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 Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  That would involve time and even worse conversation. Thinking it over coldly and calculatingly I decided that the best bet was my little friend Curley up in Harlem. If Curley didn’t have the money he would filch it from his mother’s purse. I knew I could rely on him. He would want to accompany me, of course, but I could always find a way of ditching him before the evening was over. He was only a kid and I didn’t have to be too delicate with him. What I liked about Curley was that, although only a kid of seventeen, he had absolutely no moral sense, no scruples, no shame. He had come to me as a boy of fourteen looking for a job as messenger. His parents, who were then in South America, had shipped him to New York in care of an aunt who seduced him almost immediately. He had never been to school because the parents were always traveling; they were carnival people who worked “the griffs and the grinds,” as he put it. The father had been in prison several times. He was not his real father, by the way. Anyway, Curley came to me as a mere lad who was in need of help, in need of a friend more than anything. At first I thought I could do something for him. Everybody took a liking to him immediately, especially the women. He became the pet of the office. Before long, however, I realized that he was incorrigible, that at the best he had the makings of a clever criminal. I liked him, however, and I continued to do things for him, but I never trusted him out of my sight. I think I liked him particularly because he had absolutely no sense of honor. He would do anything in the world for me and at the same time betray me. I couldn’t reproach him for it . . . it was amusing to me. The more so because he was frank about it. He just couldn’t help it. His Aunt Sophie, for instance. He said she had seduced him. True enough, but the curious thing was that he let himself be seduced while they were reading the Bible together. Young as he was he seemed to realize that his Aunt Sophie had need of him in that way. So he let himself be seduced, as he said, and then, after I had known him a little while he offered to put me next to his Aunt Sophie. He even went so far as to blackmail her. When he needed money badly he would go to the aunt and wheedle it out of her—with sly threats of exposure. With an innocent face, to be sure. He looked amazingly like an angel, with big liquid eyes that seemed so frank and sincere.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  They had met when they were college students in Ann Arbor. Both had been involved in brief affairs with the same man, who unfortunately turned out to be an uninteresting swine, something that took each of them an unduly long time to realize. Leisha had been the first; he had met Susan only a month after they broke up. She’d become aware of Leisha at a party given by his roommate, Leisha’s then-current lover. Susan had been standing against a wall in the dark, drinking vodka from a plastic cup and watching this theatrical little creature flap drunkenly around a clearly more sober partner on the dance floor, all elbows, jerking hips and senseless knee-bending dips. Her partner suddenly hoisted her up and solemnly circled the room, holding her aloft over his head like a sacrifice as she squeaked, “Give me a break, Eliot, pulease!” Susan disliked her immediately. She thought: I’m a much better dancer, and, putting her drink on the windowsill, went to demonstrate it. (Much later she learned that Leisha hadn’t thought much of her dancing either. “It was like, okay, what does a girl do when she dances? She rotates her hips and sticks out her breasts a lot and un dulates.”) Susan was aware of her intermittently after that—at parties, coffee shops, movies or walking at a distance with her stiff-hipped, mobile-necked poodle walk. She would hear Leisha’s name mentioned in gossip, usually in a tone of amused tolerance and in the context of some blighted romance, with the word “crazy” figuring prominently. Then Susan became friendly with a girl named Alex, who was, coincidentally, sharing a house with Leisha and another girl. Alex didn’t like Leisha either; she and Susan loved to talk about how trivial and fake she was. But this talk began to have an unexpected effect. As they disparaged and analyzed Leisha, a strange affection for her began to manifest itself. They started to say things like, “Well, she’s an asshole, but you have to admit she has a good heart.” When Susan saw her on the street, she regarded her as a character in a movie, a mysterious figure who might or might not reveal herself. Her reputed excesses and romantic fiascoes began to appeal to Susan. Her overblown gestures seemed like the gaudy plumage of something too refined and frail to appear unadorned. Besides, morbid, serious Susan, who would brood with a bespectacled roommate for hours over tea and toast when a romance collapsed, could not help but feel a kind of admiration for this person who ran around town chattering about the most embarrassing and painful situations as though she were discussing a musical comedy.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  “Look, Simone sets herself up for disaster. She always has. Then she tries to drag anyone within range into it.” They gnawed their food righteously. Jane still had her elbow up and her hand blocking her face. “How’s the job search going?” she asked. “It looks good so far. Like I said, I think I did all right at Ardis films. And I know somebody who used to work there. The only thing about that place is that the people are so pretentious. Everybody there is a ‘close personal friend’ of Herzog or Beth B. or somebody. Everybody has this certain pompous accent, especially when they say ‘film.’ ” “That’s professional New York,” said Jane. “People who work in the arts are always that way.” “Maybe I’ll just come work in the museum with you.” “If we’re not on strike. And it looks like we’re going to be.” “Could you survive on free-lance work if that happened?” “Maybe.” She dropped the hand at her chin, exposing her face to him. “I don’t know.” He got up from the table, looking straight ahead, and slowly gathered his coat around his shoulders. He could sense no movement of her head turning to look at him as he left the restaurant. He wouldn’t realize that he’d left the bag containing the bunny sweater-guard and Sylvia’s watch under the table until he arrived home in Westchester. An Affair, EditedWhen he saw her on the way to work in the morning, he ignored her, even though he hadn’t seen her for four years. They had met at the University of Michigan. It had been such a brief, disturbing affair that he didn’t even think of her as an old girlfriend. His memory of her was like a filmy scrap of dream discovered on the floor during the drowsy journey from bed to toilet, or a girl in an advertisement that catches in the cluttered net of memory and persists, waiting to commit sex acts with you later that night. Her slight body and pale movements intensified his impression. He had his Walkman on when they passed each other, and his blotted hearing made it easier for him to ignore her. She approached, her face tilted toward him, quizzical and apprehensive. She passed him and vanished, replaced by a girl in a suit and two staring, striding men with briefcases. She did not seem to notice that he ignored her; in fact she might have ignored him too. Their affair had ended badly. He descended into the dank grayness of the subway, relishing slightly her surprise appearance. He had never gone to work this way before. It was probably the route she always took.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  The idea of constructing a place of shelter in that particular way strikes me as absolutely insane. The city itself strikes me as a piece of the highest insanity, everything about it, sewers, elevated lines, slot machines, newspapers, telephones, cops, doorknobs, flophouses, screens, toilet paper, everything. Everything could just as well not be and not only nothing lost but a whole universe gained. I look at the people brushing by me to see if by chance one of them might agree with me. Supposing I intercepted one of them and just asked him a simple question. Supposing I just said to him suddenly: “Why do you go on living the way you do?” He would probably call a cop. I ask myself—does any one ever talk to himself the way I do? I ask myself if there isn’t something wrong with me. The only conclusion I can come to is that I am different . And that’s a very grave matter, view it how you will. Henry, I say to myself, rising slowly from the stoop, stretching myself, brushing my trousers and spitting out the gum, Henry, I say to myself, you are young yet, you are just a spring chicken and if you let them get you by the balls you’re an idiot because you’re a better man than any of them only you need to get rid of your false notions about humanity. You have to realize, Henry me boy, that you’re dealing with cutthroats, with cannibals, only they’re dressed up, shaved, perfumed, but that’s all they are—cutthroats, cannibals. The best thing for you to do now, Henry, is to go and get yourself a frosted chocolate and when you sit at the soda fountain keep your eyes peeled and forget about the destiny of man because you might still find yourself a nice lay and a good lay will clean your ballbearings out and leave a good taste in your mouth whereas this only brings on dyspepsia, dandruff, halitosis, encephalitis. And while I’m soothing myself thus a guy comes up to me to bum a dime and I hand him a quarter for good measure thinking to myself that if I had had a little more sense I’d have had a juicy pork chop with that instead of the lousy meat balls but what’s the difference now it’s all food and food makes energy and energy is what makes the world go round. Instead of the frosted chocolate I keep walking and soon I’m exactly where I intended to be all the time, which is in front of the ticket window of the Roseland. And now, Henry, says I to myself, if you’re lucky your old pal MacGregor will be here and first he’ll bawl the shit out of you for running away and then he’ll lend you a five spot, and if you just hold your breath while climbing the stairs maybe you’ll see the nymphomaniac too and you’ll get a dry fuck.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  He sat and brooded in a bad-natured and slightly drunken way. She sat next to him, diminished and fretful, with idiot radio songs about sex in her head. — They were staying in his grandmother’s deserted apartment in Washington, D.C. The complex was a series of building blocks seemingly arranged at random, stuck together and painted the least attractive colors available. It was surrounded by bright green grass and a circular driveway, and placed on a quiet highway that led into the city. There was a drive-in bank and an insurance office next to it. It was enveloped in the steady, continuous noise of cars driving by at roughly the same speed. “This is a horrible building,” she said as they traveled up in the elevator. The door slid open and they walked down a hall carpeted with dense brown nylon. The grandmother’s apartment opened before them. Beth found the refrigerator and opened it. There was a crumpled package of French bread, a jar of hot peppers, several lumps covered with aluminum foil, two bottles of wine and a six-pack. “Is your grandmother an alcoholic?” she asked. “I don’t know.” He dropped his heavy leather bag and her white canvas one in the living room, took off his coat and threw it on the bags. She watched him standing there, pale and gaunt in a black leather shirt tied at his waist with a leather belt. That image of him would stay with her for years for no good reason and with no emotional significance. He dropped into a chair, his thin arms flopping lightly on its arms. He nodded at the tray of whiskey, Scotch and liqueurs on the coffee table before him. “Why don’t you make yourself a drink?” She dropped to her knees beside the table and nervously played with the bottles. He was watching her quietly, his expression hooded. She plucked a bottle of thick chocolate liqueur from the cluster, poured herself a glass and sat in the chair across from his with both hands around it. She could no longer ignore the character of the apartment. It was brutally ridiculous, almost sadistic in its absurdity. The couch and chairs were covered with a floral print. A thin maize carpet zipped across the floor. There were throw rugs. There were artificial flowers. There was an abundance of small tables and shelves housing a legion of figures; grinning glass maidens in sumptuous gowns bore baskets of glass roses, ceramic birds warbled from the ceramic stumps they clung to, glass horses galloped across teakwood pastures. A ceramic weather poodle and his diamond-eyed kitty-cat companions silently watched the silent scene in the room. “Are you all right?” he asked. “I hate this apartment. It’s really awful.” “What were you expecting? Jesus Christ.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  They had met when they were college students in Ann Arbor. Both had been involved in brief affairs with the same man, who unfortunately turned out to be an uninteresting swine, something that took each of them an unduly long time to realize. Leisha had been the first; he had met Susan only a month after they broke up. She’d become aware of Leisha at a party given by his roommate, Leisha’s then-current lover. Susan had been standing against a wall in the dark, drinking vodka from a plastic cup and watching this theatrical little creature flap drunkenly around a clearly more sober partner on the dance floor, all elbows, jerking hips and senseless knee-bending dips. Her partner suddenly hoisted her up and solemnly circled the room, holding her aloft over his head like a sacrifice as she squeaked, “Give me a break, Eliot, pulease!” Susan disliked her immediately. She thought: I’m a much better dancer, and, putting her drink on the windowsill, went to demonstrate it. (Much later she learned that Leisha hadn’t thought much of her dancing either. “It was like, okay, what does a girl do when she dances? She rotates her hips and sticks out her breasts a lot and undulates.”) Susan was aware of her intermittently after that—at parties, coffee shops, movies or walking at a distance with her stiff-hipped, mobile-necked poodle walk. She would hear Leisha’s name mentioned in gossip, usually in a tone of amused tolerance and in the context of some blighted romance, with the word “crazy” figuring prominently. Then Susan became friendly with a girl named Alex, who was, coincidentally, sharing a house with Leisha and another girl. Alex didn’t like Leisha either; she and Susan loved to talk about how trivial and fake she was.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  175Lecture 18—The Mormons: A True American Faith õYoung led Mormons west in 1846 to settle in their “promised land,” the valley around Utah’s Great Salt Lake. They behaved like an independent kingdom, challenging the authority of the federal government and getting into fights with non-Mormon pioneers. President James Buchanan even sent troops out to intimidate the Mormons. Conf lict got worse and worse after the church went public with Joseph Smith’s most scandalous teaching: plural marriage. õAfter decades of strife with the government and non-Mormon pioneers, Mormons eventually renounced polygamy in 1890 and accepted federal authority, which allowed Utah to become a state. The Mormons gradually grew into an international church of over 15 million members. UNIQUE MORMON BELIEFS õAn important question is this: Why do some mainstream Christians get so outraged when Mormons call themselves Christian? Many Christians believe that Mormonism is a wholly different religion for three main reasons: ✳Mormons accept additional holy scriptures. ✳Historically, Mormons engaged in marital practices that were outside the mainstream. ✳The LDS Church has very non-traditional views on the nature of God, humanity, and the path to salvation. õRegarding scripture: Besides the Book of Mormon, Mormons believe that two other books of Smith’s teachings are holy scriptures too: the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. They also believe that his successors are prophets, and they can issue teachings on par with scriptural revelation. The appeal to the authority of these additional writings and revelations runs counter to the classic Protestant notion of sola scriptura, meaning that the canonical texts of the Old and New Testament are the only authoritative rule for Christian faith and practice.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She just stares at you.” They were lying in bed on their backs in their summer pajamas, their arms lying away from their bodies in the heat. The electric fan was loud. “Jarold, she’s shy,” said Virginia. “And she’s upset. She’s had a hard time these last few months.” “Whose fault is that? Why do we have to get stuck with her hard time, Virginia? Answer me that.” Virginia lay still and looked at her long naked feet standing at the end of the bed. She couldn’t think of an answer. “And she’s got such a pasty little face,” continued Jarold. “She looks like something that crawled out from under a rock.” “Jerry.” Her voice was soft and blurry in the fan. — “I don’t think Jarold likes me,” said Lily the next day. Virginia was doing the dishes. Lily stood beside her, leaning against the wall, standing on one leg. “He just needs time to get used to you.” Virginia dug around in the water for the silverware and tried to think of something to say. “He told me last night that you remind him of Magdalen. And he loved Magdalen.” Virginia could feel Lily brightening. “But you see, Magdalen hurt him more than anyone else in the world. It’s a painful memory for him.” “I guess so,” said Lily. “He told me I look like something that crawled out from under a rock.” — Jarold was a big, handsome man who sold insurance to companies. His handsomeness was masculine and severe. His bright blue eyes were harsh and direct, and his thin, arched eyebrows gave him an airy demon look that was out of character with his blunt, heavy voice. He rarely made excessive or clumsy movements, although his walk was a little plodding. He had become successful very quickly. They had never been forced to live in small apartments with peeling wallpaper. For years Virginia believed that Jarold could surmount anything. He could, too, until Magdalen. Jarold had been in love with Magdalen. At breakfast, he would look at her as she sullenly pushed her egg around her plate while the other children chattered, as if her bored, pale face gave him the energy to go to work. He read all of her papers from school; he always wanted to take her picture. She could make him do anything for her. He’d let her stay out all night; he let her spend the weekend in New York when she was fifteen. Wherever she was, even when she was traveling around Canada with a busload of hippies and a black person, if she cabled home for money, Jarold sent it immediately.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  AUGUSTINE. (Tract. xxxvii. 1) Those who had heard our Lord say, Ye judge after the flesh, shewed that they did so; for they understood what He said of His Father in a carnal sense: Then said they unto Him, Where is Thy Father? meaning, We have heard Thee say, I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent Me. We see Thee alone; prove to us then that Thy Father is with Thee. THEOPHYLACT. Some remark that this is said in contumely and contempt; to insinuate either that He is born of fornication, and knows not who His Father is; or as a slur on the low situation of His father, i. e. Joseph; as if to say, Thy father is an obscure, ignoble person; why dost Thou so often mention him? So because they asked the question, to tempt Him, not to get at the truth, Jesus answered, Ye neither know Me, nor My Father. AUGUSTINE. (Tract. xxxvii. 2.) As if He said, Ye ask where is Thy Father? As if ye knew Me already, and I were nothing else but what ye see. But ye know Me not, and therefore I tell you nothing of My Father. Ye think Me indeed a mere man, and therefore among men look for My Father. But, forasmuch as I am different altogether, according to My seen and unseen natures, and speak of My Father in the hidden sense according to My hidden nature; it is plain that ye must first know Me, and then ye will know My Father; If ye had known Me, ye would have known My Father also. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lii. 3) He tells them, it is of no avail for them to say they know the Father, if they do not know the Son. ORIGEN. (tom. xix. l. in Joan. in princ.) Ye neither know Me, nor My Father: this seems inconsistent with what was said above, Ye both know Me, and know whence I am. But the latter is spoken in reply to some from Jerusalem, who asked, Do the rulers know indeed that this is the very Christ? Ye neither know Me is addressed to the Pharisees. To the former persons from Jerusalem however He said, He that sent Me, is true, Whom ye know not. You will ask then, How is that true, If ye know Me, ye would know My Father also? when they of Jerusalem, to whom He said, Ye know Me, did not know the Father. To this we must reply, that our Saviour sometimes speaks of Himself as man, and some-times as God. Ye both know Me, He says as man: ye neither know Me, as God.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  In regard to this he does three things. First (377:C 711), he shows that such insolence tends to lead to an impossible conclusion. Second (378:C 712), he indicates the way in which it seems necessary to oppose them ( “ Yet if not all things ” ). Third (379:C V6), he explains how we must meet their argument from the viewpoint of truth ( “ And, as has been ” ). He accordingly says, first (377), that those who seek “ compulsion merely in words, ” i.e., those who are not moved by any reason or because of the difficulty involved in some problem or because of some failure in demonstration but depend solely on words and believe that they can say anything which cannot be disproved-such people as these want to argue to an impossible conclusion. For they want to adopt the principle that contraries are true at the same time on the grounds that all appearances are true. 712. Yet if not all (378). Then he shows how we may oppose these men by using their own position and avoid the foregoing impossible conclusion. He says that, unless everything which is, is claimed to be relative, it cannot be said that every appearance is true. For if there are some things in the world which have absolute being and are not relative to perception or to opinion, being and appearing will not be the same; for appearing implies a relation to perception or to opinion, because that which appears appears to someone; and thus whatever is not an appearance must be true. It is clear, then, that whoever says that all appearances are true, makes all beings relative, i.e., to perception or to opinion. Hence, in opposing the foregoing sophists who seek compulsion in words, we may say that, if anyone thinks it fitting “ to grant this view, ” i.e., to concede this opinion which they maintain, he must be careful, or observant, lest he be led to admit that contradictories are true at the same time; for it should not be said unqualifiedly that everything which appears is true, but that what appears is true for the one to whom it appears, and inasmuch as it appears, and when it appears, and in the manner in which it appears. We would be allowed to add these qualifications on the grounds that a thing does not have being in an absolute sense but only relatively.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  HILARY. Otherwise; This Scribe being one of the doctors of the Law, asks if he shall follow Him, as though it were not contained in the Law that this is He whom it were gain to follow. Therefore He discovers the feeling of unbelief under the diffidence of his enquiry. For the taking up of the faith is not by question but by following. CHRYSOSTOM. So Christ answers him not so much to what he had said, but to the obvious purpose of his mind. Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head; as though He had said; JEROME. Why do you seek to follow Me for the sake of the riches and gain of this world, when My poverty is such that I have neither lodging nor home of My own? CHRYSOSTOM. This was not to send him away, but rather to convict him of evil intentions; at the same time permitting him if he would to follow Christ with the expectation of poverty. AUGUSTINE. (Serm. 100. 1.) Otherwise; The Son of man hath not where to lay his head; that is, in your faith. The foxes have holes, in your heart, because you are deceitful. The birds of the air have nests, in your heart, because you are proud. Deceitful and proud follow Me not; for how should guile follow sincerity? GREGORY. (Mor. xix. 1.) Otherwise; The fox is a crafty animal, lying hid in ditches and dens, and when it comes abroad never going in a straight path, but in crooked windings; birds raise themselves in the air. By the foxes then are meant the subtle and deceitful dæmons, by the birds the proud dæmons; as though He had said; Deceitful and proud dæmons have their abode in your heart; but my lowliness finds no rest in a proud spirit. AUGUSTINE. (Quæst. in Matt. q. 5.) He was moved to follow Christ because of the miracles; this vain desire of glory is signified by the birds; but he assumed the submissiveness of a disciple, which deceit is signified by the foxes. RABANUS. Heretics confiding in their art are signified by the foxes, the evil spirits by the birds of the air, who have their holes and their nests, that is, their abodes in the heart of the Jewish people. Another of his disciples saith unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. JEROME. In what one thing is this disciple like the Scribe? The one called Him Master, the other confesses Him as his Lord. The one from filial piety asks permission to go and bury his father; the other offers to follow, not seeking a master, but by means of his master seeking gain for himself.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. Now our Lord might also have used other words to admonish the foolish Pharisee, but he seizes the opportunity and framed his reproof from the things that were ready before him. At the hour, namely, of meals He takes for His example the cup and the platter, pointing out that it became the sincere servants of God to be washed and clean, not only from bodily impurity, but also from that which lies concealed within the power of the soul, just as any of the vessels which are used for the table ought to be free from all inward defilement. AMBROSE. Now mark that our bodies are signified by the mention of earthly and fragile things, which when let fall a short distance are broken to pieces, and those things which the mind meditates within, it easily expresses through the senses and actions of the body, just as those things which the cup contains within make a glitter without. Hence also hereafter, by the word cup doubtless the passion of the body is spoken of. You perceive then, that not the outside of the cup and platter defiles us, but the inner parts. For he said, But your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness. AUGUSTINE. (Serm. 106.) But how was it that He spared not the man by whom He was invited? Yea rather, He spared him by reproof, that when corrected He might spare him in the judgment. Further, He shews us that baptism also which is once given cleanses by faith; but faith is something within, not without. The Pharisees despised faith, and used washings which were without; while within they remained full of pollution. The Lord condemns this, saying, Ye fools, did not he that made that which is without make that which is within also? BEDE. As if He says, He who made both natures of man, will have each to be cleansed. This is against the Manicheans, who think the soul only was created by God, but the flesh by the devil. It is also against those who abominate the sins of the flesh, such as fornication, theft, and the like; while those of the Spirit, which are no less condemned by the Apostle, they disregard as trifling. AMBROSE. Now our Lord as a good Master taught us how we ought to purify our bodies from defilement, saying, But rather give alms of such things as ye have over: and, behold, all things are clean unto you. You see what the remedies are; almsgiving cleanseth us, the word of God cleanseth us, according to that which is written, Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. (John 15:3.) CYPRIAN. (de Op. et Eleem.) The Merciful bids us to shew mercy; and because He seeks to save those whom He has redeemed at a great price, He teaches that they who have been defiled after the grace of baptism may again be made clean.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  75Lecture 8—Puritans, Kings, and Theology in Practice in a social covenant that was not limited only to the elect. Williams thought this marriage of church and state ran contrary to the idea that you are saved by grace alone. õThe Puritans banished Williams in 1635, which is why he ended up founding his own church in Rhode Island. The Puritans made being a Baptist illegal and publicly whipped any they apprehended in their colony, so it’s not hard to understand why Baptist churches grew slowly. õThe technical term for Williams’s critique of Puritan ideas of the law is antinomianism. His idea was that since grace, not good works, saves a person, the Puritans had no business compelling a person to follow any rules. This is the extreme conclusion of Martin Luther’s logic. It’s a conclusion that most of the reformers shied away from because they feared its implications for trying to run a peaceful, moral community. õAnother antinomian thorn in the Puritans’ side was a woman named Anne Hutchinson. She was a midwife by profession and passionate about theology. She started hosting mid- week meetings at her home in Boston to discuss sermons further. Word got out that Hutchinson was creeping toward that antinomian heresy, saying that Christians didn’t need to follow the law to be certain of salvation. õHer followers included some of the most prominent men in town, but most were women. One of Hutchinson’s dearest friends was a woman named Mary Dyer. Hutchinson fought her way through a snowstorm to help her through a terrible labor that resulted in the stillbirth of a deformed fetus. Hutchinson likely won the trust of many Boston women by helping them through horrible experiences like this. 76The History of Christianity II õThe town fathers, unfortunately, didn’t like Hutchinson. Beginning in 1637, they put her on trial twice, before both civil and church authorities. They accused her of slandering the colony’s ministers and committing heresy. She had born 15 children and was pregnant again during her trial. She held her own, though: She was really just following the Puritans’ own logic to its ultimate conclusion. õThen she made a mistake. She claimed that the Holy Spirit communicated with her directly. For most Puritans, this was an unacceptable threat to the authority of the Bible, and—just as important—to the authority of the clergy. They ordered her banished.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  If now and then, because of us children, the pastor called at the house unexpectedly, he was treated as one to whom they were obliged to defer out of ordinary politeness but whom they had nothing in common with, whom they were a little suspicious of, in fact, as representative of a species midway between a fool and a charlatan. To us, for example, they would say “a lovely man,” but when their cronies came round and the gossip began to fly, then one would hear an entirely different brand of comment, accompanied usually by peals of scornful laughter and sly mimicry. My father fell mortally ill as a result of swearing off too abruptly. All his life he had been a jolly hail fellow well met: he had put on a rather becoming paunch, his cheeks were well filled out and red as a beet, his manners were easy and indolent, and he seemed destined to live on into a ripe old age, sound and healthy as a nut. But beneath this smooth and jolly exterior things were not at all well. His affairs were in bad shape, the debts were piling up, and already some of his older friends were beginning to drop him. My mother’s attitude was what worried him most. She saw things in a black light and she took no trouble to conceal it. Now and then she became hysterical and went at him hammer and tongs, swearing at him in the vilest language and smashing the dishes and threatening to run away for good. The upshot of it was that he arose one morning determined never to touch another drop. Nobody believed that he meant it seriously; there had been others in the family who swore off, who went on the water wagon, as they used to say, but who quickly tumbled off again. No one in the family, and they had all tried at different times, had ever become a successful teetotaler. But my old man was different. Where or how he got the strength to maintain his resolution, God only knows. It seems incredible to me, because had I been in his boots myself I would have drunk myself to death. Not the old man, however. This was the first time in his life he had ever shown any resolution about anything. My mother was so astounded that, idiot that she was, she began to make fun of him, to quip him about his strength of will which had heretofore been so lamentably weak. Still he stuck to his guns. His drinking pals faded away rather quickly.

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  71. Lewis M. Terman dismissed the influence of environment and saw class as an accurate outcome of hereditary ability. He wrote, “Common observation would itself suggest that social class to which the family belongs depends less on chance than on the parents’ native qualities of intellect and character.” For his class arguments, see Terman, The Measurement of Intelligence, 72, 96, 115. Terman worried more about the low birthrates among the talented class, and doing everything possible to increase this class; see Lewis Madison Terman, “Were We Born That Way?,” The World’s Work 44 (May–October 1922): 655–60. Terman’s intelligence scale was more elitist; he grouped the most severely mentally deficient into one category of the “intellectually feeble,” and then used borderline, inferior, average, superior, very superior, select, very select, and genius. It was the top of the scale that mattered most to him; see Terman, “The Binet Scale and the Diagnosis of Feeble-Mindedness,” Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology 7, no. 4 (November 1916): 530–43, esp. 541–42; also see Mary K. Coffey, “The American Adonis: A Natural History of the ‘Average American’ Man, 1921–32,” in Popular Eugenics: National Efficiency and American Mass Culture in the 1930s, eds. Susan Currell and Christina Cogdell (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006), 185–216, esp. 186–87, 196, 198. Other eugenicists like popular lecturer Albert E. Wiggam feared that if intelligent and beautiful women (as if those traits were united in one class) did not breed, “the next generation will be both homely and dumb”; see R. le Clerc Phillips, “Cracks in the Upper Crust,” Independent (May 29, 1926): 633–36. 72. On C. W. Saleeby and his new book Woman on Womanhood, see “Urging Women to Lift the Race,” New York Times, November 19, 1911; for a satire of eugenic feminism, of women running down men, replacing marriage for love with the “cold-blooded selection” of the best based on “scientific propagation,” see Robert W. Chambers, “Pro Bono Publico: Further Developments in the Eugenist Suffragette Campaign,” Hampton’s Magazine (July 1, 1911): 19–30; and William McDougall, National Welfare and Decay (London, 1921), 9–25. McDougall did a similar study comparing the intellectual capacity of English private schools (children of educated elite) and primary schools (children of shopkeepers and artisans) and arrived at the same conclusion as Terman: there was a marked superiority of the children of the educated elite. See Reverend W. R. Inge, “Is Our Race Degenerating?,” The Living Age (January 15, 1927): 143–54. 73. Steven Noll, Feeble-Minded in Our Midst: Institutions for the Mentally Retarded in the South, 1900– 1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 71. For the importance of targeting delinquent white girls of the poorer class for sterilization in North Carolina in the 1920s, see Karen L. Zipf, Bad Girls at Samarcand: Sexuality and Sterilization in a Southern Juvenile Reformatory (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2016), 3, 66–67, 73, 83–84, 150–52, 154.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  In three months he had become enthusiastically American, “America is the greatest country in the world”, he assured me from an abysmal ignorance; “any young man who works can make money here; if I had a little capital I’d be a rich man in a very few years; it’s some capital I need, nothing more.” Having drawn my story out of me especially the last phase when I divided up with the boys, he declared I must be mad. “With five thousand dollars”, he cried, “I could be rich in three years, a millionaire in ten. You must be mad; don’t you know that everyone is for himself in this world: good gracious! I never heard of such insanity: if I had only known!” For some days I watched him closely and came to believe that he was perfectly suited to his surroundings, eminently fitted to succeed in them. He was an earnest Christian, I found, who had been converted and baptised in the Baptist Church; he had a fair tenor voice and led the choir; he swallowed all the idiocies of the incredible creed; but drew some valuable moral sanctions from it; he was a teetotaler and didn’t smoke; a Nazarene, too, determined to keep chaste as he called a state of abstinence from women, and weekly indulgence in self-abuse which he tried to justify as inevitable. The teaching of Jesus himself had little or no practical effect on him; he classed it all together as counsels of an impossible perfection, and like the vast majority of Americans, accepted a childish Pauline-German morality while despising the duty of forgiveness and scorning the Gospel of Love. A few days after our first meeting, Willie proposed to me that I should lend him a thousand dollars and he would give me twenty-five per cent for the use of the money. When I exclaimed against the usurious rate, twelve per cent being the State limit, he told me he could lend a million dollars if he had it, at from three to five per cent a month on perfect security. “So you see,” he wound up, “that I can easily afford to give you two hundred and fifty dollars a year for the use of your thousand: one can buy real estate here to pay fifty per cent a year; the country is only just beginning to be developed”, and so forth and so on in wildest optimism: the end of it being that he got my thousand dollars, leaving me with barely five hundred, but as I could live in a good boardinghouse for four dollars a week, I reckoned that at the worst I had one carefree year before me and if Willie kept his promise, I would be free to do whatever I wanted to do for years to come.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  One would never take them for brother and sister. I got so worked up thinking about her that I tried to tackle the wife. But that poor bastard, with her Puritanical complex, pretended to be horrified. She liked Luke. She wouldn’t say that he was a swell guy, because that wasn’t like her, but she insisted that he was genuine, loyal, a true friend, etc. I had so many loyal, genuine, true friends that that was all horseshit to me. Finally we got into such an argument over Luke that she got an hysterical attack and began to weep and sob—in bed, mind you. That made me hungry. The idea of weeping before breakfast seemed monstrous to me. I went downstairs and I fixed myself a wonderful breakfast, and as I put it away I was laughing to myself, about Luke, about the hundred and fifty bucks that his sudden death had wiped off the slate, about Lottie and the way she would look at me when the moment came . . . and finally, the most absurd of all, I thought of Maxie, Maxie Schnadig, the faithful friend of Luke, standing at the grave with a big wreath and perhaps throwing a handful of earth on the coffin just as they were lowering it. Somehow that seemed just too stupid for words. I don’t know why it should seem so ridiculous, but it did. Maxie was a simpleton. I tolerated him only because he was good for a touch now and then. And then too there was his sister Rita. I used to let him invite me to his home occasionally, pretending that I was interested in his brother who was deranged. It was always a good meal and the half-witted brother was real entertainment. He looked like a chimpanzee and he talked like one too. Maxie was too simple to suspect that I was merely enjoying myself; he thought I took a genuine interest in his brother. It was a beautiful Sunday and I had as usual about a quarter in my pocket. I walked along wondering where to go to make a touch. Not that it was difficult to scrape up a little dough, no, but the thing was to get the dough and beat it without being bored stiff. I could think of a dozen guys right in the neighborhood, guys who would fork it out without a murmur, but it would mean a long conversation afterwards—about art, religion, politics. Another thing I could do, which I had done over and over again in a pinch, was to visit the telegraph offices, pretending to pay a friendly visit of inspection and then, at the last minute, suggest that they rifle the till for a buck or so until the morrow.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  It’s looking at my old man. Ever since he’s retired he sits in front of the fire all day long and mopes. To sit there like a broken-down gorilla, that’s what he slaved for all his life. Well shit, if I thought that was going to happen to me I’d blow my brains out now. Look around you . . . look at the people we know. . . . do you know one that’s worth while? What’s all the fuss about, I’d like to know? We’ve got to live, they say. Why? that’s what I want to know. They’d all be a damned sight better off dead. They’re all just so much manure. When the war broke out and I saw them go off to the trenches I said to myself good, maybe they’ll come back with a little sense! A lot of them didn’t come back, of course. But the others!— listen, do you suppose they got more human, more considerate? Not at all! They’re all butchers at heart, and when they’re up against it they squeal. They make me sick, the whole fucking lot of ‘em. I see what they’re like, bailing them out every day. I see it from both sides of the fence. On the other side it stinks even worse. Why, if I told you some of the things I knew about the judges who condemn these poor bastards you’d want to slug them. All you have to do is look at their faces. Yes sir, Henry, I’d like to think there was once a time when things were different. We haven’t seen any real life—and we’re not going to see any. This thing is going to last another few thousand years, if I know anything about it. You think I’m mercenary. You think I’m cuckoo to want to earn a lot of money, don’t you? Well I’ll tell you, I want to earn a little pile so that I can get my feet out of this muck. I’d go off and live with a nigger wench if I could get away from this atmosphere. I’ve worked my balls off trying to get where I am, which isn’t very far. I don’t believe in work any more than you do—I was trained that way, that’s all. If I could put over a deal, if I could swindle a pile out of one of these dirty bastards I’m dealing with, I’d do it with a clear conscience. I know a little too much about the law, that’s the trouble. But I’ll fool them yet, you’ll see. And when I put it over 111 put it over big. . . .” Another shot of rye as the sea food’s coming along and he starts in again. “I meant that about taking you on a trip with me. I’m thinking about it seriously.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  I want to kill myself.” “Look, I grew up in a normal, happy family,” he’d said. “I’m well adjusted. I can’t identify with this self-esteem crisis, or whatever it is you’ve got. Anyway, we’ve only known each other for a few months and I’m not obligated to listen to your problems. You should call a psychiatrist, and anyway I have to take a bath right now.” He couldn’t stand weak women. — He went to a nightclub in the evening with his friend Jerry and two of Jerry’s hulking lawyer friends. They went to a club that made them and a lump of other people line up outside the door for inspection by a haughty doorman who might or might not admit them, depending on whether or not he liked their appearance. Joel and Jerry, with the lawyers, had to wait an inordinate length of time while a series of habitual clubbers insouciantly gained entrance. It could’ve been humiliating, but instead it was an intriguing form of entertainment, a piece of behavior to be observed. One of the lawyers kept saying, “I don’t want to go in there anyway. This is a drag. Let’s go somewhere else.” “No, it’s really good in here,” said Jerry. “You’ll see.” They eventually gained admission and roamed the three floors of the club, greedily looking around. Joel drank one paper cup of watered-down alcohol after another and stared at the moiling sweat-dampened crowd with an attitude of wistful contempt. They were coiffed like Dr. Seuss characters and dressed like children in their parents’ clothes. At one time he had wanted to be like them. Now he thought they were stupid, although he still liked to look at them. He saw a girl standing alone at a bar, dressed like a twelve-year-old’s idea of a hooker. Tight black bodice, short flared ballerina skirt. She was small, she stood with her ankles together. He edged along the wall, pretending to study the material hung up as art. He remembered the blow-up doll he had once hung up in his Ann Arbor apartment as a party decoration. It wore Sara’s clothes and bore, with Scotch tape, a sign that read “Hurt Me Beat Me Fuck Me.” Wilson had said, “Joel, come on. This is too much. It’s not funny.” Joel continued toward the girl at the bar, fighting the anxious crimp in his shoulders. The terse conversation with her didn’t result in her phone number on a piece of paper in his pocket. He found the lawyers again and stalked around with them, making jokes. They couldn’t find Jerry, so the three of them got into a cab and left together, a trio of masculine shoulders filling the paned-in back seat with gruff laughter and blurted comments. He entered his dark, narrow-halled apartment in a grainy mental state. He stopped briefly before the toilet on his way to bed.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  I know I’m being cruel.” “I don’t think you’re cruel. Most people wouldn’t have put up with it as long as you did.” “It’s so tragic, though. She’s such a great person. And I know at least two really attractive, charming girls who’re dying to get into her pants, but she’s not interested. She likes bitches.” “Look, Simone sets herself up for disaster. She always has. Then she tries to drag anyone within range into it.” They gnawed their food righteously. Jane still had her elbow up and her hand blocking her face. “How’s the job search going?” she asked. “It looks good so far. Like I said, I think I did all right at Ardis films. And I know somebody who used to work there. The only thing about that place is that the people are so pretentious. Everybody there is a ‘close personal friend’ of Herzog or Beth B. or somebody. Everybody has this certain pompous accent, especially when they say ‘film.’ ” “That’s professional New York,” said Jane. “People who work in the arts are always that way.” “Maybe I’ll just come work in the museum with you.” “If we’re not on strike. And it looks like we’re going to be.” “Could you survive on free-lance work if that happened?” “Maybe.” She dropped the hand at her chin, exposing her face to him. “I don’t know.” He got up from the table, looking straight ahead, and slowly gathered his coat around his shoulders. He could sense no movement of her head turning to look at him as he left the restaurant. He wouldn’t realize that he’d left the bag containing the bunny sweater-guard and Sylvia’s watch under the table until he arrived home in Westchester. An Affair, Edited When he saw her on the way to work in the morning, he ignored her, even though he hadn’t seen her for four years. They had met at the University of Michigan. It had been such a brief, disturbing affair that he didn’t even think of her as an old girlfriend. His memory of her was like a filmy scrap of dream discovered on the floor during the drowsy journey from bed to toilet, or a girl in an advertisement that catches in the cluttered net of memory and persists, waiting to commit sex acts with you later that night. Her slight body and pale movements intensified his impression. He had his Walkman on when they passed each other, and his blotted hearing made it easier for him to ignore her. She approached, her face tilted toward him, quizzical and apprehensive. She passed him and vanished, replaced by a girl in a suit and two staring, striding men with briefcases. She did not seem to notice that he ignored her; in fact she might have ignored him too.