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

  The real strength of Odum’s work came from the amount of information he amassed. He was able to prove that the South had surrendered ninety-seven million acres to erosion (an area larger than the two Carolinas and Georgia); it had squandered the chances of millions of people by tolerating poverty and illiteracy; and it had ignored human potential by refusing to provide technological training, or even basic services, to its people. The overwhelming power of Odum’s data undercut (what Odum himself called) Gone with the Wind nostalgia—the collective self-image elite southerners had cultivated. Here was one southerner who wanted to see some “sincere, courageous telling of the truth about the South.” He was “tired of the defense complex,” he said, and the unending ridicule, complacency, ignorance, and, above all, the poverty. The greatest virtue of Southern Regions was its quantitative weight and its objective outlook. As the southern historian Broadus Mitchell insisted at the same time, “The South does not need defense, but exposition.” 47 The primary target of Odum’s research was sectionalism’s destructive legacy. Mitchell interpreted Odum in such a way as to say that there was no longer a justification for using Yankee oppression for the South’s refusal to change. To Odum, there were “many Souths”; what was needed now was a regional vision. As a cattle breeder, he compared the sectional dictate to “cultural inbreeding,” and to the “stagnation” that came from resisting the “cross-fertilization of ideas” and by refusing to engage with those beyond one’s state. When he looked at the Tennessee Valley Authority, he saw unmistakably the most successful of New Deal projects in regional planning; the TVA had harnessed the power of seven monumental dams, coordinating among seven states and employing nearly ten thousand people in an area that previously had suffered under tremendous poverty. Odum said he hoped the TVA “would constitute the 49th State.” The straitjacket of states’ rights had suffocated southern progress long enough. 48 Odum was right about the TVA. It was a shining example of positive planning. Its dams alone were marvels of engineering, elegant and modern architectural wonders. Intelligent management resulted in soil conservation; flood, malaria, and pollution control; reforestation; and improved fertilization— all sensible land-use strategies. The TVA led to well-designed communities that supported libraries and health and recreation facilities—everything that Wilson had prescribed for the homestead villages. There were training centers in agriculture, marketing, automotive and electrical repair, mechanical work and metalwork; there were classes in engineering and mathematics at nearby

• From The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature (2000)

  I have already argued that effective verbal courtship is a reliable fitness indicator precisely because it is costly and difficult. Animals evolve to allocate their energies efficiently. If it took a million words to establish a sexual relationship with you, your boyfriend was apparently willing to absorb those costs, just as his male ancestors were. But if it takes only twenty words a day to maintain exclusive sexual access to you, why should he bother uttering more? His motivational system has evolved to deploy his courtship effort where it makes a difference to his reproductive success—mainly by focusing it where it improves his rate of sexual intercourse. Men apparently did not evolve from male ancestors who squandered high levels of verbal courtship effort on already-established relationships. Of course, if an established partner suspends sexual relations, or threatens to have an affair, evolution would favor motivations that produce a temporary resurgence of verbal courtship until the danger has passed. Frustratingly, a woman may find that the greater the sexual commitment she displays the less her man speaks. This analysis may sound heartlessly unromantic, but evolution is heartlessly unromantic. It is stingy with courtship effort, stacking it heavily where it does the most good, and sprinkling it very lightly elsewhere. Human courtship, like courtship in other animals, has a typical time-course. Courtship effort is low when first assessing a sexual prospect, increases rapidly if the prospect reciprocates one’s interest, peaks when the prospect is deciding whether to copulate, and declines once a long-term relationship is established. We all enjoy a desired partner besieging us with ardent, witty, energetic courtship. That enjoyment is the subjective manifestation of the mate preferences that shaped human language in the first place. As with any evolved preference, we may desire more than we can realistically get. Evolution’s job is to motivate us, not to satisfy us. So, when women universally complain about their slothfully mute boyfriends, we learn two things. First, women have a universal desire to enjoy receiving high levels of verbal courtship effort. Second, high levels of verbal courtship effort are so costly that men have evolved to produce them only when they are necessary for initiating or reviving sexual relationships. Far from undermining the courtship hypothesis for language evolution, this phenomenon provides two key pieces of evidence that support it. The Scheherazade StrategyBecause verbal courtship is mutual, we might expect men to feel equally frustrated by women lapsing into habitual silence as a relationship ages. This seems less often lamented, either because men develop less hunger for conversation, or because women maintain their verbal courtship effort at a higher pitch for longer.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  His apparent inconsistency is due to a change of the times rather than to a change of his conviction. Like Erasmus, he remained a humanist, who hoped for a reformation from a revival of letters rather than theology and religion, and therefore hailed the beginning, but lamented the progress, of the Lutheran movement.563 Broken by disease, affliction, and disappointment, he died in the year of the Augsburg Confession, Dec. 22, 1530, praying for the prosperity of the fatherland and the peace of the church. He left unfinished an edition of Ptolemy’s Geography, which Erasmus published with a preface. Shortly before his death, Erasmus had given him an unfavorable account of the introduction of the Reformation in Basel and of his intention to leave the city. Pirkheimer made no permanent impression, and his writings are antiquated; but, as one of the most prominent humanists and connecting links between the mediaeval and the modern ages, he deserves a place in the history of the Reformation. § 75. The Peasants’ War. 1523–1525. I. Luther: Ermahnung zum Frieden auf die zwölf Artikel der Bauernschaft in Schwaben (1525); Wider die mörderischen und raüberischen Rotten der Bauern (1525); Ein Sendbrief von dem harten Büchlein wider die Bauern (1525). Walch, Vols. XVI. and XXI. Erl. ed., XXIV. 257–318. Melanchthon: Historic Thomae Münzers (1525), in Walch, XVI. 204 sqq. Cochlæus (Rom. Cath.), in his writings against Luther. II. Histories of the Peasants’ War, by Sartorius (Geschichte des deutschen Bauernkriegs, Berlin, 1795); Wachsmuth (Leipzig. 1834); Oechsle (Heilbronn, 1830 anti 1844); Bensen (Erlangen, 1840); Zimmermann (Stuttgart, 1841, second edition 1856, 3 Vols.); Jörg (Freiburg, 1851); Schreiber (Freiburg, 1863–66, 3 vols.); Stern (Leipzig, 1868); Baumann (Tübingen, 1876–78); L. Fries, ed. by Schäffler and Henner (Würzburg, 1876, 1877); Hartfelder (Stuttgart, 1884). III. Monographs on Thomas Münzer by Strobel (Leben, Schriften und Lehren Thomae Müntzers, Nürnberg and Altdorf, 1795); Gebser (1831); Streif (1835); Seidemann (Dresden, 1842); Leo (1856); Erbkam (in Herzog2, Vol. X. 365 sqq.). IV. Ranke: II. 124–150. Janssen: II. 393–582. Häusser: ch. VII. Weber: Weltgesch., vol. X. 229–273 (second edition, 1886). The ecclesiastical radicalism at Wittenberg was the prelude of a more dangerous political and social radicalism, which involved a large portion of Germany in confusion and blood. Both movements had their roots in crying abuses; both received a strong impetus from the Reformation, and pretended to carry out its principles to their legitimate consequences; but both were ultra- and pseudo-Protestant, fanatical, and revolutionary. Carlstadt and Münzer are the connecting links between the two movements, chiefly the latter. Carlstadt never went so far as Münzer, and afterwards retraced his steps. Their expulsion from Saxony extended their influence over Middle and Southern Germany.564 Condition of the Peasants.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  This conduct is characteristic of the humanists. They would not break with the authorities of the church, and had not the courage of martyrs. They employed against existing abuses the light weapons of ridicule and satire rather than serious argument and moral indignation. They had little sympathy with the theology and piety of the Reformers, and therefore drew back when the Reformers, for conscience’ sake, broke with the old church, and were cast out of her bosom as the Apostles were cast out of the synagogue. In a letter to Erasmus, dated Sept. 1, 1524, Pirkheimer speaks still favorably of Luther, though regretting his excesses, and deprecates a breach between the two as the greatest calamity that could befall the cause of sound learning. But soon after the free-will controversy, and under the influence of Erasmus, he wrote a very violent book against his former friend Oecolampadius, in defence of consubstantiation (he did not go as far as transubstantiation).559 The distractions among Protestants, the Anabaptist disturbances, the Peasants’ War, the conduct of the contentious Osiander, sickness, and family afflictions increased his alienation from the Reformation, and clouded his last years. The stone and the gout, of which he suffered much, confined him at home. Dürer, his daily companion (who, however, differed from him on the eucharistic question, and strongly leaned to the Swiss view), died in 1528. Two of his sisters, and two of his daughters, took the veil in the nunnery of St. Clara at Nürnberg. His sister Charitas, who is famous for her Greek and Latin correspondence with Erasmus and other luminaries, was abbess. The nunnery suffered much from the disturbances of the Reformation and the Peasants’ War. When it was to be secularized and abolished, he addressed to the Protestant magistrate an eloquent and touching plea in behalf of the nuns, and conclusively refuted the charges made against them. The convent was treated with some toleration, and survived till 1590. His last letters, like those of Erasmus, breathe discontent with the times, lament over the decline of letters and good morals, and make the evangelical clergy responsible for the same evils which he formerly charged upon the Roman clergy and monks. "I hoped," he wrote to Zasius (1527), a distinguished professor of jurisprudence at Freiburg, who likewise stood halting between Rome and Wittenberg,—"I hoped for spiritual liberty; but, instead of it, we have carnal license, and things have gotten much worse than before." Zasius was of the same opinion,560 and Protestants of Nürnberg admitted the fact of the extensive abuse of the gospel liberty.561 In a letter to his friend Leib, prior of Rebdorf, written a year before his death, Pirkheimer disclaims all fellowship with Luther, and expresses the opinion that the Reformer had become either insane, or possessed by an evil spirit.562 But, on the other hand, he remained on good terms with Melanchthon, and entertained him on his way to the Diet of Augsburg in 1530.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He was summoned to the Diet of Augsburg, 1530, as a counsellor of the Emperor, but declined because he was sick and conscious of his inability to please either party. He wrote, however, to Cardinal Campeggio, to the bishop of Augsburg, and other friends, to protest against settling questions of doctrine by the sword. His remedy for the evils of the Church was mutual forbearance and the correction of abuses. But his voice was not heeded; the time for compromises and half measures had passed, and the controversy took its course. He devoted his later years chiefly to the editing of new editions of his Greek Testament, and the writings of the church fathers. Luther abandoned Erasmus, and abused him as the vainest creature in the world, as an enraged viper, a refined Epicurean, a modern Lucian, a scoffer, a disguised atheist, and enemy of all religion.552 We gladly return from this gross injustice to his earlier estimate, expressed in his letter to Erasmus as late as April, 1524: "The whole world must bear witness to your successful cultivation of that literature by which we arrive at a true understanding of the Scriptures; and this gift of God has been magnificently and wonderfully displayed in you, calling for our thanks." § 74. Wilibald Pirkheimer. Bilibaldi Pirkheimeri Opera politica, historica, philologica, et epistolica, ed. by M. Goldast, Francf., 1610, fol. With a portrait by A. Dürer. His Encomium Podagrae was translated into English by W. Est, The Praise of the Gout, or the Gout’s Apology, a paradox both pleasant and profitable. Lond., 1617. Lampe: Zum Andenken W. P.’s. Nürnberg, 1828. Karl Hagen: Deutschlands literarische und relig. Verhältnisse im Ref. Zeitalter. Mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Wilibald Pirkheimer. Erlangen, vol. I., 1841, pp. 188 sqq., 261 sqq., 2d ed. 1868. Döllinger: Reformation, vol. I., 161–174. D. F. Strauss: Ulrich von Hutten, 4th ed., Bonn, 1878, pp. 118 sq.; 227–235; 514–518. Lochner: Lebensläufe berühmter und verdienter Nürnberger, Nürnb., 1861. Rud. Hagen: W. P. in seinem Verhältniss zum Humanismus und zur Reformation, Nürnberg, 1882. Lic. P. Drews: Wilibald Pirkheimer’s Stellung zur Reformation, Leipz., 1887 (138 pp.). About this time, and after the Peasants’ War, the most eminent humanists withdrew from the Reformation, and followed Erasmus into the sheepfold of the mother church, disgusted with the new religion, but without being fully reconciled to the old, and dying at last of a broken heart. In this respect, the apprehension of Erasmus was well founded; the progress of the Reformation arrested and injured the progress of liberal learning, although not permanently. Theology triumphed over classical culture, and fierce dogmatic feuds took the place of satirical exposures of ignorant monks. But the literary loss was compensated by a religious gain. In the judgment of Luther, truth proved mightier than eloquence, faith stronger than learning, and the foolishness of God wiser than the wisdom of men.553

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Erasmus was eighteen years older than Luther, and stood at the height of his fame when the reformer began his work. He differed from him as Jerome differed from Augustin, or Eusebius from Athanasius. Erasmus was essentially a scholar, Luther a reformer; the one was absorbed in literature, the other in religion. Erasmus aimed at illumination, Luther at reconstruction; the former reached the intellect of the educated, the latter touched the heart of the people. Erasmus labored for freedom of thought, Luther for freedom of conscience. Both had been monks, Erasmus against his will, Luther by free choice and from pious motives; and both hated and opposed monkery, but the former for its ignorance and bigotry, the latter for its self-righteousness and obstruction of the true way to justification and peace. Erasmus followed maxims of worldly wisdom; Luther, sacred principles and convictions. The one was willing, as he confessed, to sacrifice "a part of the truth for the peace of the church," and his personal comfort; the other was ready to die for the gospel at any moment. Erasmus was a trimmer and timeserver, Luther every inch a moral hero. Luther wrote upon his tablet (1536), "Res et verba Philippus; verba sine re Erasmus; res sine verbis Lutherus; nec res nec verba Carolostadius." But Luther himself was the master of words and matter, and his words were deeds. Melanchthon was an improved Erasmus on the side of evangelical truth. It is easy to see how far two men so differently constituted could go together, and where and when they had to part. So long as the Reformation moved within the church, Erasmus sympathized with it. But when Luther, who had at first as little notion of leaving the Catholic Church, burnt the Pope’s bull and the decretals, and with them the bridge behind him, Erasmus shrank back, and feared that the remedy was worse than the evil. His very breadth of culture and irresolution became his weakness; while Luther’s narrowness and determination were his strength. In times of war, neutrality is impossible, and we must join one of the two contending armies. Erasmus was for unity and peace, and dreaded a split of the church as the greatest calamity; and yet he never ceased to rebuke the abuses. It was his misfortune, rather than his fault, that he could not side with the Reformation. We must believe his assertion that his conscience kept him from the cause of the Lutherans. At the same time he was concerned for his personal comfort and literary supremacy, and anxious to retain the friendship of his hierarchical and royal patrons. He wished to be a spectator, but not an actor in "the Lutheran tragedy."

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

  the residences. Bureaucratic missteps explained some of these troubles, but it was the artificially imposed class structure that most disturbed the peace. Middle-class behavior was not easy to teach. 42 An iconic image of Penderlea Homesteads (1936), which oddly juxtaposes a modern home and a mule-drawn stone-boat. Homestead, Penderlea, North Carolina (1936): LC-USF33-000717-M2, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC It took more than a village. Cooperative farming was no part of southern practice, and especially among small (or tenant) farmers. Tugwell understood the problem. Americans in general were not hostile to planned communities, which explains the popularity of Tugwell’s favorite projects. The “Greenbelt towns” of Maryland (just outside Washington, DC), Milwaukee, and Cincinnati attracted an amazing twelve million visitors in 1936–37. Here, federal housing revolutionized methods of prefabrication, laying a strong foundation for the growth of suburbia in the aftermath of World War II. However, the federal government could not bridge the North-South divide when it came to standards of public rural housing; southern projects were administered by southerners who were loath to spend on amenities—such as indoor plumbing. Will Alexander, the Missourian who replaced Tugwell at the RA, and then took over at the FSA, remarked on the persistence of southern backwardness: “If we could house all our low-income farm families with the same standards Danes use for their hogs,

• From Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999)

  §3.22. A second anecdote addresses that second desire, the “heroic” extraliterary act. A dozen years after Bread Loaf, at a writing workshop in Michigan, I was now the (relatively) well-known writer, called upon to lead a group of some twenty younger writers. One particularly determined young man in his late twenties (happily married and a father of two) had his leg in a cast for the duration of the conference. He had written a story that, indeed, I felt was fairly good—certainly putting him in the top fifth of the talent quotient as I judged it. His view of what was to be gained by networking was, however, sadly inflated. One night, cast and all, he climbed through my window—and into my bed! (Later, I learned that this had begun as a somewhat inebriated dare among the students, when he had declared to them that he would “fuck anything” and they had immediately picked me out as the . . . ahem, impossible object of desire.) Our postcoital conversation lasted till dawn. Its result was that, since I thought he had talent as well as moxie, once the conference was over I told him he could use my name and send his story to a couple of editors whom I knew. Neither editor bought it. Moreover, though I have remained a desultory and distant friend of the young man, he wrote no new work. After those two submissions, he became discouraged with his story and stopped sending it out. The fact is, the kind of energy and imagination it takes to crawl through a window and, however “heroically” (read the import of the quotation marks as you wish), bed your instructor is very different from the kind of imaginative energy it takes to write and craft a succession of stories and novels. For those who are interested, despite this single case of a bold and vigorous young man, over the thirty years I have taught at that particular writers’ conference, I have recommended many more women writers to editors than I have young male writers—for no other reason than that I found more talented women writers in attendance at such conferences than men: two from that particular session. Those recommendations also did nothing. §3.23. My third anecdote addresses the third hope of those who attend writers’ conferences: Through proximity and general good will (i.e., non-“heroic” reasons), someone in a position of power will do something nice for you—though, in this case, it is not a tale from my own experience, but one from science fiction’s history (possibly apocryphal), and one that many young writers have been aware of, as they have gone off to one SF convention or another. In the science fiction field, the story of how, back in the early 1950s, Ray Bradbury first came to the attention of readers beyond the boundaries of the science fiction “ghetto” (as it has been called) is a regularly rehearsed bit of SF folklore.

• From Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999)

  §8.0. In 1992 we emerged from twelve years of a national Republican administration that favored big business—with the result that we now have some very strong big businesses indeed. The argument the Reagan/Bush leaders used to convince the public that this was a Good Thing was the promise of tax cuts and the “trickle-down” economic theory. The “trickle-down” economic theory, you may recall, was the notion that somehow big business would be helpful and supportive to small businesses. It has taken a half dozen years for New Yorkers to learn, at least, what anyone over thirty-five could have told them in 1980 when Reagan was elected: Big businesses drive out small businesses. Left unsupervised, big businesses stamp out small businesses, break them into pieces, devour the remains, and dance frenziedly on their graves. Now that we have watched Barnes and Noble destroy Books and Company on the East Side and Shakespeare and Company on the West and, in my own neighborhood, seen the Duane Reade Pharmacy chain put Lasky’s and Ben’s and several other small drugstores out of business, people have some models for the quality of service and the general atmosphere of pleasant interchange to be lost when big businesses destroy small ones. Small businesses thrive on contact—the word-of-mouth reputations that contact engenders: “You’re looking for X? Try Q’s. It’s really good for what you want.” Big businesses promote networking as much as they possibly can: “Shop at R’s—and be part of today!” vibrating over the airwaves in a three-million-dollar ad campaign. In one sense, the Times Square takeover is one of the larger and more visible manifestations of the small being obliterated by the large. We are in a period of economic growth, we all know. But most of us are asking, Why, then, isn’t my life more pleasant? The answer is that “pleasantness” is controlled by small business diversity and social contact; and in a democratic society that values social movement, social opportunity, and class flexibility, interclass contact is the most rewarding, productive, and thus privileged kind of contact. There is no way people can move comfortably between classes if the classes themselves do not have repeated, pleasant social interactions with one another, class war or not. Big business is anti-contact in the same way that it is anti-small business. But there are many tasks that small businesses—like bookstores, stationery stores, and, often, drugstores—can do more efficiently for the customers and more pleasantly (that word again) than can big businesses and large chain outlets. And, again, certain benefits from contact, networking simply cannot provide. §8.1. An academic who heard an earlier version of this argument told me that it explained a family phenomenon that, in his younger years, had puzzled and sometimes embarrassed him. “Whenever we would go with my grandfather to a restaurant—my grampa had been born and grew up in Italy—within ten minutes, he had everybody in the restaurant talking not only to him but to everybody else.”

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He encouraged Luther to enter the priesthood (1507), and brought him to Wittenberg; he induced him to take the degree of Doctor of Divinity, and to preach. He stirred him up against popery,130 and protected him in the transactions with Cardinal Cajetan. He was greeted by Scheurl in 1518 as the one who would lead the people of Israel out of captivity. But when Luther broke with Rome, and Rome with Luther, the friendship cooled down. Staupitz held fast to the unity of the Catholic Church and was intimidated and repelled by the excesses of the Reformation. In a letter of April 1, 1524,131 he begs Luther’s pardon for his long silence and significantly says in conclusion: "May Christ help us to live according to his gospel which now resounds in our ears and which many carry on their lips; for I see that countless persons abuse the gospel for the freedom of the flesh.132 Having been the precursor of the holy evangelical doctrine, I trust that my entreaties may have some effect upon thee." The sermons which he preached at Salzburg since 1522 breathe the same spirit and urge Catholic orthodoxy and obedience.133 His last book, published after his death (1525) under the title, "Of the holy true Christian Faith," is a virtual protest against Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone and a plea for a practical Christianity which shows itself in good works. He contrasts the two doctrines in these words: "The fools say, he who believes in Christ., needs no works; the Truth says, whosoever will be my disciple, let him follow Me; and whosoever will follow Me, let him deny himself and carry my cross day by day; and whosoever loves Me, keeps my commandments .... The evil spirit suggests to carnal Christians the doctrine that man is justified without works, and appeals to Paul. But Paul only excluded works of the law which proceed from fear and selfishness, while in all his epistles he commends as necessary to salvation such works as are done in obedience to God’s commandments, in faith and love. Christ fulfilled the taw, the fools would abolish the law; Paul praises the law as holy and good, the fools scold and abuse it as evil because they walk according to the flesh and have not the mind of the Spirit."134

• From The Journals of Sylvia Plath (1982)

  But the descriptions, the observations, the feelings caught and let slip. Dreamt one dream I remember, as apposite and ironical to this morning’s mail. Read J. D. Salinger’s long Seymour: An Introduction last night and today, put off at first by the rant at the beginning about Kafka, Kierkegaard, etc., but increasingly enchanted. Dreamed, oh, how amusedly, that I picked up a New Yorker , opened to about the third story (not in the back , this was important, but with a whole front page, on the right, to itself) and read “This Earth—That House, That Hospital” in the deeply endearing New Yorker -heading type, rather like painstakingly inked hand-lettering. Felt a heart palpitation (my sleep becomes such a reasonable facsimile of my waking life) and thought “That’s my title, or a corruption of it.” And of course, it is: an alteration of “This Earth Our Hospital” and either a very good or an abominable variation of it. Read on: my own prose: only it was the Sweetie Pie story, the backyard tale, with the would-be Salinger child in it. Dr. B. congratulating me. Mother turning away, saying: “I don’t know, I just can’t seem to feel anything about it at all.” Which shows, I think, that Dr. B. has become my mother. Felt radiant, a New Yorker glow lighting my face. Precisely analagous to that young British society girl Susan who, after being deflowered in a canoe house, asks her handsome young deflowerer: Don’t I look Different ? Oh, I looked different. A pale, affluent nimbus emanating from my generally podgy and dough-colored face. This morning woke to get a letter in the mail from the estimable Dudley Fitts,r which I numbly translated to be a kind refusal of The Bull of Bendylaw , saying I missed “by a whisper,” was the alternate, but my lack of technical finish (!) was what deterred him, my roughness, indecision, my drift in all but four or five poems. When my main flaw is a machinelike syllabic death-blow. A real sense of Bad Luck. Will I ever be liked for anything other than the wrong reasons? My book is as finished as it will ever be. And after the Hudson acceptance, I have great hopes that all 46 poems will be accepted within a few months. So what. I have no champions. They will find a lack of this, or that, or something or other. How few of my superiors do I respect the opinions of anyhow? Lowell a case in point. How few, if any, will see what I am working at, overcoming? How ironic, that all my work to overcome my easy poeticisms merely convinces them that I am rough, antipoetic, unpoetic. My God.… … Reading in bed. Warm comforts. Began The Lonely Crowd this morning, an antidote to V. Woolf’s tiresome The Years , finished last night. She flits, she throws out her gossamer net. Rose, at age 9, sneaks to the store in the evening alone.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The period of the Reformatory councils, closing with the Basel-Ferrara synod, was followed by a period notable in the history of the papacy, the period of the Renaissance popes. These pontiffs of the last years of the Middle Ages were men famous alike for their intellectual endowments, the prostitution of their office to personal aggrandizement and pleasure and the lustre they gave to Rome by their patronage of letters and the fine arts. The decree of the Council of Constance, asserting the supreme authority of oecumenical councils, treated as a dead letter by Eugenius IV., was definitely set aside by Pius II. in a bull forbidding appeals from papal decisions and affirming finality for the pope’s authority. For 70 years no general assembly of the Church was called. The ten pontiffs who sat on the pontifical throne, 1450–1517, represented in their origin the extremes of fortune, from the occupation of the fisherman, as in the case of Sixtus IV., to the refinement of the most splendid aristocracy of the age, as in the case of Leo X. of the family of the Medici. In proportion as they embellished Rome and the Vatican with the treasures of art, did they seem to withhold themselves from that sincere religious devotion which would naturally be regarded as a prime characteristic of one claiming to be the chief pastor of the Christian Church on earth. No great principle of administration occupied their minds. No conspicuous movement of pious activity received their sanction, unless the proposed crusade to reconquer Constantinople be accounted such, but into that purpose papal ambition entered more freely than devotion to the interests of religion.

• From Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999)

  Once Bread Loaf was over, a woman editor at Random House who had attended the conference, and had once worked with Sloan, invited me to lunch. She also read my novel and told me, at that lunch, pretty much what half a dozen editors had told me before the conference, when I had been submitting the book here and there. “You write well, but the basic subject matter is just not what makes a commercial novel.” Today I would add the following to her articulate advice: To deal with the type of material I was dealing with (young people, mostly juvenile delinquents) would require a much more linear structure than I was using. Had I been able to organize that material into a more linear “adventure” form, rather than a mosaic of anecdotes, character sketches, and impressions (imagine as much of the plot as I’ve already discussed presented in the manner of The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge), I would have had a substantially better chance of placing my book. In short, while the conference responded to the talent I showed, once the conference was over, the realities of publishing, in the form of the Random House editor who had kindly befriended me there, fell into place. And to the extent that the book represented a literary experiment (and, in my own mind, it did), the fact is, it was not a strong enough experiment to win over any of the dozen-odd commercial editors who, over the two years before (and in the year afterward), read it. My Bread Loaf and Bread Loaf-connected experiences doubtless made it easier for me to talk to the editors at Ace Books, who, a year and a half later, oversaw the publication of my first novel—an entirely new book that I had not even thought about writing back in Vermont. But when, in June 1962, Ace Books accepted that new novel for publication, none of the social contacts either with editors or with the half dozen other “big-name writers,” e.g., Robert Frost, John Ciardi, John Frederic Nyms (then editor of Poetry), or that year’s Pulitzer Prize winner, Allen Drury, whom I had met at Bread Loaf—at which I had “starred” and been, indeed, “discovered”—were even tangentially entailed, directly or indirectly, with my actual breaking into print.

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  So I started to yell and I called the kid I- don’t-know-what, told him I’d personally separate him from his manhood if I ever caught him with her again and that sort of thing. Wendy came home peacefully. Another laugh. A party laugh, trailing off precipitously. Elena watched him in the bathroom now, straightening the ascot. She waited awhile before asking. She let it hang in the air with the menace of a grave diagnosis. —So what were you doing in the basement anyway? Only a slight hesitation: —Just dropping off a coffee cup. Jim left it, last time he was over. It was on the dash of the car. You were, you know, reading. I was just dropping off the cup. Benjamin emerged from the bathroom. Smiled. Spread wide his arms to announce his arrival. —Let’s eat, babe. I am cool. I am ready. She lifted herself, as though it were the greatest chore, from within the fold of the comforter at the end of the bed. It diapered her. And this was a great chore, too. Being lied to required such work. —Oh, right, she said. The mustache coffee cup. The one that was sitting on the dash. —Yeah, sure, he said. That’s the one. —That one. Benjamin nodded vigorously. —That one. Her husband simply laughed. As if the flimsiness of his deceits wouldn’t adhere to him. So they were back in the kitchen. Disappointment in the room like a sullen dinner guest. The peas bobbed in their sulfurous oil slick. All was ready. Wendy appeared behind Elena, wearing another pink turtleneck and corduroys. Without prompting, Wendy searched the long, narrow drawer by the range for a wooden spoon with which to disembowel the turkey of its stuffing. She set the spoon at the edge of the serving platter. Then, in the cupboard by the refrigerator, Wendy found three glasses, the ones with the decorative blueberries painted on them. The really good holiday finery would wait. In the den, Ben had vanished to fix himself another drink. Absences of this sort Elena knew intimately. Soon, according to habit, there would be the sound of ice hitting the bottom of a tumbler and the sudden swelling of show tunes from their new high-fidelity stereo system. Richard Kiley was going to dream that impossible dream again. Elena spooned the peas onto the plates Wendy provided and then went to help her daughter fold the napkins and arrange the cutlery, turning a knife here so that the sharp side faced in, adjusting the glasses so that each was at the right-hand corner of the plastic place mats. The dog trotted in from the den, decelerating as he rounded the sink, spinning in circles before settling under the center of the table. And behind him came his master, whose beverage—its tinkling melody— announced his entrance. They each stood around the remains of the turkey, spooning carbohydrates onto their plates beside the peas.

• From The Journals of Sylvia Plath (1982)

  Probably it was because I was too intense with one boy after another. That same horror came with them which comes when the paraphernalia of existence whooshes away and there is just light and dark, night and day, without all the little physical quirks and warts and knobby knuckles that make the fabric of existence: either they were all or nothing. No man is all, so, ipso facto, they were nothing. That should not be. They were also very conspicuously not Richard; I eventually came to telling them this as if they had a fatal disease and I was oh, so sorry. Fool: be didactic, now: take boys named Iko and Hamish for what they are, which may be coffee or rum and Troilus and Cressida or a sandwich on the millrace. These small particular things are good in themselves. I do not have to do them with the Only Soul in the world in the Only Body that is mine, my true one. There is a certain need of practical Machiavellian living: a casualness that must be cultivated. I was too serious for Peter,‡ but that was mainly because he did not participate in the seriousness deeply enough to find out the gaiety beyond. Richard knows that joy, that tragic joy. And he is gone, and I should probably be glad. It would somehow be more embarrassing to have him want to marry me now. I would, I think, probably say no. Why? Because both of us are moving toward security and somehow, accepting him, he might be drowned, squashed, by the simple bourgeois life I come from with its ideals for big men, conventional men: he is someone I could never live home with. Maybe someday he will want a home, but he is so damn far from it now. Our life would be so private: he would perhaps miss the blood background and social strata I don’t come from; I would miss the healthy, physical bigness. How important is all this? I don’t know: it changes, like looking in different ends of a telescope. Anyway, I am tired, and it is Saturday afternoon and I have all the academic reading and papers to do which I should have done two days ago, but for my misery. A lousy sinus cold that blunted up all my senses, bunged up nose, couldn’t smell, taste, see through rheumy eyes, or even hear, which was worse, almost. And atop of this, through the hellish sleepless night of feverish sniffling and tossing, the macabre cramps of my period (curse, yes) and the wet, mussy spurt of blood. Dawn came, black and white graying into a frozen hell. I couldn’t relax, nap, or anything. This was Friday, the worst, the very worst. Couldn’t even read, full of drugs which battled and banged in my veins. Everywhere I heard bells, telephone not for me, doorbells with roses for all the other girls in the world. Utter despair. Ugly, red nose, no force.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Part 4 (300 – 1300, Rome) (2009)

  optimism for a turn for the better in Christian fortunes; in addition to two hundred known manuscripts of the Latin letter written by the imaginary king between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries, there were fourteen early printed editions of the letter up to 1565, and large numbers of translations into vernacular European languages.62 Nevertheless, in cold practical results, Prester John turned out to be a disappointing myth, and what it chiefly revealed was just how little Western Chalcedonian Christians knew about centuries of Christian struggle, scholarship, sanctity and heroism in another world. Western Christianity, heir to Chalcedon, Reformation and Counter-Reformation, still has a long way to go before the balance is fully righted. Western Christians have forgotten that before the coming of Islam utterly transformed the situation in the eastern Mediterranean and Asia, there was a good chance that the centre of gravity of Christian faith might have moved east to Iraq rather than west to Rome. Instead, the ancient Christianity of the East was nearly everywhere faced with a destiny of contraction in numbers, suffering and martyrdom which still continues. But there was one practical consequence of the fifteenth-century Latin delusion that Prester John might unite with Western Christians. The myth generated an optimism which had a vital galvanizing effect on Latin Christianity, so it played a part in that surprising new expansion worldwide which from the end of the fifteenth century led Western Catholicism and Protestantism to become the dominant form of the Christian faith into modern times (see Chapter 17). It is towards Rome that we now turn, to begin exploring how this unlikely turn of events took place. PART IV The Unpredictable Rise of Rome (300–1300)

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He opposed some of the superstitions inherited from another time. He emphasized the authority of the sacred text. In these views as in others he was in sympathy with the progressive spirit of his age. But he stopped short of the principles of the Reformers. He knew nothing of the principles of individual sovereignty and the rights of conscience. His thinking moved along churchly lines. He had none of the bold original thought of Wyclif and little of that spirit which sets itself against the current errors of the times in which we live. His vote for Huss’ burning proves sufficiently that the light of the new age had not dawned upon his mind. He was not, like them, a forerunner of the movement of the sixteenth century. The chief principle for which Gerson contended, the supremacy of general councils, met with defeat soon after the great chancellor’s death, and was set aside by popes and later by the judgment of a general council. His writings, however, which were frequently published remain the chief literary monuments in the department of theology of the first half of the fourteenth century.404 Separated from the Schoolmen in spirit and method, he stands almost in a class by himself, the most eminent theologian of his century. This judgment is an extension of the judgment of the eminent German abbot and writer, Trithemius, at the close of the fifteenth century: "He was by far the chief divine of his age"405 Theologorum sui temporis longe princeps. § 24. Nicolas of Clamanges, the Moralist. The third of the great luminaries who gave fame to the University of Paris in this period, Nicolas Poillevillain de Clamanges, was born at Clamengis,406 Champagne, about 1367 and died in Paris about 1437. Shy by nature, he took a less prominent part in the settlement of the great questions of the age than his contemporaries, D’Ailly and Gerson. Like them, he was identified with the discussions called forth by the schism, and is distinguished for the high value he put on the study of the Scriptures and his sharp exposition of the corruption of the clergy. He entered the College of Navarre at twelve, and had D’Ailly and Gerson for his teachers. In theology he did not go beyond the baccalaureate. It is probable he was chosen rector of the university 1393. With Peter of Monsterolio, he was the chief classical scholar of the university and was able to write that in Paris, Virgil, Terence and Cicero were often read in public and in private.407

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  That is, she had felt the obligation when she had not felt the contrary one, to refuse all conversation. It was her duty to take charge. Words that soothed and were inoffensive. Words that bore up wounded hearts. Maternal language. But she had seen how these bons mots were ineffective. She had seen Benjamin, as she had seen the men in her family, bristle at some mild word of kindness. On the paddle-tennis court, recently: —Benjamin, she said to a doubles partner, has a serve like a howitzer. At once, he called to her across the court. —Don’t be a dip shit, baby doll. His face like a red balloon, swollen. To start a conversation was to be the messenger of ill. She would no longer feel obliged. She thought about her daughter in the Williamses’ basement. She imagined Wendy with a skirt hiked up, imagined the precise curve of her buttocks, the tuft of blond pubic hair. Wendy’s calves already had a perfect feminine knot, as though she had been wearing high heels for years, and it was clear from the early protrusion of her breasts that she wouldn’t have the small, insignificant bosom that her mother needlessly restrained with under-wire support. Wendy didn’t seem ashamed in the aftermath of this contretemps. She seemed, on the contrary, emboldened by being caught. In secret, Elena admired her daughter’s pluck. Lost in affection, she missed the opportunity to chastise Wendy—who hadn’t asked to be excused. Her daughter was poised at the fridge again, having left her plate and glass in the sink. Again the fridge disappointed Wendy. She turned instead to the cupboard where the cookies and candy were stacked haphazardly. She selected a box of Hot Tamales, a candy that was left over from her Halloween basket. Maybe her final Halloween basket—she was old now for that kind of dressing up. Then Elena’s daughter slunk out of the room. Dulcinea! Dulcinea! was replaced in the library by the distant sound of the television, leaden and excruciating. That it was already time for A Charlie Brown Christmas seemed intolerable to Elena. She and her husband rose together from the table. The dog trotted after them to the sink. —What’s for dessert? Benjamin said. —See for yourself. —No advice from the experts, huh? —Don’t expect me to amuse you tonight, Ben. He idled in the center of the room. —Sounds like we’re in for a good time. His plate slipped out of his hands and into the trash. He fished it out, set it on the counter. —Party time, he said. Kinda wow— —Don’t start, Elena said. —You think I— —I have no idea— She set her plate in the sink a little gingerly. It had a dramatic crash to it she hadn’t intended.

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  Fiona had imagined a thousand conversations they might have, a hundred ways the morning could end, but she hadn’t thought through what to do with her face, her body. Claire smiled tightly, an embarrassed smile. What Fiona said, eventually, was “Hi.” Claire came around the bar and gave her a brief hug, the kind of hug you’d give a distant aunt. She said, “It’s good to see you.” Fiona felt, of all things, angry and ridiculous. That she’d spent this time and money and despair to find someone who would hug her so casually, who wouldn’t collapse in her arms and ask to be rescued. This strange adult standing here, so collected. Her hair had darkened a bit, and her face had changed in ways that had nothing to do with her thinness; the bones had settled, the eye sockets deepened. She didn’t look at all like a college freshman, and not like the sun-washed, pixelated young woman in the video either. Fiona said, “Can we go somewhere to chat?” “I thought we could stay here.” She said it firmly, as if she’d practiced. As if the woman behind the bar were going to make sure Claire wasn’t abducted today. They sat in the corner under a TV showing a soccer match. The scattered patrons looked in that direction, but it was at the game, not at Fiona and Claire. Fiona wished for something to drink or eat, something to anchor them to the table. Something to lend this meeting the timeline of a meal, guarantee it would last longer than a minute. Fiona said, “I need to know that you’re okay.” She wanted to touch Claire’s hands, to feel if they were rough now, or still soft. She wanted to tuck her hair behind her ear. Claire said, “We’re fine.” “You have a little girl.” Claire smiled. “I’m teaching her English, don’t worry.” “That wasn’t really my concern.” Claire pulled a phone from the pocket of the apron Fiona just now registered her wearing—a white apron around her waist over a black skirt, a black shirt. “Hold on,” she said, and she thumbed the phone and then placed it on the table in front of Fiona. A little girl on a three-wheeled scooter, curls blowing in her face. Fiona wanted to snatch the phone up, scroll through the pictures one by one, see how far back they went, how far forward. Instead she said, “She’s beautiful.” “Kurt got married. He watches Nicolette sometimes while I work.” She’d pronounced it the French way, Nee-co-lette, and Fiona couldn’t bear to ask yet if the child was named after Nico, after the uncle Claire had never known but in whose shadow she’d grown up. She feared both answers equally. She said, “Is she in school?” “She’s only three.” “You had her in Colorado?” Claire got up and grabbed a cocktail napkin off the bar to blow her nose. Fiona worried she wouldn’t sit back down, but she did. She said, “Yeah, well.

• From Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999)

  Far more important than whether the buildings can be rented out is whether investors think the buildings can be rented out. In the late seventies, three of those towers were tabled for ten years. The ostensible purpose for that ten-year delay was to give economic forces a chance to shift and business a chance to rally to the area. The real reason, however, was simply the hope that people would forget the arguments against the project, so clear in so many people’s minds at the time. Indeed, the crushing arguments against the whole project from the mid-seventies were, by the mid-eighties, largely forgotten; this forgetting has allowed the project to take its opening steps over the last ten years. The current ten-year delay means that public relations corporations have been given another decade to make the American investing public forget the facts of the matter and convince that same public that the Times Square project is a sound one. It gambles on the possibility that, ten years from now, the economic situations might be better—at which point the developers will go ahead with those towers, towers which, Stern has told us, will be built. Berman’s article in Dissent, which I referred to above, concludes with a postscript: It begins, “I have just read in the Times of August 1 [1997], about a deal in the works to bring Reuters to Times Square. It wants to build an 800,000-square-foot office tower on Seventh Avenue and 42nd St.” He goes on to say that Reuters is an interesting company (as if it would have anything more to do with the building than, perhaps, rent some 10 percent or less of its space) and he seems appalled that the awful Philip Johnson architecture planned over a decade ago will be utilized for the construction—as if, for a moment, anyone in a position of power involved in the deal cared. (Millions were paid for it; it must be used.) He concludes by suggesting that people who care about the Square raise the roof before the deal gets done. Consider my roof raised. • • • §7.1. At the Buell conference a young sociologist countered my suggestion that there were some serious losses involved in the renovation process with the countersuggestion that at least the New Times Square would be safer for women. §7.11. Which brings me to a survey of three topics—topics I will look at as systems of social practices related by contact: crime and violence on the street, the public sex practices that have been attacked and so summarily wiped out of the Times Square area, and the general safety of the neighborhood—along with the problem of safety for women. First, the street-level public sex that the area was famous for, the sex movies, the peep show activities, the street corner hustlers and hustling bar activity were overwhelmingly a matter of contact.