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 49 of 267 · 20 per page

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Viewed simply as a novel, “Lolita” deals with situations and emotions that would remain exasperatingly vague to the reader had their expression been etiolated by means of platitudinous evasions. True, not a single obscene term is to be found in the whole work; indeed, the robust philistine who is conditioned by modern conventions into accepting without qualms a lavish array of four-letter words in a banal novel, will be quite shocked by their absence here. If, however, for this paradoxical prude’s comfort, an editor attempted to dilute or omit scenes that a certain type of mind might call “aphrodisiac” (see in this respect the monumental decision rendered December 6, 1933, by Hon. John M. Woolsey in regard to another, considerably more outspoken, book), one would have to forego the publication of “Lolita” altogether, since those very scenes that one might ineptly accuse of a sensuous existence of their own, are the most strictly functional ones in the development of a tragic tale tending unswervingly to nothing less than a moral apotheosis. The cynic may say that commercial pornography makes the same claim; the learned may counter by asserting that “H.H” ’s impassioned confession is a tempest in a test tube; that at least 12% of American adult males—a “conservative” estimate according to Dr. Blanche Schwarzmann (verbal communication)—enjoy yearly, in one way or another, the special experience “H.H.” describes with such despair; that had our demented diarist gone, in the fatal summer of 1947, to a competent psychopathologist, there would have been no disaster; but then, neither would there have been this book. This commentator may be excused for repeating what he has stressed in his own books and lectures, namely that “offensive” is frequently but a synonym for “unusual”; and a great work of art is of course always original, and thus by its very nature should come as a more or less shocking surprise. I have no intention to glorify “H.H.” No doubt, he is horrible, he is abject, he is a shining example of moral leprosy, a mixture of ferocity and jocularity that betrays supreme misery perhaps, but is not conducive to attractiveness. He is ponderously capricious. Many of his casual opinions on the people and scenery of this country are ludicrous. A desperate honesty that throbs through his confession does not absolve him from sins of diabolical cunning. He is abnormal. He is not a gentleman. But how magically his singing violin can conjure up a tendresse, a compassion for Lolita that makes us entranced with the book while abhorring its author!

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  I felt a strong affinity to this curiously life-hating religion that teaches us we have no soul and that the self is merely a baggage depot where random parcels have been checked (labeled emotions, sensations, memories and so on) soon enough to be collected by different owners, an emptying out that will leave the room blissfully vacant. That emptiness, that annihilation is what the Christian most dreads but the Buddhist most earnestly craves—or would if craving itself were not precisely what must be extirpated. Desire—hankering after sex, money, fame, security—ties us to the world and condemns us to rebirth, “the cycle of rebirth” I pictured as a wheel on which the sinner was stretched and bound, the wheel that crushed him as it turned but cruelly failed to kill him. I felt the need to free myself of desire. I must not want anything. I must feel no attachments. Above all, no attractions. I must give up all hope, plans, glad anticipations. I must study oblivion. I must give room and board to silence and pay tuition to the void. Even the slightest flicker of longing must be stilled. Every wire must be pulled until the console goes dead and all dials point to zero. My mother discovered a Buddhist church some thirty miles away. She gamely drove me down to it one Sunday ( Sunday! I mentally sniffed, already the ascetic snob; Church! I exclaimed, an Oriental purist). On the preceding Saturday night I dreamed of opening wicker gates, the process shot as the wizened abbot walks toward me on a treadmill, getting nowhere fast against a rear projection of a retreating, expanding universe of thickening blue sandalwood incense and swaying, saffron-robed monks. Instead I encountered a congregation of grinning Japanese families in a former Baptist church and heard announcements of the Young Buddhists Association’s annual picnic and basketball practice as well as disappointingly melodic hymns with words such as “Dearest Amida, Your Light Is Shining Through the Gloomy World of Sin” sung by us all to a wheezing organ accompaniment, then a tedious sermon on the evils of adultery. I fled, red-cheeked and offended, my puzzled mother reluctantly following me (“But I liked it, dear. It seemed so Christian, though of course they were much better dressed than your average Christian”). I desperately needed a new beginning. The thought of resuming my life made me want to end it—unless I could change it completely. If my homosexuality was due to a surfeit of female company at home (for so ran the most popular psychological theory of the day), then I should correct the imbalance by entering an all-male world. In order to become a heterosexual I decided I should attend a boys’ boarding school (for so ran my wonderfully logical addendum to the theory).

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I started to say something, and then sat down on the grass with a quite monstrous pain in my chest and vomited a torrent of browns and greens that I had never remembered eating. I saw Lolita’s eyes, and they seemed to be more calculating than frightened. I heard her saying to a kind lady that her father was having a fit. Then for a long time I lay in a lounge chair swallowing pony upon pony of gin. And next morning I felt strong enough to drive on (which in later years no doctor believed). 22 The two-room cabin we had ordered at Silver Spur Court, Elphinstone, turned out to belong to the glossily browned pinelog kind that Lolita used to be so fond of in the days of our carefree first journey; oh, how different things were now! I am not referring to Trapp or Trapps. After all—well, really … After all, gentlemen, it was becoming abundantly clear that all those identical detectives in prismatically changing cars were figments of my persecution mania, recurrent images based on coincidence and chance resemblance. Soyons logiques , crowed the cocky Gallic part of my brain—and proceeded to rout the notion of a Lolita-maddened salesman or comedy gangster, with stooges, persecuting me, and hoaxing me, and otherwise taking riotous advantage of my strange relations with the law. I remember humming my panic away. I remember evolving even an explanation of the “Birdsley” telephone call … But if I could dismiss Trapp, as I had dismissed my convulsions on the lawn at Champion, I could do nothing with the anguish of knowing Lolita to be so tantalizingly, so miserably unattainable and beloved on the very eve of a new era, when my alembics told me she should stop being a nymphet, stop torturing me. An additional, abominable, and perfectly gratuitous worry was lovingly prepared for me in Elphinstone. Lo had been dull and silent during the last lap—two hundred mountainous miles uncontaminated by smoke-gray sleuths or zigzagging zanies. She hardly glanced at the famous, oddly shaped, splendidly flushed rock which jutted above the mountains and had been the take-off for nirvana on the part of a temperamental show girl. The town was newly built, or rebuilt, on the flat floor of a seven-thousand-foot-high valley; it would soon bore Lo, I hoped, and we would spin on to California, to the Mexican border, to mythical bays, saguaro deserts, fatamorganas. José Lizzarrabengoa, as you remember, planned to take his Carmen to the Etats Unis . I conjured up a Central American tennis competition in which Dolores Haze and various Californian schoolgirl champions would dazzlingly participate. Good-will tours on that smiling level eliminate the distinction between passport and sport. Why did I hope we would be happy abroad? A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  No plane crashes. I’d have my own horse.” “But where would you go to school?” “They have schools. At least I think they do. I’d go anywhere to get out of this place. But first I have to eat.” She jumped up and grabbed a banana from the snack table. “I’ve been eating bananas without throwing up. Next is sweet potatoes. Did you know sweet potatoes are a perfect food? All the vitamins and minerals you could want wrapped into one tuber. Come on, let’s go…” She grabbed Miri’s hand and led her down the hall, back to her room. “I’ve been studying food groups in science. My tutor—did you know I have a tutor?” “No.” “She graduated from Teachers College at Columbia. She’s Lulu’s tutor, too.” Natalie pushed open the door to her room. “The trouble with Lulu is she wants to die. I don’t want to die. I really don’t.” Miri reached for Natalie’s hand and for just a moment Natalie looked right into her eyes. “Will you miss me if I go?” “You know I will.” Did she mean die or move to Nevada? Lulu said, “If I wanted to die that badly I’d be dead by now, Goldilocks.” “She pulls out her tubes,” Natalie said. “She tricks the nurses. You know what she has? It’s called anorexia nervosa.” “You have it, too, cutie pie.” Lulu looked at Miri and pointed a finger at Natalie. “She has it, too.” “You never know if she’s telling the truth or lying,” Natalie said with a nod toward Lulu. “You can’t believe anything she says. If she croaks I just hope she does it when I’m not around.” “I’ll remember that, Golden One.” “See this banana,” Natalie said to Miri, as she began to peel back the skin. “Don’t eat that in front of me or I’ll vomit,” Lulu said. “She can’t even look at food.” “I can if it’s a picture in a magazine. Just not the real stuff. Not the smelly stuff.” “I have to go outside to eat a banana,” Natalie said. “Banana!” she shouted, wagging it in front of Lulu. Lulu gagged and reached for her call button. A nurse came into the room. “What now, Lulu?” “She made me gag.” “I didn’t make her gag,” Natalie said. “I showed her the banana, that’s all.” Miri snuck a look at her watch. She wanted to get out of there in the worst way. “I think your mother is waiting for me,” she told Natalie. She picked up the gift-wrapped copy of Seventeenth Summer from the chair where she’d set it down earlier and handed it to Natalie. “I brought this for you.” “I hope it’s not chocolates.” “It’s a book.” “Let’s see,” Lulu said as Natalie tore the paper off Miri’s gift. “Seventeenth Summer… how sweet. Are you in love with her?” Lulu asked Miri. “Don’t answer that!” Natalie said. Then, quietly, she told Miri, “I already read it.” “I know,” Miri said.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Gently I rolled back to town, in that old faithful car of mine which was serenely, almost cheerfully working for me. My Lolita! There was still a three-year-old bobby pin of hers in the depths of the glove compartment. There was still that stream of pale moths siphoned out of the night by my headlights. Dark barns still propped themselves up here and there by the roadside. People were still going to the movies. While searching for night lodgings, I passed a drive-in. In a selenian glow, truly mystical in its contrast with the moonless and massive night, on a gigantic screen slanting away among dark drowsy fields, a thin phantom raised a gun, both he and his arm reduced to tremulous dish- water by the oblique angle of that receding world,—and the next moment a row of trees shut off the gesticulation. 35I left Insomnia Lodge next morning around eight and spent some time in Parkington. Visions of bungling the execution kept obsessing me. Thinking that perhaps the cartridges in the automatic had gone stale during a week of inactivity, I removed them and inserted a fresh batch. Such a thorough oil bath did I give Chum that now I could not get rid of the stuff. I bandaged him up with a rag, like a maimed limb, and used another rag to wrap up a handful of spare bullets. A thunderstorm accompanied me most of the way back to Grimm Road, but when I reached Pavor Manor, the sun was visible again, burning like a man, and the birds screamed in the drenched and steaming trees. The elaborate and decrepit house seemed to stand in a kind of daze, reflecting as it were my own state, for I could not help realizing, as my feet touched the springy and insecure ground, that I had overdone the alcoholic stimulation business. A guardedly ironic silence answered my bell. The garage, however, was loaded with his car, a black convertible for the nonce. I tried the knocker. Re-nobody. With a petulant snarl, I pushed the front door—and, how nice, it swung open as in a medieval fairy tale. Having softly closed it behind me, I made my way across a spacious and very ugly hall; peered into an adjacent drawing room; noticed a number of used glasses growing out of the carpet; decided that master was still asleep in the master bedroom.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  In no dark sayings, such as limed the foolish folk of old, before the Lamb of God who taketh sins away, was slain, but in clear words, and with precise discourse, answered that love paternal, hidden and revealed by his own smile: “Contingency, which beyond the sheet of your material stretcheth not, is all limned in the eternal aspect; albeit it deriveth not necessity from this, no more than doth the ship that droppeth down the stream from the sight wherein she doth reflect herself. 4 Thence, 5 as cometh to the ear sweet harmony from an organ, cometh to my sight the time that is in store for thee. As Hippolytus was severed from Athens by machination of his cruel and perfidious stepmother, 6 so must thou needs sever thee from Florence. So it is willed, so already plotted, and so shall be accomplished soon, by him who pondereth upon it in the place where Christ, day in day out, is put to sale. 7 The blame shall cleave unto the injured side in fame, as is the wont; but vengeance shall bear witness to the truth which doth dispense it. Thou shalt abandon everything beloved most dearly; this is the arrow which the bow of exile shall first shoot. Thou shalt make trial of how salt doth taste another’s bread, and how hard the path to descend and mount upon another’s stair. And that which most shall weigh thy shoulders down, shall be the vicious and ill company with which thou shalt fall down into this vale, for all ungrateful, all mad and impious shall they become against thee; but, soon after, their temples and not thine shall redden for it. 8 Of their brurishness their progress shall make proof, so that it shall be for thy fair fame to have made a party for thyself. Thy first refuge and first hostelry shall be the courtesy of the great Lombard, who on the ladder beareth the sacred bird, 9 for he shall cast so benign regard on thee that of doing and demanding, that shall be first betwixt you two, which betwixt others most doth lag. With him shalt thou see the one who so at his birth stamped by this strong star, that notable shall be his deeds. Not yet have folk taken due note of him, because of his young age, for only nine years have these wheels rolled round him. 10 But ere the Gascon have deceived the lofty Henry, sparkles of his virtue shall appear in carelessness of silver and of toils. 11 His deeds munificent shall yet be known so that concerning them his very foes shall not be able to keep silent tongues.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  4 Why should Psyche be sorry that she had listened to the reed, as the MSS (reading paenitendo) imply? The exact opposite is the case, and is supplied by Petschenig's emendation as in the text. 267 LUCIUS APULEIUS diligenter instructa illa cessavit, sed observatis omni- bus furatrina facili flaventis auri mollitie congestum gremium Veneri reportat. Nec tamen apud domi- nam saltem secundi laboris periculum secundum testimonium meruit, sed contortis superciliis surri- dens amarum sic inquit: * Nec me praeterit huius quoque facti auctor adulterinus. Sed iam nune ego sedulo periclitabor, an oppido forti animo singu- larique prudentia sis praedita. Videsne insistentem celsissimae illi rupi montis ardui verticem, de quo fontis atri fuscae defluunt undae proxumaeque con- ceptaculo vallis inclusae Stygias irrigant paludes et rauca Cocyti fluenta nutriunt? Indidem mihi de summi fontis penita scaturigine rorem rigentem hauritum ista confestim defer urnula. Sic aiens erystallo dedolatum vasculum, insuper ei graviora comminata, tradidit. 14 “At illa studiose gradum celerans montis extre- mum petit cumulum certe vel illie inventura vitae pessimae finem. Sed cum primum praedicti iugi con- terminos locos appulit, videt rei vastae letalem diffi- cultatem : namque saxum immani magnitudine procerum et inaccessa salebritate lubricum mediis e faucibus lapidis fontes horridos evomebat, qui statim proni foraminis lacunis editi perque proclive delapsi et angusti canalis exarato! contecti tramite 1 So Petschenig with great probability for the MSS’ exarto, 268 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VI memory, and with all diligence went and gathered up such locks as she found and put them in her apron and carried them home to Venus: howbeit the danger of this second labour did not please her, nor give her sufficient witness of the good service of Psyche, but twisting her brows with a sour resemblance of laughter, she said: ‘Of a certainty I know that another is the author of this thy deed, but I will prove if thou be truly of so stout a courage and singular prudence as thou seemest. Seest thou the high rock that overhangs the top of yonder great hill, from whence there runneth down water of black and deadly colour which is gathered together in the valley hard by and thence nourisheth the marshes of Styx and the hoarse torrent of Cocytus? Icharge thee to go thither and bring me a vessel of that freezing water from the middest flow of the top of that spring’: wherewithal she gave her a bottle of carven crystal, menacing and threatening her more rigorously than. before.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  When this was done, out came a woman in the middle of the Theatre arrayed in mourning vesture, and bearing a childe in her armes. And after her came an old woman in ragged robes, crying and howling likewise: and they brought with them the Olive boughs wherewith the three slaine bodies were covered on the Beere, and cried out in this manner: O right Judges, we pray by the justice and humanity which is in you, to have mercy upon these slaine persons, and succour our Widowhood and losse of our deare husbands, and especially this poore infant, who is now an Orphan, and deprived of all good fortune: and execute your justice by order and law, upon the bloud of this Theefe, who is the occasion of all our sorrowes. When they had spoken these words, one of the most antient Judges did rise and say, Touching this murther, which deserveth great punishment, this malefactor himselfe cannot deny, but our duty is to enquire and try out, whether he had Coadjutors to help him. For it is not likely that one man alone could kill three such great and valiant persons, wherefore the truth must be tried out by the racke, and so wee shall learne what other companions he hath, and root out the nest of these mischievous murtherers. And there was no long delay, but according to the custome of Grecia, the fire, the wheele, and many other torments were brought in. Then my sorrow encreased or rather doubled, in that I could not end my life with whole and unperished members. And by and by the old woman, who troubled all the Court with her howling, desired the Judges, that before I should be tormented on the racke, I might uncover the bodies which I had slaine, that every man might see their comely shape and youthfull beauty, and that I might receive condign and worthy punishment, according to the quality of my offence: and therewithall shee made a sign of joy. Then the Judge commanded me forthwith to discover the bodies of the slain, lying upon the beere, with myne own handes, but when I refused a good space, by reason I would not make my fact apparent to the eies of all men, the Sergeant charged me by commandement of the Judges, and thrust me forward to do the same. I being then forced by necessity, though it were against my wil, uncovered the bodies: but O good Lord what a strange sight did I see, what a monster? What sudden change of all my sorrows?

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  “She lives in Pennsylvania.” She has another son, Miri thought. A son and a daughter. That’s good, isn’t it? Suppose Tim was her only child? How many times had Rusty reminded Miri, You’re my only child. You’re my life. So when it comes to doing stupid things, don’t. Because I couldn’t stand it if I lost you. Do you understand? Now Miri thought she understood. There was a burden to being the only child. “Daisy, will you try to find Corinne?” Dr. O asked, handing her an appointment book with a needlepoint cover. “I’m going to take Mrs. Barnes home.” He draped a coat around Mrs. Barnes’s shoulders and led her to the kitchen door. Fern clung to Mrs. Barnes’s leg. “I want to come with you.” “You stay here with Daisy until Mommy comes home,” Dr. O said. “No, I want to come with Barnesy!” Mrs. Barnes looked down at Fern, as if for the first time. “You’ll be fine, Fern Ella.” Fern didn’t argue. She let go of Mrs. Barnes’s leg. When Daisy asked if she’d like to hear a story, Fern choose Madeline from her bookshelf. “Madeline is brave,” she told Daisy. Daisy asked Miri to do something about the volume of the music coming from the finished basement. Miri opened the door and crept down the stairs, afraid of what she might find. “Nat…Natalie,” she called softly. The only light was coming from the jukebox, the volume pumped way up. It took a minute for her eyes to adjust, for her to see Natalie crouched on the floor in the corner, rocking back and forth, mumbling to herself, like an old man davening on the High Holidays. When Miri snapped on the overhead lights, Natalie covered her eyes. “Don’t.” But Miri left the lights on and pulled the plug on the jukebox. Now it was completely quiet. Eerily quiet. “Come on, Nat,” Miri said, grabbing her by both arms. Natalie resisted. “I’m too tired.” “We’re all tired.” Miri hadn’t realized how true that was until that minute. She felt heavy, as if she could sleep for a week. Finally, Natalie stood. Miri practically pushed her up the stairs. In the kitchen, Natalie spied her quilt and pillow on the floor. She grabbed them and ran up to her bedroom, where she threw herself onto her bed, and held the pillow over her head. Miri followed. “They’re out to get us,” Natalie said, from under the pillow. “It’s only a matter of time. Ruby says there’s nothing we can do to stop them.” “What are you talking about? Who’s out to get us?” “I’m trying to tell you but you’re not listening.” Miri lifted the pillow off Natalie’s head so she could see her face, hear her words more clearly. “I am listening but you’re not making any sense.” “You think any of this makes sense? Mrs. Barnes’s son, and Phil’s cousin, the one coming home from Syracuse. She was here New Year’s Eve. Remember? Kathy Stein.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I wondered if I should mention, with a casual chuckle, that my fifteen-year-old daughter had had a minor accident while climbing an awkward fence with her boy friend, but knowing I was drunk, I decided to withhold the information till later if necessary. To an unsmiling blond bitch of a secretary I gave my daughter’s age as “practically sixteen.” While I was not looking, my child was taken away from me! In vain I insisted I be allowed to spend the night on a “welcome” mat in a corner of their damned hospital. I ran up constructivistic flights of stairs, I tried to trace my darling so as to tell her she had better not babble, especially if she felt as lightheaded as we all did. At one point, I was rather dreadfully rude to a very young and very cheeky nurse with overdeveloped gluteal parts and blazing black eyes—of Basque descent, as I learned. Her father was an imported shepherd, a trainer of sheep dogs. Finally, I returned to the car and remained in it for I do not know how many hours, hunched up in the dark, stunned by my new solitude, looking out open-mouthed now at the dimly illumed, very square and low hospital building squatting in the middle of its lawny block, now up at the wash of stars and the jagged silvery ramparts of the haute montagne where at the moment Mary’s father, lonely Joseph Lore, was dreaming of Oloron, Lagore, Rolas— que sais-je! —or seducing a ewe. Such-like fragrant vagabond thoughts have been always a solace to me in times of unusual stress, and only when, despite liberal libations, I felt fairly numbed by the endless night, did I think of driving back to the motel. The old woman had disappeared, and I was not quite sure of my way. Wide gravel roads criss-crossed drowsy rectangular shadows. I made out what looked like the silhouette of gallows on what was probably a school playground; and in another wastelike block there rose in domed silence the pale temple of some local sect.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Then our strong and valiant captaine Lamathus trusting in his own strength and force, thrust in his hand through a hole in the dore, and thought to pull back the bolt: but the covetous caitif Chriseros being awake, and making no noise came softly to the dore and caught his hand and with a great naile nailed it fast to the post: which when he had done, he ran up to the high chamber and called every one of his neighbours by name, desiring them to succour him with all possible speed, for his own house was on fire. Then every one for fear of his owne danger came running out to aid him, wherewith we fearing our present peril, knew not what was best to be don, whether wee should leave our companion there, or yeeld ourselves to die with him: but we by his consent devised a better way, for we cut off his arm by the elbow and so let it hang there: then wee bound his wound with clouts, lest we should be traced by the drops of blood: which don we took Lamathus and led him away, for fear we would be taken: but being so nigh pursued that we were in present danger, and that Lamathus could not keepe our company by reason of faintnesse; and on the other side perceiving that it was not for his profit to linger behinde, he spake unto us as a man of singular courage and vertue, desiring us by much entreaty and prayer and by the puissance of the god Mars, and the faith of our confederacy, to deliver his body from torment and miserable captivity: and further he said, How is it possible that so courageous a Captaine can live without his hand, wherewith he could somtime rob and slay so many people? I would thinke myself sufficiently happy if I could be slaine by one of you. But when he saw that we all refused to commit any such fact, he drew out his sword with his other hand, and after that he had often kissed it, he drove it clean through his body. Then we honoured the corps of so puissant a man, and wrapped it in linnen cloathes and threw it into the sea. So lieth our master Lamathus, buried and did in the grave of water, and ended his life as I have declared.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  but give me thy bottle, and sodainly he tooke it, and filled it with the water of the river, and taking his flight through those cruell and horrible dragons, brought it unto Psyches: who being very joyfull thereof, presented it to Venus, who would not yet be appeased, but menacing more and more said, What, thou seemest unto me a very witch and enchauntresse, that bringest these things to passe, howbeit thou shalt do nothing more. Take this box and to Hell to Proserpina, and desire her to send me a little of her beauty, as much as will serve me the space of one day, and say that such as I had is consumed away since my sonne fell sicke, but returne againe quickly, for I must dresse my selfe therewithall, and goe to the Theatre of the Gods: then poore Psyches perceived the end of all fortune, thinking verely that she should never returne, and not without cause, when as she was compelled to go to the gulfe and furies of hell. Wherefore without any further delay, she went up to an high tower to throw her selfe downe headlong (thinking that it was the next and readiest way to hell) but the tower (as inspired) spake unto her saying, O poore miser, why goest thou about to slay thy selfe? Why dost thou rashly yeeld unto thy last perill and danger? know thou that if thy spirit be once separated from thy body, thou shalt surely go to hell, but never to returne againe, wherefore harken to me; Lacedemon a Citie in Greece is not farre hence: go thou thither and enquire for the hill Tenarus, whereas thou shalt find a hold leading to hell, even to the Pallace of Pluto, but take heede thou go not with emptie hands to that place of darknesse: but Carrie two sops sodden in the flour of barley and Honney in thy hands, and two halfepence in thy mouth. And when thou hast passed a good part of that way, thou shalt see a lame Asse carrying of wood, and a lame fellow driving him, who will desire thee to give him up the sticks that fall downe, but passe thou on and do nothing; by and by thou shalt come unto a river of hell, whereas Charon is ferriman, who will first have his fare paied him, before he will carry the soules over the river in his boat, whereby you may see that avarice raigneth amongst the dead, neither Charon nor Pluto will do any thing for nought: for if it be a poore man that would passe over and lacketh money, he shal be compelled to die in his journey before they will shew him any reliefe, wherefore deliver to carraine Charon one of the halfpence (which thou bearest for thy passage) and let him receive it out of thy mouth.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Alas poore miser that I am, that for the onely desire to see a game of triall of weapons, am fallen into these miseries and wretched snares of misfortune. For in my returne from Macedonie, wheras I sould all my wares, and played the Merchant by the space of ten months, a little before that I came to Larissa, I turned out of the way, to view the scituation of the countrey there, and behold in the bottom of a deep valley I was suddenly environed with a company of theeves, who robbed and spoiled me of such things as I had, and yet would hardly suffer me to escape. But I beeing in such extremity, in the end was happily delivered from their hands, and so I fortuned to come to the house of an old woman that sold wine, called Meroe, who had her tongue sufficiently instructed to flattery: unto whom I opened the causes of my long peregrination and careful travell, and of myne unlucky adventure: and after that I had declared to her such things as then presently came to my remembrance, shee gently entertained mee and made mee good cheere; and by and by being pricked with carnall desire, shee brought me to her own bed chamber; whereas I poore miser the very first night of our lying together did purchase to my selfe this miserable face, and for her lodging I gave to her such apparel as the theeves left to cover me withall.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  At which time they began to devise with themselves of our death, and how they might be revenged; divers was the opinions of this divers number: the first said, that hee thought best the Mayd should be burned alive: the second said she should be throwne out to wild beasts: the third said, she should be hanged upon a gibbet: the fourth said she should be flead alive: thus was the death of the poore Maiden scanned betweene them foure. But one of the theeves after every man had declared his judgement, did speake in this manner: it is not convenient unto the oath of our company, to suffer you to waxe more cruell then the quality of the offence doth merit, for I would that shee should not be hanged nor burned, nor throwne to beasts, nor dye any sodaine death, but by my council I would have her punished according to her desert. You know well what you have determined already of this dull Asse, that eateth more then he is worth, that faineth lamenesse, and that was the cause of the flying away of the Maid: my mind is that he shall be slaine to morrow, and when all the guts and entrailes of his body is taken out, let the Maide be sowne into his belly, then let us lay them upon a great stone against the broiling heate of the Sunne, so they shall both sustaine all the punishments which you have ordained: for first the Asse shall be slaine as you have determined, and she shall have her members torne and gnawn with wild beasts, when as she is bitten and rent with wormes, shee shall endure the paine of the fire, when as the broyling heat of the Sunne shall scortch and parch the belly of the Asse, shee shall abide the gallows when the Dogs and Vultures shall have the guts of her body hanging in their ravenous mouthes. I pray you number all the torments which she shall suffer: First shee shall dwell within the paunch of an Asse: secondly her nosethrilles shall receive a carraine stinke of the beast: thirdly shee shall dye for hunger: last of all, shee shall finde no meane to ridde her selfe from her paines, for her hand shalt be sowen up within the skinne of the Asse: This being said, all the Theeves consented, and when I (poore Asse) heard and understood all their device, I did nothing else but lament and bewayle my dead carkasse, which should be handled in such sort on the next morrow.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  She wore a green velvet dress. My brother kissed her.” “What about her?” “She was on that plane.” “How do you know?” “Ruby told me.” “No she didn’t.” “You’ll see.” Miri thought about shaking Natalie. Shaking and shaking until Ruby came tumbling out headfirst, her dark hair spilling toward the floor, her blue eyes outlined in black, her lips painted bright red to match her short red dress and at last her shiny black tap shoes. But despite all the color Ruby would still look dead because that’s what she was—dead. She wanted to shake Natalie until she was the old Nat, the one Miri became best friends with in seventh grade. When Miri didn’t respond Natalie asked, “You think I’m crazy?” “Are you?” “Maybe,” Natalie said. “I just want to stop seeing Phil’s cousin dead, and Mrs. Barnes’s son in his captain’s uniform, all broken and burned.” “Stop it,” Miri said softly. “Just stop it.” “You’ll see,” Natalie said. Then she closed her eyes and hid under the quilt. —IN THE KITCHEN, Daisy forked whatever was browning in the pan, put it on a plate, covered it with wax paper and slid it into the fridge. She tapped Ajax into the pan and started scrubbing, as Fern sang, “Use Ajax, boom boom, the foaming cleanser, boom boom boom boom boom…” Miri said, “I have to go home. My grandmother will be worrying.” She grabbed her coat and her books. “Thank you for helping,” Daisy said. As she was leaving Steve opened the kitchen door and pushed past her. “Where’s Mom?” he asked Daisy. “She’s on her way home,” Daisy told him. “She was playing mah-jongg at Ceil Rubin’s house,” Fern said. “They didn’t have the radio on so they didn’t know what happened.” Fern looked at Daisy. “Right?” Daisy nodded. “What about Dad?” Steve asked. “He took Mrs. Barnes home,” Daisy said. “Her son was the pilot of the plane that crashed,” Fern added, hugging Roy Rabbit to her chest. “Shut up about planes crashing,” Steve shouted. “Just shut up!” Daisy touched Steve’s shoulder. He flinched. “Don’t!” Miri asked, “Was Phil’s cousin on that plane?” Steve shot her a look. “How did you know?” “Natalie told me.” “How did she know?” Miri shrugged, pushed past Steve out the kitchen door and trudged up the hill to the bus stop. When the bus pulled up, Miri boarded and took a seat, forgetting to pay. The driver didn’t say anything. Miri was thinking that just a little while ago she and Natalie were munching grapes in the den, waiting for Kate Smith to come on singing “God Bless America.” Miri hoped if there was a god, and she was less sure about that every day, he would bless America and especially Elizabeth, New Jersey, and that he had the power to stop this thing that was happening.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  She’d called last night before she’d gone to sleep, before any of them knew their world would be shattered a third time. There hadn’t been any answer, which made no sense. Even if no one else was home there would still be a babysitter for Fern. This time Mrs. Jones answered. “Osners’ residence. Mrs. Jones speaking.” Miri recognized her voice before she identified herself. “It’s Miri, Mrs. Jones. Can I speak to Natalie or Mrs. Osner?” “Everyone is out. I don’t know where.” “Do you know when they’ll be back?” “Sorry, I don’t. Try them tonight.” Mrs. Jones hung up first. She called again before dinner. This time she got Steve. When she asked for Natalie, he said, “She’s not here.” “Where is she?” “Visiting relatives.” “What relatives?” He didn’t answer. “Are you telling me the truth?” “No.” “Let me talk to your mother.” “Say please. ” “May I please speak to your mother?” “Sorry, no can do.” And he hung up. Then Henry came home with the paper and Miri didn’t call the Osners again. [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00031.jpg] [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00031.jpg] AIRLINER SMASHES INTO SALEM AVENUE APARTMENTSExplodes in Yard of Janet Memorial Home Third Crash in 58 Days Brings Closure of Newark AirportBy Henry AmmermanFEB. 11 — Disaster from the sky rained down on Elizabeth for the third time in eight weeks. At 12:20 a.m., a Miami-bound National Airlines four-engine DC-6 taking off from Newark Airport sliced open the roof of a three-story apartment building on Salem Avenue. Spilling fuel as a wing tip ripped off, it set the apartment building ablaze before plunging to the ground and exploding in the playing field of the Janet Memorial Home. Like a Swollen Cream PuffWrapped around the base of a tree was one of the plane’s engines. Hanging like a huge dead leaf from the blackened top of another tree was a jagged piece of silver wreckage. The roof of the apartment building looked as if the plane had taken a gigantic bite out of it. The wreckage of the 101-foot-long aircraft stretched across the recreation field of Janet Memorial, and into Westminster Avenue, all brightly lit by roaring flames that took hours to bring under control. Nearby, silhouetted like a sentinel against the orange-red flames was another engine, one propeller blade pointed skyward. The plane had broken apart like a swollen cream puff. Lying in Westminster Avenue was the forward section, the tomb of the three pilots. Unlike the two previous crashes, which claimed the lives of all on board, 38 survived this time, some seriously injured, some able to walk away. Janet Home and Schools NearbyTwenty-two passengers and three crew members aboard the plane died. Four occupants of the ravaged apartment building perished, three of them from the same family—Irving Zahler, 30, his 27-year-old wife, Marilyn, and their 4-year-old son, Monte. They had recently moved from Newark to the Salem Avenue apartment house, where Mrs. Zahler’s parents live.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  My mother had no interest in what she called “theory,” by which she meant ideas. What did interest her were plans and arrangements—all the details of daily life. These elicited her full attention, and mastering them brought her the pleasant feeling that hers was a tidy life. Plans were my despair; the minute maps were drawn out of a glove compartment or a calendar was consulted, I retreated into irritable daydreams. My mother’s interest in plans and arrangements coexisted with the most peculiar notion of what those arrangements should consist of—and a wild caprice that could overturn everything she’d worked out so methodically. Naïve and proud at the time of her divorce, she wanted to conserve money but also maintain a good address. She decided the three of us should live in that expensive hotel in one furnished room with twin beds, my sister and I taking turns sleeping on the floor. For the first time in her life our mother had a job, one at which she worked long hours. At night she was going out on dates or haunting nightclubs downtown. Because she was seldom at home I ate most of my suppers alone in the hotel dining room; my sister ate at a different hour in order to avoid my company. Before her divorce my mother had never so much as written a check. Now our fortunes teetered and careened and ground to a halt. She bought a knee-length mink but economized on food, bought a flashy Lincoln convertible but refused to send my sister to the orthodontist, packed us off to expensive summer camps but on the bus, not the train. She drank heavily and played sentimental records in the evening on the few nights she stayed home; one winter the record of “Now Is the Hour” became so worn the spindle hole grew as big as a dime, but still the voice yearned on and on. Another winter the voice, wobbling sickeningly, sang “The Tennessee Waltz.” When Mother was discouraged a smell of physical self-hatred would come off her body; she groaned her way through her self-hatred as though it were a mountain of laundry she had to wash, a dirty, physical, humiliating task. Then something nice would happen. Someone would compliment her or a man would take an interest in her—and presto, she was not only equal to other people but superior to them. The terrible laundering would be forgotten. She’d sit up very straight in her chair and smile a sort of First Lady smile. I spent many gala nights, including my eighth, ninth and tenth birthdays, in nightclubs beside my mother. She’d split a simple pasta dish with me to save money and then order highball after highball as we’d look longingly toward the man at the bar. Had he noticed Mother? Would he send her a drink?

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  Two hours ago, halfway through writing this, I bought a dime bag of weed for the first time since I was a student. I asked my housemate what hours her dealer kept, and she went out to score. I’ve done a lot of drugs I haven’t done before in these sixty-three days—MDMA and speed and laughing gas—and a lot I’ve done before—poppers, weed, and booze. Oh, so much booze. And that solves nothing either but I don’t expect it to. I expect it to help me to sleep. I’ve been taking codeine, too. I say it’s for the headaches. I have done my research. I have scrolled down the list of porn clips that come up when you type the words lesbian and rape into Google. I have read about the women in the Congo who collude in, sometimes lead, the rape of captives. I have read the interviews with Justine Chang and Armand Kaye, who made the documentary She Stole My Voice about rape in lesbian communities, but haven’t managed to bring myself to watch the film. I have read the articles that give the statistics, that explain why even these are inadequate, I have talked to women who’ve been shouted down for talking about violence in queer women’s relationships, with trans women who’ve been raped by cisgender women at gunpoint. I have listened to one of my best friends tell me she is beginning to think she is “just the kind of person this stuff happens to” and I have told her she is not, that what happened to her says nothing about her, and I have felt like a hypocrite because I do not believe the same thing about myself. I screamed and begged for you to stop, but I almost wish that you had hit me, had blackened my eyes or knocked out a few teeth, because it would mean that I fought back instead of begging. I have looked for counseling and given up on that. Two days ago, I walked into my doctor’s surgery to talk about my anemia and I fully intended to tell her about you and ask for some kind of referral, or even just something to help me sleep, some legal drug that I would almost never mix with any of the others, but she said “You don’t look your usual self” when I walked through the door and I lost my nerve. I told her about the cough I’ve had the past few days, how I’m worried that I might have pneumonia again, and when she told me to stand so she could listen to my chest I panicked and asked how much of my clothes I’d have to take off, whether I could stop at my shirt or would have to take off my vest too, felt embarrassed about the suspenders that held up my jeans.

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  This is partly because it happened again: different steps, but the same tune. It was my junior year of college; I was at a house party. I told him, No, I don’t want to have sex with you. But when he was inside me, I didn’t scream. I didn’t yell for help or push him off me, even though I had done just that a couple weeks prior, when at yet another party, yet another man had whipped out an unwelcome dick. Maybe I was just wearied. Having lived two drastically different stories of sexual assault, I’ve learned some interesting things about responses. When someone hears a story of child abuse, they usually respond in one of two ways: (1) a look of absolute horror and sympathy with what seems to be an almost overwhelming impulse to comfort you (regardless of your actual emotional state at the time) or (2) a look of absolute horror and with what seems to be an almost overwhelming impulse to flee from you. On the other hand, when someone hears of an adult woman being raped at a house party, the reactions are much more varied. Were you drunk? Had you hooked up before? Could there have been some misunderstanding? People will always respond differently to the story of a sexually abused third grader than they will that of a young woman who is violated by a friend at a booze-soaked house party. There is a kind of fairness in that, since they are very different stories. Yet, in many ways, they are so intimately intertwined: they both rely on the belief in ownership of the vulnerable body, whether female or child or both. The idea that one violation is vastly worse than the other is probably not so different a rationalization than what goes through a date rapist’s mind. Those who are disgusted at the idea of touching a child may be the exact same that would grope an adult woman in an alleyway or on a crowded subway train—or worse. IN THE FIRST OF ELENA FERRANTE’S NEAPOLITAN NOVELS, GIGLIOLA, the childhood friend of the eponymous narrator, is raped by the two wealthy brothers who terrorize the neighborhood. In the third, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Gigliola, having been seduced by promises of riches and prestige, is married to one of those rapists. Her husband, Michele, treats her poorly, beating her and cheating on her with many other women. The narrator, Elena, comes to visit Gigliola, who was once proud and boastful, and hears about the latter’s misfortune:

• From The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (2023)

  “She must be conveying a certain emotional reality that children recognize as true.” This—the idea that Judy had endeared herself to young fans by indulging their immature tastes, instead of feeding them what they needed—had been following Blume for a while. Mostly, it didn’t bother her; she didn’t see herself as a member of the literati, either. But she also felt protective of Sally. After all, it was the closest she’d come in fiction to sharing the facts of her own childhood (like so much of the book, the incident on the train really happened to her). And so when reviewer Jean Mercier panned the novel in Publishers Weekly, Judy was devastated. The write-up felt extreme and mean-spirited. “Blume’s approach will be resented as frivolous by many readers, since Sally’s own relatives are victims of the Nazi death camps, not the stuff of humor,” Mercier wrote. “Neither are some of the other details in the book. In fact, parts are sickening.” Sally was sickening?! It was all too much for Judy. The divorce, the awful new marriage, Los Alamos, her unhappy kids—and now a respected children’s book reviewer claimed that treasured memories from Judy’s own past were so repulsive that she almost lost her lunch. She couldn’t take any more. Overcome by emotion, Judy picked up her bulky IBM Selectric and walked outside to the edge of her yard. Breath heavy, she hovered the typewriter over the arroyo. What would it feel like to hurl it down? To watch the keys pop out in a cathartic crush of metal? “I held it out to drop it and then I thought, ‘Are you crazy?’ ” Blume told an audience at the Arlington Public Library event in 2015. The review was awful but the notion of quitting writing was much worse. “You’re gonna let one person stop you from doing what you love to do?” She turned around and walked back inside the house. Chapter Fifteen Monogamy “Oh Mother, dammit! Why did you bring me up to think that this was what I wanted?” Instead of tossing her career into the abyss, Judy wrote a letter to Jean Mercier. She had her habit of writing curse words over reviews she didn’t like, but this was the first time she’d confronted another professional about a bad write-up. In April 1977, she penned a respectful note to Mercier, telling her she was entitled to her opinion of Starring Sally but couldn’t understand why she’d called the book “sickening.” What was it about the creative pre-teen’s inner life that turned her stomach? Mercier wrote back right away. Apologetically, she confessed that she was a great fan of Blume’s, which made her experience of Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself all the more disappointing. She said she had read the book twice, hoping for a different impression the second time around. But alas—she thought Blume could do better, as she had many times already.