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.

Page 174 of 253 · 20 per page

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  But Maria didn’t want to get to the bottom of anything but ideas. Her feelings were all impulsive and uncritical. I once told her I thought love was a hoax and I repeated something I’d read, that love hadn’t existed in the ancient world and had only come in with the troubadours. She found this notion so absurd she’d often mention it to other people as a hilarious example of my gullibility. For her love was the one simple, painful or blissful fact in a world of shifting speculations. For her, love was as simple as Des Grieux’s cry to Manon: “In your deep eye I read my destiny.” The wonder is that when she laughed at my theory of love no one ever defended me, since my theory is certainly arguable. But no one wanted to contradict Maria. She made her ideas—no, her very being—appear so likable no one wanted to be unlike her. Because she’d been to the University of Chicago and had been converted to its Aristotelianism, she stripped every argument down to its starkest tenets and frequently asked, “What’s your point? Can you put that in a nutshell?” That habit made her unpopular later among New York intellectuals, who seldom feel comfortable in a shell and prefer expanding to contracting their arguments. All those intellectuals who rely on their own prestige or invoke the authority of others filled her with contempt. Name-dropping, except by social climbers, struck her as silly; she forgave the social climbers, since she found them touching, almost novelistic in their pursuit of frivolously minor gods. But those people who thought eloquence could replace logic and considered the essay a transition toward the novel drove her wild with impatience; she’d brush her face with her hand as though rubbing away a cobweb. Not that she disliked make-believe; she read novels night after night, propped up in her single bed, the lamp beating back the darkness, her free hand blindly reaching for the glass of red wine. My own habit of looking for a personal reason someone might have for holding a particular view (“Her idealism, of course, reflects her Christian childhood”) seemed to Maria a sneaky way of stealing a march. She said my approach was as shoddy and as insidious as gossip and she ascribed it to my early and continued immersion in psychotherapy. Freud she despised as a thorough charlatan and she insisted that none of his views—that there is an unconscious, that sex is a key to motivation, that childhood shapes the adult personality—had ever been proved, nor were they susceptible to verification. She said these bizarre notions had merely been repeated so often that the cowed public had ended by accepting them. But she forgave me most of my follies, stroked my hair, and told me what a genius-dumpling I was with my chewed-away nails, bobbing head, and surprising bits of knowledge. Maria read constantly but remembered little. At least she wasn’t very handy at serving things up.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  Not that he was taken in by stylish but empty chatter. He’d run his lacquered, dusky pink index finger over his tweezed mustache and say, “Mr. Larkin. I’m not sure I follow your point. Are you suggesting we should turn against a friend who’s an enemy of the state? Or do you agree with Cicero that loyalty to a friend must outweigh up to a certain point even patriotism?” Like any agile debater, I could defend either side of the question, but I was too immoral to wonder which side was right. I didn’t care and I couldn’t imagine anyone else did either. When it was revealed at this time that a young intellectual had cheated on a TV quiz show, I was amazed that other people were so scandalized. I looked around for winks of complicity and sly grins but found none. My own immorality didn’t trouble me, since I knew I responded to other people and I mistook this ready sympathy for goodness. Besides, I wanted only to survive; other people, the ones with power—their acts might count. Kant’s idea that one must act as a universal legislator setting a precedent for everyone seemed the purest nonsense to me—in fact, so pure I admired it. I discovered the toilets in the student union. One afternoon after class, I burst through the door in a rush to piss and hurry home. Shoes scraped, bones cracked, I turned a corner and saw a student huddled over a urinal, face blood-red and turned down, his white shirttail sticking out in back. Just two urinals away from him in a line of eight was a beefy businessman, obvious toupee, out of breath. In the stalls a scurrying and the clank of belt buckle against metal partition. I chose my urinal, the farthest one away, and I too looked down.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  However, the differences between Wells and Terrell were not only in style but in substance. In 1891, Wells wrote an editorial for the New York Age justifying her defense of the “retaliatory measures” taken by Black citizens in Georgetown, Kentucky, in response to a lynching. She wrote, “[F]undamentally men have an inherent right to defend themselves when lawful authority refuses to do it for them.”31 Terrell, however, insisted on never “tearing passion to tatters.” As a peace activist in both World Wars, Terrell would not have supported Wells’s calls for armed self-defense, though she was sympathetic to Black people who were being attacked in race riots. Terrell also had a far more optimistic view of white people than did Wells. Terrell made sure, in the introduction to her book, to acknowledge the “many genuine friends in the dominant race as I have had.” Wells, on the other hand, always remained skeptical of white people’s capacity for change, despite her friendship with prominent whites like Susan B. Anthony. For instance, in an editorial she wrote in 1885 attempting to dissuade African Americans from aligning with either political party, she considered whether “if appealed to in honesty the white people of the South could not and would not refuse us justice.” In answer to this query, she replied: “I don’t believe it, because they have been notably deaf to calls for justice heretofore, as well as to the persuasions in our behalf, of their own people.”32 Despite these critical differences, they both believed that those who perpetrated injustices toward Black people should be exposed, shamed, and compelled to change, often through the power of the pen. Terrell challenged those in her audience during her “Dignified Agitation” speech “to learn to express their thoughts as forcibly and clearly as possible.” But lest they misunderstand her admonition, she told them: [D]o not understand me to advise you to learn to do pretty writing. In this day and time, when everybody is too busy to read even the books and articles bearing directly upon their business, pretty writing will do no good. It is as much out of fashion as knee-breeches and hoop skirts. But there is an imperative of strong, clear-headed writers who know how to present facts in a forceful, tactful, attractive manner, so that sentiment may be created in behalf of the race.”33 Deeply influenced by the calls of their clubwomen comrades and colleagues back in the 1890s for women’s participation in the production of a robust race literature, Terrell would return repeatedly to the importance of writing as a political act. And it is this belief that inspired her to begin writing her own autobiography sometime during the late 1920s.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  bell hooks attended college in the early 1970s, just as Women’s Studies programs and courses on Black women’s literature and history entered the academy. By the late 1970s, figures like Barbara Smith and Mary Helen Washington were steering Black feminism into academic spaces and by 1991, more than ten years after she published her first book, bell hooks became the poster child for a new generation of professional Black feminist women who had obtained doctoral degrees, written books, and taught courses about differential aspects of Black women’s lives. In a collection of essays and interviews that she coauthored with Cornel West entitled Breaking Bread, hooks reflected on the working conditions and livelihoods of Black women intellectuals in an essay of the same title. hooks, very much in line with Pierce, made clear that the continued challenge of seeing Black women as intellectuals is rooted in our understanding of what it means to be an intellectual: Moreso than any group of women in this society, black women have been seen as “all body, no mind.” … To justify white male sexual exploitation and rape of Black females during slavery, white culture had to produce an iconography of Black female bodies that insisted on representing them as highly sexed, the perfect embodiment of primitive, unbridled eroticism. … Seen as sexual sign, Black female bodies are placed in a category that, culturally speaking, is deemed far removed from the life of the mind.4 As Black women in the current moment lead street protests in major cities to combat police brutality, they continue to confront the possibility that their labors will be perceived as “all body, no mind.” hooks’s observation clarifies both the fervent embrace of respectability politics among historic Black women thinkers and the reason that respectability politics remain a deeply contested ground among Black feminist thinkers, especially in the current movement. Her observation makes clear why Anna Julia Cooper’s formulation of embodied discourse constitutes a radical act. Cooper, whose theorization of embodiment I discuss in the prologue, placed the material condition of the Black female body at the center of her understanding and theorization of Black life, politics, and intellectual possibility. In doing so, she disrupted the tacit and prevailing logic of Western thought that Black women’s bodies are merely there to do reproductive and service labor within Black communities. These questions about embodiment and reproductive labor surface over and over again in the lives of women examined in this book. Whether it is concerns about how public intellectual work made Black women unfit for marriage or other kinds of regulation of Black female sexuality, particularly of the unmarried and nonheterosexual varieties, the work of being a race woman demands an engagement with the politics of the black (female) body. Consequently, the black female body takes center stage in much of the thought work produced by Black women, as they discuss the material effects of poor social conditions on African American life chances.

• From Lost Christianities: Christian Scriptures and the Battles over Authentication (2002)

  30 Lecture 6: The Gnostic Gospel of Truth The book concludes with an exhortation for its hearers to share the true knowledge of salvation to those who seek the truth and not to return to their former (Christian?) beliefs that they have already transcended. Far more polemical in its attitude toward non-gnostic Christianity is a second tractate from Nag Hammadi, the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter (one of three apocalypses allegedly written by Jesus’ disciple). This document is the ¿ rst forgery that we will consider. Pseudepigrapha literally means “false writing.” The term is applied to documents written under the name of someone who is not the actual author. Modern examples include authors writing under a pen name, as well as forgeries. Forgery was condemned as a practice in antiquity, although it was harder to detect and was, in fact, widely done. The term Apocalypse means a “revelation.” In this book, the truth of Jesus’ identity is revealed to Peter. Those who fail to understand this message (the proto-orthodox Christian leaders especially!) are castigated for their ignorance. We see that not only were the proto-orthodox opposed to heresy, but so, too, were the people that they claimed were heretics. For them, it was the proto-orthodox who promoted false teaching! The book begins with the teachings of “The Savior,” who informs Peter that there are many false teachers who are blind and deaf and who blaspheme the truth and teach evil. These are those who proclaim a “dead man.” Later, we learn that they are leaders of churches who call themselves “bishops” and “deacons.” These teachers fail to understand that the material world is to be despised and escaped by the true soul. In particular, they fail to realize that when Jesus was killed, it was only his body that suffered and died; his real self—his immortal soul—was above suffering and death. What was killed, then, was simply a shell; the true Savior stood above the cross laughing at those who thought they could harm him. And he continues to laugh at those who think that the physical world is what is real, when in fact, it is false and transitory. In short, this book polemicizes against the proto-orthodox leaders of the church who believe that the world was created by the good God, that Jesus 31 Christ was himself really completely À esh, and that his death was necessary for the forgiveness of sins. Ŷ Bart Ehrman, After the New Testament, readings 24, 35–36. Robert M. Grant, Jesus after the Gospels: The Christ of the Second Century. Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures. James Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library in English. 1. Are there ways that the views advocated by the Gospel of Truth are embraced by modern Christians today? 2. How does the attack of the Apocalypse of Peter against proto-orthodox believers affect our understanding of the meaning of the terms orthodoxy and heresy? Essential Reading Supplementary Reading Questions to Consider

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  [Matt 10:39 ; 16:25 ; Mark 8:35 ; Luke 9:24 ; John 12:25 ] 34 “I tell you, on that night [when Messiah comes again] there will be two [sleeping] in one bed; the i one (the non-believer) will be taken [away in judgment] and the j other (the believer) will be left. 35 “There will be two women grinding [at the mill] together; the k one (the non-believer) will be taken [away in judgment] and the other (the believer) will be left. 36 l [ “Two men will be in the field; m one will be taken and the other will be left.” ] 37 And they asked Him, “Where, Lord?” He answered, “Where the corpse is, there the vultures will be gathered.” Luke 18 Parables on Prayer 1 N OW JESUS was telling the disciples a parable to make the point that at all times they ought to pray and not give up and lose heart, 2 saying, “In a certain city there was a judge who did not fear God and had no respect for man. 3 “There was a [desperate] widow in that city and she kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice and legal protection from my adversary.’ 4 “For a time he would not; but later he said to himself, ‘Even though I do not fear God nor respect man, 5 yet because this widow continues to bother me, I will give her justice and legal protection; otherwise a by continually coming she [will be an intolerable annoyance and she] will wear me out.’ ” 6 Then the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says! 7 “And will not [our just] God defend and avenge His elect [His chosen ones] who cry out to Him day and night? Will He delay [in providing justice] on their behalf? 8 “I tell you that He will defend and avenge them quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find [this kind of persistent] faith on the earth?” The Pharisee and the Tax Collector 9 He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves and were confident that they were righteous [posing outwardly as upright and in right standing with God], and who viewed others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up into the temple [enclosure] to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 “The Pharisee stood [ostentatiously] and began praying to himself [in a self-righteous way, saying]: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like the rest of men—swindlers, unjust (dishonest), adulterers—or even like this tax collector.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  Terrell not only offered a glimpse into her narrative of personal reckoning with destructive effects of racism. She also offered an account of her public battle with white women to occupy the space of “free womanhood.” In 1904, she was invited to deliver an address at the International Congress of Women in Berlin. Because of her very light skin, many of the German conference attendees mistook her for a white woman. When two German women discovered that she spoke German but was American, they began to ask Terrell about “‘die Negerin’ (the Negress) from the United States whom they were expecting.”70 Initially, Terrell did not understand that they thought she was white, but she discovered “that they had no idea they were talking to this very unusually anthropological specimen whom they were seeking.”71 The ever-mischievous Terrell had a laugh at their expense and kept up the comedy of errors for several days as people inquired of her repeatedly about “die Negerin.” Terrell’s choice not to identify herself as Black effectively, if not intentionally, rendered her a white woman. Because Terrell was fluent in both German and French (not to mention Latin and Greek), she decided to give her address in German. Even when she finally stood to give her speech, no one realized she was Black. Thus, she had to intentionally mark herself as nonwhite with a “discourse that would impress that fact upon [her] audience.”72 As she said, “I wanted to be sure that they knew I was of African descent.” Thus, she began her address, “If it had not been for the War of the Rebellion which resulted in victory for the Union Army in 1865, instead of addressing you as a free woman tonight, in all human possibility I should be on some plantation in one of the southern states of my country manacled body and soul in the fetters of a slave.”73 This act of public self-naming as a Black woman constituted an act of embodied discourse in which Terrell literally sought to reframe her audience’s misunderstanding of her body through a pointed invocation of racial discourse. Terrell further informed her audience that she was the “only woman speaking from the platform whose parents were actually held as chattels,” and thus, “as you fasten your eyes upon me, therefore, you are truly beholding a rare bird.” Don’t miss the shade that Terrell threw at this group of white women who had been referring to her as “the Negress” for days on end.74 She was a “rare bird,” a marvel, not a common Negress, she let them know. Terrell’s heteroglossia, or literal ability to speak in tongues, not only allowed her to communicate across lines of difference but also to refract the audience’s gaze.75 She recognized that she could not fully invert the gaze once her audience knew she was a Black subject, so she made her body into a racial spectacle on her own terms, characterizing herself as rare and valuable rather than common.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  Perhaps you will be hidden [and pardoned and rescued] In the day of the LORD ’s anger. 4 For [this is the fate of the Philistines:] Gaza will be abandoned And Ashkelon a desolation; [The people of] Ashdod will be driven out at noon [in broad daylight] And Ekron will be uprooted and destroyed. 5 Woe (judgment is coming) to the inhabitants of the seacoast, The nation of the Cherethites [in Philistia]! The word of the LORD is against you, O Canaan, land of the Philistines; I will destroy you So that no inhabitant will be left. 6 So the [depopulated] seacoast shall be pastures, With [deserted] meadows for shepherds and folds for flocks. 7 The a seacoast will belong To the remnant of the house of Judah; They will pasture [their flocks] on it. In the [deserted] houses of Ashkelon [in Philistia] they [of Judah] will lie down and rest in the evening, For the LORD their God will care for them; And restore their fortune [permitting them to occupy the land]. [Is 14:29–31 ; Amos 1:6–8 ] 8 “I have heard the taunting of Moab And the revilings of the sons of Ammon, With which they have taunted My people And become arrogant against their territory [by violating Israel’s boundary and trying to seize its land]. 9 “Therefore, as I live,” declares the LORD of hosts, The God of Israel, “b Moab will in fact become like Sodom And the c sons of Ammon like Gomorrah, A land possessed by nettles and salt pits, And a perpetual desolation. The remnant of My people will plunder them And what is left of My nation will inherit them [as their own].” 10 This they shall have in return for their pride, because they have taunted and become arrogant against the people of the LORD of hosts. 11 The LORD will be terrifying and awesome to them, for He will starve all the gods of the earth; and all the coastlands of the nations will bow down and worship Him, everyone from his own place. [Joel 2:11 ; Zeph 1:4 ; 3:9 ] 12 “You also, O Ethiopians, will be slain by My sword.” [Is 18 ] 13 And the LORD will stretch out His hand against the north And destroy Assyria, And He will make Nineveh a desolation [a wasteland], Parched as the desert. [Is 10:12 ; Nah 1:1 ] 14 Flocks will lie down in her midst, All the animals which range in herds; Both the pelican and the short-eared owl Will roost on the top of Nineveh’s pillars. Birds will sing in the window, Desolation will be on the threshold; For He has uncovered the cedar paneling. 15 This is the joyous city Which dwells carelessly [feeling so secure], Who says in her heart, “I am, and there is no one besides me.” What a desolation she has become, A lair for [wild] animals!

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  In 2014, when Ta-Nehisi Coates, an editor at Atlantic, wrote that Harris-Perry is “America’s foremost public intellectual,” there was a firestorm of controversy after Dylan Byers, a journalist at Politico, suggested that such assertions damaged Coates’s credibility. 7 Though Harris-Perry achieved what no other tenured Black woman professor has ever achieved in being the eponymous host of her own major cable network show, Byers still called her intellectual credentials into question. When Harris-Perry departed her show in February 2016 after a contentious struggle with the network over editorial control of her show, she wrote in an email to her staff: “I will not be used as a tool for their purposes. I am not a token, mammy, or little brown bobble head. I am not owned by [Andy] Lack, [Phil] Griffin, or MSNBC. I love our show. I want it back. I have wept more tears than I can count and I find this deeply painful, but I don’t want back on air at any cost.” 8 Harris-Perry’s dignified and costly stance against a major corporation reflects the enduring battles for dignity and self-authorship that have characterized Black women’s intellectual work in the public sphere. But her decision to make visible both the love and the pain caused by the decision to leave on her own terms also reflects a long history of Black women naming the embodied and affective sacrifices that shape their advocacy work on behalf of Black communities. It also reflects the ways that Black women thinkers in the public sphere continually move beyond the politics of respectability and the dictates of dissemblance, when situations warrant it, opting to make their pain, their anger, and their contempt for injustice visible and palpable. The resolute defiance contained in Harris-Perry’s statement, that “I will not be used as a tool for their purposes,” reminds us of Black women’s continuing quest for what Anna Julia Cooper called “undisputed dignity” and the right to have one’s voice and one’s humanity respected as equal to that of white men with power. In his 2008 book Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era, Vanderbilt University Professor and literary critic Houston Baker offers a scathing assessment of those engaged in Black thought leadership in the forty years since the passing of the Civil Rights era. Interestingly enough, Baker returns to the figure of the “race man/woman” as a Black leadership ideal, reasserting the primacy of both a race-centered analysis and a certain level of racial kinship and loyalty in defining this aggregate group that he terms race people. The problem, to wit, is that the intellectuals who have taken center stage in the post–Civil Rights era fall into two lamentable categories according to Baker: “black centrists and black neoconservatives.” 9 Taking on black celebrity public intellectuals, including Princeton professor Cornel West, Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, and Georgetown Professor Michael Eric Dyson, among others, Baker accuses them of the high crime of racial betrayal.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  I wanted to be popular, not just with indulgent bohemian grown-ups, but even with attractive people my own age, for here, being intelligent was, if not quite a social asset, at least not a liability. English class was taught by Winthrop Shelley, a pale-skinned black man whose blue eyes seemed to be a constant source of pain, as though their blueness were a form of encroaching blindness. He was always taking off his wire-rimmed glasses, which were so pliable that they had to be handled gingerly, and massaging his closed eyes and particularly the delicate bridge of his nose, the place where he located his objections to a student’s remarks. What Mr. Shelley said was always precise, quizzical. His queer air of listening to himself, the way he had of responding to his own idea in a complex sequence of feelings by a wavering, then pinched smile and a line of doubt drawn on his forehead—such scrupulosity vaguely irritated me. Didn’t Mr. Shelley see that most of the class couldn’t parse the syntax of so much refinement? And what kind of Negro was he, anyway, with his tweed jacket and the gold pocket watch he ceremoniously placed on his desk to indicate class was beginning? With his Oxbridge accent, his soundless chuckle, and his dumbshow of glee (titter behind an exquisitely manicured hand) when someone said something stupid? Not that he was taken in by stylish but empty chatter. He’d run his lacquered, dusky pink index finger over his tweezed mustache and say, “Mr. Larkin. I’m not sure I follow your point. Are you suggesting we should turn against a friend who’s an enemy of the state? Or do you agree with Cicero that loyalty to a friend must outweigh up to a certain point even patriotism?” Like any agile debater, I could defend either side of the question, but I was too immoral to wonder which side was right. I didn’t care and I couldn’t imagine anyone else did either. When it was revealed at this time that a young intellectual had cheated on a TV quiz show, I was amazed that other people were so scandalized. I looked around for winks of complicity and sly grins but found none. My own immorality didn’t trouble me, since I knew I responded to other people and I mistook this ready sympathy for goodness. Besides, I wanted only to survive; other people, the ones with power—their acts might count. Kant’s idea that one must act as a universal legislator setting a precedent for everyone seemed the purest nonsense to me—in fact, so pure I admired it. I discovered the toilets in the student union. One afternoon after class, I burst through the door in a rush to piss and hurry home. Shoes scraped, bones cracked, I turned a corner and saw a student huddled over a urinal, face blood-red and turned down, his white shirttail sticking out in back.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  For you build tombs for the prophets and decorate and adorn the monuments of the righteous, 30 and you say, ‘If we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have joined them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ 31 “So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. 32 “Fill up, then, the [allotted] measure of the guilt of your fathers’ sins . 33 “You e serpents, you spawn of vipers, how can you escape the penalty of hell? 34 “Therefore, take notice, I am sending you prophets and wise men [interpreters, teachers] and scribes [men educated in the Mosaic Law and the writings of the prophets]; some of them you will kill and even crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues, and pursue and persecute from city to city, 35 so that on you will come the guilt of all the blood of the righteous shed on earth, from the blood of righteous f Abel to the blood of Zechariah [the priest], the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. [Gen 4:8 ; 2 Chr 24:21 ; Luke 11:51 ] 36 “I assure you and most solemnly say to you, [the judgment for] all these things [these vile and murderous deeds] will come on this generation. [2 Chr 36:15 , 16 ] Lament over Jerusalem 37 “ g O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who murders the prophets and stones [to death] those [messengers] who are sent to her [by God]! How often I wanted to gather your children together [around Me], as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. [Luke 13:34 , 35 ] 38 “Listen carefully: your house is being left to you desolate [completely abandoned by God and destitute of His protection]! [1 Kin 9:6 , 7 ; Jer 22:5 ] 39 “For I say to you, you will not see Me again [ministering to you publicly] until you say, ‘B LESSED [to be celebrated with praise] IS H E WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE L ORD !’ ” [Ps 118:26 ] Matthew 24 Signs of Christ’s Return 1 J esus left the temple area and was going on His way when His disciples came up to Him to call His attention to the [magnificent and massive] a buildings of the temple. [Mark 13 ; Luke 21:5–36 ] 2 And He said to them, “Do you see all these things?

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  The Book of Malachi Malachi 1 God’s Love for Jacob 1 T he a oracle (burdensome message) of the word of the LORD to Israel through [My messenger] Malachi. 2 “I have loved you,” says the LORD . b But you say, “How and in what way have You loved us?” “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the LORD . “Yet I loved Jacob (Israel); 3 but [in comparison with My love for Jacob] I have hated Esau (Edom), and I have made his mountains a wasteland, and have given his inheritance to the jackals of the wilderness.” [Rom 9:13 , 16 ] 4 Though [impoverished] Edom says, “We have been beaten down, but we will return and build up the ruins.” Thus says the LORD of hosts, “They may build, but I will tear down; and men will call them the Wicked Territory, the people against whom the LORD is indignant forever.” 5 Your own eyes will see this and you will say, “The LORD is great and shall be magnified beyond the border of Israel!” [Is 34 ; 63:1–6 ; Jer 49:7–22 ; Ezek 25:12–14 ; Obad 1 ] Sin of the Priests 6 “ ‘A son honors his father, and a servant his master. Then if I am a Father, where is My honor? And if I am a Master, where is the [reverent] fear and respect due Me?’ says the LORD of hosts to you, O priests, who despise My name. But you say, ‘How and in what way have we despised Your name?’ 7 “You are presenting defiled food upon My altar. But you say, ‘How have we defiled You?’ By thinking that the table of the LORD is contemptible and may be despised. 8 “When you [priests] present the c blind [animals] for sacrifice, is it not evil? And when you present the lame and the sick, is it not evil? Offer such a thing [as a blind or lame or sick animal] to your governor [as a gift or as payment for your taxes]. Would he be pleased with you? Or would he receive you graciously?” says the LORD of hosts. 9 “But now will you not entreat God’s favor, that He may be gracious to us? With such an offering from your hand [as an imperfect animal for sacrifice], will He show favor to any of you?” says the LORD of hosts. 10 “Oh, that there were even one among you [whose duty it is to minister to Me] who would shut the gates, so that you would not kindle fire on My altar uselessly [with an empty, worthless pretense]! I am not pleased with you,” says the LORD of hosts, “nor will I accept an offering from your hand. 11 “For d from the rising of the sun, even to its setting, My name shall be great among the nations.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  He was considering salaries of forty thousand dollars, whereas starting positions for writer trainees in 1962 paid only five thousand dollars. August was approaching, and soon everyone would leave town for vacation. “The whole city shuts down,” a lady at an agency told me. She asked me questions, listened, bathed us both in her cigarette smoke, coughed a full minute, and finally said, “You’re kinda weird, you know, but I like it. I like the whole package. I think I can sell it. Tell me I’m crazy. Yes, I’m crazy. But I think I can sell it.” Lou cruised the corridors of the Y and came back with descriptions of what he’d found: “All these pleasant fellows, the regulars, sitting around in the fake Moorish reception room watching TV and sipping orange soda and scanning the transients checking in. After the late movie on the tube, off to bed, but not before Fred from Toledo stops by for a cup of instant Sanka that Bill from Tampa heats up with his electric coil. They listen to the new Ferrante and Teicher album. You see, Bill’s made his room real homey, soft lights and all. Fred gets the great idea they’ll spend Thanksgiving together, never too early to plan for these lonely holidays, we’ll have turkey dinner at Schrafft’s, it’s not too expensive and it’s very nice, and then we’ll take in a show at Radio City. They agree and kiss coldly. Neither gets an erection, so they laugh and say, ‘Isn’t it silly for us to kiss when we’re just sisters?’ ” I suppose Lou made all that up. It seemed that outside the Y everyone was living on the streets and no one ever went to bed. Lou and I took the subway to the Village, emerged at Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street, and walked up Greenwich Avenue. Most of the strollers were straight couples, but here and there, flashing past like a parakeet, was a gaudy little queen, a paste clip on a shirt that might have started life as a blouse, her gait complex with extra motions, micro-motions somehow added, as though a mad scientist, after breaking walking down into its components, had had trouble reassembling the elements into a convincing continuity. “But we all walk that way,” Lou said. “We queens are so self-conscious, our little heads so drugged on just the sheer thrill of existing publicly, that we can’t even cross a room without simpering and mincing. It’s not that we start out wanting to appear effeminate. It’s that we use effeminacy after the fact as an alibi for our embarrassment, our florid but somehow ill-timed gestures, the bizarre tilt of our heads, our—” But here his lecture dissolved into a tearful laugh, for Lou loved to assail us in terms that were pushed to such an extreme that even he saw the absurdity.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  44 Some of them wanted to arrest Him, but no one laid hands on Him. 45 Then the guards went [back] to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them, “Why did you not bring Him [here with you]?” 46 The guards replied, “Never [at any time] has a man talked the way this Man talks!” 47 Then the Pharisees said to them, “Have you also been deluded and swept off your feet? 48 “Has any of the rulers or Pharisees believed in Him? 49 “But this [ignorant, contemptible] crowd that does not know the Law is accursed and doomed!” 50 Nicodemus (the one who came to Jesus before and was one of them) asked, 51 “Does our Law convict someone without first giving him a hearing and finding out what he is [accused of] doing?” 52 They responded, “Are you also from Galilee? Search [and read the Scriptures], and see [for yourself] that no prophet comes from Galilee!” 53 h [ And everyone went to his own house. John 8 The Adulterous Woman 1 B UT JESUS went to the Mount of Olives. 2 Early in the morning He came back into the temple [court], and all the people were coming to Him. He sat down and began teaching them. 3 Now the scribes and Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery. They made her stand in the center of the court, 4 and they said to Him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the very act of adultery. 5 “Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women [to death]. So what do You say [to do with her—what is Your sentence]?” [Deut 22:22–24 ] 6 They said this to test Him, hoping that they would have grounds for accusing Him. But Jesus stooped down and began writing on the ground with His finger. 7 However, when they persisted in questioning Him, He straightened up and said, “He who is without [any] sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” [Deut 17:7 ] 8 Then He stooped down again and started writing on the ground. 9 They listened [to His reply], and they began to go out one by one, starting with the oldest ones, until He was left alone, with the woman [standing there before Him] in the center of the court. 10 Straightening up, Jesus said to her, “Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?” 11 She answered, “No one, Lord!” And Jesus said, “I do not condemn you either. Go. From now on sin no more.” ] Jesus Is the Light of the World 12 Once more Jesus addressed the crowd. He said, “ a I am the Light of the world.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  32 “For John came to you [walking] in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him; but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did believe him; and you, seeing this, did not even change your mind afterward and believe him [accepting what he proclaimed to you]. Parable of the Landowner 33 “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who PLANTED A VINEYARD AND PUT A WALL AROUND IT AND DUG A WINE PRESS IN IT , AND BUILT A TOWER , and rented it out to tenant farmers and went on a journey [to another country]. [Is 5:1–7 ; Mark 12:1–12 ; Luke 20:9–19 ] 34 “When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his [share of the] fruit. 35 “But the tenants took his servants and beat one, and killed another, and stoned a third. 36 “Again he sent other servants, more than the first time; and they treated them the same way. 37 “Finally he sent his own son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son and have regard for him.’ 38 “But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This [man] is the heir; come on, let us kill him and seize his inheritance.’ 39 “So they took the son and threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. 40 “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes back, what will he do to those tenants?” 41 They said to Him, “He will put those despicable men to a miserable end, and rent out the vineyard to other tenants [of good character] who will pay him the proceeds at the proper seasons.” 42 Jesus asked them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: ‘T HE [very] f S TONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED and THREW AWAY , H AS BECOME THE CHIEF C ORNERSTONE ; T HIS IS THE L ORD ’ S DOING , A ND IT IS MARVELOUS and WONDERFUL IN OUR EYES ’? [Ps 118:22 , 23 ] 43 “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to [another] people who will produce the fruit of it. 44 “And he who falls on this Stone will be broken to pieces; but he on whom it falls will be crushed.” [Is 8:14 , 15 ; Dan 2:34 , 35 ] 45 When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables, they understood that He was talking about them. 46 And although they were trying to arrest Him, they feared the people, because they regarded Jesus as a prophet. Matthew 22 Parable of the Marriage Feast 1 J ESUS SPOKE to them again in parables, saying, 2 “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. 3 “And he sent his servants to call those who had [previously] been invited to the wedding feast, but they refused to come.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  [Matt 22:41–46 ; Mark 12:35–37 ] 42 “For David himself says in the book of Psalms, ‘T HE L ORD (the Father) SAID TO MY L ORD (the Son, the Messiah), “S IT AT M Y RIGHT HAND , 43 U NTIL I MAKE Y OUR ENEMIES A FOOTSTOOL FOR Y OUR FEET .” ’ [Ps 110:1 ] 44 “ f So David calls Him (the Son) ‘Lord,’ and how then is He David’s son?” 45 And with all the people listening, He said to His disciples, 46 “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes [displaying their prominence], and love respectful greetings in the [crowded] market places, and g chief seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets. 47 “These [men] who confiscate and devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense [to appear devout] offer long prayers. These [men] will receive the greater [sentence of] condemnation.” Luke 21 The Widow’s Gift 1 L OOKING UP , He saw the rich people putting their gifts into the treasury. [Mark 12:41–44 ] 2 And He saw a poor widow putting in two a small copper coins. 3 He said, “Truly I say to you, this poor widow has put in [proportionally] more than all of them; 4 for they all put in gifts from their abundance; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.” 5 As some were talking about the b temple, that it was decorated with beautiful stones and consecrated offerings [of magnificent gifts of gold which were displayed on the walls and hung in the porticoes], He said, [Matt 24 ; Mark 13 ] 6 “As for all these things which you see, the time will come when there will not be one stone left on another that will not be c torn down.” 7 They asked Him, “Teacher, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign when these things are about to happen?” 8 He said, “Be careful and see to it that you are not misled; for many will come in My name [appropriating for themselves the name Messiah which belongs to Me alone], saying, ‘I am He,’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not follow them. 9 “When you hear of wars and disturbances [civil unrest, revolts, uprisings], do not panic; for these things must take place first, but the end will not come immediately.” Things to Come 10 Then Jesus told them, “Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. [2 Chr 15:6 ; Is 19:2 ] 11 “There will be violent earthquakes, and in various places famines and [deadly and devastating] pestilences (plagues, epidemics); and there will be terrible sights and great signs from heaven. 12 “But before all these things, they will lay their hands on you and will persecute you, turning you over to the synagogues and prisons, and bringing you before kings and governors for My name’s sake.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  Their stories were all about getting so drunk they were sick on their dates; girls were seen as good sports who held their heads over toilets and murmured, “It’ll be okay, honey.” The fraternity house was an Edwardian mansion. The outside was crosshatched by dingy timber on cream stucco like an old tic-tac-toe game. The fraternity was famous in the South for drinking, football, and racism; here in the North, we’d retained the drinking. Two or three of our members were jocks, but no one paid them much attention. As for the racism, we’d start quaking with laughter whenever we had to put on hoods with Halloween eyeslits for our secret ceremonies and pledge to protect white womanhood. There were at least three Negro star football players the brothers would have pledged if the bylaws had permitted them to do so, but this whoring after gladiators seemed to me only another form of racism. Our swords, the flowery Masonic language, and the Klannish sentiments would make our president scratch his head. He was a hawk-nosed man who liked to sleep and drink, always seemed to be genially confused, and appeared to be freshly hatched or peeled, certainly minus a vital protective layer. “Come on, guys,” he’d say, sheepishly holding his sword aloft, “show some respect.” “Let’s skip it and have some brews,” the vice-president would suggest, and soon we’d all be sitting around the chapel-size dining room in our fancy dress, drinking beers in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon. We never even succeeded in making a float for Homecoming, though we bought the chicken wire and crepe paper. A hard core of juniors on warning and suspended seniors would play cards and drink all night, sleep all day, and stagger down to roast-beef dinner in their bathrobes, never leaving the house, sending out pledges for brews and smokes. I could hear them all night downstairs, shouting and laughing, someone roaring with triumph, someone else laughing like a hyena. The fad of the moment was to say the opposite of what was meant. “You are a wit,” was addressed to an idiot, “He is a face man,” of someone brutally ugly. In ranking pledges during rush, the brothers would say someone was a legacy (as I was, since my father had been a member down South), a jock, a brain (“He’ll pull up the house average”), or a face man. Until now, all the heterosexual men I’d known had pretended they were unable to tell whether another male was attractive or not, but the reputation of the house required the brothers to measure even such an elusive factor and they did so, protected by this strangely objective term they’d invented, “face man.” The frowsy, boozy camaraderie of the fraternity amounted to permissiveness. The brothers frequently said to one another, “You’re not a pervert,” but they were referring to yet another lapful of beerbarf or a vaunted preference for cunnilingus (“oyster diving” or “beaver heaven”).

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  Wells and Terrell had a contentious relationship, because Wells blamed Terrell for disinviting her as a speaker at the 1899 NACW Convention in Chicago. In fact, Fannie Barrier Williams and the Chicago Clubwomen initiated the snub, undoubtedly put off by Wells’s growing and vocal disdain for the philosophies of Booker T. Washington. 26 Unaware, Wells directed her vitriol toward Terrell, a figure whom she had deeply admired up until that moment. The difference in leadership styles between the two women also did not help their relationship. Terrell was a political power broker who had the ability to bring coalitions of people together because of her judicious parliamentary skills. Wells’s abrasive approach tended to alienate her colleagues, though they usually had deep respect for her. Terrell weighed political allegiances carefully, and often acted as mediator between competing interests. Her membership in the NAACP provides a case in point. Though she was an ardent admirer of the Tuskegee model, and her husband a Bookerite political appointee, Terrell believed in liberal democratic ideas and thought that Black people should agitate for political rights. She, therefore, chose to join the NAACP even though her “husband was warned that

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  One, who pretended to speak only Bulgarian—he was really a Moldavian—lived in a dog kennel in the rear of his shack. He ate with the dog—out of the same tin plate. When he smiled he showed only two teeth, huge ones, like a canine’s. He could bark too, or sniff and growl like a cur. None of this did I dare to put into the novel. No, the novel I kept like a boudoir. No Dreck . Not that all the characters were respectable or impeccable. Ah no! Some whom I had dragged in for color were plain Schmucks . (Prepucelos.) The hero, who was also the narrator and to whom I bore a slight resemblance, had the air of a trapezoid cerebralist. It was his function to keep the merry-go-round turning. Now and then he treated himself to a free ride. What element there was of the bizarre and the outlandish intrigued Pop no end. He had wondered—openly—how a young woman, the author, in other words, came by such thoughts, such images. It had never occurred to Mona to say: “From another incarnation!” Frankly, I would hardly have known what to say myself. Some of the goofiest images had been stolen from almanacs, others were born of wet dreams. What Pop truly enjoyed, it seemed, was the occasional introduction of a dog or a cat. (He couldn’t know, of course, that I was mortally afraid of dogs or that I loathed cats.) But I could make a dog talk. And it was doggy talk, no mistake about it. My true reason for inserting these creatures of a lower order was to show contempt for certain characters in the book who had gotten out of hand. A dog, properly inspired, can make an ass of a queen. Besides, if I wished to ridicule a current idea which was anathema to me all I had to do was to impersonate a mutt, lift my hind leg and piss on it. Despite all the foolery, all the shenanigans, I nevertheless managed to create a sort of antique glaze. My purpose was to impart such a finish, such a patina, that every page would gleam like star dust. This was the business of authorship, as I then conceived it. Make mud puddles, if necessary, but see to it that they reflect the galactic varnish. When giving an idiot voice mix the jabber-wocky with high-flown allusions to such subjects as paleontology, quadratics, hyperboreanism. A line from one of the mad Caesars was always pertinent. Or a curse from the lips of a scrofulous dwarf. Or just a sly Hamsunesque quip, like “Going for a walk, Froken? The cowslips are dying of thirst.” Sly, I say, because the allusion, though far-fetched, was to Froken’s habit of spreading her legs, when she thought she was well out of sight, and making water. These rambles taken to relax or to obtain fresh inspiration—often only to aerate the testicles—had a disturbing effect upon the work in progress.

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  Inflammatory labeling: This is when they label people or situations in highly negative or even cruel ways. They describe situations as completely terrible or disastrous. They describe people as total idiots, fools, or worthless. In doing so, they fail to realize that people are more complicated than they realize and that their motivations for doing something in a particular moment are similarly complicated. Differing versions of fairness: Some people evaluate outcomes in terms of fairness, but not in a way that is consistent with how others view fairness. Anger emerges because they feel injustice that others don’t necessarily see or agree with. A spouse might, for instance, think “It’s only fair that they vacuum since I made dinner” and get angry when their partner doesn’t see it the same way. Considering opinions to be facts: People sometimes misconstrue their own opinions to be facts, meaning they think that because they feel a certain way about something, other people should feel that way too.* “I think Casablanca is the best movie of all time” becomes “Casablanca is the best movie of all time” and anger ensues when others don’t recognize this as an obvious fact. Disaster Thinking When we interpret any situation we encounter or any experience we have, we interpret it in two different ways. Initially, we interpret the source itself. In the case of anger, we look to the person or situation we are feeling provoked by and we make decisions about what it means to us. This is where a lot of the thoughts we’ve already discussed come into play. We’re deciding who did what, why they did it, whether or not it was bad or good, how it impacts us, and so on. We call this primary appraisal. When we’re done with this, we decide how bad the situation is for us and whether or not we can cope with it. This is secondary appraisal and it’s critical to whether or not we get angry and how angry we might get. There are situations, for instance, where a person behaved badly but where it didn’t impact us much,