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.

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• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Florence saw me, and twitched. ‘I was just about to leave,’ I said. ‘I swear it.’ I looked at the girl called Annie, who nodded. ‘She was,’ she said. ‘She was.’ Florence gazed at me. I stepped out of the pantry and edged past her, into the parlour. She frowned. ‘What on earth have you been doing?’ she asked, as I searched for my hat. ‘Why does everything look so strange?’ She picked up a box of matches, and lit the two oil-lamps and then a couple of candles. The light was taken up by a thousand polished surfaces, and she started. ‘You have cleaned the house!’ ‘Only the downstairs rooms. And the yard. And the front step,’ I said, in increasing tones of wretchedness. ‘And I made you supper.’ She gaped at me. ‘Why!’ ‘Your house was dirty. The woman next door said you were famous for it ...’ ‘You met the woman next door?’ ‘She gave me some tea.’ ‘I leave you in my home for one day and you quite transform it. You get yourself in with my neighbours. You’re thick, I suppose, with my best friend. And what has she been telling you?’ ‘I haven’t told her anything, I’m sure!’ called Annie from the kitchen. I pulled at a thread that had come loose at my cuff. ‘I thought you would be pleased,’ I said quietly, ‘to have a tidy house. I thought -’ I had thought that it would make her like me. In Diana’s world, it would have. It, or something similar. ‘I liked my house the way it was,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe you,’ I replied; and then, when she hesitated, I said - what, I suppose, I had been planning to say to her, all along - ‘Let me stay, Miss Banner! Oh, please let me stay!’ She gave me a bewildered look. ‘Miss Astley, I cannot!’ ‘I could sleep in here, like I did last night. I could clean and cook, like I did today. I could do your washing.’ I was growing more rash and desperate as I spoke. ‘Oh, how I longed to do those things, when I was in the house in St John’s Wood! But that devil I lived with said I must let the servants do it - that it would spoil my hands. But if I stayed here - well, I could look after your little boy while you are at work. I wouldn’t give him laudanum when he cried!’ Now Florence’s eyes were wider than ever. ‘Clean and do my washing? Look after Cyril? I’m sure I couldn’t let you do all those things!’ ‘Why not? I met fifty women in your street today, all doing exactly those things! It’s natural, ain’t it? If I was your wife - or Ralph’s wife, I mean - I should certainly do them then.’

• 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)

  “Hatfield’s just got to see it our way,” Hayes said. “He’s respected on both sides of the aisle. Saint Mark, some call him. He has no truck with abuse of power. He went toe-to-toe with Nixon on Watergate. And he fought like a tiger to get funding for dams on the Columbia.” “Sounds like our best shot,” Woodell said. “Maybe our last shot,” I said. The night I arrived in Washington, Werschkul and I had dinner and rehearsed. Like two actors running lines, we went through every possible argument Hatfield might throw at us. Werschkul kept referring to WASP, Volume I. Sometimes he’d even reference Volume II . “Forget that,” I said. “Let’s just keep it simple.” The next morning we walked slowly up the steps of the U.S. Senate Office Building, and I looked up at that magnificent façade, at all the columns and all the shiny marble, and the big flag overhead, and I had to pause. I thought of the Parthenon, the Temple of Nike. I knew that this, too, would be one of the seminal moments of my life. No matter how it turned out, I didn’t want to let it pass without embracing it, acknowledging it. So I stared at the columns. I admired the sunlight bouncing off the marble. I stood there for the longest time… “You coming?” Werschkul said. It was a blazing summer day. My hand, the one gripping my briefcase, was drenched with sweat. My suit was soaked through. I looked as if I’d walked through a rainstorm. How was I going to meet a U.S. senator in this condition? How was I going to shake his hand? How was I going to think straight? We entered Hatfield’s outer office, and one of his aides led us into a waiting room. A bullpen. I thought of the births of my two sons. I thought of Penny. I thought of my parents. I thought of Bowerman. I thought of Grelle. I thought of Pre. I thought of Kitami. I thought of James the Just. “The senator will see you now,” the aide said. She led us into a large, refreshingly cool office. Hatfield came out from behind his desk. He welcomed us collegially, as fellow Oregonians, and led us to a sitting area by his window. We all sat. Hatfield smiled, Werschkul smiled. I mentioned to Hatfield that we were distantly related. My mother, I believed, was his third cousin. We talked a bit about Roseburg. Then we all cleared our throats and the air conditioner soughed. “Ah, well, Senator,” I said, “the reason we’ve come to see you today—” He held up his hand. “I know all about your situation. My staff has read Werschkul on American Selling Price, and briefed me on it. What can I do to help?” I stopped, stunned. I turned to Werschkul, whose face was the color of his pink bow tie.

• From City of Night (1963)

  Looking about this bar (the hungry faces of the hunted and the hunting)—as familiar as the others in the nightcities I have left—I feel, recurring, a sense of something hugely ominous, intensified by the interlude earlier with the gypsy woman—then a heavy weariness, quickly replaced by the manic excitement. Against the whining jukebox near me, a tall pale queen is snapping her long fingers rhythmically to the juke-rocking and twisting. Another queen, with faintly mascaraed eyes in anticipation of the actual day of Mardi Gras when they can legally “masquerade” as women, stormed in and insisted loudly nervously to the finger-snapping queen: “Mae, youve got to come outside with me this very minute and help me with Miss Ange! Shes outside pulking her nelly guts out! We gotta take her to her pad before the fuzz busts her.” In an even more hysterical voice: “Shes holding—“ (I see the woman sitting next to me straighten up alertly.) “—and I just cant handle her myself, she keeps fighting me off with her nails!” Without interrupting the indifferent snapping of her fingers, the pale queen, flying Sky-High herself, trying for artificial heaven, hisses: “Am I my sister’s keeper or something?... When I needed that nelly bitch once, she didnt know me from Eve!” Rocking back and forth—sometimes so far back that it seems she will surely lose her balance—her hands like featherless wings over her head—or, more correctly, like swaying palmtrees in a strong breeze—she calls to the smoky ceiling: “Im comin, Big Daddy-O!” And she echoes the jukebox: “Oh, yes, indeedee, babies—let the good times roll!” As the other queen dashed outside in confused exasperation, the darkhaired woman summoned the chubby bartender and whispered to him. He left the bar quickly, returning in a few moments ushering in a tiny queen who looks like a torn ragdoll: so pale her features seem to have been merely sketched on her face, all life vampirishly drained from her. The bartender placed her on one of the small couchlike benches that outline the bar. Now the blackhaired woman, crouching before the queen as if to shelter her from foreign, hostile eyes, holds her own glass to the queen’s gurgling mouth, which insistently rejects the liquid. I hear the woman say to the sick queen: “Ive warned you about drinking so much!—honey.” The tone of her voice, which is not Southern, is full of exasperation—but the last word softens it: It is the tone of a person trying, unsuccessfully, to be angry. “Not... drunk,” Miss Ange mutters dazedly. “Pills—and—...” The woman looked apprehensively about the bar. She rises from the bench, impatiently; relents, bends down again, insists curiously: “Ive told you not to drink so much.”

• From City of Night (1963)

  “Isnt this positively mad, honey?” says Pauline, playing for tonight—or until her money lasts—the wealthy woman out on the town with her “escort.” “I have a fine connection here, baby, and we’ll get tanked on bees and pod and then I’ll really show you a sex-scene . Ive been waiting since the first time I saw you.... Huccome youve never made it with me, baby?—youre the only one Ive ever loved!... My God! Those queens dancing with lesbians —ugh! They must be perverts!” I went to the head, and there, sweat-bright spade and fay faces focus intensely on dice, cramped bodies in the tiny room exploding with the odor of maryjane smoke. A droopy-eyed Negro hands me a tiny joint, offers what is hardly a roach now: “Turn on?” “You took so long,” said Pauline when I returned to the table where we were now sitting. “I hope nobody was being naughty with you. I’ll scratch their eyes out!” She goes on like this—but I wasnt really listening. I was still thinking about that man at the Hodge Podge. Somehow, whatever had happened with him, whenever and wherever it had happened, or not happened, was important. I knew that much with certainty. “Why are you so nervous, baby?” Pauline asks me. And then I remembered, suddenly and distinctly. Abruptly, I got up from the table. “Where are you going?” Pauline asked. “I just remembered,” I told her, “I have to see someone downtown. Ive got to split, Pauline. I’ll see you some other time—at your Hollywood pad, okay?” “Why, baby!” she exclaimed. “You havent even finished the drink I got you!” I drank it in a gulp. “Something is wrong ,” she said. “Or dont you love me anymore?” “Ive just got to go back,” I said. “I just remembered someone I have to see, thats all.” And now she became mad. “Go to hell, for all I care—youre not so dam tough anyway,” she growled in a man’s voice. “Sorry, Pauline—Ive got to go.” At the door I looked back, and she was storming across the dancefloor; stood staring back at me for a moment, to see if I would follow her. Realizing that I wasnt going to, she rushed into the ladies’ room, dabbing at nonexistent tears. The scene, for her, although not what she had intended, was nevertheless complete. She was now the hurt, wronged woman.... Shortly after, I was back at the Hodge Podge. As I walked in, looking through the dark clouds of smoke, I thought for a moment that the man had left, and my heart sank. But then I saw him. He had merely moved farther into the dark. And now that he was high—as he had been the first time I had seen him—I was certain who he was. I had the sudden feeling that he too was waiting for me. I stood near him.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  59 A God who interfered with human freedom was a tyrant, not so different from the human tyrants who had wrought such havoc in recent history. A God envisaged as a person in a world of his own, an “ego” relating to a “thou,” was simply a being. Even the Supreme Being was just another being, the final item in the series. It was, Tillich insisted, an “idol,” a human construction that had become absolute. As recent history had shown, human beings were chronically predisposed to idolatry. The “idea that the human mind is a perpetual manufacturer of idols is one of the deepest things which can be said about our thinking of God,” Tillich remarked. “Even orthodox theology is nothing other than idolatry.” 60 An atheism that passionately rejected a God that had been reduced to a mere being was a religious act. For centuries, symbols such as “God” or “providence” enabled people to look through the ebb and flow of temporal life to glimpse Being itself. This helped them to endure the terror of life and the horror of death, but now, Tillich argued, many had forgotten how to interpret the old symbolism and regarded it as purely factual. Hence, these symbols had become opaque; transcendence no longer shone through them. When this happened they died and lost their power, so when we spoke of these symbols in a literal manner, we made statements that were inaccurate and untrue. That was why, like so many premodern theologians, Tillich could state without qualification: “God does not exist. He is being itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore to argue that God exists is to deny him.” 61 This was not, as many of his contemporaries believed, an atheistic statement: We can no longer speak of God easily to anybody, because he will immediately question: “Does God exist?” Now the very asking of that question signifies that the symbols of God have become meaningless. For God, in the question, has become one of the innumerable objects in time and space which may or may not exist. And this is not the meaning of God at all. 62 God could never be an object of cognition, like the objects and people we see all around us. To look through the finite symbol to the reality—the God beyond “God” that lies beyond theism—demands courage; we have to confront the dead symbol to find “the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt .“ 63 Tillich liked to call God the ground of being.

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

  I approached Johnson first. I chose my moment carefully—a trip we made to Japan, to visit Nippon Rubber and discuss the Pre Montreal. Over dinner I laid it all out for him. We were in a ferocious battle, a siege. Day by day, we were doing everything we could to keep the troops fed and the enemy at bay. For the sake of victory, for the sake of survival, everything else needed to be sacrificed, subordinated. “And so, at this crucial moment in the evolution of Blue Ribbon, in the rollout of Nike… I’m sorry, but, well… you two dummies need to switch cities.” He groaned. Of course. It was Santa Monica all over again. But slowly, agonizingly, he came around. As did Woodell. Around the close of 1972 each man handed his house keys to the other, and now in early 1973 they switched places. Talk about team players. It was an enormous sacrifice, and I was deeply grateful. But in keeping with my personality, and Blue Ribbon tradition, I expressed no gratitude. I spoke not a word of thanks or praise. In fact, in several office memos I referred to the switch as “Operation Dummy Reversal.” IN THE LATE spring of 1973 I met with our recent investors, the debenture holders, for a second time. The first time they’d loved me. How could they not? Sales were booming, celebrity athletes were promoting our shoes. Sure, we’d lost Onitsuka, and we were facing a legal fight down the road, but we were on the right track. This time, however, it was my duty to inform the investors that, one year after launching Nike, for the first time in Blue Ribbon history… we’d lost money. The meeting took place at the Valley River Inn in Eugene. It was thirty men and women crammed into the conference room, with me at the head of a long conference table. I wore a dark suit and tried to project an air of confidence as I delivered the bad news. I gave them the same speech I’d given Blue Ribbon employees a year before. We’ve got them right where we want them. But this group wasn’t buying any pep talks. These were widows and widowers, retirees and pensioners. Also, the previous year I’d been flanked by Jaqua and Bowerman; this year both men were busy. I was alone. Half an hour into my pitch, with thirty horrified faces staring at me, I suggested we break for lunch. The previous year I’d handed out Blue Ribbon’s financial statements before lunch. This year I decided to wait until after. It didn’t help. Even on a full stomach, with a chocolate chip cookie, the numbers looked bad. Despite $3.2 million in sales, we showed a net loss of $57,000.

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

  He explained that he didn’t care what I said, or what I thought, or whether any of this was “fair,” or “American.” (He made air quotes with his bony “fingers.”) He just wanted his money. His money? I wrapped my arms around myself. Ever since the onset of burnout, this old habit was becoming more pronounced. I often looked in 1979 as if I were trying to keep myself from flying apart, trying to keep my contents from spilling out. I wanted to make another point, to rebut something the bureau-kraken had just said, but I didn’t trust myself to speak. I feared that my limbs might go flailing, that I might begin screaming. That I might beat the living tar out of his telephone. We made quite a pair, him with his frantic pacing, me with my frenzied self-hugging. It became clear that we were at an impasse. I had to do something. So I commenced kissing up. I told the bureau-kraken that I respected his position. He had a job to do. It was a very important job. It must not be easy, enforcing burdensome fees, dealing with complaints all the time. I looked around his office-cell, as if to sympathize. However, I said, if Nike was forced to pay this exorbitant sum of money, the straight truth was, it would put us out of business. “So?” he said. “So?” I said. “Yeah,” he said. “So… what? Mr. Knight, it’s my responsibility to collect import duties for the U.S. Treasury. For me, that’s as far as it goes. Whatever happens… happens.” I hugged myself so tight, I must have looked as if I was wearing an invisible straitjacket. Then I released myself, stood. Gingerly, I picked up my briefcase. I told the bureau-kraken that I wasn’t going to accept his decision, and I wasn’t going to give up. If necessary I would visit every congressman and senator and privately plead my case. I suddenly had the greatest sympathy for Werschkul. No wonder he’d come unhinged. Don’t you know that Hitler’s father was a customs inspector? “Do what you gotta do,” the bureau-kraken said. “Good day.” He turned back to his files. He checked his watch. Getting close to five. Not much time before the workday ended to ruin someone else’s life. I BEGAN, MORE or less, commuting to Washington. Every month I’d meet with politicians, lobbyists, consultants, bureaucrats, anyone who might help. I immersed myself in that strange political underworld, and read everything I could about customs. I even skimmed WASP, Volume I . Nothing was working. Late in the summer of 1979 Werschkul got me an appointment with one of Oregon’s senators, Mark O. Hatfield. Well respected, well connected, Hatfield was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. With one phone call he might be able to get the bureau-kraken’s bosses to clear up that $25 million discrepancy. So I spent days preparing, studying for the meeting, and huddled several times with Woodell and Hayes.

• 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 City of Night (1963)

  Cataclysmic bursts of sound from the streets draw me to them. I can shatter his sureness by walking out. “I want to be outside when it’s really swinging again,” I told him. “Just before the Parade.” But by the way hes looking at me, Im sure that he knows Im afraid of returning to the streets, afraid of the Carnival, the beginning all over again: the ritual—and because I am sure that he knows all this, and feeling that recurrent resentment, Im overwhelmed by a sudden compulsion to do what Im doing now: I draw his hand over my body so that it rests this time between my legs. “All the symbols,” he smiled—understanding again clearly, annoying me that nothing can shatter his composure. “No, it doesnt compromise me. Not at all.” It’s almost as if we’re dueling—but for what stakes? I wonder disturbingly. “You remind me of a youngman I loved very much,” he said. “He kept telling me he couldnt love me back the way he knew I did him. He told me that ultimately he’d want women only. Unwittingly, I hurt him. I finally believed that he actually wanted, very much, to get out of the life he’d been living with me. So I stopped seeing him. Then he called me up. He asked to come over. In bed, I could sense him becoming purposely cold. It was what he had plotted, to establish that I still wanted him, on his own terms. What he didnt know was that he didnt have to test anything about me. I would easily have told him—and proved to him—that I wanted him back. And all he had done was to compromise his own stance—his professed stance of indifference.... We say we hate the world,” he went on mockingly, “but we imitate it constantly: Weve got to make ours a battlefield, in which theres always a winner and a loser. But, really, the line isnt that definite.... Have you ever thought that in all those fleeting contacts in which you consider yourself the winner—have you ever thought that youre being used too—by those who want you now only for something that doesnt last?” “No,” I answered sharply, wanting to stop the inevitable direction of his words, “Ive never thought that.”

• From The Case for God (2009)

  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. Incapable of verification, religious truth now appeared “futile” and “frail”:35 Behold, we know not anything; I can but trust that good shall fall At last—far off—at last, to all, And every winter change to spring. So runs my dream: but what am I? An infant crying in the night: An infant crying for the light: And with no language but a cry.36 The Victorians had been encouraged to see themselves as invincible; they had believed that science would conduct them into a world of spiritual and moral progress. But, it seemed, stripped of the faith that made it possible to endure the sorrow of life, instead of coming of age, humanity was still afflicted by the terror and bewilderment of its infancy. Some theologians had persistently stood out against the canonization of a scientifically based natural theology. Horace Bushnell (1802–76), the notorious Congregationalist pastor of Hartford, Connecticut, was denounced as a heretic for pointing out that theology had more in common with poetry than with science.37 Religious language had to be vague and imprecise, because what we called “God” lay beyond the scope of the rational intellect. Statements about God “always affirm something which is false, or contrary to the truth intended,” because “they impute form to that which is really out of form.”38 “Fixed forms of dogma” invariably distorted truth, because such “definitions are, in fact, only changes of symbol, and if we take them to be more, they will infallibly lead us to error.”39 Remarks that would once have been commonplace were now greeted with fury. Western Christians had become addicted to scientific proof and were convinced that if God was not an empirically demonstrable fact, there was no sense in which religion could be true.

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

  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. I had a pregnancy kit I’d packed myself, with a stopwatch, the same one I’d used to time Woodell. I now timed Penny’s contractions aloud. “Five... four... three...” She stopped panting and turned to me. Through clenched teeth she said, “Stop... doing... that.” A nurse now helped her out of the wheelchair and onto a gurney and rolled her away. I stumbled back down the hall into something the hospital called “The Bullpen,” where expectant fathers were expected to sit and stare into space. I would have been in the delivery room with Penny, but my father had warned me against it. He’d told me that I’d been born bright blue, which scared the daylights out of him, and he therefore cautioned me, “At the decisive moment, be somewhere else.” I sat in a hard plastic chair, eyes closed, doing shoe work in my mind. After an hour I opened my eyes and saw our doctor standing before me. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. He was saying something. That is, his lips were moving. But I couldn’t hear. Life’s a joy? Here’s a toy? Are you Roy? He said it again: It’s a boy. “A—a—boy? Really?” “Your wife did a superb job,” he was saying, “she did not complain once, and she pushed at all the right times—has she taken many Lamaze classes?” “Lemans?” I said. “Pardon?” “What?” He led me like an invalid down a long hall and into a small room. There, behind a curtain, was my wife, exhausted, radiant, her face bright red.

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

  Bowerman spent quite a bit of time with Matthew, and he told me not to worry. I like his spirit, he said. The world needs more rebels. That spring, Penny and I had the added worry of how our little rebel would handle a sibling. She was pregnant again. Secretly, I wondered more about how we were going to handle it. By the end of 1973, I thought, it’s very possible I’ll have two kids and no job. AFTER TURNING OUT the light next to Matthew’s bed, I’d usually go and sit in the living room with Penny. We’d talk about the day. Which meant the looming trial. Growing up, Penny had watched several of her father’s trials, and it gave her an avid fondness for courtroom drama. She never missed a legal show on TV. Perry Mason was her favorite, and I sometimes called her Della Street, after Mason’s intrepid secretary. I kidded her about her enthusiasm, but I also fed off it. The final act of every evening was my phone call to my father. Time for my own bedtime story. By then he’d left the newspaper, and in his retirement he had loads of time to research old cases and precedents, to spin out arguments that might be useful to Cousin Houser. His involvement, plus his sense of fair play, plus his bedrock belief in the rightness of Blue Ribbon’s cause, was restorative. It was always the same. My father would ask about Matthew and Penny, and then I’d ask about Mom, and then he’d tell me what he’d found in the law books. I’d take careful notes on a yellow legal pad. Before signing off he’d always say that he liked our chances. We’re going to win, Buck. That magical pronoun, “we”—he’d always use it, and it would always make me feel better. It’s possible that we were never closer, maybe because our relationship had been reduced to its primal essence. He was my dad, I was his son, and I was in the fight of my life. Looking back, I see that something else was going on. My trial was providing my father with a healthier outlet for his inner chaos. My legal troubles, my nightly phone calls, were keeping him on high alert, and at home. There were fewer late nights at the bar of the club. “ I ’ M BRINGING SOMEONE else onto the team,” Cousin Houser told me one day. “Young lawyer. Rob Strasser. You’ll like him.” He was fresh out of UC Berkeley School of Law, Cousin Houser said, and he didn’t know a damn thing. Yet. But Cousin Houser had an instinct about the kid. Thought he showed tremendous promise. Plus, Strasser had a personality that was sure to mesh with our company. “The moment Strasser read our brief,” Cousin Houser told me, “he saw this case as a holy crusade.” Well, I liked the sound of that.

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

  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.” Mr. Miyazaki smiled. The other executives smiled. A murmur went around the table. Blueribbon, blueribbon, blueribbon. The executives folded their hands and fell silent again and resumed staring at me. “Well,” I began again, “gentlemen, the American shoe market is enormous. And largely untapped. If Onitsuka can penetrate that market, if Onitsuka can get its Tigers into American stores, and price them to undercut Adidas, which most American athletes now wear, it could be a hugely profitable venture.” I was simply quoting my presentation at Stanford, verbatim, speaking lines and numbers I’d spent weeks and weeks researching and memorizing, and this helped to create an illusion of eloquence. I could see that the executives were impressed. But when I reached the end of my pitch there was a prickling silence. Then one man broke the silence, and then another, and now they were all speaking over one another in loud, excited voices. Not to me, but to each other. Then, abruptly, they all stood and left. Was this the customary Japanese way of rejecting a Crazy Idea? To stand in unison and leave? Had I squandered my kei—just like that? Was I dismissed? What should I do? Should I just... leave? After a few minutes they returned. They were carrying sketches, samples, which Mr. Miyazaki helped to spread before me. “Mr. Knight,” he said, “we’ve been thinking long time about American market.” “You have?” “We already sell wrestling shoe in United States. In, eh, Northeast? But we discuss many time bringing other lines to other places in America.” They showed me three different models of Tigers. A training shoe, which they called a Limber Up. “Nice,” I said. A high-jump shoe, which they called a Spring Up. “Lovely,” I said. And a discus shoe, which they called a Throw Up. Do not laugh, I told myself. Do not... laugh.

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

  “Son of a bitch,” Hayes said, “if you look at our cash flow over the next six months, we’re in good shape. It’s just this one payment to Nissho that’s screwing up everything.” “Yes,” I said, “if we can get past this one payment, we’re home free.” “But this is some payment.” “We’ve always covered checks to Nissho within a day or two. But this time it might take us—what—three? Four?” “I don’t know,” Hayes said, “I honestly don’t know.” I followed two raindrops racing down the glass. Neck and neck. You are remembered for the rules you break. “Damn the torpedoes,” I said. “Pay Nissho.” Hayes nodded. He stood. We looked at each other for one long second. He said he’d tell Carole Fields, our head bookkeeper, what we’d decided. He’d have her start moving the money around. And come Friday he’d have her cut the check to Nissho. These are the moments, I thought. TWO DAYS LATER Johnson was in his new office at the Exeter factory, doing paperwork, when a mob of angry workers suddenly appeared at his door. Their paychecks had bounced, they said. They wanted answers. Johnson, of course, had no answers to give. He implored them to hold on, there must be some mistake. He phoned Oregon, reached Fields, and told her what was happening. He expected her to say it was all a big misunderstanding, an accounting error. Instead she whispered, “Oooh, shit.” Then hung up on him. A PARTITION WALL separated Fields’s office from mine. She ran around the wall and up to my desk. “You’d better sit down,” she blurted. “I am sitting down.” “It’s all hitting the fan,” she said. “What is?” “The checks. All the checks.” I called in Hayes. By then he weighed 330 pounds, but he seemed to be shrinking before me as Fields described to us every particular of the Johnson phone call. “We might’ve really fucked up this time,” he said. “What do we do?” I said. “I’ll call Holland,” Hayes said. Minutes later Hayes came back into my office, holding up his hands. “Holland says it’s fine, no worries, he’ll smooth things over with his bosses.” I sighed. Disaster averted. In the meantime, however, Johnson wasn’t waiting for us to get back to him. He phoned his local bank and learned that his account, for some reason, was bone dry. He called in Giampietro, who drove up the road to see an old friend, a man who owned a local box company. Giampietro asked the man for a loan of five thousand dollars, cash. An outrageous request. But the man’s box company depended on Blue Ribbon for its survival. If we went out of business, the box company might, too. So the box man became our bag man, forking over fifty crisp hundred-dollar bills. Giampietro then raced back to the factory and doled out everyone’s pay, in cash, like Jimmy Stewart keeping the Bailey Bros. Building & Loan afloat. HAYES LUMBERED INTO my office.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  el olor familiar del champú con aroma a orquídea que Mick siempre usa para las alfombras. Huele como la avalancha de perfume que sientes al entrar en un casino de gama alta, que intenta ocultar el olor a cigarrillos. Ha pasado mucho tiempo desde que vine aquí, pero de repente, tengo diecinueve años otra vez. Pago la entrada y entro, deteniéndome al pasar el bar y ver el mar de gente en el lugar. Chicos jóvenes, hombres mayores, algunas mujeres y parejas, luces moradas bajo el escenario blanco e hilos de humo flotando en el aire desde los extremos anaranjados de los cigarrillos. La aprehensión se afianza. No debí haber venido aquí. Debería irme antes que me vea. Es un adulto, se cuidó bien por mucho tiempo, y esa pequeña voz en mi cabeza tiene razón. Si puedo llevarla a la cama y mantenerla despierta la mitad de la noche, entonces es lo suficientemente mayor como para tomar sus propias decisiones. Debería poder salir con sus amigos. Quiero que salga con sus amigos. Simplemente no la quiero aquí, porque sé que Mick la quiere, ella necesita dinero, y esta noche hice que su situación en mi casa se sintiera inestable. Está molesta, ¿y si comienza a pensar que necesita mudarse? ¿Qué pasa si toma unas copas y decide que necesita ganar un dinero extra? Paso mi mano por mi cabello, sintiendo el gel que puse en él y recordando cómo me limpié para ella, incluso me cambié de ropa. Echo un vistazo al traje azul marino que compré el año pasado para la graduación de Cole, pero esta noche dejé fuera la corbata. Solo una camisa blanca abierta en el cuello, y unos zapatos negros. No sé por qué me lo puse, porque ahora me siento estúpido, pero creo que solo quiero que sepa que no soy un libro abierto, puedo ser diferente, aún puedo sorprenderla. Retrocedo para irme, rezando para que no me haya visto, pero la multitud en el club vitorea y brama, y mi atención se dirige al escenario donde un grupo de chicas están de pie en una fila. Están vestidas con cualquier cosa, desde jeans hasta faldas y tangas, con aspecto nervioso pero riendo y jugando. Un par de mujeres ya han comenzado el concurso, y parece que la voluntad de ganar trescientos dólares ahora exige medidas más extremas que en mi época. Dos mujeres ya están mojadas, una mujer mayor viene y les arroja jarras de agua mientras se meten las camisas empapadas y agitan sus pechos y luego se dan la vuelta, sentadas a horcajadas sobre el piso mientras mueven sus culos para la multitud rugiente. Vierten más agua en sus espaldas. Las cabezas de cabello mojado vuelan, y bien pueden estar jodidamente desnudas. Prácticamente lo están.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Pero me habría dicho si tenía que trabajar. Marcándole a Jordan, bajo corriendo las escaleras cuando suena la línea y apago el televisor otra vez. Cuando la línea se levanta, una explosión de música golpea mi oreja y me estremezco, alejándolo solo un poco. —Hola —dice, y me sorprende que suene tan... calmada. —¿Dónde estás? —Fuera —responde—. Estaré en casa más tarde. —¿Estás trabajando? Se ríe, y escucho la voz de otra mujer y una serie de conversaciones en el fondo. —Uhm, no —responde finalmente. Entonces escucho un bramido de lo que parece ser como cuarenta hombres vitoreando de fondo, y me enderezo, tratando de descubrir qué demonios está pasando. —Jordan, lo siento, llegué tarde —le digo. —¿Huh? —¡Lo siento, llegué tarde! —grito en el teléfono—. Había trabajo que hacer, y tuve que quedarme. —Entonces, ¿por qué no llamaste? —responde, su voz es cada vez más fuerte— . No estabas en el trabajo. Estabas en Red's, y no voy a esperar. Ya no. Estoy fuera con mis amigas y me estoy divirtiendo. Estaré en casa más tarde. Y luego, toda la música y la voz del DJ en el fondo se apagan y la línea se corta cuando cuelga. Me cuelga. Bajo mi teléfono y miro fijamente la llamada finalizada. Ok, entonces está enojada. Creo. Sin embargo, no parecía enojada. O borracha. Sonaba indiferente, y por alguna razón, eso se siente peor. Puedo lidiar con la ira, pero no con una chica que parece estar perfectamente contenta con las conclusiones que ha sacado. Mierda. Entonces se me ocurre lo que anunciaba el DJ de fondo. Noche de Camisetas Mojadas en The Hook. Mis ojos se amplían. No sería tan estúpida, ¿verdad? Maldita sea. ¿Qué demonios se supone que debo hacer? ¿Se está divirtiendo como dijo o me está poniendo en jaque? ¿Está tratando de tentarme para que vaya a

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

  Finally came the moment when I thought the party might spin out of control, when I wondered if we might actually need to call the cops. I looked across the room and spotted Jaqua, sitting beside his wife, glaring at Kitami. I knew that Jaqua had been a fighter pilot in the war, that his wingman, one of his closest friends, had been shot out of the sky by a Japanese Zero. In fact Jaqua and his wife had named their first child after that dead wingman, and I suddenly regretted telling Jaqua about Kitami’s Folder of Betrayal. I perceived something bubbling inside Jaqua, and rising to his throat, and I sensed the real possibility that Bowerman’s lawyer and best friend and neighbor might stand and march across the room and sock Kitami in the jaw. The one person who seemed to be having an uncomplicatedly wonderful time was Kitami. Gone was the angry Kitami from the bank. Gone was the scolding Kitami from my office. Talking, laughing, slapping his knee, he was so personable that I wondered what might have happened if I’d given him a mai tai before driving him over to First National. Late in the evening he spotted something across the room—a guitar. It belonged to one of Bowerman’s three sons. Kitami walked over, picked it up, and began to finger the strings. Then strum them. He carried the guitar to a short flight of steps that led from the Bowermans’ sunken living room to their dining room and, standing on the top step, started to play. And sing. All heads turned. Conversation ceased. It was a country-western song, of some sort, but Kitami performed it like a traditional Japanese folk song. He sounded like Buck Owens on a koto harp. Then without any segue he switched to “O Sole Mio.” I recall thinking: Is he really singing “O Sole Mio”? He sang it louder. O sole mio, sta nfronte a te! O sole, o sole mio, sta nfronte a te! A Japanese businessman, strumming a Western guitar, singing an Italian ballad, in the voice of an Irish tenor. It was surreal, then a few miles past surreal, and it didn’t stop. I’d never known there were so many verses to “O Sole Mio.” I’d never known a roomful of active, restless Oregonians could sit so still and quiet for so long. When he set down the guitar, we all tried not to make eye contact with each other as we gave him a big hand. I clapped and clapped and it all made sense. For Kitami, this trip to the United States—the visit to the bank, the meetings with me, the dinner with the Bowermans—wasn’t about Blue Ribbon. Nor was it about Onitsuka. Like everything else, it was all about Kitami.

• From City of Night (1963)

  With an inviting smile which in itself would have indicated that I have come to the right place, the chubby bartender (one of two working the bar this afternoon) set a complimentary Welcoming drink before me.... Occasionally, he will talk in confidential tones to the darkhaired woman, and with attempted but unsuccessful subtlety, he indicates by a look or a movement of his head someone in the bar. The woman listens without turning her face. They seem conspiratorially to be keeping track of the people here. Looking about this bar (the hungry faces of the hunted and the hunting)—as familiar as the others in the nightcities I have left—I feel, recurring, a sense of something hugely ominous, intensified by the interlude earlier with the gypsy woman—then a heavy weariness, quickly replaced by the manic excitement. Against the whining jukebox near me, a tall pale queen is snapping her long fingers rhythmically to the juke-rocking and twisting. Another queen, with faintly mascaraed eyes in anticipation of the actual day of Mardi Gras when they can legally “masquerade” as women, stormed in and insisted loudly nervously to the finger-snapping queen: “Mae, youve got to come outside with me this very minute and help me with Miss Ange! Shes outside pulking her nelly guts out! We gotta take her to her pad before the fuzz busts her.” In an even more hysterical voice: “Shes holding—“ (I see the woman sitting next to me straighten up alertly.) “—and I just cant handle her myself, she keeps fighting me off with her nails!” Without interrupting the indifferent snapping of her fingers, the pale queen, flying Sky-High herself, trying for artificial heaven, hisses: “Am I my sister’s keeper or something?... When I needed that nelly bitch once, she didnt know me from Eve!” Rocking back and forth—sometimes so far back that it seems she will surely lose her balance—her hands like featherless wings over her head—or, more correctly, like swaying palmtrees in a strong breeze—she calls to the smoky ceiling: “Im comin, Big Daddy-O!” And she echoes the jukebox: “Oh, yes, indeedee, babies—let the good times roll!” As the other queen dashed outside in confused exasperation, the darkhaired woman summoned the chubby bartender and whispered to him. He left the bar quickly, returning in a few moments ushering in a tiny queen who looks like a torn ragdoll: so pale her features seem to have been merely sketched on her face, all life vampirishly drained from her.