Chagrin

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 Little Women (1868)

  crazy plan." "That's the fun of it," began Laurie, who had got a willful fit on him and was possessed to break out of bounds in some way. "Hold your tongue!" cried Jo, covering her ears. "'Prunes and prisms' are my doom, and I may as well make up my mind to it. I came here to moralize, not to hear things that make me skip to think of." "I know Meg would wet-blanket such a proposal, but I thought you had more spirit," began Laurie insinuatingly. "Bad boy, be quiet! Sit down and think of your own sins, don't go making me add to mine. If I get your grandpa to apologize for the shaking, will you give up running away?" asked Jo seriously. "Yes, but you won't do it," answered Laurie, who wished to make up, but felt that his outraged dignity must be appeased first. "If I can manage the young one, I can the old one," muttered Jo, as she walked away, leaving Laurie bent over a railroad map with his head propped up on both hands. "Come in!" and Mr. Laurence's gruff voice sounded gruffer than ever, as Jo tapped at his door. "It's only me, Sir, come to return a book," she said blandly, as she entered. "Want any more?" asked the old gentleman, looking grim and vexed, but trying not to show it. "Yes, please. I like old Sam so well, I think I'll try the second volume," returned Jo, hoping to propitiate him by accepting a second dose of Boswell's Johnson, as he had recommended that lively work. The shaggy eyebrows unbent a little as he rolled the steps toward the shelf where the Johnsonian literature was placed. Jo skipped up, and sitting on the top step, affected to be searching for her book, but was really wondering how best to introduce the dangerous object of her visit. Mr. Laurence seemed to suspect that something was brewing in her mind, for after taking several brisk turns about the room, he faced round on her, speaking so abruptly that Rasselas tumbled face downward on the floor. "What has that boy been about? Don't try to shield him. I know he has been

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  We had often eyed each other knowingly, wryly acknowledging that we were both struggling, so it was good to be spending more time together. Charlotte wanted to be a novelist—“She can really write,” Dorothy Bednarowska had told me, and she had already introduced Charlotte to a literary agent. But Charlotte found the academic study of literature difficult. Her work was brilliant and original, but, she told me, “Studying literature so critically and technically is bad for my writing.” Fearing that it would cramp her own style, she refused to study the novel at all. As was customary at Oxford, we had to read our essays aloud to our tutor during the weekly tutorial, and Charlotte was obviously perplexed, even repelled, by mine. “I don’t know how you churn out all this stuff,” she had said to me once. “It’s beautiful in a way. Your essays are like Gothic cathedrals, with all the right scholars and theories slotted together and built into a massive structure of conformity.” I wasn’t sure that I liked the sound of that. I enjoyed reading the literary criticism that Charlotte hated. I found it fun to weigh one scholar against another and make a pattern of my own out of other people’s thoughts. But I was uneasily aware that not much of myself was going into my work and that what I was presenting, week after week, was other people’s ideas rather than my own. But that would not be allowed this term. Our new tutor was a rather affected but reputedly very clever young don at one of the more modern colleges. We sat in his bright, book-lined room overlooking the forecourt, watching some students teasing the goldfish in the moat. Dr. Brentwood Smyth sprawled elegantly in a large leather armchair, leaping up occasionally to consult a text. “You got a Violet Vaughan Morgan Prize, didn’t you?” he asked me. “Impressive. You must be very good at exams.” I could tell that he did not think much of this accomplishment. He seemed more interested in Charlotte, whose original, thoughtful response to his questions clearly intrigued him. “Oh, don’t let’s have a fixed time!” he cried impatiently when I asked him when we should come for tutorials. “That’s the trouble with the women’s colleges! They’re organized like high schools. Just ring me up when your essay is done.” “What should we write about?” I asked him. “Oh, anything you like! I’m not going to set you one of those dreary exam questions. I’m sure you get quite enough of those at St. Anne’s. No. Just write me something on one poem. Take ‘Frost at Midnight.’ Coleridge. Don’t read any literary criticism. Just live with the poem for a week and then tell me what it means to you. Not to anybody else.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  I smiled as Jane glared at herself in the mirror and threw back her long blond hair. It was indeed difficult to imagine her wilting feebly: she was built on too large a scale, was too confident for that. “Have you ever fainted before?” she asked, suddenly serious. I nodded. “It used to happen quite a lot in the convent. It’s all emotional—all in the mind. At least, that’s what the nuns said.” “Don’t tell me! I was at a convent school, remember? And I suppose you have been under a strain, giving up that lovely peaceful life.” I grimaced slightly, amazed as I always was that even people who knew nuns at first hand had such an unrealistically idyllic image of convent life. “Tell me,” Jane said abruptly, “do you feel guilty?” I thought hard for a moment. People often asked me this, because they seemed to associate Catholicism with guilt. “No,” I said at last, “I don’t feel at all guilty. ‘Guilt’ is not the word.” One of the good things that I had learned from my superiors was that guilt could be pure self-indulgence, a wallowing in the ego. Guilt, I was told, usually sprang from misplaced pride; it might simply be chagrin that you were not as wonderful as you hoped. “I feel sad,” I went on, “a failure, in some ways. But not guilty exactly.” “God, you are lucky!” Jane flung herself down in my armchair. “I feel endlessly, endlessly guilty about sleeping with Mark. It means that I can’t go to Mass, Communion, or confession, because I don’t have a ‘firm purpose of amendment,’ as they say. I’m not going to stop doing it, so I haven’t truly repented. So now I’m that dreadful thing called a ‘lapsed Catholic.’ ” “Do you miss it?” I asked, and then surprised myself by adding, “Do you care?” I noticed how far I had moved in the last few months. This time last year, I could not have imagined living outside the Catholic Church, but now I wasn’t so sure. Did God really care so much about Jane’s sexual life? Was sleeping with her fiancé as bad as telling lies or being unkind, sins which didn’t debar anybody from the sacraments? Jane sat quite still for a moment and then shrugged. “In some ways, no—of course, I don’t care. I can’t believe that God—if there is a God; I must say I do wonder sometimes—is really a narrow-minded prude. And I know that lots of people right here in college just carry on going to Communion, no matter what they do. But I can’t manage that. It seems dishonest . . .” “But do you miss it?” I probed. Jane seemed so much at ease with the world and so bracingly positive that it was hard to imagine her style cramped by a disapproving church.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  On the second finger from the left there was a narrow strip of gold, with a tiny stone - sapphire or diamond, it was too small to tell - mounted upon it. An engagement ring.I blushed - I don’t know why - and forced a smile. ‘Oh, Rhoda! I am glad. Davy! How nice for you.’ I was not glad; it was not nice; the thought of having Rhoda as a sister-in-law - of having any kind of sister-in-law! - was peculiarly horrible. But I must have sounded pleased enough, for they both grew pink and smug.Then Aunt Rosina nodded towards my own hand. ‘No sign of a ring on your finger yet, Nance?’I saw Alice shift in her seat, and shook my head: ‘Not yet, no.’ Father opened his mouth to speak; I could not bear, however, for the conversation to run down that particular road. I got up, and retrieved my bags. ‘I’ve bought you all some things,’ I said, ‘from London.’There were murmurs and little interested ‘Oh’s at that. Mother said I shouldn’t have, but reached for her spectacles and looked expectant. I went to my Aunt, first, and handed her a bag full of packages. ‘These are for Uncle Joe, and Mike and the girls. This is for you.’ George next: I had bought him a silver hip-flask. Then Liza, and the baby ... I went all around the crowded room, and finished up at Alice: ‘This is for you.’ Her parcel - a hat, in a hat box - was the biggest. She took it from me with the smallest, straightest, stiffest smile you ever saw, and began slowly and self-consciously to pull at its ribbons.Now everybody had a gift but me. I sat and watched as they tore at their packages, chewing at my knuckle and smiling into my hand. One by one the objects appeared, and were turned and examined in the late morning light. The room grew quite hushed.‘My word, Nancy,’ said Father at last, ‘you have done us proud.’ I had bought him a watch-guard, thick and bright as the one that Walter wore; he held it in his hand, and it seemed brighter than ever against the red of his palm, the faded wool of his jacket. He laughed: ‘I shall look quite the thing in this, now, shan’t I?’ The laugh, however, didn’t sound quite natural.I looked at Mother. She had a silver-backed brush and a hand-glass to match: they sat in their wrappers, in her lap, as if she were afraid to pick them up.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  But to my dismay, I found a new obstacle. This term I was sent out to study with a young tutor at one of the men’s colleges. My tutorial partner was Charlotte, an immensely gifted girl who had her own troubles. Her mother had died during our first year and Charlotte had become anorexic. Even though she seemed over the worst, she was still thin and wary of food. We had often eyed each other knowingly, wryly acknowledging that we were both struggling, so it was good to be spending more time together. Charlotte wanted to be a novelist—“She can really write,” Dorothy Bednarowska had told me, and she had already introduced Charlotte to a literary agent. But Charlotte found the academic study of literature difficult. Her work was brilliant and original, but, she told me, “Studying literature so critically and technically is bad for my writing.” Fearing that it would cramp her own style, she refused to study the novel at all. As was customary at Oxford, we had to read our essays aloud to our tutor during the weekly tutorial, and Charlotte was obviously perplexed, even repelled, by mine. “I don’t know how you churn out all this stuff,” she had said to me once. “It’s beautiful in a way. Your essays are like Gothic cathedrals, with all the right scholars and theories slotted together and built into a massive structure of conformity.” I wasn’t sure that I liked the sound of that. I enjoyed reading the literary criticism that Charlotte hated. I found it fun to weigh one scholar against another and make a pattern of my own out of other people’s thoughts. But I was uneasily aware that not much of myself was going into my work and that what I was presenting, week after week, was other people’s ideas rather than my own. But that would not be allowed this term. Our new tutor was a rather affected but reputedly very clever young don at one of the more modern colleges. We sat in his bright, book-lined room overlooking the forecourt, watching some students teasing the goldfish in the moat. Dr. Brentwood Smyth sprawled elegantly in a large leather armchair, leaping up occasionally to consult a text. “You got a Violet Vaughan Morgan Prize, didn’t you?” he asked me. “Impressive. You must be very good at exams.” I could tell that he did not think much of this accomplishment. He seemed more interested in Charlotte, whose original, thoughtful response to his questions clearly intrigued him. “Oh, don’t let’s have a fixed time!” he cried impatiently when I asked him when we should come for tutorials. “That’s the trouble with the women’s colleges! They’re organized like high schools. Just ring me up when your essay is done.” “What should we write about?” I asked him.

• From Wild (2012)

  I’d last been home the week before I left to hike the PCT. I’d driven up north to say goodbye to Eddie and to visit my mother’s grave, knowing I wouldn’t return to Minnesota after I finished my hike. I worked my last shift at the restaurant where I waited tables in Minneapolis and drove three hours north, arriving at one in the morning. I’d planned to park in the driveway and sleep in the back of my truck so as not to disturb anyone in the house, but when I arrived, there was a party in progress. The house was lit up, and in the yard there was a bonfire; tents were scattered all around, and loud music blared from speakers propped in the grass. It was the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. I got out of my truck and walked through throngs of people, most of them unknown to me. I was taken aback, but not surprised—by either the raucous nature of the party or the fact that I hadn’t been invited. It was only further evidence of how profoundly things had changed. “Cheryl!” Leif bellowed when I entered the garage packed with people. I pushed my way toward him through the crowd and we embraced. “I’m tripping on ’shrooms,” he told me cheerfully, clutching too hard on my arm. “Where’s Eddie?” I asked. “I don’t know, but I got something to show you,” he said, tugging on me. “It’s guaranteed to piss you off.” I followed him into the yard and up the front stairs of our house and through the door until we were standing before our kitchen table. It was the same one we’d had in the Tree Loft apartments when we were kids, the one our mother had bought for ten bucks, the one we’d eaten on that first night we met Eddie, when we thought we were Chinese because we sat on the floor. It was the height of a normal table now. After we’d moved out of Tree Loft and into a regular house with Eddie, he’d cut off the short legs and bolted a barrel to the bottom and we’d eaten off of it all these years sitting in chairs. The table had never been fancy, and it had become less so over the years, cracking in places that Eddie repaired with wood putty, but it had been ours. Or at least it had been until that night the week before I left to go hike the PCT. Now the surface of the table was smattered with freshly carved words and phrases, and names and initials of people linked by plus signs or rimmed with hearts, obviously made by those at the party. As we looked on, a teenaged boy I didn’t know carved into the table’s surface with a Swiss army knife.

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  Although she did almost all of the talking, that conversation with his girlfriend was the most emotionally direct the two had ever had. “The last time I ever said anything emotional to someone was . . . I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it was with her. But actually it might have been the last time I talked to you.” Cole and I had been catching up on FaceTime. He was midway through his freshman year in college, and I was checking in to see how he’d resolved the conflict between his personal values and those of the culture in which he found himself. Most of his classmates were male, as he’d expected, and there was a lot of what passed for friendly ribbing: giving each other “love taps” on the back of the head; blocking one another’s paths, then pretending to pick a fight; grabbing each other’s asses; pretending to lean in for a kiss. Giving someone a hard time, Cole said, was always “easy humor,” but it could slide into something more troubling pretty quickly. When one of his dorm mates joked to another, “I’m going to piss on you in your sleep,” for example, the other boy shot back, “If you do, I’ll fucking rape you.” For better or worse, Cole said, that sort of comment no longer jarred him. Although he had been adamantly against the epithet “fag” when we met, Cole found himself using that more, too, reasoning, as other boys did, that it was “the equivalent of ‘You suck’ or ‘You’re lame.’” Yet at least one of his friends had revealed himself to be legitimately homophobic, asserting that being gay was un-American (“I didn’t know that about him until after we became friends,” Cole hastened to add). And Cole had not met a single openly LGBTQ+ student at the school. He certainly wouldn’t want to be out in this environment if he were gay. Nor, he said, would he want to be Asian—the two Asian American boys in his dorm were ostracized, treated like foreigners; both were miserable. I pointed out, gently, that being able to silently disapprove of others’ bigotry or homophobia was a luxury conferred by his own race and sexuality; he’d once told me he hoped to be “braver than that.” Cole nodded. “I do feel kind of like a cop-out for letting all the little things slide,” he said. “It’s a cop-out to not fight the good fight. But, you know, there was that thing I tried sophomore year. . . . It just didn’t work. I could try to be a social justice warrior here, but I don’t think anyone would listen to me. And I’d have no friends.”

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  age now. OUTSIDE, the Countess lit up again, took a few puffs, then flicked the butt into the woods, where it sparked. Lamb raced after it and stomped it out before it could catch fire. “That’s a dangerous thing to do, Charlotte, especially this time of year, with everything so dry.” “I’ve always lived dangerously, Dear Boy.” “Now, Charlotte ... as much as I like you, I can’t let you burn down the island. There are laws ...” “Oh, fuck the laws ... fuck the island!” She took Vix’s hand, raised it to her lips, and kissed it twice. “Remember this, Precious Child ... nothing matters but the moment. There might be no tomorrow and even if there is, nobody gives a damn.” Vix didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. Or if she was waiting for her hand to be kissed. Vix hoped not. She was relieved when the Countess laughed and headed back to the house, where she asked for another vodka and tonic. This time Tawny put a hand on her arm. “Tawny is my savior,” the Countess said. “I don’t know where I’d be without her. If only she didn’t have that family. Such a burden. Such an albatross. Why anyone has children when they could have dogs is beyond me.” Sweetie raised her head and yawned as if she understood perfectly. Vix was miffed. Two minutes ago she’d been Precious Child, now she was a burden, an albatross around her mother’s neck. “You get everything from a dog you’d get from a child,” the Countess continued, “plus total acceptance, absolute gratitude. I’ve never met a grateful child, have you?” Abby grabbed Lamb’s hand and they smiled at each other knowingly, probably wishing they had three dogs instead of three teenagers. Where were Caitlin and Sharkey? They’d promised to be back in time for dinner. When Abby brought up the subject of the scholarship Vix held her breath. This is it, she thought, the Big Picture. She still wasn’t sure what the Big Picture was but Tawny had been in such a good mood all day

• From City of Night (1963)

  “Now, sit near me,” he said. “Yes, do bring that chair over. Not that one: the other one, it’s more comfortable, and I want you to be Comfortable.... Careful, now—my manuscripts. Push them aside, child—neatly, neatly—I was looking through some things before you came.” Sighing deeply, he waves a chubby hand over the room, indicating the books and manuscripts littering the floor. “They are: Relics—from another life!... Now, first of all, let me explain some exterior situations: You see me here, now, in this hospital bed, where Ive been for months and months; Suffice it to say: an Eternity! An automobile struck me—and it would have been Poetic Justice, yes, if I could say I had been hit by a gigantic truck—driven by a young handsome truckdriver, who knelt to gather my shattered heap of flesh (you see: I say ‘shattered heap of flesh’—I am frank with myself: Life wrecks all illusions—but you will find that out later), and to whom—had it been just such a handsome young truckdriver, though the very instrument of my infirmity—I would owe my life: There would have been something extravagantly Sexual—” He affected a slight tremor. “—about being struck by a truck—ummm—Well!... But, oh, the perversity of life: no such magnificent luck. It was no such earthangel who ran into me: but—ah, perversity, dear boy, keep it in mind: Perversity!—I was hit by a nervous, high-strung, skinny, homely, ineffectual, simpering oldmaid from Oklahoma, vainly trying to compete with our own glorious system of cabs! Not that I have anything against Oklahoma. As you will learn, I have some fond memories of—But that comes later.... And so it has taken all those months. This frail mechanism (if I may be allowed the indiscretion of referring to myself as ‘frail’—ha, ha—but I speak only relatively)—this frail mechanism called the body has refused to heal. In other words, the hip bone is no longer connected to the—How does that song go?... Anyway, you see me now rigged up in a 20th-century torture—not entirely unlike those used by the Inquisitors of old.... But do bring your chair closer, youngman—I want to hear every word you say, every phrase.... You will notice I have a hearing aid—which at times I feel must indeed be connected to an electronic god, who whispers all kinds of naughty electronic gossip to me. And, sometimes, alas! falls deadly silent... But you see, I am a bit of a poet, and you will understand—later, because I hope you will become my angel. (Robbie, forgive me, forgive me! )” He entreated Heaven. He draped the tape-measure loosely about his chest, released it momentarily, and let it lie limp along his body. I noticed a little red wire clamp marking a certain spot on the measure. “My dear boy,” he explained, “Robbie is my Guardian Angel—about whom you must hear—but later—perhaps in another interview, a precious interview—because I am also a philosopher.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  “You can fix it, can’t you?” I asked. “Of course,” he said. “If I had the proper tools.” We’d have to temporarily postpone our expedition to the Grand Canyon, he told us. Our first priority now was to head back to Phoenix so he could get his hands on the right tools. “How?” Lori asked. Hitchhiking was one option, Dad said. But it might be hard finding a car with enough room to accommodate four kids and two adults. Since we were all so athletic, and since none of us were whiners, walking home would be no problem. “It’s almost eighty miles,” Lori said. “That’s right,” Dad said. If we covered three miles an hour for eight hours a day, we could make it in three days. We had to leave everything behind except Maureen’s lavender blanket and the canteens. That included Mom’s fruitwood archery set. Since Mom was attached to that archery set, which her father had given her, Dad had Brian and me hide it in an irrigation ditch. We could come back and retrieve it later. Dad carried Maureen. To keep our spirits up, he called out hup, two, three, four, but Mom and Lori refused to march along in step. Eventually, Dad gave up, and it was quiet except for the sound of our feet crunching on the sand and rocks and the wind whipping off the desert. After walking for what seemed like a couple of hours, we reached a motel billboard that we had passed only a minute or so before the car broke down. The occasional car whizzed by, and Dad stuck out his thumb, but none of them stopped. Around midday, a big blue Buick with gleaming chrome bumpers slowed down and pulled onto the shoulder in front of us. A lady with a beauty-parlor hairdo rolled down the window. “You poor people!” she exclaimed. “Are you okay?” She asked us where we were going, and when we told her Phoenix, she offered us a ride. The air-conditioning in the Buick was so cold that goose bumps popped up on my arms and legs. The lady had Lori and me pass around Coca-Colas and sandwiches from a cooler in the foot well. Dad said he wasn’t hungry. The lady kept talking about how her daughter had been driving down the highway and had seen us and, when she got to the lady’s house, had told her about this poor family walking along the side of the road. “And I said to her, I said to my daughter, ‘Why, I can’t leave those poor people out there.’ I told my daughter, ‘Those poor kids must be dying of thirst, poor things.’” “We’re not poor,” I said. She had used that word one too many times. “Of course you’re not,” the lady quickly replied. “I didn’t mean it that way.” But I could tell that she had. The lady grew quiet, and for the rest of the trip, no one said much.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  Tawny SHE WAS GETTING MORE like Darlene every day. Bitter and hard. Slapping Victoria that way! Was she coming unglued again? The Countess had recognized the signs. Had taken her away before she’d done something to herself or one of the children. Ed had given his blessing. Just get well over there, he’d said. Just get over ... what happened. We always knew we wouldn’t have him for long. Be thankful he didn’t suffer at the end. Was Ed God? Hadn’t he been right there in the hospital room? Was that what he called not suffering? The other children need you, Tawny, he’d told her. No, they didn’t need her. They never did need her. They had him. He was the one they depended on. They wouldn’t even notice she was gone. I need you, he’d said. She doubted that, too. Sometimes she felt her mother was trying to take over her mind. She had to fight her every day. Leave me alone, Darlene! she wanted to scream. But she wasn’t one to scream. She should apologize to Victoria. She hadn’t meant to smack her. But if they let her make this move ... oh, what was the point? Victoria had turned into the same restless girl she herself had been, counting the hours until she could escape. They might as well write her off now and be done with it. THE NEXT DAY Tawny approached Vix. “While you’re at it, you might as well marry into it. Then you can take care of your father and me in our old age.” Vix was trying to come up with some smart remark, some remark that might or might not get her face slapped again, when Tawny asked, “What about the brother?” “The brother?” “You know who I mean.” “Sharkey ... you mean, Sharkey?” Vix started to laugh. “Why is that funny? He’s not that way, is he?” “What way is that?” she asked, but Tawny wouldn’t say. Sometimes she thought her mother wanted her to fail so she could say, I told you so. I told you you don’t belong in their world. Her father argued with Tawny on her behalf. “A good education opens doors.” “If she wants an education so badly she can go to UNM,” Tawny said. “She doesn’t need Harvard.” “This is a pointless argument!” Vix cried. “Who knows if I’m even going to get in?” But she did get in. And while she was celebrating on her own, keeping her pride and excitement to herself, Lanie celebrated by announcing her pregnancy.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  She said, ‘We shall have to buy you some new suits. This one - for all its charms - will hardly do for very long. I shall ask Mrs Hooper to send to an outfitters.’ I buttoned my trousers and drew the braces over my arms. ‘I have other costumes,’ I said, ‘at home.’ ‘But you would rather have new ones.’ I frowned. ‘Of course, but - I must fetch my things. I cannot leave them all unsorted.’ ‘I could send a boy for them.’ I pulled on my jacket. ‘I owe my landlady a month in rent.’ ‘I shall send her the money. How much shall I send? A Pound? Two pounds?’ I didn’t answer. Her words had made me understand anew the enormity of the change that was come upon me; and I thought, for the first time, of the visit I should have to make, to Mrs Milne and Gracie. I could hardly shirk my duty there by sending a boy, with a letter and a coin - could I? I knew I could not. ‘I must go myself,’ I said at last. ‘I should like, you know, to say good-bye to my friends.’ She raised an eyebrow: ‘As you wish. I shall have Shilling bring the carriage round, this afternoon.’ ‘I could just as easily catch a tram ...’ ‘I shall send for Shilling.’ She came to me, and set my guardsman’s cap upon my head, and brushed my scarlet shoulders. ‘I think it very naughty of you, to want to go from me at all. I must be sure, at least, of having you come swiftly back!’ My visit to Green Street was every bit as dreary as I knew it must be. I could not bear, somehow, for the brougham to draw up at Mrs Milne’s front door, so I asked Mr Shilling - Diana’s taciturn driver - to drop me at Percy Circus and wait for me there. When I let myself in with my house-key, therefore, it was as if I had just returned from a shopping expedition or a stroll, as I did most days; there was nothing but the length of my absence from them to hint to Mrs Milne and Gracie of my awful change of fortune. I closed the door very softly; still, Grace’s sharp ears must have caught the sound, for I heard her - she was in the parlour - give a cry of ‘Nance!’, and the next moment she had come lolloping down the stairs and had me in a fierce, neck-breaking embrace. Her mother soon followed her to the landing. ‘My dear!’ she called, ‘you’re home, and thank goodness! We’ve been wondering ourselves silly - haven’t we, love ? - about where you might’ve got to.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  In some respects, Deuteronomy reads like a modern document. Had it been implemented, the reformers’ program would have included the establishment of a secular sphere and an independent judiciary separate from the cult;39 a constitutional monarchy, which made the king subject to the Torah like any other citizen;40 and a centralized state with a single, national shrine.41 The reformers also rationalized Israelite theology to rid it of superstitious mythology.42 You could not manipulate God by sacrifice, and God certainly did not live in his temple, which instead of being a sacred “center,” as of old, was merely a house of prayer.43 But a rational, secular ideology is not necessarily any more tolerant than a mythical one. The Deuteronomists’ reform revealed the greatest danger of idolatry. In making their national God, now the only symbol of the divine, endorse the national will, they had crafted a god in their own image. In the past, Marduk’s power had always been challenged by Tiamat’s, Baal’s by Mot’s. For J and E, the divine was so ambiguous that it was impossible to imagine that Yahweh was infallibly on your side or to predict what he would do next. But the Deuteronomists had no doubt that they knew exactly what Yahweh desired and felt it a sacred duty to destroy anything that seemed to oppose his/their interests. When something inherently finite—an image, an ideology, or a polity—is invested with ultimate value, its devotees feel obliged to eliminate any rival claimant, because there can be only one absolute. The type of destruction described by the Deuteronomists is an infallible indication that a sacred symbol has become idolatrous. The vision of the Deuteronomists had been affected by the violence of their time. At about the same time as the sages of India had started to make ahimsa, “nonviolence,” essential to the religious quest, the Deuteronomists depicted Joshua slaughtering the inhabitants of Canaan like the Assyrian generals who had terrorized the region for over two hundred years. In the event, the Deuteronomists’ divinely articulated nationalism ended in tears. Their belligerent theology had blinded them to practical realities on the ground. It was only a matter of time before the great powers turned their attention to Judah. In 611 Pharaoh Necho II marched through Canaan in a bid to counter the rising power of Babylon. In a futile show of defiance, Josiah intercepted the Egyptian army at Megiddo and was killed in the very first encounter.44

• From City of Night (1963)

  I found that you cant always tell a score by his age or appearance: There are the young and the goodlooking ones—the ones about whom you wonder why they prefer to pay someone (who will most likely at least not indicate desiring them back) when there exists—much, much vaster than the hustling world—the world of unpaid, mutually desiring males—the easy pickups.... But often the scores are near-middle-aged or older men. And they are mostly uneffeminate. And so you learn to identify them by their method of approaching you (a means of identification which becomes instinctively surer and easier as you hang around longer). They will make one of the standard oriented remarks; they will offer a cigarette, a cup of coffee, a drink in a bar: anything to give them time in which to decide whether to trust you during those interludes in which there is always a suggestion of violence (although, for some, I would learn later, this is one of the proclaimed appeals—that steady hint of violence); time in which to find out if you’ll fit their particular sexfantasy. I learned that there are a variety of roles to play if you’re hustling: youngman out of a job but looking; dont give a damn-youngman drifting; perrenialhustler easy to makeout; youngman lost in the big city please help me sir. There was, too, the pose learned quickly from the others along the street: the stance, the jivetalk—a mixture of jazz, joint, junk sounds—the almost-disdainful, disinterested, but, at the same time, inviting look; the casual way of dress. And I learned too that to hustle the streets you had to play it almost-illiterate. The merchant marine at the Y had been the first to tell me that With Mr. King I had merely acted instinctively. But I was to learn it graphically from a man I had met on Times Square. As he sat in his apartment studying me, I leafed through a novel by Colette. The man rose, visibly angered. “Do you read books?” he asked me sharply. “Yes,” I answered. “Then Im sorry, I dont want you anymore,” he said; “really masculine men dont read!” Hurriedly, his sexfantasy evaporated, he gave me a few bucks. Minutes later I saw him again on Times Square talking to another youngman.... And so I determined that from now on I would play it dumb. And I would discover that to many of the street people a hustler became more attractive in direct relation to his seeming insensitivity—his “toughness.” I would wear that mask. By now, of course, I have met several of the shadows along Times Square.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Again, this was a novel instruction: the First Temple rituals had celebrated Sukkoth very differently. At once, the people rushed into the hills to pick branches of olive, myrtle, pine, and palm, and leafy shelters mushroomed all over the city. There was a festive atmosphere as the people assembled each evening to hear Ezra’s exposition. But later Ezra held a more somber assembly in the square in front of the new temple, during which the people stood shivering as the torrential winter rains deluged the city and they heard Ezra commanding them to send away their foreign wives. 89 Membership in Israel was now confined to the Golah and to those who submitted to the Torah, the official law of the land. Ezra had interpreted the scriptures in an exclusive manner, emphasizing the duty of separation but neglecting P’s equally stringent demand that Israelites treat the stranger with “love” and respect. The Bible consists of many contradictory texts, so our reading is always selective. Tragically, however, a selective reading of scripture to enforce a particular point of view or marginalize others would be a constant temptation for monotheists. Ezra’s reading, accompanied as it was by his own running commentary, also made it clear that the Torah required interpretation. This is the first time we hear of these miscellaneous texts being treated as scripture with binding force. Ezra’s presentation at the Water Gate marked the beginning of classical Judaism, a religion that focuses not merely on the reception and preservation of revelation but on its constant reinterpretation. 90 When he had expounded the text, Ezra did not merely recite the Torah given to Moses in the distant past but created something new and unexpected. The biblical writers had worked in the same way, making radical revisions to the texts and traditions they had inherited. In classical Judaism, revelation would never be something that had happened once and for all time, but an ongoing process that could never end, because there was always something fresh to be discovered. If it was simply read like any other text, the Torah could be disturbing. It must be heard in the context of rituals, like those of Sukkoth, which separated it from ordinary life and put the audience in a different frame of mind. And in any reading of the Torah, the commentary was as important as the text itself. The Jews had discovered that religious discourse was essentially interpretive. Ezra had not swallowed the text gullibly but had “set his heart to investigate (li-drosh)” it. Jewish exegesis would be called midrash , which derives from the verb darash , “to search,” “investigate,” “to go in pursuit of something” as yet undiscovered.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  84 To make matters worse, he had added a final paragraph to the Dialogues . “Simplicio,” the character who represented the new Aristotelian orthodoxy and performed throughout the dialogue as the “fall guy,” argued that Copernican theory was “neither true nor conclusive” and that it “would be excessive boldness for anyone to limit and restrict the divine power and wisdom to one particular fancy of his own.” 85 These words were a direct quotation of published remarks by Urban himself, who would not have been pleased to see them on the lips of Simplicio, whose name was an insult in itself. On April 12, 1633, Galileo was summoned to the Holy Office and was judged guilty of disobedience. On June 22, he was forced to recant on his knees, and returned to Florence, where he was confined to his country estate. When Copernicus had presented his ideas in the Vatican, the pope had given his approval; ninety years later, De revolutionibus was placed on the Index. In 1605, Francis Bacon (1561–1626), counselor to King James I of England, had declared that there could be no conflict between science and religion. But that openness was giving way to dogmatism and suspicion. There would soon be no place in the new Europe for the skepticism of Montaigne or the psychological agnosticism of Shakespeare. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, the notion of truth had begun to change. Thomas Aquinas would not have recognized his theology in its post-Tridentine guise. His apophatic delight in unknowing was being replaced by a strident lust for certainty and a harsh dogmatic intolerance. The spirituality of silence was giving way to wordy debate; the refusal to define (a word that literally means “to set limits upon”) was being superseded by aggressive definitions of ineffable dogma. Faith was beginning to be identified with “belief” in man-made opinions—and that would, eventually, make faith itself difficult to maintain. The first modern Western atheists, however, were not Christians who had been alienated by the terrible convictions of their clergy but Jews living in the most liberal country in Europe. Their experience tells us a good deal about our current religious predicament. By the early seventeenth century, while the rest of Europe was in the grip of severe economic recession, the Dutch were enjoying a golden age of prosperity and expansion. They did not share the new sectarian dogmatism. Toward the end of the sixteenth century, some of the Marrano Jews had been permitted to leave Portugal and migrated to Venice, Hamburg, London, and, above all, Amsterdam, which became their New Jerusalem. In Holland, Jews were not confined to ghettos, as they were elsewhere in Europe; they became successful businessmen and mingled freely with gentiles. When they arrived in Amsterdam, the Marranos were eager for the opportunity to practice their faith fully.

• From Educated (2018)

  It would take me half an hour that night to dig the black dirt out of my nostrils and ears. I didn’t feel much like an object of desire or temptation. I felt like a human forklift. How could an inch of skin matter? —I WAS HOARDING MY PAYCHECKS, in case I needed the money for tuition. Dad noticed and started charging me for small things. Mother had gone back to buying insurance after the second car accident, and Dad said I should pay my share. So I did. Then he wanted more, for registration. “These Government fees will break you,” he said as I handed him the cash. That satisfied Dad until my test results arrived. I returned from the junkyard to find a white envelope. I tore it open, staining the page with grease, and looked past the individual scores to the composite. Twenty-two. My heart was beating loud, happy beats. It wasn’t a twenty-seven, but it opened up possibilities. Maybe Idaho State. I showed Mother the score and she told Dad. He became agitated, then he shouted that it was time I moved out. “If she’s old enough to pull a paycheck, she’s old enough to pay rent,” Dad yelled. “And she can pay it somewhere else.” At first Mother argued with him, but within minutes he’d convinced her. I’d been standing in the kitchen, weighing my options, thinking about how I’d just given Dad four hundred dollars, a third of my savings, when Mother turned to me and said, “Do you think you could move out by Friday?” Something broke in me, a dam or a levee. I felt tossed about, unable to hold myself in place. I screamed but the screams were strangled; I was drowning. I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t afford to rent an apartment, and even if I could the only apartments for rent were in town. Then I’d need a car. I had only eight hundred dollars. I sputtered all this at Mother, then ran to my room and slammed the door. She knocked moments later. “I know you think we’re being unfair,” she said, “but when I was your age I was living on my own, getting ready to marry your father.” “You were married at sixteen?” I said. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “You are not sixteen.” I stared at her. She stared at me. “Yes, I am. I’m sixteen.” She looked me over. “You’re at least twenty.” She cocked her head. “Aren’t you?” We were silent. My heart pounded in my chest. “I turned sixteen in September,” I said. “Oh.” Mother bit her lip, then she stood and smiled. “Well, don’t worry about it then. You can stay. Don’t know what your dad was thinking, really. I guess we forgot. Hard to keep track of how old you kids are.” —SHAWN RETURNED TO WORK, hobbling unsteadily. He wore an Aussie outback hat, which was large, wide-brimmed, and made of chocolate-brown oiled leather.

• From City of Night (1963)

  When I want, he said: “I know I look very Real”—but theres a questioning tone in his voice, as there had been, I remember, in Miss Destiny’s when she too had proclaimed her “realness.” We were hardly through lunch when I heard the obstreperous roar of a motorcycle outside, then an insistent knock at the door. “Damn it!” Neil said, looking out the window. “It’s Carl! Whenever hes been drinking, he comes over!” Opening the door, he pretended surprise: “Carl!—how nice to see you!” Carl, a large, masculine, somewhat goodlooking man in his 30s, strutted in arrogantly in motorcycle clothes. His breath reeked of liquor. “Just seeing how the leather half lives,” he said, and sat down—unasked, and much to Neil’s evident chagrin. “Well, of course, Im always glad to see you, but we—” Neil began. Carl interrupted: “Oh, just pretend Im not here.” “Difficult to do,” Neil muttered. Then (and I can almost hear him thinking, “Well, Whu-I NOT?”): “Well. Carl, if you are going to stay—for a little while—you can take some pictures for us. That way I can be in them too.” “Sure... sweetie,” Carl said. Neil stared warningly at him, evidently annoyed by the endearment. Now both Neil and I are dressed in cop uniforms, and Neil is going down on me. Now we’re cowboys, and hes on the floor begging (not) to be hurt. Now hes in a seventeenth-century costume, and Im a pirate threatening him.... He acted out each scene impassionately.... Protesting again when I got into my own clothes, Neil is now dressed in a tight “improvised” costume—boots, belt, straps, glittering studs. “Dont let him fool you,” Neil said maliciously to me when the picturetaking was over and Carl had gone to the head. “Carl’s not quite as butch as hes pretending to be. Hes really the end!—but even people like him serve a function....I’ll tell you something about him, before he gets back. Sometimes, when he plays the sadist (though hes more often the masochist now), he picks up the nelliest queens—the most effeminate types, types I wouldnt even talk to! Theres this one little queen—a chorus boy—who goes around telling about when he went home with Carl. Carl put on a uniform (he has an insignificant collection) and stood menacingly over the little queen and said: ‘I am your fuehrer; you do everything I tell you.’ And the queen—ho-ho—you know what she said to him? She broke her wrist and lisped at Carl: ‘Oh, Mary, youre too much!’—and she swished out. You can imagine how Carl avoids her like poison!... Youd never believe it, to look at him now, but when a friend first brought Carl over—oh, several years ago—you should have seen him: shy; he wouldnt do anything. But now!... Poor Carl—the things that happen to him.... I’ll tell you something else—very funny—ho, ho!

• From Educated (2018)

  “Don’t you know he had ties to communism?” He chewed the waxy tissue where his lips had been. They departed soon after to drive through the night. I watched them go, then took out my journal. It’s astonishing that I used to believe all this without the slightest suspicion, I wrote. The whole world was wrong; only Dad was right . I thought of something Tyler’s wife, Stefanie, had told me over the phone a few days before. She said it had taken her years to convince Tyler to let her immunize their children, because some part of him still believed vaccines are a conspiracy by the Medical Establishment. Remembering that now, with Dad’s voice still ringing in my ears, I sneered at my brother. He’s a scientist! I wrote. How can he not see beyond their paranoia! I reread what I had written, and as I did so my scorn gave way to a sense of irony. Then again, I wrote. Perhaps I could mock Tyler with more credibility if I had not remembered, as I did just now, that to this day I have never been immunized . —MY INTERVIEW FOR THE Gates scholarship took place at St. John’s College in Annapolis. The campus was intimidating, with its immaculate lawns and crisp colonial architecture. I sat nervously in the corridor, waiting to be called in for my interview; I felt stiff in the pantsuit and clung awkwardly to Robin’s handbag. But in the end, Professor Steinberg had written such a powerful letter of recommendation that there was little left for me to do. I received confirmation the next day: I’d won the scholarship. The phone calls began—from BYU’s student paper and the local news. I did half a dozen interviews. I was on TV. I awoke one morning to find my picture plastered on BYU’s home page. I was the third BYU student ever to win a Gates scholarship, and the university was taking full advantage of the press. I was asked about my high school experience, and which of my grade school teachers had prepared me for my success. I dodged, I parried, I lied when I had to. I didn’t tell a single reporter that I’d never gone to school. I didn’t know why I couldn’t tell them. I just couldn’t stand the thought of people patting me on the back, telling me how impressive I was. I didn’t want to be Horatio Alger in someone’s tear-filled homage to the American dream. I wanted my life to make sense, and nothing in that narrative made sense to me. —A MONTH BEFORE MY graduation, I visited Buck’s Peak. Dad had read the articles about my scholarship, and what he said was, “You didn’t mention home school. I’d think you’d be more grateful that your mother and I took you out of them schools, seeing how it’s worked out. You should be telling people that’s what done it: home school.” I said nothing.

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  Tony n.pr.m. )" is perfect)—1. king of Judah, son of Azariah (G “IwaGap, ש10000'‎ "Iavadav) 2 K 79555 761 ד‎ Ch 3” 5” 2 Ch 267-3 241579 Ts יד‎ 7! Hox ' 1 ee one 686 son of Jerubbaal (Gideon) Ju 757 (G ut supr.; Codd. Ioéap, 10000. 3. a descendant of Caleb 1 Ch 2" (G '100000( יהושוּע .+ ישוע Tomin n.pr.m. Canaanitish king of Heb-‏ ron Jos 10°. \ in‏ הו = ו66-. interj. (onomatop.; cf.‏ ,, דְזְוי Je 51% 65; also Mod. Aram.‏ הַידָד=,6 5% Am‏ hit, % ha (in a lament), So™merie: 24) __‏ % expressing usually dissatisfaction and pain,‏ Ah, Alas, Ha (not distinctly Woe! which is‏ used in lamentations, 1 K 13° and they‏ :(אוי Ah, my‏ 47 אֶחִי mourned over him (saying)‏ הוי אֶתִי וְהוי אֶחוּת “in...‏ אָדון 22% brother! Je‏ Yin) (ef. HA ‘Am 5):‏ אָדון יִסְפדוּ לף 5 4 וְהוּי הדה Ah/ sinful nation, v‏ הוי גי חטא 14 10 hence‏ Ah! I will ease me of my adversaries; esp.‏ הוס preparatory to a declaration of judgment, Is 10* BS DIY WS 7,17” 28%, oft. sq. a ptep. Ah! those that ..., 5°85 29" 311 45° Je 22° Am 5% 6} Hb 2°9-22-19-19 6 ד‎ (more sym- pathetic than ? :(אוי‎ sq. כִּי‎ Je 307, bs 48), by 50” Ez 13°, 5 13% Sts. hardly more than an exclam. arousing attention Ha/ (though perh. with a touch of sympathy or pity) Is 18 55} Ze 2° Je 47°, vb. murmur, roar, dis-‏ [הים הוּם]ז ecomfit (Ar. <\s (med. ««) is rush about madly (lit., or in passion, love, &c.), fig. be distracted ; on ¥ .ד הִים‎ Hi¥™% Noes.) _Qal Pf 3 ms. sf. DDT consec. Dt 7% no man “7 ( subj.) and he shall discomfit them (with) a great discomfiture (acc. to 121 וה"‎ is fr. D7, here pointed as ע"ו‎ because of M2372; but v. 6 485 & reff.); here, acc. to N6"*, belongs Impf. rs. cohort. (ע"י/ .6 .1) אָהִימָה‎ 55° am driven about (Hi De), or distracted. Niph. Impf. 3 fs. DOM 1S 4*+- 2 t. (on form ef. Ges'”*°); be in a stir, of a city Ru 1” (sq. by over, on account of), ד‎ K 1°; of ground re-echoing shout ז‎ ₪ 4% Hiph. /mpf. 1s. TIN 55° shew disquietude (so most, ef. supr.); but Ol Che ANIA (774); Lag Proph. Chald. xlviii. 2, BN 27 TOTS 0% : 3 fpl. (ְתַהַמִינָה !) תְּהִימֶנָה‎ Mi 2” they (ie. fold 8 pasture) shall murmur with men.