Bewilderment

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 Collected Essays (1998)

  As a black Westerner, it was difficult to know what one's attitude should be toward three realities which were inextri cably woven together in the Western fa bric. These were reli gion, tradition, and imperialism, and in none of these realities had the lives of black men been taken into account: their ad vent dated back to 1455, when the church had determined to rule all infidels. And it just so happened, said Wright, ironi cally, that a vast proportion of these infidels were black. Nev ertheless, this decision on the part of the church had not been, despite the church's intentions, entirely oppressive, fo r one of the results of 1455 had, at length, been Calvin and Luther, who shook the authority of the church in insisting on the authority of the individual conscience. This might not, he said accu rately, have been precisely their intention, but it had certainly been one of their effects. For, with the authority of the church shaken, men were left prey to many strange and new ideas, ideas which led, finally, to the discrediting of the racial dogma. Neither had this been fo reseen, but what men imagine they are doing and what they are doing in fact are rarely the same thing. This was a perfectly valid observation which would, I fe lt, have been just as valid without the remarkable capsule history with which Wright imagined he supported it. Wright then went on to speak of the effects of European colonialism in the African colonies. He contcssed-bearing in mind always the great gap between human intentions and hu man effects-that he thought of it as having been, in many ways, liberating, since it smashed old traditions and destroyed old gods. One of the things that surprised him in the last fe w days had been the realization that most of the delegates to the conference did not fe el as he did. He felt, nevertheless, that, though Europeans had not realized what they were do ing in freeing Africans from the "rot" of their past, they had been accomplishing a good. And yet-he was not certain that he had the right to say that, having fo rgotten that Africans NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME arc not American Negroes and were not, therefore, as he somewhat mysteriously considered American Negroes to be, fl·ce from their "irrational" past. In sum, Wright said, he felt that Europe had brought the Enlightenment to Africa and that "what was good fo r Europe was good f(>r all mankind." I tCit that this was, perhaps, a tactless way of phrasing a debatable idea, but Wright went on to express a notion which I found even stranger. And this was that the West, having created an Mrican and Asian elite, should now "give them their heads" and "refuse to be shocked" at the "methods they will fe el compelled to usc" in unifYing their countries.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  We looked at the sheet, on which I read, for the first time, lettered in the most brilliant scarlet I have ever seen, the name of the hotel fr om which it had been stolen. It was the first time the word stolen entered my mind. I had certainly seen the hotel mon ogram the day I put the sheet on the bed. It had simply meant nothing to me. In New York I had seen hotel monograms on evel)'thing fr om silver to soap and towels. Taking things from New York hotels was practically a custom, though, I suddenly EQUAL IN PARIS 105 realized, I had ne,·er known anyone to take a sheet. Sadly, and without a word to me, the inspector took the sheet from the bed, fo lded it under his arm, and we started back downstairs. I understood that I was under arrest. And so we passed through the lobby, fo ur of us, two of us ,·ery clearly criminal, under the eyes of the old man and his daughter, neither of whom said a word, into the streets where a light rain was falling. And I asked, in French, "But is this very serious?" For I was thinking, it is, after all, only a sheet, not e\·en new. "No," said one of them. "It's not serious." "It's nothing at all," said the other. I took this to mean that we would recei,·e a reprimand at the police station and be allowed to go to dinner. Later on I concluded that they were not being hypocritical or e,·en trying to comfort us. They meant exactly what they said. It was only that they spoke another language. In Paris e,·erything is ,·ery slow. Also, when dealing \\ith the bureaucracy, the man you are talking to is ne,·er the man you ha,·e to see. The man you ha,·e to see has just gone off to Belgium, or is busy "ith his fa mily, or has just discovered that he is a cuckold; he "ill be in next Tuesday at three o'clock, or sometime in the course of the afternoon, or pos sibly tomorrow, or, possibly, in the next fh·e minutes. But if he is coming in the next fi,•e minutes he "ill be far too busy to be able to see you today. So that I suppose I was not really astonished to Jearn at the commissariat that nothing could possibly be done about us before The Man arri,·ed in the morning. But no, we could not go off and ha,·e dinner and come back in the morning. Of course he knew that we would come back-that was not the question. Indeed, there was no question: we would simply have to stay there fo r the night. We were placed in a cell which rather resembled a chicken coop. It was now about seven in the nening and I relin quished the thought of dinner and began to think of lunch.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  "I t's hard enough," the boy said later, still in control but with flashing eyes, "to keep quiet and keep walking when they call you nigger. But if anybody ever spits on me, I know I'll have to fight." His mother laughs, laughs to ease them both, then looks at me and says, "I wonder sometimes what makes white folks so mean." This is a recurring question among Negroes, even among the most "liber ated"-which epithet is meant, of course, to describe the writer. The next day, with this question (more elegantly phrased) still beating in my mind, I visited the prin cipal of G.' s new high school. But he didn't look "mean " and he wasn't "mean ": he was a thin, young man of about my age, bewildered and in trouble. I asked him how things were working out, what he thought about it, what he thought would happen-in the long run, or the short. "Well, I've got a job to do," he told me, "and I'm going to do it." He said that there hadn't been any trouble and that he didn't expect any. "Many students, after all, never sec G. at all ." None of the children have harmed him and the teach ers are, apparently, carrying out their rather tall orders, which are to be kind to G. and, at the same time, to treat him like any other student. I asked him to describe to me the incident, on the second day of school, when G.' s entrance had been bloc ked by the 1 94- NO BODY KN OWS MY NA ME students. He told me that it was nothing at all-"lt was a gesture more than anything else ." He had simply walked out and spoken to the students and brought G. inside. "I 've seen them do the same thing to other kids when they were kid ding," he said. I imagine that he would like to be able to place this incident in the same cheerful if rowdy category, de spite the shouts (which he does not mention) of "nigger lover!" Which epithet does not, in any case, describe him at all . "Why," I asked, "is G. the only Negro student here?" Ac cording to this city's pupil -assignment plan, a plan designed to allow the least possible integration over the longest possible period of time, G. was the only Negro student who qualified. "And, anyway," he said, "I don't think it's right for colored children to come to white schools just because they're white."

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  There comes floating up to me, out of a life I lived long ago-during the cybernetics craze, the Wilhelm Reich mis apprehension, the Karen Horney precisions, that time, predating Sartre, when many of my friends vanished into the hills, or into anarchies called communes, or into orgone boxes, never to be seen, and certainly never to make love TAKE ME TO THE WATER again-the memory of a young white man, beautiful, Jewish, American, who ate his wife's afterbirth, frying it in a frying pan. He did this because-who knows?-Wilhelm Reich, ac cording to him, had ordered it. He comes floating up to me because, though he never knew it, I loved him, and the silence between us was the precise indication of how deeply some thing in me responded to, and is still bewildered by, his trou ble. I remember his face when he told me about it, long after his courageous culinary effort. By this effort, he made his wife and child a part of himself. The question which has remained in my mind, no doubt, is why so extreme an effort should have been needed to prove a fact which should have been so obvious and so joyous. By the time he told me, he had lost both the wife and the child, was virtually adopting another one, black, this time, and, though he was younger than I, and I am speaking of a long time ago, had, emotionally, it seemed to me, ceased to exist. I got the impression that he had hur ried himself through a late and tormented adolescence into an early middle age, with an almost audible sigh of relief, hav ing encountered only theorems along the way: and, though he did not know it, was now helplessly and hopelessly in love with a small black boy, not more than ten. I do not mean to suggest that he had sexual designs on the boy. It might, in deed, have been better for him if he had, however outrageous that may sound-it would, at least, have landed him in deep emotional trouble and brought to the fore the question of his honor: I mean that he appeared to be able to love only the helpless. I have not seen this man in many years, and I hope that everything I say here has since been proven false. I hope, in short, that he has been able to live.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  He is not, after all, merely a member of a Society or a Group or a deplorable conundrum to be ex- EVERYBODY ' S PROTEST NOVEL 13 plained by Science. He is-and how old-fashioned the words sound!-something more than that, something resolutely in definable, unpredictable. In overlooking, denying, evading his complexity-which is nothing more than the disquieting com plexity of ourselves-we are diminished and we perish; only within this web of ambiguity, paradox, this hunger, danger, darkness, can we find at once ourselves and the power that will fr ee us from ourselves. It is this power of revelation which is the business of the novelist, this journey toward a more vast reality which must take precedence over all other claims. What is today parroted as his Responsibility-which seems to mean that he must make formal declaration that he is involved in, and affected by, the lives of other people and to say something improving about this somewhat self-evident fact-is, when he believes it, his corruption and our loss; moreover, it is rooted in, interlocked with and intensifies this same mechanization. Both Gentleman's Agreement and The Postman AlJVays Rings TJVice exemplifY this terror of the human being, the deter mination to cut him down to size. And in Uncle Tom's Cabin we may find foreshadowing of both: the formula created by the necessity to find a lie more palatable than the truth has been handed down and memorized and persists yet with a terrible power. It is interesting to consider one more aspect of Mrs. Stowe's novel, the method she used to solve the problem of writing about a black man at all. Apart fr om her lively procession of field hands, house niggers, Chloe, Topsy, etc.-who are the stock, lovable figures presenting no problem-she has only three other Negroes in the book. These are the important ones and two of them may be dismissed immediately, since we have only the author's word that they are Negro and they are, in all other respects, as white as she can make them. The two are George and Eliza, a married couple with a wholly adorable child-whose quaintness, incidentally, and whose charm, rather put one in mind of a darky bootblack doing a buck and wing to the clatter of condescending coins. Eliza is a beautiful, pious hybrid, light enough to pass-the heroine of Quality might, indeed, be her reincarnation-differing fr om the genteel mistress who has overseered her education only in the respect that she is a servant. George is darker, but NOTES OF A NATIVE SON makes up tor it by being a mechanical genius, and is, more O\'cr, sufficiently un-Ncgroid to pass through town, a fugitive trom his master, disguised as a Spanish gentleman, attracting no attention whatever beyond admiration. They arc a race apart from Topsy. It transpires by the end of the novel, through one of those energetic, last-minute convolutions of the plot, that Eliza has some connection with French gentility.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Everyone was filled with wonder (as well they might be) concerning the future of such a group. A great many white people had wished to be present, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus-"and," said Richard, "my own 1vije. But I told them, befi>re I can allow you to come, we've got to prepare the Negroes to receive you!" This revelation, which was uttered with a smile, produced the most strained, stunned, uneasy silence. I looked at Andy, and Andy looked at me. There was something terribly funny about it, and there was something not fu nny at all. I rather wondered what the probable response would have been had Richard dared make such a statement in, say, a Negro barber shop; rather wondered, in fa ct, what the probable response would have been had anyone else dared make such a statement to anyone in the room, under different circumstances. ("Nig ger, I been receiving white fo lks all my life-prepare who? Who you think you going to prepare?") It seemed to me, in any case, that the preparation ought, at least, to be conceived of ALAS, POOR RICHARD 26 5 as mutual: there was no reason to suppose that Parisian intel lectuals were more "prepared" to "receive" American Ne groes than American Negroes were to receive them-rather, all things considered, the contrary. This was the extent of my connection with the Franco American Fellowship Club, though the club itself, rather ane mically, seemed to drag on fo r some time. I do not know what it accomplished-very little, I should imagine; but it soon ceased to exist because it had never had any reason to come into existence. To judge from complaints I heard, Richard's interest in it, once it was-roughly speaking-launched, was minimal. He told me once that it had cost him a great deal of money-this referred, I think, to some disastrous project, involving a printer's bill, which the club had undertaken. It seemed, indeed, that Richard fe lt that, with the establishment of this club, he had paid his dues to American Negroes abroad, and at home, and fo rever; had paid his dues, and was off the hook, since they had once more proved themselves incapable of fo llowing where he led. For yet one or two years to come, young Negroes would cross the ocean and come to Richard's door, wanting his sympathy, his help, his time, his money. God knows it must have been trying.

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  a cultural mechanism to co-opt same-sex behavior: Patriarchal co-option of same-sex desire may be one of the reasons that very hierarchical, traditionally male-dominated institutions—like the military, some traditional religious institutions, or boarding schools—have a particularly hard time controlling or eliminating sexual coercion, sexual violence, and abuse both within and between sexes. The inherently hierarchical structure of these organizations facilitates and institutionalizes the sexual misuse of hierarchical power. This opinion, well represented: Warner (1999); Halperin (2012). Chapter 12: This Aesthetic View of Lifethe most succinct and memorable articulation: The closing lines of Keats’s ode are remarkable both for the stringent synonymy of beauty and truth and for their vigorous insistence that this view is an all-sufficient explanation of the world. In both ways, Keats anticipates the Wallacean worldview on sexual ornament. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: In the spring of 2013, the Yale Repertory Theatre put on a production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet starring Paul Giamatti as the troubled Danish prince. The show was a blockbuster hit, and tickets were sold out completely. For a month, the entire city of New Haven was abuzz with Hamlet. Even our weekly lab meetings, which involve presentations of current research by students and postdocs, or discussions of recent scientific papers on evolution and ornithology, became conversations about Hamlet. During this time, Jennifer Friedmann, a Yale class of ’13 cognitive science major who was doing a senior research project in my lab on avian aesthetic evolution, brought to my attention this astounding passage from Hamlet’s act 3. She was struck by the similarities to our discussions of Fisherian and Wallacean views of sexual selection, and I am grateful for her insightful suggestion to analyze this passage. “Ha, ha! Are you honest?”: When I first read this passage (for the first time since high school), my head reeled! Here, Shakespeare was obviously grappling with beauty and honesty in a surprisingly resonant way, but he packs so much into these dense lines that I needed help to figure out how to unravel it. I sought expert assistance from my friend and Yale colleague James Bundy, dean of the Yale School of Drama and the director of the 2013 Yale Rep production of Hamlet. Over lunch, James gave me a quick course in dramatic analysis for ornithologists. With James’s encouragement, I have embarked on my own evo-ornithological analysis of this passage from Hamlet. Of course, I remain solely responsible for any errors, omissions, overextensions, or oversights. Beauty, he says, can transform truth: Following Hamlet’s suggestion of “discourse,” Ophelia characterizes the relationship between beauty and honesty as “commerce.” But then Hamlet subverts Ophelia’s usage by implying a more degraded transaction—the purely carnal business of a brothel. power of beauty that actually subverts honesty: Like Fisher, Hamlet understands that the combination of beauty and truth lies unstably on a knife’s edge because the very existence of beauty creates a seductive power that can degrade its own honesty.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  His eyes searched mine as he said this and I knew that he was wondering if I believed him. I certainly did believe him; he impressed me as being a very gentle and honorable man. But I could not avoid wondering if he had ever really looked at a Negro and wondered about the life, the aspirations, the universal humanity hidden behind the dark skin. As I wondered, when he told me that race re lations in his city were "excellent" and had not been strained by recent developments, how on earth he managed to hold on to this delusion. I later got back to my interrupted question, which I phrased more tactfully. "Even though it's very difficult for all concerned-this sit- A FLY IN BUTTERMILK I95 uation---doesn't it occur to you that the reason colored chil dren wish to come to white schools isn't because they want to be with white people but simply because they want a better education?" "Oh, I don't know," he replied, "it seems to me that col ored schools are just as good as white schools." I wanted to ask him on what evidence he had arrived at this conclusion and also how they could possibly be "as good" in view of the kind of life they came out of, and perpetuated, and the dim prospects faced by all but the most exceptional or ruthless Negro students. But I only suggested that G. and his family, who certainly should have known, so thoroughly disagreed with him that they had been willing to risk G.'s present well being and his future psychological and mental health in order to bring about a change in his environment. Nor did I men tion the lack of enthusiasm envinced by G.'s mother when musing on the prospect of a fair grandchild. There seemed no point in making this man any more a victim of his heritage than he so gallantly was already. "Still," I said at last, after a rather painful pause, "I should think that the trouble in this situation is that it's very hard for you to face a child and treat him unjustly because of something for which he is no more responsible than-than you are." The eyes came to life then, or a veil fell, and I found myself staring at a man in anguish. The eyes were full of pain and bewilderment and he nodded his head. This was the impos sibility which he faced every day. And I imagined that his tribe would increase, in sudden leaps and bounds was already in creasmg.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  It had been short, methodical, and clinical. Jury selection lasted just a few hours. Pearson used his peremptory strikes to exclude all but one of the handful of African Americans who had been summoned to serve on the jury. His lawyers objected, but the judge summarily dismissed their complaints. The State put Myers on the stand to tell his absurd story about Walter forcing him to drive to Jackson Cleaners because his arm hurt. This version had Myers going into the cleaners where he saw Walter standing over the dead body of Ronda Morrison. Bizarrely, he also claimed that a third person was present and involved in the murder, a mysterious white man with salt and pepper hair who was clearly in charge of the crime and who directed Walter to kill Myers too, but Walter couldn’t because he was out of bullets. Walter thought the testimony was so nonsensical he couldn’t believe that people were taking it seriously. Why wasn’t everyone laughing? Chestnut’s cross-examination of Myers made it clear that the witness was lying. When Chestnut finished, Walter was sure that the State would simply announce that they had made a mistake. Instead, the prosecutor brought Myers back up to repeat his accusations as if the logic and contradictions in the testimony were completely irrelevant, as if repeating his lies enough times in this quiet room would make them true. Bill Hooks testified that he’d seen Walter’s truck pull out of the cleaners at the time of the murder and that he recognized the truck because it had been modified as a “low-rider.” Walter instantly whispered to his lawyers that he hadn’t turned his truck into a “low-rider” until several months after Morrison was murdered. His lawyers didn’t do much with that information, which frustrated Walter. Then another white man Walter had never heard of, Joe Hightower, took the stand and said that he had seen the truck at the cleaners, too. There were a dozen people who could talk about the fish fry and insist that Walter was at home when Ronda Morrison was killed. His lawyers called only three of them. Everybody seemed to be rushing to get the trial over with, and Walter couldn’t understand it. The State then called a white man, Ernest Welch, who said he was the “furniture man” who collected money at the McMillian house on the day they were having a fish fry—but it wasn’t the same day that Ronda Morrison was murdered. He said he remembered better than anyone when she was murdered because he was her uncle. He said that he had been so devastated that he went to the McMillian residence to collect money on a different day. The lawyers made their arguments, the jury retired, and less than three hours later they filed back into the courtroom. Stone-faced, one by one, they pronounced Walter McMillian guilty.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  In deed, the Italian community never bothered me again-or rarely and, as it were, by acci dent. But the Village was full of white tourists, and one night, when a mob gathered before the San Remo, demanding that I come out, the owners closed the joint and turned the lights out and we sat in the back room, in the dark, tor a couple of hours, until they judged it sate to drive me home. This was a strange, great and bewildering time in my lite. Once I was in the San Remo, tor example, I was in, and anybody who messed with me was out-that was all there was to it, and it happened more than once. And no one seemed to remember a time when I had not been there. I could not quite get it together, but it seemed to me that I was no longer black tor them and they had ceased to be white for me, for they sometimes introduced me to their fam ilies with every appearance of atl ection and pride and exhibited not the remotest interest in whatever my sexual proclivities chanced to be. They had fought me very hard to prevent this moment, but perhaps we were all much relieved to have got beyond the obscenity of color. 826 OTH ER ESS AYS Matters were equally bewildering, though in a different way, at The Calypso. All kinds of people came into our joint -I am now referring to white people-and one of their most vivid aspects, for me, was the cruelty of their alienat ion. They appeared to have no antecedents nor any real connections. "Do you really like your mother?" someone asked me, seeming to be astounded, totally disbelieving the possibility. I was astounded by the question. Certainly, my mother and I did not agree about everything, and I knew that she was very worried about the dangers of the lif e I lived, but that was normal, since I was a boy and she was a woman. Of course she was worried about me: She was my mother. But she knew I wasn't crazy and that I would certainly never do anything, deliberately, to hurt her. Or my tribe, my brothers and sisters, who were probably worried about me, too. My family was a part of my lif e. I could not imagine lif e without them, might never have been able to reconcile myself to lif e without them. And certainly one of the reasons I was breaking my ass in the Village had to do with my need to try to move us out of our dangerous situation. I was perfectly aware of the odds-my father had made that very clear-but he had also given me my assignment.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  But I trotted off to the Mathurin Theatre to sec it, taking along a gallant lady fr iend. And we sutTercd NO NAME IN THE STREET through this odd and interminable account of the sins of a white Southern lady, and her cardboard husband, and the nig ger-whore-dope fiend maid, Nancy. Nancy, in order to arrest her mistress's headlong flight to self-destruction-to bring her to her senses-murders the white lady's infant. This may seem an odd way of healing the sick, but Nancy is, in fact, the Christ figure, and has taken her mistress's sins on herself. Why? Nancy has enough sins of her own, which on the whole would seem to be rather more interesting, and the lady she takes such drastic means of saving is too dull, and much, much too talkative-in a word, too unreal-to warrant such concern. The key to a talc is to be found in who tells it; and so I thought I could sec why faulkner may have needed to believe in a black forgiveness, furthermore, which, if one stands aside fr om what Faulkner wishes us to make of it, can scarcely be distinguished fr om the bloodiest, most classical Old Testa ment revenge. What Faulkner wishes us to believe, and what he wishes to believe, is at war with what he, fatally, suspects. He suspects that black Nancy may have murdered white Temple's white baby out of pure, exasperated hatred. In life, in any case, it would scarcely matter: Nancy's forgiveness, or Nancy's revenge, result, anyway, in infanticide; and it is this tension between hope and terror, this panic-stricken inability to read the meaning of the event, which condemns the play to an insupportable turgidity. I could sec why Faulkner needed Nancy: but why did Camus need Faulkner? On what ground did they meet, the mind of the great, aging, Missis sippi novelist, and the mind of the young writer fr om Oran? Neither of them could accurately, or usefully, be described as racists, in spite of Faulkner's declared intention of shooting Negroes in the streets if he found this necessary for the sal vation of the state of Mississippi. This statement had to be read as an excess of patriotism, unlikely, in Faulkner's case, to lead to any further action. The mischief of the remark lay in the tact that it certainly encouraged others to such action. And faulkner's portraits of Negroes, which lack a system of nu ances that, perhaps, only a black writer can sec in black life for faulkner could sec Negroes only as they related to him, not as they related to each other-arc nevertheless made vivid TAKE ME TO THE WATER by the torment of their creator.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Now, four months into his term as sheriff, he faced a seemingly unsolvable murder and intense public pressure. When Myers told police about McMillian’s relationship with Karen Kelly, it’s likely that the infamous interracial affair was already well known to Tate as a result of the Kelly custody hearings that had generated so much gossip. But there was no evidence against McMillian—no evidence except that he was an African American man involved in an adulterous interracial affair, which meant he was reckless and possibly dangerous, even if he had no prior criminal history and a good reputation. Maybe that was evidence enough. * Even though the restriction couldn’t be enforced under federal law, the state ban on interracial marriage in Alabama continued into the twenty-first century. In 2000, reformers finally had enough votes to get the issue on the statewide ballot, where a majority of voters chose to eliminate the ban, although 41 percent voted to keep it. A 2011 poll of Mississippi Republicans found that 46 percent support a legal ban on interracial marriage, 40 percent oppose such a ban, and 14 percent are undecided. Chapter Three Trials and Tribulation A fter months of frustration, failure, and growing public scorn, Sheriff Thomas Tate, ABI lead investigator Simon Benson, and the district attorney’s investigator, Larry Ikner, decided to arrest Walter McMillian based primarily on Ralph Myers’s allegation. They hadn’t yet done much investigation into McMillian, so they decided to arrest him on a pretextual charge while they built their case. Myers claimed to be terrified of McMillian; one of the officers suggested to Myers that McMillian might have sexually assaulted him; the idea was so provocative and inflammatory that Myers immediately recognized its usefulness and somberly acknowledged that it was true. Alabama law had outlawed nonprocreative sex, so officials planned to arrest McMillian on sodomy charges. On June 7, 1987, Sheriff Tate led an army of more than a dozen officers to a back-country road that they knew Walter would use on his return home from work. Officers stopped Walter’s truck and drew their weapons, then forced Walter from his vehicle and surrounded him. Tate told him he was under arrest. When Walter frantically asked the sheriff what he had done, the sheriff told him that he was being charged with sodomy. Confused by the term, Walter told the sheriff that he did not understand the meaning of the word. When the sheriff explained the charge in crude terms, Walter was incredulous and couldn’t help but laugh at the notion.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  It must be admitted that it was a considerable achievement to have brought so many unlikely types together under one roof; and, in spite of everything, I can't help wish ing that I had been there to witness the mutual bewilderment. But the point is that no politician would have dreamed of giving such a party in order to launch his mayoralty campaign. Such an imaginative route is not usually an attribute of poli ticians. In addition, the price one pays fo r pursuing any pro fe ssion, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side. It is scarcely worth observing that political activity is often, to put it mildly, pungent, and I think that Norman, perhaps for the first time, really doubted his ability to deal with such a world, and blindly struck his way out of it. We do not, in this country now, have much taste fo r, or any real sense of, the extremes human beings can reach; time will improve us in this regard; but in the meantime the general fe ar of experience is one of the reasons that the American writer has so peculiarly difficult and dangerous a time. One can never really see into the heart, the mind, the soul of another. Norman is my very good friend, but perhaps I do not really understand him at all, and perhaps everything I have tried to suggest in the fo regoing is fa lse. I do not think so, but it may be. One thing, however, I am certain is not fa lse, and that is simply the fa ct of his being a writer, and the in calculable potential he as a writer contains. His work, after all, THE BLACK BOY LOOKS AT THE WHITE BOY 28 5 is all that will be left when the newspapers are yellowed, all the gossip columnists silenced, and all the cocktail parties m·er, and when Norman and you and I are dead. I know that this point of view is not terribly fashionable these days, but I think we do have a responsibility, not only to ourselves and to our own time, but to those who are coming after us. (I refuse to belie,·e that no one is coming after us.) And I suppose that this responsibility can only be discharged by dealing as truth fully as we know how with our present fortunes, these present days. So that my concern with �orman, finally, has to do with how deeply he has understood these last sad and stormy e\·ents. If he has understood them, then he is richer and we are richer, too; if he has not understood them, we are all much poorer. For, though it clearly needs to be brought into fo cus, he has a real \"ision of ourseh·es as we are, and it cannot be too often repeated in this country now, that, where there is no ,·ision, the people perish.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  I did not know, however, that ancient glories imply, at least in the middle of the present century, present fatigue and, quite probably, paranoia; that there is a limit to the role of the intelligence in human affairs; and that no people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it. This price they cannot, of course, assess, but it is revealed in their per sonalities and in their institutions. The very word "institu tions," from my side of the ocean, where, it seemed to me, we suffered so cruelly from the lack of them, had a pleasant ring, as of safety and order and common sense; one had to come into contact with these institutions in order to under stand that they were also outmoded, exasperating, completely impersonal, and very often cruel. Similarly, the personality which had seemed from a distance to be so large and free had to be dealt with bdc:>re one could see that, if it was large, it was also inflexible and, for the foreigner, full of strange, high, EQUAL IN l'ARIS 10 3 dusty rooms which could not be inhabited. One had, in short, to come into contact with an alien culture in order to under stand that a culture was not a community basket-weaving project, nor yet an act of God; was something neither desir able nor undesirable in itself, being inevitable, being nothing more or less than the recorded and visible effects on a body of people of the vicissitudes with which they had been forced to deal. And their great men are revealed as simply another of these vicissitudes, even if, quite against their will, the brief battle of their great men with them has left them richer. When my American friend left his hotel to move to mine, he took with him, out of pique, a bedsheet belonging to the hotel and put it in his suitcase. When he arrived at my hotel I borrowed the sheet, since my own were filthy and the cham bermaid showed no sign of bringing me any clean ones, and put it on my bed. The sheets belonging to my hotel I put out in the hall, congratulating myself on having thus forced on the attention of the Grand Hotel du Bac the unpleasant state of its linen. Thereafter, since, as it turned out, we kept very different hours-1 got up at noon, when, as I gathered by meeting him on the stairs one day, he was only just getting in-my new-found fr iend and I saw very little of each other. On the evening of the 1 9 th I was sitting thinking melan choly thoughts about Christmas and staring at the walls of my room. I imagine that I had sold something or that someone had sent me a Christmas present, for I remember that I had a little money.

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

  AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xliv. 12) A malediction only in the intention of the speakers, not in the words themselves. May such a malediction (ἐλοιδόρησαν, maledixerunt, Vulg.) be upon us, and upon our children! It follows: But we are Moses’ disciples. We know that God spake unto Moses.But ye should have known, that our Lord was prophesied of by Moses, after hearing what He said, Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me, for he wrote of Me. (c. 5:46) Do ye follow then a servant, and turn your back on the Lord? Even so, for it follows: As for this fellow, we know not whence He is. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lviii. s. 3) Ye think sight less evidence than hearing; for what ye say, ye know, is what ye have heard from your fathers. But is not He more worthy of belief, who has certified that He comes from God, by miracles which ye have not heard only, but seen? So argues the blind man: The man answered and said, Why herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not whence He is, and yet He hath opened mine eyes. He brings in the miracle every where, as evidence which they could not invalidate: and, inasmuch as they had said that a man that was a sinner could not do such miracles, he turns their own words against them; Now we know that God heareth not sinners; as if to say, I quite agree with you in this opinion. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xliv. s. 13) As yet however He speaks as one but just anointed1, for God hears sinners too. Else in vain would the publican cry, God be merciful to me a sinner. (Luke 18:13) By that confession he obtained2 justification, as the blind man had his sight. THEOPHYLACT. Or, that God heareth not sinners, means, that God does not enable sinners to work miracles. When sinners however implore pardon for their offences, they are translated from the rank of sinners to that of penitents. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lviii. 3) Observe then, when he said above, Whether He be a sinner, I know not, it was not that he spoke in doubt; for here he not only acquits him of all sin, but holds him up as one well pleasing to God: But if any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth His will, him He heareth. It is not enough to know God, we must do His will. Then he extols His deed: Since the world began, was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind: as if to say, If ye confess that God heareth not sinners; and this Man has worked a miracle, such an one, as no other man has; it is manifest that the virtue whereby He has wrought it, is more than human: If this Man were not of God, He could do nothing.

• From Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition (2004)

  192 Lecture 26: The Song of Roland the heaviness of their arms and the unevenness of the land rendered the Franks utterly unequal to the Basques. Among many others who fell in this battle were Eggihard the seneschal, Anselm the count of the palace, and Roland the prefect of the Breton March. Here is Roland! But in the Song of Roland, composed some 300 years after the event, Charlemagne is fi ghting a crusade-like war against Muslims. So where does our poem come from? How do we get from, as it were, Basque terrorists to a virtual Crusade? In the 12 th and 13 th centuries, some 100 epics were composed, largely in France, on the age of Charlemagne. These focused either on Charlemagne himself or on his historical and legendary companions. These epics are usually called chansons de geste — songs of deeds. Scholars who study these epics fall into the “traditionalist” and “individualist” camps. Traditionalists believe that stories or songs were composed close in time to the actual people and events and that these early versions stand behind Roland. Individualists believe that the Roland poet prepared an original work, even though it may well be based on old stories or traditions. Much turns, as with Beowulf, on the position one takes with respect to theories of oral-formulaic composition. I take the view that Roland, even though it contains hundreds of formulas, is essentially an original composition, although it was meant to be performed and, therefore, every performance was new and distinctive. The Oxford version is only one, albeit perhaps the fi nest, of these. It is worth saying, too, that Roland was sung, not read, and we have no clue about the music, the melody. What, then, is this epic about? How may we summarize it, given that it is 4,002 lines long? The action opens when King Marsilie, the Muslim commander, assembles a council of 20,000 men. Blancandrin offers a treacherous plan: Marsilie should sue for peace, propose to come to Aachen (in French, Aix- la Chapelle; Charlemagne’s capital) to be baptized a Christian, and offer noble hostages. On this plan, Charlemagne will leave Spain, Marsilie will not deliver on his promises, and the hostages will be slain, but Spain will be at peace. The scene shifts to Charlemagne’s camp, where Marsilie’s envoys arrive to fi nd an old and weary Charlemagne who is dubious.

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

  684. That such was their argument becomes clear as follows. For from this assumption or opinion there sprouted “ the most serious or extreme ” opinion of the philosophers of whom we have spoken, i.e., the opinion which is found to be the most serious or extreme in this class. And this is the one which he called “ Heraclitizing, ” i.e., following the opinion of Heraclitus, or the opinion of those who were disciples of Heraclitus, according to another text, or of those who professed to follow the opinion of Heraclitus, who claimed that all things are in motion and consequently that nothing is definitely true. This opinion also was maintained by Cratylus, who finally arrived at such a pitch of madness that he thought that he should not express anything in words, but in order to express what he wanted he would only move his finger. He did this because he believed that the truth of the thing which he wanted to express would pass away before he had finished speaking. But he could move his finger in a shorter space of time. This same Cratylus also reprimanded or rebuked Heraclitus. For Heraclitus said that a man cannot step into the same river twice, because before he steps in a second time the water of the river already has flowed by. But Cratylus thought that a man cannot step into the same river even once, because even before he steps in once the water then in the river flows by and other water replaces it. Thus a man is incapable not only of speaking twice about anything before his disposition is changed but even of speaking once. LESSON 13 Change in Sensible Things Not Opposed to Their Truth ARISTOTLE ’ S TEXT Chapter 5: 1010a 15-1010b 1363. But in reply to this theory we shall also say that there is some reason why these men should think that what is changing, when it is changing, does not exist. 364. Yet there is a problem here; for what is casting off some quality retains something of what is being cast off, and something of what is coming to be must already exist. And in general if a thing is ceasing to be, there must be something which is; and if a thing is coming to be, there must be something from which it comes to be and something by which it comes to be; and this process cannot proceed to infinity. 365. But setting aside these considerations, let us say that change in quantity and change in quality are not the same. Let it be granted, then, that a thing does not remain the same in quantity; but it is by reason of its form that we know each thing.

• From Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition (2004)

  507 to civilize and enlighten the natives. The story is narrated by Marlow, who recalls hearing about Kurtz and developing a great curiosity to see how this would-be paragon of wisdom will conduct himself among the natives—with no other white man to check his impulses. When he fi nally reaches Kurtz in the heart of the jungle, Marlow discovers that the true heart of darkness lies within the insane, murderous rapacity of Kurtz himself. Telling the story of a voyage up the Congo River in Heart of Darkness , Marlow presents himself as a man bursting with curiosity but also deeply bewildered. In childhood, maps fi red his imagination. He wanted to explore the world. Blank spaces on the map fascinated him. The blankest space on the map was, paradoxically, “a place of darkness” in Africa. While listening to an agent scorn the idealistic aims of Kurtz, Marlow wonders at the inscrutable immensity of the forest. The muteness of the jungle mystifi es him. He wonders whether or not mere men can “handle that big dumb thing.” By the time he wrote Heart of Darkness , Conrad had become “a Polish nobleman, cased in British tar.” Born in Poland as Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, he was educated largely by his father, then placed with various guardians—most importantly, his Uncle Tadeusz. Though his family was descended on both sides from Polish aristocracy, Conrad’s childhood was complicated by the exile of his father (who took the family with him) and the early death of his mother. In spite of these hardships and a series of illnesses, Józef learned a great deal from his father, a highly literate man who may even have introduced him to English. After the death of his father when Józef was not yet 12, he was placed with a series of guardians, leading up to the most important of all: his Uncle Tadeusz, who bankrolled the boy for many years. Starting his life at sea just before he turned 17, Conrad rose through the ranks to become a master mariner and learned English at sea before starting to write fi ction. While based for several years in Marseilles, France, he worked on a series of voyages in French ships, spent money recklessly, and at the age of 20 tried to take his own life. After losing nearly 4,000 francs and fi nding no job, he shot himself in the chest. Luckily, he survived and was

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  The James divorce totally bewildered the children. Though on a rocky course for several years, the marriage was functioning (in the children’s eyes) and family life seemed pretty stable. The father made a good living as a dermatologist who worked long hours in a private practice with four other physicians. The mother was furious at her husband, complaining that he was never available, spent zero time with the children, was cold and aloof as a husband and incompetent as a lover. He paid almost no attention to what he called her “yammering.” She was a strikingly beautiful woman who worked part-time in an upscale floral shop making elegant, expensive flower arrangements. The job engaged her artistic streak and enabled her to be at home in the afternoons when the children got home from school. She was a strict, demanding mother. He was an emotionally distant father—when he was around. The parents yelled at one another, barking grievances that made no sense to the children, but there was never any talk of divorce. As the three siblings told me, Sturm und Drang were part of normal family life. The real storm began with the sudden traumatic death of Mrs. James’s mother, who was killed in a highway accident. Mrs. James collapsed with grief. She had depended on her mother for advice, affection, and help in maintaining the social façade of a happy marriage. The death precipitated an agitated depression in Mrs. James, who became increasingly angry at the world and critical of everyone around her. She turned to her husband for solace, love, compassion, and sexual intimacy. He became the chief target of her rage because he did not provide the help she needed. Quarrels that were part of the marriage began to magnify and cascade as the anger took on a life of its own. Soon their life was nothing but a series of arguments, each louder than the next. Dr. James was badly frightened by the intensity of his wife’s needs and withdrew further. Reeling from both losses, she attacked him more and more wildly. Stung by her loud accusations of his failings, he countered with accusations of infidelity, long-standing frigidity, and incompetent mothering. As best I could make out, the final trigger was Dr. James’s departure for a two-day dermatology convention. Consumed by her anger, she impulsively sought legal counsel and filed for divorce.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  What distinguishes them is what James once described as a kind of "holy stupid ity." The writer's greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, every thing and practically everybody; in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all; and families, friends, and lovers find this extremely hard to take. While he is alive, his work is fatally entangled with his personal fortunes and misfortunes, his personality, and the social facts and at titudes of his ti me. The unadmitted relief, th en, of which I spoke has to do with a certain drop in the intensit y of our bewilderment, for the baffling creator no longer stands be tween us and his works. He does not, but many other things do, above all our own preoccupati ons. In the case of Richard Wright, dead in Paris at fifty-two, the fact that he worked during a bewildering and demoralizing era in Western history makes a proper assess ment of his work mor e difficult. In Eight Men, the earliest story, "The Man Who Saw the Flood," takes place in the deep South and was first pub lished in 1937. One of the two 247 NOBODY KN OWS MY NAME previously unpublished stories in the book, "Man, God Ain't Like That," begins in Mrica, achieves its hideous resolution in Paris, and brings us, with an ironical and fitting grimness, to the threshold of the 196o's. It is because of this story, which is remar kable, and "Man of All Work," which is a masterpiece, that I cannot avoid feeling that Wri ght, as he died, was ac quiring a new tone, and a less uncertain esthetic distance, and a new depth. Shortly after we learned of Richard Wright's death, a Negro woman who was re-reading Native Son told me that it meant more to her now than it had when she had first read it. This, she said, was because the specific social climate which had produced it, or with which it was identified, seemed archaic now, was fading from our memories. Now, there was only the book itself to deal with, for it could no longer be read, as it had been read in 1940, as a militant racial manifesto. Today's racial manifestoes were being written very differently, and in many different languages; what mattered about the book now was how accu rately or deeply the life of Chicago's South Side had been conveyed. I think that my friend may prove to be right. Certainly, the two oldest stories in this book, "The Man Who Was Almost a Man," and "The Man Who Saw the Flood," both Depres sion stories, both occurring in the South, and both, of course, about Negroes, do not seem dated.