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 Case for God (2009)

  Galileo was not a lone voice; he belonged to a “family” of Catholic progressives who supported his Copernican ideas but constantly advised him not to tangle with the Vatican authorities.77 And yet despite his conviction that theology and science were entirely separate disciplines, he seemed perversely intent on reconciling his discoveries with scripture. In his Letters on Sunspots (1612), he produced biblical quotations proving that his theory was “most agreeable to the truths of holy writ”78 and was furious when the papal censors insisted that he delete them. When opposed, Galileo could be just as scornful and impatiently self-righteous as any cardinal. But why, given his clearly stated views, had he included the quotations in the first place? Hypothetical thinking had been acceptable to Copernicus and would continue to be essential to scientific procedure. Was Galileo’s insistence on absolute certainty another sign of the dogmatism of the age? In 1615, the learned Carmelite friar Paolo Foscarini arrived in Rome to make a calm but forceful plea for the heliocentric universe. In the Bible, Foscarini argued, God revealed only those truths that could not be discovered by natural reason and had left the rest to human beings. When Bellarmine read his treatise, he replied that as far as he knew there was no definitive proof of the Copernican theory. If there were, it would be a different matter: “Then we would have to use great care in explaining the passages of scripture that seem contrary. … But I cannot believe that there is such a demonstration until someone shows it to me.”79 Galileo immediately pointed out that the Council of Trent upheld the authority of the Bible only in matters of faith and morals and that heliocentric theory fell under neither category. It did not seem to have occurred to him that it was probably unwise to correct Bellarmine, the principal spokesman of reformed Catholicism, about the Council’s rulings. He then further muddied the waters by overstating his case, arguing that his experiments had provided the definitive proof that Bellarmine declared to be missing.80 But this was not the case: Galileo’s observations on sunspots, the phases of Venus, and the tides were suggestive but not conclusive. On both sides, there was a clash of misplaced certainty.81

• From How God Became King (2012)

  The bare fact of the cross was enough; almost, for some of Bultmann’s followers, more than enough. It would therefore falsify the essence of Christian faith to suppose that the evangelists were telling us about things that actually happened as though those things mattered . It has become an either/or question: either this story is about Jesus, or it is about the early church. A story about Jesus doing something on the sabbath and making a comment about it is thus assumed to reflect not so much an actual incident in the life of Jesus, but a sabbath controversy in the early church (not that we have much other evidence of controversy on this topic). The sound from this speaker has therefore been turned up to deafening point. Some people haven’t been able to hear anything else. Many readers, not least in Britain and America, who were not particularly up on existentialist Lutheranism, but were susceptible to the mood of the times—the “spirit of the age”—found this idea very congenial. Of course Jesus didn’t really walk on water; of course he didn’t really say “I and the Father are one”; of course he didn’t rise bodily from the dead, but what marvelous expressions of early faith! Now how can we, who know these things didn’t happen, express our faith in appropriate terms for today? These prejudgments have simply falsified the entire gospel tradition. This isn’t a matter of “proving” that this or that element in the gospels is in fact historically reliable. History has, in any case, a type of “proof” different from that in many other disciplines. Science studies repeatable phenomena; an experiment can be replicated on the other side of the world. History studies unrepeatable phenomena; you cannot step twice into the same river. “Proof” in history must therefore reside in the balance of probabilities, not in the repeated experiment or the analytical mathematical truth. It’s more a matter of recognizing that the gospels were indeed intended as “biographies” in some sense or other, even though they are biographies that carry all kinds of other stories, as we are seeing in this part of the present book. And my judgment as a historian is that, once we think our way into the world of Jesus’s day, they convey the mood and flavor of the times and of its toweringly central character with remarkable precision.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Ladies, forgive the next bit. I am a rude man. I cannot gloss over the facts. As soon as she had mounted the tree, Damian pulled up her smock and fucked her. When Pluto saw that this great wrong was being wreaked upon January, he gave back the old knight his sight. It was better than it had been before and, of course, the first thing he wanted to look upon was his lovely wife. So he glanced lovingly up at the tree. Whereupon he saw Damian thrusting away. I will say no more about it. It is not polite. I have already said enough. So January sets up a roaring and a crying, just like a mother who has lost her only child. ‘Help!’ he shouted. ‘Harrow! Havoc! Alarm! What are you doing, you little whore?’ ‘What is the matter with you, sir?’ May replied demurely. ‘Have patience. Be reasonable. I have just cured your blindness. As God is my witness, I am not lying. I was told that there was one way to bring back your sight - if I were to struggle with a man up a tree, you would be healed. That’s the truth. God knows my intentions were honest.’ ‘Struggle?’ January replied. ‘I saw his cock inside you! I hope to God that you both die of shame! He fucked you. I saw it with my own eyes. May I be hanged otherwise!’ ‘It seems that my medicine did not work,’ May said. ‘If you really could see, you would not be using these words to me. You have a glimpse, or squint, and not perfect sight.’ ‘I can see as well as I ever could, thank God. Both of my eyes were open. I am sure - I thought - that he was fucking you.’ ‘You are still dazed, good husband. You are imagining things. And that is all the thanks I get for curing your blindness. I try to be kind, and then -’ She burst into tears. ‘Now, wife,’ January said, ‘let us forget all about it. Come down from the pear tree. If I have slandered you, then I am well punished for it by your tears. I really did believe that I saw Damian having sex with you. On my father’s soul I believe that I saw your smock against his chest.’

• From The Case for God (2009)

  The hierarchy was equally disturbed by these new theories. Immediately after the publication of Essays and Reviews, a letter to The Times, cosigned by the Archbishop of Canterbury and twenty-five other bishops, threatened to bring the authors to the ecclesiastical courts. Two were indeed tried for heresy, convicted (though the ruling was later overturned), and lost their posts, and Jowett was temporarily suspended from clerical duties. Bishops, theologians, and professors collaborated on major symposia to counter Essays and Reviews, and, in an unlikely alliance, Anglo-Catholics joined forces with Evangelicals in a statement that affirmed the divine inspiration of the Bible. Seven hundred seventeen scientists (of minor status) also signed a strongly worded protest, and some of the signatories established the Victoria Institute to defend the literal truth of scripture.51 The more progressive theologians who adopted the new historical-critical method often found that their staunchest supporters were scientists who, like themselves, were at the cutting edge of their field.52 When, for example, John William Colenso (1814–83), missionary bishop of Natal, was ostracized for his critical study of the Pentateuch, Lyell introduced him to his club and gave him financial help and the two became firm friends. When the Reverend Frederic William Farrar (1831–1903) wrote an article on the Flood, arguing, on evidence provided by the Higher Criticism and geological science, that the deluge had not in fact covered the entire earth, his essay was rejected by the editors of William Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible. But Darwin supported Farrar’s candidacy for the Royal Society, and Farrar was one of the bearers of Darwin’s coffin and preached a moving eulogy beside his grave.53 In the United States, the more liberal Christians were open to the Higher Criticism. Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87), Lyman’s son, believed that doctrine and belief should take second place to charitable work and argued that it was unchristian to penalize somebody for holding a different theological opinion. The liberals were also willing to “christen” Darwinism, arguing that God was at work in the process of natural selection and that humanity was gradually evolving to a greater spiritual perfection: soon men and women would find that no gulf separated them from God and that they were able to live at peace with one another. But a rift was developing between the liberals and conservatives. In dedicated opposition to the Higher Criticism, Charles Hodge insisted that every single word of the Bible was divinely inspired and infallibly true. His son Archibald wrote a classic defense of the literal truth of the Bible with his younger colleague Benjamin Warfield. All the stories and statements of the Bible were “absolutely errorless and binding for faith and obedience.” Everything in scripture was unqualified “truth to the facts.”54

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  foundations. The pavement is not laid. Not a tile has been put in place. We owe forty pounds alone for building materials. Can you believe it? So help us, Thomas, in the name of He who harrowed hell! Otherwise we will have to sell our books. If we cannot preach, then the whole world will suffer. To take us from our pulpits and our preaching crosses will be to take the sun out of the sky. I am being serious. Who can preach and do good works as we can? We are not some novelty. There have been friars around since the time of Elijah. And that was a very long time ago. There are records mentioning us. I need your charity, Thomas! For God’s sake, charity!’ And at that the friar fell down upon his knees, and crossed himself. Thomas himself was already in a very bad temper. He realized well enough that the friar was full of shit. He was a liar and a hypocrite. If he had had the strength, he would have tossed him into the fire. ‘I can only give you,’ he said, ‘what I possess on my person now. Did you say that I had become a lay brother?’ ‘Yes. Of course. I have brought the letter of fraternity with me. I was going to give it to your wife for safe-keeping.’ ‘That is good. Thank you. I will make a donation to your convent, while I still live. You will hold it in your hand. I promise you. But there is one condition. You have to swear to me that every other friar in your convent has an equal share of what I am about to give you. Swear to that, on your holy brotherhood, without cavil or hesitation.’ ‘I swear it,’ the friar replied, ‘on the blood and bones of Christ.’ He shook hands with Thomas. ‘You can have trust in me.’ ‘All right then,’ Thomas said. ‘Just put your hand down my back. Down there. If you grope just behind my buttocks, you will find something that I have hidden away for your benefit.’ ‘Aha,’ the friar thought. ‘This is going with me. This is my prize.’ So he plunged his hand under the sheets and started feeling the man’s arse to find some treasure. He put his fingers up his cleft in case there was a small package. When Thomas felt the fingers of the friar groping around his bum, he suddenly let out a great fart. A farmhorse, pulling a cart, could not have let out a greater fart. A ploughman’s ox could not have made a smellier one. The noise was terrific. Friar John was so startled that he jumped up. ‘You bastard!’ he shouted. ‘You did that on purpose, didn’t you! God help you! You’ll pay for that fart, I promise you! Just you wait!’ The servants of the house, hearing the uproar, came scurrying into the room and chased out the friar.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  ‘“And then you say that a woman’s love is nothing but hell on earth, a piece of barren land without water. You compare it to wild fire; it burns out of control; the more it consumes in flame, the more it wishes to destroy. Then you change your metaphor. You compare the poor wife to a worm eating its way up a tree; she gets hold of her husband’s vital parts, and eventually pulls him down. All husbands are supposed to know this, are they? Old dotard. Goat. Wait till I get my hands on you.” ‘And that, in a nutshell, is the way I talked to my five husbands. I really flattened them. I swore that they were drunk when they accused me of anything. I got dear Johnny and my maid to back me up. Oh Lord, the amount of trouble I caused them! And, to tell you the truth, they were quite innocent. I was like a filly. I could bite and whinny. I would scold them when I was really in the wrong. Otherwise I would have got the worst of it. That could not be allowed. The first one who comes to the mill is the first one to get bread. I called foul first. So I won the battle. They were quite ready to beg forgiveness for sins they had never committed. I accused them of having affairs with women, when they were so ill that they could hardly stand. ‘Yet they put up with it. They really believed that I complained so much because, deep down, I loved them. Oh, I used to say, I go out at night because I want to check up on all the women you are screwing. With that excuse, I had quite a lot of fun myself. Women are born with these skills, you see. God gave us the gift of weeping and trimming and deceiving. I have been doing it all my life and, if I am allowed to boast, I must say that I managed to get the better of all of my husbands. Whether it was by trick or force, by nagging or complaining, I had the mastery. They got the worst of it in bed, of course. That’s where I really gave them hell. If I felt their hands reaching out for me, I threatened to make a quick exit - unless, that is, they paid me some form of ransom. Once they had paid up, I let them do whatever they liked. I wasn’t particular.

• From City of Night (1963)

  The two poised malebodies hurl themselves against each other, grapple, separate, lock for a long motionless moment as if in passion. The blond boy staggered back, a bloody slit at his temple. The blackhaired youngman stands looking down in bewilderment at his own hand, ripped at the thumb and the finger so that it opened like the webbed foot of a duck. “Killim!” the girl screamed savagely at the dark one. Someone from the Bourbon House rushed out shouting: “Police! Police!” Like a stone scattering birds, that hollered word disbands the group quickly. People dart into doors, cross the street “Bring him with you,” an older man says peremptorily to me and another youngman who has witnessed the fight, and who, minutes earlier, had been with me and the blond boy at Les Petits bar. We hold the blond boy, the blood from his temple creating a growing dark-crimson flower on his white shirt. As quickly as we can move him—past the startled eyes of tourists as they dodge to one side to avoid Contamination—we turn into Royal, where the man who has asked us to follow him has already called a cab. Along the trellised balconied houses, the taxi flees from the afternoon, into the protective custody of the approaching night The youngman holding the blond one, who threatens to pass out at any moment (the older man sits in front, staring straight ahead; the driver is predictably unconcerned), is saying Toughly to me: “That dirty motherin bastard, we gonna come back and git him!”—asking me would we or wouldnt we kill the son of a bitch who had hit our buddy with a stick—although our buddy—the blond boy, whom both of us had met minutes earlier at Les Petits bar (all three of us with the same score), had done nothing but come on to the black-haired-youngman’s girlfriend; and she, sensing the possible conflict (easily brought into play in any hustling bar by the necessity of the hustler to assert his masculinity with a girl—any girl, any woman) and instigating the scene connivingly (by winking at us as the darkhaired youngman embraced her), had told her boyfriend that the blondhaired boy had leaned toward her as if to kiss her. On the street the fight had occurred. Somewhere beyond the Quarter, the taxi stopped before what looks like a boarded-up store, with black-painted windows. The man pays, we enter the building through an unlocked side door. Inside, the large room is dark, like a cell. Pushed against the walls are tables, chairs upturned on them. A couple of booths. Dark, smeared, ugly patches on the wall behind a bar without stools indicate that several panels of mirrors have been removed. Only one grayish-amber panel, smashed in the middle creating a glassy spider web, remained. A light is on in a room beyond the door.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  25 But the new atheists will have none of this, and in his somewhat immoderate way, Dawkins denounces Gould as a quisling. They adhere to a hard-line form of scientific naturalism that mirrors the fundamentalism on which they base their critique: atheism is always a rejection of and parasitically dependent on a particular form of theism. The work of the new atheists has been exhaustively criticized, notably by John F. Haught, Alister McGrath, and John Cornwell. 26 Like all religious fundamentalists, the new atheists believe that they alone are in possession of truth; like Christian fundamentalists, they read scripture in an entirely literal manner and seem never to have heard of the long tradition of allegoric or Talmudic interpretation or indeed of the Higher Criticism. Harris seems to imagine that biblical inspiration means that the Bible was actually “written by God.” 27 Hitchens assumes that faith is entirely dependent upon a literal reading of the Bible, and that, for example, the discrepancies in the gospel infancy narratives prove the falsity of Christianity: “Either the gospels are in some sense literal truth, or the whole thing is essentially a fraud and perhaps a moral one at that.” 28 Like Protestant fundamentalists, Dawkins has a simplistic view of the moral teaching of the Bible, taking it for granted that its chief purpose is to issue clear rules of conduct and provide us with “role models,” which, not surprisingly, he finds lamentably inadequate. 29 He also presumes that since the Bible claims to be inspired by God it must also provide scientific information. Dawkins’s only point of disagreement with the Protestant fundamentalists is that he finds the Bible unreliable about science while they do not. It is not surprising that Dawkins is incensed with American creationists who are campaigning against the teaching of evolution, and the proponents of a new, quasi-scientific philosophy that has tried to revive the theory of intelligent design (ID). These include Philip E. Johnson, professor of law at Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial (1991); the biochemist Michael Behe, author of Darwin’s Black Box (1996); and the philosopher William Dembski, author of The Design Inference (1998). These theists do not all posit God as the Designer, but they do argue that ID is a viable alternative to Darwinism and cite a supernatural agency in creation as if it were scientific evidence. But as Dennett points out, the ID theorists have not devised any experiments or made any empirical observations that challenge modern evolutionary thinking. ID, he concludes, is therefore not science.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Paul Tillich (1886–1965) was born in Prussia and served as an army chaplain in the trenches during the First World War, after which he suffered two major breakdowns. Later he became a professor of theology at the University of Frankfurt but was expelled by the Nazis in 1933 and emigrated to the United States. He saw the modern God as an idolatry that human beings must leave behind. The concept of a “Personal God,” interfering with natural events, or being “an independent cause of natural events” makes God a natural object beside others, an object among others, a being among beings, maybe the highest, but nevertheless, a being. This indeed is not only the destruction of the physical system but even more the destruction of any meaningful idea of God. 59 A God who interfered with human freedom was a tyrant, not so different from the human tyrants who had wrought such havoc in recent history. A God envisaged as a person in a world of his own, an “ego” relating to a “thou,” was simply a being. Even the Supreme Being was just another being, the final item in the series. It was, Tillich insisted, an “idol,” a human construction that had become absolute. As recent history had shown, human beings were chronically predisposed to idolatry. The “idea that the human mind is a perpetual manufacturer of idols is one of the deepest things which can be said about our thinking of God,” Tillich remarked. “Even orthodox theology is nothing other than idolatry.” 60 An atheism that passionately rejected a God that had been reduced to a mere being was a religious act. For centuries, symbols such as “God” or “providence” enabled people to look through the ebb and flow of temporal life to glimpse Being itself. This helped them to endure the terror of life and the horror of death, but now, Tillich argued, many had forgotten how to interpret the old symbolism and regarded it as purely factual. Hence, these symbols had become opaque; transcendence no longer shone through them. When this happened they died and lost their power, so when we spoke of these symbols in a literal manner, we made statements that were inaccurate and untrue. That was why, like so many premodern theologians, Tillich could state without qualification: “God does not exist. He is being itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore to argue that God exists is to deny him.” 61 This was not, as many of his contemporaries believed, an atheistic statement: We can no longer speak of God easily to anybody, because he will immediately question: “Does God exist?”

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Pluto sat down upon a green sward of turf, in the middle of the walled garden, and addressed his queen. ‘My wife, no one will disagree with me. Experience teaches us every day that women are treacherous towards men. I could tell you a million stories about their frailty and fickleness. Oh Solomon, wisest and wealthiest of all, winner of human glory, what reasonable person could fail to note and remember your words? He was praising the goodness of humankind, observing that “I have found one man among a thousand. But, among women, I have found none.” So said King Solomon, knowing full well the wickedness of the female sex. Jesus of Syrak, author of Ecclesiasticus, rarely speaks of you with reverence. May wild fire cover you! May pestilence fall upon your bones! Do you see what is happening now? This honourable knight, old and blind as he is, is about to be cuckolded by his own servant. Look where the lecherous bastard is hiding in the pear tree. I now decree, of my majesty, that sight will be restored to this worthy old man. His eyes will open at the moment his wife betrays him. Then he will know her wickedness, to the great shame of her and of other harlots.’ ‘Oh will you?’ Proserpina was very sharp. ‘Is that what you intend to do? By the soul of my grandfather, great Saturn, I swear that I will give the woman a sufficient answer to him. I will help all other women, too, who are accused. If they are found in any sin, I will ensure that they put on a bold face and give a good excuse. They will bear down their accusers. None of them will die for lack of a retort. Even if the man sees the offence with his own eyes, yet the woman will face it out boldly. She will weep and swear and bully until she wins the argument. You men are as gullible as geese. What do your so-called authorities matter to me? I know well enough that this Jew, this Solomon, discovered plenty of fools among women. He may not have come across a good woman, but other men have found women to be true and faithful and virtuous. What about all those good Christian women who proved their constancy with martyrdom? The Roman annals are filled with stories of faithful wives. Keep your temper, dear husband. I will explain to you what Solomon meant when he said that he could find no good woman. I will interpret. He meant that supreme goodness lies only in God and that all flesh, male or female, is frail.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  ‘Stop, stop.’ Harry Bailey stood up in his saddle. ‘If that was the introduction, I hate to think what the rest will be like. And I am tired of stories about patient wives. They do not exist. Take my wife, for instance. Go on. Take her. She is as patient as a mad bull. When I chastise my servants, she comes out with a great wooden stick and urges me on. “Go on,” she says. “Beat the shit out of them! Break every bone in their worthless bodies!” If by any chance one of our neighbours fails to greet her in church, or slights her in some other way, she makes me pay for it when we get home. “You fool! You coward!” she shouts at me, all the time waving her fists near my face. “You can’t even defend your wife against insults. I should be the man around the house. Here. You can have my distaff and go spin a shift.” She can nag me like this all day long. “It is a shame,” she says, “that I should have married a milksop rather than a man. You have about as much spine as a worm. Anyone can walk over you. If you cannot stand up for your wife’s rights, then you do not stand for anything.” ‘So it goes on, day after day, unless I choose to make a fight of it. But what’s the point? I just leave the house. Otherwise I would work myself into a state of madness. She makes me so wild that - I swear to God - she will make me kill somebody one of these days. I am a dangerous man when I have a knife in my hand. It is true that I run away from her. But she has huge arms, and strong wrists, as anyone who has crossed her will know. Anyway, enough of her.’ [image file=images/ackr_9781101155639_oeb_011_r1.jpg] Our Host then turned to the Monk. ‘My lord,’ he said, ‘God be with you. It is your turn to tell a story. Look, we are already coming up to Rochester. It is time for you to ride forward and speak. But in truth I don’t know your name. What shall I call you? John? Or Thomas? Alban, perhaps? That’s a good monkish name. And what house do you come from, sir? Are you from Selby or from Peterborough? Your skin is very fair and very soft. You are not used to hard labour. And you are not likely to be a penitent or a flagellant.

• From City of Night (1963)

  Neil raised his eyebrows in gigantic indignation. His authoritative pronouncement is being torpedoed. Hes been talking down to me, explaining things as if I were a potential convert—“opening the door” for me. In my having gone as far as I have into his world—by putting on his costumes and going through the poses of violence—he thinks he senses, inchoate, similar cravings in me.... But how, I keep wondering, does he rationalize his talk of supremacy with his sexual subservience? “At any rate,” Neil tries to go on, “it will be the only movement toward the justification—” “—of Mamma Nature,” Carl says, like an impudent student. He giggles sillily. “Carl!” Neil says querulously, “dont interrupt me! Im talking seriously!” ... In his imperial tone again: “There are the weak and there are the strong. Pain is the natural inclination: The inflicting of pain—...” “And yet you play the masochist?” Carl asks the question for me. Visibly cringing, Neil blurts: “Ive explained that to you before!... Seduction! I have to show The Way of Strength—so that The Movement will continue. Masochists—sadists—even people like you, Carl!—they’ll bring new converts to create that Glorious Army, of which I—” (He expanded his chest, the shirt protested, he exhaled.) “—of which I will be: The Leader! Then—and only then—can I assume my Natural Role!” He calmed down, mopping his perspiring brow with a black handkerchief. “In my experiments—naturally—I have to play many parts. I will not always be the—the—” he blustered, and then he came out with the wrong word, which he realized the moment he had uttered it: “—the low man,” he finished. His look mellowed. “Will you have some wine?” he asked me. “It’s very good.” “No, thank you.” “Hummm”... He became suddenly aware that his costume had become quite hopelessly disarrayed. Urgently, he tried to arrange it, tucking it here, smoothing it out there. One thing would go in, another would pop out. He gave up with a loud sigh of relief. “Still—” he struggled intrepidly once again to come back philosophically, “youll have to admit, Carl, that even the great writers—Dostoevsky, for instance—why, Dostoevsky even went so far as to condone murder—he—... why, in—...” “Re!-dem!-shun!” Carl shouted, still melodramatically mimicking Neil’s previous tones. “In Dostoevsky, theres always re-dem-shun at: The End!” He laughed uproariously. “Well,” said Neil, eyeing him meanly, “you may think so.... And, well, I can see that theres no use trying to carry on a Serious Discussion when youre drunk, Carl. And I dont really see why every time youve been drinking, you come over here. Everytime—...” “You dont see why?” Carl asked. “Well,” Neil said, the authoritativeness vanishing as he laughs very loud, shrugs his shoulders in a gesture that is now becoming for me typical of him (as he always does, I notice, when he feels trapped or ridiculous), “if you want to come over when youre drunk, well, whu-I NOT?”

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  ‘Traitor!’ he screamed at it. ‘With the tongue of a scorpion, not of a bird, you have destroyed my happiness! Damned is the day when I was born. I wish I were dead. And my dear wife? You were the source of all my bliss. You were always true and faithful to me, I am sure of that. Now you are lying here dead in front of me. You were innocent, weren’t you? How could I have been so blind, so stupid? How could I have committed such a crime against an innocent and virtuous woman? What was I thinking? My senseless anger has struck down a blameless victim. Distrust has destroyed us both. Every man, beware of haste. Believe nothing without strong evidence. Do not strike before you know the truth. Consider very carefully what you are doing. Anger and suspicion are not enough. They lead you into the dark. That is why I, Phoebus Apollo, now wish to kill myself.’ Then he turned to the crow. ‘Villain! False bird! You used to sing sweeter than a nightingale. You will never sing again. These fine white feathers will turn to black. You will be dumb, unable to speak, for the whole span of your life. That is how traitors are punished. You and your offspring will be black for ever. Your breed will be silent, except when you croak in warning of a storm. Your cry will remind the world of wind and rain. That is your punishment for the death of my wife.’ Phoebus reached into the cage and pulled out all of the bird’s white feathers one by one. Then he struck it dumb, depriving it of speech and song, before he drove it out of the house. May the fiend take the bird. And that is why, ladies and gentlemen, all crows are black. So take heed of this story and remember to think before you speak. Guard your tongue. Never tell a man that his wife has been unfaithful to him. Whether you are right or wrong, he will hate you for it. According to eminent scholars, Solomon had learned discretion at an early age. But, as I said, I am not a learned man. My mother is my real teacher. Once she said to me, ‘Son, for God’s sake think of the crow. Curb your tongue and keep your friends. A loose tongue is more destructive than the devil. You can cross yourself to ward off the foul fiend.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  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 this wrong. Let me have a go. I do feel sorry for you, too, sweating like a pig. Here. Take my handkerchief. Dry your face.’ While the priest was wiping his eyes, the canon quickly slipped the coal into the middle of the crucible. It was soon burning away merrily, just like all the others.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  The Miller was coming up behind, half on and half off his horse. He was so drunk that he could scarcely keep his saddle. They say of a drunken man that he has seen the devil. The Miller was pale enough. He did not have the courtesy to doff his hood or his hat, or wait for anyone else to speak. In a voice as loud as that of Pilate on the pageant stage, he cried out to our Host. ‘By the blood and bones of Christ, Harry,’ he shouted, ‘I have a noble story to tell. It will beat the Knight by a mile.’ Then he burped. Harry could see that he was drunk, and tried to calm him down. ‘Wait a little, Robin,’ he said. ‘Let someone else tell the next story, dear friend, and you can tell yours later. We have to arrange these things properly.’ ‘By God’s soul I will not. I will speak now. Or I will go my own way without you all.’ ‘In the devil’s name speak then,’ Harry replied. ‘You are a fool. You left your wits in a dish of ale.’ ‘Listen to me, all of you,’ the Miller said. ‘I admit that I am drunk. There is no point in denying it. So if I swear, or get my words mixed up, blame it on good Southwark beer. But this is it. This is the point. I want to tell you the story of a carpenter and his wife, and how a young scholar got the better of the carpenter. If you know what I mean.’ The Reeve then angrily interrupted him. ‘That’s enough. Stop spouting all this lewd nonsense. Slurring your words. It is sinful and foolish to injure the reputation of any man, and to bring wives into disrepute. Why damage the good folk? There are plenty of other things to talk about.’ The drunken Miller answered him at once. ‘Oswald, dear brother,’ he said. ‘You know the old saying. He who has no wife cannot be a cuckold. I am not saying you are one of them. I don’t know. In any case there are plenty of good wives. I would say, if you were asking, that there were a thousand good to one bad. You should know as much yourself. Unless you’re completely mad. So why are you so angry with my story? I have a wife, just the same as you. I swear on all I hold sacred that she has been faithful to me. I swear - let me think, I swear on my oxen - that I am not a cuckold. At least I hope I am not. No husband should want to know the secrets of God or the secrets of his wife. As long as he can graze on God’s plenty, in the shape of a female body, he should not bother about anything else.’

• From City of Night (1963)

  Thrown suddenly off balance, the queen blurted: “He split!—with all that money we been making!” And now shes genuinely shaken. Realizing, quickly, that shes trapped herself clearly, she excuses herself with enormous courtesy and slithers into the kitchen. She is now talking to the youngman still eating there. “Screwed-up world without laws!” Sylvia muttered disgustedly to herself. “Queens, hustlers, fairies—and me!” Suddenly angry, her words accused me harshly: “All of you!—guys like you—and that kid with the gashed head—what the hell are you trying to prove? Why, especially—....?” I was glad she stopped the uncomfortable words—but she had looked at me as if actually expecting an answer to the question that hadnt been asked. Then she reverted to what she had begun to say: “But even in a world without laws—and mostly, hell, we all know it—mostly it’s lawless because it’s a scene—... a scene people shun, are... afraid of, dont even want to know exists—even in that kind of world—well, Jesus, Holy, Christ—youve got to have some kind of—hell, yes—decency—some kind of rules. In my bar, I make those rules. And I dont give a damn who gets bugged and doesnt come back. Hell, I know everything that goes on. I watch it every day: scores coming in looking for youngmen. Some of them try to impress the hustlers with how Rich they are. So they end up clipped. That doesnt bug me. That kind of score asks for it.” She had begun with the familiar bravado, but it had faded quickly, and she dropped her eyes, unable to face me even in the darkness. “But if a hustler in my bar gets treated decently by a score (and I know most of the scores, too),” she went on, “if he agrees to what hes going to get paid—and exactly for what—and then I hear he clipped the score,” she warned, “then, God damn it, hes gonna answer to me or he doesnt come back. The same with the queens and their daddies.... Theres got to be some kind of morality!” she insisted. “Not the bull they teach you in Sunday-school. I mean; just living in the world you find yourself in—with its own rules, considering everything—yes—but theres got to be rules!” She stared into the empty bar, at the shattered mirror. Yes, it was exactly as if she had been clarifying something, rather unconvincingly, for herself—speaking words shes probably spoken to others many times, memorized now—as if she were torn between a compulsion to understand, to accept—and an innate tendency to reject.... And I wonder to what extent she really believes she can impose rules on the flagrant anarchy. “Why the hell did you come to New Orleans?” she asked me tiredly, as if shes used to getting an inadequate answer. “For the Carnival,” I told her simply. “And something else,” she said to herself. “Beyond the parades and—... the rest.” “I guess youre right,” I admitted uneasily.

• From We Were Here (2011)

  WE WERE HERE CaptionMax Page 6 3/23/2011 dave’s 1:12:27 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on billboard) Sweat it Out at 330 Ritch St. Club San Francisco 1:12:28 PAUL (VO/ON) Part of it, you’re having sex to have fun. Part of it, you’re having sex to find love. Part of it you’re having sex to uh, uh, to- to rebel against um, the people who said you couldn’t have sex. All of America was feeling very confident that you could be much more sexual, and that was okay. Venereal diseases and unwanted pregnancies, it’s all curable with a shot or a pill or something to that effect. 1:13:01 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on newspaper) City Hall Murders MOSCONE, MILK SLAIN --DAN WHITE IS HELD San Francisco Chronicle Mayor Was Hit 4 Times 1:13:07 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on newspaper) VERDICT ON DAN WHITE San Francisco Chronicle It’s Voluntary Manslaughter --Maximum Penalty 8 Years 1:13:08 PAUL (VO) (CONT’D) It’s May of nineteen seventy-nine, and the verdict has come down, a verdict on Dan White for the murder of Harvey Milk, and we’re all at City Hall protesting. There’s this enormous rage. Thousands of people arrive. The police attack. We’re tear-gassed, we’re beaten. Police cars are burned. So this is not a community that’s feeling really good about the political establishment going into (laughs) the nineteen eighties. The next night is Harvey’s birthday party. 1:13:34 ON-SCREEN TEXT HAPPY BIRTHDAY

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  The miller and his wife needed no sleeping draught. That’s for sure. He had drunk so much ale that he was gurgling and belching in his sleep like a horse; he kept on farting, too. His wife kept up the same peal of farts, the treble to his bass. And both of them snored. God, did they snore. They could have taken the roof off. Alan could not sleep with all the noise, and poked John in the back. ‘John,’ he said. ‘Are you kippin’?’ ‘I was.’ ‘Have you ever heard a noise like it? Worse than a frickin’ earthquake. I suppose this is called the song of the night. Curse them with all diseases. Whoever heard such a disgustin’ din. Yet I’ll pay them back for their snores and their mingin’ farts. I may not get any kip tonight, but I will get someik else. I tell you what, John. I am goin’ to fuck their daughter. I even have a case in law, you know. Have you read the edict that states if in one point a man is aggrieved, in another point he may be relieved. I am sure that we have been screwed out of our corn, leavin’ aside the other bollocks. We have been offered no compensation, so I will take my own from the miller’s goods. I’ll distrain the girl.’ ‘Think about it,’ John replied. ‘This miller’s a dangerous man. If he should wake up when you’re doin’ it, he will not hold back. He’ll attack both of us.’ ‘I don’t give a flyin’ fart. There are enough farts flyin’ around in any case.’ So up he got, quietly and slowly, and crept towards the young girl lying in her bed. She was fast asleep, and he got so close to her that she had no time to cry out. She hardly had time to open her eyes. But she did not say ‘oh no’. Oh no. They were at it in a moment. You have a good time, Alan, while I turn back to John. He was lying there, listening to them. After five minutes or so he got tired of their moaning and squealing. ‘This is miserable, ’ he said to himself. ‘What am I doin’ here, all on me tod, when he has got his cock up? He took a risk, and now he gets the reward. I am just lyin’ here like a spare sack of shit. When he tells the story at college, I’ll look a real knob. So here I go. I am goin’ to follow his example. Fortune favours the brave.’

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

  Second, theorizing black women's transgressive behavior, while simultaneously examining various manifestations of transgression-or what I often refer to as racialized gender transgression-this book challenges "mainstream" discourses and theories of transgression, whereby the nexus of race and transgression, especially where black (female) subjects are concerned, typically falls into an abyss of critical inattention.' This book analyzes and elucidates black female transgressive behavior and sexuality-while paying particular attention to periodization, politics, and aesthetics of the (late) mid-twentieth century-to expand understandings of the nexus of gender, sexuality, race, and transgression. In its analysis of postmodern characterizations of black womanhood, black female sexuality, and the ways that both feminism and nationalism imposed constructions of black womanhood that inform post-civil rights authors' characterizations of them as transgressive, this book diverges from previous scholarship in this regard and in its utilization of sexuality as a trope and axis of interrogation of hegemonic power, politics of passion, and female (subversive) erotic pleasure. I deploy the term "transgressive" (and by extension "transgressive behavior" and "transgression") to indicate the ways these black women characters operate out of a particular and strategic politics, agency, and deliberateness that challenge or, at the very least, call into question what constitutes "normativity," while simultaneously destabilizing conventional paradigms governing race, gender, and sexuality. In this regard, political scientist Cathy Cohen's notion of "deviance" resonates as particularly salient. In her landmark essay "Deviance as Resistance: A New Research Agenda for the Study of Black Politics," Cohen argues for an analysis and paradigmatic shift that, building upon discourses and frameworks in African American studies and queer theory, centers those vulnerable and marginalized subjects who-in their deliberate refusal to conform to established "normativity"-embody a deviance that resists socially and sociocommunally prescribed "heterogendered" and "`normalized' understandings and behaviors."9 Such individuals embody this subjectivity, complicating power relations, regulation/regulatory processes, and "normativity"; and, their deliberate agency in opting out of conformity to the "fundamental concepts/ behaviors" governing "desire, pleasure, and sex" provides the basis for transformative politics and the very paradigmatic shift Cohen proposes. Like Cohen's, my work on transgressive behavior and representations foregrounds those (black women) subjects who unapologetically subvert the established sociosexual "norms." While I recognize that multiple valences of representations of black womanhood and blackness operate as transgressive-with blackness signifying, within the literary and sociocultural imagination, anomaly, debasement, resistance, or excess-I do not present black women's transgressive behavior and racialized (gender) transgression as indicative of or coterminous with aberrance, abjection, deviance, or perversion. Nor do I situate them as pathological in ways that fortify or reaffirm heteronormativity, black debasement, or the purported norm. Rather, I read the manifestations of transgressive behavior as grounded in black (female) subjectivity that not only challenges putative normative modalities governing race, gender, and sexuality, but, as stated previously, as also emblematic of desire for and gestures toward a black postmodern moment.

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

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