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 The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  We went back towards Phil, who had been left in the middle of the pavement. I grinned at his fidelity, his cleanness, the plump relief of his … copper’s helmet. Rupert shook hands with both of us and made off, looking about like anything. When he was out of view Phil and I walked up the short flagged path to the front door of Staines’s house; it was the left-hand portion of a spacious 1830s villa, with a woody privet hedge (the kind with rooms inside it large enough for a child to hide in) round the garden, and curtains at the downstairs windows drawn in a degenerate way suggestive of late rising and afternoon TV. Staines came to the door and welcomed the two of us with the air of a man who has a good appetite. As I thought when I had met him before at Wicks’s, there was someone strangely passionate and slavish holed up inside his immaculate clothes—today an almost transparent suit of sour cream Indian silk. ‘I’m so glad Charles got you,’ he said. ‘Thank you,’ I replied. ‘Do you mean there have been others?’ ‘Oh, there was a frightfully old young man with bad breath who ran a printing press. He was around a lot last year, looking at everything. Happily Charles got rid of him, for being too snobbish.’ We went through into a drawing room with heavy theatrical curtains held back by tasselled cords, and floor-length windows open onto a terrace; a lawn and a huge weeping beech were visible beyond. A zealous sense of good taste pervaded the room: unread classics in the bookcase showed the uniform gilding of their spines, and the flowers could have graced a wedding of minor royalty. On a Sheraton side-table lay a vast, tooled portfolio; a crowd of framed photographs surmounted a mahogany writing-desk and gave the impression of a glamorous and sentimental past. Phil, trained to accommodate the whims of guests, seemed uncomfortable to be a guest himself. He hung back awkwardly, unable to get his hands in his pockets. ‘And what do you do?’ Staines asked him. ‘I’m a waiter.’ ‘Ooh.’ There was a peculiar silence. ‘Well, I’m sure you won’t have to wait very long,’ he said encouragingly, appraising Phil’s physique with an artful glance. ‘Are you a friend of Charles’s too?’ ‘Oh, no—I’m just a friend of Will’s.’ It became clear to me that Staines did not know why he had come, but was, as I had expected, glad that he had. ‘Quite so! Well, please, make yourself absolutely at home. I’m afraid there isn’t a pool—but you may like to sunbathe outside with Bobby’—he gestured tritely towards the garden—‘or whatever!’

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Whether solicitude belongs to prudence?Objection 1: It would seem that solicitude does not belong to prudence. For solicitude implies disquiet, wherefore Isidore says (Etym. x) that “a solicitous man is a restless man.” Now motion belongs chiefly to the appetitive power: wherefore solicitude does also. But prudence is not in the appetitive power, but in the reason, as stated above [2746](A[1]). Therefore solicitude does not belong to prudence. Objection 2: Further, the certainty of truth seems opposed to solicitude, wherefore it is related (1 Kings 9:20) that Samuel said to Saul: “As for the asses which were lost three days ago, be not solicitous, because they are found.” Now the certainty of truth belongs to prudence, since it is an intellectual virtue. Therefore solicitude is in opposition to prudence rather than belonging to it. Objection 3: Further, the Philosopher says (Ethic. iv, 3) the “magnanimous man is slow and leisurely.” Now slowness is contrary to solicitude. Since then prudence is not opposed to magnanimity, for “good is not opposed to good,” as stated in the Predicaments (viii) it would seem that solicitude does not belong to prudence. On the contrary, It is written (1 Pet. 4:7): “Be prudent . . . and watch in prayers.” But watchfulness is the same as solicitude. Therefore solicitude belongs to prudence. I answer that, According to Isidore (Etym. x), a man is said to be solicitous through being shrewd [solers] and alert [citus], in so far as a man through a certain shrewdness of mind is on the alert to do whatever has to be done. Now this belongs to prudence, whose chief act is a command about what has been already counselled and judged in matters of action. Hence the Philosopher says (Ethic. vi, 9) that “one should be quick in carrying out the counsel taken, but slow in taking counsel.” Hence it is that solicitude belongs properly to prudence, and for this reason Augustine says (De Morib. Eccl. xxiv) that “prudence keeps most careful watch and ward, lest by degrees we be deceived unawares by evil counsel.” Reply to Objection 1: Movement belongs to the appetitive power as to the principle of movement, in accordance however, with the direction and command of reason, wherein solicitude consists. Reply to Objection 2: According to the Philosopher (Ethic. i, 3), “equal certainty should not be sought in all things, but in each matter according to its proper mode.” And since the matter of prudence is the contingent singulars about which are human actions, the certainty of prudence cannot be so great as to be devoid of all solicitude.

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

  Here he stood and looked a little out of the window, moving his outstretched index finger, on which was a large signet ring, back and forth between his collar and his neck. He was a man of medium height, with thinning graying hair, a frizzy Jovian beard, and nearsighted bulging sapphire blue eyes that gleamed behind sharp spectacles. He was clad in an open frock coat of gray soft cloth, which he loved to touch gently in the waist area with his short-fingered and wrinkled hand. As with all teachers, except for the fine doctor Goldener, his trousers were too short and revealed the shafts of an extraordinarily wide pair of boots waxed to a glossy marble finish. Suddenly he turned his head away from the window, let out a small, friendly sigh while looking into the silent class, said "Yes, yes!" and smiled trustingly at several students. He was in a good mood, it was obvious. A movement of relief went through the room. So much happened, it all depended on whether Doctor Mantelsack was in a good mood or not, for one knew that he was unconscious of his moods and without them left the slightest self-criticism. He was of a most exceptional, boundlessly naive injustice, and his favor was sweet and fickle like luck. He always had a couple of favourites, two or three, whom he called "du" and by their first names, and who had it as good as in paradise. They could say almost what they liked and it was still right; and after the lesson Dr. Mantelsack chatted with them in the most humane way. One day, however, perhaps after the holidays, God alone knew why, one was overthrown, destroyed, abolished, rejected, and another was called by his first name... He used to mark the mistakes in the extratemporaries very lightly and delicately for these blessed ones, so that their work retained a clean aspect even when it was very defective. In other notebooks, however, he drove about with a broad and angry pen and flooded them with red, so that they made a forbidding and neglected impression. And since he did not count the mistakes, but gave the grades according to the amount of red ink, his favorites came out of it with great advantage. He did not think the least about this procedure, but found it completely in order and suspected nothing of partisanship. If anyone had had the sad courage to protest against this, they would have lost the prospect of ever being called first-names and on the first-name basis. And nobody gave up that hope... but gave the grades according to the amount of red ink, his favorites came out of it with great advantage. He did not think the least about this procedure, but found it completely in order and suspected nothing of partisanship.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  There was a perceptible conflict of claims on me as Charles, seated monumentally on the sofa, slower on the uptake, half turned to see me and then reached out his left hand for his unconventional and friendly greeting. ‘Ah, William. Let me see the worst. Let me see what they’ve done to my Boswell.’ He wore an elderly, Aschenbachish cream linen suit, not unstained. I went and sat beside him, and he took my hand again as he searched my face, appraised it as he had before. He offered no verdict, except ‘Well, at least I saw it before they spoilt it.’ ‘Is it really so bad?’ But he only patted my hand and then threw it away. ‘How’s the great work?’ he wanted to know. Staines, unprepared for Charles’s possessiveness, cut in here with instructions that we must drink. ‘And then there’s Aldo,’ he said, swivelling with extended hand and producing a small, curly-haired young man in graphic jeans from behind his armchair. As I walked round I saw that he had been looking through a pile of photographs on the floor. I shook his surprisingly large red hand, and he gave a privileged sort of smirk. ‘Aldo’s my bummaree,’ said Staines, ‘my John the Baptist.’ He had a nice, alert little body, and I realised he must be a part of the planned vulgarity. The martinis were extremely, almost disagreeably, strong on an empty stomach, and gave me a light head at once. We talked frothily for a while—Aldo, however, saying nothing at all, although Staines spoke for him in a supercilious way: ‘Oh Aldo doesn’t care for that, do you, Aldo?’ or, to suggest that under other circumstances the Italian might be a desirable conversationalist, ‘That’s what Aldo always says.’ Then Staines would touch some part of him and Bobby would nod and raise his eyebrows, as if to say there was no limit to what these queens would do. I was some way through my second drink when Staines asked us all to go through—not to the dining-room (‘We will have a special meal later’) but to the studio. I got an unpleasant feeling that we were all going to watch a sex film, and that with this company it would be most embarrassing and anaphrodisiac. Charles took my arm, more to connect me to himself than as a prop: he was clipping us together and hardly leant on me at all. There was an odd and rather revolting attitude of suppressed expectancy on everyone’s face, and I saw that I was the only one who did not know for sure what was going on.

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  They’re essentially an elaborate first round, out of which only the top two wrestlers in each weight class are advanced to the district tournaments, the events that will determine who gets to book passage to State. It’s a device set in place to reduce some of the overwhelming numbers of 1A schools before the district competition begins for all the classes in Iowa, a brutal thinning of the herd. This is, after all, a state full of small towns and small schools. So, while wrestlers at the higher school classifications are able to push hard and then enjoy one open, recuperative weekend before attempting to qualify for the state tourney, Dan LeClere and Ryan Morningstar, among others, must go through the conference, sectional, district and state tournaments on successive weekends. It’s a hell of a month’s work, a grand tradition of pain and elimination. And, this winter, Dan won’t be the only member of the North-Linn team trying to cover that distance. He is the undisputed headliner, but there are several other Lynx wrestlers who, even in a tough district, have a shot at finishing in the top two and moving on to State. The Predicament , an Iowa-based publication more or less considered the Bible of area wrestling, has at this point installed the Lynx as the No. 2 team in 1A overall, behind only powerhouse Don Bosco High of Gilbertville. Brad Bridgewater, never one to overreach, understands that he has got a roster with some real possibilities. There’s Ben Morrow, who despite being very young may have a shot at making some noise at 103 pounds. Ben is a ninth-grader on the upswing, and he has been wrestling well lately—and confidence, for a young wrestler, sometimes outstrips savvy and technique. Madison Sackett, from a wrestling family, has a shot at 112 pounds. Ryan Mulnix, also from a wrestling family, is healthy enough to go at 125 and has a high state ranking despite dealing with a balky shoulder that keeps popping out of joint, even after a surgery that was supposed to fix it. The thing finally has become so chronic that Ryan wears an interlocking series of Velcro-secured stretch wraps to hold the uncooperative appendage more or less in place. And then there is Ben Fisher, the most fragile good wrestler imaginable. By the time of the Midland tournament, Ben has already compiled a 24-1 record as a senior at 135 pounds, has achieved a state ranking, and is considered even by his tough-to-please coaches as a strong candidate to see Des Moines for the first time since going there as a freshman. But all of that assumes that he won’t self-destruct along the way—and that, really, stands as an open question. Ben is dark-haired, compact, muscled from top to bottom.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  I answer that, Solicitude denotes an earnest endeavor to obtain something. Now it is evident that the endeavor is more earnest when there is fear of failure, so that there is less solicitude when success is assured. Accordingly solicitude about temporal things may be unlawful in three ways. First on the part of the object of solicitude; that is, if we seek temporal things as an end. Hence Augustine says (De Operibus Monach. xxvi): “When Our Lord said: ‘Be not solicitous,’ etc . . . . He intended to forbid them either to make such things their end, or for the sake of these things to do whatever they were commanded to do in preaching the Gospel.” Secondly, solicitude about temporal things may be unlawful, through too much earnestness in endeavoring to obtain temporal things, the result being that a man is drawn away from spiritual things which ought to be the chief object of his search, wherefore it is written (Mat. 13:22) that “the care of this world . . . chokes up the word.” Thirdly, through over much fear, when, to wit, a man fears to lack necessary things if he do what he ought to do. Now our Lord gives three motives for laying aside this fear. First, on account of the yet greater favors bestowed by God on man, independently of his solicitude, viz. his body and soul (Mat. 6:26); secondly, on account of the care with which God watches over animals and plants without the assistance of man, according to the requirements of their nature; thirdly, because of Divine providence, through ignorance of which the gentiles are solicitous in seeking temporal goods before all others. Consequently He concludes that we should be solicitous most of all about spiritual goods, hoping that temporal goods also may be granted us according to our needs, if we do what we ought to do. Reply to Objection 1: Temporal goods are subjected to man that he may use them according to his needs, not that he may place his end in them and be over solicitous about them. Reply to Objection 2: The solicitude of a man who gains his bread by bodily labor is not superfluous but proportionate; hence Jerome says on Mat. 6:31, “Be not solicitous,” that “labor is necessary, but solicitude must be banished,” namely superfluous solicitude which unsettles the mind. Reply to Objection 3: In the works of mercy solicitude about temporal things is directed to charity as its end, wherefore it is not unlawful, unless it be superfluous.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  There were only a few more stops before we entered Gotse Delchev and turned onto residential streets, and since I was unfamiliar with the route now I moved to be near the door, where I leaned out to read the name of each station that we passed. But I needn’t have worried; the polyclinic had its own stop and several people got off there, leaving the bus almost empty as we stepped down into the snow. It was a broad gray concrete structure of four or five stories, much larger than the clinic near the school, nearly a hospital. The steps leading up to the entrance were perilous, packed with ice, as was the unusable wheelchair ramp to my left. I climbed up carefully, planting both feet on a single stair before chancing another, feeling how easily I could lose my footing, feeling elderly, and wondering how the genuinely infirm could possibly manage. The ground floor of the building was a large, echoing space that seemed unfinished; the floors were untreated, little more than concrete, the walls coated in bare plaster. There was no reception or information desk, only a large notice board with the departments organized by floor, the doctors’ names on long plastic strips that could be taken out and replaced. I had the page with the name of the department I needed, but the woman from the clinic had written in a quick cursive hand I couldn’t quite make out. Some of the words on the board were familiar, ophthalmology, gynecology, but the transliterations were awkward, I had to sound them all out, and there were several I couldn’t make any sense of at all. As I looked around in confusion, I saw a woman in a white coat coming down the large central stairs, holding a plastic cup of coffee and clearly on her way out for a break, though the day had hardly begun. Excuse me, I said, using the politest form, proshtavaite , forgive me, as I held my page out to her, can you help me find this? She took it from me, and then her eyes flicked up once, from the paper to my face, almost without expression. She pointed me toward a far corner, where there was a sign that read Dermatologiya i Venerologiya . I recognized the first word, but the second took me a moment; we say venereal disease in English, of course, but I had never heard of a venereology department, and I wondered whether the word was used in the States. By its Latin roots it should have meant the study of love, and I wondered too how often that made it the right word for the people who came here, and whether it was the right word for my own predicament. I pulled open the door and stepped into a long bare hallway of offices, lined at intervals with benches bolted to the walls.

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

  Have you waited so long...” "Not another day, my dear! Yes, let's say eight days, but not an hour longer! Does anyone still rely on...” "No name, Kesselmeyer!" “No name... fine. Does anyone still rely on your laudable Herr Schw...” “No designation...! Almighty God, don't be silly!' 'Fine, no designation! Does anyone still rely on the conscious company that your credit stands and falls with, dear? How much did she lose in the bankruptcy in Bremen? Fifty thousand? seventy thousand? hundred thousand? Even more? The sparrows on the roofs know that she was involved, enormously involved... It's a matter of mood. Yesterday was... nice, no name! Yesterday the company you knew was good and unconsciously protected you completely from distress... Today it's dull, and B. Grünlich is duller-most dull...isn't that clear? Don't you notice? You're the first to feel such fluctuations... How are you met? How are you looking at? Bock and Goudstikker are probably extremely courteous and trusting? How is the credit bank behaving?” "She's prolonging." »Ah? are you lying? I know she kicked you yesterday? A most, most encouraging kick?... Now look!... But don't be ashamed. It is of course in your best interest to make me believe that the others are still calm and secure ... Well – hey, my dear! Write to the consul. I'll wait a week." "A down payment, Kesselmeyer!" »Deduction amount back and forth! Advance payments can be shot in order to convince oneself of someone's ability to pay! Do I feel the need to experiment with this ? I know wonderfully well how it is with your ability to pay! Ha-ahah ... I find the deduction amount highly, highly amusing ..." “Moderate your voice, Kesselmeyer! Don't keep laughing like that goddamn it! My position is so grave...yes, I confess it is grave; but I have so many deals in the balance... Anything may turn out well. Look, look, roll over and I'll sign you 20 percent..." 'Nothing there, nothing there... highly ridiculous, my dear! Hey, I'm a timely seller! They offered me 8 percent and I extended. They offered me 12 and 16 percent, and I renewed each time. Now you could offer me 40, and I wouldn't think of prolongation, not even think of it, my dear!... Ever since the Westfahl brothers fell flat on their faces in Bremen, everyone is trying for the moment to unwind their interests from the company in question and to secure themselves... As I said, I'm for timely sale. I kept your signatures as long as Johann Buddenbrook was no doubt good... meanwhile I could capitalize on the arrears of interest and increase your percentage! But you only keep a thing for so long "Kesselmeyer, you are shameless!" "A-aha, I find shameless most amusing!... What do you want, anyway? You'll have to contact your father-in-law anyway! The credit bank is raging, and besides, you're not exactly spotless..." »No, Kesselmeyer...

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  Ben’s family lived in Nebraska until 1997, when it moved first to Marion and then finally out to the country, about fifteen minutes beyond Troy Mills. In Nebraska, he says, they wrestle, and they’re not bad at it at all, and pretty much nobody ever follows along, and that’s that. But Iowa is different. “In Iowa, if you’re on the football team, you’ll get some attention for sure,” Ben says. “But if you’re a wrestler and you go to the State Tournament, the whole town will go there to follow you. That’s the way they treat it. They all want to be there.” So Ben is out there, working past the alternating senses of thrill and concern; and he is taking his risks being there and asking his body to contort into shapes that only the most nimble of human beings could even ponder. Even then, it doesn’t always look quite possible. And some days Ben feels good at it, and some days Ben feels like the most worthless fool to ever pull on a singlet. Some days the doubt crushes him, and you can see him backing off in the middle of a match. Some days he rolls through the competition and looks like he’ll never lose again. “When he wrestles the way he can,” says his father, Mike, “he can be very hard to beat.” But you can’t depend on that. It’s a provisional life in wrestling for Ben Fisher. With Nick still injured, Dan will move up and wrestle at 145 pounds in Wyoming. If you’re a knucklehead about the sport—if, in other words, you are me—then you look at the brackets and see that, theoretically at least, Dan could have moved up one more weight class to 152 and wrestled in this tournament against Morningstar, a match that would’ve had the mat community clucking for weeks. LeClere versus Morningstar is the stuff of Iowa wrestling dreams, just as Borschel versus Morningstar was the most talked-about match of 2004. Had Dan shifted up one more weight class, he could have had that shot. That’s the knucklehead train of thought, though. In reality, doing so would knock Tyler Burkle out of his spot at 152, and that makes no sense for North-Linn as a team. Together, Dan, Nick and Tyler—when all are healthy and all are wrestling—make for one hell of a tough middle of the order for Bridgewater. In fact, Brad can go from Ben Fisher to Dan to Nick to Tyler in four successive weight classes, with Mulnix just two weights below Ben at 125 pounds, and there aren’t many schools who can boast of five potential State entrants in such short succession. But that presumes the health and vitality of each wrestler. Dan is by now a given. Burkle has been good all year. Ben’s hanging in there.

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  It may save his life this week. By Thursday evening, the storylines are falling into place. Dan and Jay have found their way into the newspapers, their quest formally announced to the masses, and Dan has responded by winning his first match handily. Under the 1A system, he will wrestle twice on Friday and need those two wins—one earlier in the day, one later—to vault him into the finals. Jay, meanwhile, wrestles his second match of the tournament Thursday evening against Robbie Kramer, the Cedar Rapids Prairie kid whom Jay has dominated at points earlier in the season. This time, though, Kramer takes a different tack entirely. Standing upright, refusing to lean too far in and get yanked into a low tussle, the Prairie wrestler stays a pace away from Jay and spends his time trying to anger and annoy Jay to the point that Jay might make a mistake based on emotion. When the two boys get close enough to one another to reach in, Kramer uses the proximity to slap the sides of Jay’s headgear with his heavy hands, jerking Jay’s head around in the process. The rest of the time, he uses his strength to push away Jay’s arm every time Jay tries to reach under Kramer’s midsection and find a hold on the side. It’s an interesting strategy, coming on a day in which Jay still feels horrible and might be tempted to try and shortcut his way through a match. Jay absorbs the blows and keeps on coming, but at a low hum. He is working with a cautious referee who disallows one of Jay’s signature moves, in which he wrenches his opponent’s hand behind his back in an effort to get him turned over and ready to pin. The official blows his whistle and re-sets the wrestlers, saying Jay’s move is too close to being a physically dangerous one, just as Jay is about to apply it and try to finish off Kramer. But it might not matter anyway; Jay looks, sounds and wrestles as though trapped in a fog. The weight on his chest simply will not lift. He hacks, heaves, blows out his nostrils, spits some more; and though he is still dangerous enough to score points, he cannot finish. From his corner, Doug Streicher is again riding Jay verbally, trying as he did on Wednesday to help his wrestler snap back into form. But, just as he did the day before, Jay already has come to understand that he is in a survival mode. “Cut him! Cut him!” Doug screams, meaning he wants Jay to turn Kramer loose so that he can take him down again and pile up extra points for the Linn-Mar team. But Jay already has made his decision: conserve and move on. He clings to Kramer down the stretch, again monitoring the clock. “This is fun,” he deadpans during one break.

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

  Hanno Buddenbrook sat leaning back and slumped and stared at the Book of Job with a slack mouth and swimming, hot eyes, the lines and letters of which blurred into a blackish swarm. Sometimes, when he remembered the motif of the Grail or the walk to the Minster, he slowly lowered his eyelids and felt an inward sob. And his heart prayed that it might be possible that this safe and peaceful morning hour would never come to an end. propped his head on his aristocratic and not entirely clean hand. Hanno Buddenbrook sat leaning back and slumped and stared at the Book of Job with a slack mouth and swimming, hot eyes, the lines and letters of which blurred into a blackish swarm. Sometimes, when he remembered the motif of the Grail or the walk to the Minster, he slowly lowered his eyelids and felt an inward sob. And his heart prayed that it might be possible that this safe and peaceful morning hour would never come to an end. when he remembered the motif of the Grail or the walk to the minster, he slowly lowered his eyelids and felt an inward sob. And his heart prayed that it might be possible that this safe and peaceful morning hour would never come to an end. when he remembered the motif of the Grail or the walk to the minster, he slowly lowered his eyelids and felt an inward sob. And his heart prayed that it might be possible that this safe and peaceful morning hour would never come to an end. And yet it came, as was the order of things, and the shrill wailing sound of the custodian's bell, which rang and echoed through the corridors, roused the twenty-five brains from their warm slumbers. "So far!" said Herr Ballerstedt and asked for the class register to certify with his signature that he was in charge of this hour of office. Hanno Buddenbrook closed his Bible and stretched, trembling and yawning nervously; but when he lowered his arms and tensed his limbs, he had to breathe quickly and laboriously in order to bring his heart, which for a moment weak and faltering, stopped working, a little. Now came the Latin ... He threw a sideways glance at Kai for help, who didn't seem to have noticed the end of the lesson and was still absorbed in his private reading, pulled the Ovid bound in marbled cardboard out of his portfolio and opened the verses, to be memorized for today... No, there was no hope, those black lines lined up, penciled, dead straight and numbered in fives, staring at him so hopelessly dark and unknown, to familiarize yourself a little. He could scarcely understand their meaning, let alone recite one of them off the top of his head. And he did not unravel a single sentence of those who followed suit and who had to be prepared for today.

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  The first weekend in February, the Class 1A teams vie for their conference titles. A week after that, the sectional championships will qualify wrestlers to districts; the district tournaments, held on February 19 all over the state, move that precious thimbleful of winners on to the State Tournament. By the following Wednesday, the last Wednesday in February, seemingly half of Iowa will have descended upon Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines for State. It is, in other words, coming fast and going fast; and as if on cue from Bridgewater’s speech, the wrestlers suck it up for another try. Over in the far corner, Kirk, the young heavyweight who is doing almost all his learning on the job, picks up his bulky mass one more time. In the middle of the floor stands the rangy 152-pound junior, Tyler Burkle, the brother of former North-Linn state qualifier Kyle and himself a veteran of the tournament, having made it last year. Tyler dances back and forth on the balls of his feet, shifting his weight from one wrestling shoe to the other as he gets ready for another roll. The kid is all edginess and force, ready to spring upon whoever it happens to be who is sent out there to face him. And opposite Burkle, just now, is an old man wearing a bandage around his head that makes him look like a drum-and-fife member of a Revolutionary war corps. As usual with things involving Doug LeClere, there is a story to be told. Just 44 in human years but with a lifetime’s worth of farm work behind him and enough other jobs—firefighter for the city of Cedar Rapids, inspector for the American Soil Conservation Service, assistant wrestling coach—to have made him mature before his time, Doug walks with a slight limp. The parts of him that aren’t yet broken look like they’re starting to wear thin around the edges. Or, as Doug later says in a typically blunt self-assessment, “My body’s shot to hell.” None of which keeps him out of the wrestling room. Doug fell in love with the sport early on and never fell out of it, savoring the sacrifice, finding in its demands and its seasonal domination of his time an almost perfect philosophical complement to the farming life. In the end, Doug is a wrestler. He just ran out of teams to wrestle for. And so now, after decades of wrestling competitively and then head-coaching the North-Linn High team himself for a while, LeClere is back to assisting Bridgewater, which keeps the job at something approaching part-time status, which is mostly a joke, since the in-season demands on wrestling coaches are the same as the coaches of other sports at the high school level. There are workouts almost every day of the week, dual matches on Thursday evenings, duals and tournaments on Saturdays and some Sundays.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  He was tall, thin but broad-shouldered, with the close-cropped military cut of hair popular among certain young men in Sofia, who affect a hypermasculine style and an air of criminality. I hardly noticed the man he was with, who was shorter, deferential, with bleached blond hair and a denim jacket from the pockets of which he never removed his hands. It was the larger man who turned toward me with apparently friendly interest, free of predation or fear, and though I was taken aback I found myself smiling in response. He greeted me with an elaborate rush of words, at which I could only shake my head in bemusement as I grasped the large hand he held out, offering as broken apology and defense the few phrases I had practiced to numbness. His smile widened when he realized I was a foreigner, revealing a chipped front tooth, the jagged seam of which (I would learn) he worried obsessively with his index finger in moments of abstraction. Even at arm’s length, I could smell the alcohol that emanated not so much from his breath as from his clothes and hair; it explained his freedom in a place that, for all its license, was bound by such inhibition, and explained too the peculiarly innocent quality of his gaze, which was intent but unthreatening. He spoke again, cocking his head to one side, and in a pidgin of Bulgarian, English, and German, we established that I was American, that I had been in his city for a few weeks and would stay at least a year, that I was a teacher at the American College, that my name was more or less unpronounceable in his language. Throughout our halting conversation, there was no acknowledgment of the strange location of our encounter or of the uses to which it was almost exclusively put, so that speaking to him I felt an anxiety made up of equal parts desire and unease at the mystery of his presence and purpose.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  I knew I couldn’t save him, but how could I explain to R., especially to him, the feeling of inevitability I had whenever Mitko appeared, as though we were in a story that had already been written. He was waiting patiently when I stepped outside into the cold, standing beside the door and drawing on a cigarette that he left in his mouth as he held his hand out in greeting. K’vo ima , he asked, glancing up at the dark apartment, what’s wrong? A friend is staying with me, I said, the lie R. had told me to use, and Mitko nodded, Yasno , I get it. Your friend from Portugal, he said, the obvious assumption, though I was taken aback to hear any mention from him of R., and I quickly shook my head, as if dismissing the thought of him from the air. No, I said, just a friend, and then, before he could ask anything else, Are you hungry, should we go somewhere to eat? We began walking slowly together over the ice, which was thick and many-layered on the sidewalk. Mitko was wearing the same clothes I had last seen him in, the same thin jacket, but he seemed unbothered by the cold, and in general he looked better: he had showered and shaved, his clothes were clean, and looking down, I saw that the canvas sneakers had been replaced by short leather boots, well-worn but sturdy. A friend gave them, Mitko said when I asked, shrugging his shoulders, they’re not so nice but they do the job, they’re better than the others. We turned to the right just past my building, down a side street that was less traveled and so especially treacherous now, and despite my boots I slipped several times, once nearly falling. Careful, Mitko said, grabbing me and holding me steady, surer-footed than I, and once I had regained my balance he squeezed me hard around the shoulders, leaving his arm there as we continued picking our way to the main boulevard. There was a McDonald’s on this street open twenty-four hours; it was always well lit and there were always people there, as R. had reminded me; it would be a good place if I had to meet with Mitko, he said, a safe place.

• From Science and Religion (2006)

  47 he agreed. Town leaders hoped that the trial would bring publicity and visitors (with money) to a struggling town. The result was as much circus as trial. Big guns showed up for the legal team: William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution and Clarence Darrow for the defense. Bryan had begun crusading against evolution in 1922; his in À uence was key in passing the Butler Act. He extended his populist credo in an aggressively anti-intellectual way to science. Nonetheless, his opposition to evolution was not solely demagoguery; it partly reÀ ected his traditional messages of labor rights and human dignity, which he felt were imperiled by the common origins theory. The surprise drama occurred when Darrow made Bryan, while on the stand, appear like a buffoon. The trial was eventually restricted to the narrow question of whether or not Scopes broke the law; scienti ¿ c and theological experts were not allowed to testify. Scopes, who never took the stand, was convicted and ¿ ned $100. This sentence was overturned on a technicality, preventing the case from reaching the Supreme Court. Fundamentalists receded from the scene after the 1920s. However, evolution also receded from biology textbooks, owing to book publishers’ concerns about sales. After 30 years of dormancy, fundamentalist opposition to evolution returned in the 1960s. This return was sparked by improved secondary school education in the rural South and Midwest. Following Sputnik, improved science education was promoted at the federal level; one result, in 1963, was the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS), which produced a massively improved high school biology textbook, which contained evolution. This curriculum set off a new wave of attempts to ban the teaching of evolution, but the old bans (in Arkansas) were overturned by the U. S. Supreme Court in 1968. After this failure, fundamentalists William Jennings Bryan, prosecutor in The State of Tennessee v. Scopes. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-16464.

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  You’ve just got to come back now, that’s all.” Ryan’s stepfather stops by. “Are you okay?” the man asks. “No,” Ryan replies flatly. You know what? At a time like this, that’ll have to do. Because what Ryan doesn’t realize is that Ben Fisher is about to make his experience look like a night at the opera. Ben’s 135-pound winner’s-bracket match is familiar enough to set teeth to grinding all over the gym. Again it is Alex Riniker of East Buc on the other side, and after the last two weekends of the boys trading blows, it is obvious that there’s almost no difference between them in terms of their physical ability and their technical precision. What that means is that the edge on any given day will be mostly mental, which is generally trouble for Ben. And this match is going to be something close to a replay of the conference finals; it is scoreless after the first period, and 1–0 in favor of Ben after the second only because he chose the down position to begin the period and then earned a one-point escape. Neither wrestler has been able to do much with the other. It’s just one giant standoff. In the stands, Mike Fisher’s emotion runs from hopeful to charged to frustrated and, increasingly, annoyed. He grows more and more agitated; the strain shows in his clenched jaw and his rigid back. It’s hard to watch. “Move, Ben! Keep moving! Get in on him!” Mike screams. Sitting there with his wife, Kathy, surrounded by friends and family and yet utterly alone, Mike cannot stand the idea of Ben leaving the fate of this match to the final two minutes—or, worse yet, to his opponent. He wants Ben to be better on his feet, wants him more aggressively pursuing takedowns. He knows what everybody on the team knows, which is that Ben can do this. He could always do this. It’s not a question of ability. But Ben has to want it first. On the mat, Ben is clearly tentative. He’s afraid to go for the shot. Whereas Nick had been willing to take a risky move in his semifinal in exchange for the promise of a couple of points if he succeeded, Ben is headed the other way; he seems to want to simply make the rest of the match go away. Riniker is too good for that. He finally escapes Ben’s hold early in the third period for a point that ties the match at 1-1, and now it is Riniker, not Ben, who is willing to take the chance and go for the win. With Ben almost backpedaling, trying to wind down the clock, Alex suddenly shoots in after him and drives Ben to the mat with barely twenty seconds left. “Move, Ben! Move!” Mike screams. “Get up! Stand up!” But Ben, on his belly on the mat, goes almost limp.

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  Back downstairs, Dan takes up residence on the same mat where the North-Linn team has been for most of the week. With the triumphal music from the loudspeakers up on the main floor trickling through to the basement, he gets up and begins to pace, joined almost stride for stride by his father. Doug and Dan pace in circles that come near one another but never quite intersect; they are pacing for totally different reasons. For Dan, it is time to begin envisioning the match, from the first takedown to the final escape. He sees his hand raised in victory, sees himself on the medal stand. He sees it all the way. In the vision, the opponent is nothing more than a singlet, a blur of color; he’s just the guy who keeps getting knocked to the mat and thrown around. Dan sees the match as though he were looking through a viewfinder; and as he paces those circles, it’s only his physical body, really, that is there. The rest of him has already won. As much as Doug would love to join that vision, the worrier in him won’t allow it. He paces because, as he says, “It’s nervy time,” and most of the nerves belong to him. It’s funny: For weeks, if not months, Doug has done a brilliant job of concentrating his time and his emotional energy anywhere else, away from Dan; now, there is nothing left but for him to come face-to-face with Dan’s destiny. A couple of years ago in this basement, Doug and Dan were sitting on a mat, waiting for Dan to wrestle; all of a sudden, Doug got up and shot past Larry Henderson and made for the men’s room. “I think Dad just went to puke,” Dan observed dryly, and then went out and won his second straight title. But of course Dan, at the time, only wanted a championship for himself, the same as any wrestler who is made to stand alone on a mat. Doug wanted the title for his son, for his family, for his school and a sport that he loves pretty much unreservedly. It isn’t always so easy to know who has the most at stake. A few mats away, Jay sits in a tight cluster of chairs, playing cards, coughing frequently, saying as little as possible. Everything but the cough is by design. When Jay won his first title as a freshman, the year he pinned his friend Joey at 103 pounds in the finals, he had played cards with his coaches before the match, and they have recreated that scene every year since—along with everything else from that year’s routine. Jay has taken a ninety-minute nap today, because he takes a ninety-minute nap every year on finals day at State.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  I was nervous as I entered, and annoyed with myself for being nervous. For all its literary horror I knew syphilis was easily treated, I would only need antibiotics, probably a single shot. It was stupid to be embarrassed, I said to myself, it was an infection like any other. But as I stepped up to the counter none of this eased what I felt, which was strong and deep-seated, part of that larger shame of which my whole story with Mitko, from our first encounter to this deferred consequence, was merely the latest iteration. One of the women looked up, her fingers pausing at the keyboard, and my tension was relieved by a brightness of welcome I had grown unaccustomed to. She looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to speak, and when I asked in Bulgarian if she spoke English she seemed genuinely sorry that she didn’t, no, not a word. She turned to the other women behind the desk, all of whom confessed a similar helplessness. Wait just a moment, she said, picking up the phone, we’ll find someone, and as I stood I glanced around the waiting room, relieved that none of the eight or ten people sitting in the plastic chairs, none of them visibly ill, seemed to have paid us any mind. Here, the woman behind the desk said, standing now and leaning forward to point down a hallway lined with examination rooms, this woman can help you. I looked over to see a large and much older woman walking toward us, dressed in the formless uniform of an orderly or nurse, her thinning blond hair styled severely in a masculine cut. There was something severe in her face as well, for all its heavy roundness, a tightness about the lips suggesting not just a difficult morning but a more fundamental fatigue. Good morning, she said, a plummy British accent coming through the Balkan, what can we do for you today?

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  She was beautiful and soft and kind with a tender voice, and she showed up at the house, and I put some coffee on. We went into my office, and I closed the door, in case one of my roommates walked by and saw me talking to Diane and discovered I was nuts. I sat in a chair, and Diane sat on the couch, and I wrung my hands a bit before starting in: “Well, you see, Diane, I am in this relationship with this girl, and she is great, she really is. It’s just that it is very hard for me, you know.” “You mean it is hard for you to have feelings for her?” “I’m not gay.” Diane laughed. “I didn’t mean it that way, Don.” “I do have feelings for her,” I said, with sincerity. “They are almost too strong, you know. I have trouble sleeping and eating and thinking about anything else. It is hard for me to be in a relationship, it always has been. And that makes me want to bail. I would just rather not be in the relationship at all than go through this torture. But I promised myself I wouldn’t run from it this time. But I feel like the meaning of life is riding on whether or not she likes me, and I think she does, she says she does, but it still drives me crazy.” “Whether or not she likes you, Don, or whether or not she loves you?” “Yeah, that too. Whether or not she loves me.” Diane sat there and made listening noises the whole time I was talking, and when I told her how I will go days without eating, she looked at me and sighed and ooohed and was definitely letting me know that this behavior was neither normal nor healthy. I think I could have told her that Elvis Presley was alive and living in my closet, and she would have been less surprised. When you are a writer and a speaker, sometimes people think you have your crap together. “You seem so normal, Don. You have a company and are a writer and all.” Diane looked at me, bewildered. “Yeah. But there is something wrong with me, isn’t there?” I was half hoping she would say no. I was hoping she would explain that everybody is nuts when they get into a relationship, but then it turns euphoric shortly after marriage and sex. But she didn’t. “Well, Don, there is. There is something wrong with you.” “Oh, man,” I said. “I just knew it. I just knew I was a wacko.” I thought about that movie A Beautiful Mind and wondered whether any of my housemates existed or whether those guys who kept following me were in the FBI. Diane noted the concern on my face and responded, smiling and kind. “It’s not that bad, Don. Don’t worry. It’s just that for some reason, you are letting this girl name you.”

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  Now the teams who finished 1-2 at that Tri-Rivers Conference meet, Starmont and East Buchanan, are among those on hand as part of the sectional. For Bridgewater and North-Linn, the deal is fairly straightforward and a little bit daunting: They’re going to have to step up markedly from the weekend before, or say a disappointed good-bye to a season mostly notable for its continuous uncertainty. Doug is worried primarily about Nick as the wrestlers begin their pre-match stretching and warm-ups, and it is obvious why. Nick wrestles with Doug’s over-aggressiveness, an approach that gets him into trouble as often as not, but about which he does not appear inclined to do a thing—it’s his style. But Nick hasn’t been able to engage that part of his game, because he hasn’t been able to stay healthy long enough to get in a groove with his sport this winter, in part because of the rollover effect of his football injuries. Doug doesn’t mind football, but his passion runs strictly to this one sport, wrestling; and here Nick has a chance to be something special. He cannot win four titles like his brother, but that’s not the same as saying he cannot be great. Dan has his own thing to solve today. He spent his week stewing over his result against Moorman; he couldn’t help it. To understand how a shutout could be viewed as a failure is to arrive at the heart of the matter with Dan. He didn’t want a shutout; he wanted a massacre that would send a message of invincibility. He does not wrestle anymore at the high school level to win, but rather to purchase ownership outright. He is going off to college to wrestle the best in the country, eventually, and he does himself no favors by being satisfied with merely winning out at the end of his high school career. No, Dan wants to go out in a fiery storm. Dan and Jay are exactly alike in this respect: They no longer see it as enough to get their hands raised in the air at the end of the match. They have identified levels of competition beyond mere winning and losing, pushed through to some parallel universe to which only the elite are admitted and within which only thorough domination is acceptable. They don’t want to win anymore, is the thing. Winning is for scorekeepers, and it has been done. Now they want to rule kingdoms. As always, the early talk around the North-Linn sideline concerns which Ben Fisher will show up. Ben has become a notoriously difficult person to predict, alternately aggressive and uncertain. He went inexplicably limp in the conference finals the weekend before, succumbing to Riniker from East Buchanan, whom Ben had beaten during the season. It was a frustrating lapse; Riniker is a quality opponent, and yet the feeling among the North-Linn folks is that Ben on top of his game beats Riniker and beats him soundly.