Despair

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 167 of 267 · 20 per page

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  When you and your sister are in opposition within the sign of Leo, when the tides are high, will you beseech her to send so great a flood along the coast that the highest rocks in Brittany are overwhelmed by five fathoms of water? That is my plea. And will you ask your sister to maintain the seas at that pitch for at least two years? Then I will be able to tell Dorigen that I have performed my part of the bargain and that she must fulfil hers. ‘Perform this miracle for me, lord of the Sun. Ask your sister to travel in step with you, at your speed, for the next two years. Remain in opposition, one to another. Then there will be a full moon every night, and the spring tides will not abate one inch. But if glorious Lucina does not wish me to win my love in this way, then will you plead with her to take those dark rocks down with her to the realm of Pluto? Let them be buried leagues beneath the earth. Otherwise I will never gain my lady. I will journey in bare feet to your temple in Delphi, great lord. See the tears upon my cheeks. Take pity on my pain, sir.’ And, with those words, he fell into a swoon. He did not recover for a long time. It was his brother who looked after him. When he heard of his distress, he took him up and brought him to his bed. So there will I leave poor grieving Aurelius to his painful thoughts. I do not know whether he will live or die. In the meantime Arveragus, full of honour, has returned home! He came back with all the other knights, but there was none more renowned for chivalry. You are happy again, Dorigen, to have your loving husband safely in your arms! This noble knight, this famous man of arms, still loves you above all else. He is not a suspicious husband, either. He would not even have considered the possibility of a rival. The thought never crossed his mind. He just wanted to dance and joust and make good cheer. So I will leave them together in married bliss. It is time to return to sick Aurelius. Oh dear. For two entire years he lay in woe and torment. He never left his bed. He could not have taken one step. He received comfort from no one except his brother, who was a scholar and very sympathetic to his plight. Of course Aurelius told no one else about it. He was silent and discreet. He kept the secret hidden deeply in his breast, just as Pamphilus once concealed his love for Galatea. His breast looked whole and healthy; but the arrow, unseen, had pierced his heart. Any surgeon will tell you that a wound healed only on the surface can be deadly. You must get at the arrow beneath.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  Everyone would be so shocked to hear that this book had almost been thrown away. But my editor said, “I’m sorry.” I looked at him quizzically. “I am so, so sorry,” he said. “But it still doesn’t work.” He didn’t understand why certain things happened the way they did, or why some things happened to begin with, and most importantly, why so little happened at all. I sat there staring at him as if his face were melting. “I am so sorry,” he said, and for a while I was too stunned to cry. I kept touching my forehead, the way you pat your head to make sure your hair is Okay. I think I must have looked like Blanche DuBois on bad acid. Then I started to cry and told him I had to go right that very second. He said to phone him the next day. I said I would, although I did not actually expect to be alive then. Luckily, I was still drinking at the time. I went to the house where I was staying with old family friends, slammed down a dozen social drinks with them, and then took a cab to meet some other friends. I had a few hundred more drinks with them, and the merest bit of cocaine—actually, I began to resemble an anteater at one point. Then I went to a liquor store and got a half-pint of Irish whiskey and went back to the house where I was staying and had little social slugs of Bushmills straight from the bottle until I passed out. I was a little depressed when I woke up. I looked at my manuscript in my suitcase, thought about all those beautiful, hilarious, poignant people I had been working with for almost three years, and all of a sudden I was in a rage. I called my editor at home. He was not planning on going to work that day. He was a little depressed, too. “I am coming over,” I said, and there was a silence, and then he said, very tentatively, “Okay,” like he wanted to ask, “And will you be bringing your knives?” Then I went downstairs and caught a cab to his apartment. He let me in and tried to get me to sit down, but I was too crazy and disappointed and angry and crushed and humiliated and shocked. I held my manuscript to my chest like a baby. There were sections where friends who had read it had laughed out loud, or had called me, crying. There was some incredibly funny material in there, some important things no one else was writing about.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  called out, “I have made sure, at least, that my body will not be defiled.” ‘But why should I provide more examples, when it is obvious to me that many women decided to kill themselves rather than risk dishonour and degradation? There is only one conclusion. I will die like them. I will be true to my husband, Arveragus. I will embrace my fate with the courage of the daughter of Demotion. Do you remember her, Dame Fortune? And then there were the two daughters of Cedasus. That was another sad story. The Theban virgin killed herself when under threat from Nicanor. Oh yes, and another Theban maiden did the same thing. She was raped by a Macedonian soldier, and took her own life to redeem her virginity. It was not too high a price. What shall I say about the wife of Niceratus, who slit her wrists for the same reason? The lover of Alcibiades chose to endure death rather than to leave his body unburied. And what a wife was Alcestis! She agreed to die in order to save her husband’s life. What does Homer say of Penelope, too? She was known throughout Greece for her chastity. I could go on and on. ‘When Protheselaus was slain at Troy, his wife could not endure another day. Noble Portia could not live after the death of Brutus. She had given him her heart, and now she offered him her life. Artemisia, famous for her faithfulness, was honoured throughout the lands of Barbary. Oh Teuta, queen of Ilyrica, your married chastity is an example to all wives. I could say the same thing of Billia, Rhodogune and Valeria.’ So Dorigen wept and lamented for a day or so, with the fixed intention of killing herself at the end. But then, on the third night, her husband came home unexpectedly. Of course he asked her why she was crying, at which point she cried all the more. ‘Alas,’ she replied, ‘I wish that I had never been born! I have made a promise. I have sworn an oath.’ Then she told him the whole story. There is no need for me to repeat it here. He listened to her with good grace, and answered cheerfully. ‘Is that all?’ he asked her. ‘Is there no more to tell me, Dorigen?’ ‘No. That’s it. Isn’t it enough?’ ‘Well, wife, you must know the old saying: “Let sleeping dogs lie.” All may yet turn out well. Of course you must keep your promise to Aurelius. That goes without saying. So great is my love for you that I would rather die than allow you to break your word. Honour is the highest good of humankind.’ But then he began openly to weep. ‘Upon pain of death, Dorigen, I forbid you ever to mention one word of this to anyone. I will cope with my grief as well as I can. Don’t show your feelings, either, to the world.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  When I got back from school the next day, I found Lori in the kitchen eating something out of a cup with a spoon. I looked in the refrigerator. There was nothing inside but a half-gone stick of margarine. “Lori, what are you eating?” “Margarine,” she said. I wrinkled my nose. “Really?” “Yeah,” she said. “Mix it with sugar. Tastes just like frosting.” I made some. It didn’t taste like frosting. It was sort of crunchy, because the sugar didn’t dissolve, and it was greasy and left a filmy coat in my mouth. But I ate it all anyway. When Mom got home that evening, she looked in the refrigerator. “What happened to the stick of margarine?” she asked. “We ate it,” I said. Mom got angry. She was saving it, she said, to butter the bread. We already ate all the bread, I said. Mom said she was thinking of baking some bread if a neighbor would loan us some flour. I pointed out that the gas company had turned off our gas. “Well,” Mom said. “We should have saved the margarine just in case the gas gets turned back on. Miracles happen, you know.” It was because of my and Lori’s selfishness, she said, that if we had any bread, we’d have to eat it without butter. Mom wasn’t making any sense to me. I wondered if she had been looking forward to eating the margarine herself. And that made me wonder if she was the one who’d stolen the can of corn the night before, which got me a little mad. “It was the only thing to eat in the whole house,” I said. Raising my voice, I added, “I was hungry. ” Mom gave me a startled look. I’d broken one of our unspoken rules: We were always supposed to pretend our life was one long and incredibly fun adventure. She raised her hand, and I thought she was going to hit me, but then she sat down at the spool table and rested her head on her arms. Her shoulders started shaking. I went over and touched her arm. “Mom?” I said. She shook off my hand, and when she raised her head, her face was swollen and red. “It’s not my fault if you’re hungry!” she shouted. “Don’t blame me. Do you think I like living like this? Do you?” That night when Dad came home, he and Mom got into a big fight. Mom was screaming that she was tired of getting all the blame for everything that went wrong. “How did this become my problem?” she shouted. “Why aren’t you helping? You spend your whole day at the Owl Club. You act like it’s not your responsibility.” Dad explained that he was out trying to earn money. He had all sorts of prospects that he was on the brink of realizing. Problem was, he needed cash to make them happen.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  of Palamon while he was fighting Arcite; he plunged his sword into his flesh and with twenty men dragged him to the stake. Immediately the great king, Lycurgus, rode to the rescue of his champion, but he was knocked from his horse; Emetreus himself was wounded by Palamon, who, refusing to yield, had struck out at him with his sword and dislodged him from his saddle. Yet it was all for nothing. He was taken struggling to the stake. His brave heart could not assist him now. As the rules of Theseus had stated, he was obliged to remain where he was. He had been defeated. He was bowed in sorrow, knowing well enough that he could not fight again. When Theseus witnessed all this he cried out to the knights left in the field, ‘No more! The fighting is over! I can now give my just and proper decision. Arcite of Thebes has gained the hand of Emily. He has won her in a fair contest. Fortune is on his side.’ The people then exclaimed with joy, in cries and shouts so loud that it seemed the lists themselves might fall. What can fair Venus, patron of Palamon, do now? What can she say? Of course, as women will, she broke down in tears. She wept at the thwarting of her will. ‘I am disgraced,’ she said. ‘I have been put to shame.’ ‘Wait,’ Saturn told her. ‘Be calm. Mars has had his wish fulfilled, and his knight has gained the victory. But trust me. Your heart will soon be eased.’ Together they looked down upon the scene on earth, as the trumpets blared out and the heralds joyfully declared that Arcite had triumphed over Palamon. But do not join the general clamour. Listen to me first. I will relate to you a miracle. Fierce Arcite had removed his helmet so that the crowd might see his face. He rode in triumph on his charger, around the course, looking up at Emily. She returned his look with an affectionate glance, indicating to everyone that fortune’s favourite was also her own. It seemed to Arcite that his heart might burst with love and tenderness. But then something happened. A hellborn fury rose up from the ground, despatched from the dark world by Pluto at the request of Saturn. The horse started with fright at the apparition, reared up and then fell on its side. Before Arcite could leap from his saddle he was thrown off and pitched headlong on to the ground. He lay there as if he were already dead, his chest shattered by his own bow; the blood ran into his face, so that it seemed to turn black. Immediately he was taken up and carried to the palace of Theseus. He was cut out of his armour and gently laid in a bed. He was still alive and conscious, crying out all the time for Emily.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  But probably not. I’d get up and study my teeth in the mirror for a while. Then I’d stop, remember to breathe, make a few phone calls, hit the kitchen and chow down. Eventually I’d go back and sit down at my desk, and sigh for the next ten minutes. Finally I would pick up my one-inch picture frame, stare into it as if for the answer, and every time the answer would come: all I had to do was to write a really shitty first draft of, say, the opening paragraph. And no one was going to see it. So I’d start writing without reining myself in. It was almost just typing, just making my fingers move. And the writing would be terrible . I’d write a lead paragraph that was a whole page, even though the entire review could only be three pages long, and then I’d start writing up descriptions of the food, one dish at a time, bird by bird, and the critics would be sitting on my shoulders, commenting like cartoon characters. They’d be pretending to snore, or rolling their eyes at my overwrought descriptions, no matter how hard I tried to tone those descriptions down, no matter how conscious I was of what a friend said to me gently in my early days of restaurant reviewing. “Annie,” she said, “it is just a piece of chicken . It is just a bit of cake .” But because by then I had been writing for so long, I would eventually let myself trust the process—sort of, more or less. I’d write a first draft that was maybe twice as long as it should be, with a self-indulgent and boring beginning, stupefying descriptions of the meal, lots of quotes from my black-humored friends that made them sound more like the Manson girls than food lovers, and no ending to speak of. The whole thing would be so long and incoherent and hideous that for the rest of the day I’d obsess about getting creamed by a car before I could write a decent second draft. I’d worry that people would read what I’d written and believe that the accident had really been a suicide, that I had panicked because my talent was waning and my mind was shot. The next day, though, I’d sit down, go through it all with a colored pen, take out everything I possibly could, find a new lead somewhere on the second page, figure out a kicky place to end it, and then write a second draft. It always turned out fine, sometimes even funny and weird and helpful. I’d go over it one more time and mail it in. Then, a month later, when it was time for another review, the whole process would start again, complete with the fears that people would find my first draft before I could rewrite it.

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

  I began with the speculative question of whether feminist politics could do without a “subject” in the category of women. At stake is not whether it still makes sense, strategically or transitionally, to refer to women in order to make representational claims in their behalf. The feminist “we” is always and only a phantasmatic construction, one that has its purposes, but which denies the internal complexity and indeterminacy of the term and constitutes itself only through the exclusion of some part of the constituency that it simultaneously seeks to represent. The tenuous or phantasmatic status of the “we,” however, is not cause for despair or, at least, it is not only cause for despair. The radical instability of the category sets into question the foundational restrictions on feminist political theorizing and opens up other configurations, not only of genders and bodies, but of politics itself. The foundationalist reasoning of identity politics tends to assume that an identity must first be in place in order for political interests to be elaborated and, subsequently, political action to be taken. My argument is that there need not be a “doer behind the deed,” but that the “doer” is variably constructed in and through the deed. This is not a return to an existential theory of the self as constituted through its acts, for the existential theory maintains a prediscursive structure for both the self and its acts. It is precisely the discursively variable construction of each in and through the other that has interested me here. The question of locating “agency” is usually associated with the viability of the “subject,” where the “subject” is understood to have some stable existence prior to the cultural field that it negotiates. Or, if the subject is culturally constructed, it is nevertheless vested with an agency, usually figured as the capacity for reflexive mediation, that remains intact regardless of its cultural embeddedness. On such a model, “culture” and “discourse” mire the subject, but do not constitute that subject. This move to qualify and enmire the preexisting subject has appeared necessary to establish a point of agency that is not fully determined by that culture and discourse. And yet, this kind of reasoning falsely presumes (a) agency can only be established through recourse to a prediscursive “I,” even if that “I” is found in the midst of a discursive convergence, and (b) that to be constituted by discourse is to be determined by discourse, where determination forecloses the possibility of agency.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  that Dad had used a screwdriver to take the door off its hinges and then guzzled down every single bottle. Brian didn’t lose his temper. He told Dad he had made a mistake by leaving liquor in the apartment. He said he’d allow Dad to stay, but Dad had to follow some rules, the first being that he stop drinking as long as he was there. “You’re the king of your own castle, and that’s the way it should be,” Dad replied. “But it’ll be a chilly day in hell before I bow to my own son.” He and Mom still had the white van they’d driven up from West Virginia, and he started sleeping in that. Lori, meanwhile, had given Mom a deadline to clean out the apartment. But the deadline came and went, and so did a second and a third. Also, Dad was always dropping by to visit Mom, but then they got into such screeching arguments that the neighbors banged on the walls. Dad starting fighting with them, too. “I can’t take it anymore,” Lori told me one day. “Maybe you’re just going to have to kick Mom out,” I said. “But she’s my mother.” “It doesn’t matter. She’s driving you crazy.” Lori finally agreed. It almost killed her to tell Mom she would have to leave, and she offered to do whatever it took to help her get reestablished, but Mom insisted she’d be fine. “Lori’s doing the right thing,” she said to me. “Sometimes you need a little crisis to get your adrenaline flowing and help you realize your potential.” Mom and Tinkle moved into the van with Dad. They lived there for a few months, but one day they left it in a no-parking zone and it was towed. Because the van was unregistered, they couldn’t get it back. That night, they slept on a park bench. They were homeless.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  The right words and sentences just do not come pouring out like ticker tape most of the time. Now, Muriel Spark is said to have felt that she was taking dictation from God every morning—sitting there, one supposes, plugged into a Dictaphone, typing away, humming. But this is a very hostile and aggressive position. One might hope for bad things to rain down on a person like this. For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts. The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page. If one of the characters wants to say, “Well, so what, Mr. Poopy Pants?,” you let her. No one is going to see it. If the kid wants to get into really sentimental, weepy, emotional territory, you let him. Just get it all down on paper, because there may be something great in those six crazy pages that you would never have gotten to by more rational, grown-up means. There may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that you just love, that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you’re supposed to be writing about, more or less, or in what direction you might go—but there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages. I used to write food reviews for California magazine before it folded. (My writing food reviews had nothing to do with the magazine folding, although every single review did cause a couple of canceled subscriptions. Some readers took umbrage at my comparing mounds of vegetable puree with various ex-presidents’ brains.) These reviews always took two days to write. First I’d go to a restaurant several times with a few opinionated, articulate friends in tow. I’d sit there writing down everything anyone said that was at all interesting or funny. Then on the following Monday I’d sit down at my desk with my notes, and try to write the review. Even after I’d been doing this for years, panic would set in. I’d try to write a lead, but instead I’d write a couple of dreadful sentences, XX them out, try again, XX everything out, and then feel despair and worry settle on my chest like an x-ray apron. It’s over, I’d think, calmly. I’m not going to be able to get the magic to work this time. I’m ruined. I’m through. I’m toast. Maybe, I’d think, I can get my old job back as a clerk-typist.

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

  This structure of religious tragedy in Lacanian theory effectively undermines any strategy of cultural politics to configure an alternative imaginary for the play of desires. If the Symbolic guarantees the failure of the tasks it commands, perhaps its purposes, like those of the Old Testament God, are altogether unteleological—not the accomplishment of some goal, but obedience and suffering to enforce the “subject’s” sense of limitation “before the law.” There is, of course, the comic side to this drama that is revealed through the disclosure of the permanent impossibility of the realization of identity. But even this comedy is the inverse expression of an enslavement to the God that it claims to be unable to overcome. Lacanian theory must be understood as a kind of “slave morality.” How would Lacanian theory be reformulated after the appropriation of Nietzsche’s insight in On the Genealogy of Morals that God, the inaccessible Symbolic, is rendered inaccessible by a power (the will-to-power) that regularly institutes its own powerlessness?30 This figuration of the paternal law as the inevitable and unknowable authority before which the sexed subject is bound to fail must be read for the theological impulse that motivates it as well as for the critique of theology that points beyond it. The construction of the law that guarantees failure is symptomatic of a slave morality that disavows the very generative powers it uses to construct the “Law” as a permanent impossibility. What is the power that creates this fiction that reflects inevitable subjection? What are the cultural stakes in keeping power within that self-negating circle, and how might that power be reclaimed from the trappings of a prohibitive law that is that power in its dissimulation and self-subjection?

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale Heere bigynneth the Chanouns Yeman his Tale PART ONE I have lived with this Canon for seven years, but I am nowhere near to understanding the secret. I have lost everything I owned, as have many others. Once upon a time I was clean, cheerful and well dressed. Can you believe it? I now use an old sock as my hat! I used to be plump and ruddy-cheeked. Now I am thin and sallow. I am losing my eyesight through all the hard work. Stay away from alchemy at all costs. Where is the benefit in trying to transmute metals? The sliding science has left me penniless and in despair. Nothing good has come of it. I have borrowed so much gold that I will never be able to repay my debts. Let me stand as a warning to everyone else, like a wolf’s head. If anyone were foolish enough to practise alchemy, it will prove to be his undoing. He will not succeed. He will empty his purse. He will addle his wits. But there is worse. As soon as he has lost all of his money, through his stupidity, he will try to persuade others to follow his example and try their hand at the black art. ‘Misery loves company.’ That is the proverb, is it not? Well, enough said. Now I will tell you all about our work. When we practise in our laboratory we look very wise and learned; we use high terms and rarefied phrases to explain our mysterious labours. Then I blow upon the coals until there is no breath left in my body. Is there any need to explain the exact proportions of the dark materials that we use? There is always the silver, of course. We would normally put in five or six ounces of it. We compound this with arsenic, with burned bones and iron filings. Then we grind the mixture to a powder, and put it in a little earthenware pot. Add a little salt, and some paper. Place a sheet of glass over the pot, sealing glass and vessel with some clay so that no air will escape from it. We can change and moderate the fire at will. Then begins the hard labour, the watching and the calculating. We are supposed to purify, to blend and to disperse all of the ingredients. We use quicksilver, too, which is the name for unrefined mercury. But for all our tricks and devices we never got anywhere. We used lead and arsenic, ground together with a marble pestle in a marble mortar. It made no difference. There was no result. We boiled volatile spirits - again to no effect. We experimented with the residue left at the bottom of the flask. But it did no good. Our labour was in vain. All the money we spent was lost, too. There are many other aspects of the art of alchemy.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Clear was the day, and bright the trembling air, when Theseus rode out. He was in the highest spirits, accompanied as he was by his queen, Hippolita, and by fair Emily dressed all in green. He had been told by his men that there was a hart lurking in a nearby wood, and with all speed he rode up to the spot; he knew well enough that this was the place where the beast might break cover, and fly across the stream to make its escape. So he slipped the leashes of the hounds in preparation for pursuit. Yet wait. Call off the dogs. Where, under the sun, was this wood? You have guessed it. No sooner did Theseus ride up among the trees than he saw Palamon and Arcite, the two wild boars, still in ferocious battle. They wielded their bright swords with such power that the least stroke from one of them might have felled an oak. He had no idea, as yet, who they were. But he spurred on his horse and, riding between the two combatants, he unsheathed his sword and called out to them, ‘Hoo! Stop this, on pain of losing your head! By mighty Mars, I will slay the next man who raises his sword! Now tell me, what rank or estate are you? How do you dare to fight in my land without judge or officer, as you must do in a legal duel?’ Palamon answered directly. ‘Sire, there is nothing we can say. Both of us deserve the punishment of death. We are two woeful wretches, two slaves of destiny already overburdened by our own lives; as you are a rightful lord and judge, show us neither mercy nor refuge. Yet show some charity to me. Kill me first. But then kill him as well. On second thoughts, you might as well kill him first. It makes no difference. Shall I tell you who he is? Here stands Arcite, your mortal enemy, who was banished from Athens on pain of death. Surely, now, death is the fate that he deserves. You may know him by another name. This is the man that came to your court and called himself Philostratus. Do you recognize him? He has fooled you for many years. You even made him your principal squire. This is the man, also, who declares himself to be the lover of Emily! Well. Enough of that. Since the day has come when I must die, I will make a full confession to you. I am woeful Palamon, the man who unlawfully escaped from your prison. I am your mortal enemy, too, and I also profess myself to be the lover of fair Emily. Let me die before her now. That is all I wish. So I ask for the sentence of death to be carried out on me and my companion. Both of us have deserved our fate.’

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  He isn’t going to come forward. Maybe this is not only vengeance; maybe it is just wanting to tell the truth as it really happened. Maybe it is also about trying to find some meaning in the suffering. Well. Whatever. Here is a poem by Sharon Olds, called “I Go Back to May 1937,” that I pass out to every class: I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges , I see my father strolling out under the ochre sandstone arch, the red tiles glinting like bent plates of blood behind his head, I see my mother with a few light books at her hip standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its sword-tips black in the May air , they are about to graduate, they are about to get married , they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are innocent, they would never hurt anybody . I want to go up to them and say Stop , don’t do it—she’ s the wrong woman , he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things you cannot imagine you would ever do , you are going to do bad things to children , you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of , you are going to want to die. I want to go up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it , her hungry pretty blank face turning to me , her pitiful beautiful untouched body , his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me , his pitiful beautiful untouched body , but I don’t do it. I want to live. I take them up like the male and female paper dolls and bang them together at the hips like chips of flint as if to strike sparks from them, I say Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it . I know that if you write a novel about your marriage, and your spouse is a public figure—a politician, say, or a therapist—and you say really awful inflammatory things about this person, all of which may be true, including the part about his wearing the little French maid’s outfit when you made love and that awful business with the Brylcreem, you will get a visit from your publisher’s lawyer, who will be very anxious and unamused. The problem is that the publishing house will be liable for millions of dollars in damages if this spouse of yours can convince a jury that he or she has been libeled.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  point. He taught that the dragon could be slain only by the death of its brother. By the dragon, he meant mercury. The dragon’s brother is also known as sulphur. Both of them issue from the influence of the sun and the moon, from gold and from silver. ‘And therefore,’ he wrote in warning, ‘let no unlearned man attempt to practise this art. If he has not understood the words of the philosophers, he is not fit to experiment. He is a fool and a charlatan. The work of the alchemist is the great secret of the world, the mystery of mysteries.’ One of Plato’s disciples once asked him a pertinent question. It is recorded in the Theatrum Chemicum, if you care to look it up. ‘Tell me, sir,’ the disciple asked him, ‘the name of the secret stone?’ ‘You must take up,’ Plato replied, ‘the stone known to humankind as Titan.’ ‘What is that?’ ‘It is also called Magnasia.’ ‘I am afraid, sir, that I am not following you. These terms are unknown to me. Can you tell me the nature of this Magnasia?’ ‘It is a liquid made out of the four elements.’ ‘Can you tell me the source of this liquid? Can you tell me its root?’ ‘No. Certainly not. The true philosophers have sworn never to divulge the secret, in speech or in writing. It is so dear to Christ that He has forbidden us to reveal it to anyone. He will only allow it to be told to those whom He holds most dear. It is a form of holy revelation. That is all I have to say.’ So I conclude from this that God Himself guards the secret of the stone. What is the point, therefore, in persisting? Abandon your quest. You may alchemize all of your life, and still end your days in suffering. Whoever makes God his enemy will pay dearly for it. If he goes against God’s will, he merits severe punishment. At that point I must stop. Farewell to you all. May God send every true man comfort and consolation! Heere is ended the Chanouns Yemannes Tale

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  I do not know the reason. I do not know the killer. Ugolino, count of Pisa Who can relate the suffering of Ugolino, count of Pisa? There was a dark tower, a little way out of the city, to which he was consigned. He was imprisoned there with his three children, the oldest of whom was only five years old. What cruel Fortune shut these little birds within a cage? He was destined to die in that prison. The bishop of Pisa, Roger Ubaldini, had borne false witness and had stirred up the people against him; so Ugolino was confined, with so little meat and drink that he despaired of his life. There was a certain time each day when the gaoler brought his food into the cell. Ugolino was waiting for him at that time when, suddenly, he heard the great door of the tower closing. He heard the sound clearly, but he said not a word to his children. But he knew in his heart that they would all now starve to death. ‘I wish that I had never been born,’ he said to himself. And he wept. His youngest son, three years old, crept upon his lap. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘why are you crying? When will the gaoler bring us our food? Do you not have

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Arcite would be free to go wherever he wished, but there was one condition to his liberty. It was agreed that, if Arcite were ever found and caught in Athenian territory, he would be instantly beheaded. Whatever the pretext and whatever the time of his incursion, he would die. What did Arcite do? What else but leave Athens at once and return to Thebes? There was no safer course. But he had best beware. He had left his head as his pledge. Yet, in truth, he suffered more keenly than before. He felt all the pangs of death. He wept; he wailed; he groaned; he lamented. He secretly longed for an occasion to kill himself. ‘Alas,’ he cried, ‘that I was ever born! My prison now is darker and more dreary than my cell. I am now forced to endure the torments of hell, not of purgatory as before. I wish that I had never known Perotheus. Then I could still lie imprisoned with Palamon. Then I would have been in bliss and not in woe. For then, even fettered and immured, I could have enjoyed the sight of the mistress I adore. I may never have enjoyed her favour, but at least I could have looked upon her. Oh Palamon, dear cousin, you have been awarded the palm of victory. You may endure the pain of imprisonment - endure, no, enjoy. Compared to me, you are in paradise. Fortune has turned the dice for you. You have the sight of her while I am rendered blind. And since you have the blessing of her presence near at hand it is possible that you, a worthy and a handsome knight, might one day attain that goal you so fervently desire. Fortune is ever turning like the wheel. But I, living in barren exile, have no such expectation of grace. I am deprived of all hope, in such despair that no creature on earth can comfort me. There is nothing made of fire, of earth, or water, or of air, that can console me. So I must live, and die, in misery and distress. I must say farewell to joy and happiness.’ He broke down weeping, before he once more resumed his lament. ‘Why do so many people complain of the actions of providence, or the decisions of God Himself, when their eventual fate is better than any they could possibly have imagined? Some men long for riches, but at the expense of their health and even of their lives. Some men desire to escape from prison, as I once did, only to be murdered in the households of their kin. In hope and ambition there lie infinite harms. We do not know the answers to our prayers. We fare as one who wanders drunk through the streets; he knows that he has a house, somewhere, but he cannot remember the name of the street. His is a long and wayward journey. So do we fare in this fallen world.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  forced into prostitution and winding up a drug addict like all those runaway teenagers. “I’m only telling you this because I love you,” he said. “And I don’t want to see you hurt.” One evening in May, when we’d been saving our money for almost nine months, I came home with a couple of dollars I’d made babysitting and went into the bedroom to stash them in Oz. The pig was not on the old sewing machine. I began looking through all the junk in the bedroom and finally found Oz on the floor. Someone had slashed him apart with a knife and stolen all the money. I knew it was Dad, but at the same time, I couldn’t believe he’d stoop this low. Lori obviously didn’t know yet. She was in the living room humming away as she worked on a poster. My first impulse was to hide Oz. I had this wild thought that I could somehow replace the money before Lori discovered it was missing. But I knew how ridiculous that was; three of us had spent the better part of a year accumulating the money. It would be impossible for me to replace it in the month before Lori graduated. I went into the living room and stood beside her, trying to think of what to say. She was working on a poster that said TAMMY! in Day-Glo colors. After a moment, she looked up. “What?” she said. Lori could tell by my face that something was wrong. She stood up so abruptly she knocked over a bottle of india ink, and ran into the bedroom. I braced myself, expecting to hear a scream, but there was only silence and then a small, broken whimpering. • • • Lori stayed up all night to confront Dad, but he didn’t come home. She skipped school the following day in case he returned, but Dad was AWOL for three days before we heard him climbing the rickety staircase to the porch. “You bastard!” Lori shouted. “You stole our money!” “What the goddamn hell are you talking about?” Dad asked. “And watch your language.” He leaned against the door and lit a cigarette. Lori held up the slashed pig and threw it as hard as she could at Dad, but it was empty and nearly weightless. It struck his shoulder lightly, then bounced to the floor. He bent down carefully, as if the floor beneath him could shift at any moment, picked up our ravaged piggy bank, and turned it over in his hands. “Someone sure as

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  So I wrote all this down in my letter to Sam, and little by little memory and detail and fact and feeling wove themselves together. Like a Polaroid, the letter emerged, and from it the essay, clear and bright, full of smells and sounds, and full of hope, because baseball, like life, throbs with hope, or it wouldn’t exist—and full of me, for Sam and his children to read one day. Writer’s BlockThere are few experiences as depressing as that anxious barren state known as writer’s block, where you sit staring at your blank page like a cadaver, feeling your mind congeal, feeling your talent run down your leg and into your sock. Or you look at the notes you’ve scribbled recently on yellow legal pads or index cards, and they look like something Richard Speck jotted down the other night. And at the same time, as it turns out, you happen to know that your closest writing friend is on a roll, has been turning out stories and screenplays and children’s books and even most of a novel like he or she is some crazy pot-holder factory, pot holders pouring out the windows because there is simply not enough room inside for such glorious productivity. Writer’s block is going to happen to you. You will read what little you’ve written lately and see with absolute clarity that it is total dog shit. A blissfully productive manic stage may come to a screeching halt, and all of a sudden you realize you’re Wile E. Coyote and you’ve run off the cliff and are a second away from having to look down. Or else you haven’t been able to write anything at all for a while. The fear that you’ll never write again is going to hit you when you feel not only lost and unable to find a few little bread crumbs that would identify the path you were on but also when you’re at your lowest ebb of energy and faith. You may feel a little as if writing a novel is like trying to level Mount McKinley with a dentist’s drill. Things feel hopeless, or at least bleak, and you are not imaginative or organized enough to bash your way through to a better view, let alone some interesting conclusion. You know where every idea, quote, and image came from; none of them is fresh. You’re so familiar with what you’re saying that your words all sound utterly commonplace. Writers are like vacuum cleaners, sucking up all that we can see and hear and read and think and feel and articulate, and everything that everyone else within earshot can hear and see and think and feel. We’re mimics, we’re parrots—we’re writers.

• From City of Night (1963)

  In absolute depression, Miss Destiny flung herself on the couch crying oh no, “Miss Thing, what are we doing here?”—clinging to a Poor Pitiful Pearl doll on the couch—a sadeyed orphan doll—but everyone was talking and moving and no one paid her any attention. So she freshened up her makeup peering into a tiny stonestudded compact saying shes a mess, and please, to me, sit beside her, please! Then she imagined she saw Darling Dolly in the mirror making sex-eyes at me, and Miss Destiny says Well That Is The Limit! “Darling Dolly Dane is a common whore!” Miss Destiny almost-shouted at me and no one hears her but me, the radio turned on to one of those California night-stations with the smothered rock-n-roll sexmoans, “and all of you! especially you! are just bums! nogood lowlife hobos! who will end up! on Thunderbird! or worse than hobos: hypes! hopelessly hung up and cant get it!” and shes going on very unlike the gay Miss swinging Destiny. “And I! dont! know! what! Iamdoing! here! amongst all this: tuh-rash! I! Went!! To College!!! And Read Shakespeare!!!!” I whispered dont tell anyone, but me too. “Next youll be the Prince of Wales,” she says bitchily, glowering at Chuck and Buddy making up to the nympho, who was fanning herself with her slip now. And Miss Destiny goes on haughtily—sure of her ground: “Then—tell—me: if you read Shakespeare, Who Is Des-demona?” doubting it superiorly, giving me The Supreme Test: Shakespeare and his queenly he-roines who were first, remember, played by men. I answered (and remember the pills, the liquor, the mary-jane): “Desdemona was a swinging queen in the French Quarter who married a spadestud who dug her until a jealous pusher turned him on that his queen was making it with a studsailor, and the spade smothered the queen Desdemona and the heat came for him and he killed himself....” Miss Destiny stared at me a long while—not speaking. And as she was staring at me like that, Lola—who had gone to the head outside, Destiny’s being occupied—returned howling theres a man in the head outside and he aint got no pants! Miss Destiny sprang up, rushed at Darling Dolly Dane: “You dizzy silly cunt! you brought him here didnt you?” “Where else, Miss Destiny?” Darling Dolly Dane pleads helplessly, covering her face dramatically. “Go give him his pants!” “How can I, Destiny? I dont know where I left them!” “Miss Destiny!” Miss Destiny screamed. “Miss Destiny dammit!” Darling Dolly Dane shrieked back. “Here!” Miss Destiny rushes into the other room, comes back with a pair of pants (which turn out later to be Buddy’s, who is with the nympho in the other room), empties the pockets on the floor, tosses the pants at Darling Dolly Dane, shouting: “Throw them through the transom!” Darling Dolly rushes out whimpering. “Silly bitch,” says Miss Destiny, glaring at her when she returns giggling now the man must have thought the pants came from Heaven.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  The Monk’s Tale Heere bigynneth the Monkes Tale De Casibus Virorum Illustrium So I will lament, in the manner of tragedy, the fate of those who once stood in high degree. They fell so far that they could not be rescued from the darkness. When the doom of Fortune has been decided, no one can avert its course. Never rely upon prosperity. That is the lesson of these little histories. Lucifer I will begin with Lucifer. I know that he is an angel rather than a man, but he is a very good example to us all. Fortune cannot help or harm an angel, of course. Nevertheless he fell from heaven into hell, where he still resides. Oh Lucifer, son of the morning, you can never escape from the flames of the inferno. You have become Satan. How you have fallen! Adam Behold Adam, lying in Eden (now known as Damascus). He was not made from human seed, but wrought by God’s own finger. He ruled over all of Paradise, with the exception of one tree. No human being has ever been so blessed as Adam. Yet for one bad act he fell from grace. He was consigned to a fallen world of labour and misery. Sampson Behold great Sampson, heralded by an angel before his birth, consecrated to Almighty God! While he retained his sight, he was the noblest of all. No one in the world was stronger or more courageous. Yet foolishly he told the secret of his strength to his wife. In doing so, he condemned himself to death. This mighty champion slew a lion, and tore it to pieces with his bare hands. He was on his way to his own wedding, and he had no weapons. His wife knew how to please him, with her wicked wiles, and could coax all of his confidences out of him. Then she betrayed him to his enemies, and took another man in his place. In his anger he took up three hundred foxes and bound them together by their tails. Then he set the tails on fire, with a burning torch tied to each one, and with them he set ablaze all the cornfields in the land. He destroyed the olive trees and the vineyards. In his rage he killed a thousand men, although his only weapon was the jawbone of an ass. After they were slain he was tortured by a thirst so great that he turned to God for help. He prayed Him to send water, or else he would die. Lo and behold, a miracle occurred. From the molar tooth of this dry jawbone there sprang forth a fountain of water, with which Sampson refreshed himself. So God saved him. All this really happened. You can read about it in the Book of Judges. Then one night in Gaza, despite the presence of all the Philistines in that city, he tore up the entrance gates and carried them on his back.