Disappointment

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 Summer Sisters (1998)

  a life apart from the two of us.” Vix felt like she’d slammed into a concrete wall. Her head throbbed with the titles of every insipid self-help article she’d ever read. “When Your Best Friend Betrays You!” “Are You a Victim of Your Circumstances?” “How to Handle Your Hurt.” “I’m doing you a real favor,” Caitlin said. “You understand, don’t you?” Understand? She’d willed herself not to cry, not to allow Caitlin to see her pain or disappointment. If Caitlin was afraid she’d cling to her at school, she didn’t have to worry. “I have another life, too,” she said, sounding as if she couldn’t have cared less. “I know you do,” Caitlin said. “And I’m not offended ... really.” After that Vix had to remind herself that Caitlin could have asked any of her Mountain Day friends to spend the summer, but she didn’t, did she? Sometimes, at school, Caitlin’s behavior annoyed Vix. She’d act as if she were some other person, some person Vix didn’t even know. Then Caitlin would look at her as if to say, You and I understand this is just a game but the others think it’s for real so don’t give me away ... okay? After a month at Mountain Day Vix got sick. A kidney infection. It burned when she peed. She had a high fever and a pain in her back. She needed antibiotics. She felt terrible, as bad as she’d felt in her entire life. Her mother blamed it on the new school. Just because it’s an expensive school doesn’t mean you don’t need paper on the toilet seat to protect yourself. She assured her mother she’d been careful. And the doctor swore this wasn’t something she’d caught from a toilet seat. But Tawny didn’t believe him. “Thank God your father’s job comes with health insurance,” Tawny said. “Do you know what these antibiotics cost?” She didn’t want to know. The Countess sent flowers with a card that read, Darling Child, Get well! It was signed with the names of her five dogs. Nathan offered Orlando. Orlando had magical powers. He would make her better. But if he didn’t and she died, he’d be really pissed. “You know what pissed means?” he asked her. “Yes,” she said, “I know.” His first taste of freedom had changed Nathan. “No more Mr. Nice Guy,” he’d announced. “Just because I’m in a chair doesn’t mean you

• From City of Night (1963)

  Later, Don—he became Don—would confess that he suspected there was no book. So he encouraged me to write other short pieces, which appeared in Evergreen Review; a lyrical evocation of El Paso and a Technicolor portrait of Los Angeles. Then Carey McWilliams, editor of The Nation, asked me to write for the magazine. For Evergreen Review and The Texas Quarterly, I translated into English short works by some young Mexican authors. The writing was yanking me from the streetworld, the “streets” pulled as powerfully. To connect both—and with sudden urgency—I wrote a story about Miss Destiny—a rebellious drag-queen who longed for “a fabulous wedding”—and about others in “our” world of bars, Pershing Square, streets. The story was very “literal”; I felt that to deliberately alter a “real” detail would violate the lives in that world. I sent the story to Don. He admired it a lot, but some in the growing staff of Grove Press, publishers of Evergreen Review, did not, and the story was turned down. That day, when I saw the people I had written about, Chuck the Cowboy, Skipper, Darling Dolly Dane, Miss Destiny, it seemed that not only my story but their lives and mine among them had been rejected: exiled exiles. Alone smoking grass on the roof of the building where I rented a room, I looked in the direction of Pershing Square just blocks away. Nearby church bells tolled their last for the night. Everything seemed frozen in darkness. As children, we had played a game called “statues”: Someone swung us round and round, released us unexpectedly, and we had to “freeze” in the position we fell (always—and this would assume importance for me later—adjusting for effect). Now the image occurred of a treacherous entrapping angel as the “spinner” in a life-game of “statues.” It was that imagery which was needed—and had been there behind the reality—to convey Miss Destiny’s crushed romanticism. I rewrote “The Fabulous Wedding of Miss Destiny,” imbuing it with a discovered “meaning.” I had begun my “ordering” of the chaotic reality I was experiencing and witnessing. I had been asked by one of its editors to contribute to an adventurous short-lived quarterly, Big Table, which had broken away from The Chicago Review in a dispute over censorship. Soon, Miss Destiny debuted there, among Creeley, Mailer, Burroughs.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Mrs Milne looked grey. She sank into a chair and put a hand to her throat. ‘Oh, Nance ...’ ‘Now don’t,’ I said, with an attempt at jollity, ‘don’t be like that; now just don‘t! I’m not so special a boarder, heaven knows; and you’ll soon find another nice girl to take my place.’ ‘But it ain’t me I’m thinking of so much,’ she said, ‘as Gracie. You have been so good with her, Nance; there’s not many as would understand her like you do; not many who would take the trouble over her little ways, the way you have.’ ‘But I shall come back and visit,’ I said reasonably. ‘And Grace -’ I swallowed as I said it, for I knew there would never be a welcome for Gracie in the stillness and richness and elegance of Diana’s villa - ‘Grace can come and visit me. It won’t be so bad.’ ‘Is it the money, Nance?’ she said then. ‘I know you ain’t got much -’ ‘No, of course it ain’t the money,’ I said. ‘Indeed -’ I had remembered the coin in my pocket: a pound, placed there by Diana’s own fingers. It more than covered the rent I owed, and the fortnight’s warning I should have given. I held it out to her; but when she only gazed bleakly at it and made no move to take it, I stepped awkwardly to the mantelpiece and laid it softly there. There was a silence, broken only by Mrs Milne’s sighs. I coughed. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I had better go and get my things together ...’ ‘What! You ain’t leaving us today? Not so soon?’ ‘I did promise my friend I would,’ I said, trying to suggest by my tone that my friend might have all the blame for it. ‘But you’ll stay for a bit of tea, at least?’ The thought of the dreary tea-party we would make, with Mrs Milne so ashen and disappointed, and Gracie in all probability in tears, or worse, filled me with dismay. I bit my lip. ‘I’d better not,’ I said. Mrs Milne straightened, and her mouth grew small. She shook her head slowly. ‘This will break my poor girl’s heart.’ There was a flintiness to her tone that was more frightening, more shaming, than her sadness had been; but I found myself, again, vaguely piqued. I had opened my mouth to utter some dreadful pleasantry when there came a scuffling at the door, and Grace herself appeared. ‘Tea’s hot!’ she sang out, all unsuspecting. I could not bear it. I gave her a smile, nodded blindly towards her mother, then made my escape. Her voice - ‘Oh, Ma, what’s up?’ - pursued me up the stairwell, followed by Mrs Milne’s murmurs.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  Will had a king-size bed, a gray comforter, down pillows. When he kneeled over her sporting a hot pink condom she thought, a penis dressed as Malibu Barbie, and she tried not to giggle. Maybe her mother was right. Maybe the rich were different. She was flattered by his attention and curious about his world but she couldn’t say she was in love with him. She found him arrogant and, at times, even boring. They spent a long rainy weekend at an expensive inn in the Berkshires. While he read Forbes, Barrons, the Financial Times, Vix found herself fantasizing about Bru. At Sunday brunch Will said, “Tell me about your family, Victoria. Aside from the fact that you’re from Santa Fe I don’t know anything about you.” “What you see is what you get, Will.” “But what does your family do there?” “My father manages a restaurant and my mother is the amanuensis to the Countess de Lowenhoff.” She was glad to finally have the chance to use Abby’s description of her mother’s job. “Restaurant ...” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Amanuensis. How charming. What about your grandparents?” “There are no grandparents.” She smiled at him. “Are you checking out my ancestry, Will?” “I’m interested in everything about you, Victoria.” “Well ... my sister’s on welfare and my brother enlisted on his eighteenth birthday. I went all through school on scholarships. I owe my benefactors everything. They invested in my future so I could hold my own with snobs like you.” Will laughed, then applauded. “Brilliant!” He leaned over and kissed her. “You should write novels, Victoria. With your imagination and flair ...” What was she doing with him? On the drive back to the city she decided to end it. “I’ve enjoyed our time together, Will ... but I don’t think we should continue to see each other.” She waited for his reaction, then realized he hadn’t heard a word she’d said. She leaned forward and snapped off the CD player. “What?” he asked. “It’s over, Will.”

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I had brought a towel with me from the change-room, and this she now caught up, and pressed to her face. Then she took her jacket off, and handed it to me, and unfastened the bow-tie at her throat. ‘It wasn’t so good,’ she said at last, ‘as I might have wished it. There was no — fizz, no sparkle.’ Mr Bliss gave a snort, then spread his hands. ‘My dear, your first night in the capital! A theatre larger than you have ever worked before! The crowd will come to know you, word will spread. You must be patient. Soon they will be buying tickets just for you!’ At that I saw the manager glance his way through narrowed eyes; but Kitty, at least, allowed herself to smile. ‘That’s better,’ said Mr Bliss then. ‘And now, if you’ll permit me, ladies, I believe a light little supper would be welcome. A light little supper - and, perhaps, a heavy large glass with some of that fizz in it, Miss Butler, that you seem so keen on.’ The restaurant to which he took us was a theatre people’s one, not very far away, and filled with gentlemen in fancy waistcoats just like himself, and with girls and boys like Kitty, with streaks of greasepaint on their cuffs and crumbs of spit-black in the corners of their eyes. He seemed to have a friend at every table, every one of whom saluted him as he passed by; but he did not pause to chat with them, only waved his hat in general greeting, then led us to an empty booth and called to a waiter for a recitation of the bill of fare. When this was done, and we had made our choices, he beckoned the man a little closer and murmured something to him; the waiter withdrew, and returned a minute later with a champagne bottle, which Mr Bliss proceeded ostentatiously to uncork. At that, there was a cheering at the other tables; and a woman began to sing, amidst much laughter and applause, that she wouldn’t call for sherry, and she wouldn’t call for beer, and she wouldn’t call for cham because she knew ’twould make her queer ... I thought of the postcard I would write when I got home: ‘I have had supper in a theatrical restaurant. Kitty made her debut at the Star and they are calling it a triumph...’

• From City of Night (1963)

  The cowboy first. A Prussian officer. A pirate. He poses each scene at the point of arrested violence. A whip in my hand as if about to unfurl at him behind the camera. Boots always prominently displayed. Fists clenched. Body lunging. Now he brings in one of the manikins—heterogeneously “dressed up”—studs, straps, chains.... Neil executes—crouched, contorted, sweating—“to get the feel of it,” he explained—the cringing positions that the dummy will ultimately assume, menaced, for the pictures. The camera keeps clicking as Neil vacillates from acolyte to High Priest. “Now I’ll improvise!” he exclaimed joyously. When he was ready to take the picture, he announced triumphantly: “An Executioner!” And Im standing before the camera in black tights, boots to the hips, a leather vest, a black braided whip in a swirl about the boots. Im surrounded by the shield, the lance, the metal sun, and a long medieval axe propped against the wall. The shutter closes.... Neil rushed toward me, his eyes begging, and in a terrifying, shaken voice he pleaded with me to execute with the whip the movement which the camera had just frozen. But I didnt. He was disappointed and nervous. Sulkingly, he went about preparing lunch. Then something strange happened: As he stood over the stove, dressed as he was in the Western clothes—and an apron over all of that—he turned to me (dressed now in my own clothes—although he had insisted I leave the “Executioner’s” costume on), and he asked me this: “Tell me truthfully: Do you find me effeminate?” I studied him as he stood by the stove. That apron over the costume—... He was holding the spoon limply in the air. Realizing that, he grasped it tightly. Seeing the look he was throwing at me, exhorting me to say what he wanted to hear, I said: “Of course not, Neil.” “Thank you very much,” he said almost humbly. Shrugging his shoulders, dipping vigorously into whatever he was cooking, he laughed goodhumoredly, looking very much like that ebullient, beer-drinking Bavarian. “One time,” he said, “I was walking along Market Street—oh, I was really Dressed Up—a cowboy! And a carload of teenage boys drove by and shouted: ‘Hi Tex!’” I realized the telling of this story amounted to presenting his credentials for “realness.” Yes, having seen him in the extreme clothes, I cant help thinking that what hes just presented as proof of his Realness had been, instead, more of a derisively hurled insult.... He was waiting for me to comment on the story. When I want, he said: “I know I look very Real”—but theres a questioning tone in his voice, as there had been, I remember, in Miss Destiny’s when she too had proclaimed her “realness.” We were hardly through lunch when I heard the obstreperous roar of a motorcycle outside, then an insistent knock at the door.

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

  Let someone do this with your manuscripts, help you get rid of the twists in the plot that are never going to work no matter how hard you try or how many passes you make at it. If I tell thirty students to write me a story about two married people who are considering divorce until something unforeseen happens, they’ll give me thirty wildly different stories, because they will have thirty different personal histories and sensibilities. One person is going to write an epiphany story, where the wife sees some wild geese pass in the night, lit by the moon, and suddenly decides to give her husband another chance. Another person is going to write about the moment when the husband, on his morning run, first comes to believe his marriage is worth saving and then is jogging home to share the good news with his wife when he gets hit by a student driver. Another will set the story in Hollywood, because he’s been reading Nathanael West recently, and it will be jewellike in its weirdness. Each writer will come up with his or her own description of what love and life are all about. Some of these descriptions will be cynical, some rueful, some full of hope. Some will be slow and interior, some will crackle with drama. Drama is the way of holding the reader’s attention. The basic formula for drama is setup, buildup, payoff—just like a joke. The setup tells us what the game is. The buildup is where you put in all the moves, the forward motion, where you get all the meat off the turkey. The payoff answers the question, Why are we here anyway? What is it that you’ve been trying to give? Drama must move forward and upward, or the seats on which the audience is sitting will become very hard and uncomfortable. So, in fact, will the audience. And eventually the audience will become impatient, disappointed, and unhappy. There must be movement. You need to be moving your characters forward, even if they only go slowly. Imagine moving them across a lily pond. If each lily pad is beautifully, carefully written, the reader will stay with you as you move toward the other side of the pond, needing only the barest of connections—such as rhythm, tone, or mood. Now, you may have to use effects and tricks to move things along and to help us remember who each character is—give him a cigar, give her piggy little alcoholic eyes—but if you’re faking it, it will show. If you knowingly fake something to get the plot to move forward—if, for instance, you have taken a character you don’t understand and given her feelings you don’t really feel because you want the plot to work—you probably won’t get away with it. The reader will stop trusting you and will possibly even become bitter and resentful.

• From St. Augustine's Confessions (2004)

  Questions to Consider: 1. What is the significance of Augustine’s move from Carthage to Italy, both literally and metaphorically? 2. How does Augustine’s disappointment with Faustus’s response to his questions further his quest for wisdom? 3. How good a speaker is Ambrose, and what does Augustine learn about rhetoric from listening to Ambrose’s sermons? ©2004 The Teaching Company. 35 Lecture Twelve Book VI—A New Look at Christianity Scope: As Augustine continues to bemoan people’s inability to find those things that last forever, he also takes a fresh look at the Bible and Christianity. While doing this, he considers the idea of faith, something he had previously regarded as an insufficient basis for accepting anything. He wanted the certitude he found in mathematics as the basis for anything he would commit himself to. However, he realized that everyone has faith in something because no one has sufficient knowledge. It is not a question of “Do you have faith?” but of “What do you put your faith in?” As he is moving toward Christianity, Augustine “interrupts” the narrative to tell the readers about a new friend, Alypius, and how he had gone astray with a love of gladiatorial violence while in Rome. This seeming digression is vitally important, because Alypius will convert to Christianity just minutes after Augustine, and they will be baptized together. Again, Augustine asks readers to consider the nature and value of friendship. Outline I. Augustine’s movement toward Christianity in Book VI is intertwined with three important people in his life: Monica, his mother; Ambrose, bishop of Milan; and a friend named Alypius. II. In this book, Augustine takes a fresh look at Christianity by reading the Bible in a new way and by examining carefully, for the first time, the rationality of believing on faith. III. At the beginning of the book, Monica is more confident about the conversion of Augustine than Augustine himself is. A. Augustine is, thus, able to narrate his own doubts, yet give readers clues to the ultimate outcome of the story he is telling. B. He also tells us some interesting details of his mother’s life, preparing us for the longer account that he will give us in Book IX. ©2004 The Teaching Company. 36

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  the oil that had risen to the surface until the paint, which was the color of buttercups, had turned creamy. I dipped in a fat brush and spread the paint along the old clapboard siding in long, smooth strokes. It went on bright and glossy and looked even better than I had hoped. I started on the far side of the porch, around the door that went into the kitchen. In a few hours, I had covered everything that could be reached from the porch. Parts of the front were still unpainted, and so were the sides, but I had used less than a quarter of the paint. If everyone else helped, we could paint all the areas I couldn’t reach, and in no time we would have a cheerful yellow house. But neither Mom nor Dad nor Brian nor Lori nor Maureen was impressed. “So part of the front of the house is yellow now,” Lori said. “That’s really going to turn things around for us.” I was going to have to finish the job myself. I tried to make a ladder from bits of scrap wood, but it kept collapsing whenever I put my weight on it. I was still trying to build a sturdy ladder when, during a cold snap a few days later, my can of paint froze solid. When it got warm enough for the paint to thaw, I opened the can. During the freeze, the chemicals had separated and the once-smooth liquid was as lumpy and runny as curdled milk. I stirred it as hard as I could and kept stirring even after I knew the paint was ruined, because I also knew that we’d never get more, and instead of a freshly painted yellow house, or even a dingy gray one, we now had a weird-looking half-finished patch job—one that announced to the world that the people inside the house wanted to fix it up but lacked the gumption to get the work done.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  The Tug, Dad said, had the highest level of fecal bacteria of any river in North America. “What’s fecal?” I asked. Dad watched the river. “Shit,” he said. Dad led us along the main road through town. It was narrow, with old brick buildings crowding in close on both sides. The stores, the signs, the sidewalks, the cars were all covered with a film of black coal dust, giving the town an almost monochromatic look, like an old hand-tinted photograph. Welch was shabby and worn out, but you could tell it had once been a place on its way up. On a hill stood a grand limestone courthouse with a big clock tower. Across from it was a handsome bank with arched windows and a wrought-iron door. You could also tell that the people of Welch were still trying to maintain some pride of place. A sign near the town’s only stoplight announced that Welch was the county seat of McDowell County and that for years, more coal had been mined in McDowell County than any comparable spot in the world. Next to it, another sign boasted that Welch had the largest outdoor municipal parking lot in North America. But the cheerful advertisements painted on the sides of buildings like the Tic Toc diner and the Pocahontas movie theater were faded and nearly illegible. Dad said bad times had come in the fifties. They hit hard and stayed. President John F. Kennedy had come to Welch not long after he was elected and personally handed out the nation’s first food stamps here on McDowell Street, to prove his point that—though ordinary Americans might find it hard to believe—starvation-level poverty existed right in their own country. The road through Welch, Dad told us, led only farther up into the wet, forbidding mountains and on to other dying coal towns. Few strangers passed through Welch these days, and almost all who did came to inflict one form of misery or another—to lay off workers, to shut down a mine, to foreclose on someone’s house, to compete for the rare job opening. The townspeople didn’t care much for outsiders. The streets were mostly silent and deserted that morning, but every now and then we’d pass a woman wearing curlers or a group of men in T-shirts with motor-oil decals, loitering in a doorway. I tried to catch their eyes, to give them a nod and a smile to let them know we had only good intentions, but they never nodded or spoke a word or even glanced our way. As soon as we passed, however, I could feel eyes following us up the street. Dad had brought Mom to Welch for a brief visit fifteen years earlier, right after they were married. “Gosh, things have gone downhill a little bit since we were here last,” she said. Dad gave a short snort of a laugh. He looked at her like he was about to say What the hell did I tell you?

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  THE NEXT EVENING Dad disappeared. After a couple of days, he wanted me to go out with him again to some bar, but I said no. Dad got ticked off and said that if I wasn’t going to team up with him, the least I could do was stake him some pool- shooting money. I found myself forking over a twenty, and then another in a few days. Mom had told me to expect a check in early July for the lease on her Texas land. She also warned me that Dad would try to get his hands on it. Dad actually waited at the foot of the hill for the mailman and took it from him on the day it arrived, but when the mailman told me what had happened, I ran down Little Hobart Street and caught Dad before he got into town. I told him Mom had wanted me to hide the check until she returned. “Let’s hide it together,” Dad said and suggested we stash it in the 1933 World Book Encyclopedia Mom got free from the library—under “currency.” The next day when I went to rehide the check, it was gone. Dad swore he had no idea what happened to it. I knew he was lying, but I also knew if I accused him, he’d deny it and there’d be a loud yelling match that wouldn’t do me any good. For the first time, I had a clear idea of what Mom was up against. Being a strong woman was harder than I had thought. Mom still had more than a month in Charleston; we were about to run out of grocery money; and my babysitting income wasn’t making up the difference. I had seen a help-wanted sign in the window of a jewelry store on McDowell Street called Becker’s Jewel Box. I put on a lot of makeup, my best dress—it was purple, with tiny white dots and a sash that tied in the back—and a pair of Mom’s high heels, since we wore the same size. Then I walked around the mountain to apply for the job. I pushed open the door, jangling the bells hanging overhead. Becker’s Jewel Box was a fancy store, the kind of place I never had occasion to go into, with a humming air conditioner and buzzing fluorescent lights. Locked glass display cases held rings and necklaces and brooches, and a few guitars and banjos hung on the pine-board- paneled walls to diversify the merchandise. Mr. Becker was leaning on the counter

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  DAD STAYED IN THE hospital for six weeks. By then he’d not only beaten back the TB, he’d been sober longer than any time since the Phoenix detox. He knew that if he went back to the streets, he’d start drinking again. One of the hospital administrators got him a job as a maintenance man at an upstate resort, room and board included. He tried to talk Mom into going with him, but she flatly refused. “Upstate’s the sticks,” she said. So Dad went alone. He called me from time to time, and it sounded like he’d put together a life that worked for him. He had a one-room apartment over a garage, enjoyed doing the repairs and upkeep on the old lodge, loved being back within walking distance of untamed country, and was staying sober. Dad worked at the resort through the summer and into the fall. As it began to turn cold again, Mom called him and mentioned how much easier it was for two people to stay warm during the winter, and how much Tinkle the dog missed him. In November, after the first hard frost, I got a call from Brian, who said that Mom had succeeded in persuading Dad to quit his job and return to the city. “Do you think he’ll stay sober?” I asked. “He’s already back on the booze,” Brian said. A few weeks after Dad got back, I saw him at Lori’s. He was sitting on the sofa with an arm around Mom and a pint bottle in his hand. He laughed. “This crazy-ass mother of yours, can’t live with her, can’t live without her. And damned if she doesn’t feel the same about me.” • • • All of us kids had our own lives by then. I was in college, Lori had become an illustrator at a comic-book company, Maureen lived with Lori and went to high school, and Brian, who had wanted to be a cop ever since he’d had to call a policeman to our house in Phoenix to break up a fight between Mom and Dad, had become a warehouse foreman and was serving on the auxiliary force until he was old enough to take the police department’s entrance exam. Mom suggested we all celebrate Christmas at Lori’s apartment. I bought Mom an antique silver cross, but finding a

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  Uncle Jim’s land. We have to keep it in the family.” “You mean you own land worth a million dollars?” I was thunderstruck. All those years in Welch with no food, no coal, no plumbing, and Mom had been sitting on land worth a million dollars? Had all those years, as well as Mom and Dad’s time on the street—not to mention their current life in an abandoned tenement—been a caprice inflicted on us by Mom? Could she have solved our financial problems by selling this land she never even saw? But she avoided my questions, and it became clear that to Mom, holding on to land was not so much an investment strategy as it was an article of faith, a revealed truth as deeply felt and incontestable to her as Catholicism. And for the life of me, I could not get her to tell me how much the land was worth. “I told you I don’t know,” she said. “Then tell me how many acres it is, and where exactly it is, and I’ll find out how much an acre of land is going for in that area.” I wasn’t interested in her money; I just wanted to know—needed to know—the answer to my question: How much was that freaking land worth? Maybe she truly didn’t know. Maybe she was afraid to find out. Maybe she was afraid of what we’d all think if we knew. But instead of answering me, she kept repeating that it was important to keep Uncle Jim’s land—land that had belonged to her father and his father and his father before that—in the family. “Mom, I can’t ask Eric for a million dollars.” “Jeannette, I haven’t asked you for a lot of favors, but I’m asking you for one now. I wouldn’t if it wasn’t important. But this is important.” I told Mom I didn’t think Eric would lend me a million dollars to buy some land in Texas, and even if he would, I wouldn’t borrow it from him. “It’s too much money,” I said. “What would I do with the land?” “Keep it in the family.” “I can’t believe you’re asking me this,” I said. “I’ve never even seen that land.” “Jeannette,” Mom said when she had accepted the fact that she would not get her way, “I’m deeply disappointed in you.”

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  A writer, who was a celebrity in Paris, had entered her shop one day. He was not looking for a hat. He asked if she sold luminous flowers that he had heard about, flowers which shone in the dark. He wanted them, he said, for a woman who shone in the dark. He could swear that when he took her to the theatre and she sat back in the dark loges in her evening dress, her skin was as luminous as the finest of sea shells, with a pale pink glow to it. And he wanted these flowers for her to wear in her hair. Mathilde did not have them. But as soon as the man left she went to look at herself in the mirror. This was the kind of feeling she wanted to inspire. Could she? Her glow was not of that nature. She was much more like fire than light. Her eyes were ardent, violet in color. Her hair was dyed blond but it shed a copper shadow around her. Her skin was copper-toned, too, firm and not at all transparent. Her body filled her dresses tightly, richly. She did not wear a corset, but her body had the shape of the women who did. She arched so as to throw the breasts forward and the buttocks high. The man had come back. But this time he was not asking for anything to buy. He stood looking at her, his long finely carved face smiling, his elegant gestures making a ritual out of lighting a cigarette, and said, “This time I came back just to see you.” Mathilde’s heart beat so swiftly that she felt as if this were the moment she had expected for years. She almost stood up on her toes to hear the rest of his words. She felt as if she were the luminous woman sitting back in the dark box receiving the unusual flowers. But what the polished gray-haired writer said in his aristocratic voice was, “As soon as I saw you, I was stiff in my pants.” The crudity of the words was like an insult. She reddened and struck at him. This scene was repeated on several occasions. Mathilde found that when she appeared, men were usually speechless, deprived of all inclination for romantic courtship. Such words as these fell from them each time at the mere sight of her. Her effect was so direct that all they could express was their physical disturbance. Instead of accepting this as a tribute, she resented it. Now she was in the cabin of the smooth Spaniard, Dalvedo. Dalvedo was peeling some cactus figs for her, and talking. Mathilde was regaining confidence. She sat on the arm of a chair in her red velvet evening dress.

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

  This is not verbatim. I was a little edgy for the next six weeks, as you can imagine. I had lots and lots of drinks every night, and told lots of strangers at the bar about how my dad had died and I’d written this book about it, and how the early reviewers had criticized it, and then I’d start to cry and need a few more drinks, and then I’d end up telling them about this great dog we’d had named Llewelyn who had to be put to sleep when I was twelve, which still made me so sad even to think about, I’d tell my audience, that it was all I could do not to go into the rest room and blow my brains out. Then the book came out. I got some terrific reviews in important places, and a few bad ones. There were a few book-signing parties, a few interviews, and a number of important people claimed to love it. But overall it seemed that I was not in fact going to be taking early retirement. I had secretly believed that trumpets would blare, major reviewers would proclaim that not since Moby Dick had an American novel so captured life in all of its dizzying complexity. And this is what I thought when my second book came out, and my third, and my fourth, and my fifth. And each time I was wrong. But I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do—the actual act of writing—turns out to be the best part. It’s like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward. I’ve managed to get some work done nearly every day of my adult life, without impressive financial success. Yet I would do it all over again in a hot second, mistakes and doldrums and breakdowns and all. Sometimes I could not tell you exactly why, especially when it feels pointless and pitiful, like Sisyphus with cash-flow problems.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Although he was of gentle birth, well mannered and well groomed, he happened to see a low-born kite sailing by. On that instant the sweet gentleman became infatuated with a scavenger bird. Can you believe it? Of course he forgot all about his love for me. He broke all his oaths and promises. So my so-called lover has fallen for a kite. And I am left behind without hope!’ At that the falcon let out a scream, and fainted dead away in the lap of Canacee. The princess and her entourage were greatly moved by the falcon’s plight, but they did not know how to comfort her. Canacee decided to take the bird home, cradling her in her lap, and then she began to wrap up the self-inflicted wounds with bandages and plasters. The princess also took rare herbs from the garden of the palace, making ointments and other medicines from them; she tried everything in her power to heal the hawk. She even made a pen of wickerwork by the side of her bed, draped in blue velvet cloths, where the bird might rest. Blue, of course, is the colour of faithfulness. The outside of this cage was painted green, and on it were depicted the images of all the false birds of the world - the owls, the tercelets, the lecherous sparrows. There were also placed here, in derision, the portraits of those little chatterers known as magpies. How they scold and chide! So I will leave Canacee in the company of her ailing hawk. I will say no more about her magic ring until a later occasion, when I will tell you how the poor bird regained her repentant lover. The old books relate how this reunion was accomplished by the son of Genghis Khan, Cambalus. I think I have mentioned him before. Anyway, he was the one who brought the birds together. Enough of that. I now want to proceed to tales of battle and adventure. I have many marvels to impart to you. I will tell you the history of Genghis Khan, the great conqueror. Then I will speak of Algarsif, the oldest son of the mighty warrior, who won his wife by magical means. He would have been in great danger, if he had not been saved by that wondrous horse of brass. Then I will narrate the adventures of another warrior who fought the two brothers for the hand of their sister, Canacee. There is so much to tell you! I will begin again where I left off. PART THREE

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

  You may want to tape this to the wall near your desk. The banana peel has appeared almost every time I’ve scored a triumph, or what the world would regard as a triumph. It’s God as coyote prankster. Just last week, for instance, I was participating in this illustrious literary event in San Francisco for a national charity. I had waited for years to be included in this event, each year watching six other writers be selected. I had tried to be a good sport about it, God knows I had. I understood that the organizers needed to invite big-time, nationally known writers so as to draw the biggest possible crowd; this made perfect sense. But year after year I felt dejected each time I was not included. Finally this year I was asked, and my joy was boundless. Now, I’m not stupid: I knew it was a nice big plate of cocaine for my ego. I knew it was another golden calf. But still my baby heart soared like an eagle. However. There was this one tiny little problem. I was the last author to be asked and to commit, so I wasn’t on the initial press release that went out three months ago. The publicity chairwoman sent out a second release after I came on board. But when the first big prominent mention was made in the paper a few weeks ago, my name wasn’t included. I was miffed, since it was the most important column in the paper, but I am old and tough and can handle this sort of disappointment. Next there was a paragraph about the event in the book section, and once again I was not included. This time the publicity chairwoman called, upset and so full of apologies that she managed to mollify me. Then there was a big mention in the society pages, and guess what? It felt like seventh grade all over again. The publicity chairwoman called again and was so upset that I thought she might actually drink a big glass of Drano right there on the phone. I felt suddenly so teary and premenstrual and left out that I couldn’t even talk about it. Hours later, I remembered that if I wasn’t enough before being asked to participate in this prestigious event, then participating wasn’t going to make me enough. Being enough was going to have to be an inside job. Also, about an hour after I had slogged through to this conclusion, my mouth dropped open. I had somehow forgotten that it was a charity event!

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

  Somehow you get the time to pass, and then your pub date arrives. There is something mythic about the date of publication, and you actually come to believe that on this one particular morning you will wake up to a phone ringing off the hook and your publisher will be so excited that they will have hired the Blue Angels precision flying team to buzz your squalid little hovel, which you will be moving out of as soon as sales of the book really take off. Or at least they will remember to send flowers. I remember one year my friend Carpenter and I had books out on the same day. We talked about it all summer. We each pretended to have modest expectations. I had modest expectations for his book; he had modest expectations for mine. The week before, we talked almost every morning about how excited we were and what a long time we had waited, and how it was just like being a little kid waiting for Christmas Eve. Finally the big day arrived and I woke up happy, embarrassed in advance by all the praise and attention that would be forthcoming. I made coffee and practiced digging my toe in the dirt, and called Pammy and a few friends to let them congratulate me. Then I waited for the phone to ring. The phone did not know its part. It sat there silent as death with a head cold. By noon the noise of it not ringing began to wear badly on my nerves. Luckily, though, by noon it was time for the first beer of the day. I sat by the phone like a loyal dog, waiting for it to ring. Finally, finally it rang at four. I picked up the phone and heard Carpenter laughing hysterically, like some serial killer, and then I became hysterical, and eventually we both had to be sedated. He sent me flowers, and before I knew he had done so, I sent him flowers, too. The ones he sent me were so beautiful, roses and irises mostly. That is often pretty much what it is like, except for the part about the roses and irises. I tell you, if what you have in mind is fame and fortune, publication is going to drive you crazy. If you are lucky, you will get a few reviews, some good, some bad, some indifferent. Don’t even get me started on the places where one is neglected.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Más tarde esa noche, me recuesto en el sofá con el brazo metido detrás de la cabeza y una cerveza en la mano, mirando la televisión. He estado en un lúcido aturdimiento desde hace un rato, mientras un programa se ha convertido en cinco. Dejo mi cerveza y levanto el control remoto, finalmente apagando el HGTV y parpadeando, creo que por primera vez en tres horas. —Tiene razón —murmuro—. Están malditamente obsesionados con la placa para salpicaduras. En un momento de curiosidad, había sintonizado el canal después de llegar a casa de Home Depot y es como si me hubiera desmayado después de eso, solo despertando momentáneamente para hacer un sándwich e intentar hablar con Cole. Sin embargo, ahora salió de nuevo, dándose una ducha rápida y saliendo rápidamente después de llegar a casa del trabajo y darse cuenta que Jordan no estaba aquí. Pensé que podríamos ir a cenar tarde o algo así, pero al parecer, sus planes no se podían cancelar de nuevo. O tiene miedo de estar a solas conmigo. No es como si quisiera pelear, tampoco. Incluso simplemente ver juntos un programa en la televisión estaría bien. Quiero decir, hemos logrado no matarnos el uno al otro en el pasado. Solía caerle bien. ¿Y de dónde saca todo este dinero para salir de fiesta? Tiene que estarse gastando todo lo que está ganando. No es que tenga prisa por hacer que ahorre dinero y se vaya, pero creo que ahora puedo juzgarme tan duramente como juzgué a Jordan. Cuanto más haces por alguien, menos hacen por sí mismos. Soy tan culpable como ella. Cole no crecerá hasta que se vea obligado a hacerlo. Bebo el resto de mi cerveza y me pongo de pie, llevando la botella vacía a la cocina. Mi teléfono suena en mi bolsillo y lo saco. Dutch. —Hola —respondo, arrojando la botella a la basura. —Hola. Deberías venir a Grounders ahora mismo. ¿Eh? —Como en este momento —agrega antes que tenga la oportunidad de decir algo.

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

  When someone reliable gives you this kind of feedback, you now have some true sense of your work’s effect on people, and you may now know how to approach your final draft. If you are getting ready to send your work to a potential agent for the first time, you don’t want to risk burning that bridge by sending something that’s just not ready. You really must get your piece or book just right, as right as you can. Sometimes it is just a matter of fine-tuning, or maybe one whole character needs to be rethought. Sometimes the friend will love the feel of the writing, the raw material, and yet feel that it is a million miles from being done. This can be deeply disappointing, but again, better that your spouse or friend tell you this than an agent or an editor. I heard Marianne Williamson say once that when you ask God into your life, you think he or she is going to come into your psychic house, look around, and see that you just need a new floor or better furniture and that everything needs just a little cleaning—and so you go along for the first six months thinking how nice life is now that God is there. Then you look out the window one day and see that there’s a wrecking ball outside. It turns out that God actually thinks your whole foundation is shot and you’re going to have to start over from scratch. This is exactly what it can be like to give, say, a novel to someone else to read. This person can love it and still find it a total mess, in need of a great deal of work, of even a new foundation. So how do I find one of these partners? my students ask. The same way you find a number of people for a writing group. The only difference is that in this case, you’re looking for one partner instead of several. So if you are in a class, look around, see if there’s someone whose work you’ve admired, who seems to be at about the same level as you. Then you can ask him or her if he or she wants to meet for a cup of coffee and see if you can work with each other. It’s like asking for a date, so while you are doing this, you will probably be rolfed by all your most heinous memories of seventh and eighth grade. If the person says no, it’s good to wait until you get inside your car before you fall apart completely. Then you can rend your clothes and keen and do a primal scream. Of course, you probably want to be sure that the person hasn’t followed you out to your car.