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 My Life on the Road (2015)

  When I went to campaign for her, I could see that all the new feminist electoral groups were working their hearts out. So were the volunteers in her statewide network. Though Missouri was often counted as an antichoice state, Woods refused to budge from her support for reproductive freedom. In the end, she won in rural Republican areas anyway, including one so conservative that it was known as Little Dixie. But in the final week, she had run out of money and couldn’t answer the last-minute storm of virulent attacks. She lost by less than 2 percent of the vote. This heartbreaking hairbreadth defeat drew special attention, as did the fact that she had been the only female U.S. Senate candidate in the whole country, from either party. It was so clear that she could have won with money to answer attacks that her race inspired the founding of EMILY’s List, a political action committee that supports pro-choice Democratic women candidates. As proof that even failure can be turned to good purpose, this PAC went on to attract three million members and become one of the biggest in the nation, as well as the single biggest resource for women in politics. But Danforth did win. He took with him to Washington an African American lawyer named Clarence Thomas, who had been working for Monsanto, the agrochemical giant that gave us Agent Orange, genetically engineered seeds, and more. Indeed, Danforth got him that job, too. As Danforth explained, he was very attracted to Thomas, not only because he was a rare African American conservative, but also because he, too, had studied to be a priest—in his case, a Catholic priest. All this happened decades ago. Woods died in 2007 from leukemia at the age of seventy-nine, yet the impact of her loss by a few hundred votes goes on. If you don’t believe me, flash-forward to the morning after the 2000 Bush-versus-Gore presidential election, with national results hanging by the thread of a few thousand disputed votes in Florida. I just happened to be speaking at Palm Beach County Community College that morning, a long-arranged event unrelated to any election, and its campus just happened to be in a poor area. I’d been asked to talk about social justice movements generally, but I could see that nobody wanted to talk about anything but the election cliffhanger that was upon us. A young African American woman rose to say she’d registered to vote by phone, then been challenged at her polling place because “Caucasian” had been printed next to her name. She never did get to vote. An older African American man said he had been denied the right to vote because he was told he had a felony conviction, yet he’d never been accused of a crime, much less convicted of one.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Special prominence is given in the last book of the Consolation of Philosophy to the problem of the reconciliation of God’s fore-knowledge with man’s free will. Boethius treats it very fully and with great beauty. In substance the answer is that God’s knowledge of the future no more determines it than does his knowledge of the past. and that indeed the distinction between fore-knowledge and after-knowledge does not apply to God at all, since he is not subject to the condition of time. The distinction between divine and human knowledge absorbs the lesser distinction between fore- and after-knowledge, and if we are to inquire into the relations in question at all, it must be by trying to form some conception of the higher plane of the divine knowledge in general, not by tormenting ourselves as to the specific implications of God’s fore-knowledge. It is in this connection that Boethius gives the definition of eternity that became classical: “Whatsoever, therefore, comprehendeth and possesseth the whole plenitude of unlimited life at once, to which nought of the future is wanting, and from which nought of the past hath flowed away, this may rightly be deemed eternal.” Cf. Canto xxii. Argument and note 5 together with the other passages there referred to. 12. Cieldauro (Golden Ceiling) is a name of St. Peter’s church in Pavia.13. Isidore of Seville (ca. 560-636), the author of a great Cyclopedia. Bede the Venerable (ca. 673-735). Richard of St. Victor (d. 1173) wrote a treatise entitled De Contemplatione. Cf. Epist. ad Can. Grand., § 28. See further, Canto xii, note 25. 14. Sigier of Brabant (d. probably about 1283), a professor in the University of Paris, where the Rue du Fouarre ran “close to the river, in the region which is still known as the Quartier Latin, and was the centre of the Arts Schools at Paris” (Toynbee). He took a leading part in the disputes between the mendicant orders and the University, and it is noteworthy that Thomas Aquinas himself was one of his chief opponents. He met his death (apparently by an assassin’s dagger) at the Papal court at Orvieto, but exactly when does not appear. 15. Spouse of God = the Church.C A N T O X IContrast between earth and heaven. Thomas, reading Dante’s thoughts, renews his discourse in order to remove certain difficulties, Providence raised up Francis and Dominic to succour the Church. From Assisi Francis rose sun-like, even as the sun in which Doctor and Poet are now discoursing rises to mortals from Ganges or elsewhere according to the place of their abode. His marriage with poverty. The founding and confirming of his order. He preaches to the Soldan, receives the stigmata, and dies commending his bride to his disciples. If he was such, what must Dominic have been, seeing that he was worthy to be his colleague. But almost all his followers are degenerate.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  the simple, tender soul, who knoweth naught save that, sprung from a joyous maker, willingly she turneth to that which delights her. First she tastes the savour of a trifling good; there she is beguiled and runneth after it, if guide or curb turn not her love aside. Wherefore ’twas needful to put law as a curb, needful to have a ruler who might discern at least the tower of the true city. Laws 6 there are, but who putteth his hand to them? None; because the shepherd that leads may chew the cud, but hath not the hoofs divided. 7 Wherefore the people, that see their guide aiming only at that good whereof he is greedy, feed on that and ask no further. Clearly canst thou see that evil leadership is the cause which hath made the world sinful, and not nature that may be corrupted within you. Rome, that made the good world, was wont to have two suns, which made plain to sight the one road and the other; that of the world, and that of God. One hath quenched the other; and the sword is joined to the crook; and the one together with the other must perforce go ill; because, being joined, one feareth nor the other. If thou believest me not, look well at the ear, for every plant is known by the seed. Over the land which the Adige and the Po water, worth and courtesy were wont to be found, ere Frederick met opposition; 8 now, safely may it be traversed by whomsoever had, through shame, ceased to hold converse with good men, or to draw near them. Truly three elders yet are there in whom the olden times rebuke the new, and it seems to them long ere God removes them to the better life: Corrado da Palazzo, and the good Gerard, and Guido da Castel, who is better named in French fashion the guileless Lombard. 9 Say henceforth, that the Church of Rome, by confounding two powers in herself, falls into the mire, and fouls herself and her burden.” “O my Mark,” said I, “well thou reasonest, and now I perceive why Levi’s sons were exempt from inheriting; 10 but what Gerard is that, who thou sayest is left behind for ensample of the extinct people, in reproof of the barbarous age?” “Either thy speech beguiles me, or it tempts me,” he answered me, “for thou, speaking to me in Tuscan, seemest to know naught of the good Gerard. By other surname I know him not, except I take it from his daughter Gaia, God be with you, for no further I come with you. See the light, that beams through the smoke, now waxing bright; the angel is there, and it behooves me to depart ere I am seen of him.” So turned he back and no more would hear me. 1. See John i.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  On coming into the room, Seryozha, instead of sitting down to his lessons, told his tutor of his supposition that what had been brought him must be a machine. “What do you think?” he inquired. But Vassily Lukitch was thinking of nothing but the necessity of learning the grammar lesson for the teacher, who was coming at two. “No, do just tell me, Vassily Lukitch,” he asked suddenly, when he was seated at their work table with the book in his hands, “what is greater than the Alexander Nevsky? You know papa’s received the Alexander Nevsky?” Vassily Lukitch replied that the Vladimir was greater than the Alexander Nevsky. “And higher still?” “Well, highest of all is the Andrey Pervozvanny.” “And higher than the Andrey?” “I don’t know.” “What, you don’t know?” and Seryozha, leaning on his elbows, sank into deep meditation. His meditations were of the most complex and diverse character. He imagined his father’s having suddenly been presented with both the Vladimir and the Andrey today, and in consequence being much better tempered at his lesson, and dreamed how, when he was grown up, he would himself receive all the orders, and what they might invent higher than the Andrey. Directly any higher order were invented, he would win it. They would make a higher one still, and he would immediately win that too. The time passed in such meditations, and when the teacher came, the lesson about the adverbs of place and time and manner of action was not ready, and the teacher was not only displeased, but hurt. This touched Seryozha. He felt he was not to blame for not having learned the lesson; however much he tried, he was utterly unable to do that. As long as the teacher was explaining to him, he believed him and seemed to comprehend, but as soon as he was left alone, he was positively unable to recollect and to understand that the short and familiar word “suddenly” is an adverb of manner of action. Still he was sorry that he had disappointed the teacher. He chose a moment when the teacher was looking in silence at the book. “Mihail Ivanitch, when is your birthday?” he asked all, of a sudden. “You’d much better be thinking about your work. Birthdays are of no importance to a rational being. It’s a day like any other on which one has to do one’s work.”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Alexey Alexandrovitch had gained a brilliant victory at the sitting of the Commission of the 17th of August, but in the sequel this victory cut the ground from under his feet. The new commission for the inquiry into the condition of the native tribes in all its branches had been formed and despatched to its destination with an unusual speed and energy inspired by Alexey Alexandrovitch. Within three months a report was presented. The condition of the native tribes was investigated in its political, administrative, economic, ethnographic, material, and religious aspects. To all these questions there were answers admirably stated, and answers admitting no shade of doubt, since they were not a product of human thought, always liable to error, but were all the product of official activity. The answers were all based on official data furnished by governors and heads of churches, and founded on the reports of district magistrates and ecclesiastical superintendents, founded in their turn on the reports of parochial overseers and parish priests; and so all of these answers were unhesitating and certain. All such questions as, for instance, of the cause of failure of crops, of the adherence of certain tribes to their ancient beliefs, etc.—questions which, but for the convenient intervention of the official machine, are not, and cannot be solved for ages—received full, unhesitating solution. And this solution was in favor of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s contention. But Stremov, who had felt stung to the quick at the last sitting, had, on the reception of the commission’s report, resorted to tactics which Alexey Alexandrovitch had not anticipated. Stremov, carrying with him several members, went over to Alexey Alexandrovitch’s side, and not contenting himself with warmly defending the measure proposed by Karenin, proposed other more extreme measures in the same direction. These measures, still further exaggerated in opposition to what was Alexey Alexandrovitch’s fundamental idea, were passed by the commission, and then the aim of Stremov’s tactics became apparent. Carried to an extreme, the measures seemed at once to be so absurd that the highest authorities, and public opinion, and intellectual ladies, and the newspapers, all at the same time fell foul of them, expressing their indignation both with the measures and their nominal father, Alexey Alexandrovitch. Stremov drew back, affecting to have blindly followed Karenin, and to be astounded and distressed at what had been done. This meant the defeat of Alexey Alexandrovitch. But in spite of failing health, in spite of his domestic griefs, he did not give in. There was a split in the commission. Some members, with Stremov at their head, justified their mistake on the ground that they had put faith in the commission of revision, instituted by Alexey Alexandrovitch, and maintained that the report of the commission was rubbish, and simply so much waste paper. Alexey Alexandrovitch, with a following of those who saw the danger of so revolutionary an attitude to official documents, persisted in upholding the statements obtained by the revising commission. In consequence of this, in the higher spheres, and even in society, all was chaos, and although everyone was interested, no one could tell whether the native tribes really were becoming impoverished and ruined, or whether they were in a flourishing condition. The position of Alexey Alexandrovitch, owing to this, and partly owing to the contempt lavished on him for his wife’s infidelity, became very precarious. And in this position he took an important resolution. To the astonishment of the commission, he announced that he should ask permission to go himself to investigate the question on the spot. And having obtained permission, Alexey Alexandrovitch prepared to set off to these remote provinces.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  From Betsy’s tone Vronsky might have grasped what he had to expect from the world; but he made another effort in his own family. His mother he did not reckon upon. He knew that his mother, who had been so enthusiastic over Anna at their first acquaintance, would have no mercy on her now for having ruined her son’s career. But he had more hope of Varya, his brother’s wife. He fancied she would not throw stones, and would go simply and directly to see Anna, and would receive her in her own house. The day after his arrival Vronsky went to her, and finding her alone, expressed his wishes directly. “You know, Alexey,” she said after hearing him, “how fond I am of you, and how ready I am to do anything for you; but I have not spoken, because I knew I could be of no use to you and to Anna Arkadyevna,” she said, articulating the name “Anna Arkadyevna” with particular care. “Don’t suppose, please, that I judge her. Never; perhaps in her place I should have done the same. I don’t and can’t enter into that,” she said, glancing timidly at his gloomy face. “But one must call things by their names. You want me to go and see her, to ask her here, and to rehabilitate her in society; but do understand that _I cannot_ do so. I have daughters growing up, and I must live in the world for my husband’s sake. Well, I’m ready to come and see Anna Arkadyevna: she will understand that I can’t ask her here, or I should have to do so in such a way that she would not meet people who look at things differently; that would offend her. I can’t raise her....” “Oh, I don’t regard her as fallen more than hundreds of women you do receive!” Vronsky interrupted her still more gloomily, and he got up in silence, understanding that his sister-in-law’s decision was not to be shaken. “Alexey! don’t be angry with me. Please understand that I’m not to blame,” began Varya, looking at him with a timid smile. “I’m not angry with you,” he said still as gloomily; “but I’m sorry in two ways. I’m sorry, too, that this means breaking up our friendship—if not breaking up, at least weakening it. You will understand that for me, too, it cannot be otherwise.” And with that he left her.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Golenishtchev did not agree with this, and confounded Mihailov by his support of his first idea of the unity of the impression being essential to art. Mihailov was greatly perturbed, but he could say nothing in defense of his own idea. Chapter 12 Anna and Vronsky had long been exchanging glances, regretting their friend’s flow of cleverness. At last Vronsky, without waiting for the artist, walked away to another small picture. “Oh, how exquisite! What a lovely thing! A gem! How exquisite!” they cried with one voice. “What is it they’re so pleased with?” thought Mihailov. He had positively forgotten that picture he had painted three years ago. He had forgotten all the agonies and the ecstasies he had lived through with that picture when for several months it had been the one thought haunting him day and night. He had forgotten, as he always forgot, the pictures he had finished. He did not even like to look at it, and had only brought it out because he was expecting an Englishman who wanted to buy it. “Oh, that’s only an old study,” he said. “How fine!” said Golenishtchev, he too, with unmistakable sincerity, falling under the spell of the picture. Two boys were angling in the shade of a willow-tree. The elder had just dropped in the hook, and was carefully pulling the float from behind a bush, entirely absorbed in what he was doing. The other, a little younger, was lying in the grass leaning on his elbows, with his tangled, flaxen head in his hands, staring at the water with his dreamy blue eyes. What was he thinking of? The enthusiasm over this picture stirred some of the old feeling for it in Mihailov, but he feared and disliked this waste of feeling for things past, and so, even though this praise was grateful to him, he tried to draw his visitors away to a third picture. But Vronsky asked whether the picture was for sale. To Mihailov at that moment, excited by visitors, it was extremely distasteful to speak of money matters. “It is put up there to be sold,” he answered, scowling gloomily. When the visitors had gone, Mihailov sat down opposite the picture of Pilate and Christ, and in his mind went over what had been said, and what, though not said, had been implied by those visitors. And, strange to say, what had had such weight with him, while they were there and while he mentally put himself at their point of view, suddenly lost all importance for him. He began to look at his picture with all his own full artist vision, and was soon in that mood of conviction of the perfectibility, and so of the significance, of his picture—a conviction essential to the most intense fervor, excluding all other interests—in which alone he could work.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  It’s my chance to do more than come home saying to friends, “I met an amazing person who…,” or “Here’s a great new idea for…,” or, most of all, “We have to stop generalizing about ‘the American people,’ ” as if we were one homogeneous lump. I’m also now immune to politicians who say, “I’ve traveled the length and breadth of this great land, and I know …” I’ve traveled more than any of them, and I don’t know. What we’re told about this country is way too limited by generalities, sound bites, and even the supposedly enlightened idea that there are two sides to every question. In fact, many questions have three or seven or a dozen sides. Sometimes I think the only real division into two is between people who divide everything into two, and those who don’t. Altogether, if I’d been looking at nothing but the media all these years, I would be a much more discouraged person—especially given the notion that only conflict is news, and that objectivity means being evenhandedly negative. On the road, I learned that the media are not reality; reality is reality. For instance, Americans are supposed to cherish freedom, yet we imprison a bigger percentage of our people than any other country in the world. I talk to students who are graduating in crippling debt, yet don’t connect this to state legislatures that are building prisons we don’t need instead of schools we do need, and then spending an average of fifty thousand dollars a year per prisoner and way less per student. I love the entrepreneurial spirit of people who start a high-tech company or a hot dog stand, but our income and wealth gaps are the biggest in the developed world. I meet people in Indian Country who can trace their origins back a hundred thousand years, and survivors of sex and labor trafficking who arrived yesterday. Also, this country is transforming before our eyes. In thirty years or so, the majority will no longer be European Americans; the first generation of mostly babies of color has already been born. This new diversity will give us a better understanding of the world and enrich our cultural choices, yet there are people whose sense of identity depends on the old hierarchy. It may just be their fear and guilt talking: What if I am treated as I have treated others? But with all the power and money that is behind it, this backlash could imprison us in a hierarchy all over again. As Robin Morgan wrote so wisely, “Hate generalizes, love specifies.”2 That’s what makes going on the road so important. It definitely specifies. —MY SECOND PURPOSE IS to encourage you to spend some time on the road, too. By that, I mean traveling—or even living for a few days where you are—in an on-the-road state of mind, not seeking out the familiar but staying open to whatever comes along. It can begin the moment you leave your door.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Because New Hampshire was “a hawk state.” We recovered enough to protest that his opposition to the Vietnam War was the source of his appeal, especially to kids all over the country who were volunteering to work in New Hampshire, even cutting their long hippie hair and adopting the motto “Clean for Gene.” Finally, he agreed that we could include Vietnam, but only if we put it right next to his support for veterans’ benefits. By the end, he reminded me of the executive at Household Finance who used to listen to my father’s plea for a loan, lean back, put his fingertips together in a steeple, and say, “No.” —FOLLOWING MC CARTHY’S SURPRISING SHOWING in New Hampshire, Bobby Kennedy announced that he would run for president after all. Also LBJ, a sitting president embarrassed by this little-known senator from Minnesota, stunned the country by announcing that he wouldn’t run again. Now that Bobby Kennedy was the only other major outside contender, the McCarthy campaign set out to portray him as an opportunist for not having braved “the snows of New Hampshire.” His absence from that primary nullified all virtue, just as McCarthy’s presence in New Hampshire nullified all faults. In the upstairs McCarthy headquarters where I was still volunteering, it was no longer enough to be for McCarthy as a candidate; one also had to be against Kennedy as a man. Bitter social divisions broke out among people who otherwise agreed on issues. Friends no longer spoke to friends, common goals were forgotten, and gossip about who had switched to whom politically was suddenly as juicy as who was having an affair with whom—but less tolerant. Four decades later, I would be reminded of this painful tension when the followers of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama fell into a similar division. Though those two presidential candidates were far more the same on issues than were McCarthy and Kennedy—and though they actually liked each other, unlike McCarthy, who had contempt for Bobby Kennedy and considered him a bad Catholic—Obama became the face of the future, just as McCarthy had done after New Hampshire, and Hillary Clinton supposedly became a part of the past for sharing a political name, just as Bobby Kennedy had done. Of course, this parallel was imperfect. Bobby Kennedy was not the “past” to the big majority of black and Hispanic voters who supported him as a symbol of hope, and McCarthy’s constituency for the “future” was overwhelmingly white and not poor. Also, neither McCarthy nor Kennedy embodied a huge and historic breakthrough, as did both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  This article was followed by a deadly silence about the book both in the press and in conversation, and Sergey Ivanovitch saw that his six years’ task, toiled at with such love and labor, had gone, leaving no trace. Sergey Ivanovitch’s position was still more difficult from the fact that, since he had finished his book, he had had no more literary work to do, such as had hitherto occupied the greater part of his time. Sergey Ivanovitch was clever, cultivated, healthy, and energetic, and he did not know what use to make of his energy. Conversations in drawing-rooms, in meetings, assemblies, and committees—everywhere where talk was possible—took up part of his time. But being used for years to town life, he did not waste all his energies in talk, as his less experienced younger brother did, when he was in Moscow. He had a great deal of leisure and intellectual energy still to dispose of. Fortunately for him, at this period so difficult for him from the failure of his book, the various public questions of the dissenting sects, of the American alliance, of the Samara famine, of exhibitions, and of spiritualism, were definitely replaced in public interest by the Slavonic question, which had hitherto rather languidly interested society, and Sergey Ivanovitch, who had been one of the first to raise this subject, threw himself into it heart and soul. In the circle to which Sergey Ivanovitch belonged, nothing was talked of or written about just now but the Servian War. Everything that the idle crowd usually does to kill time was done now for the benefit of the Slavonic States. Balls, concerts, dinners, matchboxes, ladies’ dresses, beer, restaurants—everything testified to sympathy with the Slavonic peoples.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  I spent my first days there trying to figure out why the halls full of students looked so odd. Suddenly I realized that everyone was white. I asked a teacher if this reflected the neighborhood, and he said of course not, it reflected segregation. Washington was two separate cities, he said, and the black majority wanted separate schools, too. Besides, the city had come a long way since slaves built the White House. This was news to me. My Toledo high school was segregated socially, too—not only by race but by whose family had a television set, spoke Polish or Hungarian at home, or had a father who was a foreman instead of working the line—but at least we all went to the same classes, ate in the same cafeteria, and cheered the same football team. Altogether, this Stevenson for President office was the most open and welcoming place I’d ever been. But one Saturday when I and the other young women arrived, we found ourselves stashed away on an upper floor. We were devastated. A staffer explained that Stevenson himself might drop in and must not be seen with any female unless she was old enough to be his mother. After all, he was that terrible thing—divorced—something no president had ever been. Though everyone seemed to know that Eisenhower had imported the beautiful young English woman who was his driver during the war—and even arranged for her U.S. citizenship—he would have his wife, Mamie, as a proper First Lady. Appearances were all that mattered. We didn’t object to being hidden away; we felt like Typhoid Marys who might endanger the cause we cared about. When we went out for ten-cent hamburgers at the local White Castle, we talked about staying out of sight. What we didn’t talk about were the male staffers who rated our looks, brushed against us in close quarters, and became hazards to be navigated. Our presence was the problem; their behavior was inevitable. Avoiding them while keeping their egos intact was just part of our job. The truth is that we would have put up with almost anything to stay in this exciting place with its air of fighting for outsiders—even though we didn’t yet know we were outsiders, too. Or to put it another way, we didn’t believe we could ever be insiders. I didn’t know that political change could make me feel safer in the street, or allow me an identity of my own instead of marrying it, or send my Toledo classmates to college instead of to factories, or get my current classmates out of their white ghetto. I didn’t realize that changes made through politics might have helped my mother remain the pioneer journalist she had been years before I was born. My only thought was Where else could I find such openness, excitement, and hope? I was hooked. And I’ve stayed hooked on campaigns to this day.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Seryozha jumped up and went up to his father, and kissing his hand, looked at him intently, trying to discover signs of his joy at receiving the Alexander Nevsky. “Did you have a nice walk?” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, sitting down in his easy chair, pulling the volume of the Old Testament to him and opening it. Although Alexey Alexandrovitch had more than once told Seryozha that every Christian ought to know Scripture history thoroughly, he often referred to the Bible himself during the lesson, and Seryozha observed this. “Yes, it was very nice indeed, papa,” said Seryozha, sitting sideways on his chair and rocking it, which was forbidden. “I saw Nadinka” (Nadinka was a niece of Lidia Ivanovna’s who was being brought up in her house). “She told me you’d been given a new star. Are you glad, papa?” “First of all, don’t rock your chair, please,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch. “And secondly, it’s not the reward that’s precious, but the work itself. And I could have wished you understood that. If you now are going to work, to study in order to win a reward, then the work will seem hard to you; but when you work” (Alexey Alexandrovitch, as he spoke, thought of how he had been sustained by a sense of duty through the wearisome labor of the morning, consisting of signing one hundred and eighty papers), “loving your work, you will find your reward in it.” Seryozha’s eyes, that had been shining with gaiety and tenderness, grew dull and dropped before his father’s gaze. This was the same long-familiar tone his father always took with him, and Seryozha had learned by now to fall in with it. His father always talked to him—so Seryozha felt—as though he were addressing some boy of his own imagination, one of those boys that exist in books, utterly unlike himself. And Seryozha always tried with his father to act being the story-book boy. “You understand that, I hope?” said his father. “Yes, papa,” answered Seryozha, acting the part of the imaginary boy. The lesson consisted of learning by heart several verses out of the Gospel and the repetition of the beginning of the Old Testament. The verses from the Gospel Seryozha knew fairly well, but at the moment when he was saying them he became so absorbed in watching the sharply protruding, bony knobbiness of his father’s forehead, that he lost the thread, and he transposed the end of one verse and the beginning of another. So it was evident to Alexey Alexandrovitch that he did not understand what he was saying, and that irritated him.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  They have brought about change, from what gets taught to who gets tenure; from how the university invests its money to where athletic uniforms are made; from students taking a role in campus decision-making to Take Back the Night marches against sexualized violence on campus; from marginalizing some by class, race, sexuality, and physical ability to including diverse people and new courses of study. In my own college life, I got through four years as a government major without learning that women were not just “given” the vote, that the real number of slave rebellions was suppressed because rebelling was contagious, or that the model for the U.S. Constitution was not ancient Greece but the Iroquois Confederacy. Then, academic courses on Europe far outnumbered those on Africa, even though it is the birthplace of us all and is bigger than Europe, China, India, and the United States combined. When I’m on campus now and look at course listings, the relative importance reflected in them is much better but still way off. There has always been this question of what is being taught. As Gerda Lerner, a pioneer of women’s history in general and African American women’s history in particular, summed it up, “We have long known that rape has been a way of terrorizing us and keeping us in subjection. Now we also know that we have participated, although unwittingly, in the rape of our minds.”1 No wonder studies show that women’s intellectual self-esteem tends to go down as years of education go up. We have been studying our own absence. I say this as a reminder that campuses not only help create social justice movements, they need them. Now, campuses look more like the country in terms of race and ethnicity—though we’re not there yet, and bias can survive college degrees. I see women outnumbering their male counterparts on some campuses, but degrees are often a way out of the pink-collar ghetto and into a white-collar one. Women still average much less in earnings over a lifetime than men do and have to pay back the same college debt. I see campuses representing more age diversity. More than a third of college students are over twenty-five, and this age group is growing faster than students of conventional age, a change that was pioneered by veterans and the GI Bill of Rights, then by older women returning to campus. I remember watching a thirty-year-old pregnant woman arguing about the health care system with an eighteen-year-old male student, and thinking: This has to be good for education.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Lionel lay down under the table. Gray spiderwebs and caught dust billowed in the corners of the legs. He could see the pencil marks of the carpenter who had made the table. He reached up and brushed the faded blue numbers. He scratched the wood with his nails. Charles crawled under the table, too. They lay on their backs, head to head, looking up into the blank underside of the table as though it were the night sky. “You ever feel like your life is getting away from you, Lionel?” “Yeah. All the time.” “If I don’t get this thing at PNB, I think that might be it for me.” “As a dancer?” “Yeah. Maybe you can put in a word for me at your proctoring thing.” “Absolutely. You bet.” “A dancer only gets so many years. And that’s if they’re brilliant.” Lionel knew better than to say that Charles was brilliant. It would have been insulting. Charles sighed. “I’m going back to the program in the spring.” “If I had another three years of this,” Charles said, waving, gesturing to Lionel’s life, apartment, world, whatever. “You had this little blip. And you’ll get to go back.” It was true, Lionel thought, that he’d return to his life. That had been the thing he wanted most. But listening to Charles, it sounded childish. It sounded simple and easy. It was another form of condescension. “You’re kind of self-pitying right now,” Lionel said. “All I’m saying is, you’ve got this nice setup. And I’m here with a bum fucking knee, about to suck some old guy’s dick so maybe he’ll arrange an audition for me. So that maybe I can get another two years out of doing the thing I love most. You tell me who’s self-pitying. You’re the cutter.” Lionel almost gasped at the fluidity of the remark. The way it snapped off at the end. “I think it’s possible for my life to be shitty and also for your life to be shitty. Maybe you should keep your eyes on your own paper,” Lionel said. He was grateful then that he hadn’t said more to Charles, that he’d recognized the pitying, facile nature of Charles’s regard for him. For what he’d gone through. He was grateful he hadn’t betrayed himself by feeling more than he’d let himself feel. “I didn’t mean that,” Charles said. “You’re selfish.” “Yeah, probably.” Charles turned and reached for Lionel. But Lionel moved away. He slid from beneath the table, and Charles followed. They sat up together. It felt like a game. Every time Lionel moved, Charles followed. They were locked in a round of Simon Says.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  She’d come to understand their work as opposite in that way. Sigrid looked back into the past, through layer upon layer of history, trying to excavate what had been. Her new project was a scale-model re-creation of the rooms of Matilda of Scotland, and she took what she could from books like De Gestis Regum Anglorum. From a series of petty facts, she tried, and sometimes succeeded, in re-creating lives lived and lives lost. She was almost always looking back, and she talked with a kind of lilting nostalgia. Even when she talked about what she’d had for breakfast, she said it as if she’d never have oatmeal and toast again. Marta worked in forecasting. Taking the current levels of fluorination in the water, projecting what it would look like in ten years, in fifty, in one hundred. She worked to understand how the small, seemingly insignificant particles that filled their water and their air might accumulate over time into something dreadful and awful. Five dollars was never five dollars to Marta. It was always turning into one hundred, two hundred. All she could see was trends, losses mounting every moment of every day. “You’re like Anne of Cleves,” Sigrid said one day when they were in bed and Marta was trying to explain to her why she needed to confront Thad. “Like who?” she had asked, annoyed. “Anne of Cleves.” It could be this way, sometimes. Sigrid saying things that had nothing to do with anything. Marta had learned to wait it out. She rolled onto her stomach and propped her chin up on her hand. Sigrid was on her back, reading. “Are you going to elaborate?” Marta asked. “Anne of Cleves was a wife of Henry the Eighth,” she said without looking up from her book. “What does that have to do with your thief of a roommate?” “Anne of Cleves was practical and frugal. And stubborn. But she was naive and judgmental.” “Oh, this is about that stupid question you asked me on the first night.” “It’s not a stupid question,” Sigrid said, and she sat up. “It’s an important question. It’s maybe the most important question.” “What’s so important about it?” Marta asked. She was annoyed now. She had been trying to help Sigrid, and she’d been called ugly and bullheaded, and now stupid. “The wives of Henry the Eighth were either murdered or discarded because of Henry’s capriciousness. They’re every woman in history. Their whole lives—everything they ever did or felt or thought—get winnowed down to this one thing about them, their marriage or association to a tyrant. Isn’t that awful? So when I ask, which one of them are you, I guess, it’s less about you and more about, how are we still reproducing the same awful, limited spaces for women?”

• 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.

• From Querelle (1953)

  261 I QUERELLE -- "May I put in a request for forty-eight hours' leave, Lieu tenant?" To ask this question, pausing in the act of pouring the tea, Querelle raised his head and directed his smile at the Lieu tenant's reflection in the mirror, but Seblon beat a quick retreat into himself. He replied, curtly: ''Sure, I'll sign it for you." A few days earlier he would have reacted differently. He would have asked Querelle a number of insidious questions, describing ever-narro, Vi ng circles round wh at was most essential, to the point of actually touching that center or even revealing parts, but never all of it. Querelle was getting on his nerves. His face, present, did not manage to dispel the image of that audacious gunman who had disappeared into the morning fog. "He was just a boy, but he had nerve." Smnetimes he thought, feeling a little ashamed, that it didn't need all that much to attack a fairy. Querelle had been insolent enough to say to his face, with a somewhat artificial undertone of threat directed against the unknown robber: "Those guys, do they know wh o they tangle with?" \Vell, it was clear that the "ravisher" had known the inconsistent nature of his victim. He hadn't been afraid. In every respect, Querelle felt the officer putting a dis tance between them, at the very moment he himself, if slowly and with a thousand reservations, would have been ready to let himself be taken in by the profound and generous tenderness only a homo was able to offer. As to the officer, his adventure generated some reflections and new attitudes we shall account for, and out of these he gained sufficient force to make it possible for him to conquer Querelle. Loved by Qucrelle, I would be loved by all the sailors of France. My lover is a compendium of aJJ their manly and naive virtues.

• From Escape (2007)

  There was a dress rehearsal before the party, and each contingent of girls got up and did its part. But Merril’s daughter, who’d organized the party, hated my cousins’ song. A song about an arranged marriage somehow exacerbated the state of misery she was in about being unmarried. She told my cousins that they could come to the party, but they’d have to find another song. Of course, there wasn’t enough time for that. The nusses’ old maids’ party was the following weekend. The day of the party, my father got a call from Merril Jessop, who was, in effect, king of the nusses. Merril and my father had been business partners for years. He was prominent in the FLDS and very tight with Uncle Roy. Merril wanted me and my cousins to come. Dad explained we hadn’t been invited, and Merril went into a whole song and dance about how that wasn’t the case. Dad didn’t see any reason why we should go to the party and let the matter drop. Then Margaret, who had been the one to throw us out of the party, came over the week afterward to try to clear up what she felt was a misunderstanding. Rosie, Annette, and I all sat quietly in the living room and listened to her state her case. She had been at the dress rehearsal and said she loved our song. She said the problem was Uncle Fred. He opposed it and had told her to talk to my cousins about doing something different. She felt bad that we had not been at the party. After it was over, she said, Uncle Fred announced that every girl present at that party would obtain her salvation and make it into the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom of God—the downtown of heaven. He didn’t have the power to make that actually come true. But Uncle Fred was so revered in the community as a godly man that his pronouncements were seen as the next best thing to divine intervention. I couldn’t figure out her motivation. Was she trying to say that because we’d rebelled and not come up with another song, we were disgraced and would never obtain our salvation? I thought she had set up the meeting to apologize. But it seemed like the only point she wanted to make was that she and the other nusses were going to heaven and we were not.

• From Escape (2007)

  She looked like an FLDS version of Princess Diana. Her hair was coiffed and every strand sprayed into place. Her gown was a mass of soft, shining blue fabric with yards of expensive lace sewn into cascades of ruffles that floated over her tiny white high heels—instead of the boys’ blue sports shoes she usually wore. Her sleeves were puffy and her tightly fitted bodice was smothered in lace. She smiled like she was the belle of the ball, except that there was no ball. “Carolyn Blackmore.” When my name was called, I walked across the stage to get my diploma. It had been worth the fight. Now my sights were set on college and medical school. I smiled, thinking that if I could make it through the nusses, I could make it through anything. Little did I know that in a year I would be forced to marry their father. Marriage After graduation, I worked for a year as a teacher’s assistant while attending a weekly class at the community college. It was an exhausting schedule, but I wanted to establish the best academic record I could before I applied to school. By the time I was eighteen, my secret dream was still to become a pediatrician. I didn’t know any woman in the FLDS who had done something so ambitious, but I was determined to try. I knew the first step was getting into a four-year college that had a good pre-med program. I started by telling my father of my desire to go to college. I left the doctor part out. He said he’d ask the prophet. Uncle Roy was a comparatively moderate man, and he felt it helped the community if a small percentage of us went on to college and then came back home. At two o’clock one morning I was awakened from the dead of sleep. It was close to the end of the semester and I’d stayed up late studying. I couldn’t imagine why my mother was awakening me or why my father would want to speak with me at such an odd hour. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Dad was waiting for me in my mother’s bedroom. My father acted as though everything was normal. “I had a chance to talk to Uncle Roy about you going to college and he told me you were a smart girl and could go to school to be a teacher.” My heart sank. A teacher? I wanted to do pre-med. But it got worse. “Uncle Roy said that before you go to school, you should be married. He wants you to marry Merril Jessop.” I was stunned. My future had just vanished. Even if I continued with my education, I’d have to do so while being pregnant and having babies. I also knew that although Uncle Roy had given me permission to go to school, my husband could overrule him in this area because he would be the ultimate authority in my life.

• From Escape (2007)

  Merril was uncomfortable with the idea. He said he hadn’t had a chance to really get to know me and wasn’t sure I should go to school this soon. In fact, he said, he wasn’t sure I should go to college at all. My heart sank. He could see the disappointment in my face. I looked stricken when he said that there might be a better way for me to fit into his life than by going to college. The sex between us was as empty and meaningless as always. But by the time Merril was ready to return to Page the next morning, the situation had completely reversed itself. I think that Barbara’s jealousy might have worked to my advantage. She wanted me out of the house. Suddenly Merril thought school was a fine idea. He gave me a check to sign up for classes. When Merril came home the next weekend, he called several of his daughters into his office. I later learned that he told them he was afraid I might get into trouble if I went there on my own. Several daughters volunteered to go with me and report what I did back to him. I learned this the next morning from Audrey. I was furious. “How dare he talk to his daughters about what I should or shouldn’t do! It’s none of their business.” Audrey agreed with me. “But I don’t think my sisters who volunteered to monitor you at school really want to be involved with tattling on you. They just want to get a chance to go to college. If they agree to keep tabs on you, this is a ticket to school for them.” I hadn’t thought of that aspect. Audrey continued. “Carolyn, we all want to go to college, but there is just no way Father would ever allow any of his daughters to do it. But he would under these conditions. I heard he is thinking of buying you a car and talked about letting you register for the whole summer quarter.” “Did he really say that?” I asked. I had only talked to Merril about the two-week course. I was so happy. But I hid my joy. I wasn’t sure how Audrey would interpret it, nor did I know how realistic this option really was. Audrey said it was her other sisters who’d encouraged Merril to let me go for more than just the two-week course because they were eager to go to college, too. Late that afternoon, Merril came home and asked me to come into Barbara’s bedroom. I noticed a new picture on her wall of a sad puppy. They asked me to sit down on a stool beside the bed. Barbara caught me looking at the picture. “I purchased that picture the week you married Merril. When the two of you were gone on your trip I felt like the puppy does in that picture.” I had no response.