Anxiety

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 156 of 501 · 20 per page

• From The Case for God (2009)

  In 1830, Charles Lyell (1797–1875) had published the first volume of his Principles of Geology, which argued that the earth’s crust was far older than the six thousand years suggested in the Bible; moreover, it had not been shaped directly by God but was formed by the slow, incremental effects of wind and water. 26 Lyell, a liberal-minded Christian, refused to discuss the theological implications of his findings, because science “ought to be conducted as if the scriptures were not in existence.” 27 He was intensely irritated by the unprofessional work of some of his colleagues, who attached “transcendent importance” to “every point of supposed discrepancy or coincidence between the phenomena of nature and the generally-received interpretations of the Hebrew text.” 28 He thus enunciated his own version of the ancient distinction between mythos and logos. Science and theology were different disciplines, and it was dangerous to mix the two. Scientists no longer considered their discipline a branch of “philosophy,” which had always been interested in metaphysics, and they no longer saw themselves as gentlemen scholars but as professionals. By the middle of the nineteenth century, it was not only physicists but geologists, botanists, and biologists who formulated their insights in the exact language of mathematics. As part of their new professional ethos, they were beginning to insist on a “positivist” assessment of truth that excluded anything that was not quantifiable. 29 The Cambridge geologist Adam Sedgwick (1785–1873) defined science as “the consideration of all subjects, whether of a pure or mixed nature, capable of being reduced to measurement and calculation.” 30 Clearly this could not include God. Because of the marvelous advances in technology, scientists were held in higher esteem than ever before. Science seemed the avatar of progress. It was definite, precise, and accurate; it accumulated truth in a methodical, purposeful manner, proved its theories, corrected earlier mistakes, and moved fearlessly into the future. Impressed by this new professional rigor and eager to share science’s prestige, people in other disciplines were increasingly influenced by its positivist standard of truth. But Lyell’s revelations gave many believers, who were used to thinking that science was on their side, a salutary jolt. In America, after a brief but intense panic, Evangelical churchmen started to pull back from their strict biblical literalism. But they still relied on the argument from design, and few were aware of the disturbing new evidence that life itself—not merely the earth’s crust—had evolved from “lower” to “higher” forms. The fossil record showed that innumerable species had failed to survive; instead of a neat design, the geologists were uncovering a natural history of pain, death, and racial extinction. In 1844, the popular Scottish writer Robert Chambers (1802–71) published Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, arguing that scientists would soon prove that there was a purely natural explanation for the development of life. But others tried to “baptize” these new discoveries.

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

  We all gathered in the conference room at Blue Ribbon. There was Woodell, who must have caught the first flight out of Boston, and Hayes, and Strasser, and Cale flew up from Los Angeles. Someone brought doughnuts. Someone sent out for pizzas. Someone dialed Johnson and put him on the speakerphone. The mood in the room, at first, was somber, because that was my mood. But having my friends around, my team, made me feel better, and as I lightened up, they did, too. We talked long into the evening, and if we agreed on anything, we agreed there wasn’t an easy solution. There usually isn’t when the FBI has been notified. Or when you’ve been ousted by your bank for the second time in five years. As the summit drew to a close the mood shifted again. The air in the room grew stale, heavy. The pizza looked like poison. A consensus formed. The resolution of this crisis, whatever it might be, is in the hands of others. And of all those others, Nissho was our best hope. We discussed tactics for Monday morning. That’s when the men from Nissho were due to arrive. Ito and Sumeragi were going to pore through our books, and while there was no telling what they might think of our finances, one thing was pretty much preordained. They were going to see right away that we’d used a big chunk of their financing not to purchase shoes from overseas but to run a secret factory in Exeter. Best case, this would make them mad. Worst case, it would make them lose their minds. If they considered our accounting sleight of hand a full-fledged betrayal, they would abandon us, faster than the bank had, in which case we’d be out of business. Simple as that. We talked about hiding the factory from them. But everyone around the table agreed that we needed to play this one straight. As in the Onitsuka trial, full disclosure, total transparency, was the only course. It made sense, strategically and morally. Throughout this summit the phones rang constantly. Creditors from coast to coast were trying to find out what was going on, why our checks were bouncing like Super Balls. Two creditors in particular were livid. One was Bill Shesky, head of Bostonian Shoes. We owed him a cool half million dollars, and he wanted to let us know that he was boarding a plane and coming to Oregon to get it. The second was Bill Manowitz, head of Mano International, a trading company in New York. We owed him one hundred thousand dollars, and he, too, was coming to Oregon to force a showdown. And to cash out. After the summit adjourned I was the last to leave. Alone, I staggered out to my car. In my lifetime I had finished many races on sore legs, gimpy knees, zero energy, but that night I wasn’t altogether sure I had the strength to drive home.

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

  In many ways she was a permanent teenager, resisting her role as matriarch. It struck me that she was more like a sister to Penny than a mother, and indeed, soon after dinner, when Penny and I invited her to come get a drink with us, Dot jumped at the chance. We hit several hot spots and wound up at an after-hours joint on the east side. Penny, after two cocktails, switched to water—but not Dot. Dot kept right on going, and going, and soon she was jumping up to dance with all sorts of strange men. Sailors, and worse. At one point she jabbed a thumb in Penny’s direction and said to me, “Let’s ditch this wet blanket! She’s dead weight!” Penny put both hands over her eyes. I laughed and kicked back. I’d passed the Dot Test. Dot’s seal of approval promised to be an asset some months later, when I wanted to take Penny away for a long weekend. Though Penny had been spending evenings at my apartment, we were still in some ways constrained by propriety. As long as she lived under their roof, Penny felt bound to obey her parents, to abide by their rules and rituals. So I was bound to get her mother’s consent before such a big trip. Wearing a suit and tie, I presented myself at the house. I made nice with the animals, petted the goose, and asked Dot for a word. The two of us sat at the kitchen table, over cups of coffee, and I said that I cared very much for Penny. Dot smiled. I said that I believed Penny cared very much for me. Dot smiled, but less certainly. I said that I wanted to take Penny to Sacramento for the weekend. To the national track-and-field championships. Dot took a sip of her coffee and puckered her lips. “Hmm… no,” she said. “No, no, Buck, I don’t think so. I don’t think we’re going to do that.” “Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry to hear that.” I went and found Penny in one of the back rooms of the house and told her that her mother said no. Penny put her palms against her cheeks. I told her not to worry, I’d go home, collect my thoughts, and try to think of something. The next day I returned to the house and again asked Dot for a moment of her time. Again we sat in the kitchen over cups of coffee. “Dot,” I said, “I probably didn’t do a very good job yesterday of explaining how serious I am about your daughter. You see, Dot, I love Penny. And Penny loves me. And if things continue in this vein, I see us building a life together. So I really hope that you’ll reconsider your answer of yesterday.” Dot stirred sugar into her coffee, drummed her fingers on the table. She had an odd look on her face, a look of fear, and frustration.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  The democratization of Europe was not a peaceful process but was achieved in a series of bloody revolutions, civil wars, the assassination of the nobility, militant dictatorships, and reigns of terror. During the 1640s and 1650s, for example, England had seen a violent civil war, the execution of King Charles I (1649), and a period of republican rule under the Puritan government of Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658). Levelers, Quakers, Diggers, and Muggletonians had developed their own revolutionary piety. 36 If God dwelled in nature— if, as some said, God was nature—there was no need for clerics and churches, and everybody should share the nation’s prosperity. George Fox (1624–91), founder of the Society of Friends, taught Christians to seek their own inner light and “make use of their own understanding without direction from another”; 37 in the scientific age, religion should be “experimental,” every one of its doctrines tested empirically against each person’s experience. 38 For Richard Coppin, the God within was the only true authority. Because God informed all things, Jacob Bauthumely regarded the worship of a distinct, separate God as blasphemous, while Laurence Clarkson called upon the omnipresent God to empower the people to bring the aristocracy down. This fervid piety was not quelled by the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 under King Charles II; it simply went underground. The next thirty years were a time of extreme anxiety, since people feared another violent revolution. 39 A flourishing market economy was developing in London and the southeast, but the poor resented the affluence of the new commercial classes, the authority of the recently established Church of England, and the privileges of the landed gentry. In Cambridge, the mathematician and clergyman Isaac Barrow (1630–77) developed a liberal Anglicanism that he hoped would help to build an orderly society, modeled on the cosmos, in which all people kept to their proper orbits and worked together harmoniously for the common good. A regular member of these discussion groups was the young Isaac Newton (1642–1727). 40 Like Descartes, Newton aspired to create a universal science capable of interpreting the whole of human experience. Where Descartes’ quest had been solitary, Newton understood the importance of cooperation in science. He wanted to build on the achievements of his great predecessors, and felt, as he wrote to his friend Robert Hooke, as though he were “standing on the shoulders of giants.” 41 But these giants had left some unanswered questions: What kept the planets in their orbits?

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Science seemed the avatar of progress. It was definite, precise, and accurate; it accumulated truth in a methodical, purposeful manner, proved its theories, corrected earlier mistakes, and moved fearlessly into the future. Impressed by this new professional rigor and eager to share science’s prestige, people in other disciplines were increasingly influenced by its positivist standard of truth. But Lyell’s revelations gave many believers, who were used to thinking that science was on their side, a salutary jolt. In America, after a brief but intense panic, Evangelical churchmen started to pull back from their strict biblical literalism. But they still relied on the argument from design, and few were aware of the disturbing new evidence that life itself—not merely the earth’s crust—had evolved from “lower” to “higher” forms. The fossil record showed that innumerable species had failed to survive; instead of a neat design, the geologists were uncovering a natural history of pain, death, and racial extinction. In 1844, the popular Scottish writer Robert Chambers (1802–71) published Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation , arguing that scientists would soon prove that there was a purely natural explanation for the development of life. But others tried to “baptize” these new discoveries. For the Swiss American Harvard professor Louis Agassiz (1807–73) this struggle had been part of God’s grand design; 31 God had simply been preparing the earth for its human inhabitants. Agassiz saw evidence of the divine Mind in the symmetry of nature, in which patterns were repeated in every vertebrate. This could not have been accidental: an “intelligent and intelligible connection between the facts of nature must be looked upon as a direct proof of the existence of a thinking God.” 32 But a seed of doubt had been sown. The English poet Alfred Tennyson (1809–92) gave moving expression to the buried anxiety that was eroding the faith of his contemporaries. The instant popular success of In Memoriam (1850) showed that he had voiced the unspoken fears of many. For two hundred years, Western Christians had been encouraged to believe that the scientific investigation of the natural world endorsed their faith. But now, it appeared, if there had been a divine plan, it had been cruel, callously prodigal, and wasteful. As Tennyson memorably put it, Nature was “red in tooth and claw.” Because the scientific proof on which people had been taught to depend had been radically called into question, we could only “faintly trust the larger hope”: 33 That nothing walks with aimless feet That not one life shall be destroy’d Or cast as rubbish to the void When God hath made the pile complete . 34 But “trust” seemed vague and insubstantial beside the confident, precise, and certain knowledge of science.

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

  For one merciful moment it diverted attention from our office space. Then Kitami pointed at eastern Montana. “No pins,” he said. “Obviously salesman here not doing job.” DAYS WENT SWOOSHING by. I was trying to build a company and a marriage. Penny and I were learning to live together, learning to meld our personalities and idiosyncrasies, though we agreed that she was the one with all the personality and I was the idiosyncratic one. Therefore it was she who had more to learn. For instance, she was learning that I spent a fair portion of each day lost in my own thoughts, tumbling down mental wormholes, trying to solve some problem or construct some plan. I often didn’t hear what she said, and if I did hear I didn’t remember it minutes later. She was learning that I was absentminded, that I would drive to the grocery store and come home empty-handed, without the one item she’d asked me to buy, because all the way there and all the way back I’d been puzzling over the latest bank crisis, or the most recent Onitsuka shipping delay. She was learning that I misplaced everything, especially the important things, like wallets and keys. Bad enough that I couldn’t multitask, but I insisted on trying. I’d often scan the financial pages while eating lunch—and driving. My new black Cougar didn’t remain new for long. As the Mr. Magoo of Oregon, I was forever bumping into trees and poles and other people’s fenders. She was learning that I wasn’t housebroken. I left the toilet seat up, left my clothes where they fell, left food on the counter. I was effectively helpless. I couldn’t cook, or clean, or do even the simplest things for myself, because I’d been spoiled rotten by my mother and sisters. All those years in the servants’ quarters, I’d essentially had servants. She was learning that I didn’t like to lose, at anything, that losing for me was a special form of agony. I often flippantly blamed Bowerman, but it went way back. I told her about playing Ping-Pong with my father when I was a boy, and the pain of never being able to beat him. I told her that my father would sometimes laugh when he won, which sent me into a rage. More than once I’d thrown down my paddle and run off crying. I wasn’t proud of this behavior, but it was ingrained. It explained me. She didn’t really get it until we went bowling. Penny was a very good bowler—she’d taken a bowling class at Oregon State—so I perceived this as a challenge, and I was going to meet the challenge head-on. I was determined to win, and thus everything other than a strike made me glum. Above all, she was learning that marrying a man with a start-up shoe company meant living on a shoestring budget. And yet she thrived.

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

  1966 As I neared the end of my contract with Onitsuka, I checked the mail every day, hoping for a letter that would say they wanted to renew. Or that they didn’t. There would be relief in knowing either way. Of course I was also hoping for a letter from Sarah, saying she’d changed her mind. And as always I was braced for a letter from my bank, telling me my business was no longer welcome. But every day the only letters were from Johnson. Like Bowerman, the man didn’t sleep. Ever. I could think of no other explanation for his ceaseless stream of correspondence. Much of which was pointless. Along with gobs of information I didn’t need, the typical Johnson letter would include several long parenthetical asides, and some kind of rambling joke. There might also be a hand-drawn illustration. There might also be a musical lyric. Sometimes there was a poem. Batted out on a manual typewriter that violently Brailled the onionskin pages, many Johnson letters contained some kind of story. Maybe “parable” is a better word. How Johnson had sold this person a pair of Tigers, but down the road said person might be good for X more pairs, and therefore Johnson had a plan... How Johnson had chased and badgered the head coach at such-and-such high school, and tried to sell him six pairs, but in the end sold him a baker’s dozen... which just went to show... Often Johnson would describe in excruciating detail the latest ad he’d placed or was contemplating placing in the back pages of Long Distance Log or Track & Field News. Or he’d describe the photograph of a Tiger shoe he’d included with the ad. He’d constructed a makeshift photo studio in his house, and he’d pose the shoes seductively on the sofa, against a black sweater. Never mind that it sounded a bit like shoe porn, I just didn’t see the point of placing ads in magazines read exclusively by running nerds. I didn’t see the point of advertising, period. But Johnson seemed to be having fun, and he swore the ads worked, so, fine, far be it from me to stop him. The typical Johnson letter would invariably close with a lament, either sarcastic or pointedly earnest, about my failure to respond to his previous letter. And the one before that, etc. Then there would be a PS, and usually another PS, and sometimes a pagoda of PS’s. Then one last plea for encouraging words, which I never sent. I didn’t have time for encouraging words. Besides, it wasn’t my style. I look back now and wonder if I was truly being myself, or if I was emulating Bowerman, or my father, or both. Was I adopting their man-of-few-words demeanor? Was I maybe modeling all the men I admired? At the time I was reading everything I could get my hands on about generals, samurai, shoguns, along with biographies of my three main heroes—Churchill, Kennedy, and Tolstoy.

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

  I’d rehearsed this scene in my head so many times, as I’d rehearsed every race I’d ever run, long before the starting pistol. But now I realized this was no race. There is a primal urge to compare everything—life, business, adventures of all sorts—to a race. But the metaphor is often inadequate. It can take you only so far. Unable to remember what I’d wanted to say, or even why I was here, I took several quick breaths. Everything depended on my rising to this occasion. Everything. If I didn’t, if I muffed this, I’d be doomed to spend the rest of my days selling encyclopedias, or mutual funds, or some other junk I didn’t really care about. I’d be a disappointment to my parents, my school, my hometown. Myself. I looked at the faces around the table. Whenever I’d imagined this scene, I’d omitted one crucial element. I’d failed to foresee how present World War II would be in that room. The war was right there, beside us, between us, attaching a subtext to every word we spoke. Good evening, everyone—there’s good news tonight! And yet it also wasn’t there. Through their resilience, through their stoic acceptance of total defeat, and their heroic reconstruction of their nation, the Japanese had put the war cleanly behind them. Also, these executives in the conference room were young, like me, and you could see that they felt the war had nothing to do with them. On the other hand, their fathers and uncles had tried to kill mine. On the other hand, the past was past. On the other hand, that whole question of Winning and Losing, which clouds and complicates so many deals, gets even more complicated when the potential winners and losers have recently been involved, albeit via proxies and ancestors, in a global conflagration. All of this interior static, this seesawing confusion about war and peace, created a low-volume hum in my head, an awkwardness for which I was unprepared. The realist in me wanted to acknowledge it, the idealist in me pushed it aside. I coughed into my fist. “Gentlemen,” I began. Mr. Miyazaki interrupted. “Mr. Knight—what company are you with?” he asked. “Ah, yes, good question.” Adrenaline surging through my blood, I felt the flight response, the longing to run and hide, which made me think of the safest place in the world. My parents’ house. The house had been built decades before, by people of means, people with much more money than my parents, and thus the architect had included servants’ quarters at the back of the house, and these quarters were my bedroom, which I’d filled with baseball cards, record albums, posters, books—all things holy. I’d also covered one wall with my blue ribbons from track, the one thing in my life of which I was unabashedly proud. And so? “Blue Ribbon,” I blurted. “Gentlemen, I represent Blue Ribbon Sports of Portland, Oregon.”

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

  Which seemed like saying: Aside from being on death row, life was grand. Another good sign. We kept outgrowing our headquarters. We moved again that year, to a forty-thousand-square-foot building all our own, in Beaverton. My private office was sleek, and huge, bigger than our entire first headquarters next to the Pink Bucket. And utterly empty. The interior decorator decided to go Japanese minimalist—with one touch of the absurd that everyone found hilarious. She thought it would be a hoot to set beside my desk a leather chair that was a giant baseball mitt. “Now,” she said, “you can sit there every day and think about your... sports things.” I sat in the mitt, like a foul ball, and looked out the window. I should have reveled in that moment, savored the humor and the irony. Getting cut from my high school baseball team had been one of the great hurts of my life, and now I was sitting in a giant mitt, in a swank new office, presiding over a company that sold “sports things” to professional baseball players. But instead of cherishing how far we’d come, I saw only how far we had to go. My window looked onto a beautiful stand of pines, and I definitely couldn’t see the forest for the trees. I didn’t understand what was happening, in the moment, but now I do. The years of stress were taking their toll. When you see only problems, you’re not seeing clearly. At just the moment I needed to be my sharpest, I was approaching burnout. I OPENED THE final Buttface of 1978 with a rah-rah speech, trying to fire up the troops, but especially myself. “Gentlemen,” I said, “our industry is made up of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs! And next year... finally... one of the dwarfs is going to get into Snow White’s pants!” As if the metaphor needed further explanation, I explained that Adidas was Snow White. And our time, I thundered, is coming! But first we needed to start selling clothes. Aside from the plain numerical fact that Adidas sold more apparel than shoes, apparel gave them a psychological edge. Apparel helped them lure bigger athletes into sweeter endorsement deals. Look at all we can give you, Adidas would say to an athlete, pointing to their shirts and pants and other gear. And they could say the same thing when they sat down with sporting goods stores. Besides, if we ever resolved our fight with the Feds, and if we ever wanted to go public, Wall Street wouldn’t give us the respect we deserved if we were just a shoe company. We needed to be diverse, which meant developing a solid line of apparel—which meant finding someone darned good to put in charge of it. At the Buttface I announced that someone would be Ron Nelson. “Why him?” Hayes asked. “Uh, well,” I said, “for starters, he’s a CPA...” Hayes waved his arms over his head.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Those philosophers who focused on Derrida’s later work have been more successful. The Italian postmodernist Gianni Vattimo argues that from the very first religion had recognized that it was an essentially interpretive discourse: it had traditionally proceeded by endlessly deconstructing its sacred texts, so that from the start it had the potential to liberate itself from metaphysical orthodoxy. Vattimo is anxious to promote what is called “weak thought” to counter the aggressively triumphalist certainty that characterizes a good deal of modern religion and atheism. Metaphysics is dangerous because it makes absolute claims for either God or reason. “Not all metaphysics have been violent,” Vattimo admits, “but all violent people of great dimensions have been metaphysical.”56 Hitler, for example, was not content to hate only the Jews in his vicinity but created a grand récit that made metaphysical claims about Jews in general. “When someone wants to tell me the absolute truth,” Vattimo remarks shrewdly, “it is because he wants to put me under his control.”57 Both theism and atheism make such claims, but there are no absolute truths anymore—only interpretations.58 Modernity, Vattimo believes, is over; when we contemplate history, we cannot now see the future as an inevitable and unilinear progression toward emancipation. Freedom no longer lies in the perfect knowledge of and conformity to the necessary structure of reality, but in an appreciation of multiple discourses and the historicity, contingency, and finitude of all religious, ethical, and political values— including our own.59 Vattimo wants to bring down “walls,” including the walls that separate theists and atheists. Even though he believes that society will reembrace religion, he does not want to abandon secularization, because he regards the Church-state alliance set up by Constantine as a Christian aberration. The ideal society should be based on charity rather than truth. In the past, Vattimo recalls, religious truth generally emerged from people interacting with others rather than by papal edict. Vattimo recalls Christ’s saying “When two or three are gathered together in my name, I will be in the midst of them,” and the classic hymn “Where there is love, there is also God.”60

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

  While "an unspeakable restlessness and agitation," at once titillating and perhaps orgasmic, engulf Sula and Nel after their grass play scene, their homoerotic moment ends abruptly as Chicken, "a little boy in too big knickers," approaches from the lower side of the riverbank. Chicken's presence is, in a (sexual) sense, not consensual: it is an unwelcome, uninvited intrusion. The language of the passage is rife with references to the sexual, though far more nuanced (especially in juxtaposition to the grass play scene), but nonetheless engages the erotic. Chicken's entry from the "lower banks" of the river, emblematic in both physiological and anatomical terms, of the body's lower regions where the genitalia, the sex organs reside, reinforces the sexual and his unwelcome infringement upon Sula and Nel. His immediate death, then, marked by an ambiguity of calculation versus inadvertence with regard to Sula and Nel's intentions, resembles the playful and accidental, yet borders on the ambiguously deliberate and punitive: with Sula picking Chicken Little up by his hands, swinging him "outward then around and around" as his "knickers ballooned" before he "slipped from her hands." As he sailed "over the water they could still hear his bubbly laughter" before the "water darkened and closed quickly over the place where [he] sank" (6o-61). In this scene, vis-a-vis actions, gestures, language, and imagery, the sexual is provocatively encoded in, first, the embrace: the picking up and "foreplay"-the stimulating pleasure from touch and movement, the outward gyration that proceeds "around and around" in the swinging motion-resulting in the ballooning of Chicken's pants. The response is titillation: the ballooning knickers, symbolic male corporeal gratification, the excited body with emphasis on the pants (the regions of erectile stimulation and pleasure)-with (orgasmic-like) "shrieks of frightened joy"that culminates with a penetration, a submergence wherein he reaches a cumulative peak of stimulated pleasure, in a painfully tragic (sadomasochist) climax: death. Sequentially, Chicken's death follows Sula and Nel's homoerotic intimacy; and, just as Sula and Nel methodically concealed their symbolic sexualized gestures, filling the holes with debris for concealment, so, too, is Chicken Little eliminatedhis body drowned and engulfed by water-to keep their homoerotic scene private. If, as Sharon Holland posits in Raising the Dead, readings on "the dead" animate "death" as emblematic of "a figurative silencing or process of erasure, and as an embodied entity or subject capable of transgression," Chicken's unwelcome presence elicits his death; for, he, to evoke Holland, not only embodies the capability of transgression, but also, I would add, marks and, indeed, underscores Sula and Nel's very own capacity for transgression.24 As a male meddler intruding upon and threatening their female intimacy, his death, regardless of their intent, enables them to maintain their agency through the eradication, physically and metaphorically, of oppressive (and "masculinist") forces that threaten, infringe upon, or restrict female sexuality, the homoerotic, and/or homosocial relationships.25

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

  His father had been a salesman, and a good one, and Cousin Houser learned from him how to sell his client. Better yet, he was a tenacious competitor. When we were kids Cousin Houser and I used to play vicious, marathon games of badminton in his backyard. One summer we played exactly 116 games. Why 116? Because Cousin Houser beat me 115 straight times. I refused to quit until I’d won. And he had no trouble understanding my position. But the main reason I chose Cousin Houser was poverty. I had no money for legal fees, and Cousin Houser talked his firm into taking my case on contingency. Much of 1973 was spent in Cousin Houser’s office, reading documents, reviewing memos, cringing at my own words and actions. My memo about hiring a spy—the court would take a dim view of this, Cousin Houser warned. And my “borrowing” Kitami’s folder from his briefcase? How could a judge view that as anything but theft? MacArthur came to mind. You are remembered for the rules you break. I contemplated hiding these painful facts from the court. In the end, however, there was only one thing to do. Play it straight. It was the smart thing, the right thing. I’d simply have to hope the court would see the stealing of Kitami’s folder as a kind of self-defense. When I wasn’t with Cousin Houser, studying the case, I was being studied. In other words, deposed. For all my belief that business was war without bullets, I’d never felt the full fury of conference-room combat until I found myself at a table surrounded by five lawyers. They tried everything to get me to say I’d violated my contract with Onitsuka. They tried trick questions, hostile questions, squirrelly questions, loaded questions. When questions didn’t work, they twisted my answers. A deposition is strenuous for anyone, but for a shy person it’s an ordeal. Badgered, baited, harassed, mocked, I was a shell of myself by the end. My condition was worsened by the sense that I hadn’t done very well—a sense Cousin Houser reluctantly confirmed. At the close of those difficult days, it was my nightly six-mile run that saved my life. And then it was my brief time with Matthew and Penny that preserved my sanity. I’d always try to find the time and energy to tell Matthew his bedtime story. Thomas Jefferson was toiling to write the Declaration of Independence, you see, struggling to find the words, when little Matt History brought him a new quill pen and the words seemed to magically flow… Matthew almost always laughed at my bedtime stories. He had a liquid laugh, which I loved to hear, because at other times he could be moody, sullen. Cause for concern. He’d been very late learning to talk, and now he was showing a worrisome rebellious streak. I blamed myself. If I were home more, I told myself, he’d be less rebellious.

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

  1974 I sat in the federal courthouse in downtown Portland, at a little wooden table, alongside Strasser and Cousin Houser, staring at the high ceiling. I tried to take deep breaths. I tried not to look to my left, at the opposing table, at the five raptor-eyed lawyers representing Onitsuka and four other distributors, all of whom wanted to see me ruined. It was April 14, 1974. We’d tried one last time to avoid this nightmare. In the moments before the trial began we’d offered to settle. We’d told Onitsuka: Pay us eight hundred thousand dollars in damages, withdraw your suit in Japan, we’ll withdraw ours, and we’ll all walk away. I didn’t think there was much chance of acceptance, but Cousin Houser thought it worth a try. Onitsuka rejected the offer instantly. And made no counter. They were out for blood. Now the bailiff shouted, “Court is in session!” The judge swooped into the courtroom and banged his gavel and my heart jumped. This is it, I told myself. The head lawyer for Onitsuka’s side, Wayne Hilliard, gave his opening statement first. He was a man who enjoyed his work, who knew he was good at it. “These men… have unclean hands!” he cried, pointing at our table. “Unclean… hands ,” he repeated. This was a standard legal term, but Hilliard made it sound lurid, almost pornographic. (Everything Hilliard said sounded somewhat sinister to me, because he was short and had a pointy nose and looked like the Penguin.) Blue Ribbon “conned” Onitsuka into this partnership, he bellowed. Phil Knight went to Japan in 1962 and pretended there was a company called Blue Ribbon, and thereafter he employed subterfuge, theft, spies, whatever necessary, to perpetuate this con. By the time Hilliard was done, by the time he’d taken his seat next to his four fellow lawyers, I was ready to find in favor of Onitsuka. I looked into my lap and asked myself, How could you have done all those terrible things to those poor Japanese businessmen? Cousin Houser stood. Right away it was clear that he didn’t have Hilliard’s fire. It just wasn’t in his nature. Cousin Houser was organized, prepared, but he wasn’t fiery. At first I was disappointed. Then I looked more closely at Cousin Houser, and listened to what he was saying, and thought about his life. As a boy he’d suffered a severe speech impediment. Every “r” and “l” had been a hurdle. Even into his teens he’d sounded like a cartoon character. Now, though he retained slight traces of the impediment, he’d largely overcome it, and as he addressed the packed courtroom that day, I was filled with admiration, and filial loyalty. What a journey he’d made. We’d made. I was proud of him, proud he was on our side. Moreover, he’d taken our case on contingency because he’d thought it would come to trial in months. Two years later he hadn’t seen a dime. And his costs were astronomical.

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

  My photocopying bill alone was in the tens of thousands. Now and then Cousin Houser mentioned that he was under intense pressure from his partners to kick us to the curb. At one point he’d even asked Jaqua to take over the case. (No thanks, Jaqua said.) Fire or no, Cousin Houser was a true hero. He finished speaking, seated himself at our table, and looked at me and Strasser. I patted his back. Game on. AS THE PLAINTIFFS, we presented our case first, and the first witness we called was the founder and president of Blue Ribbon, Philip H. Knight. Walking to the stand I felt as if it must be some other Philip Knight being called, some other Philip Knight now raising his hand, swearing to tell the truth, in a case marked by so much deceit and rancor. I was floating above my body, watching the scene unfold far below. I told myself as I settled deep into the creaky wooden chair in the witness stand and straightened my necktie, This is the most important account you’ll ever give of yourself. Don’t blow it. And then I blew it. I was every bit as bad as I’d been in the depositions. I was even a little worse. Cousin Houser tried to help me, to lead me. He struck an encouraging tone, gave me a friendly smile with each question, but my mind was going in multiple directions. I couldn’t concentrate. I hadn’t slept the night before, hadn’t eaten that morning, and I was running on adrenaline, but the adrenaline wasn’t giving me extra energy or clarity. It was only clouding my brain. I found myself entertaining strange, almost hallucinatory thoughts, like how much Cousin Houser resembled me. He was about my age, about my height, with many of my same features. I’d never noticed the family resemblance until now. What a Kafkaesque twist, I thought, being interrogated by yourself. By the end of his questioning, I had made a slight recovery. The adrenaline was gone and I was starting to make sense. But now it was the other side’s turn to have a go at me. Hilliard drilled down, down. He was relentless and I was soon reeling. I hemmed, hawed, couched every other word in strange qualifiers. I sounded shady, shifty, even to myself. When I talked about going through Kitami’s briefcase, when I tried to explain that Mr. Fujimoto wasn’t really a corporate spy, I saw the courtroom spectators, and the judge, look skeptical. Even I was skeptical. Several times I looked into the distance and squinted and thought, Did I really do that? I scanned the courtroom, looking for help, and saw nothing but hostile faces. The most hostile was Bork’s. He was sitting right behind the Onitsuka table, glaring. Now and then he’d lean into the Onitsuka lawyers, whispering, handing them notes. Traitor, I thought. Benedict Arnold.

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

  Between my hours at Price Waterhouse, my drunken revels with Hayes, my nights and weekends handling the minutiae connected with Blue Ribbon, and my fourteen hours each month soldiering in the Reserves, I was on fumes. Then Johnson wrote me a fateful letter, and I had no choice. I jumped on a plane. JOHNSON’S CUSTOMER PEN pals now numbered in the hundreds, and one of them, a high school kid on Long Island, had written to Johnson and inadvertently revealed some troubling news. The kid said his track coach had recently been talking about acquiring Tigers from a new source... some wrestling coach in Valley Stream or Massapequa or Manhasset. The Marlboro Man was back. He’d even placed a national ad in an issue of Track and Field. While Johnson was busy poaching on the Marlboro Man’s turf, the Marlboro Man was poaching our poaching. Johnson had done all this marvelous groundwork, had built up this enormous customer base, had spread the word about Tigers through his doggedness and crude marketing, and now the Marlboro Man was going to swoop in and capitalize? I’m not sure why I hopped on the next plane to Los Angeles. I could have phoned. Maybe, like Johnson’s customers, I needed a sense of community, even if it was a community of just two.

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

  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. Allegedly it would help us do a better job of dictating the quality of our outer soles and midsoles. More, Bowerman wanted it for his experiments, and my policy was still WBW: Whatever Bowerman Wants. If Bowerman requisitions a Sherman tank, I told Woodell, don’t ask questions. Just dial the Pentagon. But when Hayes asked Woodell about “these rubber mill gizmos,” and where to find one, Woodell shrugged. Never heard of them. Woodell referred Hayes to Giampietro, who knew everything worth knowing about rubber mills, of course, and days later Hayes found himself trekking with Giampietro into the backwoods of Maine, to the little town of Saco, and an auction of industrial equipment. Hayes wasn’t able to find a rubber mill at the auction, but he did fall in love with the auction site, an old redbrick factory on an island in the Saco River. The factory was something out of Stephen King, but that didn’t spook Hayes. It spoke to him. I guess it was to be expected that a man with a bulldozer fetish would become enamored of a rusted-out factory. The surprising part was, the factory happened to be for sale. Price: $500,000. Hayes offered the factory owner $100,000, and they settled on $200,000. “Congratulations,” Hayes and Woodell said when they phoned that afternoon. “For what?” “For only slightly more than the cost of a rubber mill you are the proud owner of a whole damn factory,” they said. “The heck are you talking about?” They filled me in. Like Jack telling his mother about the magic beans, they mumbled when they got to the part about the price. And about the factory needing tens of thousands of dollars in repairs. I could tell they’d been drinking, and later Woodell would confess that, after stopping at a huge discount liquor outlet in New Hampshire, Hayes whooped: “At prices like this? A man can’t afford not to drink!” I rose from my chair and yelled into the phone, “You dummies! What do I need with a nonworking factory in Saco, Maine?”

• From City of Night (1963)

  He sees me hesitating—saw me looking at him trying to pin him—and he said completely unexpectedly: “Dont worry, Im not on the vice squad.” “What makes you think I’d care?” I said, annoyed. “Honestly,” he said. “Look.” He drew open his coat, so I could see there is no badge—although of course it proved nothing. It only irritated me further. “What makes you think I’d care if you are?” I challenged him again. The implication that he knows I have something to fear in that direction bothers me. It indicates, too, that, whatever he is, hes familiar with that world. But then, merely his repeated presence on this beach revealed that. “Oh,” he said uncomfortably, “well, I mean, it has nothing to do with you, really. I mean—well—this beach—and I have seen you several times—you leave with different people—and they—well—...” He went on apologetically, making it worse. “Lets go get some coffee somewhere,” he said hurriedly. We got into his car, a new stationwagon. There is a suitcase on one seat. “Im on vacation,” he explained. “I dont live here. Usually I come down on weekends. I didnt have any plans for my vacation—so I thought I’d just drive around. Ive only got four more days left.” At the restaurant on Wilshire—as we stood waiting to be served (surrounded by tanned faces rejuvenated by the Sun), he doesnt look at me like the other people who would usually pick you up, doesnt talk like them.... Of course, there are many men in that world who, outside of pickup places, wear a mask convincingly, but in the atmosphere of the beaches, the bars—or when theyve made a contact—the mask usually slides off—if only slightly: They remain masculine, yes, but there is usually at least the subtlest hint of the façaded sex-hunger. About the man Im with there hasnt been that slightest hint. “Have you eaten yet?” he asked me. “No.” “Why dont you then?” Even this is said merely graciously, not buyingly. Too, there is always the threat of meeting someone who looks perfectly “normal” and who turns out to be psycho—like the man in the raincoat in New York who had pulled a knife on me. In a life that thrives on the arbitrary stamp of “differentness” imposed on it by the world that creates it and then rejects it, the more “regular” the person (the more he defies the usually easy classification of masculine homosexual, queen, score, hustler, fairy), the more suspect he becomes. He talked very little while we ate; and because of my complete inability to make him out, I had eased the hustling stance. That pose can blot out all but sexual communication. Yet, those usual times, you know—youve learned!—that it’s necessary.... This man, though, is different. Outside again, we stood on the sidewalk. The sun is fading behind the strip of park, beyond the sand, into the ocean. Toward the horizon, the fog lifts itself gracefully like a veil welcoming the night.

• From City of Night (1963)

  Then to Harry’s bar and more smoke, more streaky mirrors, more hungry eyes and stares—and later, before the burlesque house with the winking lights and the pictures of nude women, we saw three girls, and Chuck went casually and talked to them and they said yes. They belonged obviously to that breed of young girls with whom the hustlers periodically prove their masculinity. Like the malehustlers, they live the best they can from day to day.... We went back to the 1-2-3 to look for Skipper or Buddy to come along with us. Miss Destiny was standing outside with Lola, and when she saw the girls with us, she stomped angrily inside the bar. We found Skipper, and we got into Buddy’s car and Skipper made it run, and since no one had a place to go, we drove to Echo Park. And the night was miraculously clear as it rarely is in Los Angeles, and the moon hung sadly in the sky as unconcerned as the world, as we sexhuddled in the car with the three lost girls.... We left the girls at Silverlake and came back to the 1-2-3, where Miss Destiny, skyhigh, rushed at us shrieking, “You know whats the crazy matter with you, all of you? youre so dam gone on your own damselves you have to hang around queens to prove youre such fine dam studs, and the first dam cunt that shows, you go lapping after her like hot dam dawgs!” Then she cooled off right away and said drive her to Bixel Street, where someone (shes playing it mysterious like someone is turning her on free because shes such a gone queen) is laying all kinds of stuff on her. When we got to Bixel, it turns out Trudi’s daddy has paid for the stuff, including a tin of maryjane and rolls of bees, and hes asked Miss Destiny to take it to her place and Bring Everybody and theyll be up later and we’ll have a party. We rode back, and on Broadway the cop-patrol is driving meanly. Skipper put on his dark shades, Chuck lowered his widehat, I sank into the seat (the junk: the roust), and goddamned Miss Destiny waves at the cops—“Yoohoo, girls”—shes flying out of her gay head. Luckily they didnt hear her and they already had someone in back, so they went by with everyone-hating faces. Just as Skipper parked, Trudi’s daddy drives up in his tough station-wagon with Trudi behind him wrapped in—I swear—a fur stole—“Like Mae West,” she cooed. And we all went up to Miss Destiny’s. 5 I was out in the street with the jazzcat from New York wearing dark shades who had somehow turned up later at Destiny’s. And Los Angeles was- dreary in the earlyhours with the sidewalks wet where theyve just watered them and the purplish haze of the early morning. And he asked me which way I was going. That way, I said. Me too, he said.

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

  I didn’t mention that two members of my scrappy hometown Portland Trail Blazers had just worn Nikes during a rout of the New York Knicks, 133–86. The Oregonian had recently run a photo of Geoff Petrie driving past a Knick (Phil Jackson, by name), and visible on Petrie’s shoes was a swoosh. (We’d just made a deal with a couple of other Blazers to supply them with shoes, too.) Good thing the Oregonian didn’t have a wide circulation in Kobe. Kitami asked if the new Nike was in stores. Of course not, I lied. Or fibbed. He asked when I was going to sign his papers and sell him my company. I told him my partner still hadn’t decided. End of meeting. He buttoned and unbuttoned the coat of his suit and said he had other business in California. But he’d be back. He marched out of my office and I immediately reached for the phone. I dialed our retail store in Los Angeles. Bork answered. “John, our old friend Kitami is coming to town! I’m sure he’ll come by your store! Hide the Nikes!” “Huh?” “He knows about Nike, but I told him it isn’t in stores!” “What you’re asking of me,” Bork said, “I don’t know.” He sounded frightened. And irritated. He didn’t want to do anything dishonest, he said. “I’m asking you to stash a few pairs of shoes,” I cried, then slammed down the phone. Sure enough, Kitami showed up that afternoon. He confronted Bork, badgered him with questions, shook him down like a cop with a shaky witness. Bork played dumb—or so he told me later. Kitami asked to use the bathroom. A ploy, of course. He knew the bathroom was somewhere in the back, and he needed an excuse to snoop back there. Bork didn’t see the ploy, or didn’t care to. Moments later Kitami was standing in the stockroom, under a bare lightbulb, glowering at hundreds of orange shoe boxes. Nike, Nike, everywhere, and not a drop to drink. Bork phoned me after Kitami left. “Jig’s up,” he said. “What happened?” I asked. “Kitami forced his way into the stockroom—it’s over, Phil.” I hung up, slumped in my chair. “Well,” I said, out loud, to no one, “I guess we’re going to find out if we can exist without Tiger.” We found out something else, too. Soon after that day, Bork quit. Actually, I don’t remember if he quit or Woodell fired him. Either way, not long after that , we heard Bork had a new job. Working for Kitami. I SPENT DAYS and days staring into space, gazing out windows, waiting for Kitami to play his next card. I also watched a lot of TV. The nation, the world, was agog at the sudden opening of relations between the United States and China. President Nixon was in Beijing, shaking hands with Mao Zedong, an event nearly on a par with the moon landing.

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

  Maybe when Wallace saw our boring, sterile new office space, he’d treat us with respect. Also, the office was in Tigard. Selling Tigers out of Tigard—maybe it was meant to be. Then I thought about Woodell. He said he was happy at Blue Ribbon, but he’d mentioned the irony. Maybe it was more than ironic, sending him out to high schools and colleges to sell Tigers out of his car. Maybe it was torture. And maybe it was a poor use of his talents. What suited Woodell best was bringing order to chaos, problem-solving. One small task. After he and I went together to sign the Tigard lease, I asked him if he’d like to change jobs, become operations manager for Blue Ribbon. No more sales calls. No more schools. Instead he’d be in charge of dealing with all the things for which I didn’t have the time and patience. Like talking to Bork in L.A. Or corresponding with Johnson in Wellesley. Or opening a new office in Miami. Or hiring someone to coordinate all the new sales reps and organize their reports. Or approving expense accounts. Best of all, Woodell would have to oversee the person who monitored company bank accounts. Now, if he didn’t cash his own paychecks, he’d have to explain the overage to his boss: himself. Beaming, Woodell said he liked the sound of that very much. He reached out his hand. Deal, he said. Still had the grip of an athlete. PENNY WENT TO the doctor in September 1969. A checkup. The doctor said everything looked fine, but the baby was taking its time. Probably another week, he said. The rest of that afternoon Penny spent at Blue Ribbon, helping customers. We went home together, ate an early dinner, turned in early. About 4:00 a.m. she jostled me. “I don’t feel so good,” she said. I phoned the doctor and told him to meet us at Emanuel Hospital. In the weeks before Labor Day I’d made several practice trips to the hospital, and it was a good thing, because now, “game time,” I was such a wreck that Portland looked to me like Bangkok. Everything was strange, unfamiliar. I drove slowly, to make sure of each turn. Not too slowly, I scolded myself, or you’ll have to deliver the baby yourself. The streets were all empty, the lights were all green. A soft rain was falling. The only sounds in the car were Penny’s heavy breaths and the wipers squeaking across the windshield. As I pulled up to the entrance of the emergency room, as I helped Penny into the hospital, she kept saying, “We’re probably overreacting, I don’t think it’s time yet.” Still, she was breathing the way I used to breathe in the final lap. I remember the nurse taking Penny from me, helping her into a wheelchair, rolling her down a hall. I followed along, trying to help.