Chagrin
Sheepish discomfort after a minor wrong move or social misstep.
280 passages · in 1 cluster
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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 Satyricon (1)
Worn out with work and vexation, I forced my way into the thickest part of the grove and remained there for four mortal hours, but at last, bored to extinction by the horrible solitude, I sought a way out. As I went ahead, I caught sight of a peasant; then I had need of all my nerve, and it did not fail me. Marching boldly up to him, I asked my way to the city, complaining that I had been lost in the wood for several hours. Seeing my condition, he took pity upon me, for I was covered with mud and paler than death, and asked me whether I had seen anyone in the place. “Not a soul,” I replied, whereupon he kindly conducted me to the high road, where he met two of his companions, who informed him that they had beaten along every path in the forest without having found anything except a tunic, which they showed him. As may be readily supposed, I did not have the audacity to claim it, though well aware of its value, and my chagrin became almost insupportable as I vented many a groaning curse over my lost treasure. The peasants paid no attention to me, and I was gradually left behind, as my weakness increased my pace decreased. For this reason, it was late when I reached the city, and, entering the inn, beheld Ascyltos, stretched out, half dead, upon a cot. Too far gone to utter a single syllable, I threw myself upon another. Ascyltos became greatly excited at not seeing the tunic which he had entrusted to me, demanding it insistently, but I was so weak that my voice refused its office and I permitted the apathy of my eyes to answer his demand, then, by and by, regaining my strength little by little, I related the whole affair to Ascyltos, in every detail. He thought that I was joking, and although my testimony was fortified by a copious flood of tears, it could easily be seen that he remained unconvinced, believing that I wanted to cheat him out of the gold. Giton, who was standing by during all this, was as downcast as myself, and the suffering of the lad only served to increase my own vexation, but the thing which bothered me most of all, was the painstaking search which was being made for us; I told Ascyltos of this, but he only laughed it off, as he had so happily extricated himself from the scrape. He was convinced that, as we were unknown and as no one had seen us, we were perfectly safe. We decided, nevertheless, to feign sickness, and to keep to our room as long as possible; but, before we knew it, our money ran out, and spurred by necessity we were forced to go abroad and sell some of our plunder.)
From Satyricon (1)
Worn out with work and vexation, I forced my way into the thickest part of the grove and remained there for four mortal hours, but at last, bored to extinction by the horrible solitude, I sought a way out. As I went ahead, I caught sight of a peasant; then I had need of all my nerve, and it did not fail me. Marching boldly up to him, I asked my way to the city, complaining that I had been lost in the wood for several hours. Seeing my condition, he took pity upon me, for I was covered with mud and paler than death, and asked me whether I had seen anyone in the place. “Not a soul,” I replied, whereupon he kindly conducted me to the high road, where he met two of his companions, who informed him that they had beaten along every path in the forest without having found anything except a tunic, which they showed him. As may be readily supposed, I did not have the audacity to claim it, though well aware of its value, and my chagrin became almost insupportable as I vented many a groaning curse over my lost treasure. The peasants paid no attention to me, and I was gradually left behind, as my weakness increased my pace decreased. For this reason, it was late when I reached the city, and, entering the inn, beheld Ascyltos, stretched out, half dead, upon a cot. Too far gone to utter a single syllable, I threw myself upon another. Ascyltos became greatly excited at not seeing the tunic which he had entrusted to me, demanding it insistently, but I was so weak that my voice refused its office and I permitted the apathy of my eyes to answer his demand, then, by and by, regaining my strength little by little, I related the whole affair to Ascyltos, in every detail. He thought that I was joking, and although my testimony was fortified by a copious flood of tears, it could easily be seen that he remained unconvinced, believing that I wanted to cheat him out of the gold. Giton, who was standing by during all this, was as downcast as myself, and the suffering of the lad only served to increase my own vexation, but the thing which bothered me most of all, was the painstaking search which was being made for us; I told Ascyltos of this, but he only laughed it off, as he had so happily extricated himself from the scrape. He was convinced that, as we were unknown and as no one had seen us, we were perfectly safe. We decided, nevertheless, to feign sickness, and to keep to our room as long as possible; but, before we knew it, our money ran out, and spurred by necessity we were forced to go abroad and sell some of our plunder.)
From Shunned (2018)
The book of James was quoted: “My brothers, if anyone among you is misled from the truth and another turns him back, know that he who turns a sinner back from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.” In other words, you get spiritual bonus points if you bring someone back into the fold. That’s what these elders would try to do now. “Look at that view,” Jeremy said, pushing past Ray and walking straight through the living room. In the distance was the true-blue lake, dotted with sailboats. Jeremy had stopped short at the closed screen. “Feel free to go onto the balcony,” I said. Jeremy pushed open the screen and stepped outside. Ray set down his briefcase and stood in the living room, hands at his waist, smiling. “What a great place,” he said, scanning the living room, the kitchen. “Thanks. The apartment isn’t anything special, but the view is priceless. I can sit on the balcony for hours and not get bored.” Jeremy had removed his jacket and folded it over his arm without looking away from the view. But as Ray took a seat at the farthest corner of the couch, Jeremy followed his lead, came in, and sat in the side chair. I took a seat on the opposite end of the couch from Ray, one cushion between us. After a brief silence, Ray started speaking to Jeremy, detailing what he already knew about me. “Linda was raised in The Truth and moved here from Portland,” he said. Turning to me, he asked, “And you pioneered for several years, didn’t you, Linda?” “Yes,” I said. “Five in total.” I was already growing impatient with memory lane and thought it odd Ray hadn’t told Jeremy any of this before arriving. To my surprise, Jeremy looked thoroughly engaged. “How can we help you?” Ray asked. I turned to lean against the arm of the couch so I could face them both. “For a while now, I’ve had something on my mind that I’d like to share.” I spoke directly to Jeremy, to bring him up to speed. “About a year and a half ago, I started experiencing doubts about this religion. I was raised a Witness, married a Witness, really knew no other way of living or thinking. I found myself curious about the world and, much to my husband and family’s chagrin, became inactive. I thought if I got some distance from the religion, I could also get some perspective. I divorced my husband of nine years, on the grounds of irreconcilable differences. We were married young. It wasn’t a bad marriage, but it wasn’t great, either, and I wanted to free us both to live our separate lives. About that time, Harris Bank recruited me and moved me here to Chicago, and not a moment too soon. I was quite happy to get away.” Both men were looking at me, following along in earnest.
From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)
Read in this way, the individual notes in the Reconsiderations are of quite variable interest. In some cases, more often those of his earlier books, he has corrections or amendments to make. He spends the most time and shows the thinnest skin concerning his Free Choice of the Will (De libero arbitrio voluntatis), inasmuch as Pelagius and others had quoted this work over the years in support of doctrines that Augustine would not now acknowledge.615 Though he says often, both in the Reconsiderations and elsewhere, that he believes that he has learned and progressed as he has grown older (“Whoever reads my books in the order they were written in will likely find out how much progress I have made with my writing”616), he is loath to admit that he was ever distinctly wrong on a point of substance. We can fairly describe his development by saying that the ideas of Free Choice of the Will were brought forth by an Augustine who had not yet settled on his distinctive reading of Paul, and thus on his ideas of grace and predestination. In the Reconsiderations, Augustine wants to make it seem as if the ideas that Pelagius is missing were simply irrelevant to the narrow topic of the early book. Few readers not already committed to finding Augustine in the right on every possible point have been persuaded by this. For the most part, however, the corrections and amendments made in the Retractations are of slight import, not of much more interest than the addenda et corrigenda slips that publishers sometimes drop into a badly printed volume. And so the book escapes modern attention. But it has exercised an invisibly powerful influence over our view of Augustine. First of all, by cataloguing and indexing the work of Augustine, even usually giving the incipit (or opening words) of each text, this book made it remarkably easy in the middle ages to know what Augustine had written, to identify books that could be found, and to know what books to look for that were not at hand. At or shortly after the time Augustine was working on the Reconsiderations, his friend and biographer Possidius compiled a sketchier index of Augustine’s works, one including sermons and letters. Together with the Reconsiderations, Possidius’s work made it easy for those who had heard of Augustine to find their way in a mass of material. The self-presentation that Augustine as writer had been careful to manage was thus perpetuated into later centuries with extraordinary success.
From The Battle for God (2000)
Over the years, the Movement helped the Kookists to formulate their ideology in a way that would appeal to the public, and gave them financial and moral support. Gradually, the Kookists were being drawn into the mainstream. In April 1968, Moshe Levinger led a small group of Kookists and their families to celebrate Passover in Hebron, the city where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are thought to be buried. Since Muslims also venerate these Jewish patriarchs as great prophets, Hebron was a holy city for them too. For centuries, Palestinians had called Hebron al-Khalil, because of its sacred associations with Abraham, the “friend” of God. But Hebron also evoked darker memories. On August 24, 1929, during a period of great tension between Arabs and Zionists in Palestine, fifty-nine Jewish men, women, and children had been massacred in Hebron. Levinger and his party checked into the Park Hotel, pretending to be Swiss tourists, but when Passover was over they refused to leave and stayed on as squatters. This was embarrassing for the Israeli government, since the Geneva conventions forbade any settlement in territory occupied during hostilities, and the United Nations was demanding that Israel withdraw from the land they had conquered. But the chutzpa of the Kookists reminded Laborites of their own pioneers in their Golden Age, and the government was, therefore, reluctant to evict them. 92 Levinger’s group immediately went on the offensive in the Cave of the Patriarchs. After the Six Day War, the Israeli military government had opened the shrine, which had been closed during the hostilities, for worship once again, making special arrangements for Jews to pray there without disturbing the Arabs. This was not good enough for the Jewish settlers, who began to press for more space and time in the Cave. They would refuse to leave on Fridays in time to let the Muslims in for their weekly communal prayer; sometimes they would leave the halls, but block the main entrance, so that the Muslim worshippers could not get in; they would hold a kiddush in the Cave, drinking wine, which they knew the Muslims would find offensive, and, on Independence Day 1968, they flew the Israeli flag at the shrine, in defiance of government regulations. Tension escalated and—inevitably, perhaps—a hand grenade was thrown at some Jewish visitors by a Palestinian outside the mosque. 93 Reluctantly, the Israeli government established an enclave for the settlers outside Hebron; the new settlement was protected by the IDF. Levinger called it Kiryat Arba (the biblical name for Hebron) and it has remained a bastion for the most extreme, violent, and provocative Zionist fundamentalists. By 1972, Kiryat Arba had grown to a small town with a population of about five thousand settlers. For the Kookists, it represented a victory in a holy war that pushed against the frontiers of the “Other Side” and liberated an important area of the Holy Land for God. Otherwise, however, Kookists made little progress.
From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)
compromise. Although it talked of the Union of Two Natures, and took care to give explicit mention of Theotokos, it largely followed Nestorius’s viewpoint about ‘two natures’, ‘the distinction of natures being in no way abolished because of the union’.90 Meanwhile, to satisfy his enemies, the unhappy former Bishop of Constantinople was condemned once more: an ecclesiastical stitch-up, dictated by imperial power. Nestorius was already completely isolated from public affairs, in a remote Egyptian location (which the Egyptian government still uses for a high-security prison); he endured his humiliation at the hands of his enemies with stoicism. He is reputed to have died the day before a message arrived inviting him to participate in the Council of Chalcedon; regardless of this impulse to reconciliation, the Emperor then ordered Nestorius’s writings burned, and children bearing his name were rebaptized and renamed. His last and most extensive work, written in prison, a dignified defence of all that he had done, was only rediscovered in a manuscript in 1889, in the library of the East Syrian Patriarch, whose Church’s separate status originated in its unhappiness with the results of Chalcedon.91 The Chalcedonian Definition certainly proved to have staying power, unlike the Homoean compromise solution to the Arian dispute at Ariminum in 359, but it still won much less acceptance than the credal formula of Constantinople from 381. In the manner of many politically inspired middle-of-the-road settlements, it left bitter discontents on either side in the Eastern Churches. On the one hand were those who adhered to a more robust affirmation of two natures in Christ and who felt that Nestorius had been treated with outrageous injustice. These protestors were labelled Nestorians by their opponents, and the Churches which they eventually formed have habitually been so styled by outsiders ever since. It would be truer to their origins, and more considerate to their self-esteem, to call them Theodoreans, since Theodore of Mopsuestia was the prime source of their theological stance and Nestorius hardly figured in their minds as a founding father. In view of their insistence on two (dyo) natures in Christ, they could with justice be called ‘Dyophysites’, and we will trace their subsequent history primarily as ‘the Church of the East’ using this label. By contrast, on the other side the history of the winners has likewise given those who treasure the memory of Cyril and his campaign against Nestorius a label which they still resent: ‘Monophysites’ (monos and physis=single nature). This latter group of Churches has always been insistent on claiming that title prized among Eastern Churches: ‘Orthodox’. In an age where both Churches of the Greek, Romanian and Slavic Orthodox traditions and the various Catholic and Protestant heirs of the Western Latin Church have increasingly sought to end ancient bitterness, these sensitivities have been respected, and the label
From The Art of Seduction (2001)
the harbor I seek is far Maintain lightness. Seduction is a game, not a matter of life and death. away \ Through my verses, it's true, you may have There will be a tendency in the "post" phase to take things more seriously acquired a mistress, \ But and personally, and to whine about behavior that does not please you. Fight that's not enough. If my this as much as possible, for it will create exactly the effect you do not want. art \ Caught her, my art must keep her. To guard a You cannot control the other person by nagging and complaining; it will conquest's \As tricky as make them defensive, exacerbating the problem. You will have more con-making it. There was luck trol if you maintain the proper spirit. Your playfulness, the little ruses you in the chase, \ But this task will call for skill. If ever I employ to please and delight them, your indulgence of their faults, will needed support from \ make your victims compliant and easy to handle. Never try to change your Venus and Son, and victims; instead, induce them to follow your lead. Erato— the Muse \ Erotic by name— it's now, for my too-ambitious project \ To relate some techniques that Avoid the slow burnout. Often, one person becomes disenchanted but might restrain \ That fickle lacks the courage to make the break. Instead, he or she withdraws inside. As young globetrotter, Love. . . . \ To be loved an absence, this psychological step back may inadvertently reignite the you must show yourself other person's desire, and a frustrating cycle begins of pursuit and retreat. lovable— \ Something Everything unravels, slowly. Once you feel disenchanted and know it is good looks alone \ Can never achieve. You may be over, end it quickly, without apology. That would only insult the other per-handsome as Homer's son. A quick separation is often easier to get over—it is as if you had a Nireus, \ Or young Hylas, problem being faithful, as opposed to your feeling that the seduced was no snatched by those bad \ longer being desirable. Once you are truly disenchanted, there is no going Naiads; but all the same, to avoid a surprise back, so don't hang on out of false pity. It is more compassionate to make a desertion \And keep your clean break. If that seems inappropriate or too ugly, then deliberately disen-girl, it's best you have gifts chant the victim with anti-seductive behavior. of mind \ In addition to physical charms. Beauty's fragile, the passing \ Years diminish its substance, eat Examples of Sacrifice and Integration it away. \ Violets and bell-mouthed lilies do not bloom for ever, \ Hard 1. In the 1770s, the handsome Chevalier de Belleroche began an affair thorns are all that's left of with an older woman, the Marquise de Merteuil. He saw a lot of her, but the blown rose. \ So with
From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)
It was around this time that Mueller asked the Apollo 8 astronauts to sign a statement confirming that they’d been properly trained by NASA. To Anders, that came as a bitter disappointment. Mueller was the boss—he should have been the one to tell the crew they’d been properly trained. Instead, he seemed to want a waiver in case anything went wrong. By early December, the eyes of the world were trained on Kazakhstan. Cosmonauts were already at the launchpad there, awaiting the mission’s final go-ahead. On December 8, many at NASA held their breath. If the Soviets were going to send a manned spacecraft to the Moon, this was the forty-eight-hour window during which they would do it. More than a decade in the making, the Space Race was coming down to a matter of hours. The first day passed. The Soviets now had twenty-four hours to make their move to the Moon. The second day passed. The Soviets now had just a few hours remaining. If they were going to beat the United States they had to do it now. By midnight, it was clear that nothing had happened at Baikonur. Technically, it was still possible for the Soviets to go, even as late as December 10. But by many assessments, if they were going to go in December, they would have gone already. For the first time since the Space Race began, nothing stood between America and the Moon. —Nearly two hundred members of the media were accredited for an early December press conference in Houston with Borman, Lovell, and Anders. They were shown film of the astronauts training and were then allowed to ask questions of the three astronauts. A reporter asked about recent comments by Sir Bernard Lovell in which the famed British astronomer had criticized NASA for taking undue risk by flying Apollo 8. “I have the highest regard for him and I hope he has his telescope—his radio dishes—beamed on us,” Borman said. “He’s done a great job of tracking in the past.” When asked about the risks of the flight, Borman answered straight, as always. “I think there are sensible risks….If we really believe what we’re doing is worthwhile, then we accept the risk. When we get to the point where we don’t believe it’s worthwhile, I’ll quit.” In fact, Borman had already quit. Several days earlier, he’d told NASA that he wouldn’t fly in space after Apollo 8. Since becoming an astronaut in 1962, his mission had been simple: to beat the Soviets to the Moon. If all went well, Apollo 8 would do that. To risk another lunar journey just to pick up rocks or add a fraction to mankind’s knowledge about the Moon didn’t seem worth it after the battle had been won. As he answered questions and made the media laugh, few could have predicted this sudden turn in Borman’s career. He was the consummate astronaut, a man for whom the mission always came first.
From Middlesex (2002)
"Oh, darling, notthatgood surely." Sourmelina brought hercigaretteholder to herlipsandinhaled, scanning the crowd. "PoorDesdemona!Herbrotherfallsinlove and leaves herbehind inNewYork.Howisshe?" "She's fine." "Why didn'tshe comewithyou?She'snotjealous ofyournew wife,is she?" "No, nothing likethat." She clutchedhisarm."Wereadaboutthefire.Terrible! Iwasso worried untilIgotyourletter.TheTurksstartedit.I knowit.Of course,my husbanddoesn'tagree." "Hedoesn't?" "Onesuggestion,sinceyou'llbelivingwithus?Don'ttalk politics withmyhusband." "Allright." "Andthevillage?" Sourmelinainquired. "Everybodyleft thehoreo,Lina.There's nothingnow." "IfIdidn'thatethatplace,maybeI'dshed twotears." "Lina,there'ssomethingIhavetoexplain toyou.. ." But Sourmelinawaslookingaway, tappingherfoot."Maybeshe fellin." "... Something about Desdemonaandme .. ." "Yes?" "... Mywife ...Desdemona.. ." "WasIright? They don't get along?" "No...Desdemona . ..mywife .. ." "Yes?" "Same person."He gave the signal. Desdemonasteppedfrom be- hind thepillar. "Hello, Lina,"mygrandmothersaid."We'remarried.Don'ttell." And that washowitcame out,forthe next-to-last time. Blurted out bymy yiayia,beneaththeechoing roof ofGrandTrunk,toward Sourmelina's cloche-covered ears.Theconfessionhoveredinthe aira moment, beforefloatingaway with thesmokerisingfromherciga- rette. Desdemona took herhusband'sarm. My grandparentshad everyreasontobelievethat Sourmelina would keeptheirsecret.She'dcometo Americawith asecretofher own, asecretthatwouldbeguardedbyour family untilSourmelina 85 died in 1979, whereupon,likeeveryone'ssecrets, itwasposthu- mously declassified,so thatpeoplebeganto speakof"Sourmelina's girlfriends." A secretkept, inotherwords,only bytheloosest defini- tion, so that now—as I get readytoleakthe informationmyself— I feel onlya slight twingeoffilialguilt. Sourmelina's secret(asAunt Zo put it) :"Lina wasone of those women they namedtheislandafter." Asa girlinthe horeo^Sourmelinahad beencaughtincompromis- ing circumstanceswithafew femalefriends. "Notmany,"shetoldme herself, yearslater, "two orthree.Peoplethinkifyoulikegirls, you like everysingleone.Iwas alwayspicky.Andtherewasn't muchto pick from."Forawhileshe'd struggledagainst herpredisposition. "I wenttochurch. Itdidn'thelp.Inthose days thatwas thebest place to meeta girlfriend.Inchurch!All of us praying tobedifferent."When Sourmelina was caughtnotwithanothergirlbutwithafull-grown woman, a motheroftwo children, a scandalarose.Sourmelina'spar- entstriedto arrangehermarriagebutfoundnotakers.Husbands werehardenoughtocomeby inBithynioswithouttheaddedliabil- ityof anuninterested,defectivebride. Herfatherhadthen donewhatGreekfathersofunmarriageable girlsdidinthosedays:hewroteto America.TheUnitedStates abounded withdollarbills,baseballsluggers, raccooncoats,diamond jewelry—andlonely,immigrant bachelors.Witha photographofthe prospectivebrideand a considerabledowry, herfatherhadcomeup withone. Jimmy Zizmo(shortened fromZisimopoulos)had cometo Americain1907 at theageofthirty. Thefamilydidn't know much abouthimexceptthathewasa hardbargainer. In a seriesoflettersto Sourmelina's father, Zizmo had negotiatedthe amountofthedowry intheformallanguageofabarrister, evengoingso farastodemand abankcheckbeforetheweddingday. The photographSourmelina receivedshowed a tall,handsomeman with a virilemustache,hold- ingapistolinonehandand a bottleofliquor inthe other.Whenshe steppedoffthetrain at GrandTrunktwo months later,however,the shortman who greetedher was clean-shaven, witha sourexpression anda laborer'sdark complexion.Sucha discrepancy might havedis- appointed a normalbride, but Sourmelinadidn't care onewayoran- other. 86 Sourmelina had writtenoften,describinghernewlifeinAmerica, but she concentrated onthenewfashions,orherAeriola Jr., thera- dioshe spent hourseachdaylisteningto,wearing earphonesand manipulating the dial,stoppingevery so often to cleanoffthecar- bondust that builtuponthecrystal.Shenevermentionedanything connected towhat Desdemonareferred toas"thebed,"andsoher cousins wereforced toreadbetweenthelinesof thoseaerograms, tryingtosee, in a descriptionof a Sundaydrivethrough BelleIsle, whetherthefaceof thehusband atthewheelwashappyorunsatis- fied; orinferring, froma passageaboutSourmelina'slatesthair- style—something called"cootie garages"—whether Zizmo wasever allowedtomuss it up. Thissame Sourmelina,fullofherownsecrets,now tookinher new co-conspirators."Married?Youmeansleeping-together mar- ried?" Leftymanaged,"Yes." Sourmelina noticedher ashforthefirsttime,andflickedit. "Just myluck.Soon as Ileavethevillage,things get interesting." ButDesdemonacouldn'tabidesuchirony. She grabbed Sourme- lina'shandsandpleaded,"Youhavetopromisenever totell.We'll live, we'lldie,andthatwillbetheendofit." "Iwon't tell." "Peoplecan't evenknow I'myourcousin." "I won'ttellanyone." "What aboutyourhusband?" "Hethinks I'mpickingupmy cousin andhisnewwife." "Youwon't sayanythingto him?" "That'll beeasy." Linalaughed."Hedoesn'tlisten to me." Sourmelina insisted on gettingaporter to carrytheirsuitcasestothe car,ablack- and-tanPackard.Shetippedhimandclimbedbehindthe wheel, attracting looks.A womandrivingwasstill a scandaloussight in 1922.After restinghercigaretteholderonthe dashboard, she pulled outthe choke,waited therequisitefiveseconds,andpressed the ignition button.Thecar's tin bonnet shudderedtolife.The leather seats beganto vibrateandDesdemonatook holdofher hus- band's arm. Upfront, Sourmelina took offhersatin-straphighheels todrive barefoot. She putthe carinto gearand,withoutchecking 87
From Detransition, Baby (2021)
Katrina frowns and admits that no, she doesn’t know very many trans women. The biggest impact a trans woman ever had in her life was a year or so ago, when a good friend’s husband had an affair with a trans woman. “One husband that you know of!” Reese says brightly. “I bet a lot more husbands that you don’t know about have also.” Ames shakes his head. “Reese! Can you not?” Katrina cuts him off, both hands steadying her drink. “No, wait, I like her approach to this conversation way better than yours!” “Why? What was his approach?” Reese asks. Katrina scrunches up her nose like a rabbit, then says, “I would describe it as getting me pregnant, then dumping a huge transsexual revelation on me with almost no time to process.” “Oh yeah,” Reese says. “That’s a classic. That’s like the second most popular way to announce one’s current, future, or past transsexuality.” Inwardly, Reese senses the moment coming under her reins. She doesn’t want to do a whole getting-to-know-you thing. She wants to talk about the pregnancy. She wants to talk about why the three of them have seated themselves on a couch in the back of a Midtown hotel surrounded by bland carpeting and various attempts at gay branding. Moreover, Reese knows how to team up with another woman to tease a man. Which is what she supposes Ames is to Katrina. Teasing men is very much in her wheelhouse. She finds the strategy to be an effective method to endear herself with other women, provided that she’s careful not to outright flirt. Ames does not defend himself. He shrugs and adjusts his jacket. “Ts it a classic?” Katrina glances briefly at Ames, but lets her doubtful expression come to rest on Reese. “Nothing about this has felt classic so far. I don’t even know what to tell my friends. I haven’t told them, actually. I don’t know where to begin.” “What do you tell them instead?” Reese asks. “What can I tell them? That I seduced my employee because he wore cowboy boots to work and looked good in a button-down?” “T like her,” Reese says to Ames. “That’s the second time you’ve said something like that,” Katrina shoots back, before Ames can respond. “What did you expect of me?”
From The City of God
97 Lecture 5 Transcript—The Problem of Suffering (Book 1) Edward Gibbon is the greatest proponent of this view, but it’s still very often a commonly accepted one. But there’s another view. On this view, the classical world is not just like modern Europe except without churches. It’s not bourgeois civilization. It’s a world of unbridled passion, divine enthusiasms, madness, great cruelty, and great achievement. There’s no simple way for modern people to reach around their Christian heritage and shake hands with Cicero or Marcus Aurelius. This is the view of Nietzsche, who was a classicist before he was a philosopher, and one who indicted the educators of his age for failing to grasp the psychological profundity of the classical world, and the way that they were trying to grab its flowers, its blossoms, without reaching down to seize its deep psychological roots. For Nietzsche, Christianity is not just an optional thing for us, a light cloak we can throw off and return to our classical origins. The centuries between us and Augustus and Cicero have made us into very different creatures altogether. There’s no going back; there’s no rebirth. There is only going forward in full cognizance of all that has made us. I personally hew more to the Nietzschean view of the ancient world than the Gibbonian one, particularly in this: The Romans were not like contemporary secularist thinkers, at least not entirely like that. They were deeply religious, deeply passionate, and they had a morality that was real, but much of which we would find terrifyingly inhuman. That word choice is telling, for in our bourgeois self-satisfaction we find it hard to imagine a way of life as radically different from our own as what these sources seem to think is true, and to still recognize that as a human way of life. The Roman playwright Terence is famously reputed to have said, “Humanus sum, nihil humanum a me alienum puto”; I am a human, and so nothing human is alien to me. Augustine, by the way, knew that line. But is it true? Do you want it to be true? For murderers are human. Sadists are human. Hitler was a human. Are there limits
The woman said to Peter, “You are not also one of this man’s disciples, are you?” He said, “I am not.” (John 18:15–17) It is significant that nothing is said about that other disciple who is presumably the same as the Beloved Disciple, denying Jesus! The transference of that peculiarly or even uniquely Markan literary-theological structure from Mark 14:53–72 into John 18:13–27 persuades me to accept, at least as a working hypothesis, the dependence of John’s passion account on Mark’s. Hence my third major presupposition about the intracanonical gospels is that Jolin is dependent on the synoptic gospels at least and especially for the passion narratives (here I agree with Maurits Sabbe [1991: 355–388, 467–513; 1994; 1995]) and for the resurrection narratives (with Frans Neirynck [1982: 181–488; 1991: 571–616]). Once again, if that is wrong, everything I build on it is invalid. And again, the same goes for the opposite position. PRESUPPOSITIONS ABOUT THE EXTRACANONICAL GOSPELS Exactly the same principles used in determining relations between the intracanonical gospels are used for those between intracanonical and extracanonical gospels. For direct literary dependence: in this situation, genetic relationship is established by finding specific stylistic traits of one gospel within another gospel and using redactional confirmation to explain why that latter version used the former as it did. In the absence of such traits giving evidence of direct literary dependence in either direction, independence may be hypothetically proposed. For indirect literary dependence: in this situation, where no specific stylistic traits of one gospel are present in another, redactional confirmation is the only method available to argue in either direction. Those principles will be exemplified in what follows, but an even more basic problem must first be faced. Fixing the Evidence? Why is it necessary to make a distinction here between intracanonical and extracanonical gospels if exactly the same principles establish dependence or independence among them all? Go back and read the epigraph to this section, a passage from Luke Johnson’s book The Real Jesus , with its accusations that my method is “fixed”; that I have given an early date and independent status to “virtually all apocryphal materials” and a correspondingly late date and dependent status to “virtually all intracanonical materials”; and that my only arguments are citations from “like-minded colleagues.” Something clearly happens to collegial courtesy, scholarly integrity, and academic accuracy when extracanonical gospels enter the debate. But, since principles and not just polemics are concerned in that indictment, let me use it to review my methodology. First, it is very, very serious to charge that another scholar has “fixed” his research methodology. Our only integrity as scholars is not to be right and correct but to be honest and public. “Fixing” data entails a deliberate intention to deceive. When one scholar accuses another of fixing the evidence, somebody has lost his integrity. Others will have to decide whether it is Johnson or myself.
From Sense and Sensibility (1811)
The whole country about them abounded in beautiful walks. The high downs which invited them from almost every window of the cottage to seek the exquisite enjoyment of air on their summits, were a happy alternative when the dirt of the valleys beneath shut up their superior beauties; and towards one of these hills did Marianne and Margaret one memorable morning direct their steps, attracted by the partial sunshine of a showery sky, and unable longer to bear the confinement which the settled rain of the two preceding days had occasioned. The weather was not tempting enough to draw the two others from their pencil and their book, in spite of Marianne’s declaration that the day would be lastingly fair, and that every threatening cloud would be drawn off from their hills; and the two girls set off together. They gaily ascended the downs, rejoicing in their own penetration at every glimpse of blue sky; and when they caught in their faces the animating gales of a high south-westerly wind, they pitied the fears which had prevented their mother and Elinor from sharing such delightful sensations. “Is there a felicity in the world,” said Marianne, “superior to this?—Margaret, we will walk here at least two hours.” Margaret agreed, and they pursued their way against the wind, resisting it with laughing delight for about twenty minutes longer, when suddenly the clouds united over their heads, and a driving rain set full in their face. Chagrined and surprised, they were obliged, though unwillingly, to turn back, for no shelter was nearer than their own house. One consolation however remained for them, to which the exigence of the moment gave more than usual propriety,—it was that of running with all possible speed down the steep side of the hill which led immediately to their garden gate. They set off. Marianne had at first the advantage, but a false step brought her suddenly to the ground; and Margaret, unable to stop herself to assist her, was involuntarily hurried along, and reached the bottom in safety. A gentleman carrying a gun, with two pointers playing round him, was passing up the hill and within a few yards of Marianne, when her accident happened. He put down his gun and ran to her assistance. She had raised herself from the ground, but her foot had been twisted in her fall, and she was scarcely able to stand. The gentleman offered his services; and perceiving that her modesty declined what her situation rendered necessary, took her up in his arms without farther delay, and carried her down the hill. Then passing through the garden, the gate of which had been left open by Margaret, he bore her directly into the house, whither Margaret was just arrived, and quitted not his hold till he had seated her in a chair in the parlour.
From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)
Then she opened her fingers to let that rinse effluent fall away. Again she made the C-cup with her left hand and let it fill, and again sloshed it vigorously. At last she knew that she had a truly clean, well-rinsed asscrack, ready to greet the day. She dressed in her new form-fitting ass jeans and went strutting outside. She walked down the Avenue of the Men Who Need to Suck on Twat Every Day and took a left on Upskirt Street. There she heard a voice calling, “Wait, stop, hello, wait!” Ruzty hurried up in his torn jeans, out of breath. His T-shirt was old and red, and it said “Phillies.” “I request to squeeze your ass,” he said, in his foreign voice. “You will notice that I have the ass-squeezer’s license.” “Do you now?” asked Henriette. “Good for you. What else do you have?” “Basically, that’s it,” said Ruzty. “Everybody is trying to keep going, but then they turn out to be broke. The size of what they owe is how rich they are. If they can borrow a billion dollars, that makes them rich. Really they have nothing. But never mind, because I have”—he pulled out a folded sheet of paper and patted it—“an ass-squeezer’s license, signed. This means I can walk up to a girl like you with a big, beautiful ass and tell her I want to squeeze it, and she has to let me.” “Let’s see the license,” said Henriette. Ruzty waved it at her. “Very well. Where?” “My hotel.” They went up to his suite at the Portalino Extended Stay Suites. “How do you want to squeeze it?” Henriette asked. “I want you up on the bed, as soon as possible.” Henriette took off her roomy denim ass pants and arranged herself bending forward on the bed like a person skiing down a slalom course. She felt his hands on her, squeezing their way along her backthighs and finding her lower backcheeks and massaging her deeply, with an interest in all her cores and centers. Then she felt his cock pushing strangely at the seams of her underwear. “No, now, Ruzty,” she said. “You have an ass-squeezer’s license, not a pussy-fucker’s license.” “Wait a second, yes, I do, I do, I just forgot to show it,” Ruzty said, rummaging in his pockets. He had a slightly desperate sound. He waved another folded piece of paper. “I’ve been saving it for this moment.” Henriette looked the paper over. “You just typed this yourself and printed it out, didn’t you?” Ruzty looked chagrined. “Yes.” “Is the ass-squeezer’s license forged as well? ” “Yes,” he said. “Daggett said he couldn’t give me a real one because there are too many. I was wrong, I know it now. I went outside the proper channels.” Henriette said, “Ruzty, you very bad boy.”
From Lit: A Memoir (2009)
Dev peered in. Jonathan said, Mine is brie and kiwi fruit. Dev reached for it, and Jonathan cupped one hand around it. It has less sugar than yours. His next sentence was so remarkable, I noted it down in my journal: I first had this sandwich in Vienna.... Perhaps Evan’s flinch stemmed from the day Dev had elected to yank Jonathan’s mittens from his coat pocket, bolt up the stairs while Evan and Warren chased after him, and fling them into the toilet. Warren fished them out with a pencil and offered to launder them. When I got the ziploc bag from my husband, I tossed the mittens into the trash among the potato peelings. I just didn’t want to deal with them—or the whole starchy Cambridge milieu. So the mittens stop me dropping Dev off, or the puking. My head spends much of its day pumping out reasons for not doing what I should the way a magician draws long strings of scarves from a sleeve. Warren drops him now, an act that brings him endless praise. How great, the teachers say every day when I fetch Dev, that Warren drops him off! And isn’t it great that I pick him up? Then spend all day and night with him? I once asked. From their stunned expressions, I could guess that it wasn’t. Not so much.
From The Historical Jesus (2000)
documentation for what had really happened. For Strauss, the Gospels do not contain historical narratives but “myths,” i.e., history-like stories that evolved in early Christianity to relate the “truth” about who Jesus really was. These stories didn’t actually happen but nonetheless proclaim the Christian message. The book created a storm of protest in the theological and academic communities. As a result of his views, Strauss was relieved of his duties as a professor at Tübingen and from then on, had difficulty landing a regular teaching post. In subsequent editions of the book, Strauss retracted some of his more radical views about Jesus but later returned to them. Embittered by the controversies over his work, he continued to write in philosophy, theology, and early Christianity (as well as politics and biography) until his death in 1874. ©2000 The Teaching Company. 173 Bibliography Allison, Dale. Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet . Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998. The most thorough recent attempt to show that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet; the book is written at a scholarly level and deals with the issue of the criteria scholars have used to establish historically reliable tradition. Boyer, Paul. When Time Shall Be No More : Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1992. A fascinating study of different religious leaders, writers, and sects in America that have maintained that the world was going to end in the near future. Brown, Raymond. The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke , 2nd ed. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1993. A massive and exhaustive (but highly popular) discussion of the accounts of Jesus’ birth in both Matthew and Luke; suitable for those who want to know everything about every detail of the passages. ⎯⎯⎯. The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave , 2 vols. London: Doubleday, 1994. A detailed and thorough discussion of the accounts of Jesus’ last hours found in all four Gospels. Carter, Warren. What Are They Saying about Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount? New York: Paulist, 1994. The best introductory sketch of what scholars have said about the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 5–7, Jesus’ best known set of teachings. Cartlidge, David R., and David L. Dungan, eds. Documents for the Study of the Gospels , 2nd ed. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1994. A valuable selection of ancient literary texts that portray “divine men” in ways that sound remarkably like the portrayals of Jesus in the New Testament. Includes portions of Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius . Charlesworth, James H., ed. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983, 1985. The most complete collection of non-canonical writings of early Judaism from before and around the time of the New Testament, with full and informative introductions. Included are a number of “apocalypses” from around the time of Jesus. ©2000 The Teaching Company. 174
The author of the Cross Gospel , or of any other gospel, did not say this: I know that the Roman authorities crucified Jesus, but I will blame the Jewish authorities; I will play the Roman card; I will write propaganda that I know is inaccurate. If they had done that, the resulting text would have been a lie. No matter how weak the gospel writers were, or how threatened their existence, such a tactic would not have been apologetics and polemics; it would have been libel and lie. That intuition helped me understand how the Cross Gospel was composed. But it helped me understand as well the continuing nature of the passion-resurrection tradition. That tradition, in my view, developed from the Cross Gospel basis and is a single genetic stream of transmission. No gospel written after the war of 66–73/74 C.E. is willing to leave the Romans totally guiltless, as did the Cross Gospel . No matter what Pilate thinks, he supplies the soldiers for the crucifixion. Mark blames the “crowd” in Jerusalem, Matthew blames “all the people,” and John blames “the Jews.” As Christian Jewish communities are steadily more alienated from their fellow Jews, so the “enemies” of Jesus expand to fit those new situations. By the time of John in the 90s, those enemies are “the Jews”—that is, all those other Jews except us few right ones. If we had understood gospel, we would have understood that. If we had understood gospel, we would have expected that. It is, unfortunately, tragically late to be learning it. CHAPTER 26EXEGESIS, LAMENT, AND BIOGRAPHYCould one suggest that women, whose involvement with the dead body is an intimate one (in most societies it is women who tend the dying, wash the corpse and dress it) need no heightened retelling of the stories of death to comprehend its reality or to quicken their emotional response? They move from experience to art, from tears to ideas. Men, whose experience of death is, in many traditional societies, less physical, in that they do not tend the dying or handle the corpse except when they kill one another (a situation which demands a particular relationship to the dead-as-enemy) must re-read death in art or play in order to experience it. The movement, in this case, might be seen as the obverse of women’s lamentation, one that progresses from ideas to tears. Gail Holst-Warhaft, Dangerous Voices , p. 22 Here is the argument so far. There is a consecutive and canonically independent passion-resurrection story, the Cross Gospel , within the Gospel of Peter . Its present form derives from the Jerusalem community in the early 40s. Its central theme of Jewish authorities versus Jewish people concerning Jesus’ passion-resurrection is the story presumed by the heirs of that Jerusalem community about a century later in the Ascents of James from Recognitions 1.41–43.
From Sometimes an Art: Nine Essays on History (2015)
The difficulty of recovering the context in this case, and of keeping it free from anachronistic distortions, is typical of the problems one faces at this level of historical interpretation. Such difficulties can to some extent, however, be overcome—by the amassment of detailed knowledge of the past; by the skill that can be developed in piecing documentary fragments together into strange but meaningful mosaics; by close attention to the losers (Butterfield’s misfires and blind alleys); and by the constant effort to imagine the distinctiveness of distant worlds. And there have been notable successes in recovering at least some of the subtlest, most interior experiences of people in the past, experiences that are strikingly different from our own. But to the extent that one succeeds in this kind of historical archaeology, one confronts consequences that raise difficult problems that have ignited bitter contention in contemporary politics. The first problematic consequence of succeeding in contextualizing history is essentially moral. To explain contextually is, implicitly at least, to excuse. One could explain, with reference to the context of the time, the logical reasons why the American Constitution did not eliminate slavery. But it seems to be moral obtuseness to say that the framers of the Constitution had good reasons for what they did. However understandable these reasons may have been, to try to explain them seems to be an attempt to excuse them, while what historians should be doing, according to some, is condemning them and focusing on the immorality of slavery and the Founders’ moral blinders. Jefferson was a liberal, imaginative, and sensitive man, and he sincerely loathed slavery; he called it “an abominable crime” and a blot on civilization. Then why did he not free his slaves? Consistent with the Revolution’s egalitarianism, there was a short-lived abolitionist movement in the 1780s; surely it should have been advanced and exploited by people like Jefferson. But it was not. And the seeming dilemma is not resolved by noting that though Jefferson’s generation did not rid the country of slavery they did a great deal to restrict it. They scheduled the slave trade for extinction and prohibited slavery itself in what would become the five states of the Old Northwest, while the northeastern states set in motion legal processes that would abolish it. Above all, the Revolution made of slavery a problem it had never been before. Before the Revolution, slavery was rarely seen as a problem; after the Revolution, there never was a time when slavery was not a problem.
From Lit: A Memoir (2009)
12 Bent Bender “Well, if God doesn’t exist, who’s laughing at us?” —Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov One day Lecia rings me up. Tawdry, she says. An adjective meaning crude or trashy or otherwise unseemly, I say. Talk to me. Mother’s sleeping with Harold, she says, meaning Daddy’s pill-popping nurse, crashing of late in the spare room. Never happen, I say. That man has got to be gay. Happened, she says. They showed up drunk last night, talking about the hustle contest at Get Down Brown’s. Lecia lives two hours from our hometown, but her former secretary saw Mother and Harold necking. I wonder were they doing this with Daddy in the house! Who knows? Lecia says. Daddy’s so out of it, he may not have twigged to it anyway. If anything, he likes Harold better than Mother. Harold’s nicer, I say. Way nicer. And he used to work at the jail, Lecia says. I wonder if they practice safe sex. We both went quiet till I add, She needs to get an AIDS test. Tawdry, Lecia says. Tawdry, I say, and hang up. So vivid is Mother’s story of her final drunk with Harold—so painterly in its grotesque detail—that I take the liberty of recounting as if I were there, for a good story told often enough puts you in rooms never occupied. The way other families keep wedding videos or log dates in a Bible, mine stores in the genetic warehouse alcohol-fueled catastrophe. I’m the voyeur as Harold tries to zip Mother into her red sequined top, a close fit on her sixty-two-year-old frame. You need to spray some PAM on me, Mother says. Before the mirror, she sucks in her cheeks and rouges a terra-cotta stripe in the cheekbone’s shadow. He tugs down on the blouse hem and she feels her zipper pop midback. Whoa, she says. I can feel a breeze in here. She takes a sip of Harold’s banana daiquiri as he checks her out from behind. I’ll safety-pin it, he says. After draining the glass, she holds up the empty, saying, And do me. He opens the refrigerator, on which Mother has painted a bulbous hippolike old woman, nude in a floppy hat. Hippos are their theme animal, Mother and Harold’s. In the months since I’ve moved Daddy into the home, the old house has sprouted hippos all over. Money I’ve sent to help out has partly been used for the bloated, nappy furniture they laze on—also for redoing the bath, where Mother painted another cartoonlike mural of twin hippos, which I fear echoes the two of them nude together. Mother dials the phone while telling Harold to put some britches on. The silky polyester shirt he slides into has zigzag lightning bolts. Once the buttons are fastened, the front puckers. In our apartment in Cambridge, the phone squeals, and I holler to my husband, who’s typing in the next room, That’s her. Don’t answer it, he says. I know he’s right.
From Martin Luther (2016)
Luther did not make much of a knight, however. He had not found the ride from Altenstein to the Wartburg easy—he was used to traveling in wagons, not to riding and the muscular control it required. Noble life was not much to his taste, either. He tried hunting, but his instincts were all wrong: He wanted to protect the quarry. On one outing, he scooped up the hare and wrapped the injured animal in his sleeve to protect it from the dogs, but they bit right through his cloak, broke the hare’s leg, and choked it to death. Luther, ever the preacher, turned the incident into a theological metaphor. The hare was the Christian soul, attacked by the Pope and Satan. In heaven, the tables would be turned, and the noble hunters who so loved eating game would become Christ’s prey. Stuck in the castle, where he would remain for ten months, Luther evidently did not relish being a victim, incapable of fighting back. For all his distaste for hunting, he would rather be a hunter than a hare.4 Hans von Berlepsch, the castellan, treated him well, but it was difficult to keep the secret about the mysterious guest. The wife of one of the Elector’s notaries had let Luther’s location slip, and since this rumor originated at court, it was credible. Moreover, Berlepsch was convinced that Luther’s whereabouts were already general knowledge. Not for the first time, therefore, Luther determined on a ruse to fool his enemies—and like many of his other cunning plans, this one was a little too clever. He wrote to Spalatin in mid-July 1521 enclosing another letter in his own hand, that purported to have been sent from “my quarters” in Bohemia. He asked Spalatin to “lose” it “with studied carelessness”: “I hear a rumor is being spread, my Spalatin, that Luther is living in the Wartburg near Eisenach….Strange that nobody now thinks of Bohemia,” he wrote. He “would love the ‘hog of Dresden’ ” (that is, Duke Georg) to find the letter, Luther wrote in his accompanying note. It was obvious that the letter has no point apart from where it was supposedly sent. It would have fooled nobody. Worse, for many, it would have confirmed that he was indeed in the Wartburg, the letter too eager to deny the rumor in the first line.5