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 324 of 501 · 20 per page

• From Querelle (1953)

  Now, all of a sudden, two steps and yet very far away from her, the brothers reunited by an unknown youngster who naturally became the personification of that brotherly love her anguish labored over. But as soon as she had admitted this to herself she felt that she was being ridiculous. She wanted to turn her attention to the clients and whores, but was unable to forget the brothers, to whom she was now turning her back. She hesitated, then chose the pretext of talking to Robert about an expected delivery of liquor, to go over and take a look at the kid. He was adorable. He was worthy of the two lovers. She sized him up. " . . . and when the Cinzano man comes, teJl him to wait for me." She made as if to leave the parlor, but turning back immediately, smiling, she pointed at Roger: And, smiling even more : "You know, this could get me into trouble. And I'm not joking." Robert, trying to look indifferent, asked Querelle : "\Vho is he?" "He's the kid brother of a girl I know. A little chickie I'm after." Quite ignorant of the love between men, Robert thought that the boy had to be another one of his brother's fairy lovers. 268 I JEAN GENET He didn't dare look at him. Madame Lysiane was in the ladies' room, masturbating. Like her, Roger was very excited by it all, and when he left La Feria and went on to the old prison, he was in such a vulnerable frame of mind that (to use a hideous but appropriate expression ) Gil had no difficulty in breaking him in. If Querelle, as she had said to him a little sadly, didn't have such great powers of erection, his rod at least was no disappointment, it had been worth dreaming about. It was a · heavy, thick, rather massive cock, not elegant, but potentially vigorous. At long last Madame Lysiane found a little peace of mind, in that Querelle's member r�lly was different from Robert's. There, at least, one could tell one from the other. At first Querelle accepted the patronne's advances rather nonchalantly, but as soon as he discovered that this could be a way of taking revenge on his brother for the humiliation he had caused him, he decided to speed up the affair. The first time, while he was taking off his clothes, his fury-revenge drawing near!made him move with such alacrity that Madame Lysiane imagined him to be in the clutches of wild desire. In reality, Querelle was entering this bout with his body on the defensive. His amorous submission to a real cop had liberated him. He was at peace. Whenever he met Nono with whom he no longer wished to enter into secret frolics, he was not surprised to find that Nono seemed in no hurry to remind him of them, either.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I had also to be careful in regard to a Mrs. Holigan, a charwoman and cook of sorts whom I had inherited with the vacuum cleaner from the previous tenants. Dolly got lunch at school, so that this was no trouble, and I had become adept at providing her with a big breakfast and warming up the dinner that Mrs. Holigan prepared before leaving. That kindly and harmless woman had, thank God, a rather bleary eye that missed details, and I had become a great expert in bedmaking; but still I was continuously obsessed by the feeling that some fatal stain had been left somewhere, or that, on the rare occasions where Holigan’s presence happened to coincide with Lo’s, simple Lo might succumb to buxom sympathy in the course of a cozy kitchen chat. I often felt we lived in a lighted house of glass, and that any moment some thin-lipped parchment face would peer through a carelessly unshaded window to obtain a free glimpse of things that the most jaded voyeur would have paid a small fortune to watch.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  old printed editions had Aaoís decis, which may be compared with the Jte missa est at the end of the Roman Mass ; other commentators suggest dyvà. é$' ücww and other formulae of Oriental religion. 569 e LUCIUS APULEIUS quippe cum mihi familiares quod. ad cultum sump- tumque largiter succederet deferre prospicue curas- 19 sent. Affatis itaque ex officio singulis, narratisque meis probe et pristinis aerumnis et praesentibus gaudiis, me rursum ad deae gratissimum mihi refero conspectum, aedibusque conductis intra consaeptum templi Larem temporarium mihi constituo, deae mini- steriis adhuc privatis appositus contuberniisque sacer- dotum individuus et numinis magni cultor insepara- bilis. Nec fuit nox una vel quies aliqua. visu deae monituque ieiuna, sed crebris imperiis sacris suis me iamdudum destinatum nunc saltem censebat initiari. Atego,quamquam cupienti voluntate praeditus,tamen religiosa formidine retardabar, quod enim sedulo percontaveram difficile religionis obsequium et cas- timoniorum abstinentiam satis arduam cautoque cireumspectu vitam, quae multis casibus subiacet, esse muniendam. Haec identidem mecum re- putans nescioquo modo, quamquam festinans, differ- ebam. 20 Nocte quadam plenum gremium suum visus est mihi summus sacerdos offerre, ac requirenti, quid utique istud, respondisse partes illas de Thes- salia mihi missas, servum etiam meum indidem supervenisse nomine Candidum. Hane experrectus imaginem diu diuque apud cogitationes meas revolve- bam quid rei portenderet, praesertim cum nullum unquam habuisse me servum isto nomine nuncupatum certus essem; utut tamen sese praesagium somni 570 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK XI much as my servants had taken care to bring with them enough of such things as was necessary for my body and my charges. After that ] had greeted each according to his kindness, and made relation unto them of all my pristine misery and present joys, I. went again before the face of the goddess, and hired me a house within the cloister of the temple, since I had been set apart for the service of the goddess that hitherto had been kept private from me, so that I might ordinarily frequent the company of the priests, whereby I would wholly become devout to the goddess, and an inseparable worshipper of her divine name : nor was there any night nor sleep but that the goddess appeared to me, persuading and commanding me to take the order of her religion whereto [ had been long since foreordained. But I, although I was endued with a desirous goodwill, yet the reverend fear of the same held me back, eon- sidering that as I had learned by diligent enquiry her obeisance was hard, the chastity of the priests diffi- cult to keep, and the whole life of them, because it is set about with many chances, to be watched and guarded very carefully. Being thus in doubt, I refrained myself from all those things as seeming impossible, although in truth I was hastening towards them.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘Michael – Howard. Hi. Thanks for coming to get me, I wasn’t – ’ ‘Find it OK?’ Michael cut in with extreme shortness, nodding at the station. Howard, who didn’t understand the point of this question, grinned stupidly back at him. Michael was quite a bit taller than Howard, which Howard was unused to and disliked. He was broad too; not that freshman muscle that Howard saw in his classes, the kind that begins at the top of the neck and makes young men trapezoid, no, this was more elegant than that. A birthright. He’s one of those people, thought Howard, who looks like one quality very much, and the quality in this case is ‘noble’. Howard didn’t much trust people like that, so full of one quality, like books with insistent covers. ‘This way, then,’ said Michael, and took a step forward, but Howard caught him by the shoulder. ‘Just going to get these – new passport,’ he said, as the photos were delivered to the chute, where an artificial breeze began to blow on them. Howard reached for his pictures, but now Michael’s hand stopped him. ‘Wait – let them dry – they smudge otherwise.’ Howard straightened up, and they both stood still where they were, watching the photos twitch. Although perfectly content with silence, Howard suddenly heard himself saying ‘Soooo . . .’ for a long time, with no clear idea of what was to follow ‘so’. Michael turned to him, his face sourly expectant. ‘So,’ said Howard again, ‘what is it you do, Mike, Michael?’ ‘I’m a risk analyst for an equities firm.’ Like many academics, Howard was innocent of the world. He could identify thirty different ideological trends in the social sciences, but did not really know what a software engineer was.  On Beauty ‘Oh, I see . . . that’s very . . . Is that in the City, or – ?’ ‘In the City, yeah. Round St Paul’s way.’ ‘But you’re still living at home.’ ‘Just come back weekends. Go to church, Sunday lunch. Family stuff.’ ‘Live near by or – ?’ ‘Camden – just by the – ’ ‘Oh, I know Camden – once upon a century I used to knock about there a bit – well, do you know where the – ’ ‘Your photos are finished, I think,’ said Michael, picking them out of their cubbyhole. He shook them and blew on them. ‘You couldn’t use the first three; they’re not square on your face,’ said Michael brusquely. ‘They’re strict about that now. Use the last one, maybe.’ He handed them to Howard, who pushed them into his pocket without looking. So he hates the idea of this marriage even more than I do, thought Howard. He can barely even be polite to me.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘I don’t know . . . There was boxes everywhere – look like she was just moving in – anyway, that ain’t even the point – point is, I’m sick of people watching me every damn step I – ’ ‘Oh, Jesus – Jesus . . . were you rude to her?’ demanded Kiki, putting down the bag of sugar she had in her hand. ‘ What? ’ ‘You know who that is?’ asked Kiki rhetorically. ‘I’ll bet you that’s the Kippses moving in – I heard their place was right by here. I’ll bet you a hundred dollars that was the wife.’ ‘Don’t be absurd ,’ said Howard. ‘Levi – what did the woman look like – what did she look like ?’ Levi, bemused and depressed that his anecdote had met with such a heavy reception, struggled to remember details. ‘Old . . . real tall, wearing, like, very bright colours for an old lady – ’ Kiki looked hard at Howard. ‘Ah . . .’ said Howard. Kiki turned back to Levi. ‘What did you say to her? You better not have been rude to her, Levi, or I swear to God, I’ll tire your ass out this evening – ’ ‘ What? It was just some crazy . . . I don’t know – she was asking me all these weird questions . . . I don’t remember what I said – I wasn’t rude, though – I wasn’t . I barely said anything, man, and she was crazy! She was ahksing me all these questions about my mom and I was just like, I’m late – my mom’s having a party, I gotta go, I can’t talk now – and that was it.’ ‘You said we were having a party.’  kipps and belsey ‘Oh, my gosh – Mom, it ain’t whoever you think it is. It’s just some crazy old woman who thought I’m gonna kill her ’cos I’m wearing a doo-rag.’ Kiki put a hand over her eyes. ‘It’s the Kippses – oh, God – I have to invite them now. I should have told Jack to invite them anyway. I have to invite them.’ ‘You don’t have to invite them,’ stated Howard slowly. ‘Of course I have to invite them. I’ll go round there when I’m done with the key lime – Jerome’s out buying more alcohol – God knows what he’s doing, he ought to be back by now. Or Levi can go, drop a note off or something – ’ ‘What are you mad at me now? Man, I am not going back there. I was just trying to explain to you how I feel when I walk round this neighbourhood – ’ ‘Levi, please, I’m trying to think. Go downstairs and deal with your room.’ ‘Aw, fuck you, man.’ The swearing policy in the Belsey house was not self-evident.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  How you gittin’ on there, buddy?’ It was Smith’s artificial voice of calm. In the past it had always worked, but recently Howard had grown better at attuning himself to the reality of his own situation. ‘I’m late, Smith. I’m now very late.’ ‘Oh, it’s not rilly that bad. You’ve got time. Pah -point’s all set up there ready for you. Where you at exactly?’ Howard gave his coordinates. A suspicious silence followed. ‘You know what ah’ll do?’ said Smith. ‘Just make a little announcement. And if you can get here in about twenty minutes or under, that would be just fine.’ Thirty minutes after that call, the Big Dig spat an apoplectic Howard out into the city. Huge flowers of sweat bloomed beneath each armpit on his dark blue shirt. Panicking, Howard decided to avoid the one-way system by parking five blocks from where he needed to be. He slammed the door of the car and began to run, locking it remotely over his shoulder. He could feel sweat dribbling between his buttocks and slooshing in his sandals, readying his instep for the two water blisters that would surely have formed by the time he reached the gallery. He had given up smoking soon after Kiki walked out, but now he cursed that decision – his lungs were in no way better at coping with this exertion than they would  on beauty and being wrong have been five months ago. He had also put on twenty-three pounds. ‘The loneliness of the long-distance runner!’ called Smith, upon spotting him staggering round the corner. ‘You did it, you did it – it’s OK. Take a moment, you can take a moment.’ Howard leaned against Smith, unable to speak. ‘You’re OK,’ said Smith convincingly. ‘You’re just fine.’ ‘I’m going to be sick.’ ‘No, no, Howard. That is the very last thing you’re gonna do. Come on now, let’s git in.’ They walked into the kind of air-conditioning that freezes sweat on contact. Smith led Howard by the elbow down one hallway, and then another. He stationed his charge just by a door that was slightly ajar. Through the gap Howard could see the thin slice of a podium, a table, and a jug of water with two lemon slices floating in it. ‘Now, to make the pah -point work, you just click the red button – it’ll be right by your hand on the podium. Each time you press that button, a new painting will appear, in the order that they’re mentioned in the lecture.’ ‘Everybody in there?’ asked Howard. ‘Everybody who’s anybody,’ replied Smith and pushed open the door. Howard entered. Polite but fatigued applause greeted him. He stood behind the podium and apologized for his lateness. He spotted at once half a dozen people from the Art History Department, as well as Claire, Erskine, Christian and Veronica, and several of his students past and present. Jack French had brought his wife and children. Howard was touched by this support.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  There was no one in the church but a beggar soldier, two old women, and the church officials. A young deacon, whose long back showed in two distinct halves through his thin undercassock, met him, and at once going to a little table at the wall read the exhortation. During the reading, especially at the frequent and rapid repetition of the same words, “Lord, have mercy on us!” which resounded with an echo, Levin felt that thought was shut and sealed up, and that it must not be touched or stirred now or confusion would be the result; and so standing behind the deacon he went on thinking of his own affairs, neither listening nor examining what was said. “It’s wonderful what expression there is in her hand,” he thought, remembering how they had been sitting the day before at a corner table. They had nothing to talk about, as was almost always the case at this time, and laying her hand on the table she kept opening and shutting it, and laughed herself as she watched her action. He remembered how he had kissed it and then had examined the lines on the pink palm. “Have mercy on us again!” thought Levin, crossing himself, bowing, and looking at the supple spring of the deacon’s back bowing before him. “She took my hand then and examined the lines. ‘You’ve got a splendid hand,’ she said.” And he looked at his own hand and the short hand of the deacon. “Yes, now it will soon be over,” he thought. “No, it seems to be beginning again,” he thought, listening to the prayers. “No, it’s just ending: there he is bowing down to the ground. That’s always at the end.” The deacon’s hand in a plush cuff accepted a three-rouble note unobtrusively, and the deacon said he would put it down in the register, and his new boots creaking jauntily over the flagstones of the empty church, he went to the altar. A moment later he peeped out thence and beckoned to Levin. Thought, till then locked up, began to stir in Levin’s head, but he made haste to drive it away. “It will come right somehow,” he thought, and went towards the altar-rails. He went up the steps, and turning to the right saw the priest. The priest, a little old man with a scanty grizzled beard and weary, good-natured eyes, was standing at the altar-rails, turning over the pages of a missal. With a slight bow to Levin he began immediately reading prayers in the official voice. When he had finished them he bowed down to the ground and turned, facing Levin. “Christ is present here unseen, receiving your confession,” he said, pointing to the crucifix. “Do you believe in all the doctrines of the Holy Apostolic Church?” the priest went on, turning his eyes away from Levin’s face and folding his hands under his stole.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  When, during our longer stops, I would relax after a particularly violent morning in bed, and out of the goodness of my lulled heart allow her—indulgent Hum!—to visit the rose garden or children’s library across the street with a motor court neighbor’s plain little Mary and Mary’s eight-year-old brother, Lo would come back an hour late, with barefoot Mary trailing far behind, and the little boy metamorphosed into two gangling, golden-haired high school uglies, all muscles and gonorrhea. The reader may well imagine what I answered my pet when—rather uncertainly, I admit—she would ask me if she could go with Carl and Al here to the roller-skating rink. I remember the first time, a dusty windy afternoon, I did let her go to one such rink. Cruelly she said it would be no fun if I accompanied her, since that time of day was reserved for teenagers. We wrangled out a compromise: I remained in the car, among other (empty) cars with their noses to the canvas-topped open-air rink, where some fifty young people, many in pairs, were endlessly rolling round and round to mechanical music, and the wind silvered the trees. Dolly wore blue jeans and white high shoes, as most of the other girls did. I kept counting the revolutions of the rolling crowd—and suddenly she was missing. When she rolled past again, she was together with three hoodlums whom I had heard analyze a moment before the girl skaters from the outside—and jeer at a lovely leggy young thing who had arrived clad in red shorts instead of those jeans or slacks. At inspection stations on highways entering Arizona or California, a policeman’s cousin would peer with such intensity at us that my poor heart wobbled. “Any honey?” he would inquire, and every time my sweet fool giggled. I still have, vibrating all along my optic nerve, visions of Lo on horseback, a link in the chain of a guided trip along a bridle trail: Lo bobbing at a walking pace, with an old woman rider in front and a lecherous rednecked dude-rancher behind; and I behind him, hating his fat flowery-shirted back even more fervently than a motorist does a slow truck on a mountain road. Or else, at a ski lodge, I would see her floating away from me, celestial and solitary, in an ethereal chairlift, up and up, to a glittering summit where laughing athletes stripped to the waist were waiting for her, for her . In whatever town we stopped I would inquire, in my polite European way, anent the whereabouts of natatoriums, museums, local schools, the number of children in the nearest school and so forth; and at school bus time, smiling and twitching a little (I discovered this tic nerveux because cruel Lo was the first to mimic it), I would park at a strategic point, with my vagrant schoolgirl beside me in the car, to watch the children leave school—always a pretty sight.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  I'm sure you understand the feeling. I felt swollen and huge, and very naked, and each welt was stinging under the paddle, and I was growing out of breath and desperate lest I fail, as I had to scurry every farther away from her to retrieve the gold balls. But the new sensation was this filling of me, the stuffing of my anus, which I had now to hold tightly closed not to expel the gold balls against my will. I soon felt that my anus was widened and open, and at the same time stuffed mercilessly. "The game grew more and more frantic. I soon glimpsed others watching from the doors. I had often to hurry past the hem of another Lady in waiting. "I worked harder and harder, was stuffed every the more firmly by those strong leather-sheathed fingers. And though the tears were pouring down my face, and I was breathing rapidly and hoarsely, I managed to complete the game with no more than four cracks of the paddle at any round of it. "The Queen embraced me. She kissed me on the mouth and told me I was her loyal slave and her favorite. There was a ripple of approval throughout the Court, and she let me lie against her breasts for an instant as she held me. "Of course I was suffering. I was struggling to hold in the gold balls, and also to not let my penis rub against her gown and disgrace me. "She now sent for a small golden chamber pot. I knew then what she expected of me. And I know I must have blushed furiously. I had to squat over it and expel the toys I had gathered, and of course I did so. "The day was an endless round of tasks after that. "I shan't try to tell you all of them, save I had the Queen's absolute attention and absorption, and I intended with all my heart to keep it. I still did not know for certain that I might not be sent back to the kitchen. At any moment, I might be sent back to the kitchen. "I remember many things. We were in the garden for a long time, the Queen walking among her roses as she much enjoys, and driving me along with that rod with the leather phallus at the end of it. It seemed sometimes she almost lifted my buttocks on the rod. My knees badly needed relief of the soft grass after the floors of the castle. And I was so sore and tender by this time that the slightest stroke of my buttocks brought pain. But she only walked about.

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  My daughters get fed a lot of phony girl power through books and television and clubs at school. And then they go into the schoolyard where they get their real messages, they catch ads in the subway, they overhear conversations at the diner, I take them to The LEGO Movie—much admired, roundly praised, critical darling—and they watch as the main female character is objectified throughout the entire thing. We need a break from all this empowerment. I’m standing on the corner of Twenty-Second and Sixth in Manhattan. “Miss, Miss!” a man’s voice calls to me and I think it can’t be me, I’m no Miss and I think what if it’s me please leave me alone and he taps me on the shoulder, I flinch because I flinch, and he says, “I just wanted to say I like your dress!” Holy crap, he just wants to say he likes my dress! It’s a whole new world. At forty-two (still got it!) (MILF tits!), the harassment has certainly, thankfully slowed, but it doesn’t seem to want to go away altogether. And, even though it happens much less frequently than it used to, I flinch and brace myself every time I leave my apartment. I wonder if, when it finally stops for good, if it will be too late to relax, if the muscle memory of the harassment will keep me tense on the sidewalk forever. I try to understand when people tell me they enjoy it, when women my age say they miss being called names or when they get a kick out of being called to so explicitly: I wanna fuck your asshole. (I was wearing a down coat.) I’d like to put my cock between those titties. Ugly cunt, I’m talking to you! I know what it’s like to feel invisible as a child and I imagine it feels the same as an adult. But it’s a pretty sorry situation when the choice is either objectification by intimidating strangers or invisibility. Once or twice in my life, I swear to you, I’ve done things other than be a body available for men to enjoy or reject. But I know I have no right to complain. I am lucky. I’ve been allowed one more day as a woman on this earth, relatively unviolated. Shouldn’t that be enough? Lucky Lucky Lucky SpectatorMy Family, My Rapist, and Mourning OnlineBrandon TaylorONE OF THE MEN WHO RAPED ME, W., IS DYING FROM cancer, and I’m watching it happen via Facebook. The man who raped me is married to my aunt and is the father of my cousin, who was, at one time, my closest friend in a family in which friends and love were rare. He is not the only man who raped me, but he is the only one who raped me and refused to leave because he was stitched into my life like an ugly scar from a wound healed wrong.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Levin went up to the table, paid the forty roubles he had lost; paid his bill, the amount of which was in some mysterious way ascertained by the little old waiter who stood at the counter, and swinging his arms he walked through all the rooms to the way out. Chapter 9 “Oblonsky’s carriage!” the porter shouted in an angry bass. The carriage drove up and both got in. It was only for the first few moments, while the carriage was driving out of the clubhouse gates, that Levin was still under the influence of the club atmosphere of repose, comfort, and unimpeachable good form. But as soon as the carriage drove out into the street, and he felt it jolting over the uneven road, heard the angry shout of a sledge driver coming towards them, saw in the uncertain light the red blind of a tavern and the shops, this impression was dissipated, and he began to think over his actions, and to wonder whether he was doing right in going to see Anna. What would Kitty say? But Stepan Arkadyevitch gave him no time for reflection, and, as though divining his doubts, he scattered them. “How glad I am,” he said, “that you should know her! You know Dolly has long wished for it. And Lvov’s been to see her, and often goes. Though she is my sister,” Stepan Arkadyevitch pursued, “I don’t hesitate to say that she’s a remarkable woman. But you will see. Her position is very painful, especially now.” “Why especially now?” “We are carrying on negotiations with her husband about a divorce. And he’s agreed; but there are difficulties in regard to the son, and the business, which ought to have been arranged long ago, has been dragging on for three months past. As soon as the divorce is over, she will marry Vronsky. How stupid these old ceremonies are, that no one believes in, and which only prevent people being comfortable!” Stepan Arkadyevitch put in. “Well, then their position will be as regular as mine, as yours.” “What is the difficulty?” said Levin. “Oh, it’s a long and tedious story! The whole business is in such an anomalous position with us. But the point is she has been for three months in Moscow, where everyone knows her, waiting for the divorce; she goes out nowhere, sees no woman except Dolly, because, do you understand, she doesn’t care to have people come as a favor. That fool Princess Varvara, even she has left her, considering this a breach of propriety. Well, you see, in such a position any other woman would not have found resources in herself. But you’ll see how she has arranged her life—how calm, how dignified she is. To the left, in the crescent opposite the church!” shouted Stepan Arkadyevitch, leaning out of the window. “Phew! how hot it is!” he said, in spite of twelve degrees of frost, flinging his open overcoat still wider open.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Why, this isn’t it, this isn’t he! Where are his blue eyes, his sweet, shy smile?” was her first thought when she saw her chubby, rosy little girl with her black, curly hair instead of Seryozha, whom in the tangle of her ideas she had expected to see in the nursery. The little girl sitting at the table was obstinately and violently battering on it with a cork, and staring aimlessly at her mother with her pitch-black eyes. Answering the English nurse that she was quite well, and that she was going to the country tomorrow, Anna sat down by the little girl and began spinning the cork to show her. But the child’s loud, ringing laugh, and the motion of her eyebrows, recalled Vronsky so vividly that she got up hurriedly, restraining her sobs, and went away. “Can it be all over? No, it cannot be!” she thought. “He will come back. But how can he explain that smile, that excitement after he had been talking to her? But even if he doesn’t explain, I will believe. If I don’t believe, there’s only one thing left for me, and I can’t.” She looked at her watch. Twenty minutes had passed. “By now he has received the note and is coming back. Not long, ten minutes more.... But what if he doesn’t come? No, that cannot be. He mustn’t see me with tear-stained eyes. I’ll go and wash. Yes, yes; did I do my hair or not?” she asked herself. And she could not remember. She felt her head with her hand. “Yes, my hair has been done, but when I did it I can’t in the least remember.” She could not believe the evidence of her hand, and went up to the pier-glass to see whether she really had done her hair. She certainly had, but she could not think when she had done it. “Who’s that?” she thought, looking in the looking-glass at the swollen face with strangely glittering eyes, that looked in a scared way at her. “Why, it’s I!” she suddenly understood, and looking round, she seemed all at once to feel his kisses on her, and twitched her shoulders, shuddering. Then she lifted her hand to her lips and kissed it. “What is it? Why, I’m going out of my mind!” and she went into her bedroom, where Annushka was tidying the room. “Annushka,” she said, coming to a standstill before her, and she stared at the maid, not knowing what to say to her. “You meant to go and see Darya Alexandrovna,” said the girl, as though she understood. “Darya Alexandrovna? Yes, I’ll go.”

• From Querelle (1953)

  Vic sounded shocked. 60 I JEAN GENET "If someone proposed that to you, would you say 'sure, go ahead'?" "Why not, if I felt like it. I've done worse things than that." A wan smile appeared on Querelle' s face. "If you saw my brother, you'd fall for him. You'd let him do 't 1 , • "They say it hurts." "You bet' cha." Querelle stopped. ''Smoke?" The breath, about to be exhaled, flowed back into him who became Querelle once more. Without moving his hand, with a fixed stare, paradoxically directed inward at himself, he saw himself making the sign of the Cross. After that sign, given to warn the audience that the artiste is about to perform a feat of mortal danger, there was no looking back. He had to remain totally attentive in order to go through the motions of murder: he had to avoid any brutal gesture that might surprise the sailor, because Vic most probably wasn't used to being murdered, yet, and might cry out. The criminal has to contend with life and death, both : once they start shouting, one might stick them anywhere. The last time, in Cadiz, the victim had soiled Querelle's collar. Querelle turned to Vic and offered him a cigarette and lighter, .with a seemingly awkward gesture hampered by the parcel he was holding under his arm. "Go head, light one for me too." Vic turned his back to keep the wind out. "Yeah, he'd like you, you're such a sweet little kitten. And if you could suck his prick as hard as you're pulling on the old coffin nail, boy he could really swing with thatl" Vic blew out a puff of smoke. Holding out the lighted cigarette to Querelle, he said : "Well, yeah, I don't think he'd get a chance." Querelle sniggered. 61 I QUERELLE "Oh, no? And what about me, I wouldn't get a chance either?" "Oh , come ff o 't 1 • • • " Vic wanted to move on, but Querelle held hin1 back, stretching out one leg as if to trip him. Baring his teeth, cigarette clamped between them, he went on : "Hey? Hey . . . Tell me something, ain't I as good as Mario? Ain't I?" ''What Mario?" ''What Mario? Well . . . It's thanks to you that I got over that wall, right?" "Yeah, so what? What the hell are you driving at?" "So you don't want to?" "Come off it, stop horsing around . . ." Vic would never add anything to that. Querelle grabbed him by the throat, letting his package fall onto the path. As it fell, he whipped out his knife and severed the sailor's' carotid artery.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “I can’t say I was quite pleased with him,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, raising his eyebrows and opening his eyes. “And Sitnikov is not satisfied with him.” (Sitnikov was the tutor to whom Seryozha’s secular education had been intrusted.) “As I have mentioned to you, there’s a sort of coldness in him towards the most important questions which ought to touch the heart of every man and every child....” Alexey Alexandrovitch began expounding his views on the sole question that interested him besides the service—the education of his son. When Alexey Alexandrovitch with Lidia Ivanovna’s help had been brought back anew to life and activity, he felt it his duty to undertake the education of the son left on his hands. Having never before taken any interest in educational questions, Alexey Alexandrovitch devoted some time to the theoretical study of the subject. After reading several books on anthropology, education, and didactics, Alexey Alexandrovitch drew up a plan of education, and engaging the best tutor in Petersburg to superintend it, he set to work, and the subject continually absorbed him. “Yes, but the heart. I see in him his father’s heart, and with such a heart a child cannot go far wrong,” said Lidia Ivanovna with enthusiasm. “Yes, perhaps.... As for me, I do my duty. It’s all I can do.” “You’re coming to me,” said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, after a pause; “we have to speak of a subject painful for you. I would give anything to have spared you certain memories, but others are not of the same mind. I have received a letter from _her_. _She_ is here in Petersburg.” Alexey Alexandrovitch shuddered at the allusion to his wife, but immediately his face assumed the deathlike rigidity which expressed utter helplessness in the matter. “I was expecting it,” he said. Countess Lidia Ivanovna looked at him ecstatically, and tears of rapture at the greatness of his soul came into her eyes. Chapter 25 When Alexey Alexandrovitch came into the Countess Lidia Ivanovna’s snug little boudoir, decorated with old china and hung with portraits, the lady herself had not yet made her appearance. She was changing her dress. A cloth was laid on a round table, and on it stood a china tea service and a silver spirit-lamp and tea kettle. Alexey Alexandrovitch looked idly about at the endless familiar portraits which adorned the room, and sitting down to the table, he opened a New Testament lying upon it. The rustle of the countess’s silk skirt drew his attention off. “Well now, we can sit quietly,” said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, slipping hurriedly with an agitated smile between the table and the sofa, “and talk over our tea.” After some words of preparation, Countess Lidia Ivanovna, breathing hard and flushing crimson, gave into Alexey Alexandrovitch’s hands the letter she had received. After reading the letter, he sat a long while in silence. “I don’t think I have the right to refuse her,” he said, timidly lifting his eyes.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  After all, they’ve been told that feminism is too radical or not radical enough, antimale or male-imitative, impossible because men are from Mars and women are from Venus, or unnecessary because we’re now in a postfeminist, postracist age. The nature and specifics of the negative depend on the part of the country and the year, but the common thread is: self-doubt. I tell them they’ve done their best—now it’s up to the universe. Then I ask about current events or controversies on campus so I will know what to use as examples in my speech. After all, my job is to make their work easier after I leave than it was before I came. It’s already easy for me. I don’t have to worry about getting good grades, negotiating faculty politics, achieving tenure, publishing in scholarly journals, becoming department chair, or crossing other hurdles that those in academia have to cross. I can bring up problems and possibilities that students want brought up. I can also carry ideas from one campus to the next, in the bee-and-flower model of organizing. I’m here to make them look reasonable. After all, I’m leaving in the morning. At first, my student hosts may cite faraway subjects—say, global warming or foreign policy—as if only the big, distant, and well publicized could be serious. But since revolutions, like houses, are built from the bottom up, I ask what changes they want to see on campus and in their daily lives. In this way, I find out that, say, the business school is getting a new building while the college of education is still in Quonset huts; or that the state legislature has raised tuition and cut scholarships but is now paying $50,000 a year per prisoner to Wackenhut, which operates prisons for profit; or that military recruiters are offering impoverished female and male students big signing bonuses but giving little forewarning of combat or sexual assault statistics; or that faculty of color somehow never become department chairs; or that the mostly female nonprofessional staff is being paid bubkes and forbidden to unionize; or that fraternities are defending brothers against sexual assault charges by threatening to bring libel suits against the women who report them; or that a newly “out” lesbian basketball coach has to take a monitoring faculty member along on team travels; or that a law school professor is famous for asking only female students about cases with a sexual component; or that a male medical school professor hires prostituted women on whom to demonstrate gynecological exams; or that the football team spends a lot on Astroturf but not on preventing brain injury—and many other indicators of a need for change. In short, serious politics are happening right here on campus. After visiting a class or two, maybe having dinner with student leaders and faculty—where I find out still more about what’s happening on campus—we go to the lecture hall.

• From Querelle (1953)

  254 I JEAN GENET events became quite curious. In order to assign to him his definitive and perhaps final meanings, we have to resort to a couple of flashbacks. Dede was-or thought he was-informed of all the young boys' sentimental involvements--in Brest. In order to serve better-serve Mario, no doubt, and beyond him, the police authorities, but, primarily, to serve-he distinguished himself (and this, again, seemed to originate in his physical and ethical agility, in his quick eye) by his speedy powers of obser vation. Before he acquired a sense of his own consciousness (and with it, anxiety), Dede was a marvelous recording device. (His admiration for Robert may be regarded the exception to the rule.) The mission Mario had given him, to keep an eye on Querelle, was primarily designed to create a new, sympathetic relationship between those hoodlums the detective had double crossed and the detective himself. Dede never dared to remind Robert of the fight between the two brothers that he had been witness to, but he regarded it as a solid item of information that Roger was Gil's lover-boy. Yet he never thought to watch his movements or follow him. One day he said to Mario: "That's little Roger, Turko's buddy." Round about the same time Gil said to Querelle who did not pay much attention to it: "Somet imes I think, if I get arrested, maybe I could make some sort of deal with Mario." � "How?" "What? Well, you k n ow .. " "What kind of deal?'' "You never know. He's a homo. He's buddies with Dede." Gil's musings reflect a common enough notion: from the very moment of his arrest, the adolescent thinks about turning the fact of homosexuality to his advantage. Since we are talking a bout a general reaction, something beyond ourselves, we'll attempt merely a cursory and controversial explanation : is . it

• From Querelle (1953)

  gether used to his own name. Now Gilbert Turko was a person who would forever be grist to the newspapers' mill. But ·when those articles ceased to be poems, they clearly described a danger that Gil became aware of, even savored, letting himself become totally preoccupied by it, at times; it was then he experienced not only a sharper, almost painful consciousness of being alive, but also a kind of forgetfulness, self-abandon, loss of faith, similar to what he felt when fingering the (no doubt pink) flesh of his hemorrhoids, or when, as a child, he had squatted by the side of the road and written his name in the dust, with his fingers-deriving a curious delight from it, no doubt provoked by the soft feel ·of the dust and by the rounded shape of the letters; it was then he had forgotten himself to the point of fainting, feeling his heart tum over, wanting to lie down right there on top of his name and fall asleep, never mind the risk of getting run over by a car: but all he had done then was to erase the letters, demolishing their fragile ramparts of dust, gently sweeping the ground with his ten outstretched fingers. "But anyhow, those judges, they ought to see . . ." 4'See what? And what judges? Listen, you're not going to tum yourself in now. That would be one hell of a stupid thing to do. First of all, you've been hiding from them much too long for them not to think that you're guilty. And secondly, you can see what it says in the paper-that you killed one guy who was queer, and another one, a sailor. Not so easy to explain that away." Gil let himself be won over by Querelle's arguments. He wanted to be won over. No longer did he feel that he was in great danger: on the contrary, he had been saved by having become permanent. Part of him would remain because his name, his printed name would remain, escaping justice, being bound for glory. Yet there was a bitter aftertaste. Gil knew he 223 I QUERELLE was doomed : his name would always and everywhere �e accompanied by the word "murders." 'We11, here's a plan, old buddy. You go out and get yourself a little hard cash, and then you take off to Spain. Or America. I'm a sailor, I can get you aboard a ship. I'll take care of that." Gil dearly wanted to believe in Quere11e. Surely a sailor had to be we11 connected to a11 the sailors of the world, to be in secret communication with the most mysterious crews, with the sea itself. This notion pleased GiL He snuggled up in it, it romforted him, and as he derived a sense of security from it, he was not about to analyze it at aU.

• From Querelle (1953)

  violated. \Vith astonishing insight he knew that he must not touch the knife arm, and his white fingers were resting on Querelle's left. Now, at last, he was free to be brave in every way. For the first time he addressed Querelle familiarly, and in the circumstances that seemed the only normal thing to do. In his private diary, the Lieutenant had said that for him, the most important thing in becomi_ng an officer was not so much to become a 1naster, feared or not, as a kind of master spirit, animating those muscular masses, those big displays of sinewy flesh. \Ve can thus understand his anxiety at that moment. He did not know yet whether this powerful body, every nerve alive, charged and inflated with rage and hatred, would let itself be calmed down by him, or-better still-allow all that swirling energy to be directed according to his wishes . . . Seblon felt quite prepared to accept the homage and the envy of all the women in the crowd, when he would walk off, right in front of their noses, with this, the handsomest of all brutes on h is arm, charmed and made docile by his orphic song. "Get back on board. I don't want you to get messed up. And give me that thing." And that was when he held out his hand, to take the knife : but Querelle, while accepting the officer's intervention, refused to have his weapon confiscated. He snapped it shut by pressing the back of the blade against his thigh and put it in his pocket. Without a word he stepped forward and pushed his way through the crowd, which gave way with a growl. 'When the Lieutenant met him again, in the vicinity of the jetty, Querelle was stone drunk. A little unsteady on his feet, he came up to the officer, planted a heavy hand on his shoulder and said : "You're a buddy! Those were goddamn asshole landlubbers. But you, you're a real buddy." Overcome by all the drink, he sat down on a mooring ballard. "You can get anything you want from me." He started to fall off his seat. To hold him, the Lieutenant grabbed his shoulders and said, gently : 274 I JEAN GENET "Calm down, now. If an officer should happen to , "Fuck that! There ain't no one here but you!" "Pipe down, I'm telling you. I don't want you to get locked up.''

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  At the chemist’s the lank shopman sealed up a packet of powders for a coachman who stood waiting, and refused him opium with the same callousness with which the doctor’s footman had cleaned his lamp chimneys. Trying not to get flurried or out of temper, Levin mentioned the names of the doctor and midwife, and explaining what the opium was needed for, tried to persuade him. The assistant inquired in German whether he should give it, and receiving an affirmative reply from behind the partition, he took out a bottle and a funnel, deliberately poured the opium from a bigger bottle into a little one, stuck on a label, sealed it up, in spite of Levin’s request that he would not do so, and was about to wrap it up too. This was more than Levin could stand; he took the bottle firmly out of his hands, and ran to the big glass doors. The doctor was not even now getting up, and the footman, busy now in putting down the rugs, refused to wake him. Levin deliberately took out a ten rouble note, and, careful to speak slowly, though losing no time over the business, he handed him the note, and explained that Pyotr Dmitrievitch (what a great and important personage he seemed to Levin now, this Pyotr Dmitrievitch, who had been of so little consequence in his eyes before!) had promised to come at any time; that he would certainly not be angry! and that he must therefore wake him at once. The footman agreed, and went upstairs, taking Levin into the waiting room. Levin could hear through the door the doctor coughing, moving about, washing, and saying something. Three minutes passed; it seemed to Levin that more than an hour had gone by. He could not wait any longer. “Pyotr Dmitrievitch, Pyotr Dmitrievitch!” he said in an imploring voice at the open door. “For God’s sake, forgive me! See me as you are. It’s been going on more than two hours already.” “In a minute; in a minute!” answered a voice, and to his amazement Levin heard that the doctor was smiling as he spoke. “For one instant.” “In a minute.” Two minutes more passed while the doctor was putting on his boots, and two minutes more while the doctor put on his coat and combed his hair. “Pyotr Dmitrievitch!” Levin was beginning again in a plaintive voice, just as the doctor came in dressed and ready. “These people have no conscience,” thought Levin. “Combing his hair, while we’re dying!” “Good morning!” the doctor said to him, shaking hands, and, as it were, teasing him with his composure. “There’s no hurry. Well now?” Trying to be as accurate as possible, Levin began to tell him every unnecessary detail of his wife’s condition, interrupting his account repeatedly with entreaties that the doctor would come with him at once.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  He walked rapidly to the door of his studio, and in spite of his excitement he was struck by the soft light on Anna’s figure as she stood in the shade of the entrance listening to Golenishtchev, who was eagerly telling her something, while she evidently wanted to look round at the artist. He was himself unconscious how, as he approached them, he seized on this impression and absorbed it, as he had the chin of the shopkeeper who had sold him the cigars, and put it away somewhere to be brought out when he wanted it. The visitors, not agreeably impressed beforehand by Golenishtchev’s account of the artist, were still less so by his personal appearance. Thick-set and of middle height, with nimble movements, with his brown hat, olive-green coat and narrow trousers—though wide trousers had been a long while in fashion,—most of all, with the ordinariness of his broad face, and the combined expression of timidity and anxiety to keep up his dignity, Mihailov made an unpleasant impression. “Please step in,” he said, trying to look indifferent, and going into the passage he took a key out of his pocket and opened the door. Chapter 11 On entering the studio, Mihailov once more scanned his visitors and noted down in his imagination Vronsky’s expression too, and especially his jaws. Although his artistic sense was unceasingly at work collecting materials, although he felt a continually increasing excitement as the moment of criticizing his work drew nearer, he rapidly and subtly formed, from imperceptible signs, a mental image of these three persons.