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 City of Night (1963)

  4 The Chorus chooses sides, the Fates prepare to cast their lots: And when It happens — if It happens—will they allow Lance a graceful fall? Or will he topple from the heights on the debris of crushed egos? ... The Chorus waits for news from The Cliff. Jamey was bursting with excitement at the Leopard bar. “I just saw Lance!” he announced to a large group. Tonight he is wearing beachcomber clothes. “And let me tell you!—hes stinking drunk!” “Not Lance,” someone protests. “Lance O’Hara—I just saw him. He looks like hes been drinking all day. Hes a mess!” “Ive never seen Lance drunk,” said another. “Except that time at Laguna Beach,” someone remembers. “Hes been drunk all his life—with himself.” “Well!” said Jamey, “Hes worse than all that. He almost collapsed at the Pirate’s Den, and they wouldnt even serve him a drink. They had to bounce him out! But thats not the best: He started fighting with Eddy—that cute bartender—and you know Eddy’s not too big and Lance is, and finally the three bartenders had to push him out, and Lance yelling—guess what he was yelling? Well! He says hes looking for someone! Isnt that Too Delicious?” “Did he say who he was looking for?” someone asked eagerly. “Yessssss....” “Who?” “Who?” “Who!” Jamey looked smug for a silent moment, like a messenger bringing the news of a battle won. As if spitting out poison, he blurts: “Dean!” “Dean!” “That little tramp?” “Everyone’s had him.” “He’s a thief.” “Is that the guy that clipped Eddy?” “Hes just a kid—” “Honey, hes a Mess.” “I’d be ashamed to be seen talking to him!” “And Lance O’Hara was looking for him?” “Thats what I told you, isnt it?” snapped Jamey, and the buzzing continued. Delectably aware of the excitement he’d created, Jamey slithers away, pretends surprise at seeing me nearby, and confides to me: “Ive got to talk to you, babe. I saw you the other night with Chick, and Ive got to warn you about that mad fruit—For Your Own Good. Shes vicious. Let me tell you what she did to this cute kid I know. She promised to take him to Las Vegas, spend all kinds of money on him if he’d let her make him—and then she gives the kid a phony phone number—...”

• From City of Night (1963)

  I watch the skinny man now talking to Skipper. And I see the damning smile on the fatman’s face as he motions them over. As Skipper walks toward us with the skinny man, I notice immediately that Skipper is already drunk; he stumbles, curses. His eyes are smoldering with the hinted awareness of tonight.... “Hi, jack,” he says to me. “Hi cholly,” he says to the fatman. This is Skipper’s way of putting a score down. The world is divided into “jacks”—of which he is one—and “chollys.” A “cholly” is the necessary enemy in the life of a “jack.”... “Hey, don I know you from somewhere?” he says to the fatman. “Ive seen you—around,” the fatman says. He stares at Skipper—and the smile on the fatman’s face contemptuously belies the piercing hatred in his eyes—hammering their gaze at Skipper. The fatman put a fresh cigar in his mouth, snapping his cigarette lighter on, clicking it loudly as if he were cocking a gun aimed at Skipper. In the flickering light of the flame, which the fatman held before Skipper’s face, you can see the beginning tracings of lines around Skipper’s eyes. Sensing this and the unyielding stare of the fatman, Skipper moves slightly back, into the orangy twilight that floats, in smoky pools about the bar. 2 On the table, in the booth where weve been sitting since Skipper came over—myself and the fatman on one side, Skipper and the skinny man on the other—there are the empty bottles of beer, empty glasses; the ashtray is crammed with smoked cigarettes like dead bugs. The mixture of beer and hard liquor Ive been drinking has worked its peculiar magic on me: I feel alertly high: The world now seems compressed into this immediate spot, as if in a giant painting everything but one tiny area has been blocked out—and the unblocked area is now in sharp focus, locked for minute observation. And as usual in that state, I feel tied in fascination to the scene.... The dim smoky figures beyond this booth have retreated farther and farther into the amber darkness of the bar. “And then what happened?” The fatman has been questioning Skipper with the tone of voice one would use to goad a child to relate a fantastic story for the amusement of adults listening with mock interest—the child, unaware of being used, becoming more and more responsive to the attention.

• From City of Night (1963)

  An incredible gigantic white owl, I thought—as I leaned against the bar near her to allow the mashing tides of people to pass in their fervid display of restlessness (as I lean against the bar, too, in order to avoid facing Sylvia, whom I can see sitting at the other end, closely surveying the constantly changing panorama of her bar). And through pill-clouded thoughts, I imagine this queen next to me as though she had descended from the sky through the ceiling, perching owl-like on that stool—defiantly, to bring her unheard prophecy to doomed ears. Through the open door, near which she sat, facing it, the man-and-woman crowds, howling outside in the compulsive happiness which may be Terror, are visible like writhing worms gnawing at each other. And the blond-owl queen in lace drag turns toward the door, slowly as if to perform a ritual: With the cigarette holder clenched between her second and fourth fingers—the third finger, erect, supporting the holder—she aimed an unequivocal fuck-you symbol at the world Outside—and she rasps loudly: “Hey, world!” Then the curious curse of contempt was followed by unintelligible grumbling. And now loudly: “Why doesnt somebody close the fuckin doors? You wanna contaminate the Pure air in Here?” as, at each tossed-out word, she “purifies” the air with puffs of gray smoke, to create a smokescreen that will shelter her within the wombgrayness of this bar. She scowled meanly at the door. Open, it threatens her world. “Chi-Chi! Chi-Chi honey!” Miss Ange (Scarlett O’Hara) gushed at her, over somebody’s shoulder, unable to advance any closer through the deadlocking crowd, “you look simply Fabulous, honey! No, no, you dont look Fabulous—you look Real! ... And who made your gorgeous gown?—Im green with envy,” she says, unsuccessfully hiding her astonishment at the clumsy dress draping the huge body. “I made it myself,” the blond-owl queen, drag-named Chi-Chi, snorted. “When did you get back into town?” Miss Ange asked, wresting her arm free from between two people pulling her along. “I thought youd decided Not To Come Back. How was Boston, baby?” “Lousy,” Chi-Chi answered. “I kept getting busted. Father-fucking cops! wont leave me! alone!” she called loudly as if addressing a proclamation at every hostile person in this bar. Farther and farther away, surrendering now to being carried along by the shifting crowd, Miss Ange shouts: “But youre making it All Right?” “Yeah—yeah, still living off the lean of the land,” said Chi-Chi sourly. “See you later, sweetie!” Miss Ange called, all but swallowed by the other bodies as she adjusts her beribboned straw hat; raising her skirt over her head to make her dizzying way through the crowd. “Y’all stop crushing muh skirt!” she pleads plaintively. Mostly sporting New-Year’s-type hats, the tourists—intrigued, revealing auspicious Interest—eye the queens; and Chi-Chi eyes them back coldly, challenging them.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  We would sometimes meet up at the coffee-stalls of Leicester Square, and have a little boast, or grumble, about our fortunes. And while we talked his eyes would be darting, darting, darting all about, looking for new customers, or old ones, or for sweethearts and friends. ‘Polly Shaw,’ he would say, inclining his head as some slight young man tripped by us, smiling. ‘A daisy, an absolute daisy, but never let her talk you into lending her a quid.’ Or, less kindly: ‘My eyes! but doesn’t that puss always land with her nose in the cream!’ as another boy drew up in a hansom, and disappeared into the Alhambra on the arm of a gentleman with a red silk lining to his cape. Finally, of course, his drifting gaze would settle and harden, and he would give a little nod, or wink, and hastily put down his cup. ‘Whoops!’ he would say, ‘I see a porter who wants to punch Sweet Alice’s ticket. Adieu, cherie. A thousand kisses on your marvellous eyes!’ He would touch his fingertip to his lips, then lightly press it to the sleeve of my jacket; then I would see him picking his careful way across the crowded square to the fellow who had gestured to him. When he asked me, early on, what my name was, I answered: Kitty. It was Sweet Alice who introduced me to the various renter types, and explained to me their costumes, and their habits, and their skills. Foremost amongst them, of course, were the mary-annes, the other boys like himself, who could be seen strolling up and down the Haymarket at any time of the day or night, with their lips rouged and their throats powdered, and clad in trousers as tight and revealing, almost, as a ballerina’s fleshings. These boys took their customers to lodging-houses and hotels; their aim was to be spotted by some manly young gentleman or lord and set up as his mistress in apartments of their own. More succeeded in this ambition than you might think. Then again, there were the more ordinary-looking fellows, the clerks and shop-boys: they rather despised the mary-annes, and went with gentlemen - or so they claimed - for the money rather than for the thrill of it; some of them, I believe, even kept wives and sweethearts. The aristocracy or leading men of this particular branch of the profession were the guardsmen: it had been as one of these that I had costumed myself, when I had donned that scarlet uniform - all innocently, of course, for I had known nothing of their reputation in this direction, then. These men, I was assured, were cock-handlers and -suckers, almost exclusively. They occasionally obliged a gentleman with a poke or two, when they were feeling friendly; but they never let their own parts be fondled or kissed.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  He was prouder, and more pompous, than any emperor before; he was more fastidious than a maid, and would never wear the same robes twice. He used to fish in the Tiber with nets of gold. His caprices were turned into laws. His lusts were always satisfied. Dame Fortune smiled upon him. He burned Rome to ashes for his entertainment. He killed all of the senators of that city just to hear how they groaned in their death throes. He killed his brother, and slept with his own sister. He made sad work of his mother, too. He cut open her womb so that he could view the place where he was conceived. That is how little he thought of her. He did not cry at the sight of her ravaged body. He merely observed that she had once been a fine-looking woman. How could he judge of her beauty, when she lay dead before him? Then he called for wine, and drank off a draught. He showed no sign of remorse. When strength is united with cruelty, there breed monstrous offspring. In his youth Nero had a teacher who tutored him in literature and morals. This man was the very flower of learning, as the old books tell us, and he managed to impart to his pupil all the lessons of civility. Nero then was compliant and obedient. He hid his vices very well. The teacher’s name was Seneca. He ruled over Nero with words rather than deeds. He did not punish him, but he reproved wrongdoing. ‘Sir,’ he would say, ‘a good emperor must love virtue and hate tyranny.’ What was his reward? Nero ordered that the wrists of Seneca should be slit as he lay in a bath. Nero hated any authority placed over him. In particular he always felt a grievance against Seneca. So the philosopher chose to die in the bath, his blood in the water, rather than endure any more grievous punishment. That is the way the emperor slaughtered him. There came a time, however, when Dame Fortune no longer favoured Nero. She detested his pride. And she knew, even though he was strong, that she was stronger. ‘I cannot allow this vicious man to glory in his power and wickedness. I will throw him from the emperor’s throne and, when he least expects it, he will suffer a great fall.’ One night the people of Rome rose up against him. When he learned of the revolt he ran out of the palace and looked for allies among his confederates. But their doors were closed to him. He knocked upon their gates, and cried for help, but they did not listen. He knew then that it was over. He stopped crying out, and went on his lonely way.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Justinus, despising January’s total stupidity, responded straight away with a joke. He did not bother to quote authorities. He would give him a short answer. ‘There is no obstacle on your path to heaven. God by some miracle will come to your aid. He will ensure that, before you are carried to the grave, you will have cause to repent your marriage. You say there is no woe or strife in marriage. By divine intervention He will prove you wrong. Did you not know that husbands always have more cause for repentance than single men? This is the best advice I can give you. Wait and see. Do not despair of heaven. It may turn out that your wife will be your purgatory. She may be God’s instrument. His whip to scourge you. Then your soul will skip up to heaven faster than an arrow leaves a bow. I hope to God for your own sake, then, that you discover there is no great happiness to be found in marriage. There is nothing so pleasurable about it that will keep you from salvation. You still have to be moderate in all things, of course. You must never fulfil all of your wife’s desires, if you know what I mean. Do not be too amorous with her, and keep yourself free from other sins. Then you will reach heaven’s gate. That is the only advice I can give to you. My cupboard is bare, as they say. Don’t look so surprised, dear brother. Shall we forget we ever mentioned the subject? You have already heard the Wife of Bath discourse on the perils of marriage.’ ‘The Wife of Bath?’ ‘She made a lot of sense, didn’t she? Well, enough. God keep you.’

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  He drank away the first money, and I could not lend him anything but more paper and carbons. George Barker, the excellent English poet, writing erotica to drink, just as Utrillo painted paintings in exchange for a bottle of wine. I began to think about the old man we all hated. I decided to write to him, address him directly, tell him about our feelings. “Dear Collector: We hate you. Sex loses all its power and magic when it becomes explicit, mechanical, overdone, when it becomes a mechanistic obsession. It becomes a bore. You have taught us more than anyone I know how wrong it is not to mix it with emotion, hunger, desire, lust, whims, caprices, personal ties, deeper relationships that change its color, flavor, rhythms, intensities. “You do not know what you are missing by your microscopic examination of sexual activity to the exclusion of aspects which are the fuel that ignites it. Intellectual, imaginative, romantic, emotional. This is what gives sex its surprising textures, its subtle transformations, its aphrodisiac elements. You are shrinking your world of sensations. You are withering it, starving it, draining its blood. “If you nourished your sexual life with all the excitements and adventures which love injects into sensuality, you would be the most potent man in the world. The source of sexual power is curiosity, passion. You are watching its little flame die of asphyxiation. Sex does not thrive on monotony. Without feeling, inventions, moods, no surprises in bed. Sex must be mixed with tears, laughter, words, promises, scenes, jealousy, envy, all the spices of fear, foreign travel, new faces, novels, stories, dreams, fantasies, music, dancing, opium, wine. “How much do you lose by this periscope at the tip of your sex, when you could enjoy a harem of distinct and never-repeated wonders? No two hairs alike, but you will not let us waste words on a description of hair; no two odors, but if we expand on this you cry Cut the poetry. No two skins with the same texture, and never the same light, temperature, shadows, never the same gesture; for a lover, when he is aroused by true love, can run the gamut of centuries of love lore. What a range, what changes of age, what variations of maturity and innocence, perversity and art . . . “We have sat around for hours and wondered how you look. If you have closed your senses upon silk, light, color, odor, character, temperament, you must be by now completely shriveled up. There are so many minor senses, all running like tributaries into the mainstream of sex, nourishing it. Only the united beat of sex and heart together can create ecstasy.” POSTSCRIPT

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  As soon as the friar had left the neighbourhood, however, he would take out the writing tablet and erase the names he had just put down. It was all a trick, an act, on his part. ‘This is all lies!’ The Friar was very indignant. ‘Peace!’ Harry Bailey called out. ‘For the love of God go on with your story, sir Summoner. Go on till the end. Leave out nothing.’ ‘That’s what I intend,’ the Summoner replied. ‘You can be sure of it.’ So Friar John went from house to house, until he came to one where he was accustomed to hospitality. He was sure of getting something here. But the good man who lived here was sick; he was lying upon a low couch, and could scarcely rise. ‘God be with you,’ the friar said. ‘Good day to you, Thomas. And may God reward you, my friend. I have been very well fed at this table. I have enjoyed many meals, haven’t I?’ He shoved the cat from its favourite chair - put down his stick, his satchel and his hat - and then sat down at the table with a smile on his face. He was alone. His friend had already gone into town, with the servant, in order to book rooms in the inn for that night. ‘Oh my dear master,’ the sick man said, ‘how have you been this last week or two? I haven’t seen you for a while.’ ‘God knows, Thomas, I have been hard at work. I have been working for your salvation. You would never believe the number of prayers I have offered up for you and for my other friends in Jesus. I have just come from your parish church, as a matter of fact, where I delivered a sermon during mass. It was a poor thing, but it was my own. It was not entirely based on scriptures, of course, because I prefer to paraphrase and interpret in my own way. Holy writ is too hard for some to understand. So paraphrase is a good alternative. Do you know that phrase we friars use? The letter killeth. I simply told the congregation to be charitable, and give their money for a good cause. I saw your wife there, by the way. Where is she now?’ ‘She’s in the backyard, I think. She’ll be here in a minute.’ And then stepped in the good wife. ‘Welcome, holy friar,’ she said, ‘in the name of Saint John. Are you keeping well?’ The friar rose to his feet very politely, put his arms around her very tightly, and kissed her on the lips. He was chirping like a sparrow. ‘Never felt better in my life, good woman. I am yours to command in all things. I saw you in church today, you know. I have never seen a prettier wife, as God is my witness.’ ‘Alas I have my faults, good friar. I am a frail woman. But thank you. And welcome.’

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  Officially, Beauvoir contends that the female body is marked within masculinist discourse, whereby the masculine body, in its conflation with the universal, remains unmarked. Irigaray clearly suggests that both marker and marked are maintained within a masculinist mode of signification in which the female body is “marked off,” as it were, from the domain of the signifiable. In post-Hegelian terms, she is “cancelled,” but not preserved. On Irigaray’s reading, Beauvoir’s claim that woman “is sex” is reversed to mean that she is not the sex she is designated to be, but, rather, the masculine sex encore (and en corps) parading in the mode of otherness. For Irigaray, that phallogocentric mode of signifying the female sex perpetually reproduces phantasms of its own self-amplifying desire. Instead of a self-limiting linguistic gesture that grants alterity or difference to women, phallogocentrism offers a name to eclipse the feminine and take its place. IV THEORIZING THE BINARY, THE UNITARY, AND BEYOND Beauvoir and Irigaray clearly differ over the fundamental structures by which gender asymmetry is reproduced; Beauvoir turns to the failed reciprocity of an asymmetrical dialectic, while Irigaray suggests that the dialectic itself is the monologic elaboration of a masculinist signifying economy. Although Irigaray clearly broadens the scope of feminist critique by exposing the epistemological, ontological, and logical structures of a masculinist signifying economy, the power of her analysis is undercut precisely by its globalizing reach. Is it possible to identify a monolithic as well as a monologic masculinist economy that traverses the array of cultural and historical contexts in which sexual difference takes place? Is the failure to acknowledge the specific cultural operations of gender oppression itself a kind of epistemological imperialism, one which is not ameliorated by the simple elaboration of cultural differences as “examples” of the selfsame phallogocentrism? The effort to include “Other” cultures as variegated amplifications of a global phallogocentrism constitutes an appropriative act that risks a repetition of the self-aggrandizing gesture of phallogocentrism, colonizing under the sign of the same those differences that might otherwise call that totalizing concept into question. 23 Feminist critique ought to explore the totalizing claims of a masculinist signifying economy, but also remain self-critical with respect to the totalizing gestures of feminism. The effort to identify the enemy as singular in form is a reverse-discourse that uncritically mimics the strategy of the oppressor instead of offering a different set of terms. That the tactic can operate in feminist and antifeminist contexts alike suggests that the colonizing gesture is not primarily or irreducibly masculinist. It can operate to effect other relations of racial, class, and heterosexist subordination, to name but a few. And clearly, listing the varieties of oppression, as I began to do, assumes their discrete, sequential coexistence along a horizontal axis that does not describe their convergences within the social field.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  But then others in the company began to remonstrate with the Host. ‘We don’t want any dirty stories. Let him give us a morality tale. Let him teach us a lesson or two.’ ‘If that’s what you want,’ the Pardoner said. ‘But I must have a drink first. I need time to come up with something honest.’ When he came out of the alehouse he mounted his horse, and turned to them all. ‘Lords and ladies,’ he said, ‘I am used to preaching in churches, as you all know. I take great pains with my delivery, so that my voice rings out like a bell. I know my theme off by heart, of course. It is always the same. Do you know what it is? Greed is the root of all evil. First I tell them from where I have come. It might be Rome or Jerusalem. They don’t know the difference. Then I show them my papal indulgences. Oh. Before that I make sure that they all see the lord bishop’s seal on my papers. That is just to protect myself from interfering clergy, who might try to prevent me doing Christ’s holy work. They are so jealous, some of them. Then I really get going. I tell the congregation about the indulgences offered by cardinals and patriarchs and archbishops. I mutter a few words of Latin to spice up my sermon, and beg them to pray on their knees for their salvation. I get out of my sack the glass cases that hold the relics of the holy saints - a collar bone here and a wrist bone there. ‘“Here, good sirs and dames,” I might say, “is the shoulder bone of one of the sheep led by Jacob in the hills of Beersheba. Listen to my words. Wash this bone in any well, and the water from that well will cure your cattle of any murrain or blight. It will heal snakebites and kill intestinal worms. Bring your sheep to the well. When they drink from it, their scabs and sores will fall away from them. They will be uplifted. Listen to me carefully. If any one of you should drink a draught of the well water, once a week, just before dawn, your stock will thrive and multiply. There will be more lambs than you can count. That is what Genesis in the Holy Book tells us. You can read the passage for yourself. Chapter 39. Verses 37 to 39. ‘“And I’ll tell you something else. The water will heal suspicion and distrust. If a man should fall into a jealous rage, just let him mix it with his soup. He will feel the difference. He will never accuse his wife again - not even if he sees her in the company of a priest or two. Do you see this glove of knitted wool? If any man puts his hand in this glove, his harvest will be bountiful.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  quien se casó con una stripper y decidió que quería pasar el resto de su vida en un bar, así que él y su esposa abrieron este lugar y vivieron felices desde entonces. Me sonríe, su camiseta negra está tensada sobre su pecho aún musculoso. —El dinero que podríamos hacer juntos —menciona, guiñándome un ojo. Regreso mi mirada a la habitación, conteniendo la risa. El tipo realmente debería poner un puesto en la feria de empleo de la secundaria, así puede tomar a las mujeres en cuanto lleguen a la edad legal de dieciocho años, en lugar de seguir acosándome. —Tu hermana dice que no tienes la cabeza para esto, y se supone que te deje en paz, pero Jordan... —No vine aquí para eso —interrumpo—. Vine a hablar con ella. Terminé analizando la habitación y estoy a punto de irme a la parte trasera, pero de repente se mueve hacia mí, con tono calmado pero severo. —También ves a estos clientes en Grounders, ¿cierto? —Mira la multitud y luego hacia mí—. Son los mismos tipos a los que sirves allí, ¿no es así? Vuelvo a poner la mirada en las mesas y las cabinas, reconociendo a algunos. Es una ciudad pequeña. ¿Y qué? —¿Por qué crees que van ahí? —cuestiona, estrechando su mirada en mí—. Aquí tengo un chef y un menú mucho mejor. Camareros entrenados. Baños limpios. ¿Por qué no pasar todo su tiempo en los bares aquí? —Porque Grounders es más barato. —Porque Grounders también vende sexo —contesta—. Estos chicos van a Grounders para verte a ti, a Shel, Ashley, Ellie... No por la cerveza barata y las cáscaras de cacahuete en el suelo. Después de todo, ¿por qué crees que allí no hay hombres trabajando? Shel te contrató por tu apariencia. No digo nada, sino que vuelvo a centrarme en el escenario donde veo a mi hermana salir detrás del telón. Mick me observa, y casi puedo sentir su aliento en mi nuca, aunque está a dos metros. —No te engañes —me dice—. Todavía te están mirando como un trozo de carne, incluso con toda la ropa puesta. —Y luego levanta la mirada hacia el escenario, hacia mi hermana girando en la barra—. Ella simplemente gana mucho más dinero.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Drunkenness is just as foul a sin. Alcohol provokes violence and creates misery. It sours the breath. It disfigures the features. Who would want to embrace a drunk? He snores loudly, and mutters broken words. Oh you drunkard, you fall down as heavily as a stuck pig. You have lost your tongue, as well as your self-respect. Drunkenness is the graveyard of intelligence and decency. Never trust a man who is lost in drink. Never confide in him. So, good people, keep away from the red and the white wines that are sold in Fish Street and Cheapside. Spanish wine is the cheapest and the worst. It seems to get mixed up with other wines, until it becomes quite overpowering. Its vapours go straight to the head. I do not blame the vintners for this, of course. God forbid. My father was a vintner. It must happen naturally somehow. Two or three glasses are enough. The drunkard may then think he is at home in London, but in fact he has been transported to a vineyard in Spain. He is lying among the grapes, burbling nonsense. So, lords and ladies, listen to me. All of the great deeds and victories commemorated in the Old Testament were performed by men who practised abstinence. They never touched liquor. They prayed to Almighty God instead. Read all about it in the Holy Book. In contrast, think of Attila. This great king and conqueror, to his manifest shame and dishonour, died in his sleep from too much drink; he was bleeding at the nose, in fact. A military man should live soberly. Remember what was commanded of Lamuel. Was it Samuel? No. Lamuel. It is in the Book of Proverbs. ‘Give not to kings, Oh Lamuel, give not wine to kings. For there is no secret where drunkenness reigns.’ There is no need to say more on that subject.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  ‘I knew it! I saw his death in a vision! I was lying in the dormitory, when I saw him before me. It was probably less than a hour after he expired. I saw him being transported to heaven, so help me God! Our sacristan and our infirmarian saw him, too, and they have been holy friars for fifty years or more. They have reached the age when they may walk about in the world alone, God bless them. As soon as I saw your child in bliss, I got up from my bed. The tears were running down my cheeks. Lord. My eyes were waterspouts. The whole of our convent came out with me, with no bells and no noise at all, and we went into the chapel where we sang the Te Deum. Then I prayed to Christ, thanking Him for His revelation to me. Trust me, good wife and husband, when I tell you that the prayers of friars really do work. We know more about the teachings of Christ than any layperson, kings included. We live in poverty and abstinence. You lay folk indulge in luxury and spendthrift ways. You love meat and drink and all the foul temptations of the flesh. We friars, on the other hand, hold the world in contempt.’ The wife now left the room, in order to prepare the pig’s head for her guest. ‘Do you know the difference, Thomas,’ he went on in the same even tone, ‘between the poor man Lazar and the rich man Dives? One of them came to a bad end. Which one do you think it was? Those who wish to pray must fast and remain pure; they must curb the body and attend to the soul. We follow the teaching of the apostles. We are content with scraps of food and the merest rags. So our penance and our abstinence give wings to our prayers. They fly straight up to Christ in heaven. ‘You recall, Thomas, that Moses fasted for forty days and forty nights before he was permitted to converse with Almighty God on the summit of Mount Sinai? Only after he had denied himself food for all that time was he permitted to receive the Ten Commandments, written with Jehovah’s own finger of fire. And do you remember Elijah on Mount Horeb? The prophet fasted, too, and spent his days in contemplation before God deemed it right to speak to him. Aaron and all the other priests of the temple would never dare to approach the incense altar without mortifying their flesh. They prayed only after they had abstained from drink. How could they be drunk in the holy place? It was unthinkable. God would have struck them dead. Take warning from what I say, Thomas. The priest who prays for your welfare and recovery must be sober - or else . . . well, I will say no more. You catch my drift.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  He started kicking at the dirt like he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “She was kinda nice,” he said. After that, Brian waved to the women on the porch of the Green Lantern, and they smiled real big and waved back, but I was still a little afraid of them. OUR HOUSE IN BATTLE MOUNTAIN was filled with animals. They came and went, stray dogs and cats, their puppies and kittens, nonpoisonous snakes, and lizards and tortoises we caught in the desert. A coyote that seemed pretty tame lived with us for a while, and once Dad brought home a wounded buzzard that we named Buster. He was the ugliest pet we ever owned. Whenever we fed Buster scraps of meat, he turned his head sideways and stared at us out of one angry-looking yellow eye. Then he’d scream and frantically flap his good wing. I was secretly glad when his hurt wing healed and he flew away. Every time we saw buzzards circling overhead, Dad would say that he recognized Buster among them and that he was coming back to thank us. But I knew Buster would never even consider returning. That buzzard didn’t have an ounce of gratitude in him. We couldn’t afford pet food, so the animals had to eat our leftovers, and there usually wasn’t much. “If they don’t like it, they can leave,” said Mom. “Just because they live here doesn’t mean I’m going to wait on them hand and foot.” Mom told us that we were actually doing the animals a favor by not allowing them to become dependent on us. That way, if we ever had to leave, they’d be able to get by on their own. Mom liked to encourage self-sufficiency in all living creatures. Mom also believed in letting nature take its course. She refused to kill the flies that always filled the house; she said they were nature’s food for the birds and lizards. And the birds and lizards were food for the cats. “Kill the flies and you starve the cats,” she said. Letting the flies live, in her view, was the same as buying cat food, only cheaper. One day I was visiting my friend Carla when I noticed that her house didn’t have any flies. I asked her mother why. She pointed toward a shiny gold contraption dangling from the ceiling, which she proudly identified as a Shell No-Pest Strip. She said it could be bought at the filling station and that her family had one in every room. The No-Pest Strips, she explained, released a poison that killed all the flies. “What do your lizards eat?” I asked. “We don’t have any lizards, either,” she said. I went home and told Mom we needed to get a No-Pest Strip like Carla’s family, but she refused.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  When they arrived at the mill John unloaded the sack while Alan chatted to the miller. ‘Canny to see you, Simkin,’ he said. ‘How are your wife and your bonny daughter?’ ‘Alan, how are you? And you, too, John. What are you both doing here?’ ‘Well, Simkin, need knows no law. A lad who has no servant must serve himself. Otherwise he has a pranny for a master. You know that our manciple is on the way out?’ ‘I have heard.’ ‘Even his teeth hurt. It’s that bad. So me and Alan have come here to grind our corn and take it back to college. Will ye give us a hand?’ ‘Of course I will. Better than that. I’ll do it for you. But what do you want to do while it is grinding?’ ‘Well, I think I’ll stand awa’ there by the hopper when the corn flows in. I have never watched that happen. I wouldn’t mind seein’ it.’ ‘And I’ll stand awa’ there,’ Alan said, ‘and watch the meal gannin’ doon into the trough. That’ll keep me happy. You and I are just the same, John. We kna’ nowt about mills or millers.’ The miller was smiling at their stupidity. ‘They are trying to trick me,’ he said to himself. ‘They think that nobody can fool them. Well, well. I’ll pull the wool over their eyes just the same. Their logic or philosophy - whatever it is they study - is not worth a bean. The more tricks they pull, the more I will return. Instead of flour, I’ll give them bran. As the wolf said to the mare, the greatest scholars are not the wisest men. That was a shrewd wolf. And so will I be.’ So, when he saw his opportunity, he left the mill very quietly and went down into the yard. He looked about him, and finally found the clerks’ horse tied to a tree behind the mill. The miller goes up to it, unties it, and takes off its bridle. When the horse was loose it started sniffing the air and then with a ‘Weehee’ galloped off towards the fen where the wild mares roam. Well pleased, the miller returned to John and Alan. He said nothing about the horse, of course, but laughed and joked with them as he got on with the job. At last the corn was finely ground, and the meal put in a sack, all above board. Then John went out into the yard. He looked around for the horse. And then - ‘Oh fuck! The horse is gone! Alan, for fuck’s sake get oot here! We’ve lost the master’s horse!’ Alan forgot all about the meal and corn, forgot all about watching the miller, and rushed out of the mill. ‘Which way did it gan?’ he cried out to John. ‘How am I supposed to kna’?’ Then out ran the miller’s wife in a state of great excitement.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Of all the four orders, however, his was the most inclined to gossip and to flattery. He had arranged many marriages and sometimes, for reasons that I will not mention, he had to pay for them himself. Still, he was a pillar of the faith. He was well known to all the rich landowners of his neighbourhood and he was familiar, too, with the worthy women of his town. He had full power of confession, which, as he said himself, was superior to that of an ordinary curate; he could absolve the most awful sins. He heard the confessions very patiently, and pronounced the absolution very sweetly; he exacted the mildest of penances, especially if the penitent had something to give to his poor order. Bless me, father, for I have sinned and I have a large purse. That was the kind of thing he liked to hear. For, as he said, what is better proof of penitence than dispensing alms to the friars of God? There are many men who suffer from guilt and repentance, but are so hard of heart that they cannot weep for their sins. Therefore, instead of tears and prayers, these men must give silver to the friars. The tip of his hood, hanging down his back, was stuffed full of knives and pins which he gave away to pretty wives; whether he got anything in return, I could not say. I am only the narrator. I cannot be everywhere at once. I can say that the Friar had a very pleasant voice; he could sing well, and play on the gitern or lute. There was no one to beat him with a ballad. I heard him sing ‘Grimalkin, our cat’. He was excellent. And when he played the harp, and sang an accompaniment, his eyes shone like the stars on a clear crisp night of frost. He had skin as white as a lily, but he was not lily-livered; he was as strong as a champion at the Shrovetide games. He knew the taverns in every town, as well as every landlord and barmaid; certainly he spent more time with them than with lepers or beggar-women. Who could blame him? ‘My position as a confessor,’ he told me, ‘does not allow me to consort with the poorer sort. It would not be honourable. It would not be respectable. It would not be beneficial. I am more at my ease with the rich, and with the wealthier merchants. They are my congregation, sir.’ So, wherever there was profit to be gained, he was modest and courteous and virtuous to a fault. No one was better at soliciting funds. Even a widow with no shoes to her name would have given him something. When he greeted a poor householder with ‘In principio’, he would end up with a farthing at least. In the beginning was the coin. His total income was higher than his projected income. I will say no more.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  So let me turn to gambling. Next to drunkenness, gaming is the worst vice. Dice are the mothers of lies. They are the cause of deceit, of cursing, of perjury, of blasphemy, and even of manslaughter. They waste time and money. And, furthermore, to be known as a common gambler is deemed to be a great dishonour. The more exalted a man is in rank, as a gambler, the more infamous he will become. A gambling prince would be unfit to frame a policy. He would be considered incompetent in public life. Once upon a time the philosopher Stilbo was sent from Sparta as an ambassador to form an alliance with Corinth. He travelled in great state but, on his arrival, he happened to find all the greatest in the land grouped around a gaming table. As soon as he could, he returned to his own nation. ‘I am not going to lose my reputation,’ he said to his rulers, ‘or bring shame to my own people, by making an alliance with gamblers. Send other wise envoys, if you wish, but on my honour I would rather die than negotiate with such wastrels. We Spartans are a glorious people. We cannot allow ourselves to be associated with them. I for one could not sign such a treaty.’ So spoke the wise philosopher. Take the case of King Demetrius. The king of Persia sent him a pair of golden dice to signify his scorn for him as a well-known gambler. Demetrius had no thought for his honour or his glory. As a result he had no reputation in the outside world. The great lords of the earth can surely think of better ways to spend their time than in dicing.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  99 This state of “unknowing” was not a defeat but an achievement; we arrived at this point by ruthlessly paring down all our God talk, until prayer was reduced to a single syllable: “God!” or “Love!” It was not easy. The mind rushed to fill the vacuum we were trying to create within ourselves with “wonderful thoughts of [God’s] kindness” and reminded us “of God’s sweetness and love, his grace and mercy.” But unless we turned a deaf ear to this pious clamor, we would be back where we started. 100 In the meantime, the apprentice must continue with his prayers, liturgy, and lectio divina like everybody else. This was not what Eckhart would have called a special spiritual “way” but was a practice that should inform all the routine devotions and spiritual exercises of the Christian life. If we persevere, the intellect will eventually abdicate and allow love to take over. Here we see the new separation of knowledge from the affections: “Therefore I will leave on one side everything I can think, and choose for my love that which I cannot think!” the author exclaims. “Why? Because [God] may well be loved but not thought. By love he may be caught and held but by thinking never.” 101 But the apophatic habit is still so strong that the author immediately starts to deconstruct the notion of “love” and explain what it is not. There is no glow, no heavenly music, or interior sweetness in the Cloud. In fact the author seems to have Rolle in mind when he comes out strongly against the idea of an intense experience of God’s love. He warns beginners to be on their guard against the absurd literalism of this new spirituality. Novices hear talk of all kinds of special feelings— “how a man shall lift up his heart to God and continually long to feel his love. And immediately in their silly minds they understand these words not in the intended spiritual sense but in a physical and material, and they strain their natural hearts outrageously within their breasts!” Some even feel an “unnatural glow.” 102 It is impossible to feel for God the love we feel for creatures; the “God” with whom these so-called mystics are infatuated is simply the product of their unhinged imagination. Clearly this “sham spirituality” 103 was becoming a problem. When novices are told to stop all “exterior” mental activity, the author explains, they don’t know what “interior” work means, so “they do it wrong. For they turn their actual physical minds inwards to their bodies, which is an unnatural thing, and they strain as if to see spiritually with their physical eyes.” 104 Their antics are painful to behold. They stare into space, looking quite deranged, squat “as if they were silly sheep,” and “hang their heads to one side as if they had a worm in their ear.” 105 But “interiority” is achieved only by the discipline of “forgetting.”

• From City of Night (1963)

  Outside again, I recognized the ovaled fairy who had made it with me that first day in New Orleans; he is a freckled schoolboy, with a lollypop. With him is his youngman-lover who had turned femme—and he is, resignedly perhaps, a schoolgirl: bloomers peeking, ruffled, from beneath the starched skirt. “Tramp!” the ovaled one sneers at me—and he skipped quickly away as if I would menace or contaminate them. Past the giant burlesque picture of Holly Sand on Bourbon. And I imagine her making quite a breeze, creating quite a storm, fanning waves of flesh-desire (to go all the way), and the poster of Aloha twirled giant mechanical breasts like windmills— whoosh! and around; whoosh! and around.... I look about me searching Burlesque street, L.A. Instead, I see the costumed orgy of Mardi Gras. “Lover!” A fat woman embraces me tightly. We kiss. Now I turn to a young girl near me, shes dressed in a leopard suit I kiss her too, pushing my tongue urgently into her mouth, crushing her mouth—as if to erase from my own the stamp of Jeremy’s remembered kiss.... The sky has darkened. The streetlights, turned on now, will prolong the naked street merriment to midnight. Tomorrow, I keep thinking. Tomorrow... When Ash Wednesday will hang like a pall over this city. “Lets make it, man!” Sonny shouted into my ear, his lips so near they brushed my face. Still shirtless, he embraced me drunkenly while the two suited scores hes still with look on disapprovingly. “Later,” I said dazedly, taking the pill he slipped into my hand. “Later....” The Cathedral is solemn like a tomb. I think groggily: Dave.... The man on the beach, now somewhere in this city.... Lance, Pete, Mr King.... Miss Destiny. Skipper.... Jeremy. Each in his own way.... Each in his own way what? And Barbara. And Jocko in his way.... What! Nothing, I thought. “Nothing!” I said aloud, as face blends with hunting face. “Honey,” said Whorina, “youre twisted out of your swinging mind. Whatve you been taking? Here. I got something thatll straighten you out.” She hands me a strange pill which looks like a raisin. She says: “Nothing like it, honey, You Just Wait and See.” I pop it into my mouth and hurl myself back into the crowd. Although the star-tossed sky is clear—as if to reveal the city, Naked, to the sight of Heaven—I hope it will begin to snow suddenly: a sheet of snow covering this city drowning the shrieking colors.... The ice age of the heart.... But I forget about that quickly, forget about the snow which would purify the city.... In the courtyard of The Rocking Times, moments later, I saw Kathy. Still with Jocko as if he can protect her from something shadowing her, she smiles as she stares at the mobs.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Freud had studied medicine at the University of Vienna but always had a deep interest in religion and philosophy. His religious studies, however, were conducted in light of the death of God in his heart. There was no need to justify his atheism, because its truth was self-evident. The idea of God was “so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity, it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals would never be able to rise above this view of life.”86 Observing the similarity between religious rites and the obsessive rituals of some of his patients, Freud concluded that religion was a neurosis that bordered on insanity. The desire for God sprang from the infant’s experience of helplessness and his yearning for a protector; it reflected the child’s passion for justice and fairness and his longing for life to continue forever. Freud had already worked out his theory of the origins of faith before he began to study religion. He simply selected texts, which he interpreted somewhat eccentrically, that supported his conviction that religion sprang from psychological pressures reflecting our evolutionary development. He had been influenced by the theories of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829), who thought all living creatures had an innate urge to adapt to their environment. To reach the leaves on a high branch, a giraffe learned how to stretch its neck and passed this acquired characteristic to the next generation. In a Lamarckian theory, since dismissed as simplistic, Freud suggested that religion was an acquired trait of this kind, which had developed in response to a specific event. At a very early stage of human history, he suggested in Totem and Taboo (1913), the patriarch had exclusive rights to the females of the tribe. This aroused the hostility and resentment of his sons, who overthrew and killed him but later, tormented by remorse, invented rituals to assuage their guilt. In Moses and Monotheism (1938), Freud argued that Moses had been killed by the Israelites in the wilderness during a ritual reenactment of this primal murder. His definition of religion in The Future of an Illusion (1927) is also reductive: religion is wish fulfillment of instinctual, unconscious desires, a fantasy that was once consoling but is now doomed to failure, because its myths and rituals belong to such a primitive stage of human evolution. It was time to allow science to allay our fears and provide a new basis for morality. These explanations won respect because they were rooted in science, but Freud’s critique was flawed by a rather unscientific view of the female as homme manqué: religion was a female activity, while atheism represented the postreligious, healthy masculine human being.87 His view of religion as rooted in the infant’s veneration of the father also prompts the question of whether Freud’s rejection of God did not spring from an unconscious hostility to his own father.