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.

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• From Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life (2005)

  93 which must rule by terror because it denies a basic human right, the right to property. Solzhenitsyn smuggled The Gulag Archipelago out of the country and gave a “secret” interview to the New York Times about the persecution he was experiencing. He was not allowed to go to Sweden to accept the Nobel Prize in 1970. Solzhenitsyn was stripped of his Soviet citizenship and exiled. He fi rst went to Switzerland, then to Vermont, where he lived on a farm and continued to write. In the West it was believed that because he was anti-Soviet, he would embrace democracy and capitalism. As he moved further from the oppressive and soul-destroying experience of the Soviet Union, he found a new sense of identity. He began to understand that Russia was an autonomous, 1,000-year- old culture that Communism had tried to destroy because it represented eternal values. Communism rests on the belief that because there is no God, there is no absolute right and wrong. The Communists had to destroy the old Russian culture because it rested on belief in a politicized God. Under the czars, God was the ruler of Russia, and the czar was accountable only to God. God would judge the czar on the basis of absolute right and wrong. Solzhenitsyn became convinced that in this old Russian concept of God lay his own spiritual redemption and salvation. In 1978, Solzhenitsyn was invited to Harvard to receive an honorary degree and give a commencement address. Instead of offering a few platitudes, he gave a thoughtful indictment of Western democracy, not as an enemy, but as a friend with a different vantage point. He said that the colonial empires built by Western powers were fragile and left behind nothing but problems. The West had not learned and still believed that it was a model for the world. The West wanted to turn all the nations of the world into model capitalistic, liberal democracies. He believed that the spread of capitalism merely continued that imperial march. Solzhenitsyn believed that the West shows contempt for justice. In the West, what is right legally, not necessarily what is just, is what matters. The United States has become a nation of suers and countersuers and is interested only in legalities. Members of the press destroy a reputation by basing stories on unnamed sources and scurrilous rumors. The press is held unaccountable in the name of journalistic freedom. Thus, freedom of the press has become a form of government by terror. Capitalism can become all-destroying. Spiritual concerns have been replaced by the desire to make

• From Story of the Eye (1928)

  The notion implicit in Story of O that eros is a sacrament is not the “truth” behind the literal (erotic) sense of the book—the lascivious rites of enslavement and degradation performed upon O—but, exactly, a metaphor for it. Why say something stronger, when the statement can’t really mean anything stronger? But despite the virtual incomprehensibility to most educated people today of the substantive experience behind religious vocabulary, there is a continuing piety toward the grandeur of emotions that went into that vocabulary. The religious imagination survives for most people as not just the primary but virtually the only credible instance of an imagination working in a total way. No wonder, then, that the new or radically revamped forms of the total imagination which have arisen in the past century—notably, those of the artist, the erotomane, the left revolutionary, and the madman—have chronically borrowed the prestige of the religious vocabulary. And total experiences, of which there are many kinds, tend again and again to be apprehended only as revivals or translations of the religious imagination. To try to make a fresh way of talking at the most serious, ardent, and enthusiastic level, heading off the religious encapsulation, is one of the primary intellectual tasks of future thought. As matters stand, with everything from Story of O to Mao reabsorbed into the incorrigible survival of the religious impulse, all thinking and feeling gets devalued. (Hegel made perhaps the grandest attempt to create a post-religious vocabulary, out of philosophy, that would command the treasures of passion and credibility and emotive appropriateness that were gathered into the religious vocabulary. But his most interesting followers steadily undermined the abstract meta-religious language in which he had bequeathed his thought, and concentrated instead on the specific social and practical applications of his revolutionary form of process-thinking, historicism. Hegel’s failure lies like a gigantic disturbing hulk across the intellectual landscape. And no one has been big enough, pompous enough, or energetic enough since Hegel to attempt the task again.) And so we remain, careening among our overvaried choices of kinds of total imagination, of species of total seriousness. Perhaps the deepest spiritual resonance of the career of pornography in its “modern” Western phase under consideration here (pornography in the Orient or the Moslem world being something very different) is this vast frustration of human passion and seriousness since the old religious imagination, with its secure monopoly on the total imagination, began in the late eighteenth century to crumble. The ludicrousness and lack of skill of most pornographic writing, films, and painting is obvious to everyone who has been exposed to them. What is less often remarked about the typical products of the pornographic imagination is their pathos. Most pornography—the books discussed here cannot be excepted—points to something more general than even sexual damage.

• From Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life (2005)

  55 of evil, who does not appear often in the Old Testament, is found here as a clever manipulator. God boasts about what a good man Job is. Satan manipulates God to test Job by sending him terrible evils. First, his fl ocks are destroyed and his children are killed. Job’s response is to bless God and say, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” God next turns Job over to the devil to further test him. Job suffers horrible bodily affl ictions. Even his wife turns on him and suggests that he “curse God and die.” Four friends come to comfort him. These four friends are not Hebrew, which gives the story an air of universality. An element of Schadenfreude— enjoyment of the troubles of others—can be seen in their attempts to comfort him. These friends make themselves feel good by seeing how miserable Job is. The friends indicate that Job must have done something to deserve these problems, because God would not punish a righteous person. They state that Job must be guilty and should accept what he is given by God. Job laments his fate in moving, magnifi cent verse. Job begins to transform. He speaks to God directly and asks God to explain why he is suffering. Job knows that he is not guilty and demands an explanation. Finally, God appears to Job out of a whirlwind. God does not offer an explanation to Job or justify his actions. Instead, God proclaims his own power as the only explanation needed. God asks, “Where were you when I created the foundations of the world?” He tells Job that it is not for him to question God, because God is all-powerful. Job bows his head before God. God then saves Job. He reproves the friends of Job and tells Job that he will give him more than he ever had if Job offers sacri fi ces so that God will forgive his friends. Job lived a long life and had more children and even greater wealth. The remarkable story of Job raises the question of evil in our own day. Job showed willingness to give a speech of conscience and demand that God answer him. Contemporary people are unwilling to consider evil an absolute reality. The 20 th century has all but removed Satan from serious discussion. Hitler and Stalin were 20 th-century embodiments of absolute evil. Hitler was able to convince the people of Germany of the righteousness of his cause. The The remarkable story of Job raises the question of evil in our own day.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Finally, the intense attention that the Siren attracts can prove irritating and worse. Sometimes she will pine for relief from it; sometimes, too, she will want to attract an attention that is not sexual. Also, unfortunately, physical beauty fades; although the Siren effect depends not on a beautiful face but on an overall impression, past a certain age that impression gets hard to project. Both of these factors contributed to the suicide of Marilyn Monroe. It takes a genius on the level of Madame de Pompadour, the Siren mistress of King Louis XV, to make the transition into the role of the spirited older woman who continues to seduce with her nonphysical charms. Cleopatra had such an intellect, and had she lived long enough, she would have remained a potent seductress for many years. The Siren must prepare for age by paying attention early on to the more psychological, less physical forms of coquetry that can continue to bring her power once her beauty starts to fade. A woman never quite feels desired and appreciated enough. She wants attention, but a man is too often distracted and unresponsive. The Rake is a great female fantasy figure— when he desires a woman, brief though that moment may be, he will go to the ends of the earth for her. He may be disloyal, dishonest, and amoral, but that only adds to his appeal. Unlike the normal, cautious male, the Rake is delightfully unrestrained, a slave to his love of women. There is the added lure of his reputation: so many women have succumbed to him, there has to be a reason. Words are a woman's weakness, and the Rake is a master of seductive language. Stir a woman's repressed longings by adapting the Rake's mix of danger and pleasure. The Ardent Rake For the court of Louis XIV, the king's last years were gloomy—he was old, and had become both insufferably religious and personally unpleasant. The court was bored and desperate for novelty. So in 1710, the arrival of a fifteen-year-old lad who was both devilishly handsome and charming had a particularly strong effect on the ladies. His name was Fronsac, the future Duke de Richelieu (his granduncle being the infamous Cardinal [ After an accident at sect, Richelieu). He was impudent and witty. The ladies would play with him Don Juan finds himself washed up on a beach, like a toy, but he would kiss them on the lips in return, his hands wandering where he is discovered by a far for an inexperienced boy. When those hands strayed up the skirts of a young woman. ] • TISBEA: duchess who was not so indulgent, the king was furious, and sent the youth Wake up, handsomest of all men, and be yourself

• From Story of the Eye (1928)

  If I had nightmares, if I sometimes locked myself up in a cellar for hours at a time precisely because I was thinking about Marcelle, I would nevertheless still be prepared to start all over again, for instance by ducking her hair, head down, in a toilet bowl. But since she is dead, I have nothing left but certain catastrophes that bring me to her at times when I least expect it. Otherwise, I cannot possibly perceive the least kinship now between the dead girl and myself, which makes most of my days inevitably dreary. I will merely report here that Marcelle hanged herself after a dreadful incident. She recognized the huge bridal wardrobe, and her teeth started chattering: she instantly realized upon looking at me that I was the man she called the Cardinal, and when she began shrieking, there was no other way for me to stop that desperate howling than to leave the room. By the time Simone and I returned she was hanging inside the wardrobe…. I cut the rope, but she was quite dead. We laid her out on the carpet. Simone saw I was getting a hard-on and she started tossing me off. I too stretched out on the carpet. It was impossible to do otherwise; Simone was still a virgin, and I fucked her for the first time, next to the corpse. It was very painful for both of us, but we were glad precisely because it was painful. Simone stood up and gazed at the corpse. Marcelle had become a total stranger, and in fact, so had Simone at that moment. I no longer cared at all for either Simone or Marcelle. Even if someone had told me it was I who had just died, I would not even have been astonished, so alien were these events to me. I observed Simone, and, as I precisely recall, my only pleasure was in the smutty things Simone was doing, for the corpse was very irritating to her, as though she could not bear the thought that this creature, so similar to her, could not feel her anymore. The open eyes were more irritating than anything else. Even when Simone drenched the face, those eyes, extraordinarily, did not close. We were perfectly calm, all three of us, and that was the most hopeless part of it.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  I talked to the police. It was instant. The steering wheel hit her chest. I’m so sorry.” And I said, you saw her and he said yes and I said how did she look and he said, just a bit of blood coming out of her nose, and I sat down on the floor of the gym. I could hear the Colonel still screaming, and I could feel hands on my back as I hunched forward, but I could only see her lying naked on a metal table, a small trickle of blood falling out of her half-teardrop nose, her green eyes open, staring off into the distance, her mouth turned up just enough to suggest the idea of a smile, and she had felt so warm against me, her mouth soft and warm on mine. — The Colonel and I are walking back to our dorm room in silence. I am staring at the ground beneath me. I cannot stop thinking that she is dead, and I cannot stop thinking that she cannot possibly be dead. People do not just die. I can’t catch my breath. I feel afraid, like someone has told me they’re going to kick my ass after school and now it’s sixth period and I know full well what’s coming. It is so cold today—literally freezing—and I imagine running to the creek and diving in headfirst, the creek so shallow that my hands scrape against the rocks, and my body slides into the cold water, the shock of the cold giving way to numbness, and I would stay there, float down with that water first to the Cahaba River, then to the Alabama River, then to Mobile Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. I want to melt into the brown, crunchy grass that the Colonel and I step on as we silently make our way back to our room. His feet are so large, too large for his short body, and the new generic tennis shoes he wears since his old ones were pissed in look almost like clown shoes. I think of Alaska’s flip-flops clinging to her blue toes as we swung on the swing down by the lake. Will the casket be open? Can a mortician re-create her smile? I could still hear her saying it: “This is so fun, but I’m so sleepy. To be continued?” — Nineteenth-century preacher Henry Ward Beecher’s last words were “Now comes the mystery.” The poet Dylan Thomas, who liked a good drink at least as much as Alaska, said, “I’ve had eighteen straight whiskeys. I do believe that’s a record,” before dying. Alaska’s favorite was playwright Eugene O’Neill: “Born in a hotel room, and—God damn it—died in a hotel room.” Even car-accident victims sometimes have time for last words. Princess Diana said, “Oh God.

• From Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life (2005)

  48 Lecture 8: Gilgamesh Gilgamesh was two-thirds divine; his mother was a goddess, and his father was part divine, as well. Gilgamesh abuses his power. The people believe that the behavior of Gilgamesh is out of control, and they appeal to the divinities for assistance. The gods create Enkidu, a wild and uncivilized man who knows nothing of civilization and lives in the world of nature. Enkidu is fi nally civilized by a temple prostitute. After a trial of strength, Enkidu and Gilgamesh become friends and set off on a series of adventures to make names for themselves so that people will remember Gilgamesh forever. Together, Enkidu and Gilgamesh conquer and kill the fi erce monster Khumbaba. Gilgamesh rejects the love of the goddess Ishtar. Enkidu and Gilgamesh conquer a ferocious bull, a symbol of chaos, which had been sent to avenge this insult to the goddess. Enkidu then sickens and dies. Gilgamesh becomes distraught and overwhelmed by his understanding that he, too, must die at some point. Gilgamesh sets out to discover how he can conquer death. He discovers that one man, Ut-Napishtim, is immortal and decides to ask him the secret of immortality. To fi nd Ut-Napishtim, Gilgamesh travels through the dark mountains, past the scorpion monster, and fi nally, crosses the sea of death. Ut-Napishtim explains that the gods had decided to destroy the human race and had instructed him to build an ark with two of every creature. These creatures and the family of Ut-Napishtim were the only beings who survived a mighty fl ood. The gods had granted Ut-Napishtim eternal life as a reward for his suffering. Ut-Napishtim tells Gilgamesh that he can become immortal if he is able to avoid sleeping. Gilgamesh immediately falls asleep. After he awakens, Ut-Napishtim tells him that he can live forever if he can bring the plant of immortality up from the bottom of the sea. Gilgamesh fi nds the plant, but a snake eats it. Gilgamesh then realizes that he will die. Gilgamesh returns to Uruk and surveys the walls around the city. He says, “What I have done is good.” He then lives the rest of his life knowing that he will die and that all that matters is his reputation and the achievements that he leaves behind. ■ 49 Gilgamesh. Hallo and Simpson, History of the Ancient Near East. Jacobsen and Frankfort, The Intellectual Adventures of Ancient Man. Kramer, History Begins at Sumer. 1. Are you engaged or put off by the fairy-tale quality of Gilgamesh? 2. What signi fi cance do you see in the parallels between Gilgamesh and the Old Testament? Essential Reading Supplementary Reading Questions to Consider

• From Middlesex (2002)

  ciety meeting, AuntLina had metawomannamedMrs. EvelynWat- son.Mrs. Watson hadbeenattracted tothe TheosophicalSocietyby the hopeof contactingherdeceasedhusband, but soonlostinterest in communicating withthe spiritworldinfavorofwhisperingwith Sourmelinain theflesh.With shockingspeed,AuntLinahadquither job atthe florist'sshopandmoveddown totheSouthwestwithMrs. Watson. EveryChristmassince,shesentmyparents a gift boxcon- taining hotsauce,a flowering cactus,and a photographofMrs. Wat- sonand herselfinfrontofsomenational monument.(Onesurviving photoshows thecouplein an Anasazi ceremonialcaveatBandelier, Mrs. Watsonlookingaswiselylined asGeorgiaO'KeeffewhileLina, ina tremendoussunhat,descendsaladder intoa kiva.) AsforDesdemona,duringthemid-to-latefifties shewas experi- encing a briefandcompletelyuncharacteristicspellofcontentment. Hersonhadreturned unhurt fromanotherwar.(St.Christopherhad kepthiswordduringthe"policeaction"inKoreaandMiltonhadn't been somuchasfiredon.)Herdaughter-in-law'spregnancyhad causedtheusual anxiety,of course, but ChapterEleven hadbeen bornhealthy.Therestaurant was doingwell.Every weekfamilyand friendsgathered at Milton'snewhouseinIndianVillagefor Sunday dinner. One day Desdemonareceived a brochurefromtheNew Smyrna BeachChamberofCommerce,whichshehadsentawayfor. Itdidn'tlook likeSmyrnaatall,butatleast it wassunny,andthere werefruit stands. Meanwhile, mygrandfather wasfeelinglucky.Havingplayed at leastone number everyday for a littleovertwoyears,hehadnowbet on everynumber from1 to 740. Only 259 numbers togotoreach 999!Thenwhat? Whatelse?—start over.Banktellershandedrolls of money toLefty, whichhe inturnhandedtothepharmacistbehind thewindow. He played 741,742, and743. He played 744,745, and 746. Andthen onemorning thebanktellerinformedLeftythatthere weren't sufficient funds inhis account to makeawithdrawal. The teller showed himhisbalance:$13.26. My grandfather thankedthe teller. He crossed the banklobby,adjusting histie. He feltsuddenly dizzy. The gambling feverhe'dhadfortwenty-six months broke, sending alast waveofheat overhisskin,andsuddenlyhisentire body was drippingwet. Moppinghisbrow,Leftywalkedoutof the bank into his penniless oldage. The earsplittingcrymygrandmotherletout when shelearned of 207 the disaster cannotbe done justiceinprint.The shriekwent onand on,as she toreherhairandrenthergarments andcollapsedonto the floor. "HOW WILLWEEAT!" Desdemonawailed, staggering around thekitchen."WHEREWILL WE LIVE!" Shespread her arms,appealingtoGod,then beatonherchest,andfinally took holdofherleftsleeve and ripped itoff."WHAT KIND OFHUSBANDAREYOUTO DOTHISTOYOUR WIFE WHOCOOKEDAND CLEANEDFOR YOU ANDGAVEYOUCHILDRENAND NEVERCOM- PLAINED!" Now she tore off herrightsleeve."DIDN'TI TELLYOUNOTTOGAMBLE?DIDN'T I >" Shestarted onher dresspropernow. Shetooktheheminherhands,asan- cientNearEasternululationsissuedfromherthroat."OULOU- LOULOULOULOULOU!OULOULOULOULOULOU- LOU !" Mygrandfatherwatchedinastonishment as hismodestwife shreddedherclothingbeforehiseyes,theskirtofthedress,thewaist, thebosom,theneckline.With a finalrip,thedresssplitintwoand Desdemonalayonthelinoleum,exposingtotheworldthemiseryof her underwear, her overburdenedunderwirebrassiere,hergloomy underpants,andthefranticgirdlewhosestaysshewasevennow popping assheapproachedthe summitofherdishevelment.Butat lastshe stopped. Beforeshe was completelynaked, Desdemonafell back as though depleted.She pulledoffherhairnetandherhair spilledouttocoverherandsheclosedhereyes, spent.Inthenext moment, shesaidinapractical tone,"Nowwehaveto move in with Milton." Three weekslater, inOctober 1958, my grandparentsmovedout ofHurlbut, oneyearbeforetheywouldhave paid offthemortgage. Over awarmIndiansummerweekend,my father anddishonored grandfather carried furnitureoutsideforthe yardsale,thesea-foam- greensofaand armchairs,whichstill looked brand-newbeneathplas- tic slipcovers, thekitchentable,the bookcases. Lampswere set out onthe grass alongwithMilton'soldBoy Scout manuals,Zoe'sdolls and tap shoes, a framedphotographof Patriarch Athenagoras,anda closetfulof Lefty's suits, whichmy grandmother forcedhimtosellas punishment.Hair safely restoredbeneath her hairnet,Desdemona gloweredaroundtheyard,submergedina despair toodeep fortears. Sheexaminedeachobject,sighingaudibly before affixinga price tag, 208

• From Middlesex (2002)

  was enthralled withZoe.Shecarriedthenewbabyaround withher likea new doll. Theirlifelongfriendship,whichwouldsuffermany strains, began fromdayone,withTheodorapretending tobe Zoe's mother. The arrival ofanotherbaby madethehouseonHurlbutfeel crowded. Sourmelinadecidedtomove out. She foundajobina florist's shop,leaving Lefty andDesdemonatoassume the mortgage onthe house.In thefallofthat sameyear,SourmelinaandTheodora took up residencenearbyintheO'TooleBoardinghouse, right be- hind HurlbutonCadillacBoulevard.The backs of thetwohouses faced eachotherandLinaandTheodorawerestillclose enoughto visitnearlyeveryday. OnThursday, October 24, 1929, onWall StreetinNewYorkCity, meninfinelytailoredsuitsbeganjumpingfromthewindowsof the city'sfamousskyscrapers.Theirlemming-likedespairseemedfar awayfromHurlbutStreet,butlittlebylittlethedarkcloud passed over the nation,movingin the oppositedirection tothe weather, un- tilitreachedtheMidwest.TheDepression made itselfknown to Lefty bya growingnumber of emptybarstools.Afternearlysixyears ofoperatingatfullcapacity,therebegantobeslowperiods,nights when theplace was onlytwo-thirdsfull,orjusthalf.Nothingde- terredthestoic alcoholicsfrom theircalling.Despitetheinterna- tional banking conspiracy (unmasked by FatherCoughlinonthe radio), thesestalwartspresentedthemselvesfordutywhenever St. Georgegalloped inthewindow.But thesocialdrinkersandfamily men stopped showing up. By Marchof 1930, onlyhalfasmany pa- trons gavethe secret dactylic-spondaicknockonthe basementdoor. Business picked up duringthe summer."Don'tworry,"Leftytold Desdemona. "President HerbertHooveristakingcareof things.The worst is over." Theyskated along throughthenextyearandahalf, but by1932 only a few customerswerecomingin each day. Lefty ex- tended credit, discounted drinks,but itwasnouse.Soonhecouldn't payfor shipments ofliquor. Onedaytwomen cameinandrepos- sessed the slotmachine. "Itwas terrible. Terrible!"Desdemona still cried fifty yearslater, describing those years. Throughoutmy childhoodtheslightestmen- tion of the Depression would set myyiayia offintoafullcycle of 135 wailing andbreast-clutching. (Even oncewhen the subject was "manic depression.") Shewould golimpinher chair, squeezing her facein bothhands likethefigure inMunch's The Scream—and then would doso:"Mana!TheDepression! Soterrible youno can be- lieve! Everybody theynohave work.I remember themarchesfor the hunger, allthepeoplethey aremarching inthe street,amillion peo- ple,one afterone,oneafterone, togo totellMr.Henry Ford to open thefactory.Then wehaveinthealley onenight anoisewas ter- rible. Thepeoplethey arekillingrats,plam plamplam, withsticks, to goto eat therats. OhmyGod!And Leftyhe wasnoworking inthe factory then.Heonlyhaving, youknow,the speakeasy, wherethe peoplethey usetocometodrink.Butin theDepression wasin themiddleanother bad time, economyvery bad,andnobody they havemoneyto drink.Theynocan eat, how theycandrink? Sosoon papouand yiayiawenohave money.Andthen"— handtoheart— "thentheymakeme gotoworkforthosemavros. Blackpeople! Oh my God!" Ithappenedlikethis. Onenight,mygrandfather gotinto bed withmy grandmothertofindthat shewasn'talone.Milton, eight yearsoldnow, was snuggled upagainstherside. Onherotherside wasZoe,who wasonlyfour.Lefty, exhaustedfromwork,looked down atthespectacleof thismenagerie.Helovedthesight ofhis sleeping children. Despitetheproblemsofhismarriage, hecould neverblame hissonordaughter forthem.Atthesametime,herarely sawthem. In ordertomakeenoughmoneyhehad tokeepthe speakeasyopen sixteen,sometimeseighteen,hours aday. He worked sevendays aweek.To supporthisfamilyhehadtobeexiledfrom them.In themornings whenhewasaroundthehouse,hischildren treatedhim like afamiliarrelative,anunclemaybe,butnot a father. And then there was the problemofthebar ladies.Servingdrinks dayandnight, in adimgrotto,hehadmany opportunities tomeet womendrinking withtheirfriendsorevenalone. Mygrandfather was thirtyyears oldin 1932.Hehadfilledoutand become aman;he was charming, friendly, alwayswelldressed—and stillinhis physical prime.Upstairs hiswife wastoofrightenedto havesex,but down in theZebra Room women gaveLefty bold, hot looks.Now, as my grandfathergazed down atthethreesleeping figuresinthebed,his headcontainedallthese things atonce:love forhischildren,love 136

• From Middlesex (2002)

  sitis in his shoulder. His clothes had gone out of style, so that he looked like an extra in a gangster movie. One day, appraising himself with severity in the bathroom mirror, Lefty realized that he had be- come one of diose older men who slicked their hair back in allegiance to an era no one could remember. Depressed by this fact, Lefty gath- ered up his books. He drove over to Seminole, intending to use the library, but when he got to the house he kept on going. With a wild look in his eyes, he headed instead for Rubsamen Medical Supply. Once you've visited the underworld, you never forget the way back. Forever after, you're able to spot the red light in the upstairs window or the champagne glass on the door that doesn't open until midnight. For years now, driving past Rubsamen Medical Supply, my grandfather had noticed the unchanging window display of her- nia truss, neck brace, and crutches. He'd seen the desperate, crazily hopeful faces of the Negro men and women who went in and out without buying a thing. My grandfather recognized that desperation and knew that now, in his forced retirement, this was the place for him. Roulette wheels spun behind Lefty's eyes as he sped toward the West Side. The clicking of backgammon dice filled his ears as he pressed the accelerator. His blood grew hot with an old excitement, a quickening of the pulse he hadn't felt since descending the mountain to explore the back streets of Bursa. He parked at the curb and hur- ried inside. He walked past the startled customers (who weren't used to seeing white people); he strode past the props of aspirin bottles, corn plasters, and laxatives, and went up to the pharmacist's window in the rear. "Can I help you?" the pharmacist asked. "Twenty-two," said Lefty. "You got it." Trying to reclaim the drama of his gambling days, my grandfather started playing the West Side numbers. He started small. Little bets of two or three dollars. After a few weeks, to recoup his losses, he went up to ten bucks. Every day he wagered a piece of the new prof- its from the restaurant. One day he won and so went double or noth- ing the next, and lost. Amid hot-water bottles and enema bags, he placed his bets. Surrounded by cough medicine and cold sore oint- ment, he started playing a "gig," meaning three numbers at once. As they had in Bursa, his pockets filled up with scraps of paper. He 205 wrote out lists of the numbers he played along with the dates, so as not to repeat any. He played Milton's birthday, Desdemona's birth- day, the date of Greek Independence minus the last digit, the year of the burning of Smyrna. Desdemona, finding the scraps in the wash, thought they had to do with the new restaurant. "My husband the millionaire," she said, dreaming of Florida retirement.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  leather couch in the den; they spread out on the bluebirds and red berries of the living room sofa; and a few times they even lay down on the heavy-duty kitchen carpeting, which had a pattern of bricks. The only place they didn't use was the basement because there was no telephone there. Their lovemaking was not passionate but slow and elegiac, carried out to the magisterial rhythms of suffering. They were not young anymore; their bodies were no longer beautiful. Tessie sometimes wept afterward. Milton kept his eyes squeezed shut. Their exertions resulted in no flowering of sensation, no re- lease, or only seldom. Then one day, three months after I was gone, the signals coming over my mother's spiritual umbilical cord stopped. Tessie was lying in bed when the faint purring or tingling in her navel ceased. She sat up. She put her hand to her belly. "I can't feel her anymore!" Tessie cried. "What?" "The cord's cut! Somebody cut the cord!" Milton tried to reason with Tessie, but it was no use. From that moment, my mother became convinced that something terrible had happened to me. And so: into the harmony of their suffering entered discord. While Milton fought to keep up a positive attitude, Tessie increas- ingly gave in to despair. They began to quarrel. Every now and then Milton's optimism would sway my mother and she would become cheerful for a day or two. She would tell herself that, after all, they didn't know anything definite. But such moods were temporary. When she was alone Tessie tried to feel something coming in over the umbilical cord, but there was nothing, not even a sign of distress. I had been missing four months by this time. It was now January 1975. My fifteenth birthday had passed without my being found. On a Sunday morning while Tessie was at church, praying for my return, the phone rang. Milton answered. "Hello?" At first there was no response. Milton could hear music in the background, a radio playing in another room maybe. Then a muffled voice spoke. "I bet you miss your daughter, Milton." "Who is this?" 493 "A daughter is a special thing." "Who is this?" Milton demanded again, and the line went dead. He didn't tell Tessie about the call. He suspected it was a crank. Or a disgruntied employee. The economy was in recession in 1975 and Milton had been forced to close a few franchises. The following Sunday, however, the phone rang again. This time Milton answered on the first ring. "Hello?" "Good morning, Milton. I have a question for you this morning. Would you like to know the question, Milton?" "You tell me who this is or I'm hanging up." "I doubt you'll do that, Milton. I'm the only chance you have to get your daughter back." Milton did a characteristic thing right then. He swallowed, squared his shoulders, and with a small nod prepared himself to meet whatever was coming.

• From The Greatest Controversies of Early Christian History (2013)

  79 as the messiah was supposed to do. Instead, Jesus was destroyed by his enemies—tortured and subjected to the most humiliating and painful death they could devise. Predictions in Scripture  Christians who believed that Jesus was the messiah and, therefore, that the messiah had to suffer turned to passages of scripture for support. They searched for texts in which a righteous person suffered and was vindicated by God. For example, Psalm 22 reads: “My God, my God why have you forsaken me? … For dogs are all around me; a company of evildoers encircles me. My hands and feet have shriveled. I can count all my bones. … They divide my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots.”  Even more commonly, Christians turned to Isaiah 53: “Surely he has borne our infi rmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and af fl icted. But he was wounded for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his wounds we are healed.”  Christians believe that Isaiah 53 settles the matter: Scripture does indeed predict the suffering messiah. But Jews argue that this passage does not relate to the messiah; indeed, the word “messiah” never occurs in the text. Moreover, Isaiah indicates that the suffering has taken place in the past and the vindication will take place in the future.  The word mashiach is not applied to the one who suffers in Isaiah. Rather than the “anointed one,” he is called the “servant of the Lord.” Further, Isaiah identifi es this suffering servant. o This portion of Isaiah, starting with Isaiah 40, was written about 40 years after the Babylonian Captivity. In this passage, Isaiah indicates that the people of Israel can now rejoice. They have already paid the price for their sins; God is satis fi ed and will now return them to the Promised Land and restore his good favor to them.

• From Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life (2005)

  76 Lecture 14: Dante, The Divine Comedy Dante, The Divine Comedy Lecture 14 La Commedia; The Comedy . That is what Dante called it. But we agree with all the generations that come afterwards and call it the Divine Comedy. S everal works discussed previously in this course have dealt with the immortality of the soul. It was discussed in Plato’s Phaedo, which was concerned with the last hours of the life of Socrates. The friends and students of Socrates judged him to be the best, the wisest, and the most just man of his time; however, he was executed by the Athenian democracy on charges of corruption and treason. During the life of Socrates, his goal was to search for truth, which led to his belief in the immortality of the soul. The Bhagavad Gita was written in approximately 500 B.C., more than 100 years before Plato’s Phaedo was written. According to this work, the goal of a wise man, that is, a seeker after truth, is to free the soul from the body to be joined in eternal bliss with God. The concept of the eternal soul is also developed in other works we have examined. In Homer, after death, the soul descends into the underworld, where it leads a miserable existence. As Achilles says to Odysseus, “Better to be a slave in the world above than to be the king of the underworld.” In the Old Testament, the immortality of the soul is of no consequence; life on earth is what matters. By the 6 th century B.C., the concept of the eternal soul had been transformed. In the Bacchae, the souls of those who believe in Dionysus never die but live on in eternal bliss. In Phaedo, Socrates agrees with the worshippers of Bacchus, or Dionysus, that few are chosen to receive immortal life. For the Bacchae, belief in God brings immortality and salvation. For Socrates, one’s own puri fi cation, that is, the gaining of wisdom, is necessary. After the time of Alexander the Great, belief in the immortality of the soul became more important in the Greek and Roman world. By 19 B.C., Vergil describes an underworld where the souls of the just go to join God and the souls of evildoers are punished.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  duce a person is the effort we expend on their behalf, showing how much we care, how much they are worth. Leaving things to chance is a recipe for disaster, and reveals that we do not take love and romance very seriously. It was the effort Casanova expended, the artfulness he applied to each affair that made him so devilishly seductive. Falling in love is a matter not of magic but of psychology. Once you understand your target's psychology, and strategize to suit it, you will be better able to cast a "magical" spell. A seducer sees love not as sacred but as warfare, where all is fair. Seducers are never self-absorbed. Their gaze is directed outward, not inward. When they meet someone their first move is to get inside that per- Preface • xxiii son's skin, to see the world through their eyes. The reasons for this are sev- The disaffection, neurosis, eral. First, self-absorption is a sign of insecurity; it is anti-seductive. Every- anguish and frustration encountered by one has insecurities, but seducers manage to ignore them, finding therapy psychoanalysis comes no for moments of self-doubt by being absorbed in the world. This gives them doubt from being unable to a buoyant spirit—we want to be around them. Second, getting into some- love or to be loved, from being unable to give or take one's skin, imagining what it is like to be them, helps the seducer gather pleasure, but the radical valuable information, learn what makes that person tick, what will make disenchantment comes from them lose their ability to think straight and fall into a trap. Armed with seduction and its failure. Only those who lie such information, they can provide focused and individualized attention—a completely outside rare commodity in a world in which most people see us only from behind seduction are ill, even if the screen of their own prejudices. Getting into the targets' skin is the first they remain fully capable of important tactical move in the war of penetration. loving and making love. Psychoanalysis believes it Seducers see themselves as providers of pleasure, like bees that gather treats the disorder of sex pollen from some flowers and deliver it to others. As children we mostly and desire, but in reality it devoted our lives to play and pleasure. Adults often have feelings of being is dealing with the disorders of seduction. . . . cut off from this paradise, of being weighed down by responsibilities. The The most serious seducer knows that people are waiting for pleasure—they never get enough deficiencies always concern of it from friends and lovers, and they cannot get it by themselves. A person charm and not pleasure, enchantment and not some who enters their lives offering adventure and romance cannot be resisted. vital or sexual satisfaction. Pleasure is a feeling of being taken past our limits, of being overwhelmed— —JEAN BAUDRILLARD, by another person, by an experience. People are dying to be overwhelmed, SEDUCTION

• From Middlesex (2002)

  For the first time ever, Lefty consulted Desdemona's dream book, in the hope of calculating a winning number on the abacus of his un- conscious. He became alert to the integers that appeared in his dreams. Many of the Negroes who frequented Rubsamen's Medical Supply noticed my grandfather's preoccupation with the dream book, and after he won for two weeks in a row, word spread. This led to the only contribution Greeks have ever made to African American culture (aside from the wearing of gold medallions) as the blacks of Detroit began to buy dream books themselves. The Atlantis Publish- ing Company translated the books into English and shipped them to major cities all over America. For a short time elderly colored women began to hold the same superstitions my grandmother did, believing, for instance, that a running rabbit meant you were coming into money or that a black bird on a telephone line augured that some- body was about to die. "Taking that money to the bank?" Milton asked, seeing his father empty the cash register. "Yes, to the bank." And Lefty did go to the bank. He went to withdraw money from his savings account, in order to continue his steady assault on all nine hundred and ninety-nine possible permuta- tions of a three-digit variable. Whenever he lost, he felt awful. He wanted to stop. He wanted to go home and confess to Desdemona. The only antidote to this feeling, however, was the prospect of win- ning the next day. It's possible that a hint of self-destructiveness played a part in my grandfather's numbers-playing. Full of survivor's guilt, he was surrendering himself to the random forces of the uni- verse, trying to punish himself for still being alive. But, mosdy, gam- bling just filled his empty days. I alone, from the private box of my primordial egg, saw what was going on. Milton was too busy running the diner to notice. Tessie was too busy taking care of Chapter Eleven to notice. Sourmelina might have noticed something, but she didn't make many appear- ances at our house during those years. In 1953, at a Theosophical So- 206 ciety meeting, Aunt Lina had met a woman named Mrs. Evelyn Wat- son. Mrs. Watson had been attracted to the Theosophical Society by the hope of contacting her deceased husband, but soon lost interest in communicating with the spirit world in favor of whispering with Sourmelina in the flesh. With shocking speed, Aunt Lina had quit her job at the florist's shop and moved down to the Southwest with Mrs. Watson. Every Christmas since, she sent my parents a gift box con- taining hot sauce, a flowering cactus, and a photograph of Mrs. Wat- son and herself in front of some national monument. (One surviving photo shows the couple in an Anasazi ceremonial cave at Bandelier, Mrs. Watson looking as wisely lined as Georgia O'Keeffe while Lina, in a tremendous sunhat, descends a ladder into a kiva.)

• From Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life (2005)

  108 Lecture 20: Vergil, Aeneid to leave Carthage. Aeneas tries to avoid a confrontation with Dido. Dido, however, fi nds out he is leaving and tries to stop him. Aeneas leaves with the Trojans, and Dido, in despair, takes her own life. Aeneas and his men sail on and ultimately land in Italy, on the shore of Cumae, the oldest Greek colony on the mainland of Italy. Aeneas visits the cave of the Sibyl to ask when the suffering will end. She says that he must fi rst go to the underworld itself; only there will he fi nd the way to Rome. She will lead him, and the Golden Bough will open the gates. She warns Aeneas that the way down is easy, but the return trip is more dif fi cult. Aeneas and the Sibyl descend to the River Styx, where the boatman Charon refuses to take them across because Aeneas is alive. When they show Charon the Golden Bough, he ferries them across. Aeneas sees Dido among the shadows of those who died for love, but she refuses to talk to him. Another section of the underworld contains a fi re-fi lled area for those who committed sins so terrible that they can never be redeemed. In a lovely fi eld, Aeneas sees souls waiting to return to the upper world. Aeneas meets his father, Anchises, who shows Aeneas where following his duty will lead him and what will result from his piety, his sense of honor, obligation, duty, and courage, embodied in the Roman notion of pietas. Anchises tells Aeneas that everything in the universe comes from God—the divine spirit, the divine soul, and divine reason mingled together. The divine spirit and mind of God have given to every creature a spark of the divine that is the soul and laid on each creature the obligation to live with justice. The soul is divine; however, the body encases it and weighs it down. Anchises tells Aeneas that at death, all people will be judged in the underworld for their actions. Those who have led pure lives join the stars and never again have a body; others, lesser sinners, must pay the appointed penalty for what they have done, then return for another life. Before returning to their next lives, they drink from the River of Forgetfulness so that they will not remember their previous lives. Anchises then shows Aeneas what God has for destined for him—a long line of men representing the glory of Rome, including his son, who will found a great city; Romulus, who will found Rome; and Roman warriors, such as Scipio, who will defeat Carthage. The line culminates with Augustus, who will bring peace to the world and extend the borders of the Roman Empire to the frontiers of the world.

• From Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life (2005)

  117 Western Front gave voice to those feelings that nothing was worth another war; paving the way for the appeasement policies in both Britain and France that, in fact, made another and even more horrible war inevitable. The message of Im Westen, nichts Neues, or All Quiet on the Western Front, is that war is a great fraud perpetrated against ordinary people by incompetent leaders. This is the greatest novel about war ever written. Erich Maria Remarque, a veteran of World War I, published the work in 1928. All Quiet on the Western Front tells the story of war and its costs through the eyes of an ordinary soldier, Paul Bäumer. In the preface, Remarque says that All Quiet on the Western Front is neither an indictment nor a confession. It intends simply to tell the story of a generation that was destroyed by war. The story begins in 1916 in the middle of the action, when Paul Bäumer has been in the German military for two years. Paul is happy. His company had 150 men, but their numbers had been reduced in battle to 80. Because rations for 150 men had been ordered, however, the survivors have enough to eat. The soldiers agree that they do not hate anyone in France and that they are fi ghting because their diplomats and politicians could not think of any other way to settle their differences. Paul and the men reminisce about their enlistment. Until the war started, Paul had been a schoolboy. Kantorek, his professor of classics and literature, had told the students in August 1914 that they were the iron youth of Germany and that their country was calling them. He exhorted Paul, as class leader, to enlist, and one by one, the students are killed in battle. Kemmerich [sic; should read “Joseph Behm”], a boy who initially did not want to enlist, was the fi rst one killed. Paul and his companions go to visit their wounded comrades in a hospital tent. They see one man who is worried about his boots but does not know that he has lost his leg. Paul realizes that his life has been reduced to the contentment of a full belly and enough cigarettes to get through a day. What he learned in school was All Quiet on the Western Front is a powerful novel fi lled with characters we care about and written in a forceful, compact German style, reminiscent of a German Hemingway.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  "Crawl back into the hole you came out of, freak." They left me there. It was still dark out when I found the public fountain by the aquar- ium and bathed in it. I didn't seem to be bleeding anywhere. My right eye was swollen shut. My side hurt if I took a deep breath. I had my dad's Samsonite with me. I had seventy-five cents to my name. I wished more than anything that I could call home. Instead, I called Bob Presto. He said he would be right over to pick me up. 477 HERITlflPHRODITUS fs no surprise that Luce's theory of gender identity was popular in the early seventies. Back then, as my first barber put it, everybody wanted to go unisex. The consensus was that personality was pri- marily determined by environment, each child a blank slate to be written on. My own medical story was only a reflection of what was happening psychologically to everyone in those years. Women were becoming more like men and men were becoming more like women. For a little while during the seventies it seemed that sexual difference might pass away. But then another thing happened. It was called evolutionary biology. Under its sway, the sexes were separated again, men into hunters and women into gatherers. Nur- ture no longer formed us; nature did. Impulses of hominids dating from 20,000 B.C. were still controlling us. And so today on televi- sion and in magazines you get the current simplifications. Why can't men communicate? (Because they had to be quiet on the hunt.) Why do women communicate so well? (Because they had to call out to one another where the fruits and berries were.) Why can men never find things around the house? (Because they have a narrow field of vision, useful in tracking prey.) Why can women find things so easily? (Because in protecting the nest they were used to scanning a wide field.) Why can't women parallel-park? (Because low testosterone inhibits spatial ability.) Why won't men ask for directions? (Because asking for directions is a sign of weakness, and hunters never show weakness.) This is where we are today. Men 478 and women, tired of being the same, want to be different again. Therefore, it's also no surprise that Dr. Luce's theory had come under attack by the 1990s. The child was no longer a blank slate; every newborn had been inscribed by genetics and evolution. My life exists at the center of this debate. I am, in a sense, its solution. At first when I disappeared, Dr. Luce was desperate, feeling that he had lost his greatest find. But later, possibly realizing why I had run away, he came to the conclusion that I was not evidence in support of his the- ory but against it. He hoped I would stay quiet. He published his ar- ticles about me and prayed that I would never show up to refute them.

• From Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life (2005)

  105 Vergil, Aeneid Lecture 20 The Aeneid is a great book in that it made literary history. It is a great book for its central theme, which is certainly how Rome was founded— the great task of founding Rome—but also its theme of duty. Do your duty, no matter what. T he previous three lectures have examined the concepts of duty, responsibility, and honor and their role in the way we lead our lives. In the 20 th century, Solzhenitsyn and Orwell portray the individual as having little ability to live his or her life in terms of duty, honor, and responsibility. In 1984, the individual counts for nothing. Whatever feelings of conscience an individual has can be destroyed by brainwashing. The state can replace feelings of conscience with whatever it wants. Solzhenitsyn says that God was what saved him among all those who perished without mention or remembrance in the Gulag Archipelago. All Quiet on the Western Front, 1984, and The Gulag Archipelago all deal with the desolation of war and its effects on the soul; these books also deal with labor camps and totalitarianism and their effects on the soul. The 20 th century was the greatest democratic age in history, but it included two of the most despotic regimes in history—Hitler’s Third Reich and Stalin’s Soviet Union, as well as the most destructive wars in history, World Wars I and II. Vergil’s Aeneid tells about another age of civil war, destruction, and widespread hopelessness from which the entire world was saved by one man who did his duty. That man was Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, known to the world as Augustus. In the Famous Romans course, the Aeneid was examined brie fl y for what it told of the policies of Augustus. The Aeneid was written by Vergil, the greatest poet of his day, who was born in 70 B.C. and came of age in the turmoil that preceded and followed the death of Julius Caesar. He had witnessed the Roman world brought to political and economic ruin by self-satis fi ed politicians who sought only their own best interests. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar ends with the deaths of Caesar, Brutus, and Cassius. Shakespeare’s audience would have been aware that these deaths had led to a new round of civil war.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  The head remains down. "Deck or cabin?" "Deck." "Fifteen hundred drachmas." "No, not cabin," Lefty says, "deck will be fine." "That is deck." "Fifteen hundred? I don't have fifteen hundred. It was five hun- dred yesterday." "That was yesterday." On September 8, 1922, General Hajienestis, in his cabin, sits up in bed, rubs first his right leg and then his left, raps his knuckles against them, and stands up. He goes above deck, walking with great dignity, much as he will later proceed to his death in Athens when he is exe- cuted for losing the war. On the quay, the Greek civil governor, Aristedes Sterghiades, boards a launch to take him out of the city. The crowd hoots and jeers, shaking fists. General Hajienestis takes the scene in calmly. The crowd obscures the waterfront, his favorite cafe. All he can see is the marquee of the movie theater at which, ten days earlier, he'd been to see Le Tango de laMort. Briefly— and possibly this is another halluci- nation—he smells the fresh jasmine of Bournabat. He breathes this in. The launch reaches the ship and Sterghiades, ashen-faced, climbs aboard. And then General Hajienestis gives his only military order of 53 the past few weeks: "Up anchors. Reverse engines. Full steam ahead." On shore, Lefty and Desdemona watched the Greek fleet leaving. The crowd surged toward the water, raised its four hundred thou- sand hands, and shouted. And then it fell silent. Not one mouth ut- tered a sound as the realization came home that their own country had deserted them, that Smyrna now had no government, that there was nothing between them and the advancing Turks. (And did I mention how in summer the streets of Smyrna were lined with baskets of rose petals? And how everyone in the city could speak French, Italian, Greek, Turkish, English, and Dutch? And did I tell you about the famous figs, brought in by camel caravan and dumped onto the ground, huge piles of pulpy fruit lying in the dirt, with dirty women steeping them in salt water and children squatting to defecate behind the clusters? Did I mention how the reek of the fig women mixed with pleasanter smells of almond trees, mimosa, lau- rel, and peach, and how everybody wore masks on Mardi Gras and had elaborate dinners on the decks of frigates? I want to mention these things because they all happened in that city that was no place exacriy, that was part of no country because it was all countries, and because now if you go there you'll see modern high-rises, amnesiac boulevards, teeming sweatshops, a NATO headquarters, and a sign that says Izmir . . .)