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 The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Cour- tesans have used this method throughout history; it is how Cleopatra worked on Antony, how Josephine seduced Napoleon, how La Belle Otero amassed a fortune during the Belle Epoque. It lets the man maintain his masculine illusions, although the woman is really the aggressor. The second form of feminine boldness does not bother with such illu- sions: the woman simply takes charge, initiates the first kiss, pounces on her victim. This is how Marguerite de Valois, Lou Andreas-Salomé, and Madame Mao operated, and many men find it not emasculating at all but very exciting. It all depends on the insecurities and proclivities of the vic- tim. This kind of feminine boldness has its allure because it is more rare than the first kind, but then all boldness is somewhat rare. A bold move will always stand out compared to the usual treatment afforded by the tepid hus- band, the timid lover, the hesitant suitor. That is how you want it. If every- one were bold, boldness would quickly lose its allure. Master the Art of the Bold Move • 413 Symbol: The Summer Storm. The hot days follow one another, with no end in sight. The earth is parched and dry. Then there comes a stillness in the air, thick and oppressive—the calm before the storm. Suddenly gusts of wind arrive, and flashes of lightning, exciting and frightening. Allow- ing no time to react or run for shelter, the rain comes, and brings with it a sense of release. At last. Reversal I f two people come together by mutual consent, that is not a seduction. There is no reversal. Beware the Aftereffects Danger follows in the aftermath of a successful se- duction. After emotions have reached a pitch, they often swing in the opposite direction—toward lassitude, distrust, disappointment. Beware of the long, drawn-out goodbye; insecure, the victim will cling and claw, and both sides will suffer. If you are to part, make the sacrifice swift and sudden. If necessary, deliberately break the spell you have created. If you are to stay in a relationship, beware a flag- ging of energy, a creeping familiarity that will spoil the fantasy. If the game is to go on, a second seduction is required. Never let the other person take you for granted—use absence, create pain and con- flict, to keep the seduced on ten- terhooks. Disenchantment S eduction is a kind of spell, an enchantment. When you seduce, you are not quite your normal self; your presence is heightened, you are playing more than one role, you are strategically concealing your tics and insecuri- ties.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  With the Reformed Rake, you must spark his in- terest indirectly, then let him burn and glow with desire. With the Re- formed Siren, you want to give her the impression that she still has the irresistible power to draw a man in and make him give up everything for her. Remember that what you are offering these types is not another rela- tionship, another constriction, but rather the chance to escape the corral and have some ran. Do not be put off if they are in a relationship; a preex- isting commitment is often the perfect foil. If hooking them into a rela- tionship is what you want, hide it as best you can and realize it may not be possible. The Rake or Siren is unfaithful by nature; your ability to spark the old feeling gives you power, but then you will have to live with the conse- quences of their feckless ways. The Disappointed Dreamer. As children, these types probably spent a lot of time alone. To entertain themselves they developed a powerful fantasy life, fed by books and films and other kinds of popular culture. And as they get older, it becomes increasingly difficult to reconcile their fantasy life with reality, and so they are often disappointed by what they get. This is particularly true in relationships. They have been dreaming of romantic he- roes, of danger and excitement, but what they have is lovers with human frailties, the petty weaknesses of everyday life. As the years pass, they may force themselves to compromise, because otherwise they would have to spend their lives alone; but beneath the surface they are bitter and still hun- gering for something grand and romantic. You can recognize this type by the books they read and films they go to, the way their ears prick up when told of the real-life adventures some peo- ple manage to live out. In their clothes and home furnishings, a taste for exuberant romance or drama will peek through. They are often trapped in drab relationships, and little comments here and there will reveal their dis- appointment and inner tension. The Seducer's Victims—The Eighteen Types • 151 These types make for excellent and satisfying victims. First, they usually have a great deal of pent-up passion and energy, which you can release and focus on yourself. They also have great imaginations and will respond to anything vaguely mysterious or romantic that you offer them. All you need do is disguise some of your less than exalted qualities and give them a part of their dream. This could be the chance to live out their adventures or be courted by a chivalrous soul. If you give them a part of what they want they will imagine the rest. At all cost, do not let reality break the illusion you are creating. One moment of pettiness and they will be gone, more bitterly disappointed than ever.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  2 6 In the long run, scientists who still subscribe to the basic emotion method are very likely helping to create the universality that they believe they are discovering. Closer to home, if people believe that a face alone displays emotion, it can lead to serious mistakes with damaging repercussions. In one case, this belief changed the course of a U.S. presidential election. In 2003–2004, Governor Howard Dean of Vermont was seeking the Democratic nomination for president of the United States, an honor that ultimately went to Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. Voters saw a lot of negative campaigning that season, and one of the most misleading examples was a video of Dean taken during a speech. In a snippet of video that went viral, Dean’s face was shown alone, without context, and he looked furious. But if you watched the entire video in context, it becomes obvious that Dean was not enraged but excited, firing up the crowd with his enthusiasm. The snippet circulated on the news, spread widely, and, ultimately, Dean dropped out of the race. We can only wonder what might have happened if viewers had understood how emotions are made when they saw those misleading images. … Guided by a constructionist approach, scientists continue to replicate my lab’s findings in other cultures (data from China, East Africa, Melanesia, and other regions are looking promising at press time). As they do, we are speeding the paradigm shift to a new understanding of emotion that goes beyond Western stereotypes. We can cast aside questions like “How accurately can you recognize fear?” and instead study the variety of facial movements that people actually make in fear. We can also try to understand why people hold stereotypes about facial configurations in the first place, and what their value might be. The basic emotion method has shaped the scientific landscape and influenced public understanding of emotion. Thousands of scientific studies claim that emotions are universal. Popular books, magazine articles, radio broadcasts, and TV shows casually assume that everyone makes and recognizes the same facial configurations as expressions of emotion. Games and books teach preschool children these allegedly universal expressions. International political and business negotiation strategies are likewise based on this assumption. Psychologists assess and treat emotion deficits in people suffering from mental illness using similar methods. The growing economy of emotion-reading gadgets and apps also assumes universality, as if emotions can be read in the face or in patterns of bodily changes in the absence of context, as easily as reading words on a page. The sheer amount of time, effort, and money going into these efforts is mind-boggling.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  She left Paris and returned a year later, her manner com- pletely altered—now she played the part of an elegant Frenchwoman, who happened to be an ingenious dancer and performer. The French fell in love again; the power was back on her side. If you are in the public eye, you must learn from this trick of surprise. People are bored, not only with their own lives but with people who are meant to keep them from being bored. The minute they feel they can predict your next step, they will eat you alive. The artist Andy Warhol kept moving from incarnation to incarna- tion, and no one could predict the next one—artist, filmmaker, society man. Always keep a surprise up your sleeve. To keep the public's attention, keep them guessing. Let the moralists accuse you of insincerity, of having no core or center. They are actually jealous of the freedom and playfulness you reveal in your public persona. Finally, you might think it wiser to present yourself as someone reliable, not given to caprice. If so, you are in fact merely timid. It takes courage and effort to mount a seduction. Reliability is fine for drawing people in, but stay reliable and you stay a bore. Dogs are reliable, a seducer is not. If, on the other hand, you prefer to improvise, imagining that any kind of planning or calculation is antithetical to the spirit of surprise, you are mak- ing a grave mistake. Constant improvisation simply means you are lazy, and thinking only about yourself. What often seduces a person is the feeling that you have expended effort on their behalf. You do not need to trumpet this too loudly, but make it clear in the gifts you make, the little journeys you plan, the little teases you lure people with. Little efforts like these will be more than amply rewarded by the conquest of the heart and willpower of the seduced. Symbol: The Roller Coaster. The car rises slowly to the top, then suddenly hurtles you into space, whips you to the side, throws you upside down, in every possible direction. The riders laugh and scream. What thrills them is to let go, to grant control to someone else, who propels them in unexpected directions. What new thrill awaits them around the next corner? Keep Them in Suspense—What Comes Next? • 249 Reversal S urprise can be unsurprising if you keep doing the same thing again and again. Jiang Qing would try to surprise her husband Mao Zedong with sudden changes of mood, from harshness to kindness and back. At first he was captivated; he loved the feeling of never knowing what was coming.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Another charge which some readers have made is that Lolita is anti-American. This is something that pains me considerably more than the idiotic accusation of immorality. Considerations of depth and perspective (a suburban lawn, a mountain meadow) led me to build a number of North American sets. I needed a certain exhilarating milieu. Nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity. But in regard to philistine vulgarity there is no intrinsic difference between Palearctic manners and Nearctic manners. Any proletarian from Chicago can be as bourgeois (in the Flaubertian sense) as a duke. I chose American motels instead of Swiss hotels or English inns only because I am trying to be an American writer and claim only the same rights that other American writers enjoy. On the other hand, my creature Humbert is a foreigner and an anarchist, and there are many things, besides nymphets, in which I disagree with him. And all my Russian readers know that my old worlds—Russian, British, German, French—are just as fantastic and personal as my new one is. Lest the little statement I am making here seem an airing of grudges, I must hasten to add that besides the lambs who read the typescript of Lolita or its Olympia Press edition in a spirit of “Why did he have to write it?” or “Why should I read about maniacs?” there have been a number of wise, sensitive, and staunch people who understood my book much better than I can explain its mechanism here.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  They said that emotions do not have biological essences. Following a trail of references, I discovered a treasure trove of over a hundred publications, written across a span of fifty years, that most of my scientific colleagues had never heard of. The writers were nascent constructionists, though they did not use that term. They were running experiments to find physical fingerprints for distinct emotions, failing to do so, concluding that the classical view was unjustified, and speculating about constructionist ideas. I call this band of scientists the Lost Chorus because their work, published in prestigious journals, has been largely overlooked, ignored, or misunderstood since the supposed dark ages ended. 3 7 Why did the Lost Chorus flourish for half a century and then vanish? My best guess is that these scientists did not offer a fully formed, alternative theory of emotion to compete with the compelling classical view. They presented solid counterevidence to be sure, but criticism alone was not enough to remain relevant. As philosopher Thomas Kuhn wrote about the structure of scientific revolutions: “To reject one paradigm without simultaneously substituting another is to reject science itself.” So when the classical view reasserted itself in the 1960s, half a century of anti-essentialist research was swept into history’s dustbin. And we are all the poorer for it, considering how much time and money are being wasted today in pursuit of illusory emotion essences. At press time, Microsoft is analyzing facial photographs in an attempt to recognize emotion. Apple has recently purchased Emotient, a startup company using artificial intelligence techniques in an effort to detect emotion in facial expressions. Companies are programming Google Glass ostensibly to detect emotion in facial expressions in an effort to help autistic children. Politicians in Spain and Mexico are engaging in so-called neuropolitics to discern voter preferences from their facial expressions. Some of the most pressing questions about emotion remain unanswered, and important questions remain obscured, because many businesses and scientists continue practicing essentialism while the rest of us are figuring out how emotions are made. 3 8 It’s hard to give up the classical view when it represents deeply held beliefs about what it means to be human. Nevertheless, the facts remain that no one has found even a single reliable, broadly replicable, objectively measurable essence of emotion. When mountains of contrary data don’t force people to give up their ideas, then they are no longer following the scientific method. They are following an ideology.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  The family business was a worldwide chain of dancing schools which sold life memberships to lonely old people. It wasn’t exactly a racket any more than psychoanalysis or religion or encounter groups or Rosicrucianism can be said to be rackets, but, like them, it also promised an end to loneliness, powerlessness, and pain, and of course it disappointed many people. Charlie had worked in the dance-studio business for a few summers during college, but this was only a token gesture. He hated any kind of everyday job—even if it consisted of gliding across the dance floor with an eighty-year-old lady who had just become a life member to the tune of several thousand dollars. When I knew him, Charlie was very sensitive on the subject of ballroom dancing. He did not want it generally known that this was what his father did for a living. Nevertheless, he dropped his famous uncle’s name frequently among his friends and mine. Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own. But what did Charlie do? He prepared himself for greatness. He daydreamed about his conducting debut—which otherwise he did nothing much to hasten—and he began symphonies. They were—every one of them—unfinished symphonies. He also began sonatas and operas (based on works by Kafka or Beckett). These were unfinished bars (but which he always promised to dedicate to me). Perhaps to others he was a failure, but to himself he was a romantic figure. He spoke of “silence, exile, and cunning.” (Silence: the unfinished symphonies. Exile: he had left the Beresford for the East Village. Cunning: his affair with me.) He was going through the initial trials of all great artists. As a conductor, he had not yet had his break and was further handicapped, he thought, by the fact of not being a homosexual. As a composer, it was a question of learning to cope with the crisis of style which bedeviled the age. That too would come in time. One had to think in decades, not years.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Matta apologized; he had not realized his errors. Moved by his apology, the lady was more than ready to resume the courtship—but a few days later, after a few trifling stabs at wooing, Matta once again assumed that she was ready for bed. To his dismay, she refused him as before. "I do not think that [women] can be mightily offended," Matta told the cheva- lier, "if one sometimes leaves off trifling, to come to the point." But Madame de Senantes would have nothing more to do with him, and the Chevalier de Grammont, seeing an opportunity he could not pass by, took advantage of her displeasure by secretly courting her properly, and eventu- ally winning the favors that Matta had tried to force. There is nothing more anti-seductive than feeling that someone has assumed that you are theirs, that you cannot possibly resist them. The slightest ap- pearance of this kind of conceit is deadly to seduction; you must prove yourself, take your time, win your target's heart. Perhaps you fear that he or she will be offended by a slower pace, or will lose interest. It is more likely, however, that your fear reflects your own insecurity, and insecurity is always anti-seductive. In truth, the longer you take, the more you show the depth of your interest, and the deeper the spell you create. In a world of few formalities and ceremony, seduction is one of the few remnants from the past that retains the ancient patterns. It is a ritual, and its rites must be observed. Haste reveals not the depth of your feelings but the degree of your self-absorption. It may be possible sometimes to hurry someone into love, but you will only be repaid by the lack of pleasure this kind of love affords. If you are naturally impetuous, do what you can to disguise it. Strangely enough, the effort you spend on holding yourself back may be read by your target as deeply seductive. 3. In Paris in the 1730s lived a young man named Meilcour, who was just of an age to have his first affair. His mother's friend Madame de Lursay, a widow of around forty, was beautiful and charming, but had a reputation for being untouchable; as a boy, Meilcour had been infatuated with her, but never expected his love would be returned. So it was with great surprise and excitement that he realized that now that he was old enough, Madame de Lursay's tender looks seemed to indicate a more than motherly interest in him.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  It was broken into parts, which were hawked all over Europe for enormous amounts. And when Rohan finally complained to the queen, news of the extravagant purchase spread rapidly. The public believed Rohan's story—that the queen had in- deed bought the necklace, and was pretending otherwise. This fiction was the first step in the ruin of her reputation. Everyone has lost something in life, has felt the pangs of disappoint- ment. The idea that we can get something back, that a mistake can be righted, is immensely seductive. Under the impression that the queen was prepared to forgive some mistake he had made, Rohan hallucinated all kinds of things—nods that did not exist, letters that were the flimsiest of forgeries, a prostitute who became Marie Antoinette. The mind is infi- nitely vulnerable to suggestion, and even more so when strong desires are involved. And nothing is stronger than the desire to change the past, right a wrong, satisfy a disappointment. Find these desires in your victims and cre- ating a believable fantasy will be simple for you: few have the power to see through an illusion they desperately want to believe in. Confuse Desire and Reality—The Perfect Illusion • 307 Symbol: Shangri-La. Everyone has a vision in their mind of a perfect place where people are kind and noble, where their dreams can be realized and their wishes fulfilled, where life is full of adventure and romance. Lead the target on a journey there, give them a glimpse of Shangri- La through the mists on the mountain, and they will fall in love. Reversal T here is no reversal to this chapter. No seduction can proceed without creating illusion, the sense of a world that is real but separate from reality. Isolate the Victim An iso- lated person is weak. By slowly isolating your vic- tims, you make them more vul- nerable to your influence. Their isolation may be psychological: by filling their field of vision through the pleasurable attention you pay them, you crowd out every- thing else in their mind. They see and think only of you. The isolation may also be physi- cal: you take them away from their normal mi- lieu, friends, family, home. Give them the sense of being marginalized, in limbo—they are leaving one world behind and entering another. Once isolated like this, they have no outside support, and in their confu- sion they are easily led astray. Lure the seduced into your lair, where nothing is familiar. Isolation—the Exotic Effect I n the early fifth century B.C., Fu Chai, the Chinese king of Wu, defeated his great enemy, Kou Chien, the king of Yueh, in a series of battles.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  These glimpses of her body drove him crazy, and he would some- times try to steal a kiss or caress, only to have her push him away and scold him. Weeks went by; clearly he had shown that his was not a passing fancy. Tired of the endless courtship, he took Conchita's mother aside one day and proposed that he set the girl up in a house of her own. He would treat her like a queen; she would have everything she wanted. (So, of course, would her mother.) Surely his proposal would satisfy the two women—but the next day, a note came from Conchita, expressing not gratitude but re- crimination: he was trying to buy her love. "You shall never see me again," she concluded. He hurried to the house only to discover that the women had moved out that very morning, without leaving word where they were going. Don Mateo felt terrible. Yes, he had acted like a boor. Next time he would wait months, or years if need be, before being so bold. Soon, how- ever, another thought assailed him: he would never see Conchita again. Only then did he realize how much he loved her. The winter passed, the worst of Mateo's life. One spring day he was walking down the street when he heard someone calling his name. He looked up: Conchita was standing in an open window, beaming with ex- citement. She bent down toward him and he kissed her hand, beside him- self with joy. Why had she disappeared so suddenly? It was all going too quickly, she said. She had been afraid—of his intentions, and of her own feelings. But seeing him again, she was certain that she loved him. Yes, she was ready to be his mistress. She would prove it, she would come to him. Being apart had changed them both, he thought. A few nights later, as promised, she appeared at his house. They kissed and began to undress. He wanted to savor every minute, to take it slowly, but he felt like a caged bull finally set free. He followed her into bed, his hands all over her. He started to take off her underwear but it was laced up in some complicated way. Eventually he had to sit up and take a look: she was wearing some elaborate canvas contraption, of a kind he had never seen. No matter how hard he tugged and pulled, it would not come off. He felt like hitting Conchita, he was so distraught, but instead he started to cry. She explained: she wanted to do everything with him, yet to remain a mozita. This was her protection. Exasperated, he sent her home. Over the next few weeks, Don Mateo began to reassess his opinion of Conchita. He saw her flirting with other men, and dancing a suggestive fla- menco in a bar: she was not a mozita, he decided, she was playing him for money.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  For she was, as Fan Li had said, the one and only, the incomparable Hsi Shih, whose magnetic personality attracted everyone, many even against their own will. . . . • Embroidered silk curtains encrusted with coral and gems, scented furniture and screens inlaid with jade and mother-of- pearl were among the luxuries which surrounded the favorite. . . . On one of the hills near the palace there was a celebrated pool of clear water which has been known ever since as the pool of the king of Wu. Here, to amuse her lover, Hsi Shih would make her toilet, using the pool as a mirror while the infatuated king combed her hair. . . . —ELOISE TALCOTT HIBBERT, EMBROIDERED GAUZE: PORTRAITS OR FAMOUS CHINESE LADIES Isolate the Victim • 313 into your world, the weaker they become. As with the king of Wu, by the time they realize what has happened, it is too late. Isolation—The "Only You" Effect I n 1948, the twenty-nine-year-old actress Rita Hayworth, known as Hollywood's Love Goddess, was at a low point in her life. Her marriage to Orson Welles was breaking up, her mother had died, and her career seemed stalled. That summer she headed for Europe. Welles was in Italy at the time, and in the back of her mind she was dreaming of a reconciliation. Rita stopped first at the French Riviera. Invitations poured in, particu- larly from wealthy men, for at the time she was considered the most beauti- ful woman in the world. Aristotle Onassis and the Shah of Iran telephoned her almost daily, begging for a date. She turned them all down. A few days after her arrival, though, she received an invitation from Elsa Maxwell, the society hostess, who was giving a little party in Cannes. Rita balked but Maxwell insisted, telling her to buy a new dress, show up a little late, and make a grand entrance. Rita played along, and arrived at the party wearing a white Grecian gown, her red hair falling over her bare shoulders. She was greeted by a re- action she had grown used to: all conversation stopped as both men and women turned in their chairs, the men gazing in amazement, the women jealous. A man hurried to her side and escorted her to her table. It was thirty-seven-year-old Prince Aly Khan, the son of the Aga Khan III, who was the worldwide leader of the Islamic Ismaili sect and one of the richest men in the world. Rita had been warned about Aly Khan, a notorious rake. To her dismay, they were seated next to each other, and he never left her side.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  You have deliberately created mystery and suspense to make the victim experience a real-life drama. Under your spell, the seduced gets to feel transported away from the world of work and responsibility. You will keep this going for as long as you want or can, heightening the tension, stirring the emotions, until the time finally comes to complete the seduction. After that, disenchantment almost inevitably sets in. The release of tension is followed by a letdown—of excitement, of energy—that can even materialize as a kind of disgust directed at you by your victim, even though what is happening is really a natural emotional course. It is as if a drug were wearing off, allowing the target to see you as you are—and being disap- pointed by the flaws that are inevitably there. On your side, you too have probably tended to idealize your targets somewhat, and once your desire is satisfied, you may see them as weak. (After all, they have given in to you.) You too may feel disappointed. Even in the best of circumstances, you are dealing now with the reality rather than the fantasy, and the flames will slowly die down—unless you start up a second seduction. You may think that if the victim is to be sacrificed, none of this mat- ters. But sometimes your effort to break off the relationship will inadver- tently revive the spell for the other person, causing him or her to cling to you tenaciously. No, in either direction—sacrifice, or the integration of the two of you into a couple—you must take disenchantment into account. There is an art to the post-seduction as well. Master the following tactics to avoid undesired aftereffects. Fight against inertia. The sense that you are trying less hard is often enough to disenchant your victims. Reflecting back on what you did dur- ing the seduction, they will see you as manipulative: you wanted something then, and so you worked at it, but now you are taking them for granted. After the first seduction is over, then, show that it isn't really over—that you want to keep proving yourself, focusing your attention on them, luring them. That is often enough to keep them enchanted. Fight the tendency to let things settle into comfort and routine. Stir the pot, even if that means a In a word, woe to the woman of too monotonous a temperament; her monotony satiates and disgusts. She is always the same statue, with her a man is always right. She is so good, so gentle, that she takes away from people the privilege of quarreling with her, and this is often such a great pleasure! Put in her place a vivacious woman, capricious, decided, to a certain limit, however, and things assume a different aspect.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Accompanying her father was a white man, an unusual sight in these parts. He was a twenty-two-year-old Aus- tralian from Tasmania, and he was the owner of the plantation. His name was Errol Flynn. Flynn smiled warmly at Tuperselai, seeming particularly interested in her bare breasts. (As was the custom in New Guinea then, she wore only a grass skirt.) He said in pidgin English how beautiful she was, and kept re- peating her name, which he pronounced remarkably well. He did not say You're anxiously expecting me to escort you \ To parties: here too solicit my advice. \ Arrive late, when the lamps are lit; make a graceful entrance— \ Delay enhances charm, delay's a great bawd. \ Plain you may be, but at night you'll look fine to the tipsy: \ Soft lights and shadows will mask your faults. \ Take your food with dainty fingers: good table manners matter: \ Don't besmear your whole face with a greasy paw. \ Don't cat first at home, and nibble— but equally, don't indulge your \ Appetite to the full, leave something in hand. \ If Paris saw Helen stuffing herself to the eyeballs \ He'd detest her, he'd feel her abduction had been \ A stupid mistake. . . . \ Each woman should know herself, pick methods \ To suit her body: one fashion . won't do for all. \ Let the girl with a pretty face lie supine, let the lady \ Who boasts a good back be viewed \ From behind. Milanion bore Atalanta's legs on \ His shoulders: nice legs should always be used this way \ The petite should ride a horse (Andromache, Hector's Theban \ Bride, was too tall for these games: no jockey she); \ If you 're built like a fashion model, with a willowy figure, \ Then kneel on the bed, your neck \ A little arched; the girl who has perfect legs and bosom \ Should lie sideways on, and make her lover stand. \ Don't blush to unbind your hair like some ecstatic maenad \ And tumble long tresses about \ Your uncurved throat. —OVID, THE ART OF LOVE, TRANSLATED BY PETER GREEN 398 • The Art of Seduction much else, mind you—he did not speak her language—so she said goodbye and walked away with her father. But later that day she discovered, to her dismay, that Mr. Flynn had taken a liking to her and had purchased her from her father for two pigs, some English coins, and some seashell money. The family was poor and the father liked the price. Tuperselai had a boyfriend in the village whom she did not want to leave, but she did not dare disobey her father, and she left with Mr. Flynn for the tobacco planta- tion.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Kaoru and the others appear in the eleventh-century Japanese novel The Tale of Genji, by the noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu. The characters are based on people the author knew, but Kaoru's type appears in every culture and period: these are men and women who seem to be searching for an ideal partner. The one they have is never quite right; at first glance a person excites them, but they soon see faults, and when a new person crosses their path, he or she looks better and the first person is forgotten. These types often try to work on the imperfect mortal who has excited them, to im- prove them culturally and morally. But this proves extremely unsatisfactory for both parties. The truth about this type is not that they are searching for an ideal but that they are hopelessly unhappy with themselves. You may mistake their dissatisfaction for a perfectionist's high standards, but in point of fact nothing will really satisfy them, for their unhappiness is deep-rooted. You can recognize them by their past, which will be littered with short-lived, stormy romances. Also, they will tend to compare you to others, and to try to remake you. You may not realize at first what you have gotten into, but people like this will eventually prove hopelessly anti-seductive because they cannot see your individual qualities. Cut the romance off before it happens. These types are closet sadists and will torture you with their unreachable goals. 142 • The Art of Seduction 5. In 1762, in the city of Turin, Italy, Giovanni Giacomo Casanova made the acquaintance of one Count A.B., a Milanese gentleman who seemed to like him enormously. The count had fallen on hard times and Casanova lent him some money. In gratitude, the count invited Casanova to stay with him and his wife in Milan. His wife, he said, was from Barcelona, and was admired far and wide for her beauty. He showed Casanova her letters, which had an intriguing wit; Casanova imagined her as a prize worth se- ducing. He went to Milan. Arriving at the house of Count A.B., Casanova found that the Spanish lady was certainly beautiful, but that she was also quiet and serious. Some- thing about her bothered him. As he was unpacking his clothes, the count- ess saw a stunning red dress, trimmed with sable, among his belongings. It was a gift, Casanova explained, for any Milanese lady who won his heart. The following evening at dinner, the countess was suddenly more friendly, teasing and bantering with Casanova.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  The baby gets sick and she makes it with the pediatrician. He is fucking his masochistic little secretary who reads Cosmopolitan and thinks herself a swinger. Not: when did it all go wrong? But: when was it ever right? A grim picture. Not all marriages are like that. Take the marriage I dreamed of in my idealistic adolescence (when I thought that Beatrice and Sidney Webb, Virginia and Leonard Woolf had perfect marriages). What did I know? I wanted “total mutuality,” “companionship,” “equality.” Did I know about how men sit there glued to the paper while you clear the table? How they pretend to be all thumbs when you ask them to mix the frozen orange juice? How they bring friends home and expect you to wait on them and yet feel entitled to sulk and go off into another room if you bring friends home? What idealistic adolescent girl could imagine all that as she sat reading Shaw and Virginia Woolf and the Webbs? I know some good marriages. Second marriages mostly. Marriages where both people have outgrown the bullshit of me-Tarzan, you-Jane and are just trying to get through their days by helping each other, being good to each other, doing the chores as they come up and not worrying too much about who does what. Some men reach that delightfully relaxed state of affairs about age forty or after a couple of divorces. Maybe marriages are best in middle age. When all the nonsense falls away and you realize you have to love one another because you’re going to die anyway. — We were all stoned (but I was more stoned than everyone) when we piled into Adrian’s green Triumph and headed for a discotheque. There were five of us sardined into that tiny car: Bennett; Marie Winkleman (a very bosomy college classmate of mine whom Bennett had sort of picked up at the party—she was a psychologist); Adrian (who was driving, after a fashion); me (head back, like the first Isadora, post-strangulation); and Robin Phipps-Smith (the mousy British candidate with frizzy hair and German eyeglass frames who talked all the time about how he detested “Ronnie” Laing—something which endeared him to Bennett’s heart). Adrian, on the other hand, was a follower of Laing, had studied with him, and could do excellent imitations of his Scottish accent. At least I thought they were excellent—but then I didn’t know how Laing spoke. We zigzagged through the streets of Vienna, over the cobblestones and trolley tracks, across the muddy brown Danube. I don’t know the name of the discotheque, or the street, or anything. I go into states where I notice nothing about the landscape except the male inhabitants and which organs of mine (heart, stomach, nipples, cunt) they cause to palpitate. The discotheque was silver. Chrome paper on the walls. Flashing white lights. Mirrors everywhere. The glass tables elevated on platforms of chrome. The seats white leather. Ear-splitting rock music.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  This program rather appalled me, but I spoke to two intelligent ladies who had been connected with the school, and they affirmed that the girls did quite a bit of sound reading and that the “communication” line was more or less ballyhoo aimed at giving old-fashioned Beardsley School a financially remunerative modern touch, though actually it remained as prim as a prawn. Another reason attracting me to that particular school may seem funny to some readers, but it was very important to me, for that is the way I am made. Across our street, exactly in front of our house, there was, I noticed, a gap of weedy wasteland, with some colorful bushes and a pile of bricks and a few scattered planks, and the foam of shabby mauve and chrome autumn roadside flowers; and through that gap you could see a shimmery section of School Rd., running parallel to our Thayer St., and immediately beyond that, the playground of the school. Apart from the psychological comfort this general arrangement should afford me by keeping Dolly’s day adjacent to mine, I immediately foresaw the pleasure I would have in distinguishing from my study-bedroom, by means of powerful binoculars, the statistically inevitable percentage of nymphets among the other girl-children playing around Dolly during recess; unfortunately, on the very first day of school, workmen arrived and put up a fence some way down the gap, and in no time a construction of tawny wood maliciously arose beyond that fence utterly blocking my magic vista; and as soon as they had erected a sufficient amount of material to spoil everything, those absurd builders suspended their work and never appeared again.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Nabokov reinstated the scene in his published screenplay of Lolita (Stanley Kubrick had dropped it from the film). “Although there are just enough borrowings from [my Lolita script in Kubrick’s] version to justify my legal position as author of the script, the final product is only a blurred skimpy glimpse of the marvelous picture I imagined and set down scene by scene during the six months I worked in a Los Angeles villa. I do not wish to imply that Kubrick’s film is mediocre; in its own right, it is first-rate, but it is not what I wrote. A tinge of poshlust [see Introduction, here] is often given by the cinema to the novel it distorts and coarsens in its crooked glass. Kubrick, I think, avoided this fault in his version, but I shall never understand why he did not follow my directions and dreams. It is a great pity; but at least I shall be able to have people read my Lolita play in its original form” (Paris Review interview, 1967). Speaking more positively three years earlier, Nabokov said, “The four main actors deserve the very highest praise. Sue Lyon bringing that breakfast tray or childishly pulling on her sweater in the car—these are moments of unforgettable acting and directing. The killing of Quilty [Peter Sellers] is a masterpiece, and so is the death of Mrs. Haze [Shelley Winters; James Mason was H.H.]. I must point out, though, that I had nothing to do with the actual production. If I had, I might have insisted on stressing certain things that were not stressed—for example, the different motels at which they stopped” (Playboy interview). The highways and motels were so little in evidence because the film, released in 1962, was shot in England. 342: for “coincidences,” see A key (342!) and 342. A lady who lived opposite: and she is subsequently referred to as “Miss Opposite” on pp. 52 ff. suburban dog: a foreshadowing of Charlotte Haze’s death, for Mr. Beale will run over her when he swerves to avoid hitting what may well be this dog (see here). See also Keys, p. 6. van Gogh: the “Arlésienne” (1888) is a famous portrait of a woman from the town of Aries in Provence, by Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890). Mass-produced reproductions of it are quite popular in America. H.H.’s low opinion of van Gogh is shared by other Nabokov characters. In Pnin, the art teacher Lake thinks “That van Gogh is second-rate and Picasso supreme, despite his commercial foibles” (p. 96); and Victor Wind acknowledges “with a nod of ironic recognition” a framed reproduction of van Gogh’s “La Berceuse” (p. 108). Marlene Dietrich: see Lola.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Plekhanov was treated with deference, Martov was loved, but Lenin alone was followed unhesitatingly as the only indisputable leader. For only Lenin represented that rare phenomenon, especially rare in Russia, of a man of iron will and indomitable energy who combines fanatical faith in the movement, the cause, with no less faith in himself. —A. N. POTRESOV, QUOTED IN DANKWART A. RUSTOW, ED., PHILOSOPHERS AND KINGS: STUDIES IN LEADERSHIP "I had hoped to see the mountain eagle of our party, the great man, great physically as well as politically. I had fancied Lenin as a giant, stately and imposing. Mow great was my disappointment to see a most ordinary-looking man, below average height, in no way, literally in no way distinguishable from ordinary mortals. " —JOSEPH STALIN, ON MEETING LENIN FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 1905, QUOTED IN RONALD W. CLARK, LENIN:THE MAN BEHIND THE MASK The Charismatic • 109 drome: once people imagine you can save them from chaos, they will fall in love with you, like a person who melts in the arms of his or her rescuer. And mass love equals charisma. How else to explain the love ordinary Rus- sians felt for a man as emotionless and unexciting as Vladimir Lenin. The guru. According to the beliefs of the Theosophical Society, every two thousand years or so the spirit of the World Teacher, Lord Maitreya, inhab- its the body of a human. First there was Sri Krishna, born two thousand years before Christ; then there was Jesus himself; and at the start of the twentieth century another incarnation was due. One day in 1909, the theosophist Charles Leadbeater saw a boy on an Indian beach and had an epiphany: this fourteen-year-old lad, Jiddu Krishnamurti, would be the World Teacher's next vehicle. Leadbeater was struck by the simplicity of the boy, who seemed to lack the slightest trace of selfishness. The members of the Theosophical Society agreed with his assessment and adopted this scraggly underfed youth, whose teachers had repeatedly beaten him for stu- pidity. They fed and clothed him and began his spiritual instruction. The scruffy urchin turned into a devilishly handsome young man. In 1911, the theosophists formed the Order of the Star in the East, a group intended to prepare the way for the coming of the World Teacher. Krishnamurti was made head of the order. He was taken to England, where his education continued, and everywhere he went he was pampered and revered. His air of simplicity and contentment could not help but impress. Soon Krishnamurti began to have visions. In 1922 he declared, "I have drunk at the fountain of Joy and eternal Beauty. I am God-intoxicated." Over the next few years he had psychic experiences that the theosophists interpreted as visits from the World Teacher. But Krishnamurti had actually had a different kind of revelation: the truth of the universe came from within.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  We recently spotted a young man strolling down Las Ramblas in Barcelona proudly sporting a T-shirt proclaiming that he was Born to F*ck. One wonders whether he has a whole set of these shirts at home: Born to Bre*the, Born to E*t, Born to Dr*nk, Born to Sh*t, and of course the depressing but inevitable Born to D*e. But maybe he was making a deeper point. After all, the argument central to this book is that sex has long served many crucial functions for Homo sapiens, with reproduction being only the most obvious among them. Since we human beings spend more time and energy planning, executing, and recalling our sexual exploits than any other species on Earth, maybe we all should wear such shirts. Or maybe just the women. When it comes to sex, men may be trash-talking sprinters, but it’s the women who win all the marathons. Any marriage counselor will tell you the most common sex-related complaint women make about men is that they are too quick and too direct. Meanwhile, men’s most frequent sex-related gripe about women is that they take too damned long to get warmed up. After an orgasm, a woman may be anticipating a dozen more. A female body in motion tends to stay in motion. But men come and go. For them, the curtain falls quickly and the mind turns to unrelated matters. This symmetry of dual disappointment illustrates the almost comical incompatibility between men’s and women’s sexual response in the context of monogamous mating. You have to wonder: if men and women evolved together in sexually monogamous couples for millions of years, how did we end up being so incompatible? It’s as if we’ve been sitting down to dinner together, millennium after millennium, but half of us can’t help wolfing everything down in a few frantic, sloppy minutes, while the other half are still setting the table and lighting candles. Yes, we know: mixed strategies, lots of cheap sperm versus a few expensive eggs in one basket, and so on. But these flagrantly maladjusted sexual responses make far more sense when viewed as relics of our having evolved in promiscuous groups. Rather than spinning theories within theories in an effort to prop up an unstable paradigm—monogamy with mistakes, mild polygyny, mixed mating strategies, serial monogamy—can we simply face the one scenario where none of this self-contradicting, inconsistent special pleading is necessary?

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  In the 1960s, anthropologist William Davenport lived among a group of Melanesian islanders who regarded sex as natural and uncomplicated. All the women claimed to be highly orgasmic, with most reporting several orgasms to each of her partner’s one. Nevertheless, reported Davenport, “it is assumed that after a few years of marriage, the husband’s interest in his wife will begin to pale.” Until the recent imposition of colonial laws stopped the practice, these Melanesians avoided monotomy by allowing married men to have young lovers. Rather than being jealous of these concubines, wives regarded them as status symbols, and Davenport claimed that both men and women regarded the loss of this practice the worst result of contact with European culture. “Older men often comment today that without young women to excite them and without the variety once provided by changing concubines, they have become sexually inactive long before their time.”26 Closer to home, William Masters and Virginia Johnson reported that “loss of coital interest engendered by monotony in a sexual relationship is probably the most constant factor in the loss of an aging male’s interest in sexual performance with his partner.” They note that this loss of interest can frequently be reversed if the man has a younger lover—even if the lover is not as attractive or sexually skilled as the man’s wife. Kinsey concurred, writing, “There seems to be no question but that the human male would be promiscuous in his choice of sexual partners throughout the whole of his life if there were no social restrictions.”27 For most men and many women, sexual monogamy leads inexorably to monotomy. It’s important to understand this process has nothing to do with the attractiveness of the long-term partner or the depth and sincerity of the love felt for him or her. Indeed, quoting Symons, “A man’s sexual desire for a woman to whom he is not married is largely the result of her not being his wife.”28 Novelty itself is the attraction. Though they’re unlikely to admit it, the long-term partners of the sexiest Hollywood starlets are subject to the same psychosexual process. Frustrating? Unfair? Infuriating? Humiliating on both sides? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. But still, true.