Contempt

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 Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "Quite, Hammond, quite! But if someone starts making love to Julia, you begin to simmer; and if he goes on, you are soon at boiling point."... Julia was Hammond's wife. "Why, exactly! So I should be if he began to urinate in a corner of my drawing-room. There's a place for all these things." "You mean you wouldn't mind if he made love to Julia in some discreet alcove?" Charlie May was slightly satirical, for he had flirted a very little with Julia, and Hammond had cut up very roughly. "Of course I should mind. Sex is a private thing between me and Julia; and of course I should mind anyone else trying to mix in." "As a matter of fact," said the lean and freckled Tommy Dukes, who looked much more Irish than May, who was pale and rather fat: "As a matter of fact, Hammond, you have a strong property instinct, and a strong will to self-assertion, and you want success. Since I've been in the army definitely, I've got out of the way of the world, and now I see how inordinately strong the craving for self-assertion and success is in men. It is enormously over-developed. All our individuality has run that way. And of course men like you think you'll get through better with a woman's backing. That's why you're so jealous. That's what sex is to you ... a vital little dynamo between you and Julia, to bring success. If you began to be unsuccessful you'd begin to flirt, like Charlie, who isn't successful. Married people like you and Julia have labels on you, like travellers' trunks. Julia is labelled _Mrs. Arnold. B. Hammond_ ... just like a trunk on the railway that belongs to somebody. And you are labelled Arnold. B. Hammond, _C/o Mrs. Arnold. B. Hammond_. Oh, you're quite right, you're quite right! The life of the mind needs a comfortable house and decent cooking. You're quite right. It even needs posterity. But it all hinges on the instinct for success. That is the pivot on which all things turn." Hammond looked rather piqued. He was rather proud of the integrity of his mind, and of his _not_ being a timeserver. None the less, he did want success. "It's quite true, you can't live without cash," said May. "You've got to have a certain amount of it to be able to live and get along ... even to be free to _think_ you must have a certain amount of money, or your stomach stops you. But it seems to me you might leave the labels off sex. We're free to talk to anybody; so why shouldn't we be free to make love to any woman who inclines us that way?" "There speaks the lascivious Celt," said Clifford.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Clifford left them alone, and she learnt to do the same: she just went by without looking at them, and they stared as if she were a walking wax figure. When he had to deal with them, Clifford was rather haughty and contemptuous; one could no longer afford to be friendly. In fact he was altogether rather supercilious and contemptuous of anyone not in his own class. He stood his ground, without any attempt at conciliation. And he was neither liked nor disliked by the people: he was just part of things, like the pit-bank and Wragby itself. But Clifford was really extremely shy and self-conscious now he was lamed. He hated seeing anyone except just the personal servants. For he had to sit in a wheeled chair or a sort of bath-chair. Nevertheless he was just as carefully dressed as ever, by his expensive tailors, and he wore the careful Bond Street neckties just as before, and from the top he looked just as smart and impressive as ever. He had never been one of the modern lady-like young men: rather bucolic even, with his ruddy face and broad shoulders. But his very quiet, hesitating voice, and his eyes, at the same time bold and frightened, assured and uncertain, revealed his nature. His manner was often offensively supercilious, and then again modest and self-effacing, almost tremulous. Connie and he were attached to one another, in the aloof modern way. He was much too hurt in himself, the great shock of his maiming, to be easy and flippant. He was a hurt thing. And as such Connie stuck to him passionately. But she could not help feeling how little connection he really had with people. The miners were, in a sense, his own men; but he saw them as objects rather than men, parts of the pit rather than parts of life, crude raw phenomena rather than human beings along with him. He was in some way afraid of them, he could not bear to have them look at him now he was lame. And their queer, crude life seemed as unnatural as that of hedgehogs. He was remotely interested; but like a man looking down a microscope, or up a telescope. He was not in touch. He was not in actual touch with anybody, save, traditionally, with Wragby, and, through the close bond of family defence, with Emma. Beyond this nothing really touched him. Connie felt that she herself didn't really, not really touch him; perhaps there was nothing to get at ultimately; just a negation of human contact.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  In fact everything was a little ridiculous, or very ridiculous: certainly everything connected with authority, whether it were in the army or the government or the universities, was ridiculous to a degree. And as far as the governing class made any pretensions to govern, they were ridiculous too. Sir Geoffrey, Clifford's father, was intensely ridiculous, chopping down his trees, and weeding men out of his colliery to shove them into the war; and himself being so safe and patriotic; but also, spending more money on his country than he'd got. When Miss Chatterley--Emma--came down to London from the Midlands to do some nursing work, she was very witty in a quiet way about Sir Geoffrey and his determined patriotism. Herbert, the elder brother and heir, laughed outright, though it was his trees that were falling for trench props. But Clifford only smiled a little uneasily. Everything was ridiculous, quite true. But when it came too close and oneself became ridiculous too...? At least people of a different class, like Connie, were earnest about something. They believed in something. They were rather earnest about the Tommies, and the threat of conscription, and the shortage of sugar and toffee for the children. In all these things, of course, the authorities were ridiculously at fault. But Clifford could not take it to heart. To him the authorities were ridiculous _ab ovo_, not because of toffee or Tommies. And the authorities felt ridiculous, and behaved in a rather ridiculous fashion, and it was all a mad hatter's tea party for a while. Till things developed over there, and Lloyd George came to save the situation over here. And this surpassed even ridicule, the flippant young laughed no more. In 1916 Herbert Chatterley was killed, so Clifford became heir. He was terrified even of this. His importance as son of Sir Geoffrey and child of Wragby was so ingrained in him, he could never escape it. And yet he knew that this too, in the eyes of the vast seething world, was ridiculous. Now he was heir and responsible for Wragby. Was that not terrible? And also splendid at the same time, perhaps, purely absurd? Sir Geoffrey would have none of the absurdity. He was pale and tense, withdrawn into himself, and obstinately determined to save his country and his own position, let it be Lloyd George or who it might. So cut off he was, so divorced from the England that was really England, so utterly incapable, that he even thought well of Horatio Bottomley. Sir Geoffrey stood for England and Lloyd George as his forebears had stood for England and St. George: and he never knew there was a difference. So Sir Geoffrey felled timber and stood for Lloyd George and England, England and Lloyd George.

• From Between the World and Me (2015)

  But race is the child of racism, not the father. And the process of naming “the people” has never been a matter of genealogy and physiognomy so much as one of hierarchy. Difference in hue and hair is old. But the belief in the preeminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organize a society and that they signify deeper attributes, which are indelible—this is the new idea at the heart of these new people who have been brought up hopelessly, tragically, deceitfully, to believe that they are white. These new people are, like us, a modern invention. But unlike us, their new name has no real meaning divorced from the machinery of criminal power. The new people were something else before they were white—Catholic, Corsican, Welsh, Mennonite, Jewish—and if all our national hopes have any fulfillment, then they will have to be something else again. Perhaps they will truly become American and create a nobler basis for their myths. I cannot call it. As for now, it must be said that the process of washing the disparate tribes white, the elevation of the belief in being white, was not achieved through wine tastings and ice cream socials, but rather through the pillaging of life, liberty, labor, and land; through the flaying of backs; the chaining of limbs; the strangling of dissidents; the destruction of families; the rape of mothers; the sale of children; and various other acts meant, first and foremost, to deny you and me the right to secure and govern our own bodies. The new people are not original in this. Perhaps there has been, at some point in history, some great power whose elevation was exempt from the violent exploitation of other human bodies. If there has been, I have yet to discover it. But this banality of violence can never excuse America, because America makes no claim to the banal. America believes itself exceptional, the greatest and noblest nation ever to exist, a lone champion standing between the white city of democracy and the terrorists, despots, barbarians, and other enemies of civilization. One cannot, at once, claim to be superhuman and then plead mortal error. I propose to take our countrymen’s claims of American exceptionalism seriously, which is to say I propose subjecting our country to an exceptional moral standard. This is difficult because there exists, all around us, an apparatus urging us to accept American innocence at face value and not to inquire too much. And it is so easy to look away, to live with the fruits of our history and to ignore the great evil done in all of our names. But you and I have never truly had that luxury. I think you know.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Silence fell. The four men smoked. And Connie sat there and put another stitch in her sewing.... Yes, she sat there! She had to sit mum. She had to be quiet as a mouse, not to interfere with the immensely important speculations of these highly-mental gentlemen. But she had to be there. They didn't get on so well without her; their ideas didn't flow so freely. Clifford was much more edgy and nervous, he got cold feet much quicker in Connie's absence, and the talk didn't run. Tommy Dukes came off best; he was a little inspired by her presence. Hammond she didn't really like; he seemed so selfish in a mental way. And Charles May, though she liked something about him, seemed a little distasteful and messy, in spite of his stars. How many evenings had Connie sat and listened to the manifestations of these four men! these, and one or two others. That they never seemed to get anywhere didn't trouble her deeply. She liked to hear what they had to say, especially when Tommy was there. It was fun. Instead of men kissing you, and touching you with their bodies, they revealed their minds to you. It was great fun! But what cold minds! And also it was a little irritating. She had more respect for Michaelis, on whose name they all poured such withering contempt, as a little mongrel arriviste, and uneducated bounder of the worst sort. Mongrel and bounder or not, he jumped to his own conclusions. He didn't merely walk round them with millions of words, in the parade of the life of the mind. Connie quite liked the life of the mind, and got a great thrill out of it. But she did think it overdid itself a little. She loved being there, amidst the tobacco smoke of those famous evenings of the cronies, as she called them privately to herself. She was infinitely amused, and proud too, that even their talking they could not do without her silent presence. She had an immense respect for thought ... and these men, at least, tried to think honestly. But somehow there was a cat, and it wouldn't jump. They all alike talked at something, though what it was, for the life of her she couldn't say. It was something that Mick didn't clear, either. But then Mick wasn't trying to do anything, but just get through his life, and put as much across other people as they tried to put across him. He was really anti-social, which was what Clifford and his cronies had against him. Clifford and his cronies were not anti-social; they were more or less bent on saving mankind, or on instructing it, to say the least. There was a gorgeous talk on Sunday evening, when the conversation drifted again to love. "Blest be the tie that binds Our hearts in kindred something-or-other"--

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The king, feeling himself healed, said, 'Damsel, you have well earned your husband'; whereto she answered, 'Then, my lord, I have earned Bertrand de Roussillon, whom I began to love even in the days of my childhood and have ever since loved over all.' The king deemed it a grave matter to give him to her; nevertheless, having promised her and unwilling to fail of his faith, he let call the count to himself and bespoke him thus: 'Bertrand, you are now of age and accomplished [in all that behoveth unto man's estate];[200] wherefore it is our pleasure that you return to govern your county and carry with you a damsel, whom we have given you to wife.' 'And who is the damsel, my lord?' asked Bertrand; to which the king answered, 'It is she who hath with her medicines restored to us our health.' [Footnote 200: _Fornito_, a notable example of what the illustrious Lewis Carroll Dodgson, Waywode of Wonderland, calls a "portmanteau-word," a species that abounds in mediæval Italian, for the confusion of translators.] Bertrand, who had seen and recognized Gillette, knowing her (albeit she seemed to him very fair) to be of no such lineage as sorted with his quality, said all disdainfully, 'My lord, will you then marry me to a she-leach? Now God forbid I should ever take such an one to wife!' 'Then,' said the king, 'will you have us fail of our faith, the which, to have our health again, we pledged to the damsel, who in guerdon thereof demanded you to husband?' 'My lord,' answered Bertrand, 'you may, an you will, take from me whatsoever I possess or, as your liegeman, bestow me upon whoso pleaseth you; but of this I certify you, that I will never be a consenting party unto such a marriage.' 'Nay,' rejoined the king, 'but you shall, for that the damsel is fair and wise and loveth you dear; wherefore we doubt not but you will have a far happier life with her than with a lady of higher lineage.' Bertrand held his peace and the king let make great preparations for the celebration of the marriage. The appointed day being come, Bertrand, sore against his will, in the presence of the king, espoused the damsel, who loved him more than herself. This done, having already determined in himself what he should do, he sought leave of the king to depart, saying he would fain return to his county and there consummate the marriage; then, taking horse, he repaired not thither, but betook himself into Tuscany, where, hearing that the Florentines were at war with those of Sienna, he determined to join himself to the former, by whom he was joyfully received and made captain over a certain number of men-at-arms; and there, being well provided[201] of them, he abode a pretty while in their service. [Footnote 201: _i.e._ getting good pay and allowances (_avendo buona provisione_).]

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  said Tommy Dukes. "I'd like to know what the tie is.... The tie that binds _us_ just now is mental friction on one another. And, apart from that, there's damned little tie between us. We bust apart, and say spiteful things about one another, like all the other damned intellectuals in the world. Damned everybodies, as far as that goes, for they all do it. Else we bust apart, and cover up the spiteful things we feel against one another by saying false sugaries. It's a curious thing that the mental life seems to flourish with its roots in spite, ineffable and fathomless spite. Always has been so! Look at Socrates, in Plato, and his bunch round him! The sheer spite of it all, just sheer joy in pulling somebody else to bits.... Protagoras, or whoever it was! And Alcibiades, and all the other little disciple dogs joining in the fray! I must say it makes one prefer Buddha, quietly sitting under a bo-tree, or Jesus, telling his disciples little Sunday stories, peacefully, and without any mental fireworks. No, there's something wrong with the mental life, radically. It's rooted in spite and envy, envy and spite. Ye shall know the tree by its fruit." "I don't think we're altogether so spiteful," protested Clifford. "My dear Clifford, think of the way we talk each other over, all of us. I'm rather worse than anybody else, myself. Because I infinitely prefer the spontaneous spite to the concocted sugaries; now they _are_ poison; when I begin saying what a fine fellow Clifford is, etc, etc, then poor Clifford is to be pitied. For God's sake, all of you, say spiteful things about me, then I shall know I mean something to you. Don't say sugaries, or I'm done." "Oh, but I do think we honestly like one another," said Hammond. "I tell you we must ... we say such spiteful things to one another, about one another, behind our backs! I'm the worst." "And I do think you confuse the mental life with the critical activity. I agree with you, Socrates gave the critical activity a grand start, but he did more than that," said Charlie May, rather magisterially. The cronies had such a curious pomposity under their assumed modesty. It was all so _ex cathedra_, and it all pretended to be so humble. Dukes refused to be drawn about Socrates. "That's quite true, criticism and knowledge are not the same thing," said Hammond. "They aren't, of course," chimed in Berry, a brown, shy young man, who had called to see Dukes, and was staying the night. They all looked at him as if the ass had spoken.

• From Between the World and Me (2015)

  “We would prefer to say that such people cannot exist, that there aren’t any,” writes Solzhenitsyn. “To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law.” This is the foundation of the Dream—its adherents must not just believe in it but believe that it is just, believe that their possession of the Dream is the natural result of grit, honor, and good works. There is some passing acknowledgment of the bad old days, which, by the way, were not so bad as to have any ongoing effect on our present. The mettle that it takes to look away from the horror of our prison system, from police forces transformed into armies, from the long war against the black body, is not forged overnight. This is the practiced habit of jabbing out one’s eyes and forgetting the work of one’s hands. To acknowledge these horrors means turning away from the brightly rendered version of your country as it has always declared itself and turning toward something murkier and unknown. It is still too difficult for most Americans to do this. But that is your work. It must be, if only to preserve the sanctity of your mind. — The entire narrative of this country argues against the truth of who you are. I think of that summer that you may well remember when I loaded you and your cousin Christopher into the back seat of a rented car and pushed out to see what remained of Petersburg, Shirley Plantation, and the Wilderness. I was obsessed with the Civil War because six hundred thousand people had died in it. And yet it had been glossed over in my education, and in popular culture, representations of the war and its reasons seemed obscured. And yet I knew that in 1859 we were enslaved and in 1865 we were not, and what happened to us in those years struck me as having some amount of import. But whenever I visited any of the battlefields, I felt like I was greeted as if I were a nosy accountant conducting an audit and someone was trying to hide the books.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  Bradlaugh’s name and his so- called atheism. I read some book about it, the name of which I forget. It had no effect on me, for I had already crossed the Sahara of atheism. Mrs. Besant who was then very much in the limelight, had turned to theism from atheism. I had read her book How I became a Theosophist. It was about this time that Bradlaugh died. He was buried in the Working Cemetery. I attended the funeral, as I believe every Indian residing in London did. A few clergymen also were present to do him the last honours. On our way back from the funeral we had to wait at the station for our train. A champion atheist from the crowd heckled one of these clergymen. ‘Well sir, you believe in the existence of God?’ ‘I do,’ said the good man in a low tone. ‘You also agree that the circumference of the Earth is 28,000 miles, don’t you?’ said the atheist with a smile of self-assurance. ‘Indeed.’ ‘Pray tell me then the size of your God and where he may be?’ ‘Well, if we but knew, He resides in the hearts of us both.’ ‘Now, now, don’t take me to be a child,’ said the champion with a triumphant look at us. The clergyman assumed a humble silence. This talk still further increased my prejudice against atheism. 23.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Now Connie would sometimes plead a headache as an excuse for going up to her room after dinner. "Perhaps Mrs. Bolton will play piquet with you," she said to Clifford. "Oh, I shall be perfectly all right. You go to your own room and rest, darling." But no sooner had she gone, than he rang for Mrs. Bolton, and asked her to take a hand at piquet or bezique, or even chess. He had taught her all these games. And Connie found it curiously objectionable to see Mrs. Bolton, flushed and tremulous like a little girl, touching her queen or her knight with uncertain fingers, then drawing away again. And Clifford, faintly smiling with a half-teasing superiority, saying to her: "You must say _j'adoube_!" She looked up at him with bright, startled eyes, then murmured shyly, obediently: "_J'adoube!_" Yes, he was educating her. And he enjoyed it, it gave him a sense of power. And she was thrilled. She was coming bit by bit into possession of all that the gentry knew, all that made them upper class: apart from the money. That thrilled her. And at the same time, she was making him want to have her there with him. It was a subtle deep flattery to him, her genuine thrill. To Connie, Clifford seemed to be coming out in his true colours: a little vulgar, a little common, and uninspired; rather fat. Ivy Bolton's tricks and humble bossiness were also only too transparent. But Connie did wonder at the genuine thrill which the woman got out of Clifford. To say she was in love with him would be putting it wrongly. She was thrilled by her contact with a man of the upper class, this titled gentleman, this author who could write books and poems, and whose photograph appeared in the illustrated newspapers. She was thrilled to a weird passion. And his "educating" her roused in her a passion of excitement and response much deeper than any love affair could have done. In truth, the very fact that there could _be_ no love affair left her free to thrill to her very marrow with this other passion, the peculiar passion of _knowing_, knowing as he knew. There was no mistake that the woman was in some way in love with him: whatever force we give to the word love. She looked so handsome and so young, and her grey eyes were sometimes marvellous. At the same time, there was a lurking soft satisfaction about her, even of triumph, and private satisfaction. Ugh, that private satisfaction! How Connie loathed it! But no wonder Clifford was caught by the woman! She absolutely adored him, in her persistent fashion, and put herself absolutely at his service, for him to use as he liked. No wonder he was flattered!

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  never increased with the increase in population. Beyond arranging to clean the latrines in the location in a haphazard way, the Municipality did nothing to provide any sanitary facilities, much less good roads or lights. It was hardly likely that it would safeguard its sanitation, when it was indifferent to the welfare of the residents. These were too ignorant of the rules of municipal sanitation and hygiene to do without the help or supervision of the Municipality. If those who went there had all been Robinson Crusoes, theirs would have been a different story. But we do not know of a single emigrant colony of Robinson Crusoes in the world. Usually people migrate abroad in search of wealth and trade, but the bulk of the Indians who went to South Africa were ignorant, pauper agriculturists, who needed all the care and protection that could be given them. The traders and educated Indians who followed them were very few. The criminal negligence of the Municipality and the ignorance of the Indian settlers thus conspired to render the location thoroughly insanitary. The Municipality, far from doing anything to improve the condition of the location, used the insanitation, caused by their own neglect, as a pretext for destroying the location, and for that purpose obtained from the local legislature authority to dispossess the settlers. This was the condition of things when I settled in Johannesburg. The settlers, having proprietory rights in their land, were naturally entitled to compensation. A special tribunal was appointed to try the land acquisition cases. If the tenant was not prepared to accept the offer of the Municipality, he had a right to appeal to the tribunal, and if the latter’s award exceeded the Municipality’s offer, the Municipality had to bear the costs. Most of the tenants engaged me as their legal adviser. I had no desire to make money out of these cases, so I told the tenants that I should be satisfied with whatever costs the tribunal awarded, in case they won, and a fee of £ 10 on every

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  She shifted her weight to the other hip and reversed the motion, criss-crossing the previously inflicted lashes. Bill let go of the ladder and turned around as soon as the first stroke drew blood, but the woman behind him was so fast, she inflicted a dozen times nine crimson and overflowing welts, each bleeding bouquet placed an even distance from its mates, before he could get out of her way. As he turned to face her, she continued to flog him overhand, catching his shoulders, then changed direction and came down hard across both of his tits. The welts were instantly visible, even in the club twilight. “Jesus,” Iduna heard Howard say, “this is a bit sick.” Gil sighed again. “I’m sorry!” Bill screamed, falling to the filthy concrete floor. “Please stop, please stop, please stop!” She jerked her arm back, and the incomplete stroke came back into her own stomach. He was crawling now, reaching for her hand. Despite being an out-of-towner, he must have heard enough of Kerry’s legend to know that she allowed select victims to kiss her ring. But Iduna knew he would never receive that boon, even after taking all that punishment. He had promised her he could take anything , and then he had tried to get away. Kerry didn’t like it when they moved, let alone tried to get away. Indeed, a boot in the face stopped his progress, and its owner removed her silver shades to give him one hard stare that shut his whining mouth. There was something funny about this, since she wasn’t even looking into his face. She was looking at the blood that ran in thin but eager trickles to the floor. In the middle of his renewed and tearful apologies, she spun on her heel and made for the door, tucking the blood-stained cat beside its fellows. “Shit!” Teddy said, and slammed his beer down on the bar. He turned to complain to Iduna, but she was not there. Kerry was not pleased to be intercepted between the coatcheck and the door by her personal, self-appointed voyeur, wine glass in hand. She made quite a provocative picture, this full-bosomed, very pale woman in her black dress, but she was in the way and a nuisance. Then she became impertinent. She tilted the glass to her lips and let a half-swallow of wine run out of the corner of her mouth. It was just a little too purple to be blood, that tiny rivulet, the few drops clinging to her lips. Kerry snarled and went sideways to get by, angry, almost pushing the woman who had arranged this strange tableau for her. A man who had behaved that way might have gotten a broken jaw for his bad manners. But she was known for her chivalry. It was part of a code she thought all true leathermen (regardless of gender) should obey. Let women make do with their feminine wiles and plots and foibles.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  A few days after Ferondo repaired to the abbey, whom, whenas the abbot saw, he cast about to send him to purgatory. Accordingly, he sought out a powder of marvellous virtue, which he had gotten in the parts of the Levant of a great prince who avouched it to be that which was wont to be used of the Old Man of the Mountain,[194] whenas he would fain send any one, sleeping, into his paradise or bring him forth thereof, and that, according as more or less thereof was given, without doing any hurt, it made him who took it sleep more or less [time] on such wise that, whilst its virtue lasted, none would say he had life in him. Of this he took as much as might suffice to make a man sleep three days and putting it in a beaker of wine, that was not yet well cleared, gave it to Ferondo to drink in his cell, without the latter suspecting aught; after which he carried him into the cloister and there with some of his monks fell to making sport of him and his dunceries; nor was it long before, the powder working, Ferondo was taken with so sudden and overpowering a drowsiness, that he slumbered as yet he stood afoot and presently fell down fast asleep. [Footnote 194: The well-known chief of the Assassins (properly _Heshashin_, _i.e._ hashish or hemp eaters). The powder in question is apparently a preparation of hashish or hemp. Boccaccio seems to have taken his idea of the Old Man of the Mountain from Marco Polo, whose travels, published in the early part of the fourteenth century, give a most romantic account of that chieftain and his followers.]

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  No, that’s not it, George. Tell you what I like right now: disaster films. And air hockey. Hood knew what came next—the competition to excuse yourself first. Clair didn’t want to talk to him any more than he wanted to talk to Clair. What they would do now, in unison—Hey, well, great to talk, see you Monday—was make a run at the hors d’oeuvres. Or suddenly recognize a face across the room. Whoever got out first won. So Hood was already searching the room as he spoke, distractedly. And as he came to the end of the sentence, as he spoke the words air hockey, he saw his mistress, Janey Williams, wife of the S-shaped Styrofoam-packaging king, across a crowded room. —Whoa, big fella, Hood mumbled, you gotta— Only to find that Clair had already turned away. Clair was engaged with Maura O’Brien. Probably getting some inexpensive advice about a urological condition. Janey was in black, silk pajamas, the top opened to just below her breasts. No bra. At her cleavage, turquoise beads swayed. As she leaned down to take up her drink, she stilled the shimmering pajama top with one hand. Her earth-colored lipstick and eye shadow matched her brown stiletto heels. Her frosted-blond hair was flawlessly arranged, like a fiberglass waterfall. Hood’s first sensation was of reunion, of wholeness and conjunction, like he had the rollerskate and she had the key. But the feeling soured almost immediately, because he remembered the afternoon. Janey pretended to be occupied with a vase of flowers beside the trapeze chair —chrome and steel with a pure rubber sling—in which the Halfords’ cat was curled. He made for her like any spurned lover. —Oh, Jeez, Benjie, she said, fingering her beads. Well, here you are. —Damn right, but where the hell were you? —What are you talking about? —Don’t bullshit me around, Janey. Hood was whispering, but he was caught in some tidal or astrological imperative, some mood that would not be stopped, and the words poured from him as though their syntax was using him to express some mood. He felt, suddenly, that he might even cry. —Jesus Christ, I waited around for more than a half hour, in the dark, in nothing but my boxer shorts, no wait, with the light on, so anybody could have come by and seen me in the window. What’s that all about? What the hell happened? Janey sipped. She set the drink down on the table, beside the vase. —A prior engagement overcame me. —What do you mean? What kind of stuff is this? I mean— —Listen, Benjamin Hood, I have obligations that precede your ... from before you showed up in my life. One or two, you know, good-natured encounters, that doesn’t mean I’m ...

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  There were no words, but you would have to be crazy not to understand that it meant, “Keep away—or pay the price.” No wonder he jumped away from her. But Domina snickered at him, and Iduna thought, oh dear, now he’ll have to get angry and prove something. “The name’s Bill,” he said heartily, shoving his hand at Kerry. She looked at it as if it were leprous. There was a long silence. She regarded him from behind her mirrored shades. No telling what she thought. Iduna looked lovingly at that full mouth and the two tiny puckers in it over the prominent canine teeth. She was sure no one else could have spotted these minute irregularities, or known why there were two places where Kerry’s lips could not quite meet. Finally, the leatherwoman spoke. “Can I help you?” she said softly, speaking each word slowly and precisely. It was not a question. Ooh, Iduna squealed to herself, massacre alert, massacre alert! “Wall, Ah don’t know what a little bitty thang like yew could do fer me,” he drawled. An out-of-towner, Iduna thought. But that was no excuse. She was an out-of-towner herself, and she knew better. Kerry smiled. On her face, this expression signified the opposite of its usual meaning. The fool kept on talking. “Why Ah don’t reckon yew could even make a dent in my hide,” he chuckled. “Probably be a waste of time. Ah kin take quite a lot, yew know. Wouldn’t want ta embarrass a lil gal like yew—yew are a gal, ain’tcha?” Then the fatuous ass pronounced his own sentence: “Ah kin take anythin’ yew kin dish out, sister.” It took one well-placed kick to take him down. Iduna was the only one who could follow the swiftness of that booted foot. Once down, he stayed down, and Kerry kicked him in the direction she wanted him to go. The pointed toe of her boot made a crunching noise when it hit his buttocks and ribs. She hustled him to the foot of a very large ladder that stood in one corner of the dance floor. Then she put her boot on the back of his neck and pushed him flat. She bent down to speak to him. What she told him made him keep very small, then shudder and hide his head beneath his arms. Eventually, she lifted him up off the floor—literally lifted him, with one hand— and hauled him up to face the whipping ladder. A revolving ball with mirrored facets spun a dizzy procession of colored lights over the scene. The ball was part of the special effects for the disco music played on other nights of the week.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Now Connie would sometimes plead a headache as an excuse for going up to her room after dinner. "Perhaps Mrs. Bolton will play piquet with you," she said to Clifford. "Oh, I shall be perfectly all right. You go to your own room and rest, darling." But no sooner had she gone, than he rang for Mrs. Bolton, and asked her to take a hand at piquet or bezique, or even chess. He had taught her all these games. And Connie found it curiously objectionable to see Mrs. Bolton, flushed and tremulous like a little girl, touching her queen or her knight with uncertain fingers, then drawing away again. And Clifford, faintly smiling with a half-teasing superiority, saying to her: "You must say _j'adoube_!" She looked up at him with bright, startled eyes, then murmured shyly, obediently: "_J'adoube!_" Yes, he was educating her. And he enjoyed it, it gave him a sense of power. And she was thrilled. She was coming bit by bit into possession of all that the gentry knew, all that made them upper class: apart from the money. That thrilled her. And at the same time, she was making him want to have her there with him. It was a subtle deep flattery to him, her genuine thrill. To Connie, Clifford seemed to be coming out in his true colours: a little vulgar, a little common, and uninspired; rather fat. Ivy Bolton's tricks and humble bossiness were also only too transparent. But Connie did wonder at the genuine thrill which the woman got out of Clifford. To say she was in love with him would be putting it wrongly. She was thrilled by her contact with a man of the upper class, this titled gentleman, this author who could write books and poems, and whose photograph appeared in the illustrated newspapers. She was thrilled to a weird passion. And his "educating" her roused in her a passion of excitement and response much deeper than any love affair could have done. In truth, the very fact that there could _be_ no love affair left her free to thrill to her very marrow with this other passion, the peculiar passion of _knowing_, knowing as he knew. There was no mistake that the woman was in some way in love with him: whatever force we give to the word love. She looked so handsome and so young, and her grey eyes were sometimes marvellous. At the same time, there was a lurking soft satisfaction about her, even of triumph, and private satisfaction. Ugh, that private satisfaction! How Connie loathed it! But no wonder Clifford was caught by the woman! She absolutely adored him, in her persistent fashion, and put herself absolutely at his service, for him to use as he liked. No wonder he was flattered!

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  Also he must have foreseen, if dimly, that it was nothing less than martyrdom which lay in wait for him along the way; that this brand which Fate had set upon him was precisely the token of his apartness from all the ordinary men of earth. Now, on that particular morning, Sebastian kicked off his covers and sprang from bed at break of day, pressed with martial duties. There was a dream he had dreamt at dawn—ill-omened magpies flocking in his breast, covering his mouth with flapping wings—and not yet had it vanished from his pillow. But the crude bed in which he lay himself down each night was shedding a fragrance of seaweed cast up upon the shore; surely then such perfume as this would lure him on for many a night to come to dreams of sea and wide horizons. As he stood at the window and donned his creaking armor, he looked across the way at a temple surrounded by a grove, and in the skies above it he saw the sinking of the clustered stars called Mazzaroth. He looked at that magnificent pagan temple, and in the subtle arching of his eyebrows there came a look of deep contempt, akin almost to suffering and well becoming his beauty. Invoking the name of the only God, he softly chanted some awesome verses of the Holy Scriptures. And thereupon, as though the faintness of his chant were multiplied a thousandfold and echoed with majestic resonance, he heard a mighty moaning that came, there was no doubt, from that accursed temple, from those rows of columns partitioning the starry heavens. It was a sound like that of some strange cumulation crumbling into bits, resounding against the star-encrusted dome of sky.He smiled and lowered his eyes to a point beneath his window. There was a group of maidens ascending secretly to his chambers for morning prayers, as was their custom in the darkness before each dawn. And in her hand each maiden bore a lily that still was sleeping closed. . . . It was well into the winter of my second year in middle school. By then we had become accustomed to long trousers and to calling each other by unadorned surnames. (In lower school we had never been permitted to leave our knees bare below our short pants, not even at the height of summer, and thus our joy at first putting on long trousers had been doubled by the knowledge that never again would we have to garter our thighs painfully. In lower school we had also had to use the formal form of address when calling each other by name.) We had become accustomed as well to the splendid custom of making fun of the teachers, to standing treat by turns at the school teashop, to jungle games in which we went galloping about the school woods, and to dormitory life. I took part in all these diversions except dormitory life.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  COLOUR BAR The symbol of a Court of justice is pair of scales held evenly by an impartial and blind but sagacious woman. Fate has purposely made her blind, in order that she may not judge a person from his exterior but from his intrinsic worth. But the Law Society of natal set out to persuade the Supreme Court to act in contravention of this principle and to belie its symbol.I applied for admission as an advocate of the Supreme Court. I held a certificate of admission from the Bombay High Court. The English certificate I had to deposit with the Bombay High Court when I was enrolled there. It was necessary to attach two certificates of character to the application for admission, and thinking that these would carry more weight if given by Europeans, I secured them from two well-known European merchants whom I knew through Sheth Abdulla. The application had to be presented through a member of the bar, and as a rule the Attorney General presented such applications without fees. Mr. Escombe, who, as we have seen, was legal adviser to Messrs. Dada Abdulla & Co, was the Attorney General. I called on him, and he willingly consented to present my application. The Law Society now sprang a surprise on me by serving me with a notice opposing my application for admission. One of their objections was that the original English certificate was not attached to my application. But the main objection was that, when the regulations regarding admission of advocates were made, the possibility of a coloured man applying could not have been contemplated. Natal owed its growth to European enterprise, and therefore it was necessary that the European element should predominate in the bar. If coloured people were admitted, they might gradually outnumber the Europeans, and the bulwark of their protection would break down. The Law Society had engaged a distinguished lawyer to support their opposition.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Nevertheless Michaelis had his apartment in Mayfair, and walked down Bond Street the image of a gentleman, for you cannot get even the best tailors to cut their low-down customers, when the customers pay. Clifford was inviting the young man of thirty at an inauspicious moment in that young man's career. Yet Clifford did not hesitate. Michaelis had the ear of a few million people, probably; and, being a hopeless outsider, he would no doubt be grateful to be asked down to Wragby at this juncture, when the rest of the smart world was cutting him. Being grateful, he would no doubt do Clifford "good" over there in America. Kudos! A man gets a lot of kudos, whatever that may be, by being talked about in the right way, especially "over there." Clifford was a coming man; and it was remarkable what a sound publicity instinct he had. In the end Michaelis did him most nobly in a play, and Clifford was a sort of popular hero. Till the reaction, when he found he had been made ridiculous. Connie wondered a little over Clifford's blind, imperious instinct to become known: known, that is, to the vast amorphous world he did not himself know, and of which he was uneasily afraid; known as a writer, as a first-class modern writer. Connie was aware from successful, old, hearty, bluffing Sir Malcolm, that artists did advertise themselves, and exert themselves to put their goods over. But her father used channels ready-made, used by all the other R.A.'s who sold their pictures. Whereas Clifford discovered new channels of publicity, all kinds. He had all kinds of people at Wragby, without exactly lowering himself. But, determined to build himself a monument of reputation quickly, he used any handy rubble in the making. Michaelis arrived duly, in a very neat car, with a chauffeur and a manservant. He was absolutely Bond Street! But at sight of him something in Clifford's country soul recoiled. He wasn't exactly ... not exactly ... in fact, he wasn't at all, well, what his appearance intended to imply. To Clifford this was final and enough. Yet he was very polite to the man; to the amazing success in him. The bitch-goddess, as she is called, of Success, roamed, snarling and protective, round the half-humble, half-defiant Michaelis' heels, and intimidated Clifford completely: for he wanted to prostitute himself to the bitch-goddess Success also, if only she would have him.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  of Deseret. And the cornerstone of this defense, says historian Will Bagley, “was to rally Utah’s Indians to the Mormon cause.” The inspiration for Brigham’s military strategy came directly from Mormon scripture: according to The Book of Mormon, the Indians of North America were descended from the Lamanites, and as such they were remnants of the same ancient tribe of Israel to which Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni had belonged. The Lamanites, of course, had rejected the teachings of Jesus, waged war on the Nephites, and eventually killed every last one of them—crimes that had resulted in God cursing the Lamanites with dark skin. Scripture nevertheless taught that the Lamanites/Indians would once again become “a white and delightsome people” when, during the Last Days before the return of Christ, the Latter-day Saints converted them to Mormonism. The Book of Mormon indeed prophesied that the Lamanites, once redeemed, would join forces with the Mormons to vanquish the Gentiles, and thereby usher in the Great and Dreadful Day of the Lord. This momentous alliance between Mormon and Lamanite, Brigham was certain, was about to become a reality, paving the way for the Second Coming. He had reached this conclusion as soon as the Saints had arrived in the Great Salt Lake Valley, when he’d realized that the Mormons’ new homeland was in the midst of the Lamanites. God’s plan seemed to be unfolding just as it had been prophesied in The Book of Mormon. It hadn’t occurred to Brigham, though, that the Lamanites might balk at playing their divinely ordained role. The Indians were sometimes willing to act as mercenaries and attack “Mericats” on behalf of the “Mormonee” * in return for a share of the plunder, but they never considered the Saints to be their allies. The Indians regarded the Big Captain and the rest of the Mormonee as merely the lesser of two hideous evils—and sometimes not even that. Despite the Indians’ lack of enthusiasm for fulfilling their prophetic calling, Brigham used every means at his disposal to enlist them in his campaign against the Gentiles. And when the spoils were sufficiently enticing, the Indians obliged. Numerous Gentile emigrants passing through Utah reported that their horses and cattle were driven off by Indian raiders, only to show up later in Mormon corrals. If the Indians fell short of the Saints’ millennial expectations that they would function as “the battle axe of the Lord,” when the Lamanites could be induced to do the Mormons’ bidding they were, nevertheless, a potent weapon.