seriously intending to take this class.’ ‘Jack, darling,’ said Claire, shaking her head, ‘you send these websites your shopping lists and they put them up. They’ll take anything .’ Jack retrieved the printouts from Claire and slipped them back into his drawer. He had tried reason and plea and rhetoric, and now he must introduce reality into the conversation. It was time,  On Beauty once again, to walk round the desk, perch on the end and cross one leg over the other. ‘Claire . . .’ ‘My God , what a piece of work that girl is!’ ‘Claire, I really can’t have you making those kind of . . .’ ‘Well, she is .’ ‘That’s as may be, but . . .’ ‘Jack, are you telling me I have to have her in my class?’ ‘Claire, Zora Belsey is a very good student. She’s an exceptional student, in fact. Now, she may not be Emily Dickinson . . .’

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  to my ill: behold how in a manner they foreshewed their own destined punishment when they prayed for the darkness to come. Sleep careless, dream that thou art in the hands of the merciful, for 1 will not hurt thee with thy sword or with any other weapon ; God forbid that I should make thee equal to my husband by a like death. But thy eyes shall fail thee still living, and thou shalt see no more save when thou dreamest: I will see to it that thou shalt think the death of thine enemy more sweet than thy life: of a surety thou shalt see no light, thou shalt lack the aid of a leader, thou shalt not have me as thou hopest, thou shalt have no delight of my marriage, thou shalt have no rest in the quiet of death, and yet living thou shalt have no joy, but wander between the light of day and the darkness of hell as an unsure image: thou shalt seek for the hand that pricked out thy eyes, yet shalt thou not know(the most grievous part in all calamity) of whom thou shouldst complain: I will make libation with the blood of thine eyes upon the grave of my husband, I will pacify his holy shade with these eyes of thine. But why dost thou gain respite of thy due torment through my delay? Perhaps thou dreamest that thou embracest me in thine arms to thine own ruin: leave off the darkness of sleep, and awake thou to receive a penal deprivation of light: lift up thy sightless face, regard thy vengeance and evil fortune, reckon thy misery : so pleaseth thine eyes to a chaste woman, so have the nuptial torches lightened thy couch, that thou shalt have the Furies to be women of thy bedchamber, blindness to be thy companion, and an everlasting prick of remorse to thy miserable conscience.’ « When she had prophesied in these words, she 365

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘Please, Claire . . . I need you to appreciate that I have been placed in an extremely invidious situation in which – ’ ‘ You’re in a situation – what about the situation you’re putting me in?’ ‘Claire, Claire – sit down for a moment, will you? I haven’t explained myself well, I see that. Sit down for one moment.’ Claire lowered herself slowly into her chair, tucking one leg nimbly underneath her bottom like a teenager. She blinked at him warily. ‘I looked at the boards today. Three of the names in your class I did not recognize.’ Claire Malcolm did a double-take at Jack French. Then she lifted her hands and brought them down hard on the arms of the chair. ‘And? What are you saying?’ ‘Who, for example,’ said Jack, glancing at a sheet of paper on his desk, ‘is Chantelle Williams?’  On Beauty ‘She’s a receptionist, Jack. For an optician, I believe. I don’t know which optician. What’s your point?’ ‘A receptionist . . .’ ‘She also happens to be one of the most exciting young female talents I’ve come across in years,’ announced Claire. ‘Claire, it still remains that she is not a student registered at this institution,’ said Jack quietly, neatly meeting hyperbole with sobriety. ‘And therefore not strictly speaking eligible for – ’ ‘Jack, I can’t believe we’re doing this . . . it was agreed three years ago that if I wanted to take on extra students, above and beyond my requirements, then that was under my discretion. There are a lot of talented kids in this town who don’t have the advantages of Zora Belsey – who can’t afford college, who can’t afford our summer school, who are looking at the army as their next best possibility, Jack, an army that’s presently fighting a war – kids who don’t – ’ ‘I am well aware,’ said Jack, a little tired of being lectured by highly strung women this morning, ‘of the educational situation for economically disadvantaged young people in New England – and you know I have always supported your sterling attempts . . .’ ‘Jack – ’ ‘. . . to offer your impressive abilities . . .’ ‘Jack, what are you saying?’ ‘. . . to young people who would not otherwise have these opportunities . . . but the bottom line here is that people are asking questions about the fairness of classes being open to non-Wellington – ’ ‘Who’s asking? English Department people?’ Jack sighed. ‘Quite a few people, Claire. And I redirect those questions. Have done for a while. But if Zora Belsey is successful in bringing a lot of unwelcome attention to your, shall we say, selective admissions process – then I don’t know if I will still be able to continue redirecting those questions.’

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Nabokov expands the dual allusion in Pale Fire . John Shade addresses “My dark Vanessa, Crimson-barred, my blest / My Admirable butterfly!…” (lines 270–271); and, in his note to these lines, Charles Kinbote quotes from Swift’s “Cadenus and Vanessa,” though he doesn’t identify it by name: “When, lo! Vanessa in her bloom / Advanced like Atalanta’s star.” He also alludes to “Vanessa” ’s actual name thusly: “ Van homrigh, Esther !” (p. 172)—thereby underscoring at least the alphabetical arrangement of Swift’s anagramour (let me laugh a little, too, gentlemen, as H.H. says here ). But in his succinct way, H.H. has already anticipated Kinbote (“van Ness”). A Red Admirable lands on Shade’s arm the minute before he is killed (see lines 993–995 and Kinbote’s note for them) and the insect appears in King, Queen, Knave just after Nabokov has withdrawn his omniscience (p. 44). In the final chapter of Speak, Memory Nabokov recalls having seen in a Paris park, just before the war, a live Red Admirable being promenaded on a leash of thread by a little girl; “there was some vaguely repulsive symbolism about her sullen sport,” he writes (p. 306). When Van Veen casually mentions Ada’s having pointed out “some accursed insect,” the offended heroine parenthetically and angrily adds, “Accursed? Accursed ? It was the newly described, fantastically rare vanessian, Nymphalis danaus Nab., orange-brown, with black-and-white foretips, mimicking, as its discoverer Professor Nabonidus of Babylon College, Nebraska, realized, not the Monarch butterfly directly, but the Monarch through the Viceroy, one of the Monarch’s best known imitators” (p. 158). See John Ray, Jr. . solipsism : a central word in Lolita . An epistemological theory that the self knows only its present state and is the only existent thing, and that “reality” is subjective; concern with the self at the expense of social relationships. See safely solipsized . plage : French; beach. chocolat glacé : French; in those days, an iced chocolate drink with whipped cream (today it means “chocolate ice cream”). red rocks : see Roches Roses and Aubrey McFate … devil of mine . lost pair of sunglasses : the sunglasses image connects Annabel and Lolita. H.H. first perceives her as his “Riviera love peering at me over dark glasses” (see Riviera love … over dark glasses ). See also Keys , p. 43 and p. 143n. point of possessing : for a comment on the “traumatic” nature of this experience, see natural climax . “My darling” echoes line 39 of “Annabel Lee” (see of my darling … my bride for the entire line, and Lo-lee-ta for the poem itself). Corfu : Greek island. C HAPTER 4 haze of stars : see Gray Star .

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Another version of the puritanical bullshit. Only you have a new twist to it. You think you’re a hedonist because you take off and run around with me. But it’s the bloody old work ethic all the same because you’re only thinking you’ll write about me. So it’s actually work, n’est-ce pas? You can fuck me and call it poetry. Pretty clever. You deceive yourself beautifully that way.” “You really are a great one for unloading two-bit analyses, aren’t you? A real television shrink.” Adrian laughed. “Look, ducks, I know about you from myself. Psychoanalysts play the same game. They’re just like writers. Everything’s at one remove, a case history, a study. Also, they’re terrified of death—just like poets. Doctors hate death: that’s why they go into medicine. And they have to stir things up all the time and keep bloody busy just to prove to themselves they’re not dead. I know your game because I play it myself. It’s not such a mystery as you think. You’re really quite transparent.” It infuriated me that he saw me more cynically than I saw myself. I always think I’m protecting myself against other people’s views of me by taking the most jaundiced view of myself possible. Then suddenly I realize that even this jaundiced view is self-flattering. When wounded, I lapse into high-school French: “Vous vous moquez de moi.” “You’re damned right I do. Look—you’re sitting here with me right now because your life is dishonest and your marriage either dead or dying or riddled with lies. The lies are of your own making. You have to bloody well save yourself. It’s your life you’re fucking up, not mine.” “I thought you said I wanted you to save me.” “You do. But I’m not going to be trapped like that. I’ll fail you in some major way and you’ll start to hate me worse than you hate your husband….” “I don’t hate my husband.” “Right. But he bores you—and that’s worse, isn’t it?” I didn’t answer. Now I was really depressed. The champagne was wearing off. “Why do you have to start converting me before you’ve even fucked me?” “Because it’s what you really want.” “Bullshit, Adrian. What I really want is to get laid. And leave my bloody mind alone.” But I knew I was lying. “Madam, if you want to get laid, then you’ll get laid.” He started the car. “I rather like calling you madam, you know.” But I had no diaphragm and he had no erection and by the time we finally made it to the pension, we were all wrung out from having gotten lost so many times. We lay on his bed and held each other. We examined each other’s nakedness with tenderness and amusement.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘ If we are to speak of explicit agendas, we might discuss the under-the-counter manner in which class admissions are organized here at Wellington – a policy that is a blatant corruption of the Affirmative Action bill (which, by the way, is itself a corruption) – whereby students who are NOT enrolled at this college are yet taught in classes here, by professors who, at their own ‘‘discretion’’ (as it is so disingenuously put), allow these ‘‘students’’ into their classes, choosing them over actual students better qualified than they – NOT because these young people meet the academic standards of Wellington, no, but because they are considered needy cases – as if it helps minorities to be pushed through an elite environment to which they are not yet suited. When the truth is that the liberal – as ever! – assumes there is benefit, only because doing so makes the liberal herself ,’ said Monty with mischievous emphasis, ‘feel good!’ Howard clapped his hands and looked to Jack French in exasperation. ‘Sorry – which case are we arguing now? Is there anything in this university that Professor Kipps is not on a crusade against?’  On Beauty Jack French looked distraughtly at the agenda notes Liddy had just passed him. ‘Umm, Howard is correct there, Montague – I understand you have a concern about class admissions but that issue comes fourth, I think you’ll find, on our agenda. If we could just stick with the . . . I suppose the question, as it has been framed by Howard, is: Will you give your text to the community?’ Monty pushed his chest up and out, and held his pocket-watch in his hand. ‘I will not.’ ‘Well, will you submit to putting it to the vote?’ ‘Dean French, with all due respect to your authority, I will not. No more than I would accept a vote on whether a man might be allowed to cut out my tongue – a vote is completely irrelevant in this context.’ Jack looked hopelessly at Howard. ‘Opinions from the floor?’ suggested exasperated Howard. ‘Yes . . .’ said Jack, with great relief. ‘Opinions from the floor? Elaine – did you want to say something?’ Professor Elaine Burchfield pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘Is Howard Belsey really suggesting,’ she said with patrician disappointment, ‘that Wellington is such a terribly delicate institution that it fears the normal cut and thrust of political debate within its halls? Is the liberal consciousness (which it pleases Professor Kipps to ridicule) really so very slight that it cannot survive a series of six lectures that come from a perspective other than its own? I find that prospect very alarming.’ Howard, glowing with anger now, addressed his answer to a high spot on the back wall. ‘I’m obviously not making myself clear. Professor Kipps is on record , alongside his ‘‘kindred spirit’’ Justice Scalia, denouncing homosexuality as an evil – ’

• From On Beauty (2005)

  For the first time in months, she got dressed without attention to anything else except the basic practical covering of her body. She didn’t do her hair. No make-up. No contact lenses. No heels. How much time she saved! How much more she would get done in this new life! She got into the Belsey family car and drove with hostile speed into town, cutting up other cars and swearing at innocent traffic signals. She parked illegally in a faculty space. It being a weekend, the department doors were locked. Liddy Cantalino buzzed her in. ‘Jack French?’ demanded Zora. ‘And good morning to you too, young lady,’ Liddy snapped back. ‘They’re all in his office.’ ‘All? Who?’ ‘Zora, dear, why don’t you go on in there and see for yourself ?’ For the very first time in a faculty building, Zora walked in without knocking. She was confronted with a bizarre composition of people: Jack French, Monty Kipps, Claire Malcolm and Erskine Jegede. All had taken up different poses of anxiety. Nobody was sitting, not even Jack. ‘Ah, Zora – come in,’ said Jack. Zora joined the standing party. She had no idea what it was all about, but she was not in any way nervous. She was still flying on fury, capable of anything. ‘What’s going on?’  on beauty and being wrong ‘I’m extremely sorry for dragging you out this morning,’ said Jack, ‘but it is an urgent matter and I did not feel it could wait until the end of spring break . . .’ Here Monty snorted derisively. ‘Or indeed even until Monday.’ ‘What’s going on?’ repeated Zora. ‘Well,’ said Jack, ‘it seems that last night, after everybody had left for the evening – at about  p.m. we think, although we’re looking at the possibility that one of our own cleaners was still here at a later point and did, in some capacity, aid whoever it was who – ’ ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Jack!’ cried Claire Malcolm. ‘I’m sorry – but Jesus Christ – let’s not spend all day here – I, for one, would like to get back to my holiday – Zora, do you know where Carl Thomas is?’ ‘Carl? No – why? What’s happened?’ Erskine, tired of having to pretend he was more panicked than he was, took a seat. ‘A painting,’ he explained, ‘was stolen from the Black Studies Department last night. A very valuable painting belonging to Professor Kipps.’ ‘I find out only now ,’ said Monty, his voice twice as loud as everybody else’s, ‘that one of the street-children of Dr Malcolm’s collection has been working three doors away from me for a month, a young man who evidently – ’ ‘Jack, I am not ,’ said Claire, as Erskine covered his eyes with his hand, ‘going to stand around being insulted by this man.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Calcabrina, furious at the trick, kept flying after him, desirous that the sinner might escape, to have a quarrel. And, when the barrator had disappeared, he turned his talons on his fellow, and was clutched with him above the ditch. But the other was indeed a sparrowhawk to claw him well; and both dropt down into the middle of the boiling pond. The heat at once unclutched them; but rise they could not, their wings were so beglued. Barbariccia with the rest lamenting, made four of them fly over to the other coast with all their drags; and most rapidly on this side, on that, they descended to the stand; they stretched their hooks towards the limed pair, who were already scalded within the crust; and we left them thus embroiled.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘Kiki . . .’ she began, her face as demure as can be managed at fifty-four, ‘the term isn’t figurative, you know. Not any more. When I said husband just then.’ ‘What are you talking about?’ said Kiki at the same moment that she realized the answer. ‘Husband. Warren is my husband. I said it earlier but you didn’t pick up. We got married. Isn’t it fabulous ?’ Claire’s tensile features pulled themselves tight with glee. ‘I thought something was going on with you – you seemed nervy. Married!’ ‘Completely and absolutely,’ confirmed Warren. ‘But you didn’t invite anybody or anything? When was this?’ ‘Two months ago! We just did it. You know what? I didn’t want anybody rolling their eyes about a couple of old birds like us getting hitched, so we didn’t invite anybody and there was no goddamn eye-rolling. Except Warren. He rolled his eyes because I dressed up as Salome´. Now is that something to roll your eyes about?’ Just before an oncoming lamp-post their little chain of three dissolved itself, and Claire and Warren merged into each other again. ‘ Claire , I wouldn’t have rolled my eyes, honey – you should have said something.’  On Beauty ‘It was utterly last minute, Keeks, really it was,’ said Warren. ‘You think I would have married this woman if I’d had time to think about it? She called me up and said it’s the birthday of St John the Baptist, let’s do it, and we did it.’ ‘Again, please,’ said Kiki, although this aspect of the couple, their locally celebrated ‘eccentricity’, was not really attractive to her. ‘So I have this Salome´ dress – red, sequinned, I knew when I saw it that it was my Salome´ dress, I bought it in Montreal. I wanted to get married in my Salome´ dress and take a man’s head with me. And, goddamn it, I did. And it’s such a sweet head,’ said Claire, pulling it gently towards her. ‘So full of facts,’ said Kiki. She wondered how many times this exact routine would be repeated to well-wishers in the coming weeks. She and Howard were just the same, especially when they had news. Each couple is its own vaudeville act. ‘ Yes ,’ said Claire, ‘so full of genuine facts . And I never had that before, someone who knew anything real at all . Apart from ‘‘art is truth’’ – you can’t move for people in this town who know that. Or think they know it.’ ‘Mom.’ Jerome, in all his gloomy Jeromeity, had joined them. The ill-pitched greetings that compassionate age sings to mysterious youth rang out; hair was almost tousled and then wisely not, the eternal unanswerable question was met with a new and horrible answer (‘I’m dropping out.’ ‘He means he’s taking a little time out.’).

• From On Beauty (2005)

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

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘Dr Belsey, if I may refer you to one of your own liberal lodestars, Jean-Paul Sartre: ‘‘We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are – that is the fact.’’ Now is it not you , Dr, who speaks of the instability of textual meaning? Is it not you , Dr, who speaks of the indeterminacy of all sign systems? How, then, can I possibly predict before I give my lectures how the ‘‘multivalency’’,’ said Monty, enunciating the word with obvious disgust, ‘of my own text will be received in the ‘‘heterogeneous consciousnesses’’ of my audience?’ said Monty, sighing heavily. ‘Your entire line of attack is a perfect model of my argument. You photocopy my article but you do not take the time to read it properly yourself. In that article I ask: ‘‘why is there one rule for the liberal intellectual and another rule entirely for his conservative colleague?’’ And I ask you now: why should I offer the text of my lectures to a committee of liberal interrogators and thus have my own – much vaunted in this very institution – right to free speech curtailed and threatened?’ ‘Oh, for fucks sake – ’ flashed Howard. Jack leaped from his chair. ‘Umm, Howard, I’m going to have to ask you to mind your p’s and q’s there.’ ‘No need, no need – I am not so delicate, Dean French. I was under no illusion that my colleague was a gentleman . . .’ ‘Look,’ said Howard, his face budding rouge, ‘what I want to know – ’ ‘Howard, please,’ said Monty scoldingly, ‘I did do you the courtesy of listening until you had finished. Thank you. Now: two years ago, at Wellington, in this great freedom-loving institution, a group of Muslim students requested the right to have a room given over to their daily prayers – a request Dr Belsey was instrumental in rebuffing, with the result that this group of Muslims is presently pursuing Wellington College through the courts – FOR THE  on beauty and being wrong RIGHT ,’ intoned Monty over Howard’s remonstrations, ‘ for the right to practise their faith – ’ ‘And of course your own defence of the Muslim faith is legendary,’ taunted Howard. Monty assumed a face of historical gravity. ‘I support any religious freedom against the threat of secular fascism.’ ‘Monty, you know as well as I do that that case has nothing to do with what we’re discussing today – this college has always maintained a policy of, of, non-religious activity – we do not discriminate – ’ ‘HA!’ ‘We do not discriminate, but all students are asked to pursue their religious interests outside of the confines of the university. But that case is an irrelevance today – what we’re discussing today is a cynical attempt to force upon our students what is basically an explicitly right-wing agenda disguised as a series of lectures on the – ’

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Now that everything had been put out of the way, I could dedicate myself freely to the main object of my visit to Ramsdale. In the methodical manner on which I have always prided myself, I had been keeping Clare Quilty’s face masked in my dark dungeon, where he was waiting for me to come with barber and priest: “Réveillez-vous, Laqueue, il est temps de mourir!” I have no time right now to discuss the mnemonics of physiognomization—I am on my way to his uncle and walking fast—but let me jot down this: I had preserved in the alcohol of a clouded memory the toad of a face. In the course of a few glimpses, I had noticed its slight resemblance to a cheery and rather repulsive wine dealer, a relative of mine in Switzerland. With his dumbbells and stinking tricot, and fat hairy arms, and bald patch, and pig-faced servant-concubine, he was on the whole a harmless old rascal. Too harmless, in fact, to be confused with my prey. In the state of mind I now found myself, I had lost contact with Trapp’s image. It had become completely engulfed by the face of Clare Quilty—as represented, with artistic precision, by an easeled photograph of him that stood on his uncle’s desk. In Beardsley, at the hands of charming Dr. Molnar, I had undergone a rather serious dental operation, retaining only a few upper and lower front teeth. The substitutes were dependent on a system of plates with an inconspicuous wire affair running along my upper gums. The whole arrangement was a masterpiece of comfort, and my canines were in perfect health. However, to garnish my secret purpose with a plausible pretext, I told Dr. Quilty that, in hope of alleviating facial neuralgia, I had decided to have all my teeth removed. What would a complete set of dentures cost? How long would the process take, assuming we fixed our first appointment for some time in November? Where was his famous nephew now? Would it be possible to have them all out in one dramatic session? A white-smocked, gray-haired man, with a crew cut and the big flat cheeks of a politician, Dr. Quilty perched on the corner of his desk, one foot dreamily and seductively rocking as he launched on a glorious long-range plan. He would first provide me with provisional plates until the gums settled. Then he would make me a permanent set. He would like to have a look at that mouth of mine. He wore perforated pied shoes. He had not visited with the rascal since 1946, but supposed he could be found at his ancestral home, Grimm Road, not far from Parkington. It was a noble dream. His foot rocked, his gaze was inspired. It would cost me around six hundred. He suggested he take measurements right away, and make the first set before starting operations. My mouth was to him a splendid cave full of priceless treasures, but I denied him entrance.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘We’re not arguing, honey,’ said Kiki and bent her body at the hips. She tipped her head forward and released her hair from its flame-coloured headwrap. She wore it in two thick ropes of plait that reached to her backside, like a ram’s unwound horns. Without looking up, she evened out each side of the material, threw her head back once more, spun the material twice round and retied it in exactly the same manner but tighter. Everything lifted an inch, and, with this new, authoritative face, she leaned on the table and turned to her children. ‘OK, show’s over. Zoor, there might be a few dollars in the pot by the cactus. Give them to Levi. If not, just lend him some and I’ll pay you back later. I’m a little short this month. OK. Go forth and learn. Anything. Anything at all.’ A few minutes later, with the door closed behind her children, Kiki turned to her husband with a thesis for a face, of which only Howard could know every line and reference. Just for the hell of it Howard smiled. In return he received nothing at all. Howard stopped smiling. If there was going to be a fight, no fool would bet on him. Kiki – whom Howard had once, twenty-eight years ago, thrown over his shoulder like a light roll of carpet, to be laid down, and laid upon, in their first house for the first time – was nowadays a solid two hundred and fifty pounds, and looked twenty years his junior. Her skin had that famous ethnic advantage of not wrinkling  kipps and belsey much, but, in Kiki’s case the weight gain had stretched it even more impressively. At fifty-two, her face was still a girl’s face. A beautiful tough-girl’s face. Now she crossed the room and pushed by him with such force that he was muscled into an adjacent rocking chair. Back at the kitchen table, she began violently to pack a bag with things she did not need to take to work. She spoke without looking at him. ‘You know what’s weird? Is that you can get someone who is a professor of one thing and then is just so intensely stupid about everything else? Consult the ABC of parenting, Howie. You’ll find that if you go about it this way, then the exact, but the exact opposite, of what you want to happen will happen. The exact opposite .’ ‘But the exact opposite of what I want,’ considered Howard, rocking in his chair, ‘is what always fucking happens.’ Kiki stopped what she was doing. ‘Right. Because you never get what you want. Your life is just an orgy of deprivation.’

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Levi kept flicking through his thousand songs. ‘You think we’re all peasants,’ said Choo, but without any sign of rancour, as if objectively interested in the proposition. ‘But we don’t all live in dumps like this. Felix lives in Wellington – no, you didn’t know that. Big house. His brother runs the taxis there. He saw you there.’ Levi knelt up, still with his back to Choo. He never could lie straight to someone’s face. ‘Well, that’s ’cos my uncle , see, he lives there . . . and, I like, I do small jobs for him, stuff around his yard and – ’ ‘I was there Tuesday,’ said Choo, ignoring him. ‘In the college .’ He treated this word like ink upon his tongue. ‘Fucking serving like a monkey . . . teacher becomes the servant. It’s painful! I can tell you, because I know.’ He thumped his breast. ‘It hurts in here! It’s fucking painful!’ He sat up straight suddenly. ‘I teach, I am a teacher, you know, in Haiti. That’s what I am. I teach in a high school. French literature and language.’ Levi whistled. ‘Bro, I hate French, man. We have to do that shit. I hate that.’ ‘And now,’ continued Choo, ‘my cousin says – come and do this, serve them one night, thirty dollars in the hand, swallow your pride! Wear a monkey suit and look a monkey and serve them their shrimps and their wine, the big white professors. We didn’t even get thirty dollars – we had to pay to dryclean our own uniforms! Which leaves twenty-two dollars!’ Choo passed Levi the joint. Once more Levi declined it. ‘How much do you think their professors get paid? How much?’ Levi said he didn’t know and it was true, he didn’t. All he knew was how hard it was to get even twenty bucks out of his own father. ‘And then they pay us in cents to serve them. The same old slavery. Nothing changes. Fuck this, man,’ said Choo, but it sounded  On Beauty harmless and comic in his accent. ‘Enough American music. Put some Marley on! I want to hear some Marley!’ Levi obliged with the only Marley he had – a ‘Best Of ’ collection copied off his mother’s CD. ‘And I saw him,’ said Choo, kneeling and staring past Levi, his bloodshot eyes acute and fixed upon some demon not in this room. ‘Like a lord at the table. Sir Montague Kipps . . .’ Choo spat on his own floor. Levi, for whom cleanliness had long superseded godliness, was repelled.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Now the modern pastors must needs be buttressed on this side and on that, and have one to lead them on, so heavy are they, and one to hoist behind. With their mantles they o’erspread their palfreys, so that two beasts travel beneath one hide; O patience, that so much endureth!” At this voice I saw more flames from step to step descend and whirl, and every whirl made them more beauteous. Around this one they came and stayed themselves and raised a cry of so deep sound that here it may not find similitude; nor did I understand it, so vanquished me the thunder.