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 Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Had he not insured it sufficiently? I was angry, disappointed and bored, but being a polite European, could not refuse to be sent off to Lawn Street in that funeral car, feeling that otherwise McCoo would devise an even more elaborate means of getting rid of me. I saw him scamper away, and my chauffeur shook his head with a soft chuckle. En route, I swore to myself I would not dream of staying in Ramsdale under any circumstance but would fly that very day to the Bermudas or the Bahamas or the Blazes. Possibilities of sweetness on technicolor beaches had been trickling through my spine for some time before, and McCoo’s cousin had, in fact, sharply diverted that train of thought with his well-meaning but as it transpired now absolutely inane suggestion. Speaking of sharp turns: we almost ran over a meddlesome suburban dog (one of those who lie in wait for cars) as we swerved into Lawn Street. A little further, the Haze house, a white-frame horror, appeared, looking dingy and old, more gray than white—the kind of place you know will have a rubber tube affixable to the tub faucet in lieu of shower. I tipped the chauffeur and hoped he would immediately drive away so that I might double back unnoticed to my hotel and bag; but the man merely crossed to the other side of the street where an old lady was calling to him from her porch. What could I do? I pressed the bell button. A colored maid let me in—and left me standing on the mat while she rushed back to the kitchen where something was burning that ought not to burn. The front hall was graced with door chimes, a white-eyed wooden thingamabob of commercial Mexican origin, and that banal darling of the arty middle class, van Gogh’s “Arlésienne.” A door ajar to the right afforded a glimpse of a living room, with some more Mexican trash in a corner cabinet and a striped sofa along the wall. There was a staircase at the end of the hallway, and as I stood mopping my brow (only now did I realize how hot it had been out-of-doors) and staring, to stare at something, at an old gray tennis ball that lay on an oak chest, there came from the upper landing the contralto voice of Mrs. Haze, who leaning over the banisters inquired melodiously, “Is that Monsieur Humbert?” A bit of cigarette ash dropped from there in addition.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Levin felt so resolute and serene that no answer, he fancied, could affect him. But he had never dreamed of what Stepan Arkadyevitch replied. “She’s never thought of being married, and isn’t thinking of it; but she’s very ill, and the doctors have sent her abroad. They’re positively afraid she may not live.” “What!” cried Levin. “Very ill? What is wrong with her? How has she...?” While they were saying this, Laska, with ears pricked up, was looking upwards at the sky, and reproachfully at them. “They have chosen a time to talk,” she was thinking. “It’s on the wing.... Here it is, yes, it is. They’ll miss it,” thought Laska. But at that very instant both suddenly heard a shrill whistle which, as it were, smote on their ears, and both suddenly seized their guns and two flashes gleamed, and two bangs sounded at the very same instant. The snipe flying high above instantly folded its wings and fell into a thicket, bending down the delicate shoots. “Splendid! Together!” cried Levin, and he ran with Laska into the thicket to look for the snipe. “Oh, yes, what was it that was unpleasant?” he wondered. “Yes, Kitty’s ill.... Well, it can’t be helped; I’m very sorry,” he thought. “She’s found it! Isn’t she a clever thing?” he said, taking the warm bird from Laska’s mouth and packing it into the almost full game bag. “I’ve got it, Stiva!” he shouted. Chapter 16 On the way home Levin asked all details of Kitty’s illness and the Shtcherbatskys’ plans, and though he would have been ashamed to admit it, he was pleased at what he heard. He was pleased that there was still hope, and still more pleased that she should be suffering who had made him suffer so much. But when Stepan Arkadyevitch began to speak of the causes of Kitty’s illness, and mentioned Vronsky’s name, Levin cut him short. “I have no right whatever to know family matters, and, to tell the truth, no interest in them either.” Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled hardly perceptibly, catching the instantaneous change he knew so well in Levin’s face, which had become as gloomy as it had been bright a minute before. “Have you quite settled about the forest with Ryabinin?” asked Levin. “Yes, it’s settled. The price is magnificent; thirty-eight thousand. Eight straight away, and the rest in six years. I’ve been bothering about it for ever so long. No one would give more.” “Then you’ve as good as given away your forest for nothing,” said Levin gloomily. “How do you mean for nothing?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch with a good-humored smile, knowing that nothing would be right in Levin’s eyes now. “Because the forest is worth at least a hundred and fifty roubles the acre,” answered Levin.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  clear enough should be to thee the excellence of that other, concerning whom, ere my coming, Thomas was so courteous. But the track which the highest part of its circumference took hath been so abandoned, that there now is mould where once was crust. His household, who marched straight with feet in his footprints, hath turned so round, that the toe striketh on the heel’s imprint; and soon shall sight be had of the harvest of the ill-culture, when the tare shall wail that the chest is reft from it. 21 I well allow that whoso should search leaf after leaf through our volume, might yet find a page where he might read; I am as I was wont; but not from Casale, nor from Acquasparta shall he be, whence come such to our Scripture that the one shirketh, the other draweth it yet tighter. 22 I am the life of Bonaventura of Bagnoregio, who in the great offices did ever place behind the left-hand care. 28 Illuminato and Augustine 24 are here, who were of the first unshod poor brethren, that with the cord made themselves friends to God. Hugh of St. Victor 25 is here with them, and Pietro Mangiadore, and Pietro Ispano, 26 who giveth light below in twelve booklets; Nathan the prophet, the metropolitan Chrysostom, and Anselm, and that Donatus 27 who deigned to set his hand to the first art; Rabanus 28 is here, and there shineth at my side the Calabrian abbot Joachim, 29 dowed with prophetic spirit. To emulous speech of so great paladin moved me the enkindled courtesy of brother Thomas and his well-judged discourse, and moved this company with me.” 1. The horizontal sweep of a millstone is contrasted with the vertical motion of a wheel in Conv. iii. 5. The Apostles are frequently represented in art as working the Divine mill, and it may be under the influence of this association, as well as the direct fascination of the sight of a mill at work, that Dante compares the circling of these lights of the Church to the sweep of a millstone. 2. The reference is general. “Every song and every note produced in the throat or in the tubes of musical instruments is but a faint reflection of the heavenly music.” 3. This passage is often cited to illustrate Dante’s love of packing one simile within another. The two circles of lights were like a double rainbow (Juno’s handmaid = Iris = Rainbow), and one rainbow is like the echo of another, and the nymph Echo was consumed by love as vapours are consumed by the Sun. Note the characteristic combination of Pagan mythology and Hebrew legend. Cf. Gen. ix. 8-17. 4. The Italian presents a difficulty; ultima = the “last” (counting from outside inwards), being used for intima = the “inmost.” 5. The speaker is Bonaventura (1221-1274), known as the Seraphic Doctor. He became General of the Franciscans in 1256. 6. Cf.

• From Querelle (1953)

  She was literally shedding it. First, her shoulders appeared, white and divided from her torso by the narrow straps of velvet or satin holding up her slip and her breasts under all that black lace and a pink bra; then Madame Lysiane stepped out of the dress, ready for the joys of the bed. Very upright on her extremely high and pointed Louis Quinze heels she advanced toward the bed on which Robert was already reclining. She gazed at him, not a thought in her head. Suddenly she turned round, exclaiming : ''Ah!" and headed for her mahogany dressing table. She took off the four rings she wore on her fingers, and then, with motions equaiiy well-rounded, but even more sweeping than befo e, she undid her hair. As the shivers running through a lion's body make desert or jungle vibrate from ground to sky, so her room shook, from the short-pile rug to the last fold of the window curtains, when Madame Lysiane shook her head, her angry mane, her shoulders white as alabaster (or mother-of-pearl ) : proudly she set out, every night, to vanquish the already conquered male. She came back to the bubbling brook under the palm trees where Robert went on smoking, oblivious to everything but the physical aspect of the ceiling. "\Von't you let me in?" Casuaiiy, he flicked aside the comer of the sheet, so that his mistress could join him on the bed. Such lack of gallantry hurt �1adame Lysiane, yet that hurt was one she delighted in every time, because it showed that there still were realms to conquer. She was a courageous, yet vanquished woman. Her physical splendor, the wealth of her breasts and her hair, the total opulence of her body, as it offered itself to men, was, by its very nature (because all opulence is virginal ) , easily conquered and enjoyed. It is not beauty we are talking about, in her case. 180 I JEAN GENET Beauty can be an obstacle more fearsome than barbed wire: it can be pointed and barbed, it can kill at a distance, like a burst of gunfire. The opulence of Madame Lysiane's flesh was the exact form of her innate generosity. Her skin was white and soft. As soon as she had stretched out (Madame Lysiane hated the expression "go to bed," and respecting her sense of propriety we won't use it when discussing her, but hope to say a word or two about the "delicacy" of forbidden words ) , stretched out, she looked around the room. With a slow, circu·

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  In spite of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s efforts to be an attentive father and husband, he never could keep in his mind that he had a wife and children. He had bachelor tastes, and it was in accordance with them that he shaped his life. On his return to Moscow he informed his wife with pride that everything was ready, that the house would be a little paradise, and that he advised her most certainly to go. His wife’s staying away in the country was very agreeable to Stepan Arkadyevitch from every point of view: it did the children good, it decreased expenses, and it left him more at liberty. Darya Alexandrovna regarded staying in the country for the summer as essential for the children, especially for the little girl, who had not succeeded in regaining her strength after the scarlatina, and also as a means of escaping the petty humiliations, the little bills owing to the wood-merchant, the fishmonger, the shoemaker, which made her miserable. Besides this, she was pleased to go away to the country because she was dreaming of getting her sister Kitty to stay with her there. Kitty was to be back from abroad in the middle of the summer, and bathing had been prescribed for her. Kitty wrote that no prospect was so alluring as to spend the summer with Dolly at Ergushovo, full of childish associations for both of them. The first days of her existence in the country were very hard for Dolly. She used to stay in the country as a child, and the impression she had retained of it was that the country was a refuge from all the unpleasantness of the town, that life there, though not luxurious—Dolly could easily make up her mind to that—was cheap and comfortable; that there was plenty of everything, everything was cheap, everything could be got, and children were happy. But now coming to the country as the head of a family, she perceived that it was all utterly unlike what she had fancied.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The waiting-room of the celebrated Petersburg lawyer was full when Alexey Alexandrovitch entered it. Three ladies—an old lady, a young lady, and a merchant’s wife—and three gentlemen—one a German banker with a ring on his finger, the second a merchant with a beard, and the third a wrathful-looking government clerk in official uniform, with a cross on his neck—had obviously been waiting a long while already. Two clerks were writing at tables with scratching pens. The appurtenances of the writing-tables, about which Alexey Alexandrovitch was himself very fastidious, were exceptionally good. He could not help observing this. One of the clerks, without getting up, turned wrathfully to Alexey Alexandrovitch, half closing his eyes. “What are you wanting?” He replied that he had to see the lawyer on some business. “He is engaged,” the clerk responded severely, and he pointed with his pen at the persons waiting, and went on writing. “Can’t he spare time to see me?” said Alexey Alexandrovitch. “He has no time free; he is always busy. Kindly wait your turn.” “Then I must trouble you to give him my card,” Alexey Alexandrovitch said with dignity, seeing the impossibility of preserving his incognito. The clerk took the card and, obviously not approving of what he read on it, went to the door. Alexey Alexandrovitch was in principle in favor of the publicity of legal proceedings, though for some higher official considerations he disliked the application of the principle in Russia, and disapproved of it, as far as he could disapprove of anything instituted by authority of the Emperor. His whole life had been spent in administrative work, and consequently, when he did not approve of anything, his disapproval was softened by the recognition of the inevitability of mistakes and the possibility of reform in every department. In the new public law courts he disliked the restrictions laid on the lawyers conducting cases. But till then he had had nothing to do with the law courts, and so had disapproved of their publicity simply in theory; now his disapprobation was strengthened by the unpleasant impression made on him in the lawyer’s waiting room. “Coming immediately,” said the clerk; and two minutes later there did actually appear in the doorway the large figure of an old solicitor who had been consulting with the lawyer himself. The lawyer was a little, squat, bald man, with a dark, reddish beard, light-colored long eyebrows, and an overhanging brow. He was attired as though for a wedding, from his cravat to his double watch-chain and varnished boots. His face was clever and manly, but his dress was dandified and in bad taste. “Pray walk in,” said the lawyer, addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch; and, gloomily ushering Karenin in before him, he closed the door.

• From Querelle (1953)

  Was it because Nona was older? He refused to admit that Nono dominated him by buggering him, although that could be part of it. After all, it is hardly pos.sible to engage, every day, in a game one regards as only �hat, an amorous game, without ending up being attached to it. But there was some other factor involved in the creation of this new feeling-which was really an atmosphere of relaxed complicity : it consisted of the forms, the gestures, the jewels, the looks of Madame Lysiane, and it included those words she had said twice that very same evening : "My dear." However, after having been wiped out, in every sense, by the detective, Querelle had lost his taste for his games with Norbert. He had given him�elf one more time, out of habit, almost by accident, but-and Nona's pleasure, which had become too obvious in its manifestations, contributed to this change-he began to detest it. Nevertheless, as it seemed impossible to him to entirely extricate himself, he thought of secretly gaining some advantage of the situation and, first of all, of making Nono pay him for his favors. The patronne's smile and gestures seemed to indicate another, dimly perceived possibility. The first idea Querelle abandoned fairly quickly. Norbert was not the kind of guy one could intimidate. We shall see how Querelle did not, however, completely forget the idea itself, and how he applied it to bring about Lieutenant Seblon's downfall. The newspapers were still discussing the Gil Turko case, "the double murder of Brest," and the police went on looking for the assassin whom the articles presented as a frightful monster whose cunning would enable him to evade justice for a long time yet. Gil's reputation became as hideous as that of Gilles d� Rais. As he could not be found, the population of Brest began 221 I QUERELLE to think of him as an invisible man : and was that only because of the fog, or was there another and more fantastic reason?

• From The Art of the Graphic Memoir: Tell Your Story, Change Your Life (2018)

  SKETCHING I did lots of sketching in certain places, just to understand better the image I was trying to convey, whether it was these three boys holding a baby goat, or a fictional character in despair, or our own trauma, or just a couple of wild chickens. MENTORS AND MODELS I also went to friends and mentors for help. Below is an inked tracing of a drawing by my co-teacher at SAW, Justine. She is an expert with a brush, and I asked her to show me how she might handle some of these drawings. My drawing that follows is more my own, less controlled, frankly, and more crude, but maybe more me in a way that I hope is effective. Additonally, some of of my visual inspiration came from the EC Comics that spoke to me during the time of the events. I copied them literally at times, then tried to remember the style and motion of the pen and brush when making other drawings. The mud on the road (bottom), for instance, was done thinking about the mud in that deep Johnny Craig hole (below). CARTOONING For whatever reason, the one visual style in the book that should have been easy was depicting my wife and me as simple three-head-tall cartoon characters on a lifeboat. In fact, virtually each one of these drawings is quite terrible and I am utterly displeased with them! I couldn’t draw them on a large scale. The few instances where they needed to be squeezed into a tiny panel they work fine. Another drawing I was displeased with is the third panel in this sequence. I am attempting to literally copy the cover to Josh Bayer’s Raw Power, and succeed the first time in panel 2, below. But in the next one, I missed the tension in the shoulders, and it comes across as a calm rather than a vicious slicing across the chest. A drawing is sometimes a performance, and I came to like this slightly imperfect one, so I left it, as a sort of waver in my voice. Perhaps it’s an unconscious foreshadowing of the calm we needed to arrive at at the end of the book. Finding a Visual Style DO THIS The best things you can be doing in this section are looking and experimenting. Look at the material of your story, yourself, your family or friends, the important artifacts and objects in the story. And experiment visually. LOOK! This is a good time to collect visual materials: photos, references, inspirations. Put them in front of you, study them, and let that looking become a part of the engine that is driving this story. And then we can start drawing in order to look at our materials better. Here are a few ways to make sure you are looking at your materials. (Remember your friends and family in real life may be some of your materials, too. Don’t be afraid to draw from life.) • Trace a photo.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  and from her bosom the illustrious soul willed to depart, turning to its own realm, and for its body would no other bier. 19 Think now what he was, who was a worthy colleague 20 to maintain the bark of Peter in deep sea towards the right sign! And such was our patriarch; wherefore who followeth him as he commandeth, thou must perceive, loadeth him with good wares. But his flock hath grown so greedy for new viands, it may not be but that through divers glades it strayeth; and the more his sheep distant and wandering depart from him, the emptier of milk they return foldwards. There are of them, indeed, who fear the loss and cleave close to the shepherd, but they are so few that little cloth doth furnish forth their cowls. Now if my words have not been faint, if thy listening hath been attent, if thou call back to mind what I have said, in part thy will must now be satisfied, for thou shalt see the plant from which they whittle, and thou shalt see the rebuke 21 that is intended in: Where is good fattening if there be no straying” 1. Aphorisms. The name of a celebrated work of Hippocrates (460-357 B.C.). Hence equivalent to medicine. 2. See Canto x. 3. Cf. Canto xiii. To “distinguish” is a technical term of logic. It consists in showing that the inference is not correct though the premises are true, because there is a difference between the sense in which a word is used in the true premise and the sense in which alone it would justify the false conclusion. If an argument is refuted by denying one of the premises the process is called interemption = “destruction.” Cf. De Monarchia, iii. 4. 4. The Seraphs, in popular estimate, are symbolical of love and the Cherubs of knowledge. Hence Francis (1182-1226), known as the Seraphic Father, and Dominic (1170-1221) are respectively akin to them. But see Canto xxviii, note 13. 5. The Chiascio. 6. Ubaldo (bishop of Gubbio, d. 1160) selected this hill for his hermitage, but (according to Scartazzini) was never able to carry out his intention of retiring to it. Hence the term chosen. 7. Porta Sole, the eastern gate of Perugia. 8. They were under the Angevin dynasty so hated by Dante. Cf Canto vi, note 11. But others (with less probability) interpret heavy yoke as referring to the barren eastern slope of Monte Subasio. 9. Dante uses Ascesi, an old form of Assisi, which may be translated “I have ascended.” A play upon the word, in connection with Orient, is found by some commentators. The comparison of Francis to the rising Sun is ancient and widespread. “Glowing as the light-bearer and as the morning star, yea, even as the rising Sun, illuminating, cleansing and fertilizing the world like some new luminary, was Francis seen to arise,” says the Prologue of one of the earliest Lives. 10.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Nous connûmes (this is royal fun) the would-be enticements of their repetitious names—all those Sunset Motels, U-Beam Cottages, Hillcrest Courts, Pine View Courts, Mountain View Courts, Skyline Courts, Park Plaza Courts, Green Acres, Mac’s Courts. There was sometimes a special line in the write-up, such as “Children welcome, pets allowed” ( You are welcome, you are allowed). The baths were mostly tiled showers, with an endless variety of spouting mechanisms, but with one definitely non-Laodicean characteristic in common, a propensity, while in use, to turn instantly beastly hot or blindingly cold upon you, depending on whether your neighbor turned on his cold or his hot to deprive you of a necessary complement in the shower you had so carefully blended. Some motels had instructions pasted above the toilet (on whose tank the towels were unhygienically heaped) asking guests not to throw into its bowl garbage, beer cans, cartons, stillborn babies; others had special notices under glass, such as Things to Do (Riding: You will often see riders coming down Main Street on their way back from a romantic moonlight ride . “Often at 3 A.M .,” sneered unromantic Lo). Nous connûmes the various types of motor court operators, the reformed criminal, the retired teacher and the business flop, among the males; and the motherly, pseudo-ladylike and madamic variants among the females. And sometimes trains would cry in the monstrously hot and humid night with heartrending and ominous plangency, mingling power and hysteria in one desperate scream. We avoided Tourist Homes, country cousins of Funeral ones, old-fashioned, genteel and showerless, with elaborate dressing tables in depressingly white-and-pink little bedrooms, and photographs of the landlady’s children in all their instars. But I did surrender, now and then, to Lo’s predilection for “real” hotels. She would pick out in the book, while I petted her in the parked car in the silence of a dusk-mellowed, mysterious side-road, some highly recommended lake lodge which offered all sorts of things magnified by the flashlight she moved over them, such as congenial company, between-meals snacks, outdoor barbecues—but which in my mind conjured up odious visions of stinking high school boys in sweatshirts and an ember-red cheek pressing against hers, while poor Dr. Humbert, embracing nothing but two masculine knees, would cold-humor his piles on the damp turf. Most tempting to her, too, were those “Colonial” Inns, which apart from “gracious atmosphere” and picture windows, promised “unlimited quantities of M-m-m food.” Treasured recollections of my father’s palatial hotel sometimes led me to seek for its like in the strange country we traveled through.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The night spent by Levin on the haycock did not pass without result for him. The way in which he had been managing his land revolted him and had lost all attraction for him. In spite of the magnificent harvest, never had there been, or, at least, never it seemed to him, had there been so many hindrances and so many quarrels between him and the peasants as that year, and the origin of these failures and this hostility was now perfectly comprehensible to him. The delight he had experienced in the work itself, and the consequent greater intimacy with the peasants, the envy he felt of them, of their life, the desire to adopt that life, which had been to him that night not a dream but an intention, the execution of which he had thought out in detail—all this had so transformed his view of the farming of the land as he had managed it, that he could not take his former interest in it, and could not help seeing that unpleasant relation between him and the workpeople which was the foundation of it all. The herd of improved cows such as Pava, the whole land ploughed over and enriched, the nine level fields surrounded with hedges, the two hundred and forty acres heavily manured, the seed sown in drills, and all the rest of it—it was all splendid if only the work had been done for themselves, or for themselves and comrades—people in sympathy with them. But he saw clearly now (his work on a book of agriculture, in which the chief element in husbandry was to have been the laborer, greatly assisted him in this) that the sort of farming he was carrying on was nothing but a cruel and stubborn struggle between him and the laborers, in which there was on one side—his side—a continual intense effort to change everything to a pattern he considered better; on the other side, the natural order of things. And in this struggle he saw that with immense expenditure of force on his side, and with no effort or even intention on the other side, all that was attained was that the work did not go to the liking of either side, and that splendid tools, splendid cattle and land were spoiled with no good to anyone. Worst of all, the energy expended on this work was not simply wasted. He could not help feeling now, since the meaning of this system had become clear to him, that the aim of his energy was a most unworthy one. In reality, what was the struggle about? He was struggling for every farthing of his share (and he could not help it, for he had only to relax his efforts, and he would not have had the money to pay his laborers’ wages), while they were only struggling to be able to do their work easily and agreeably, that is to say, as they were used to doing it.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Knowing as I did its every cranny by heart—since those days when from my chair I mentally mapped out Lolita’s course through the house—I had long entered into a sort of emotional relationship with it, with its very ugliness and dirt, and now I could almost feel the wretched thing cower in its reluctance to endure the bath of ecru and ocher and putty-buff-and-snuff that Charlotte planned to give it. She never got as far as that, thank God, but she did use up a tremendous amount of energy in washing window shades, waxing the slats of Venetian blinds, purchasing new shades and new blinds, returning them to the store, replacing them by others, and so on, in a constant chiaroscuro of smiles and frowns, doubts and pouts. She dabbled in cretonnes and chintzes; she changed the colors of the sofa—the sacred sofa where a bubble of paradise had once burst in slow motion within me. She rearranged the furniture—and was pleased when she found, in a household treatise, that “it is permissible to separate a pair of sofa commodes and their companion lamps.” With the authoress of Your Home Is You , she developed a hatred for little lean chairs and spindle tables. She believed that a room having a generous expanse of glass, and lots of rich wood paneling was an example of the masculine type of room, whereas the feminine type was characterized by lighter-looking windows and frailer woodwork. The novels I had found her reading when I moved in were now replaced by illustrated catalogues and homemaking guides. From a firm located at 4640 Roosevelt Blvd., Philadelphia, she ordered for our double bed a “damask covered 312 coil mattress”—although the old one seemed to me resilient and durable enough for whatever it had to support. A Midwesterner, as her late husband had also been, she had lived in coy Ramsdale, the gem of an eastern state, not long enough to know all the nice people. She knew slightly the jovial dentist who lived in a kind of ramshackle wooden chateau behind our lawn. She had met at a church tea the “snooty” wife of the local junk dealer who owned the “colonial” white horror at the corner of the avenue. Now and then she “visited with” old Miss Opposite; but the more patrician matrons among those she called upon, or met at lawn functions, or had telephone chats with— such dainty ladies as Mrs. Glave, Mrs. Sheridan, Mrs. McCrystal, Mrs. Knight and others, seldom seemed to call on my neglected Charlotte.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘All earring fifteen, necklace thirty, bracelet some ten, some fifteen, different – silver, all silver – all this here silver. You should try necklace, very nice – with black skin, it is good. Do you like earrings?’ ‘I’m going to get a burrito.’ ‘Oh, Jerome, please – one minute. We can’t spend five minutes together? What do you think of those?’ ‘Fine.’ ‘Small hoop or big?’ Jerome made a desperate face. ‘OK, OK. Where will you be?’ Jerome pointed directly into the rippling day. ‘It’s called something hokey . . . like Chicken America or something.’ ‘God, Jay, I don’t know what that is. What is that? Just meet me in front of the bank in fifteen, OK? And get me one – a shrimp one if they have it, extra hot sauce and sour cream. You know I like ’em hot.’ She watched him amble away, pulling his long-sleeved Nirvana T-shirt down over that sloppy English backside, wide and charmless like the rear view of one of Howard’s aunts. She turned back to the stall and once again tried to engage the man, but he was busy fiddling with the coins in his fanny pack. Listlessly she picked up this and that and put it down, nodding at prices as they were earnestly recounted each time her finger made contact with an item. Aside from her money, the guy seemed barely concerned with her, neither as a person nor as an idea. He did not call Kiki ‘sister’, make any assumptions or take any liberties. Obscurely disappointed, as we sometimes are when the things we profess to dislike don’t happen, she looked up abruptly and smiled at him. ‘You’re from Africa?’ she asked sweetly, and picked up a charm bracelet with tiny replicas of international totems hanging from it:  kipps and belsey the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Statue of Liberty. The man folded his arms across his narrow filleted chest, every rib as visible as it is upon a cat’s belly. ‘Where do you think I am from? You are African – no?’ ‘No, noooo, I’m from here – but of course . . .’ said Kiki. She wiped some sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, waiting for him to finish the sentence as she knew it would be finished. ‘We are all from Africa,’ said the man obligingly. He made a double outward fan of his hands over the jewellery. ‘All of this, from Africa. You know where I am from?’ Kiki was trying to fix something to her wrist, unsuccessfully.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  As sometimes happens, the song playing in Levi’s headphones ended the moment he put his hand to the gate of  Langham. This afternoon his home appeared more surreal a place to him than ever, as far from his idea of where he lived as seemed possible. It looked glorious. The sun had the Belsey house in her hands. She warmed the wood and made the windows opaque and splendid with reflected light. She offered herself to the brazen purple flowers that grew along the front wall, and they opened their mouths wide to receive her. It was twenty past five. The night was going to be sexy: close and warm but with enough of a breeze so that you didn’t have to sweat through it. Levi sensed women getting ready all over New England: undressing, washing, dressing again, in cleaner, sexier things; black girls in Boston oiling their legs and ironing their hair, club floors being swept, barmen turning up for work, DJs kneeling in their bedrooms, picking out records to be  kipps and belsey placed in their heavy silver boxes – all of which imaginings, usually so exciting to him, were made sour and sad by the knowledge that the only party he was going to tonight would be full of white people three times his own age. He sighed and worked his head round in a slow circle. Reluctant to go indoors, he stayed where he was, halfway up the garden path, with his head tipped forward and the departing sun on his back. Somebody had laced petunias around the triangular base of his grandmother’s statuary, a three-foot piece of pyramidal stone that sat midway between a pair of sugar maples in the front yard. Strands of lights – not yet lit – had been wound around the trunks of both these trees and laid among their branches. Levi was thinking how grateful he was that he’d missed having to help with these tasks when he felt his pocket vibrate. He took out his pager. From Carl. It took him a minute to remember who the hell Carl was. The message said: ‘That party still on? Might swing by. Peace. C.’ Levi was both flattered and concerned. Had Carl forgotten what type of party it was? He was about to phone back when he was surprised out of his solitude by the noise of Zora climbing down from a ladder at the front of the house. Evidently she had just hung four upside-down bunches of dried tea-roses, pinks and whites, above the doorframe. Levi could not explain why he hadn’t noticed her a moment before, but he had not. On the third rung down she seemed to notice him too; her head slowly turned towards her brother, but her eyes went beyond him, intent on something across the street.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Older women especially saw Hillary Clinton as their last and best chance to see a woman in the White House. And not just any woman:7 as one said, “This isn’t just about biology. We don’t want a Margaret Thatcher, who cut off milk for schoolchildren.” They wanted Hillary Clinton because she supported the majority interests of women. On the other hand, many young black single mothers said they supported Obama because their sons needed a positive black male role model. A divorced white father told me that Obama’s life story had inspired him to drive hundreds of miles to see his son every week. “I don’t want to be the father Obama almost never saw,” he explained. “I want to be the father he wished he had.” In Austin, Texas, an eighty-year-old black woman said she was supporting Hillary because “I’ve seen too many women who earned it, and too many young men who came along and took it.” But the press, instead of reporting on these shared and often boundary-crossing views as an asset for the Democratic Party—after all, Democratic voters would have to unify around one of these candidates eventually—responded with disappointment and even condescension. They seemed to want newsworthy division. Soon frustrated reporters were creating conflict by turning any millimeter of difference between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama into a mile. Since there was almost none in content, they emphasized ones of form. Clinton was entirely summed up by sex, and Obama was entirely summed up by race. Journalists sounded like sports fans who arrived for a football game and were outraged to find all the players on the same team. It dawned on me that in the abolitionist and suffragist past, a universal suffragist movement of black men and white and black women also had been consciously divided by giving the vote to black men only—and then limiting even that with violence, impossible literacy tests, and poll taxes. Now, this echo of divide-and-conquer in the past was polarizing the constituencies of two barrier-breaking “firsts,” never mind that the candidates were almost identical in content. As in history, a potentially powerful majority was being divided by an entrenched powerful few. Maybe attributing a divide-and-conquer motive was unfair in a country that treats everything like a horse race, but there had to be some reason why the press did not consider what I witnessed on the road—delight in two “firsts” with similar purpose—worth reporting. Soon, a person or a group’s choice of one candidate was assumed to be a condemnation of the other. I could feel fissures opening up between people who had been allies on issues for years. The long knives of reporters—plus a few shortsighted partisans in both campaigns—deepened those fissures until they bled. To make a case for linking racism and sexism instead of ranking them—and for unifying around one of these two firsts in the national election—I wrote a New York Times op-ed titled “Coalition vs.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Older women especially saw Hillary Clinton as their last and best chance to see a woman in the White House. And not just any woman:7 as one said, “This isn’t just about biology. We don’t want a Margaret Thatcher, who cut off milk for schoolchildren.” They wanted Hillary Clinton because she supported the majority interests of women. On the other hand, many young black single mothers said they supported Obama because their sons needed a positive black male role model. A divorced white father told me that Obama’s life story had inspired him to drive hundreds of miles to see his son every week. “I don’t want to be the father Obama almost never saw,” he explained. “I want to be the father he wished he had.” In Austin, Texas, an eighty-year-old black woman said she was supporting Hillary because “I’ve seen too many women who earned it, and too many young men who came along and took it.” But the press, instead of reporting on these shared and often boundary-crossing views as an asset for the Democratic Party—after all, Democratic voters would have to unify around one of these candidates eventually—responded with disappointment and even condescension. They seemed to want newsworthy division. Soon frustrated reporters were creating conflict by turning any millimeter of difference between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama into a mile. Since there was almost none in content, they emphasized ones of form. Clinton was entirely summed up by sex, and Obama was entirely summed up by race. Journalists sounded like sports fans who arrived for a football game and were outraged to find all the players on the same team. It dawned on me that in the abolitionist and suffragist past, a universal suffragist movement of black men and white and black women also had been consciously divided by giving the vote to black men only—and then limiting even that with violence, impossible literacy tests, and poll taxes. Now, this echo of divide-and-conquer in the past was polarizing the constituencies of two barrier-breaking “firsts,” never mind that the candidates were almost identical in content. As in history, a potentially powerful majority was being divided by an entrenched powerful few. Maybe attributing a divide-and-conquer motive was unfair in a country that treats everything like a horse race, but there had to be some reason why the press did not consider what I witnessed on the road—delight in two “firsts” with similar purpose—worth reporting. Soon, a person or a group’s choice of one candidate was assumed to be a condemnation of the other. I could feel fissures opening up between people who had been allies on issues for years. The long knives of reporters—plus a few shortsighted partisans in both campaigns—deepened those fissures until they bled. To make a case for linking racism and sexism instead of ranking them—and for unifying around one of these two firsts in the national election—I wrote a New York Times op-ed titled “Coalition vs.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  He tried to be calm, but it was the same again. His finger pressed the cock before he had taken a good aim at the bird. It got worse and worse. He had only five birds in his game-bag when he walked out of the marsh towards the alders where he was to rejoin Stepan Arkadyevitch. Before he caught sight of Stepan Arkadyevitch he saw his dog. Krak darted out from behind the twisted root of an alder, black all over with the stinking mire of the marsh, and with the air of a conqueror sniffed at Laska. Behind Krak there came into view in the shade of the alder tree the shapely figure of Stepan Arkadyevitch. He came to meet him, red and perspiring, with unbuttoned neckband, still limping in the same way. “Well? You have been popping away!” he said, smiling good-humoredly. “How have you got on?” queried Levin. But there was no need to ask, for he had already seen the full game bag. “Oh, pretty fair.” He had fourteen birds. “A splendid marsh! I’ve no doubt Veslovsky got in your way. It’s awkward too, shooting with one dog,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, to soften his triumph. Chapter 11 When Levin and Stepan Arkadyevitch reached the peasant’s hut where Levin always used to stay, Veslovsky was already there. He was sitting in the middle of the hut, clinging with both hands to the bench from which he was being pulled by a soldier, the brother of the peasant’s wife, who was helping him off with his miry boots. Veslovsky was laughing his infectious, good-humored laugh. “I’ve only just come. _Ils ont été charmants_. Just fancy, they gave me drink, fed me! Such bread, it was exquisite! _Délicieux!_ And the vodka, I never tasted any better. And they would not take a penny for anything. And they kept saying: ‘Excuse our homely ways.’” “What should they take anything for? They were entertaining you, to be sure. Do you suppose they keep vodka for sale?” said the soldier, succeeding at last in pulling the soaked boot off the blackened stocking. In spite of the dirtiness of the hut, which was all muddied by their boots and the filthy dogs licking themselves clean, and the smell of marsh mud and powder that filled the room, and the absence of knives and forks, the party drank their tea and ate their supper with a relish only known to sportsmen. Washed and clean, they went into a hay-barn swept ready for them, where the coachman had been making up beds for the gentlemen. Though it was dusk, not one of them wanted to go to sleep.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Vronsky, meanwhile, in spite of the complete realization of what he had so long desired, was not perfectly happy. He soon felt that the realization of his desires gave him no more than a grain of sand out of the mountain of happiness he had expected. It showed him the mistake men make in picturing to themselves happiness as the realization of their desires. For a time after joining his life to hers, and putting on civilian dress, he had felt all the delight of freedom in general of which he had known nothing before, and of freedom in his love,—and he was content, but not for long. He was soon aware that there was springing up in his heart a desire for desires—_ennui_. Without conscious intention he began to clutch at every passing caprice, taking it for a desire and an object. Sixteen hours of the day must be occupied in some way, since they were living abroad in complete freedom, outside the conditions of social life which filled up time in Petersburg. As for the amusements of bachelor existence, which had provided Vronsky with entertainment on previous tours abroad, they could not be thought of, since the sole attempt of the sort had led to a sudden attack of depression in Anna, quite out of proportion with the cause—a late supper with bachelor friends. Relations with the society of the place—foreign and Russian—were equally out of the question owing to the irregularity of their position. The inspection of objects of interest, apart from the fact that everything had been seen already, had not for Vronsky, a Russian and a sensible man, the immense significance Englishmen are able to attach to that pursuit. And just as the hungry stomach eagerly accepts every object it can get, hoping to find nourishment in it, Vronsky quite unconsciously clutched first at politics, then at new books, and then at pictures. As he had from a child a taste for painting, and as, not knowing what to spend his money on, he had begun collecting engravings, he came to a stop at painting, began to take interest in it, and concentrated upon it the unoccupied mass of desires which demanded satisfaction.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Well, I am glad you are beginning to love him,” said Kitty to her husband, when she had settled herself comfortably in her usual place, with the baby at her breast. “I am so glad! It had begun to distress me. You said you had no feeling for him.” “No; did I say that? I only said I was disappointed.” “What! disappointed in him?” “Not disappointed in him, but in my own feeling; I had expected more. I had expected a rush of new delightful emotion to come as a surprise. And then instead of that—disgust, pity....” She listened attentively, looking at him over the baby, while she put back on her slender fingers the rings she had taken off while giving Mitya his bath. “And most of all, at there being far more apprehension and pity than pleasure. Today, after that fright during the storm, I understand how I love him.” Kitty’s smile was radiant. “Were you very much frightened?” she said. “So was I too, but I feel it more now that it’s over. I’m going to look at the oak. How nice Katavasov is! And what a happy day we’ve had altogether. And you’re so nice with Sergey Ivanovitch, when you care to be.... Well, go back to them. It’s always so hot and steamy here after the bath.” Chapter 19 Going out of the nursery and being again alone, Levin went back at once to the thought, in which there was something not clear. Instead of going into the drawing-room, where he heard voices, he stopped on the terrace, and leaning his elbows on the parapet, he gazed up at the sky. It was quite dark now, and in the south, where he was looking, there were no clouds. The storm had drifted on to the opposite side of the sky, and there were flashes of lightning and distant thunder from that quarter. Levin listened to the monotonous drip from the lime trees in the garden, and looked at the triangle of stars he knew so well, and the Milky Way with its branches that ran through its midst. At each flash of lightning the Milky Way, and even the bright stars, vanished, but as soon as the lightning died away, they reappeared in their places as though some hand had flung them back with careful aim.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Seeing the same lethal scenes over and over again had become a form of national mourning. —WITH MC CARTHY ONCE AGAIN the only antiwar candidate, Clay Felker suggested that I join the press corps on his campaign plane and write a piece for New York magazine titled “Trying to Love Eugene.”2 Truthfully, that’s what I and many others were trying to do. Flying to four states in five days, I saw a traveling political culture that would prepare me for many campaigns to come. First, the candidate’s staff was divided into professional pragmatists and true believers, with each group worrying about the other’s influence on the candidate. Second, there were locals at every stop who were good or not so good at getting the right crowds to disparate events in venues that were a little too small, so reporters would write, “Speaking to an overflow crowd…” Third, there were journalists themselves, a traveling press corps who hid their emotions under the armor of objectivity, and jockeyed for a seat next to the candidate with the goal of getting some unique tidbit before filing time. As the lowest person on this journalistic totem pole—a position I hoped was unrelated to the fact that I was also the only woman—I had just one turn at the seat next to McCarthy. Since his political appeal was based on opposing LBJ’s war, I asked what I’d been wondering: Was he glad now that he hadn’t become LBJ’s vice president? “Yes,” he said ambiguously, “vice presidents don’t have much influence on policy.” If he had been chosen as he once sought to be, could he still be a peace candidate? There was a long pause. In an earlier interview, I’d asked another question when he failed to answer a first one. Now I’d figured out that the key to getting an answer was to outwait him. “I would have had to stay silent,” he said. Nothing about protesting the war, much less resigning. Only my question about the recent firing of some of his youthful aides elicited emotion. He was angry at press criticism of a firing that he saw as routine and justified. As McCarthy put it, “Some of them are like ski bums in summer. They ought to go home and get jobs. They just like to hang around.” I was surprised at his description of young men whose belief in him had turned a political campaign into a movement. After that interview, I began to pay more attention to the few young staffers on the plane who had survived. Unlike the enthusiasts who had been the ground troops in New Hampshire, they had adopted McCarthy’s cool, his cynicism, and his disdain for emotion. If I’d followed my instincts, I would have stopped volunteering for McCarthy the moment I met him. As soon as Bobby Kennedy declared, I would have worked for him instead of just escaping to California.