Boredom

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 Post Office (1971)

  Those white boys really liked his tapioca pudding, hehehehe! They asked him how he made it and he said he had his own secret recipe, hehehehehehe!” We all laughed. I don’t know how many times I had to hear the tapioca pudding story … “Hey, poor white trash! Hey, boy!” “Look, man, if I called you ‘boy’ you might draw steel on me. So don’t call me ‘boy.’ “ “Look, white man, what do you say we go out together this Saturday night? I got me a nice white gal with blonde hair. “ “And I got myself a nice black gal. And you know what color her hair is.” “You guys been fucking our women for centuries. We’re trying to catch up. You don’t mind if I stick my big black dick into your white gal?” “If she wants it she can have it.” “You stole the land from the Indians.” “Sure I did.” “You won’t invite me to your house. If you do, you’ll ask me to come in the back way, so no one will see my skin …” “But I’ll leave a small light burning.” It got boring but there was no way out. 12Fay was all right with the pregnancy. For an old gal, she was all right. We waited around at our place. Finally the time came. “It won’t be long,” she said. “I don’t want to get there too early.” I went out and checked the car. Came back. “Oooh, oh,” she said. “No, wait.” Maybe she could save the world. I was proud of her calm. I forgave her for the dirty dishes and The New Yorker and her writers’ workshop. The old gal was only another lonely creature in a world that didn’t care. “We better go now,” I said. “No,” said Fay, “I don’t want to make you wait too long. I know you haven’t been feeling well.” “To hell with me. Let’s make it.” “No, please, Hank.” She just sat there. “What can I do for you?” I asked. “Nothing.” She sat there 10 minutes. I went into the kitchen for a glass of water. When I came out she said, “You ready to drive?” “Sure.” “You know where the hospital is?” “Of course.” I helped her into the car. I had made two practice runs the week earlier. But when we got there I had no idea where to park. Fay pointed up a runway. “Go in there. Park in there. We’ll go in from there.” “Yes, ma’am,” I said … She was in bed in a back room overlooking the street. Her face grimaced. “Hold my hand,” she said. I did. “Is it really going to happen?” I asked. “Yes.” “You make it seem so easy,” I said. “You’re so very nice. It helps.” “I’d like to be nice. It’s that god damned post office …” “I know. I know.” We were looking out the back window. I said, “Look at those people down there.

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  Sandy’s room was tentatively decorated, as if he suspected he would be moving soon. A lone Yale pennant was tacked up over his bed. It served only to confirm the emptiness of the space. There was a bookshelf full of strange-but- true baseball stories, strange-but-true ghost stories—The Thing at the Foot of the Bed—and the 1972 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records. (Heaviest man, Robert Earl Hughes of Monticello, Ill., who achieved a peak heft of 1,069 pounds. Buried in a piano case.) On top of the bookshelf, several small fish tanks full of Magic Rocks. —Janey! Hood whispered, in the center of this unnaturally clean space. He slid back the door to Sandy’s closet. A mound of dirty laundry piled there. No Janey, though, crouching, in lingerie, waiting. Back in the hall, Hood headed for Mike Williams’s room. He was sure the doorknob would be rigged with home electronic alarms. The apparatus for this alarm would be arranged on the floor just inside the room, rigged with pipe cleaners and roach clips and a nine-volt battery he had lifted from somebody’s automatic garage opener. Mike liked whoopee cushions and rubber dog excrement. He often wore a Nixon mask. And he also had a fondness for the crank telephone call. —Hello, is your refrigerator running? —Why, yes. —Well, I guess it must be, because I just saw it run by my house. HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! —Hello, is this 655-FUCK? —Hello, is this 655-SHIT? Paul had told him all this one night. One of those frail dusks when father and teenaged son share a good laugh over something. Few and far between were these days. Hood found these calls hysterically funny. Perhaps this was the day that Paul told him about his own crank phone calls, and about the bizarre miracle of their own number, 655-4663. The last four digits actually rendered their name. 655-HOOD. Mike’s doorknob released no shock, however. It sent up no electronic squeak. (Alarms were never activated for the real intruders.) The room belonged to Hood, the interloper. Black-light posters and tapestries covered the walls, tapestries that, in light of the dim table lamp Hood switched on, were full of burn holes and unidentifiable stains. A water pipe the size of a barber pole stood in one corner. Janey permitted this behavior? With more time he might have extended the search. No doubt the traditional pornographic magazines were concealed between his mattresses, along with socks crusty with his dried seed. The shame and resourcefulness of the masturbator coming into his craft! No fabric or substance or receptacle was beyond being tested. Mike’s laundry was probably welded together with his semen. Imagine the sheer volume of it at single-sex schools and in penitentiaries.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  He thrust the box into Stephen’s hands. “ Here, you take it — it’s dripping. Can I have a wash rag?’ But after a moment he forgot the new gloves. ‘I’ve raided Fortnum and Mason — such fun—I do love eating things out of cardboard boxes. Hallo, Puddle darling! I sent you a plant. Did you get it? A nice little plant with brown bobbles. It smells good, and it’s got a ridiculous name like an old Italian dowager or something. Wait a minute — what’s it called? Oh, yes, a baronia — it’s so humble to have such a pompous name! Stephen, do be careful — don’t rock the lobster about like that. I told you the thing was dripping! ’ He dumped his parcels on to the hall table. ‘Pll take them along to the kitchen,’ smiled Puddle. ‘No, I will,’ said Brockett, collecting them again, ‘I'll do THE WELL OF LONELINESS 261 the whole thing; you leave it to me. I adore other people’s kitchens.’ He was in his most foolish and tiresome mood — the mood when his white hands made odd little gestures, when his laugh was too high and his movements too small for the size of his broad-shouldered, rather gaunt body. Stephen had grown to dread him in this mood; there was something almost aggressive about it; it would seem to her that he thrust it upon her, showing off like a child at a Christmas party. She said sharply: ‘If you'll wait, PI ring for the maid.’ But Brockett had already invaded the kitchen. She followed, to find the cook looking offended. ‘I want lots and lots of dishes,’ he announced. Then unfor- tunately he happened to notice the parlourmaid’s washing, just back from the laundry. * Brockett, what on earth are you doing? ’ He had put on the girl’s ornate frilled cap, and was busily tying on her small apron. He paused for a moment. * How do I look? What a perfect duck of an apron! ’ The parlourmaid giggled and Stephen laughed. That was the worst of Jonathan Brockett, he could make you laugh in spite of yourself — when you most disapproved you found your- self laughing. The food he had brought was the oddest assortment: lobster, caramels, paté de foies gras, olives, a tin of rich-mixed biscuits and a Camembert cheese that was smelling loudly. There was also a bottle of Rose’s lime-juice and another of ready-made cocktails. He began to unpack the things one by one, clamouring for plates and entrée dishes. In the process he made a great mess on the table by upsetting most of the lobster salad. He swore roundly. ‘ Damn the thing, it’s too utterly bloody! It’s ruined my gloves, and now look at the table!’ In grim silence the cook repaired the damage. This mishap appeared to have damped his ardour, for he sighed and removed his cap and apron. ‘Can anyone open this 262 THE WELL OF LONELINESS

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "There might even be real men, in the next phase," said Tommy. "Real, intelligent, wholesome men, and wholesome nice women! Wouldn't that be a change, an enormous change from us? _We're_ not men, and the women aren't women. We're only cerebrating make-shifts, mechanical and intellectual experiments. There may even come a civilization of genuine men and women, instead of our little lot of clever-jacks, all at the intelligence-age of seven. It would be even more amazing than men of smoke or babies in bottles." "Oh, when people begin to talk about real women, I give up," said Olive. "Certainly nothing but the spirit in us is worth having," said Winterslow. "Spirits!" said Jack, drinking his whiskey and soda. "Think so? Give me the resurrection of the body!" said Dukes. "But it'll come, in time, when we've shoved the cerebral stone away a bit, the money and the rest. Then we'll get a democracy of touch, instead of a democracy of pocket." Something echoed inside Connie: "Give me the democracy of touch, the resurrection of the body!" She didn't at all know what it meant, but it comforted her, as meaningless things may do. Anyhow everything was terribly silly, and she was exasperatedly bored by it all, by Clifford, by Aunt Eva, by Olive and Jack, and Winterslow, and even by Dukes. Talk, talk, talk! What hell it was, the continual rattle of it! Then, when all the people went, it was no better. She continued plodding on, but exasperation and irritation had got hold of her lower body, she couldn't escape. The days seemed to grind by, with curious painfulness, yet nothing happened. Only she was getting thinner; even the housekeeper noticed it, and asked her about herself. Even Tommy Dukes insisted she was not well, though she said she was all right. Only she began to be afraid of the ghastly white tombstones, that peculiar loathsome whiteness of Carrara marble, detestable as false teeth, which stuck up on the hillside, under Tevershall church, and which she saw with such grim plainness from the park. The bristling of the hideous false teeth of tombstones on the hill affected her with a grisly kind of horror. She felt the time not far off when she would be buried there, added to the ghastly host under the tombstones and the monuments, in these filthy Midlands. She needed help, and she knew it; so she wrote a little _cri de coeur_ to her sister, Hilda. "I'm not well lately, and I don't know what's the matter with me." Down posted Hilda from Scotland, where she had taken up her abode. She came in March, alone, driving herself in a nimble two-seater. Up the drive she came, tooting up the incline, then sweeping round the oval of grass, where the two great wild beech trees stood, on the flat in front of the house. Connie had run out to the steps. Hilda pulled up her car, got out, and kissed her sister.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Sir Malcolm was painting. Yes, he still would do a Venetian lagoonscape, now and then, in contrast to his Scottish landscapes. So in the morning he was rowed off with a huge canvas, to his "site." A little later, Lady Cooper would be rowed off into the heart of the city, with sketching-block and colours. She was an inveterate water-colour painter, and the house was full of rose-coloured palaces, dark canals, swaying bridges, medieval façades, and so on. A little later the Guthries, the prince, the countess, Sir Alexander, and sometimes Mr. Lind, the chaplain, would go off to the Lido, where they would bathe; coming home to a late lunch at half-past one. The house-party, as a house-party, was distinctly boring. But this did not trouble the sisters. They were out all the time. Their father took them to the exhibition, miles and miles of weary paintings. He took them to all the cronies of his in the Villa Lucchese, he sat with them on warm evenings in Piazza, having got a table at Florian's: he took them to the theatre, to the Goldoni plays. There were illuminated water-fêtes, there were dances. This was a holiday-place of all holiday-places. The Lido with its acres of sun-pinked or pyjamaed bodies, was like a strand with an endless heap of seals come up for mating. Too many people in piazza, too many limbs and trunks of humanity on the Lido, too many gondolas, too many motor-launches, too many steamers, too many pigeons, too many ices, too many cocktails, too many men-servants wanting tips, too many languages rattling, too much, too much sun, too much smell of Venice, too many cargoes of strawberries, too many silk shawls, too many huge, raw-beef slices of watermelon on stalls: too much enjoyment, altogether far too much enjoyment! Connie and Hilda went around in their sunny frocks. There were dozens of people they knew, dozens of people knew them. Michaelis turned up like a bad penny. "Hullo! Where you staying? Come and have an ice cream or something! Come with me somewhere in my gondola." Even Michaelis _almost_ sunburned: though sun-cooked is more appropriate to the look of the mass of human flesh. It was pleasant in a way. It was _almost_ enjoyment. But anyhow, with all the cocktails, all the lying in warmish water and sunbathing on hot sand in hot sun, jazzing with your stomach up against some fellow in the warm nights, cooling off with ices, it was a complete narcotic. And that was what they all wanted, a drug: the slow water, a drug; the sun, a drug; jazz, a drug; cigarettes, cocktails, ices, vermouth. To be drugged! Enjoyment! Enjoyment!

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  His name was Giovanni, and he wanted to know at what time he should come, and then for whom should he say he was waiting. Hilda had no card. Connie gave him one of hers. He glanced at it swiftly, with his hot, southern blue eyes, then glanced again. "Ah!" he said, lighting up, "Milady! Milady, isn't it?" "Milady Costanza!" said Connie. He nodded, repeating: "Milady Costanza!" and putting the card carefully away in his blouse. The Villa Esmeralda was quite a long way out, on the edge of the lagoon looking towards Chioggia. It was not a very old house, and pleasant, with the terraces looking seawards, and below, quite a big garden with dark trees, walled in from the lagoon. Their host was a heavy, rather coarse Scotchman who had made a good fortune in Italy before the war, and had been knighted for his ultrapatriotism during the war. His wife was a thin, pale, sharp kind of person with no fortune of her own, and the misfortune of having to regulate her husband's rather sordid amorous exploits. He was terribly tiresome with the servants. But having had a slight stroke during the winter he was now more manageable. The house was pretty dull. Besides Sir Malcolm and his two daughters, there were seven more people, a Scotch couple, again with two daughters; a young Italian Contessa, a widow; a young Georgian prince, and a youngish English clergyman who had had pneumonia and was being chaplain to Sir Alexander for his health's sake. The prince was penniless, good-looking, would make an excellent chauffeur, with the necessary impudence, and basta! The contessa was a quiet little puss with a game on somewhere. The clergyman was a raw simple fellow from a Bucks vicarage: luckily he had left his wife and two children at home. And the Guthries, the family of four, were good solid Edinburgh middle class, enjoying everything in a solid fashion, and daring everything while risking nothing. Connie and Hilda ruled out the prince at once. The Guthries were more or less their own sort, substantial, but boring: and the girls wanted husbands. The chaplain was not a bad fellow, but too deferential. Sir Alexander, after his slight stroke, had a terrible heaviness in his joviality, but he was still thrilled at the presence of so many handsome young women. Lady Cooper was a quiet, catty person who had a thin time of it, poor thing, and who watched every other woman with a cold watchfulness that had become her second nature, and who said cold, nasty little things which showed what an utterly low opinion she had of all human nature. She was also quite venomously overbearing with the servants, Connie found: but in a quiet way. And she skilfully behaved so that Sir Alexander should think _he_ was lord and monarch of the whole caboosh, with his stout, would-be-genial paunch, and his utterly boring jokes, his humourosity, as Hilda called it.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  He thought of his boyhood in Tevershall, and of his five or six years of married life. He thought of his wife, and always bitterly. She had seemed so brutal. But he had not seen her now since 1915, in the spring when he joined up. Yet there she was, not three miles away, and more brutal than ever. He hoped never to see her again while he lived. He thought of his life abroad, as a soldier. India, Egypt, then India again: the blind, thoughtless life with the horses: the Colonel who had loved him and whom he had loved: the several years that he had been an officer, a lieutenant with a very fair chance of being a captain. Then the death of the Colonel from pneumonia, and his own narrow escape from death: his damaged health: his deep restlessness: his leaving the army and coming back to England to be a working-man again. He was temporising with life. He had thought he would be safe, at least for a time, in this wood. There was no shooting as yet: he had to rear the pheasants. He would have no guns to serve. He would be alone, and apart from life, which was all he wanted. He had to have some sort of a background. And this was his native place. There was even his mother, though she had never meant very much to him. And he could go on in life, existing from day to day, without connection and without hope. For he did not know what to do with himself. He did not know what to do with himself. Since he had been an officer for some years, and had mixed among the other officers and civil servants, with their wives and families, he had lost all ambition to "get on." There was a toughness, a curious rubber-necked toughness and unlivingness about the middle and upper classes, as he had known them, which just left him feeling cold and different from them. So, he had come back to his own class. To find there, what he had forgotten during his absence of years, a pettiness and a vulgarity of manner extremely distasteful. He admitted now at last, how important manner was. He admitted, also, how important it was even _to pretend_ not to care about the halfpence and the small things of life. But among the common people there was no pretence. A penny more or less on the bacon was worse than a change in the Gospel. He could not stand it. And again, there was the wage-squabble. Having lived among the owning classes, he knew the utter futility of expecting any solution of the wage-squabble. There was no solution, short of death. The only thing was not to care, not to care about the wages.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Sir Malcolm was painting. Yes, he still would do a Venetian lagoonscape, now and then, in contrast to his Scottish landscapes. So in the morning he was rowed off with a huge canvas, to his "site." A little later, Lady Cooper would be rowed off into the heart of the city, with sketching-block and colours. She was an inveterate water-colour painter, and the house was full of rose-coloured palaces, dark canals, swaying bridges, medieval façades, and so on. A little later the Guthries, the prince, the countess, Sir Alexander, and sometimes Mr. Lind, the chaplain, would go off to the Lido, where they would bathe; coming home to a late lunch at half-past one. The house-party, as a house-party, was distinctly boring. But this did not trouble the sisters. They were out all the time. Their father took them to the exhibition, miles and miles of weary paintings. He took them to all the cronies of his in the Villa Lucchese, he sat with them on warm evenings in Piazza, having got a table at Florian's: he took them to the theatre, to the Goldoni plays. There were illuminated water-fêtes, there were dances. This was a holiday-place of all holiday-places. The Lido with its acres of sun-pinked or pyjamaed bodies, was like a strand with an endless heap of seals come up for mating. Too many people in piazza, too many limbs and trunks of humanity on the Lido, too many gondolas, too many motor-launches, too many steamers, too many pigeons, too many ices, too many cocktails, too many men-servants wanting tips, too many languages rattling, too much, too much sun, too much smell of Venice, too many cargoes of strawberries, too many silk shawls, too many huge, raw-beef slices of watermelon on stalls: too much enjoyment, altogether far too much enjoyment! Connie and Hilda went around in their sunny frocks. There were dozens of people they knew, dozens of people knew them. Michaelis turned up like a bad penny. "Hullo! Where you staying? Come and have an ice cream or something! Come with me somewhere in my gondola." Even Michaelis _almost_ sunburned: though sun-cooked is more appropriate to the look of the mass of human flesh. It was pleasant in a way. It was _almost_ enjoyment. But anyhow, with all the cocktails, all the lying in warmish water and sunbathing on hot sand in hot sun, jazzing with your stomach up against some fellow in the warm nights, cooling off with ices, it was a complete narcotic. And that was what they all wanted, a drug: the slow water, a drug; the sun, a drug; jazz, a drug; cigarettes, cocktails, ices, vermouth. To be drugged! Enjoyment! Enjoyment!

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "There might even be real men, in the next phase," said Tommy. "Real, intelligent, wholesome men, and wholesome nice women! Wouldn't that be a change, an enormous change from us? _We're_ not men, and the women aren't women. We're only cerebrating make-shifts, mechanical and intellectual experiments. There may even come a civilization of genuine men and women, instead of our little lot of clever-jacks, all at the intelligence-age of seven. It would be even more amazing than men of smoke or babies in bottles." "Oh, when people begin to talk about real women, I give up," said Olive. "Certainly nothing but the spirit in us is worth having," said Winterslow. "Spirits!" said Jack, drinking his whiskey and soda. "Think so? Give me the resurrection of the body!" said Dukes. "But it'll come, in time, when we've shoved the cerebral stone away a bit, the money and the rest. Then we'll get a democracy of touch, instead of a democracy of pocket." Something echoed inside Connie: "Give me the democracy of touch, the resurrection of the body!" She didn't at all know what it meant, but it comforted her, as meaningless things may do. Anyhow everything was terribly silly, and she was exasperatedly bored by it all, by Clifford, by Aunt Eva, by Olive and Jack, and Winterslow, and even by Dukes. Talk, talk, talk! What hell it was, the continual rattle of it! Then, when all the people went, it was no better. She continued plodding on, but exasperation and irritation had got hold of her lower body, she couldn't escape. The days seemed to grind by, with curious painfulness, yet nothing happened. Only she was getting thinner; even the housekeeper noticed it, and asked her about herself. Even Tommy Dukes insisted she was not well, though she said she was all right. Only she began to be afraid of the ghastly white tombstones, that peculiar loathsome whiteness of Carrara marble, detestable as false teeth, which stuck up on the hillside, under Tevershall church, and which she saw with such grim plainness from the park. The bristling of the hideous false teeth of tombstones on the hill affected her with a grisly kind of horror. She felt the time not far off when she would be buried there, added to the ghastly host under the tombstones and the monuments, in these filthy Midlands. She needed help, and she knew it; so she wrote a little _cri de coeur_ to her sister, Hilda. "I'm not well lately, and I don't know what's the matter with me." Down posted Hilda from Scotland, where she had taken up her abode. She came in March, alone, driving herself in a nimble two-seater. Up the drive she came, tooting up the incline, then sweeping round the oval of grass, where the two great wild beech trees stood, on the flat in front of the house. Connie had run out to the steps. Hilda pulled up her car, got out, and kissed her sister.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Olive was reading a book about the future, when babies would be bred in bottles, and women would be "immunised." "Jolly good thing too!" she said. "Then a woman can live her own life." Strangeways wanted children, and she didn't. "How'd you like to be immunised?" Winterslow asked her, with an ugly smile. "I hope I am; naturally," she said. "Anyhow the future's going to have more sense, and a woman needn't be dragged down by her _functions_." "Perhaps she'll float off into space altogether," said Dukes. "I do think sufficient civilization ought to eliminate a lot of the physical disabilities," said Clifford. "All the love-business for example, it might just as well go. I suppose it would if we could breed babies in bottles." "No!" cried Olive. "That might leave all the more room for fun." "I suppose," said Lady Bennerley, contemplatively, "if the love-business went, something else would take its place. Morphia perhaps. A little morphine in all the air. It would be wonderfully refreshing for everybody." "The government releasing ether into the air on Saturdays, for a cheerful weekend!" said Jack. "Sounds all right, but where should we be by Wednesday?" "So long as you can forget your body you are happy," said Lady Bennerley. "And the moment you begin to be aware of your body, you are wretched. So, if civilization is any good, it has to help us to forget our bodies, and then time passes happily without our knowing it." "Help us to get rid of our bodies altogether," said Winterslow. "It's quite time man began to improve on his own nature, especially the physical side of it." "Imagine if we floated like tobacco smoke," said Connie. "It won't happen," said Dukes. "Our old show will come flop; our civilization is going to fall. It's going down the bottomless pit, down the chasm. And believe me, the only bridge across the chasm will be the phallus!" "Oh do! _do_ be impossible, General!" cried Olive. "I believe our civilization is going to collapse," said Aunt Eva. "And what will come after it?" asked Clifford. "I haven't the faintest idea, but something, I suppose," said the elderly lady. "Connie says people like wisps of smoke, and Olive says immunised women, and babies in bottles, and Dukes says the phallus is the bridge to what comes next. I wonder what it will really be?" said Clifford. "Oh, don't bother! let's get on with today," said Olive. "Only hurry up with the breeding bottle, and let us poor women off."

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  And this was the very point I had failed to perceive. . . . It was truly a simple reason—nothing more than that, where women were concerned, I was devoid of that shyness which other boys possess innately. In order to escape the charge that I am simply crediting the person I was in those days with powers of judgment I did not possess until today, let me cite here a passage from something I wrote at the age of fifteen: . . . Ryotaro lost no time in making himself a part of this new circle of friends. He believed confidently that he could conquer his reasonless melancholy and ennui by being—or pretending to be—even a little cheerful. Credulity, the acme of belief, had left him in a state of incandescent repose. Whenever he joined in some mean jest or prank he always told himself: "Now I'm not blue, now I'm not bored." He styled this "forgetting troubles." Most people are always doubtful as to whether they are happy or not, cheerful or not. This is the normal state of happiness, as doubt is a most natural thing. Ryotaro alone declares “I am happy," and convinces himself that it is true. Because of this, people are inclined to believe in his so-called "unquestionable happiness." And at last a faint but real Ming is confined in a powerful machine of falsehood. The machine sets to work mightily. And people do not even notice that he is a mass of "self-deceit." . . . ". . . The machine sets to work mightily. . . ." Was it not actually working mightily in my case? It is a common failing of childhood to think that if one makes a hero out of a demon the demon will be satisfied. So then, the time had come when somehow or other I had to make a start in life. The supply of knowledge with which I was equipped for the journey consisted of little more than the many novels I had read, a sex encyclopedia for home use, the pornography that passed from hand to hand among the students, and an abundance of naïve dirty jokes heard from friends on nights of field exercises. Finally, even more important than all these, there was also the burning curiosity that would be my faithful traveling companion. To begin my journey I had to take a posture of departure at the gate, and for this the determination to be "a machine of falsehood" was sufficient. I studied many novels minutely, investigating how boys my age felt about life, how they spoke to themselves.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  There were people staying in the house, among them Clifford's Aunt Eva, Lady Bennerley. She was a thin woman of sixty, with a red nose, a widow, and still something of a "grande dame." She belonged to one of the best families, and had the character to carry it off. Connie liked her, she was so perfectly simple and frank, as far as she intended to be frank, and superficially kind. Inside herself she was a past-mistress in holding her own, and holding other people a little lower. She was not at all a snob: far too sure of herself. She was perfect at the social sport of coolly holding her own, and making other people defer to her. She was kind to Connie, and tried to worm into her woman's soul with the sharp gimlet of her well-born observations. "You're quite wonderful, in my opinion," she said to Connie. "You've done wonders for Clifford. I never saw any budding genius myself, and there he is all the rage."--Aunt Eva was quite complacently proud of Clifford's success. Another feather in the family cap! She didn't care a straw about his books, but why should she? "Oh, I don't think it's my doing," said Connie. "It must be! Can't be anybody else's. And it seems to me you don't get enough out of it." "How?" "Look at the way you are shut up here. I said to Clifford: If that child rebels one day you'll have yourself to thank!" "But Clifford never denies me anything," said Connie. "Look here, my dear child,"--and Lady Bennerley laid her thin hand on Connie's arm. "A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it. Believe me!" And she took another sip of brandy, which maybe was her form of repentance. "But I do live my life, don't I?" "Not in my idea! Clifford should bring you to London, and let you go about. His sort of friends are all right for him, but what are they for you? If I were you I should think it wasn't good enough. You'll let your youth slip by, and you'll spend your old age, and your middle age too, repenting it." Her ladyship lapsed into contemplative silence, soothed by the brandy. But Connie was not keen on going to London, and being steered into the smart world by Lady Bennerley. She didn't feel really smart, it wasn't interesting. And she did feel the peculiar, withering coldness under it all; like the soil of Labrador, which has gay little flowers on its surface, and a foot down is frozen. Tommy Dukes was at Wragby, and another man, Harry Winterslow, and Jack Strangeways with his wife Olive. The talk was much more desultory than when only the cronies were there, and everybody was a bit bored, for the weather was bad, and there was only billiards, and the pianola to dance to.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "Oh nothing: just his manner; and he said he knew nothing about keys." "There may be one in father's study. Betts knows them all; they're all there. I'll get him to look." "Oh do!" she said. "So Mellors was almost rude?" "Oh, nothing, really! But I don't think he wanted me to have the freedom of the castle, quite." "I don't suppose he did." "Still, I don't see why he should mind. It's not his home, after all! It's not his private abode. I don't see why I shouldn't sit there if I want to." "Quite!" said Clifford. "He thinks too much of himself, that man." "Do you think he does?" "Oh decidedly! He thinks he's something exceptional. You know he had a wife he didn't get on with, so he joined up in 1915 and was sent out to India, I believe. Anyhow he was blacksmith to the cavalry in Egypt for a time; always was connected with horses, a clever fellow that way. Then some Indian colonel took a fancy to him, and he was made a lieutenant. Yes, they gave him a commission. I believe he went back to India with his colonel, and up to the north-west frontier. He was ill; he has a pension. He didn't come out of the army till last year, I believe, and then, naturally, it isn't easy for a man like that to get back to his own level. He's bound to flounder. But he does his duty all right, as far as I'm concerned. Only I'm not having any of the Lieutenant Mellors touch." "How could they make him an officer when he speaks broad Derbyshire?" "He doesn't ... except by fits and starts. He can speak perfectly well, for him. I suppose he has an idea if he's come down to the ranks again, he'd better speak as the ranks speak." "Why didn't you tell me about him before?" "Oh, I've no patience with these romances. They're the ruin of all order. It's a thousand pities they ever happened." Connie was inclined to agree. What was the good of discontented people who fitted in nowhere? In the spell of fine weather Clifford, too, decided to go to the wood. The wind was cold, but not so tiresome, and the sunshine was like life itself, warm and full. "It's amazing," said Connie, "how different one feels when there's a really fresh fine day. Usually one feels the very air is half dead. People are killing the very air." "Do you think people are doing it?" he asked. "I do. The steam of so much boredom, and discontent and anger out of all the people, just kills the vitality in the air. I'm sure of it." "Perhaps some condition of the atmosphere lowers the vitality of the people?" he said. "No, it's man that poisons the universe," she asserted. "Fouls his own nest," remarked Clifford.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "There might even be real men, in the next phase," said Tommy. "Real, intelligent, wholesome men, and wholesome nice women! Wouldn't that be a change, an enormous change from us? _We're_ not men, and the women aren't women. We're only cerebrating make-shifts, mechanical and intellectual experiments. There may even come a civilization of genuine men and women, instead of our little lot of clever-jacks, all at the intelligence-age of seven. It would be even more amazing than men of smoke or babies in bottles." "Oh, when people begin to talk about real women, I give up," said Olive. "Certainly nothing but the spirit in us is worth having," said Winterslow. "Spirits!" said Jack, drinking his whiskey and soda. "Think so? Give me the resurrection of the body!" said Dukes. "But it'll come, in time, when we've shoved the cerebral stone away a bit, the money and the rest. Then we'll get a democracy of touch, instead of a democracy of pocket." Something echoed inside Connie: "Give me the democracy of touch, the resurrection of the body!" She didn't at all know what it meant, but it comforted her, as meaningless things may do. Anyhow everything was terribly silly, and she was exasperatedly bored by it all, by Clifford, by Aunt Eva, by Olive and Jack, and Winterslow, and even by Dukes. Talk, talk, talk! What hell it was, the continual rattle of it! Then, when all the people went, it was no better. She continued plodding on, but exasperation and irritation had got hold of her lower body, she couldn't escape. The days seemed to grind by, with curious painfulness, yet nothing happened. Only she was getting thinner; even the housekeeper noticed it, and asked her about herself. Even Tommy Dukes insisted she was not well, though she said she was all right. Only she began to be afraid of the ghastly white tombstones, that peculiar loathsome whiteness of Carrara marble, detestable as false teeth, which stuck up on the hillside, under Tevershall church, and which she saw with such grim plainness from the park. The bristling of the hideous false teeth of tombstones on the hill affected her with a grisly kind of horror. She felt the time not far off when she would be buried there, added to the ghastly host under the tombstones and the monuments, in these filthy Midlands. She needed help, and she knew it; so she wrote a little _cri de coeur_ to her sister, Hilda. "I'm not well lately, and I don't know what's the matter with me." Down posted Hilda from Scotland, where she had taken up her abode. She came in March, alone, driving herself in a nimble two-seater. Up the drive she came, tooting up the incline, then sweeping round the oval of grass, where the two great wild beech trees stood, on the flat in front of the house. Connie had run out to the steps. Hilda pulled up her car, got out, and kissed her sister.

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  Because it was unusual for residents to author publications, the Hopkins faculty responded very positively. Their plaudits were gratifying but also a bit puzzling to me because writing came so easily. J ohn Whitehorn always dressed in a white shirt, necktie, and brown suit. We residents speculated he had two or three identical suits, since we never saw him wear anything else. The entire resident class was expected to attend his annual cocktail party at the beginning of every academic year, and we all dreaded it: we had to stand for hours dressed in our suits and ties and were served a small glass of sherry and no other food or drink. During our third year, the five other third-year residents and I spent the entire day every Friday with Dr. Whitehorn. We sat in the large corner conference room adjacent to his office as he interviewed each of his hospitalized patients. Dr. Whitehorn and the patient sat in upholstered chairs, while we eight residents sat a few feet away in wooden chairs. Some interviews lasted only ten or fifteen minutes, others lasted an hour, and sometimes two or three hours. His publication “Guide to Interviewing and Clinical Personality Study” was used in most psychiatric training programs in the United States at the time and offered the neophyte a systematic approach to the clinical interview, but his own interviewing style was anything but systematic. He rarely inquired about symptoms or areas of distress, but instead followed a plan of “Let the patient teach you.” Now, over half a century later, a few examples still remain in mind: one patient was writing his PhD thesis on the Spanish Armada, another was an expert on Joan of Arc, and another was a wealthy coffee planter from Brazil. In each of these instances, Dr. Whitehorn interviewed the patient at great length, at least ninety minutes, focusing on the patient’s interests. We learned a great deal about the historical background of the Spanish Armada, the conspiracy against Joan of Arc, the accuracy of Persian archers, the curriculum of professional welding schools, and everything we wanted to know (and more) about the relationship between the quality of the coffee bean and the altitude at which it was grown. At times I was bored and tuned out, however, only to discover, ten or fifteen minutes later, that a hostile, guarded, paranoid patient was now speaking more frankly and personally about his or her inner life. “You and the patient both win,” John Whitehorn said. “The patient’s self-esteem is raised by your interest and your willingness to be taught by him, and you are edified and will eventually learn all you need to know about his illness.” After the morning interviews, we had a two-hour lunch served in his large, comfortable office on good bone china in leisurely southern style: a large salad, sandwiches, codfish cakes, and, my favorite dish until this very day, Chesapeake Bay crab cakes.

• From Another Country (1962)

  “You writing?” asked Lorenzo, still smiling. For he was one of those poets who escaped the terrors of writing by writing all the time. He carried a small notebook with him wherever he went and scribbled in it, and when he got drunk enough, read the results aloud. It lay before him, closed, on the table now. “I’m trying,” said Vivaldo. He looked above their heads at the window, out into the streets. “It’s a dead night.” “It sure is,” said Harold. He looked over at Vivaldo with his little smile. “Where’s your chick, man? Don’t tell me she’s got away.” “No. She’s uptown, at some kind of family deal.” He leaned forward. “We have a deal, dig, she won’t bug me with her family and I won’t bug her with mine.” Belle giggled again. Lorenzo laughed. “You ought to bring them together. It’d be the biggest battle since the Civil War.” “Or since Romeo and Juliet,” Belle suggested. “I’ve been trying to do that in a long poem,” Lorenzo said, “you know, Romeo and Juliet today, only she’s black and he’s white—” “And Mercutio’s passing,” grinned Vivaldo. “Yes. And everybody else is all fucked up—” “Call it,” suggested Harold, “Pickaninnies Everywhere.” “Or Everybody’s Pickaninnies.” “Or, Checkers, Anyone?” They all howled. Belle, still clinging to her thumbnail, laughed until tears rolled down her face. “You people are high!” said Vivaldo. This sent them off again. “Baby,” cried Lorenzo, “one day, you’ve got to tell me how you figured that out!” “You want to turn on?” Harold asked. It had been a long time. He had become bored by the people with whom one turned on, and really rather bored with marijuana. Either it did not derange his senses enough, or he was already more than sufficiently deranged. And he found the hangover crushing and it interfered with his work and he had never been able to make love on it. Still, it had been a long time. It was only ten past eleven, he did not know what he was going to do with himself. He wanted to enter into, or to forget, the chaos at his center. “Maybe,” he said. “Let me buy a round first. What’re you drinking?” “We could make it on back to my pad,” said Harold, scowling his little scowl. “I’m having beer,” said Lorenzo. His expression indicated that he would rather have had something else, but did not wish to seem to be taking advantage of Vivaldo. Vivaldo turned to Belle. “And you?” She dropped her hand and leaned forward. “Do you think I could have a brandy Alexander?” “God,” he said, “if you can drink it, I guess they can make it.” She leaned back again, unsmiling, oddly ladylike, and he looked at Harold. “Beer, dad,” Harold said. “Then we’ll split.”

• From Another Country (1962)

  It was filled with shapeless, filthy women with whom Jane drank, apparently, sometimes, during the day; and pale, untidy, sullen men, who worked on the docks, and resented seeing him there. He wanted to go, but he was trying to wait for the rain to let up a little. He was bored speechless with Jane’s chatter about her paintings, and he was ashamed of Vivaldo for putting up with it. How had the fight begun? He had always blamed it on Jane. Finally, in order not to go to sleep, he had begun to tease Jane a little; but this teasing revealed, of course, how he really felt about her, and she was not slow to realize it. Vivaldo watched them with a faint, wary smile. He, too, was bored, and found Jane’s pretensions intolerable. “Anyway,” Jane said, “you aren’t an artist and so I don’t see how you can possibly judge the work I do—” “Oh, stop it,” said Vivaldo. “Do you know how silly you sound? You mean you just paint for this half-assed gang of painters down here?” “Oh, let her swing, man,” Rufus said, beginning to enjoy himself. He leaned forward, grinning at Jane in a way at once lewd and sardonic. “This chick’s too deep for us, man, we can’t dig that shit she’s putting down.” “You’re the snobs,” she said, “not I. I bet you I’ve reached more people, honest, hard-working, ignorant people, right here in his bar, than either of you ever reach. Those people you hang out with are dead, man—at least, these people are alive.” Rufus laughed. “I thought it smelled funny in here. So that’s it. Shit. It’s life, huh?” And he laughed again. But he was also aware that they were beginning to attract attention, and he glanced at the windows where the rain streamed down, saying to himself. Okay, Rufus, behave yourself. And he leaned back in the booth, where he sat facing Jane and Vivaldo. He had reached her, and she struck back with the only weapon she had, a shapeless instrument which might once have been fury. “It doesn’t smell any worse in here than it does where you come from, baby.” Vivaldo and Rufus looked at each other. Vivaldo’s lips turned white. He said, “You say another word, baby, and I’m going to knock your teeth, both of them, right down your throat.” This profoundly delighted her. She became Bette Davis at once, and shouted at the top of her voice, “Are you threatening me?” Everyone turned to look at them. “Oh, shit,” said Rufus, “let’s go.” “Yes,” said Vivaldo, “let’s get out of here.” He looked at Jane. “Move. You filthy bitch.” And now she was contrite. She leaned forward and grabbed Rufus’ hand. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.” He tried to pull his hand away; she held on.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Certainly not the three people whose table he joined, who were also running out of money and who were not on a tab. One of these was the Canadian-born poet, Lorenzo, moon-faced, with much curly hair; and his girl, a refugee from the Texas backwater, scissor-faced, with much straight hair, and a thumb-chewing giggle; and their sidekick, older, lantern-jawed, with tortured lips, who scowled when he was pleased—which was rare—and smiled a pallid smile when he was frightened—which was almost always—so that he enjoyed the reputation of being extremely good-natured. “Hi, Vi,” cried the poet, “Come on over and join us!” There was, indeed, nothing else to do, unless he left the bar; so he ordered himself a drink and sat down. They were all drinking beer, and most of their beer was gone. He was introduced, for perhaps the thirtieth time, to Belle and to Harold. “How are you, man?” Lorenzo asked. “Nobody ever sees you any more.” He had an open, boyish grin, and it summed him up precisely, even though he was beginning to be rather old for a boy. Still, and especially by contrast with his boy and his girl, he seemed the most vivid person at the table and Vivaldo rather liked him. “I’m up and I’m down,” Vivaldo said—and Belle giggled, chewing on her thumb—“and I’m turning into a serious person; that’s why you never see me any more.” “You writing?” asked Lorenzo, still smiling. For he was one of those poets who escaped the terrors of writing by writing all the time. He carried a small notebook with him wherever he went and scribbled in it, and when he got drunk enough, read the results aloud. It lay before him, closed, on the table now. “I’m trying,” said Vivaldo. He looked above their heads at the window, out into the streets. “It’s a dead night.” “It sure is,” said Harold. He looked over at Vivaldo with his little smile. “Where’s your chick, man? Don’t tell me she’s got away.” “No. She’s uptown, at some kind of family deal.” He leaned forward. “We have a deal, dig, she won’t bug me with her family and I won’t bug her with mine.” Belle giggled again. Lorenzo laughed. “You ought to bring them together. It’d be the biggest battle since the Civil War.” “Or since Romeo and Juliet,” Belle suggested. “I’ve been trying to do that in a long poem,” Lorenzo said, “you know, Romeo and Juliet today, only she’s black and he’s white—” “And Mercutio’s passing,” grinned Vivaldo. “Yes. And everybody else is all fucked up—” “Call it,” suggested Harold, “Pickaninnies Everywhere.” “Or Everybody’s Pickaninnies.” “Or, Checkers, Anyone?” They all howled. Belle, still clinging to her thumbnail, laughed until tears rolled down her face. “You people are high!” said Vivaldo. This sent them off again. “Baby,” cried Lorenzo, “one day, you’ve got to tell me how you figured that out!” “You want to turn on?” Harold asked.

• From Little Women (1868)

  Next morning, Meg did not appear till ten o'clock. Her solitary breakfast did not taste good, and the room seemed lonely and untidy, for Jo had not filled the vases, Beth had not dusted, and Amy's books lay scattered about. Nothing was neat and pleasant but 'Marmee's corner', which looked as usual. And there Meg sat, to 'rest and read', which meant to yawn and imagine what pretty summer dresses she would get with her salary. Jo spent the morning on the river with Laurie and the afternoon reading and crying over The Wide, Wide World , up in the apple tree. Beth began by rummaging everything out of the big closet where her family resided, but getting tired before half done, she left her establishment topsy-turvy and went to her music, rejoicing that she had no dishes to wash. Amy arranged her bower, put on her best white frock, smoothed her curls, and sat down to draw under the honeysuckle, hoping someone would see and inquire who the young artist was. As no one appeared but an inquisitive daddy-longlegs, who examined her work with interest, she went to walk, got caught in a shower, and came home dripping. At teatime they compared notes, and all agreed that it had been a delightful, though unusually long day. Meg, who went shopping in the afternoon and got a 'sweet blue muslin', had discovered, after she had cut the breadths off, that it wouldn't wash, which mishap made her slightly cross. Jo had burned the skin off her nose boating, and got a raging headache by reading too long. Beth was worried by the confusion of her closet and the difficulty of learning three or four songs at once, and Amy deeply regretted the damage done her frock, for Katy Brown's party was to be the next day and now like Flora McFlimsey, she had 'nothing to wear'. But these were mere trifles, and they assured their mother that the experiment was working finely. She smiled, said nothing, and with Hannah's help did their neglected work, keeping home pleasant and the domestic machinery running smoothly. It was astonishing what a peculiar and uncomfortable state of things was produced by the 'resting and reveling' process. The days kept getting longer and longer, the weather was unusually variable and so were tempers; an unsettled feeling possessed everyone, and Satan found plenty of mischief for the idle hands to do. As the height of luxury, Meg put out some of her sewing, and then found time hang so heavily, that she fell to snipping and spoiling her clothes in her attempts to furbish them up a la Moffat. Jo read till her eyes gave out and she was sick of books, got so fidgety that even good-natured Laurie had a quarrel with her, and so reduced in spirits that she desperately wished she had gone with Aunt March.

• From Another Country (1962)

  He remembered a rainy night last winter, when he had just come in from a gig in Boston, and he and Vivaldo had gone out with Jane. He had never really understood what Vivaldo saw in Jane, who was too old for him, and combative and dirty; her gray hair was never combed, her sweaters, of which she seemed to possess thousands, were all equally raveled and shapeless; and her blue jeans were baggy and covered with paint. “She dresses like a goddamn bull dagger,” Rufus had told Vivaldo once, and then laughed at Vivaldo’s horrified expression. His face had puckered as though someone had just cracked a rotten egg. But he had never really hated Jane until this rainy night. It had been a terrible night, with rain pouring down like great tin buckets, filling the air with a roaring, whining clatter, and making lights and streets and buildings as fluid as itself. It battered and streamed against the windows of the fetid, poor-man’s bar Jane had brought them to, a bar where they knew no one. It was filled with shapeless, filthy women with whom Jane drank, apparently, sometimes, during the day; and pale, untidy, sullen men, who worked on the docks, and resented seeing him there. He wanted to go, but he was trying to wait for the rain to let up a little. He was bored speechless with Jane’s chatter about her paintings, and he was ashamed of Vivaldo for putting up with it. How had the fight begun? He had always blamed it on Jane. Finally, in order not to go to sleep, he had begun to tease Jane a little; but this teasing revealed, of course, how he really felt about her, and she was not slow to realize it. Vivaldo watched them with a faint, wary smile. He, too, was bored, and found Jane’s pretensions intolerable. “Anyway,” Jane said, “you aren’t an artist and so I don’t see how you can possibly judge the work I do—” “Oh, stop it,” said Vivaldo. “Do you know how silly you sound? You mean you just paint for this half-assed gang of painters down here?” “Oh, let her swing, man,” Rufus said, beginning to enjoy himself. He leaned forward, grinning at Jane in a way at once lewd and sardonic. “This chick’s too deep for us, man, we can’t dig that shit she’s putting down.” “You’re the snobs,” she said, “not I. I bet you I’ve reached more people, honest, hard-working, ignorant people, right here in his bar, than either of you ever reach. Those people you hang out with are dead , man—at least, these people are alive .” Rufus laughed. “I thought it smelled funny in here. So that’s it. Shit. It’s life, huh?” And he laughed again. But he was also aware that they were beginning to attract attention, and he glanced at the windows where the rain streamed down, saying to himself.