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.

Page 415 of 447 · 20 per page

• From Banned Books

  8. Holden Caulfield’s Subversive Voice Some breaches of Salinger’s privacy occurred over the years . Most notably, in 1972, Salinger, then 53, wrote a fan letter to the 18-year-old writer Joyce Maynard, who had written an autobiographical cover essay for The New York Times Magazine . Maynard moved in with Salinger, who was then divorced from his second wife, and lived with him for eight months . In 1998, she published her memoir, At Home in the World, which portrayed Salinger as a narcissistic predator . Opinion remains split on whether Maynard was prey or publicity-seeking predator and whether, in light of #MeToo, Salinger’s reputation will be tarnished . RECEPTION OF CATCHER Holden’s is perhaps the most vivid voice in American literature . His voice is suffused with anger, sad humor, nostalgia, and an insistence that authenticity is the highest virtue . Anything or anyone that isn’t authentic is a “phony .” Of course, the fact that he’s in some kind of rest home or psychiatric hospital when the novel opens suggests that Holden’s absolutist view is neither healthy nor sustainable . It’s interesting that in Catcher, readers have yet another controversial American literary work narrated in the first person . Statistically speaking, a fair number of the most challenged and banned great American literary works—To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, Huckleberry Finn, Lolita, “Howl,” and The Catcher in the Rye—are written in the first person . Perhaps there’s something especially worrisome to censors about a powerful first-person voice that gets into a reader’s head—especially a young reader’s head . There is a mystical power to Salinger’s writing, particularly Catcher, that has driven both its fans and its haters mad . The novel was not universally praised when it came out in 1951 . Reviewers were sharply divided . The New York Times initial review became something of a controversial classic itself in that the reviewer, James Stern, parodied Holden’s voice, saying that Salinger “knows how to write about kids” before bringing down the full weight of Holdenesque contempt upon Catcher itself . Similarly, in The New Republic, Anne L . Goodman thought Salinger created in Caulfield an extraordinary portrait, but there is “too much of him .” Other critics were more generous, though . S . N . Behrman in The New Yorker called Catcher “brilliant, funny, meaningful” and noted that “Holden’s contacts with the outside world are generally extremely funny . It is his self-communings that are tragic and touching—a dark whirlpool churning fiercely below the unflagging hilarity of his surface activities .” 63

• From Banned Books

  8. Holden Caulfield’s Subversive Voice Catcher continued to attract the attention of the offended and enraged throughout the culture wars of the ’60s, ’70s, and early ’80s . In a second battle over the book’s distribution in the public school system of Marin County in 1960, Reverend Thomas Grabowski, who was leading the protest before the board of trustees, claimed that the novel takes God’s name in vain 295 times . Pamela Steinle found similar objections in other school districts she examined, including Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1968 and Calhoun County, Alabama, from 1982 to 1983 . In their efforts to censor literature, the guardian elites of mainstream culture— religious organizations, school boards, politicians, and community leaders—tend to cast the offending texts as broadly subversive of conventional ideas about faith, family, sexuality, and social hierarchy . During the Cold War era, there was deep anxiety about artistic and popular expressions that broke from the period’s conformist norms . All nonconformist art and behavior were linked to a collapse of American values, which might make young people vulnerable to baneful political influences . Sometimes this anxiety took a religious tone, and sometimes it was voiced as a broader secular fear that the book was somehow un-American . Together, the opposition saw—and still sees—Catcher as insufficiently respectful of the dominant strains of American life and the rightful authority of parents, school, organized religion, or God . Holden’s cursing, drinking, and encounter with a prostitute account for some of the reaction that Catcher engendered . However, because the protesters could not see the way that Salinger slyly complicated and even sometimes undercut his adolescent narrator—how he has Holden himself constantly questioning his own thoughts and actions— they took the anger he directs at “phonies” as a straightforward political screed . MORE MODERN CHALLENGES TO CATCHER The Catcher in the Rye continues to appear on challenged and banned lists annually . For example, it was challenged as required reading in California’s Corona-Norco Unified School District in 1993 because it is “centered around negative activity .” The book was retained, and teachers selected alternatives if students objected to Salinger’s novel . Catcher was also challenged as mandatory reading in the Goffstown, New Hampshire, schools in 1994 because 65

• From Banned Books

  9. Artistry, Morality, and Nabokov’s Lolita to as “her uncle .” Over the next two years, a frenzied Humbert searches for Lolita . At last, he receives a note from Lolita, now 17, married, and pregnant . She needs money . When the two are reunited again, Humbert discovers that Lolita was “kidnapped” by Clare Quilty, the aged playwright and author of the play that Lolita was to have acted in in high school . Enraged, Humbert murders Quilty and winds up in prison, where he’ll die . Lolita, too, meets a sudden end when she dies in childbirth . PUBLICATION OF LOLITA This was the manuscript—an extraordinary, finely wrought tale of predation, grooming, kidnapping, rape and psychological abuse of a minor, and murder—that Nabokov brought to New York in December 1953 . Nabokov himself was fully aware of the risky nature of his novel . He told friends he planned to publish it under a pseudonym so as not to endanger his teaching position at Cornell . All the publishing houses he offered it to turned it down on the grounds that prosecution for obscenity could not be avoided with a book like Lolita . Indeed, Boyd, Simon & Schuster’s editors deemed it “sheer pornography .” Nabokov couldn’t have been completely surprised by these rejections, but he’d hoped that the artistic brilliance of his writing would more than offset any objections to the novel’s subject . In fact, you can read Lolita as the ultimate artistic challenge to readers, one that asks you: What do you value most in a work of art, subject matter or artistry? For a time, the verdict, at least from American publishers, was subject matter . Because of Lolita’s deeply offensive subject matter, they refused to publish the novel . Ironically, that same subject matter made Lolita irresistible to one French publishing house, Olympia Press, which specialized in pornography . Olympia’s publisher, Maurice Girodias, wrote to Nabokov telling him that “the book was admirable not only from a literary point of view, but … might lead to a change in social attitudes toward the kind of love described in Lolita .” Boyd says that Nabokov was so delighted that his novel was finally finding a publishing home that he didn’t take in the “strange odor” of statements like these from Girodias . 71

• From Banned Books

  9. Artistry, Morality, and Nabokov’s Lolita Lolita, which Nabokov wrote in English, was published by Olympia in the form of a pair of green paperbacks in September of 1955 . Although critics took little notice of it, the first printing of 5,000 copies sold out . At the end of the year, a review of the novel appeared in the London Sunday Times . The reviewer, novelist Graham Greene, called it one of the three best books of 1955 . In response, the editor of the London Sunday Express declared that Lolita was “the filthiest book I have ever read” and labeled it “sheer unrestrained pornography .” The furious and ongoing debate over Lolita’s literary value had begun, and so had the debate over whether the reading public should have access to the novel . LOLITA’S CONTROVERSIAL RISE TO FAME In the United Kingdom, customs officers were instructed to seize all copies of Lolita entering the country; it was banned there until 1959 . France banned the novel as obscene from 1956 to 1959 . Argentina banned it in 1959 . New Zealand banned it in 1960 . It was also banned at various times in its early history in Australia, Burma, Belgium, and Austria . In the United States, the publishing house G . P . Putnam’s Sons brought out the first American edition of Nabokov’s novel in August 1958 thanks to 26-year-old Rosemary Ridgewell, who worked as a showgirl at the Latin Quarter nightclub in New York City . She had picked up a copy of Lolita while she was in Paris . After a party in New York City in 1957, Ridgewell had taken home Walter Minton, the then-married publisher of Putnam’s . Minton spied the notorious green paperbacks on her coffee table and stayed up all night reading the novel . By dawn, he was committed to publishing it . Lolita came out in the United States on August 18, 1958 . The influential New York Times reviewer Orville Prescott declared it “repulsive … highbrow pornography” and “dull, dull, dull .” By the end of September, however, the novel was number 1 on the New York Times bestseller list and the first novel since Gone with the Wind to sell 100,000 copies in its first three weeks of publication . Nabokov had at last attained the commercial success he so desired . As several critics have pointed out, it’s odd, given Lolita’s repulsive storyline, that the novel wasn’t immediately banned upon its publication in 72

• From Banned Books

  13. New Kids’ Books, Old Objections agenda the community did not agree with .” In Seminole County, Florida, one grade school teacher even became the target of a school board investigation after he read Marlon Bundo aloud to his first graders . In many, if not most, of these cases, school boards and libraries decided to keep A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo on the shelves . However, the concerns reveal how children’s books can spark some of the most extreme adult reactions . Such controversies foreground current debates about whether people should continue to read and teach books that may be problematic because of racial stereotyping or outdated attitudes toward gender relationships . With children’s books in particular, this concerns early stories so powerful they often stay with readers for a lifetime . READING Brown, Jill . “Captain Underpants Under Fire Again?” Intellectual Freedom Blog, The Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association, January 5, 2017 . Philips, Nel . Was the Cat in the Hat Black? The Hidden Racism of Children’s Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books . Oxford University Press, 2017 . Scales, Pat . “What Makes a Good Banned Book?” Horn Book Magazine 85, no . 5 (Sept .–Oct . 2009): 533–536 . 113 14 CANCELED AUTHORS T his lecture considers some striking recent instances in which authors’ behavior—alleged or confirmed—has resulted in the challenging or banning of their works . Such a situation would have been unheard of a few decades ago, before social justice movements and before the advent of the internet, where people’s personal lives are instantly available for public scrutiny . Think about where you stand on the question of separating the dancer from the dance, the author from the book . 114

• From Banned Books

  2. Ulysses on Trial It’s maddening and brilliant and exhausting to read . “The Oxen of the Sun,” like most of Ulysses, is suffused with raunchy humor . However, when the novel was on trial for alleged obscenity, many of the readers, including the lawyers for the prosecution, had difficulty making out what exactly Joyce was saying . Literary obscurity, for Joyce, became a saving grace . PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK V. MARGARET ANDERSON AND JANE HEAP Even before it was completed, three episodes of Ulysses were published in 1918 in the Little Review . This was a literary magazine based in Chicago and run by publishers Jane Heap and Margaret Anderson . In January and May of 1919 and January 1920, the United States Postal Service seized and burned some issues of the Little Review containing those episodes on the grounds that Joyce’s writing was obscene and supportive of anarchy . The Post Office, as Birmingham details, was “the cornerstone of the US censorship regime .” The Post Office, during and immediately after World War I, was given the power under the Espionage Act to seize material it deemed unpatriotic or, by extension, corrupting of conventional morals . In September of 1920, a New York attorney brought issues of the Little Review to the attention of John S . Sumner . Sumner was the secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice . He filed a complaint against the magazine . A month later, Heap and Anderson were arrested and charged with obscenity for publishing the “Nausicaa” episode of Ulysses in the April 1920 issue of the Little Review . The episode features Leopold Bloom masturbating in response to the sight of a young woman, Gerty MacDowell, displaying her underclothes as she sits on a rock by the seashore . However, you have to be a discerning reader to unpack what’s going on in that episode . The obscenity trial of People of the State of New York v. Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap commenced on Friday, February 4, 1921 . Three judges oversaw the trial . The two publishers were represented by John Quinn, who had had success in earlier free speech battles . As Birmingham recounts, Quinn tersely told the two women that they had two responsibilities: “to shut their 13

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  First, never belittle, berate, or hurl sexual insults at your partner, no matter how upset you are. Damaging your sex life is too high a price to pay for the momentary satisfaction of lashing out. It’s much better to talk sincerely about how you feel, even if you must wait until you calm down. Sexual insults are very difficult to take back. So even if you’re an ardent believer in speaking your mind, stifle yourself whenever you feel an urge to attack your lover’s sexuality. Second, never compare your partner to past lovers. Not only is this downright rude, it makes it harder for your partner to let go of inhibitions and un-self-consciously reveal his or her sexuality to you—a prerequisite for maximum satisfaction. Finally, never complain about your sex life to a mutual friend. Not only does this place your friend in an awkward position, but such complaints have a way of coming back to the partner, often exaggerated and distorted. It’s perfectly valid to talk with a friend about your problems, but pick someone who doesn’t have a close connection with your partner. In addition, request an explicit promise that your disclosures will remain confidential. Those are the don’ts. Fortunately, there are also do’s that help make talking about sex easier and far more productive. First, make a habit of regularly giving your partner positive verbal and nonverbal feedback about what feels especially good. This builds his or her confidence and increases the chances that you’ll receive more of what you like. What psychologists call positive reinforcement (praising what feels good) is much more effective at bringing about change than punishment (complaining about what’s wrong). Let’s say you wish your partner would stroke your inner thighs with gentle caresses rather than grabbing you like a hunk of meat. It’s perfectly valid to say, “I like it best when you touch my thighs gently like this,” and then either describe your desires or, better yet, take your partner’s hand and demonstrate. You’ll get even better results if you also whisper, “Ohhh, that feels wonderful” the next time your partner touches you even a little bit more like the way you enjoy it. Second, discuss sexual problems and dissatisfactions when you are feeling close, not when either of you is defensive, tired, or preoccupied. Some of the best opportunities are during or after any shared pleasurable experience. The goal is to create a link in both of your minds between feeling good and talking about sex. Third, if it’s too difficult to talk directly, write your lover a note. This technique allows you to refine your message and gives your partner plenty of time to digest it without reacting. Rather than assuming your motives are obvious, describe them explicitly—for example, “I value our sexual relationship so much that I’ve been thinking about how to make it even better.”

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  Similarly, the pomp and ceremony surrounding such an individual make him more admirable and less like the common herd, increasing both his selfconfidence and the confidence of his subjects. The phenomenon is found not only with individual leaders, but with entire movements.' Some modern-day dictators have been identified as cult leaders, not only due to the adulation required from the general public in their respective countries, but also due to the controlling and corrupt dynamics of their inner circle of top lieutenants and sycophants. Certainly Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot fit into this cult leader/dictator parallel. An authoritarian personality, however, is just one aspect of a cult leader. There are other traits and characteristics to consider. Who Becomes a Cult Leader?Frequently, at gatherings of former cult members, a lively exchange takes place when participants compare their respective groups and leaders. As people begin to describe their special, enlightened, and unique leader-whether a pastor, therapist, political leader, teacher, lover, or swami-those present are often surprised to learn that their once-revered leaders are actually quite similar in temperament and personality. It seems as if these leaders come from a common mold, sometimes light-heartedly called the "Cookie-Cutter Messiah School." In some cases, the similarities and behavioral patterns noted in cult leaders of all stripes appear to be rooted in troubling personality traits commonly associated with Narcissistic Personality Disorder or Antisocial Personality Disorder (or sociopathy). Psychiatrists, medical doctors, clinical psychologists, and oth ers have studied these traits and diagnostic criteria for more than half a century, and their research provides fascinating insights into this type of authoritarian and abusive personality. Usually cult groups originate with a living leader who is believed to be a god or godlike by a cadre of dedicated believers. Along with a dramatic and convincing talent for self-expression, these leaders have an intuitive ability to sense their followers' needs and draw them closer with seductive promises. Gradually the leader inculcates the group with his own private ideology (and sometimes his bizarre inclinations or predilections). Then he creates conditions so that his followers cannot or dare not test his claims. (How can you prove that someone is not the Messiah? ... Or that the world won't end on such-and-such date? ... Or that humans are not possessed by aliens from another dimension?) Through social-psychological influence and control, cult leaders manipulate their followers into accepting a new ideology, and then prevent them from testing or disproving it. It's clear that mature and psychologically healthy individuals can be induced into dependency on a leader; this is all the more true in a group setting. Jerrold Post, a leader in the field of political psychology and personality profiling, writes: The skillful charismatic leader intuitively shapes and induces these states in his followers. Some may be attracted to the charismatic religious cults .... others to the path of terrorism .... and especially in times of societal stress, some may be attracted to the banner of the charismatic political leader....

• From Action (2014)

  I have been in this exact position—well, save for the gin rummy (but not the Hpnotiq)—and I felt disrespected and unconsidered. The couple in question were some girls I knew, and whose nascent friendship I enjoyed, from hanging out at this one dance party we all frequented on Monday nights. The thing that sometimes sucks about taking a relaxed approach to group sex, and having it present itself in the strands of friendly conversation, is that people try to Simon Says you into a threesome without your consent because they see you as a point of entry. Barf. That behavior roundly munches sewage… but I get its incentive. If a person has intimated they love the sonorous musicality that often comes with playin’ the triangle, a complex, beautiful genre their audience has long considered beyond the reaches of its talent, it might be tempting to ask them for lessons. That’s fine! The pivotal point of that sentence, though, is the word “ask.” Would you demand that a known triangle solo artist whip out their wand and give the virtuoso performance of a lifetime with nary an inkling’s notice? No, you have never done that—you’re not that rude. Don’t expect a threesome of someone solely because you know, or are guessing, that they have had one before. Don’t expect a threesome of someone even if you’ve had it with the same configuration of people before! People’s angles are less rigid than those found in geometry. You are not treating that person as a person, which is the most essential part of the approach to group sex in general: No one is anyone’s sexy attaché. Everyone has the right to say what their limitations are not only during, but before. • In an intergender couple, the person of the same identity (if there is one) as the person being asked does the actual asking. Sorry: This suggestion feels archaic. But there’s a lot to be said for considering the perspectives and experiences of your target, then deploying whichever member of the home team might relate to them most closely. I like having one person act as the amanuensis and point of communication for both others, and that person should be the one whom the other two trust, collectively, the most—across the interpersonal board, and as applied singularly to this situation.

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  By their teens and twenties, boys consume content from men’s lifestyle brands whose presentation of female sexuality is not always so very different from porn’s: study participants presented with quotes from popular “lad” magazines mixed with those by convicted rapists were unable to reliably distinguish between the two; they actually ranked the former as more derogatory. “[Such publications] give the appearance that sexism is acceptable and normal,” the researchers concluded, adding that “the legitimization strategies that rapists deploy when they talk about women are more familiar to these young men than we had anticipated.” Rape is routinely used as a plot device on premium cable programs that draw a huge teen audience, such as Game of Thrones or Westworld, where it is presented as a presumed male fantasy. Movies and TV shows such as Fight Club, The Godfather, The Wolf of Wall Street, Empire, Billions, and Silicon Valley—all iconic among high school and college guys—consistently define masculinity through wealth and dominance; the worst (and often cleverest) slurs against other men invoke femininity, homosexuality, sexual submission, or rape. Weak men are “pussies”; a person beneath contempt is “fucked” or in the position to “suck my dick.” Aside from the occasional tough bitch who trumpets the size of her own balls (the MBA version of Gillian Flynn’s “cool girl”), women are invisible, love interests, sex workers, or trophies through which men assert power over other men. Nor is it generally clear whether the point is to critique that culture or to celebrate it. Women in The Wolf of Wall Street—prostitutes, strippers, generic hot chicks from central casting—are portrayed as the rightful spoils of success (and excess). Until its creators were shamed by the internet, Silicon Valley’s cast included precisely one woman: the only conventionally “hot” character on the show, she was an assistant (neither a programmer nor even an executive) who played Wendy to a start-up’s lost boys. The show’s continual stream of phallic humor, while indisputably funny, cements as much as satirizes brogrammer culture. Billions, too, reinforces the behavior it purports to expose. Misogynist barbs, pornification, and the marginalization or objectification of female characters are all so pervasive that it’s hard to identify just one (or two or three or five) examples. Though one can try: there is the character who is nicknamed “Pouch” because “he’s got no balls. They say he has a vagina.” Or the one who yells, “You wouldn’t know the right thing to do if it kneeled down and sucked your tiny goddamn cock!”

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  Boniface, the Roman general in charge of Africa, was pursuing his own ambitions when he invited the Vandal warlord active in Spain to support him in rivalry with the imperial government, which found its own mercenaries to send against him from Italy. Though the warriors who came to Africa on both sides of this conflict were all subjects of long service in the Roman empire, and all professed the Christian religion, contemporaries and moderns alike chose to make much of their barbarian affiliations, but especially in the case of those who fought against the reigning emperor and his forces. Barbarians who fought for the emperor were somehow Romanized by that act, at least for the moment, but could be demonized again almost instantly when it suited. When Roman control of the military situation began to fail in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, contemporaries were quick to speak of “barbarian invasions,” and our textbooks to this day are illustrated with maps showing brightly colored arrows swooping across sharply drawn borders, then dashing back and forth across Roman territory. The same maps do not usually show the sites of the four serious Roman army rebellions in Africa in Augustine’s lifetime, or of the two civil wars that irrupted into Italy, killing one emperor and almost overthrowing another, in the last years of the fourth century. Barbarians make better copy. Augustine himself had written in his City of God an antidote for that way of avoiding thought and responsibility. In its pages, every place was equidistant from eternity, and Rome’s privilege turned out to have been a way station on the way to Christianity, not an “empire without end”—the prophetic words from Vergil that Augustine ironically and boldly put on the first page of City of God. Possidius’s story of Augustine’s deathbed under a dark cloud of threatening barbarians reveals how poorly that lesson had penetrated Augustine’s own inmost circle. Throughout his life, Augustine represented himself as the object of forces beyond himself. He succeeded at every level—autobiographically, historically, theologically—in presenting himself in that light. Augustine the agent, Augustine the actor, Augustine the misreader of his times, Augustine the mismaker of African society: he has escaped, until now. Knowing Augustine’s failures and keeping them in mind can make it easier to understand who he was, how he lived, what he did, and what was dying when he died. First, we should not forget the evident disarray all around him, little of it having anything to do with barbarians. In the last twenty years of his life, he had been increasingly preoccupied with a set of ideas and controversies that have marked his reputation ever since, as Vietnam has marked that of Lyndon Johnson. His battle against “Pelagianism” was murky and unnecessary for all that Augustine portrays himself as an unwilling warrior in a fateful struggle. Well-wishers lament that if only that one false step had not been taken, an underlying benign liberalism would be evident. The escape is not that easy.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  As a means of motivating people to be cruel or inhumane—as a means of inciting evil, to borrow the vocabulary of the devout—there may be no more potent force than religion. When the subject of religiously inspired bloodshed comes up, many Americans immediately think of Islamic fundamentalism, which is to be expected in the wake of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. But men have been committing heinous acts in the name of God ever since mankind began believing in deities, and extremists exist within all religions. Muhammad is not the only prophet whose words have been used to sanction barbarism; history has not lacked for Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, and even Buddhists who have been motivated by scripture to butcher innocents. Plenty of these religious extremists have been homegrown, corn-fed Americans. Faith-based violence was present long before Osama bin Laden, and it will be with us long after his demise. Religious zealots like bin Laden, David Koresh, Jim Jones, Shoko Asahara, * and Dan Lafferty are common to every age, just as zealots of other stripes are. In any human endeavor, some fraction of its practitioners will be motivated to pursue that activity with such concentrated focus and unalloyed passion that it will consume them utterly. One has to look no further than individuals who feel compelled to devote their lives to becoming concert pianists, say, or climbing Mount Everest. For some, the province of the extreme holds an allure that’s irresistible. And a certain percentage of such fanatics will inevitably fixate on matters of the spirit. The zealot may be outwardly motivated by the anticipation of a great reward at the other end—wealth, fame, eternal salvation—but the real recompense is probably the obsession itself. This is no less true for the religious fanatic than for the fanatical pianist or fanatical mountain climber. As a result of his (or her) infatuation, existence overflows with purpose. Ambiguity vanishes from the fanatic’s worldview; a narcissistic sense of self-assurance displaces all doubt. A delicious rage quickens his pulse, fueled by the sins and shortcomings of lesser mortals, who are soiling the world wherever he looks. His perspective narrows until the last remnants of proportion are shed from his life. Through immoderation, he experiences something akin to rapture. Although the far territory of the extreme can exert an intoxicating pull on susceptible individuals of all bents, extremism seems to be especially prevalent among those inclined by temperament or upbringing toward religious pursuits. Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a crucial component of spiritual devotion. And when religious fanaticism supplants ratiocination, all bets are suddenly off. Anything can happen. Absolutely anything. Common sense is no match for the voice of God—as the actions of Dan Lafferty vividly attest. It is the aim of this book to cast some light on Lafferty and his ilk.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  "I was absent when this was being taken," he said with coarse emphasis. Herr Ballerstedt swelled, flexed his weak fist, worked his lips, and stared into young Heinricy's face with raised eyebrows. His dark red head trembled with the straining effort until he finally managed to utter a "Well..." breaking the spell and winning the game. 'There's never anything to be gained from you,' he went on with ease and eloquence, 'and you always have an excuse ready, Heinricy. If you were ill last hour, you could very well have informed yourself about the work done during these days, and if the first part deals with the condition before the cross and the second with the cross itself, you could finally turn to the Count on your fingers that the third part according to the state aforesaid misery. But you lack the right devotion, and not only are you a weak person, you are also always ready to gloss over and defend your weakness. But remember, Heinricy, that as long as this is the case, there is no question of an elevation and improvement. You sit down. Waterfowl, go on." Heinricy, thick-skinned and defiant, sat down with scratches and creaks, whispered cheekily to his neighbor and pulled out his handy knife again. Apprentice Waterbird stood up, a boy with sore eyes, turned up nose, protruding ears and chewed fingernails. In a soft, squeaky voice he finished the "overview" and began to tell about Job, the man in the land of Uz, and what happened to him. He had opened the Old Testament behind the back of the man in front of him, read it with an expression of consummate innocence and devoted thoughtfulness, then stared at a point on the wall and spoke, translating what he saw into a helpless, modern German with faltering and squeaking coughs... There was something extremely disgusting about him but Herr Ballerstedt praised him greatly for all his efforts. The student Wasservogel had it good in life insofar as most of the teachers praised him willingly and above his merits, to show him, themselves and the others that their ugliness in no way led them to injustice... And the religion lesson continued. Various young people were also called upon to share their knowledge To evict Job, the man in the land of Uz, and Gottlieb Kassbaum, son of the merchant Kassbaum who had an accident, received an excellent grade in spite of his broken family circumstances, because he was able to determine with accuracy that Job had seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yokes of cattle, had five hundred donkeys and a great many servants. Then the Bibles could be opened, most of which were already open, and the reading continued. Whenever there was a passage that Mr. Ballerstedt thought needed explanation, he would splutter, say, "Well..." and, after the usual preparations, give a short lecture, mixed with general moral considerations, on the point in question. Nobody listened to him.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Without the context of spiritual marriage, there would be no debate that these are acts of pedophilia. . . . A man committed what amounts to statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl and, basically, won’t serve any time for it. David Leavitt was also dismayed by Green’s lenient sentence. “People in the state of Utah,” he proclaimed, “simply do not understand, and have not understood for fifty years, the devastating effect that the practice of polygamy has on young girls in our society.” But Leavitt went on to say that a change in how polygamy was regarded by Utahans had begun: “The ball is rolling. Time will demonstrate that this society will understand that the practice of polygamy is abusive to children, is abusive to women, is abusive to society.” Leavitt prevailed against Green in court, and he won plaudits from the LDS Church and establishment editorial writers. But like Arizona governor Howard Pyle, who was voted out of office for masterminding the Short Creek raid of 1953, Leavitt discovered that his anti-polygamy crusade was not popular with the people. In November 2002, the voters of Juab County responded to the conviction of Tom Green by giving the boot to prosecutor David Leavitt. Ever since the conviction of the Kingstons—even before Tom Green was first charged with bigamy—Mormon Fundamentalists have received support from the American Civil Liberties Union and gay-rights activists in advancing their claims of religious persecution. It has been an especially curious, and uncomfortable, coalition: FLDS doctrine proclaims that sodomy and homosexuality are egregious crimes against God and nature, punishable by death—yet gays and polygamists have joined forces to keep the government out of the bedroom. This partnership is made even more incongruous by the fact that on the other side of the issue, radical feminists have allied themselves with the resolutely antifeminist LDS Church to lobby for aggressive prosecution of polygamists. * As they have been forced out of the shadows into the probing glare of the news media, polygamists continue to insist that they are simply trying to live in accordance with their deeply held, constitutionally protected beliefs. “What goes on in our homes here is nobody’s business,” asserts Sam Roundy, Colorado City’s polygamous police chief. “We’re not infringing on anybody. Don’t we have the right to practice our religion?” But polygamy is a crime in all fifty states, as well as in Canada, and police officers are sworn to uphold the law. This point became problematic for Chief Roundy on February 6, 2002, when Ruth Stubbs—the third wife of one of his police officers—fled Colorado City with her two children and appeared on the evening news in Phoenix, complaining that she had been beaten by her husband, Rodney Holm, and that polygamy is intrinsically abusive. Ruth, nineteen when she left Holm and visibly pregnant with her third child, had been pulled out of school following the sixth grade.

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  Hood would have liked to yank tight Clair’s squeaky-clean bow tie and to watch him, in the process, swell and burst. —Well, hey, Benjamin said, isn’t that a one-in-a-million coincidence? A real dreamer, Jim Williams. And the sort of guy to turn those dreams into, well, bottom-line realities. —Darned right about that. Look here, Benj, whaddya make of this film of The Exorcist , you know, William Peter Blatty’s novel? You think it’s gonna work? —Don’t see how, Hood said. The star’s a little girl. Just devil-worship stuff. I mean, maybe if the little girl was possessed by an Indian spirit, angered by the white man’s occupation of his native … ancestral lands or something. No, that’s not it, George. Tell you what I like right now: disaster films. And air hockey. Hood knew what came next—the competition to excuse yourself first. Clair didn’t want to talk to him any more than he wanted to talk to Clair. What they would do now, in unison—Hey, well, great to talk , see you Monday—was make a run at the hors d’oeuvres. Or suddenly recognize a face across the room. Whoever got out first won. So Hood was already searching the room as he spoke, distractedly. And as he came to the end of the sentence, as he spoke the words air hockey , he saw his mistress, Janey Williams, wife of the S-shaped Styrofoam-packaging king, across a crowded room. —Whoa, big fella, Hood mumbled, you gotta— Only to find that Clair had already turned away. Clair was engaged with Maura O’Brien. Probably getting some inexpensive advice about a urological condition. Janey was in black, silk pajamas, the top opened to just below her breasts. No bra. At her cleavage, turquoise beads swayed. As she leaned down to take up her drink, she stilled the shimmering pajama top with one hand. Her earth-colored lipstick and eye shadow matched her brown stiletto heels. Her frosted-blond hair was flawlessly arranged, like a fiberglass waterfall. Hood’s first sensation was of reunion, of wholeness and conjunction, like he had the rollerskate and she had the key. But the feeling soured almost immediately, because he remembered the afternoon. Janey pretended to be occupied with a vase of flowers beside the trapeze chair—chrome and steel with a pure rubber sling—in which the Halfords’ cat was curled. He made for her like any spurned lover. —Oh, Jeez, Benjie, she said, fingering her beads. Well, here you are. —Damn right, but where the hell were you? —What are you talking about? —Don’t bullshit me around, Janey. Hood was whispering, but he was caught in some tidal or astrological imperative, some mood that would not be stopped, and the words poured from him as though their syntax was using him to express some mood. He felt, suddenly, that he might even cry.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  Mommy ain’t here, so buck up, big guy.” I left without saying a word to her and went to my room, slamming the door behind me, waking the Colonel, and stomping into the bathroom. I got in the shower to wash the algae and the lake off me, but the ridiculous faucet of a showerhead failed spectacularly, and how could Alaska and Kevin and those other guys already dislike me? After I finished the shower, I dried off and went into the room to find some clothes. “So,” he said. “What took you so long? Get lost on your way home?” “They said it was because of you,” I said, and my voice betrayed a hint of annoyance. “They said I shouldn’t hang out with you.” “What? No, it happens to everybody,” the Colonel said. “It happened to me. They throw you in the lake. You swim out. You walk home.” “I couldn’t just swim out,” I said softly, pulling on a pair of jean shorts beneath my towel. “They duct-taped me. I couldn’t even move, really.” “Wait. Wait,” he said, and hopped out of his bunk, staring at me through the darkness. “They taped you? How?” And I showed him: I stood like a mummy, with my feet together and my hands at my sides, and showed him how they’d wrapped me up. And then I plopped down onto the couch. “Christ! You could have drowned! They’re just supposed to throw you in the water in your underwear and run!” he shouted. “What the hell were they thinking? Who was it? Kevin Richman and who else? Do you remember their faces?” “Yeah, I think.” “Why the hell would they do that?” he wondered. “Did you do something to them?” I asked. “No, but I’m sure as shit gonna do something to ’em now. We’ll get them.” “It wasn’t a big deal. I got out fine.” “You could have died .” And I could have, I suppose. But I didn’t. “Well, maybe I should just go to the Eagle tomorrow and tell him,” I said. “Absolutely not,” he answered. He walked over to his crumpled shorts lying on the floor and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He lit two and handed one to me. I smoked the whole goddamned thing. “You’re not,” he continued, “because that’s not how shit gets dealt with here. And besides, you really don’t want to get a reputation for ratting. But we will deal with those bastards, Pudge. I promise you. They will regret messing with one of my friends.” And if the Colonel thought that calling me his friend would make me stand by him, well, he was right. “Alaska was kind of mean to me tonight,” I said. I leaned over, opened an empty desk drawer, and used it as a makeshift ashtray. “Like I said, she’s moody.” I went to bed wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and socks.

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Boys know such sentiments are wrong—they are not completely blank slates for the culture to inscribe. Still, they are barraged by these images and ideas, usually without challenge or context. About half of boys ages ten to nineteen say that at least several times a week on TV, in movies, in music videos, or on YouTube they see unrealistic images of women’s bodies or women whose bodies and looks are portrayed as more important than their brains or abilities (and, frankly, a mere half of boys seems low). Nearly half also see female video game characters portrayed as “hot” and a quarter see such characters every day. “I’ve been watching the show Californication lately,” said Mason, the guy with the flip phone. “I think in some ways it’s more damaging than things that are incredibly unrealistic. Because it’s just slightly unrealistic. It’s still kind of believable. Like, the main character has sex with everyone wherever he goes. His character has such a good build, it’s believable. But every girl in the show is a topless, sex-crazed fiend, and every dude is sex-crazed as well. And, I don’t know. They make it seem so convincing. Whereas if you were to watch a porn video where a dude comes in with his dick in a pizza box, it’s like, ‘All right, obviously that isn’t going to happen in real life.’ Also Californication—it’s on regular TV; it’s not porn. So you believe that more.” Even a show like Modern Family, Mason added, which was one of his favorites in high school, includes Gloria, the dumbed-down, hypersexualized (though secretly smart!) bombshell who is essentially a latter-day Charo. “Whatever media you turn to,” he said, “however family friendly it is, it’s always sexualizing women. It’s inescapable.”

• From The Second Sex (1949)

  In societies where “blood money” exists, only a small sum is required when the victim is of the feminine sex: her value compared with a male’s is like a slave’s with a free man’s. When she is a young girl, the father has total power over her; on her marriage he transmits it entirely to her spouse. Since she is his property like the slave, the beast of burden, or the thing, it is natural for a man to have as many wives as he wishes; only economic reasons put limits on polygamy; the husband can disown his wives at whim, and society barely accords them any guarantees. In return, woman is subjected to rigorous chastity. In spite of the taboos, matriarchal societies allow great freedom of behavior; prenuptial chastity is rarely demanded; and adultery not judged severely. On the contrary, when woman becomes man’s property, he wants a virgin, and he demands total fidelity at the risk of severe penalty; it would be the worst of crimes to risk giving heritage rights to a foreign offspring: this is why the paterfamilias has the right to put a guilty wife to death. As long as private property lasts, conjugal infidelity on the part of a woman is considered a crime of high treason. All codes up to our time have perpetuated inequality in issues concerning adultery, arguing the seriousness of the fault committed by the woman who might bring an illegitimate child into the family. And though the right to take the law into one’s own hands has been abolished since Augustus, the Napoleonic Code still holds out the promise of the jury’s leniency for a husband who avenges himself. When woman belonged to both a patrilineal clan and a conjugal family, she was able to preserve a good amount of freedom, as the two series of bonds overlapped and even conflicted with each other and as each system served to support her against the other: for example, she could often choose the husband of her fancy, since marriage was only a secular event and had no effect on society’s deep structure. But under the patriarchal regime, she was the property of a father who married her off as he saw fit; then attached to her husband’s household, she was no more than his thing and the thing of the family (genos) in which she was placed.

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  Throughout my postpartum delirium, I found myself lazily clicking on articles on my AOL home page (yes, AOL) about how certain celebrities got back into shape or into being sexual after babies. It’s humdrum but relentless: the obsession with who’s pregnant and who’s showing and whose life is transforming due to the imminent arrival of the all-miraculous, all-coveted BABY—all of which flips, in the blink of an eye, into an obsession with how soon all signs of bearing the life-transforming BABY can evaporate, how soon the mother’s career, sex life, weight can be restored, as if nothing ever happened here at all. Who cares what SHE feels like doing? It’s her conjugal duty to get over a massive physical event that has literally rearranged her organs and stretched her parts beyond comprehension and brought her through a life-or-death portal as soon as humanly possible. As in this post by a woman on Marriage Missions, a Christian website that hopes “to help those who are married and those preparing for marriage to be PRO-ACTIVE in helping to save marriage from divorce”: “I felt what I did all day was meet other people’s needs. Whether it was caring for my children, working in ministry, or washing my husband’s clothes, by the end of the day I wanted to be done need-meeting. I wanted my pillow and a magazine. But God prompted me: Are the “needs” you meet for your husband the needs he wants met?’” The answer of course is NO! No less than GOD says she needs to put aside the sanity-producing magazine and pillow and start fucking her husband! Get over yourself and start fucking! God says, get GGG! GGG: Good, Giving, and Game. That’s sex-advice columnist Dan Savage’s acronym, meaning “good in bed,” “giving equal time and equal pleasure,” and “game for anything—within reason.” “If you are expected to be monogamous and have one person be all things sexually for you, then you have to be whores for each other,” Savage says. “You have to be up for anything.” These are solid guidelines to which I have long aspired. But now I think we have a right to our kink and our fatigue, both.

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  black mistress, even if the black wench wore a white mask. Her stain of impurity would never be tolerated among Washington’s better sort. Another unpoliced critic made a similar argument. Her crude conduct might belong in “every cabin beyond the mountains,” he wrote, but not in the President’s House. 64 Even without the marriage scandal, Rachel Jackson had the look of a lower- class woman. One visitor to the Jacksons’ home in Tennessee thought she might be mistaken for an old washerwoman. Another described her as fat and her skin tanned, which may explain the “black wench” slur. Whiteness was a badge of class privilege denied to poor cracker gals who worked under the sun. Critics laughed at Mrs. Jackson’s backcountry pronunciation; they made fun of her favorite song, “Possum Up a Gum Tree.” She smoked a pipe. Alas, Rachel Jackson succumbed to heart disease shortly before she was meant to accompany her husband to Washington and take up her duties as First Lady. Her death only intensified the incoming president’s hatred for his political enemies. 65 • • • To be sure, even beyond class issues, Jackson’s candidacy changed the nature of democratic politics. One political commentator noted that Jackson’s reign ushered in the “game of brag.” Jacksonians routinely exaggerated their man’s credentials, saying he was not just the “Knight of New Orleans,” the country’s “deliverer,” but also the greatest general in all human history. Another observer concluded that a new kind of “talkative country politician” had arisen, who could speak for hours before having finally “exhausted the fountain of his panegyric on General Jackson.” 66 Bragging had a distinctive class dimension in the 1820s and 1830s. In a satire published in Tennessee, a writer took note of the strange adaptations of the code of chivalry in defense of honor. The story involved a duel between one Kentucky “Knight of the Red Rag” and a “great and mighty Walnut cracker” of Tennessee. The nutcracker gave himself an exalted title: “duke of Wild Cat Cove, little and big Hog Thief Creek, Short Mountain, Big Bore Cave and Cuwell’s Bridge.” So what did this kind of posturing mean? Like certain masters of gangsta rap in the twenty-first century, crackers had to make up for their lowly status by dressing themselves up in a boisterous verbal garb. In the Crockett manner, lying and boasting made up for the absence of class pedigree. This, too, was Andrew Jackson. He used duels, feuds, and oaths to rise in the political pecking order in the young state of Tennessee. 67