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 Birthday Girl (2018)

  —Ho-ola —tartamudeo, un poco conmocionado al verlo de repente—. He estado intentando contactarte todo el día. Incluso estuve fuera en algunos de tus lugares habituales durante mi almuerzo. ¿Dónde demonios has estado? —Sí, lo sé, lo siento. —Entra y se dirige a la cocina—. Tenía algunas cosas que concluir. Se acerca al refrigerador y saca un refresco, luego se da vuelta y se apoya en el fregadero mientras abre la tapa. —Entonces, ¿qué pasa contigo? —Me paro junto a la isla—. Tu mamá apareció esta mañana, diciendo que ¿dejas tu trabajo? Me muestra una mirada divertida como si estuviera reaccionando exageradamente. —Si me mantuvieras informado, no me molestaría —estallo pero intento que parezca una broma. Mira detrás de él por la ventana, viendo algo, y se aleja del mostrador, dirigiéndose a través del cuarto de lavado y al patio trasero. Lo sigo. —Estoy bien —dice por encima de su hombro—. De hecho, tengo un nuevo trabajo. Es por eso que renuncié. Camina hacia la piscina y comienza a jalar el tubo para aspirar. Me había olvidado completamente de eso. Había estado funcionando desde ayer por la tarde. —¿Un nuevo trabajo? —le pregunto, tomando la cuerda detrás de él—. ¿Dónde? —Es una sorpresa. —No me gustan las sorpresas. ¿Dónde es el trabajo? Comienza a reír, y frunzo el ceño. —¿Por qué te ríes? —exijo. ¿Sabe cuán preocupado está todo el mundo por él, y ahora actúa como si tuviera todo solucionado, y se supone que no debemos hacer preguntas? —Porque estoy emocionado —dice—. Te lo contaré pronto. Lo prometo. —¿Es legal? —Tomo el tubo, sintiendo el peso de la aspiradora mientras comienza a flotar a través de la piscina hacia nosotros. Le tiembla la espalda con otra risa. Levanto una ceja. —Lo prometo, este trabajo es lo más legal posible —me dice, sus palabras encierran un chiste privado que no entiendo—. Recibo un sueldo constante, seguro médico, dental, jubilación, todo completo. —Me mira—. No tomo drogas, y no estoy en problemas. Estoy absolutamente bien. Lamento, no haber estado cerca. Simplemente no quería que fuera incómodo para Jordan. Dejo caer el tubo, habiendo llegado casi al final. —Entonces, ¿estás bien? —pregunto, para puntualizar. —Sí. —¿Vendrás a casa? Pero se encoge de hombros, pareciendo inseguro. —Sería incómodo, creo. Quiero que Jordan se quede aquí todo el tiempo que necesite. Me acerco a él. Todavía soy un par de centímetros más alto, pero siempre me sorprende lo grande que parece cada vez que lo veo. Dudo en decirlo, porque no quiero que se vaya a ninguna parte, pero sé que el lugar de Cole está aquí. —Puedo encontrar un arreglo diferente para ella —digo. Puedo resolver algo para asegurarme que ambos estén cuidados. Sin embargo, no parece necesitar pensar en ello. —No. —Sacude la cabeza, cuadrando los hombros—. No valdría la pena. Tendré mi propio lugar pronto de todos modos. —¿En serio? —Ahora estoy preocupado. Este nuevo trabajo parece demasiado bueno para ser verdad—. Me estás poniendo nervioso de nuevo —le digo.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Después de nueve semanas, me he vuelto bastante buena en este juego. Danni continúa sugiriendo que aprenda póker o blackjack o incluso que comienza a jugar con personas de todo el mundo, pero no soy tan genial. Me gusta jugar sola. Solo algo para mantener mi cerebro ocupado. Han sido unas vacaciones agitadas. He ganado cerca de trescientos cinco juegos de cuatrocientos, y solo perdí esos porque seguía jugando demasiado tarde y me quedé dormida, haciendo que la batería muriera. En realidad me siento un poco patética cuando me permito pensar en cómo he pasado horas y horas en este hermoso verano. Pero cuando comienzo un nuevo juego, dejo de pensar al respecto. Escucho sonar la campana en la puerta del lobby, y miro hacia arriba, viendo a un hombre joven, en una camisa negra y jeans, entrar y dirigirse al escritorio del frente. Me deslizo de mi banco y me levanto. Siempre me pongo nerviosa cuando llegan clientes tan tarde. El motel se encuentra en una vieja carretera sin muchos negocios o luces. La mayoría de las personas se quedan con la interestatal, especialmente cuando está así de oscuro, y los que no lo hacen, me hacen dudar. Pero bueno, es negocios. —Hola. —Sonrío—. Bienvenido a The Blue Palms. Se acerca al mostrador, y mi sonrisa titubea, viendo el enorme tatuaje de alas en su cuello con las palabras El Demonio No Duerme en tinta negra. Esta es un área bastante conservadora. No puede ser local. —Hola. —Se encuentra con mis ojos pero solo por un segundo—. ¿Cuántas habitaciones vacías tiene? —Um… —Miro los cubículos y cuento las llaves para asegurarme—. Seis —le digo. Asiente, moviendo la mano hacia su bolsillo trasero por su cartera, asumo. —Tomaré cinco. Por una noche, por favor. ¿Cinco? No creo que hayamos estado así de cerca de Sin Vacantes desde que llegué aquí. ¿Para qué necesita todas esas habitaciones? No es que me esté quejando. Necesitamos el negocio. The Blue Palms, propiedad de mi amiga Danni y su familia, se encuentra casi en un camino desierto. La nueva interestatal que se terminó hace veinte años hace difícil el negocio. Las únicas personas que parecían saber dónde estábamos eran los locales, o las familias de los locales que viajaban para visitar, y los motociclistas en búsqueda de una experiencia más auténtica rodando por las antiguas carreteras. Sin embargo, me alegra haber venido a ayudar. Danni me había suplicado por años para que la visitara, y ha sido un viaje en el tiempo el pasar otro verano con ella. Ella y yo ganamos una beca para un campamento cuando teníamos doce, y nos hemos mantenido en contacto desde entonces. Siempre había querido conocer el lugar de donde provenían muchas de sus historias tontas y sexis. El cliente me da su identificación, y la tomo. —Gracias —digo, llevándola al teclado para registrar las habitaciones a su nombre. La puerta de repente se vuelve a abrir, la campana suena, y escucho una voz demandante gritar. —¡Necesitamos comida!

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Yet Mather showed how easily old beliefs could coexist with the new. During the 1680s, he had warned his congregations that Satan regarded New England as his own province and had fought a bitter campaign against the colonists. Satan himself was responsible for the Indian Wars, the smallpox epidemics, and the decline in piety that had caused such anxiety in the Puritan community. In his Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcraft and Possessions (1689), Mather did much to fan the fears that exploded in the infamous Salem witch trials (1692), in which he took a leading role. His faith in scientific rationality had not been able to assuage his own inner demons or his conviction that evil spirits lurked everywhere, poised to overthrow the colony. But despite the explosion of irrationality in Salem, educated Americans were able to participate in the philosophical movement known as the Enlightenment. In both Europe and the American colonies, an elite group of intellectuals was convinced that humanity was beginning to leave superstition behind and was on the brink of a glorious new era. Science gave them greater control over nature than had ever been achieved before; people were living longer and felt more confident about the future. Already some Europeans had begun to insure their lives.6 The rich were now prepared to reinvest capital systematically on the basis of continuing innovation and in the firm expectation that trade would continue to improve. In order to keep abreast of these exciting developments, religion would have to change, so Enlightenment philosophers developed a new form of theism, based entirely on reason and Newtonian science, which they called Deism. It is not true that Deism was a halfway house to an outright denial of God.7 Deists were passionate about God and almost obsessed with religion. Like Newton, they believed that they had discovered the primordial faith that lay beneath the ancient biblical account. They spread their rational religion with near-missionary zeal, preaching salvation through knowledge and education. Ignorance and superstition had become the new Original Sins. The theologians Matthew Tindal (1655–1733) and John Toland (1670–1722) in the British Isles, the philosopher Voltaire (1694–1778) in France, and the scientist, statesman, and philosopher Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) and the statesman Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) in America all sought to bring faith under the control of reason. The Enlightenment philosophes wanted every single person to grasp the truths unveiled by science and learn to reason and discriminate correctly.8 Inspired by Newton’s vision of a universe ruled by immutable laws, they were offended by a God who intervened erratically in nature, working miracles and revealing “mysteries” that were not accessible to our reasoning powers. Voltaire defined Deism in his Philosophical Dictionary (1764). Like Newton, he thought that true religion should be “easy,” its truths clearly discernible, and, above all, it should be tolerant.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  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

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  26 AT HARVARD she called herself Victoria. Maia, her freshman roommate, an elfin princess from New Jersey, with colorless braces on her teeth—Don’t even ask! It’s my second round of orthodontia. My parents are thinking of suing—took one look at Bru’s picture and said, “God ... what a great-looking guy. I love those rugged, outdoorsy types. Where’s he go to school?” “He’s out of school.” “Really. What’s he do?” “He’s in construction.” “Construction?” “He works for his uncles. They build houses ... on the Vineyard.” “Oh, wow ... the Vineyard. I hear that’s a great place. So where’d he go to school?” “On the island.” “Really? There’s, like, a college on the island?” She hated Maia already and they’d just met. The freshman class was filled with high school valedictorians, people who’d scored in the high fifteen hundreds on their Boards. They were talented, brilliant, intense, and competitive, used to being number one in everything they tried. Graduating second in her class from Mountain Day meant nothing at Harvard. It was a joke. She couldn’t imagine why they’d admitted her. She was out of her league, to use Tawny’s expression. Even her roommate had bagged straight A’s. At least that’s what she claimed. She drove Vix up the wall with her running commentary and questions. Not that she answered any of them with more than a yes, no, or maybe, not since that first day. And the way Maia bit her fingernails as she studied, like a hungry gerbil. Vix had fantasies of tying her hands behind her back, or painting her nails with some vile-tasting substance that would send Maia racing across the hall to the bathroom. She couldn’t wait until Maia crashed at night so she could have some peace and quiet in their room.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  as she jots down the date and time of the wedding. She doodles all around it while Caitlin chats, until the whole page is filled with arrows, crescent moons, and triangles, as if she’s back in sixth grade. “Vix?” Caitlin says. “Are you still there? Do we have a bad connection or what?” “No, it’s okay.” “So you’ll come?” “Yes.” The second she hangs up she makes a mad dash for the women’s room where she pukes her guts out in the stall. She has to call Caitlin back, tell her there’s no way she can do this. What can Caitlin be thinking? What was she thinking when she agreed? Four weeks later Caitlin, her hair flying in the wind, meets Victoria at the tiny Vineyard airport. Victoria is the last one to step out of the commuter from LaGuardia. She’d spotted Caitlin from her window as soon as they’d landed but felt glued to her seat. It’s been more than two years since they’ve seen each other, and three since Victoria graduated from college and got caught up in real life—a job, with just two weeks vacation a year. No money to fly around. Bummer, as Lamb would say when they were kids. “Going on to Nantucket with us?” the flight attendant asks and suddenly Victoria realizes she’s the only passenger still on the plane. Embarrassed, she grabs her bag and hustles down the steps onto the tarmac. Caitlin finds her in the crowd and waves frantically. Victoria heads toward her, shaking her head because Caitlin is wearing a T-shirt that says simplify, simplify, simplify. She’s barefoot as usual and Victoria is betting her feet will be as dirty as they were that first summer. Caitlin holds her at arm’s length for a minute. “God, Vix ...” she says, “you look so ... grownup!” They both laugh, then Caitlin hugs her. She smells of seawater, suntan lotion, and something else. Victoria closes her eyes, breathing in the familiar scent, and for a moment it’s as if they’ve never been apart. They’re still Vixen and Cassandra, summer sisters forever. The rest is a mistake, a crazy joke. PART ONE Dancing Queen 1977–1980

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  Riviere’s postulated unity between gender attributes and a naturalized “orientation” appears as an instance of what Wittig refers to as the “imaginary formation” of sex. And yet, Riviere calls into question these naturalized typologies through an appeal to a psychoanalytic account that locates the meaning of mixed gender attributes in the “interplay of conflicts” (35). Significantly, she contrasts this kind of psychoanalytic theory with one that would reduce the presence of ostensibly “masculine” attributes in a woman to a “radical or fundamental tendency.” In other words, the acquisition of such attributes and the accomplishment of a heterosexual or homosexual orientation are produced through the resolution of conflicts that have as their aim the suppression of anxiety. Citing Ferenczi in order to establish an analogy with her own account, Riviere writes: Ferenczi pointed out ... that homosexual men exaggerate their heterosexuality as a “defence” against their homosexuality. I shall attempt to show that women who wish for masculinity may put on a mask of womanliness to avert anxiety and the retribution feared from men. (35) It is unclear what is the “exaggerated” form of heterosexuality the homosexual man is alleged to display, but the phenomenon under notice here might simply be that gay men simply may not look much different from their heterosexual counterparts. This lack of an overt differentiating style or appearance may be diagnosed as a symptomatic “defense” only because the gay man in question does not conform to the idea of the homosexual that the analyst has drawn and sustained from cultural stereotypes. A Lacanian analysis might argue that the supposed “exaggeration” in the homosexual man of whatever attributes count as apparent heterosexuality is the attempt to “have” the Phallus, the subject position that entails an active and heterosexualized desire. Similarly, the “mask” of the “women who wish for masculinity” can be interpreted as an effort to renounce the “having” of the Phallus in order to avert retribution by those from whom it must have been procured through castration. Riviere explains the fear of retribution as the consequence of a woman’s fantasy to take the place of men, more precisely, of the father. In the case that she herself examines, which some consider to be autobiographical, the rivalry with the father is not over the desire of the mother, as one might expect, but over the place of the father in public discourse as speaker, lecturer, writer—that is, as a user of signs rather than a sign-object, an item of exchange. This castrating desire might be understood as the desire to relinquish the status of woman-as-sign in order to appear as a subject within language. Indeed, the analogy that Riviere draws between the homosexual man and the masked woman is not, in her view, an analogy between male and female homosexuality. Femininity is taken on by a woman who “wishes for masculinity,” but fears the retributive consequences of taking on the public appearance of masculinity.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Typical of the fundamentalist mind-set is the belief that there is only one way of interpreting reality. For the new atheists, scientism alone can lead us to truth. But science depends upon faith, intuition, and aesthetic vision as well as on reason. The physicist Paul Dirac has argued that “it is more important to have beauty in one’s equations than to have them fit experiment.”45 The mathematician Roger Penrose believes that the creative mind “breaks through” into a Platonic realm of mathematical and aesthetic forms: “Rigorous argument is usually the last step! Before that, one has to make many guesses, and for these aesthetic convictions are enormously important.”46 There are many circumstances in which human beings have to lay aside an objectivist analysis, which seeks in some way to master what it contemplates.47 When confronted with a work of art, we have to open our minds and allow it to carry us away. If we seek to relate intimately to another person, we have to be prepared to make ourselves vulnerable—as Abraham did when he opened his heart and home to the three strangers at Mamre. As Tillich pointed out, men and women continually feel drawn to explore levels of truth that go beyond our normal experience. This imperative has inspired the scientific as well as the religious quest. We seek what Tillich called an “ultimate concern” that shapes our life and gives it meaning. The ultimate concern of Dawkins and Harris appears to be reason; this has seized and taken possession of them. But their idea of reason is very different from the rationality of Socrates, who used his reasoning powers to bring his dialogue partners into a state of unknowing. For Augustine and Aquinas, reason became intellectus, opening naturally to the divine. Today, for many people, reason no longer subverts itself in this way. But the danger of this secularization of reason, which denies the possibility of transcendence, is that reason can become an idol that seeks to destroy all rival claimants. We hear this in the new atheism, which has forgotten that unknowing is a part of the human condition, so much so that, as the social critic Robert N. Bellah has pointed out: “Those who feel they are … most fully objective in their assessment of reality are most in the power of deep, unconscious fantasies.”48

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  This doesn’t mean that all minority practices are to be condoned or celebrated, but it does mean that we ought to be able to think them before we come to any kinds of conclusions about them. What worried me most were the ways that the panic in the face of such practices rendered them unthinkable. Is the breakdown of gender binaries, for instance, so monstrous, so frightening, that it must be held to be definitionally impossible and heuristically precluded from any effort to think gender? Some of these kinds of presumptions were found in what was called “French Feminism” at the time, and they enjoyed great popularity among literary scholars and some social theorists. Even as I opposed what I took to be the heterosexism at the core of sexual difference fundamentalism, I also drew from French poststructuralism to make my points. My work in Gender Trouble turned out to be one of cultural translation. Poststructuralist theory was brought to bear on U.S. theories of gender and the political predicaments of feminism. If in some of its guises, poststructuralism appears as a formalism, aloof from questions of social context and political aim, that has not been the case with its more recent American appropriations. Indeed, my point was not to “apply” poststructuralism to feminism, but to subject those theories to a specifically feminist reformulation. Whereas some defenders of poststructuralist formalism express dismay at the avowedly “thematic” orientation it receives in works such as Gender Trouble, the critiques of poststructuralism within the cultural Left have expressed strong skepticism toward the claim that anything politically progressive can come of its premises. In both accounts, however, poststructuralism is considered something unified, pure, and monolithic. In recent years, however, that theory, or set of theories, has migrated into gender and sexuality studies, postcolonial and race studies. It has lost the formalism of its earlier instance and acquired a new and transplanted life in the domain of cultural theory. There are continuing debates about whether my own work or the work of Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Chakravorty Spival, or Slavoj Žižek belongs to cultural studies or critical theory, but perhaps such questions simply show that the strong distinction between the two enterprises has broken down. There will be theorists who claim that all of the above belong to cultural studies, and there will be cultural studies practitioners who define themselves against all manner of theory (although not, significantly, Stuart Hall, one of the founders of cultural studies in Britain). But both sides of the debate sometimes miss the point that the face of theory has changed precisely through its cultural appropriations. There is a new venue for theory, necessarily impure, where it emerges in and as the very event of cultural translation. This is not the displacement of theory by historicism, nor a simple historicization of theory that exposes the contingent limits of its more generalizable claims.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  In the poêle , Descartes turned Montaigne’s skepticism on its head and made the experience of doubt the foundation of certainty. First, he insisted, the thinker must empty his mind of everything that he thought he knew. He must, he told himself, “accept nothing as true which I did not clearly recognize to be so: that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitation and prejudice in judgments, and to accept in them nothing more than what was presented in my mind so clearly and distinctly that I could have no occasion to doubt it.” 11 It was a rationalized version of Denys’s way of denial. 12 A scientist must empty his mind of the truths of revelation and tradition. He could not trust the evidence of his senses, because a tower that looked round from a distance might really be square. He could not even be certain that the objects in his immediate environment were real: How did we know that we were not dreaming when we saw, heard, or touched them? How could we prove that we were awake? His aim was to find ideas that were immediately self-evident; only “clear” and “distinct” truths could provide a basis for his Universal Mathematics. Eventually, Descartes found what he was looking for. “I noticed that whilst I wished to think all things false, it was absolutely essential that the ‘I’ should be somewhat,” he concluded. Remarking that this truth, “I think, therefore I am” was so certain and so assured that all the most extravagant suppositions brought forward by the sceptics were incapable of shaking it, I came to the conclusion that I could receive it without scruple as the first principle of the philosophy for which I was seeking. 13 This was the one certain thing that answered Montaigne’s challenge. The internal experience of doubt itself revealed a certainty that nothing in the external world could provide. When we experience ourselves thinking and doubting, we become aware of our existence. The ego rose ineluctably from the depths of the mind by the disciplined ascesis of skepticism: 14 “What then am I? A thing which thinks [res cogitans] . What is a thing that thinks? It is a thing which doubts, understands, conceives, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, which also imagines and feels.” 15 Descartes’ famous maxim “Cogito ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”) neatly reversed traditional Platonic epistemology: “I think, therefore there is that which I think.” The modern mind was solitary, autonomous, and a world unto itself, unaffected by outside influence and separate from all other beings. From this irreducible nub of certainty, Descartes went on to prove the existence of God and the reality of the external world. Because the material universe was lifeless, godless, and inert, it could tell us nothing about God. The only animate thing in the entire cosmos was the thinking self, and it was here that we should look for incontrovertible proof. Descartes was clearly influenced by Augustine and Anselm.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  There can be no doubt about it. In the patterns of the stars can be seen, as if in a glass, the death of every man. Yet who can interpret them properly? In ancient times the stars had foretold the death of Hector and of Achilles, of Caesar and of Pompey; their fates were decided before they were born. In the heavens could be seen the siege of Thebes. The stars prefigured the death of Socrates, the adventures of Hercules and the misfortunes of Sampson. Yet the wit of man is dull. He cannot see what is above him. The sultan consulted his privy council and - to cut this story short - he told them of his intention to possess Constance by any means he could. If he could not have her, he said, then he was as good as dead. So he charged them with the task of discovering a way his wish might be granted. How could he get hold of her? Diverse courtiers said diverse things. They argued between themselves and canvassed many opinions. They had plenty of ideas, of course. Some advised the use of magic, while others suggested even more deceitful methods. And yet finally they concluded that the only way to win her was to marry her. It was the best and simplest solution. But then they realized the difficulties. To be quite plain about it, there was such a difference between the laws of East and West that it would be very difficult to find any accommodation. ‘No Christian ruler,’ they said to the sultan, ‘would dream of marrying his daughter to one who professed the sweet teaching of Mahomet. Blessed be the prophet.’ The sultan gave a firm reply. ‘Rather than lose Constance, then, I will be baptized as a Christian. She must be mine. There is nothing else to be said. No. Please. There can be no argument about this. Either I have her or I will die. So go on your way without delay. Travel to Rome. Bring back the woman who has plunged me into such distress.’ What else need I say? There were negotiations and embassies between the two realms. The pope was obliged to mediate between them, too. The princes of the Church, and the princes of the Roman court, were all involved. The Romans themselves were agreed that this was a good opportunity for augmenting the Christian communion. It represented a triumph against idolatry. So these were the terms of the treaty. The sultan and all his kin, as well as the members of his court and government, would be baptized as Christians. After that ceremony was performed, the sultan was free to marry Constance. A great sum of gold was also to be paid to Rome, in surety of his good intentions. The pact was duly signed by both parties. Oh Constance, God help you! Some people would now expect me to describe the feasts and celebrations arranged by the emperor for his daughter.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  The queen thanked her lord for his graciousness and, as soon as she found the opportunity, she called the knight to her. ‘Your fate is in the balance,’ she said to him. ‘You cannot be certain of your life. The day of your doom may be nearer than you think. I will save you, if you can tell me one thing. What is it that women most desire? Be careful! Think before you speak. That is the only way you will be able to rescue your neck from the executioner’s blade. If you cannot give me the answer today, I will give you permission to leave the court. Seek out the answer far and wide. Then return here in a year and a day. Before you go, you must give me your solemn pledge that you will come back and surrender yourself to the court.’ The knight sighed, filled with doubt and perplexity. How could he answer such a question? Yet he had no real choice in the matter. In the end he decided that he would obey the queen’s command. He would leave the court and return within a year and a day. He put his faith in God to find the right course for him, and jumped on to his horse. He tried every town and village, looking for enlightenment. ‘What is it,’ he said to one and all, ‘that women desire most?’ However hard he tried, he could not find a suitable answer. No two people agreed on the subject. Some said that women loved money the most; some said that they prized honour, and others pleasure. Some said that women wanted gorgeous clothes, but others chose sex as the main dish. Some said that women loved to be married, and widowed, often. Some said that they liked to be married and looked after in luxury. The knight was told that a man could win a woman with flattery. Or that any woman, young or old, rich or poor, could be caught by fuss and attention. Of course there were others who claimed that us women really wanted our liberty. We wanted to do as we pleased, and not to be judged. I think there is a lot of truth in that. Who wants to be told that she is acting immodestly? I’ll tell you one thing. If women are attacked on a sensitive point, then they will hit back. Try it, and you will see. Even if we are vicious on the inside, we need to appear virtuous and wholesome. There were other arguments. Some people told the knight that, above all else, women wished to seem discreet and trustworthy; they wanted to have a reputation for strength of mind, and for preserving secrets. That is rubbish, naturally. Women can never keep a secret. Have you heard the story of Midas?

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  “Shit ...” D’Nisha looked at her as if she were hopeless, a person who just didn’t get it. “You know ... good things happen when you got it? Nothin’ happens when you don’t.” “Oh, that luck.” “You know another kind?” “Not really.” “So?” “Sometimes I have it,” Vix told her, “but not always. How about you?” “Not yet. But I keep waitin’.” Luck. Luck had changed her life, hadn’t it? Sometimes, when she couldn’t sleep she played the What If game. What if Caitlin hadn’t chosen her for her summer sister? What if Abby and Lamb hadn’t taken a personal interest? What if Nathan hadn’t died or she hadn’t gone to Harvard or she’d married Bru? What would her life be like? Would she be happy, fulfilled? She was a great believer in luck. Every week she bought a lottery ticket from the newsstand near her office because, as the guy in the commercial said, Hey ... you never know ... She even signed up for a junket to Atlantic City in early April just to see what all the hoopla was about. Gus had taught her to play poker the summer she was seventeen, the last summer they’d shared the house with the Chicago Boys. He’d been impressed with her stone-cold expression. You don’t give away a thing, do you, Cough Drop? Never, she’d told him. Sometimes she dreamed about how it would feel if her ship came in. About how she would spend all that money. But she wasn’t as certain now as she’d been at fourteen. She withdrew a hundred dollars from the ATM near her office in preparation for her trip. But she didn’t take her checkbook or credit cards. That way there’d be no danger of blowing more than she could afford, not that she could afford even a hundred, given her salary and expenses, but just this once couldn’t hurt. Maia and Paisley were heading out to the Hamptons to look for a summer share. They’d wanted her to join them but Vix said, “Not this weekend.”

• From City of Night (1963)

  “Now you take Skip,” Chuck is going on. “That stud, he is gonna bust wide open one of these days—I mean, he is gonna explode! Boom! It’s like he has gotta firecracker with a long fuse up his ass—an that fuse gets shorter an shorter—an one day: Baroom!! ... An take Buddy: he is gonna end up with his picture hangin in a postoffice.... An Tiger—one day he is gonna kill one of them guys he makes it with—he hates everyone, man.... An you too, man,” he says to me now, “hell, you always ack like youre hyped up or comin off: Always movin. Where you think you gonna go so fast?—an what’s gonna be there if you get there?... Me, I’ll take it real slow, real cool—easy—I’ll last longer.” And so how could I explain to him the frantic running that, for me, was Youth? With the stark realization that I could never outrun It, I became more and more anxious to find some kind of meaning in Youth itself.... And so how can I explain this to Chuck?—always smiling, always drifting happily, effortlessly.... He was right about the other young-men hustling Main Street and the park. Although they never Spoke of their terror—and for that matter neither did I—it was stamped in every frantic gesture, in every empty pose of unconcern.... We worked at indolence from bar to park to bar.... Not Chuck. His idleness had an aspect of purity. Again: The world for him was a vast plain which he must occupy for a space of time, easily.... And yet—... Yet there was something incomplete about his easygoingness. “Now there is one thing I wouldnt mind,” he was going on good-humoredly. “I wouldnt mind finding that male whoorhouse I been hearing about Out in Hollywood. Wouldnt that be a gassy kick?—get signed up workin there? Even hustle chicks for a change. Man, I will tell you some-thin: Usually I don get no real good buzz outta guys swinging on my joint. Most of the time, I fall asleep. When I fall asleep, I ain got no problem. I always sleep with a Hardon....” With Chuck—and I knew this instinctively and without a doubt—there was nothing ulterior in his making it with males. It was merely easier in the world in which he found himself. That sexually he liked only girls, I never doubted. The other scene would have been too complicated for him to hassle.... And I had never heard even the scores and queens, who would often in bitchiness claim that “today’s trade is tomorrow’s competition,” say it about Chuck. “Not that I got anything against anyone swinging on a joint, dig?—if they wanna—” he was going on.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  ‘It’s me. Don’t you think you ought to eat something, Peter? How much time are you going to spend with all your sums and calculations? Let the devil take all these account books! Surely you have enough of God’s blessings without having to count them all? Come out. Forget your bags of money for a while. Are you not ashamed that dear John has not had a meal all day? Let us go to mass. And then eat.’ ‘My wife,’ the merchant replied, ‘you know nothing about men’s business. It is too complicated for you to understand, I suppose. But let me explain this to you. Take a group of twelve merchants. Only two of them will succeed and prosper. Only two will make a good profit in the course of their careers. We put on a brave face, of course, and make ourselves busy in the world. But we have to keep our affairs secret - until we are dead. The only alternative is to go on a pilgrimage. Or just disappear. That is the reason I pore over my books. I have to know how to master the tricks of the world. I am always in dread of failure, bankruptcy, and all the other hazards of business life. ‘I am going to Bruges tomorrow, as you know, but I will be back as soon as I can. While I am away I want you to be modest and courteous with everyone. Look after our property as carefully as you can. Keep the house neat and tidy. You have enough provisions, I am sure of that, so don’t overspend. You don’t lack meat or wine. You have all the clothes you need. But I’m feeling generous. Here is some silver for your purse.’ And with that he closed the door of the counting house and went down with his wife for luncheon. He had done enough work for the day. So they attended a quick mass and, as fast as they could, they sat down to eat. The tables were laid, the dishes come and gone in an instant. No one ate more than the monk.

• From City of Night (1963)

  “It aint good,” I heard him say through the sound of the rain. (It reminds me of the showers at the YMCA earlier—except that eventually the rain would stop, but the showers will go on Forever.... Crazily Im remembering a Mexican kid song: “Let it rain, let it rain, Virgin of the Cave....”) He moves away, sits on a chair a few feet from me, looking at me. “No,” he repeats, “it aint no good—whattaya wanna hang around the streets for? Youre a nicelooking kid,” he goes on, “not what I would call Handsome,” he says indifferently, “but—umm—youll do—” He lost points. “—but kinda Sexy, maybe, if you like your type—” He gained the lost points, plus a few. “—maybe a little new—but Available—” He hurled the last word at me. And he lost the points hopelessly. “—so, cummon, whattaya wanna hang around the streets for?” he went on. “Go on back Home and marry your girlfriend—you gotta girlfriend?—and raise lots of snottynosed little bastards, and I’ll tell you what: Keepem away from New York—all those fuckin cities—are you from L.A.? No? Keepem away from there too—you look like you could be—I was there once, L.A.—too many creeps for me, though: like a nuthouse.... That Pershing Square!—it’s a loony asylum!... 42nd Street, thats the lowest, though. All those lights, sure you think theyre Pretty—Im tellinya, listena-me, they aint: It’s bullshit—got the same fuckin lights in New Orleans—are you really from the South? New Orleans maybe—no, you wouldnt be so nervous if you were—12 years old there and youd know Everything: hell, I know a 12-year-old boy there, hustles. But all this shit aint worth knowing, like I say. It was Chicago for me,” he said. He squashes the cigarette into a butt-crammed ashtray; the butts squirm like gutted white worms. “You still wanna make the ten bucks?” he asked me abruptly. I panic. I think hes lost interest; and I realize uncomfortably how important it is, to me, that he still want me. “Yeah, sure,” I said, trying to sound casual.

• From City of Night (1963)

  He looks at his watch, looks toward either side of the street I can almost smell the sweet cologne. Carefully dressed and talcumed, clothes freshly pressed, his grayish hair combed neatly.... Frantically trying to look good for me! Suddenly I turned back, away from him, down the hall and the stairs, out the 42nd Street entrance, through the park waiting somehow like a Trap—through the popcorn-crunching leaves, the shadows of the trees grotesque in the faint autumn moon like in a witchstory... the stars hugely unconcerned. And I take the subway back to 34th Street, to that giant spider building I had moved into.... And days later I saw him again, on Times Square, as he crossed the street cockily with a hoodylooking black-haired boy to get into a cab. He glanced at me, turned away quickly. His hat still slouched defiantly to one side. CITY OF NIGHT FROM THE THUNDERING UNDERGROUND—THE MAZE of the New York subways—the world pours into Times Square. Like lost souls emerging from the purgatory of the trains (dark rattling tunnels, smelly pornographic toilets, newsstands futilely splashing the subterranean graydepths with unreal magazine colors), the newyork faces push into the air: spilling into 42nd Street and Broadway—a scattered defeated army. And the world of that street bursts like a rocket into a shattered phosphorescent world. Giant signs—Bigger! Than! Life!—blink off and on. And a great hungry sign groping luridly at the darkness screams: F * A * S * C * I * N * A * T * I * O * N I had been in the islandcity several weeks now, and already I had had two jobs, briefly: each time thinking now I would put down Times Square. But like a possessive lover—or like a powerful drug—it lured me. FASCINATION! I stopped working.... And I returned, dazzled, to this street. The giant sign winked its welcome: FASCINATION! I surrendered to the world of Times Square, and like a hype who needs more and more junk to keep going, I haunted that world not only at night now but in the mornings, the afternoons.... That world of Times Square that I inhabited extends from 42nd Street to about 45th Street, from grimy Eighth Avenue to Bryant Park—where, nightly, shadows cling to the ledges: malehungry looks hidden by the darkness of the night; and occasionally, shadowy figures, first speaking briefly, disappear in pairs behind the statue with its back to the library and come out after a few frantic moments, from opposite directions: intimate nameless strangers joined for one gasping brief space of time. Periodically the newyork cop comes by meanly swinging his stick superiorly, sometimes flashing his light toward the bushes—and the shadows scatter from the ledges, the benches, the trees—walking away aimlessly. But that world exists not only along the streets; it extends into the movie theaters.

• From City of Night (1963)

  The motor: Stops! I saw the driver’s head sway toward the steering wheel; he seemed to pass out momentarily, recovers. I recognized Lance O’Hara. Then the motor started uncertainly, the car sped away, around the corner, into Sunset Boulevard, as I entered the Rendezvous Room. On weekends the Rendezvous Room begins to fill early: Those who hadnt found someone last night are still trying—their faces drained of all color from the night-long hunting. Others, still unsatisfied, still sexhungry, are beginning the endless pursuit early. Most have come from parties lasting into the morning, parties often still going on; and they comb the bars for new, possibly fresh recruits. The parting of the drapes at the door, announcing the entrance of someone possibly interesting, acts like a kind of electronic device pulling all alerted units in its direction. The heads swivel as the light darts frightened into the dark bar, scurries, rushes out again.... Inside, there are certain familiar faces. Jamey, Randy, and Chick are sitting together. I sit at the bar with them. The jukebox is playing: “Children, go where I send you—how shall I send you? Im gonna send you one by one—...” Then the curtains parted, and the lightning streak of the sun flashed into the bar. “It’s Lance!” “Whats the matter with him?” “Is he sick?” “Lance, baby!” “Come on over here, Lance....” “He looks Terrible!” “Hes drunk!” Voices fluttering through the smoky bar like lost birds. Randy, who had been tapping his fingers to the rhythm of the jukemusic, flattened his hand on the bar with an angry: bang!! —the fingers suddenly tense, motionless. Jamey slid off the stool quickly, walked to the tall slender figure now inside the bar and said: “Why, Lance-baby, I thought you were in New York—what happened to your show? I thought—” The slender figure moved past him, staring anxiously around the bar. “Whats the matter, Lance?” Chick whispers, following him as if to shelter him; aware of the chorus waiting. Lance O’Hara squints dazedly, reels toward Chick: “Chick—I—” And then, “Have you seen... Dean?” Voices, the music—the deafening sounds. Smoke like a gray shroud.... I walked out quickly. Across the street, the cops were frisking three youngmen. I started to walk back toward the Boulevard, and then I was aware of someone close behind me. I waited. I felt someone’s hand on my shoulder, and I turned to face Lance O’Hara. “Youre not him,” he sighed. The cops were looking in our direction now. Lance was leaning heavily on me, about to pass out. “Come on,” I said, leading him away. “No—wait. Will—you—drive?” he mumbled. “Please—come with me. Im parked—parked—somewhere!” He began to laugh at not being able to remember where his car was. I had seen him turn on Sunset earlier, and I led him around the corner. “There—” he said. “Thats my car.” He handed me the keys, got in stumbling; leaned back, covering his face: “Whew!

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Pietists who opted for the “religion of the heart” were not in revolt from reason; they were simply refusing to reduce faith to merely intellectual conviction. John Wesley (1703–91) was fascinated by the Enlightenment and tried to apply a scientific and systematic “method” to spirituality: his Methodists followed a strict regimen of prayer, scripture study, fasting, and good works. But he insisted that religion was not a doctrine in the head but a light in the heart. “We do not lay the main stress of our religion on any opinions, right or wrong,” he explained. “Orthodoxy or right opinion is at best but a very slender part of religion, if it can be allowed to be any part of it at all.”24 If the rational evidence for Christianity became “clogged and encumbered, this could be a blessing in disguise, as it would compel people “to look into themselves” and “attend to that same light.”25 Pietism shared many of the Enlightenment ideals: it mistrusted external authority, ranged itself with the moderns as against the ancients, shared the emphasis on liberty, and was excited by the possibility of progress.26 But it refused to relinquish the older patterns of religion in favor of a streamlined, rationalized piety. But without discipline, the “religion of the heart” could easily degenerate into sentimentality and even hysteria. We have seen that Eckhart, the author of the Cloud, and Denys the Carthusian had all been concerned about a religiosity that confused affective states with the divine presence. The Enlightenment tendency to polarize heart and head could mean that a faith that was not capable of intelligent self-appraisal degenerated into emotional indulgence. This became clear during the religious revival known as the First Great Awakening that erupted in the American colony of Connecticut in 1734. The sudden deaths of two young people in the community of Northampton plunged the town into a frenzied religiosity, which spread like a contagion to Massachusetts and Long Island. Within six months, three hundred people had experienced “ born-again” conversions, their spiritual lives alternating between soaring highs and devastating lows when they fell prey to intense guilt and depression. When the revival burned itself out, one man committed suicide, convinced that the loss of ecstatic joy must mean that he was predestined to hell. In premodern spirituality, rituals such as the Eleusinian mysteries had been skillfully crafted to lead people through emotional extremity to the other side. But in Northampton, the new American cult of liberty meant that there was no such supervision, that everything was spontaneous and free, and that people were allowed to run the gamut of their emotions in a way that for some proved fatal.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  MOM AND DAD SURVIVED the winter, but every time I saw them, they looked a little worse for wear: dirtier, more bruised, their hair more matted. “Don’t you fret a bit,” Dad said. “Have you ever known your old man to get himself in a situation he couldn’t handle?” I kept telling myself Dad was right, that they knew how to look after themselves and each other, but in the spring, Mom called me to say Dad had come down with tuberculosis. Dad almost never got sick. He was always getting banged up and then recovering almost immediately, as if nothing could truly hurt him. A part of me still believed all those childhood stories he’d told us about how invincible he was. Dad had asked that no one visit him, but Mom said she thought he’d be pretty pleased if I dropped by the hospital. I waited at the nurse’s station while an orderly went to tell him he had a visitor. I thought Dad might be under an oxygen tent or lying in a bed coughing up blood into a white handkerchief, but after a minute, he came hurrying down the hall. He was paler and more gaunt than usual, but despite all his years of hard living, he had aged very little. He still had all his hair, and it was still coal black, and his dark eyes twinkled above the paper surgical mask he was wearing. He wouldn’t let me hug him. “Whoa, Nelly, stay back,” he said. “You’re sure a sight for sore eyes, honey, but I don’t want you catching this sonofabitch of a bug.” Dad escorted me back to the TB ward and introduced me to all of his friends. “Believe it or not, ol’ Rex Walls did produce something worth bragging about, and here she is,” he told them. Then he started coughing. “Dad, are you going to be okay?” I asked. “Ain’t none of us getting out of this alive, honey,” Dad said. It was an expression he used a lot, and now he seemed to find a special satisfaction in it. Dad led me over to his cot. A neat pile of books was stacked next to it. He said his bout with TB had set him to pondering about mortality and the nature of the cosmos. He’d been stone-cold sober since entering the hospital, and reading a lot more about chaos theory, particularly about the work of Mitchell Feigenbaum, a