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 Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition (2004)

  367 In the fi rst half of Candide, the hero’s journey is determined by chance and the ill or good will of others, rather than by his own free will. In the second half, Candide actively pursues his own choices (although doing so does not seem to offer him any advantage in dealing with the world). In chapter 1, Candide is chased from his native Westphalia, an earthly paradise, after kissing the Baroness Cunégonde. Candide innocently believes that life at the Baron of Thunder-ten-tronckh’s chateau is “the best of all possible worlds,” as Pangloss has taught him. He is physically and spiritually exiled from what he believes to be paradise. Candide’s education about the real nature of the world begins as soon as he leaves Westphalia and fi nds himself alternately fl eeing violence or persecution and being saved by the goodness of strangers. When he fl ees to Holland to escape these horrors, he is reunited with Dr. Pangloss, who is at fi rst unrecognizable because he is suffering the ravages of syphilis. Pangloss and Candide travel to Lisbon, just in time to be injured in the terrible earthquake that devastated the city in 1755. Pangloss appears to die at the hands of the Inquisition, while Candide narrowly escapes death; is reunited with Cunégonde, miraculously recovered from the rape and disemboweling committed on her body by Bulgarian soldiers; by chance, kills her lover, the Grand Inquisitor; and fl ees with her to the New World, where Candide loses Cunégonde again to a lascivious colonial governor in Buenos Aires. Candide once again escapes death by vengeful natives in Paraguay, and his prudent travel companion, Cacambo, concludes what the naïve hero cannot deduce for himself—that “This hemisphere is no better than the other.” Giving themselves over entirely to fate, Candide and Cacambo take a small boat down river in Paraguay, where they discover the mythical city of Eldorado. Despite their contentment, Candide and Cacambo resolve not to be happy any longer and decide to leave this paradise to fi nd Cunégonde. The narrative of Candide follows the (mis)adventures of Candide, Voltaire’s naïve hero, whose name suggests his directness but also, in its Latinate form, means a tabula rasa.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Guerin lacks any sense of history, except as something to be manipulated, and has really no respect whatever for the human personality, he is unable to give us any sense of the perpetual interaction of these forces on one another. Without this sense all states be come abstractions, and lawless ones at that. Mr. Guerin wants us all to go out right away and begin preparing for the equitable new state which will succeed to the present inequitable one; and should the present state seem reluctant to wither away, he has no objection to setting it to the torch. One of his heroes, John Brown, is one of the minor villains in J. C. Furnas' admirable Goodbye To Uncle Tom. Mr. Furnas' attitude can be gathered fr om his comment that "What Mrs. Stowe and John Brown did was not to create the forces that would free the slave but to make sure that North and South went into their crisis in the least promising state of mind." In view of the enormous bitterness the Civil War has left us, this statement seems disquietingly close to the truth. It suggests that indignation and goodwill are not enough to make the world better. Clarity is needed, as well as charity, however difficult this may be to imagine, much less sustain, toward the other side. Perhaps the worst thing that can be said about social indignation is that it so frequently leads to the death of personal humility. Once that has happened, one has ceased to live in that world of men which one is striving so mightily to make over. One has entered into a dialogue with that terrifying deity, sometimes called History, previ ously, and perhaps again, to be referred to as God, to which no sacrifice in human suffering is too great. Mr. Furnas maintains that, despite the world-renowned in dignation of its author, Uncle Tom's Cabin is a shoddy and 610 OTHER ESSAYS almost totally undocumented piece of fiction, which it is; and, further, that it is this book which has set the tone for the attitude of American whites toward Negroes for the last one hundred years. This may seem, at first, rather too heavy a weight to place on a single book. Y ct when one considers this novel's enormous prestige and popularity, remembers that it was read for generations as though it were another Bible, that it is involved with the deepest, most lasting bitterness and the bloodiest conflict this nation has ever known; when one re flects, above all, how it flatters the popular mind, positively discouraging that mind from any tendency to think the matter through for itself-and this to such an extent that both pro and anti-Negro sentiment have read this book as scripture one is forced to the conclusion that Mr.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  What is really at question is whether Americans already have an iden tity or arc still sufficiently flexible to achieve one. This is a painfully complicated question, for what now appears to be the American identity is really a bewildering and sometimes demoral izing blend of nostalgia and opportunism. For ex ample, the Irish who march on St. Patrick's Day, do not, after all, have any desire to go back to Ireland. They do not intend NEGR OES ARE AN TI-SE MI TIC BE CAUS E .. . 747 to go back to live there, though they may dream of going back there to die. Their lives, in the meanwhile, are here, but they cling, at the same time, to those credentials forged in the Old World, credentials which cannot be duplicated here, cre dentials which the American Negro does not have. These cre dentials are the abandoned history of Europe-the abandoned and romanticized history of Europe. The Russian Jews here have no desire to return to Russia either, and they have not departed in great clouds for Israel. But they have the authority of knowing it is there. The Americans are no longer Euro peans, but they are still living, at least as they imagine, on that capital . That capital also belongs, however, to the slaves who cre ated it for Europe and who created it here; and in that sense, the Jew must see that he is part of the history of Europe, and will always be so considered by the descendant of the slave. Always, that is, unless he himself is willing to prove that this judgment is inadequate and unjust. This is precisely what is demanded of all the other white men in this country, and the Jew will not find it easier than anybody else. The ultimate hope for a genuine black-white dialogue in this country lies in the recognition that the driven European serf merely created another serf here, and created him on the basis of color. No one can deny that the Jew was a party to this, but it is senseles s to assert that this was because of his Jewishness. One can be disappointed in the Jew if one is romantic enough-f or not having learned from his history; but if people did learn from history, history would be very different. All racist positions baffle and appall me. None of us are that different from one another, neither that much better nor that much worse. Furthermore, when one takes a position one must attempt to see where that position inexorably leads.

• From Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition (2004)

  534 Lecture 79: Virginia Woolf Virginia Woolf Lecture 79 Virginia Woolf herself came from the upper middle class. Daughter of a distinguished scholar and literary critic named Leslie Stephen, she was raised in London along with her seven siblings and educated at home by her parents and governesses. I n 1895, when she was 13, the death of her mother provoked the fi rst of her mental breakdowns, which ended only when she drowned herself in 1941, at the age of 59. But it’s a great mistake to read her whole life in the dark light of its ending. We do much better to read it in the shining light of her achievement. In spite of the depression that periodically seized her, she read voraciously, wrote prolifi cally, and lived fully. She produced a remarkable body of fi ction, essays, and criticism. In Mrs. Dalloway (published 1925), her fourth novel, she tells the story of a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, wife of a member of Parliament, who gives a grand party that evening attended by the prime minister. For Clarissa, the day is charged with memories of her earlier self; of her relations with a man named Peter Walsh, who wanted to marry her; and with the irrepressibly vital Sally Seton, who once kissed her passionately. Furthermore, the glittering party is shadowed by the news of a suicide. Incurably traumatized by the war and by the death of a man he loved, a young man named Septimus Smith has thrown himself from a window. Re fl ecting on this news, Clarissa feels at once the emptiness of her life and the daring of the young man’s death. In Mrs. Dalloway , Clarissa’s disappointment at the news that her husband is lunching out reveals the sense of death and chill that underlies her apparent vitality. Though she’s a fashionable, well-married London hostess who has just been out to buy fl owers for her own grand party, she is disappointed to learn that her husband will not be home for lunch. As she returns to her house, she learns from her servant Lucy and from a note that her husband will be lunching with Lady Bruton, who has not invited Clarissa herself. Because the lunch party promised to be “extraordinarily amusing,” she feels

• From Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition (2004)

  504 Lecture 73: Henry James Greatly impressed by Isabel’s independence, Ralph gives her the fi nancial means to exercise it. Because he’s dying of tuberculosis, he persuades his father to leave her a fortune. He hopes only to live long enough to see what Isabel will do. Thus freed of all obligations, Isabel is dangerously captivated by two expatriate Americans who seem to her supremely cultivated. Madame Merle enchants her. Though born in Brooklyn, she’s been thoroughly Europeanized and seems a paragon of social perfection. On meeting her at the Touchetts’ house, Isabel is enchanted with her. Speaking slightingly of Ralph, she contrives to make herself Isabel’s new mentor. She leads Isabel into the hands of Osmond, who charms her purely by his taste. Introduced to Osmond—another expatriate American—by Madame Merle, Isabel is drawn to him precisely because he has nothing but taste. Unlike Warburton and Goodwood, he’s “a perfect nonentity” by conventional standards, which makes her want to help him with her money. Only after her marriage to Osmond does she learn his true nature. Too late, she learns that his super fi cially cultivated world is a fallen and corrupt garden ruled by his egotism. She learns that he will do everything to keep her trapped. Having come to Europe in quest of life, experience, and culture, Isabel succumbs to the ideal of taste; only then she discovers that to endure the treachery of the old world, she will need all the moral strength she brought with her from the new one. ■ Edel, Henry James: A Life. James, The Portrait of a Lady: An Authoritative Text , 2 nd ed., edited by Robert D. Bamberg. Wagenknecht, The Novels of Henry James. Essential Reading Supplementary Reading 505 1. Given Isabel’s intelligence, why does she fail to see the true character of Osmond before she agrees to marry him? 2. Does Henrietta Stackpole offer us anything more than comic relief? Questions to Consider

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The Crisis has the most exciting subject matter in the world at its fingertips, and yet manages to be one of the world's dullest magazines. When the Reverend James Law son-who was expelled from Vanderbilt University for his sit in activities-said this, or something like it, he caused a great 656 OTH ER ES SAYS storm of ill feeling. But he was quite right to feel as he does about The 0-isis, and quite right to say so. And the charge is not answered by referring to the history of the NAAC P. Now, to charge The 0-isis with dullness may seem to be a \'cry trivial matter. It is not trivial, though, because this dull ness is the result of its failure to examine what is really hap pening in the Negro world-its failure indeed, for that matter, to seize upon what is happening in the world at large. And I have singled it out because this inability is revelatory of the gap which now ominously widens between what we shall now have to call the official leadership and the young people who have begun what is nothing less than a moral revolution. It is because of this gap that King finds himself in such a difficult position. The pressures on him are tremendous, and they come from above and below. He lost much moral credit, for example, especially in the eyes of the young, when he al lowed Adam Clayton Powell to force the resignation of his (King's) extremely able organizer and lieutenant, Bayard Rus tin. Rustin, also, has a long and honorable record as a fighter for Negro rights, and is one of the most penetrating and able men around. The techniques used by Powell-we will not speculate as to his motives-were far from sweet; but King was faced with the choice of defending his organizer, who was also his friend, or agreeing with Powell; and he chose the latter course. Nor do I know of anyone satisfied with the reasons given for the excl usion of James Lawson from the Southern Christian Leadership Conf erence. It would seem, certainly, that so able, outspoken, and energetic a man might prove of great value to this organization: why, then, is he not a part of it? And there arc many other questions, all of them ominous, and too many to go into here. But they all come, finally, it seems to me, to this tremendous reality: it is the sons and daughters of the beleaguered bourgeoisie-supported, in the most extraordinary fashion, by those old, work-worn men and women who were known, only yesterday, as "the country nig gcrs"-who have begun a revolution in the consciousness of this country which will inexorably destroy nearly all that we now think of as concrete and indisputable.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  I was, too, I imagine, also rather disappointed that my hair had not turned white, that my face was clearly not going to bear any marks of tragedy, disappointed at bottom, no doubt, to re alize, facing him in that room, that far worse things had hap pened to most people and that, indeed, to paraphrase my mother, if this was the worst thing that ever happened to me I could consider myself among the lu ckiest people ever to be born. He injected-my visitor-i nto my solitary nightmare common sense, the world, and the hint of blacker things to come. The next day, Christmas, unable to endure my cell, and feeling that, after all, the day demanded a gesture, I asked to 116 NO TES OF A NA TIVE SON be allowed to go to Mass, hoping to hear some music. But I found mysclt: tor a freezing hour and a half , locked in exactly the same kind of cubicle as in the wagon which had first brought me to prison, peering through a slot placed at the le\"cl of the eye at an old Frenchman, hatted, overcoated, muf fled, and gloved, preaching in this language which I did not understand, to this row of wooden boxes, the story of Jesus Christ's love for men. The next day, the 26th, I spent learning a peculiar kind of game, played with match-sticks, with my cellmates. For, since I no longer felt that I would stay in this cell forever, I was beginning to be able to make peace with it for a time. On the 27th I went again to trial and, as had been predicted, the case against us was dismissed. The story of the drap de lit, finally told, caused great merriment in the courtroom, whereupon my friend decided that the French were "great." I was chilled by their merriment, even though it was meant to warm me. It could only remind me of the laughter I had often heard at home, laughter which I had sometimes deliberately elicited. This laughter is the laughter of those who consider themselves to be at a sate remove trom all the wretched, for whom the pain of the living is not real. I had heard it so of ten in my native land that I had resolved to find a place where I would never hear it any more.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  It was not, now, the Euro pean necessity to go rummaging in the past, and through all the countries of the world, bi tterly staking out claims to its cultural possessi ons. Y ct Black Boy owed its existence to a great many other fac tors, by no means so tenuous or so problematical; in so hand somely prese nting Wright with his African heritage, Senghor rather seemed to be taking away his identity. Black Boy is the study of the growing up of a Negro boy in the Deep South , and is one of the major American autobiograp hies. I had never thought of it, as Scnghor clearly did, as one of the major African autobiographies, only one more document, in fact, like one mor e book in the Bible, speaking of the African's long persecution and exile. Scnghor chose to overlook several gaps in his argument, not the least of which was the fact that Wri ght had not been in a position, as Europeans had been, to remain in contact with his hypothetical African heritage. The Grc co -Roman tradition had, after all, been written down; it was by this means that it had kept itself alive. Granted that ther e was something African in Black Boy, as there was undoubt edly something African in all American Negroes, the great question of what this was, and how it had survived, remained wide open. Moreover, Black Boy had been written in the English language which Americans had inherited from England, that is, if you like, PRI NCES AND POWER S 1 55 from Greece and Ro me; its fo rm, psychology, moral attitude, preoccupations, in short, its cultur al validity, were all due to fo rces which had nothing to do with Africa. Or was it simply that we had been rendered unable to recognize Africa in it? fo r, it seemed that, in Senghor's vast re-creation of the world, the fo otf all of the African would prove to have covered more territory than the fo otf all of the Ro man. Thursday's great event was Aime Cesaire's speech in the afternoon, dealing with the relation between colonization and culture. Cesaire is a caramel-colored man from Marti nique, probably around fo rty, with a great tendency to roundness and smoothness, physically speaking, and with the rather vaguely benign air of a schoolteacher. All this changes the moment he begins to speak.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  But one night, in one of the cafes of St. Germain des 101 102 NO TES OF A NA TIVE SON Pres, I was discovered by this New Yorker and only because we found ourselves in Paris we im mediately established the illusion that we had been fast friends back in the good old U.S.A. This illusion proved itself too thin to support an eve ning's drinking, but by that time it was too late. I had com mitted myself to getting him a room in my hotel the next day, tor he was living in one of the nest of hotels near the Gare St. Lazare, where, he said, the propriitaire was a thief, his wife a repressed nymphomaniac, the chambermaids "pigs," and the rent a crime. Americans are always talking this way about the French and so it did not occur to me that he meant what he said or that he would take into his own hands the means of avenging himself on the French Re public. It did not occur to me, either, that the means which he did take could possibly have brought about such dire results, results which were not less dire for being also comic-opera. It came as the last of a series of disasters which had perhaps been made inevitable by the fact that I had come to Paris originally with a little over forty dollars in my pockets, nothing in the bank, and no grasp whatever of the French language. It developed, shortly, that I had no grasp of the French char acter either. I considered the French an ancient, intelligent, and cultured race, which indeed they are. I did not know, however, that ancient glories imply, at least in the middle of the present century, present fatigue and, quite probably, paranoia; that there is a limit to the role of the intelligence in human affairs; and that no people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it. This price they cannot, of course, assess, but it is revealed in their per sonalities and in their institutions.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  In an overlong speech, the sadistic-looking head of the judges, a thin-lipped man with oiled, old-fashioned hair, said how close it had been, and praised the generosity of Lord Nantwich, ‘who not only gave this magnificent cup, but ’elped the Boys’ Club movement in so many and varied ways.’ It was regretted he was not well enough to be there himself. The audience showed appreciation in a hearty fashion, and the Cup, a kind of baroque tureen with handles in the form of upward-reaching youths, was presented amid generous applause to the ferocious, broken-nosed little tyke who captained the St Albans gang. Bill could not contain the mood of futility which overcame him. I imagined he would be taken for a consolatory drink by friends, fellow trainers, even, illicitly, the older of the boys. But they were all frightfully busy. The place drained and grew quiet. I took him for a beer at the nearest pub, a cavernous saloon where a few men gazed stunned at a television above the bar. ‘Never mind, Bill,’ I said, bringing back two pints to a corner table he had chosen. ‘Oh, thanks, Will. Thanks a lot. Cheers.’ He picked up the glass and sucked off the frothy head of the beer—then set it aside with an apprehensive look. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve had one of those,’ he said. ‘Really? Would you like something different?’ He was shocked at having seemed ungrateful. ‘No, no, no. It’s great. It’s just I don’t drink much these days. Used to, though; if you know what I mean.’ There were more sadnesses in him this evening than I’d known about before. He took a tentative sip. ‘Still, even I need cheering up sometimes,’ he said, as though he were widely known as a figure of high spirits. ‘There’s always another time,’ I condoled feebly. ‘The sport’s the thing.’ He shook his head in self-denying acceptance of what I said. ‘To tell you the truth, I was quite surprised to find you here. I didn’t realise that was your name. I had this idea you were called … Hawkins,’ I added, laughing at my own absurdity. Bill looked at me earnestly. ‘I can explain that,’ he said, in the tone of one who has just dreamt up an alibi and is about to test it on a sceptical CID man. But he didn’t do so. ‘I will explain it to you one day. You’re quite right though. At the Corinthian Club I’m Hawkins, but down here with the lads I’m Shillibeer—Shilly Billy, they call me. All in good fun, of course.’ ‘You’re a dark one,’ I said flirtatiously, and he looked pleased. ‘But tell me about the Nantwich Cup.’ ‘The Nantwich? Well, his Lordship established it in 1955. He did a lot for this Club—he paid for those new changing-rooms.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  At this moment Paris ceases to be a city dedicated to Ia vie boheme, and becomes one of the cities of Europe. At this point, too, it may be suggested, the legend of Paris has done its deadly work, which is, perhaps, so to stun the traveler with freedom that he begins to long for the prison of home-home then becoming the place where � estions are not asked. It is at this pomt, precisely, that many and many a student packs his bags for home. The transformation which can be effected, in less than a year, in the attitude and aspirations of the youth who has divorced himself from the crudities of main street in order to be married with European finesse is, to say the very least, astounding. His brief period of enchantment �n g ended, he cannot walt, It seems, tO look agam on his native land the \'lrtues of which, If not less crude, have also become, abruptly, stmple, and vztal. With the air of a man who has but barely escaped tumbling headlong into the bottomless pit, he tells you that he can scarcely wait to leave this city, which has been revealed to the eye of his maturity as old, dirty, crumbling, and dead. The people who were, when he arrived at Le Havre, the heirs of the world's richest culture, the pos sessors of the world's largest esp1'it, are really decadent, pe nurious, self-seeking, and false, with no trace of American spontaneity, and lacking in the least gratitude for American favors. Only America is alive, only Americans are doing any thing worth mcmiuning in the arts, or 111 any other field of NO TES OF A NA TIVE SON human activity: to America, only, the future belongs. Whereas, but only yesterday, to confess a fondness for anything Amer ican was to be suspected of the most indefensible jingoism, to suggest today that Europe is not all black is to place oneself under the suspicion of harboring treasonable longings. The violence of his emb race of things American is embar rassing, not only because one is not quite prepared to follow his ad mirable example, but also because it is impossible not to sus pect that his present acceptance of his country is no less romantic, and unreal, than his earlier rejection. It is as easy, after all, and as meaningless, to emb race uncritically the cul tural sterility of main street as it is to decry it. Both extremes avoid the question of whether or not main street is really ster ile, avoid, in fact- which is the principal convenience of ex tremes-any questions about main street at al l.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Yet, in speaking of the relation between politics and culture, he pointed out that the loss of vitality from which all Negro cultur es were suffering was due to the fact that their political destinies were not in their hands. A people depr ived of polit ical sover eignty finds it very nearly impossible to recreate, fo r itself� the image of its past, this perpetual recreation being an absolute necessity f(>r, if not, indeed, the definition of a living culture. And one of the questions, then, said Diop, which would of ten be raised during this conference was the question of assimilation. Assimilation was frequently but another name f(>r the very special brand of relations between human beings which had been imposed by colonialism. These relations de manded that the individual, torn from the context to which he owed his identity, should replace his habits of feeling, thinking, and acting by another set of habits which belonged to the strangers who dominat ed him. He cited the example of certain natives of the Belgian Congo, who, accab te des com plexes, wished f(>r an assimilation so complete that they would PRI NCES AND POWER S 145 no longer be distinguishable from white men. This, said Diop, indicated the blind horror which the spiritual heritage of Africa inspired in their breasts. The question of assimilation could not, however, be posed this way. It was not a question, on the one hand, of simply being swallowed up, of disappearing in the maw of Western culture, nor was it, on the other hand, a question of rejecting assimilation in order to be isolated within Atrican culture. Nei ther was it a question of deciding which African \'alues were to be retained and which European Yalues were to be adopted. Life was not that simple. It was due to the crisis which their cultures were now un derg oing that black intellectuals had come together. They were here to define and accept their responsibilities, to assess the riches and the promise of their cultures, and to open, in effect, a dialogue with Europe. He ended with a brief and rather moYing reference to the fifteen-year struggle of himself and his confreres to bring about this day. His speech won a great deal of applause. Yet, I telt that among the dark people in the hall there was, perhaps, some disappointment that he had not been more specific, more bit ter, in a word , more demagogical; whereas, among the whites in the hall, there was certainly expressed in their applause a somewhat shame-taced and uneasy relief.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  He had seen me . . . And was there controlled anger in his cool delivery, a new tone in our affairs? I lobbed the blame clumsily back—"You can't have been working very hard if you were looking out of the window"—and heard what a leaden censorious jerk I sounded, and grinned to deflect his hatred. "Perhaps you don't know all about our little mirrors in the window, which are present in most of the old houses. We can sit and do what we want to do and then we just look up quickly and we can see all along the street." I blushed and nodded with genuine enlightenment. Of course I had seen these spying-glasses; but I hadn't realised just how routinely nosy these people were. I began to feel that everything I did might be observed and censured from within the dark old windows of the town. "How was your weekend?" I said. "Oh, it was very good, thank you." "You'll have to remind me where it was you went. I know you said it's where a friend of yours has a house?" "Yes. It's in a small village that is actually in France, called St Ernest-allx-Sablonnières . . ." "Of course, I remember now, where St Ernest etc . . ." He nodded, and looked at me with slight concern, as if I might really have forgotten the whole rigmarole of our first lesson. "You must have had good weather—You even look a bit browner; if it was anything like it was here, you could almost have done some sunbathing." "I find it is too boring, sunbathing. But yes, the sun was shining and all was right with the world." "So." I pondered this vain concealment. "Tell me what you did. Who was there?" "Oh, it was just me and my friend Patrick. I think I told you before it is his parents' house." "Just the two of you, then?" "Yes, it was very quiet, we could just relax and well, do our work." "How cosy." And he looked away as if I were insinuating something, though in fact I was baffled by this lie and hurt to be lied to and had a will to chase and expose him. His mother was out today at the Cathedral, and we had no coffee to fill the pauses and neutralise our embarrassments. We were alone in the house . . . I stood up and walked to the window and made a frowning survey of the garden, two Japanese maples with twisted limbs in a combustion of bronze and crimson. My long, disappointed silence bothered him. "I have done the reading you told me to do." "Good . . . good . . ."I came back and sat down. I needed to reestablish the reality of the weekend. "We might as well be very British," I said gravely, and watched his forced smile fade into unease. "Tell me again what the weather was like." Relief and boredom.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  One father of modest means sent a check to his son for the down payment on a house; the young man was flabbergasted. He had not asked for help and was everlastingly grateful for the thoughtfulness and generosity that prompted it. On the other end of the spectrum, we saw fathers who abandoned their children outright. One man adopted his stepsons and stopped seeing his own children (who were the same age as his stepsons) even though they had been close during the first marriage. Others saw their children once a year and felt it was adequate. Some violent husbands continued to be violent in their second marriages and did not see their behavior as being detrimental to their children. The sons and daughters of such men struggled for years to break away from the powerful model of such immoral behavior. As adults, most angrily rejected their fathers and have little compassion for them when they’re in trouble. When Larry learned that his father had prostate cancer, he felt bad but said, “I feel sorry for him but he was never there for me. I can’t be of help to him, either.” Most fathers in this study fall in between. They intend to maintain frequent contact with their children but gradually visit less as the difficulties of maintaining a relationship loom larger and as they are caught up in second marriages with new children and stepchildren as well as new jobs, new communities, and new concerns. These men are regarded by their children as selfish and insensitive to the consequences of their failures as fathers. “My dad loves life but he has no heart for others,” said one young man. “He never wrote, he never called. He didn’t understand that getting a message from him would change my life.” Most young adults do not blame their stepmothers or stepsiblings for these shortcomings; they blame their father. They often speak of their fathers with affection, even with compassion, but they make no attempt to hide their disappointment or anger. They say, “I love him but I don’t respect him.” Many people believe that children learn to dislike their fathers because mothers say bad things about them, but that has not been my experience. The children that I have talked with make their own observations and draw their own conclusions. They ask, Has he been a faithful father? Is he a loser in love and marriage? Can he be trusted? Only eight men and women in the entire group said they would seek their father’s advice about any aspect of a personal relationship or a family problem. A large national study reports that young adults in divorced families, very much in accord with my findings here, are angry at their fathers and are unlikely to be helpful to them as they grow old.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Albert Camus in the pages of the french political newspaper, Combat. Camus had been TAKE ME TO THE WA TER 379 born in Oran, which is the scene of his first novel, The Stranger. He could be described, perhaps, as a radical human ist; he was young, he was lucid, and it was not illo gical to assume that he would bring-along with the authority of knowing the land of his birth-some of these qualities to bear on his apprehension of the nature of the French-Algerian conflict. I have never esteemed this writer as highly as do so many others. I was struck by the fact that, tor Camus, the European humanism appeared to expire at the European gates: so that Camus, who was dedicated to liberty, in the case of Europe ans, could only speak of "justice" in the case of Algeria. And yet, he must surely have known, must have seen with his own eyes, some of the results of French "justice" in Algeria. (" A legal means," said an Atrican recipient, "of administering injustice.") Given the precepts upon which he based his eloquent discourses concerning the problems of individual lib erty, he must have seen that what the battle of Algiers was really about was the fact that the French refused to give the Algerians the right to be wrong; refused to allow them, so to speak, that "existentialist" situation, of which the french, for a season, were so enamored; or, more accurately, did not even dare imagine that the Algerian situation could be "existen tialist"; precisely because the French situation was so extreme. There was no way for him not to have known that Algeria was French only insof ar as French power had <.iccrccd it to be French. It existed on the European map only insotar as Eu ropean power had placed it there. It is power, not ju stice, which keeps rearranging the map, and the Algerians were not fighting the French for justice (of which, indeed, they must have had their fill by that time) but for the power to determine their own destinies. It was during this time that Camus translated and directed, tor the Mathurin Theatre, in Paris, William Faulkner's Re quiem for a Nun, and an American magazine asked me to review it. I would almost certainly not have seen this produc tion otherwise, tor I had seen the play in New York, and I had read the book, and had tound Faulkner's table to be a preposterous bore.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  Two or three children were dressed as playing-cards, like the gardeners in Alice in Wonderland, and pointed gleefully through the wrought-iron banisters. Theo Altidore stood in the middle, hand on hip, turbaned and robed in red, a scimitar in his belt. I couldn't tell if his rajah's moustaches were real or part of the costume. He was stout and high-coloured, with the irritable glare of the determined pleasure-seeker, handsome, young still, but already the man he would become. The brilliant picture, untouched by smoke or rain, could only show, like the Pavillion itself, how far he had wandered from Guillaume's austere refinement. He reminded me of bankers at Glyndebourne pretending to be aesthetes (betrayed by drink) or Toiler spreads on charity balls—the Duke of Somewhere, a frightful old monster, got up as a sheik or an Indian prince, never anything less than his own status. And it was notable how Theo had chosen the glamour of another empire than the one that was to ruin him. I could see why he'd frightened little Luc with his sword and his stare and his party of idlers. But then the whole place spoke of adult pleasures and delusions—it was mad to think that Luc would ever have wanted to come here. His mother and I revealed some romantic failing of our own, poetic suppositions that had nothing to do with the boy's troubles and discoveries, the hidden upheavals of love. I was such a bad teacher. I stood for a while at the open front door, feeling tired and dirty. It wasn't just that I hadn't found Luc there in person. He wasn't there in other ways I'd hoped for: I'd dreamt of the house as a means of possessing him, of entering his past at a deep and early level, but the jumpy ten minutes inside gave me nothing but a lonely shell. I started to snivel pathetically and turned away in case Marcel should see me. Then I heard the dull report of a car on the cattle-grid. The mauve Mini was coming over the field, bouncing and struggling on the rutted track. That terrifying little car. I waited for it shiftily, trying to make out if it contained one, two, or even three people—perhaps they'd all come to tell me the game was over, they would get out and lean on the open car door and marvel at my folly. It buzzed on to the mossy flagstones and stopped dead in front of the statue. There was only Sibylle inside—she sat for a while glaring out. It was clear to me she'd been sent by Luc to deliver some ultimatum and was working herself up to it and concentrating her anger at me and my blind interventions. Then she spotted Marcel, who was standing away to my right, frowning, head on one side in one of his gawky "grown-up" attitudes. She got out and hurried over to him, kissed him on both cheeks.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Instead, their relationship must be created from the more limited interactions they enjoy or, if things are not going well, do not enjoy. The potential for disappointment and hurt, or for misunderstanding on both sides, is omnipresent. The opportunities for making up after a quarrel, for doing better, are more limited. It’s as if the myriad daily interactions of the father-child relationship have to flow through the narrow end of a funnel. Relationships feel constrained by the clock because they are being interrupted constantly . Even more important, as the child gets older the symbolic significance of the divorced father changes. He’s no longer the commanding presence in his child’s life—the loving protective figure who makes sure everyone is cared for. Because he’s no longer responsible for the welfare of the household, his image inevitably diminishes. Daddy may be good company or a bore, he may be loved or resented, but he has lost his big job. Henceforth he is judged by what transpires between himself and his child, not by virtue of his traditional role as father in situ. Whatever relationship father and child create, they must do it by themselves without the structure of the family to support either of them, without the comforting presence of just having each other around, and without the help of the mother who, in a good intact family, encourages the father-child relationship to take off and to grow. The average child in a functioning intact family turns to each parent as he wants or needs their attention or help. Children are very astute in figuring out what each parent is better at providing emotionally as well as in other spheres of knowledge. When children get hurt, they often call for their mothers. Even older children want comforting and holding when they’re in pain. When the same child feels lively and eager to do something new, she may well turn to her father. When my twelve-year-old daughter was hit by a car, she wanted her father to ride in the ambulance because she had greater confidence in his ability to take charge. Later on in the hospital, she wanted me to sit at her bedside all day to comfort her. What could be more natural? I’m reminded of Alice in Wonderland, who held pieces of a magic mushroom in each hand. One side made her smaller and the other taller. She could nibble away at will and change her height. Similarly, the child in an intact family is free to turn alternately to each parent to meet her changing needs and wishes as she grows. Young adolescent girls typically turn to their mothers. Six-year-old boys want to be with their dads. But in the divorced family the child has to tailor her needs and wishes to the parent who happens to be scheduled in her life at any given moment. Many children complain that when they’re with their moms they miss their dads and vice versa. Indeed they do.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  "He came many times before he spoke to her; he hired a fiacre every Sunday morning to bring him and take him back. He could really hardly believe his eyes, he longed to be with her, but dreaded meeting her and being disabused." "Was she really so similar?" "It's rather touching, at first he thought identical, but myopically he couldn't be sure—the whole impression, the slow but electrifying movement, what he called Jane's Lady Macbeth quality, seemed to be perfectly reproduced. It was only when he had, well, picked her up, and taken her for a drive that he conceded the single difference—in place of Jane's virtually colourless eyes, hers were what he called chrysanthemum brown—a tarnished gold colour." "Presumably he got her to go with him without too much difficulty." "Of course. I think she virtually leapt into the cab. But then to him that only confirmed the sense of reincarnation, of a destined meeting. And she was no fool, she went along with it; she must have had a bit of the actress in her too, although she didn't have anything of the real Jane's artistic background or farrdly connections. She was just a woman of the people. There is an awful kind of unintended humour in his diary if you know what she was and what he thought about her. He simply believed what he so very much wanted to believe." "He can't really have believed there was any connection between the two women, surely?" Paul looked mildly around the church. "Beliefs a funny thing," he said. "It's the little obstacles to belief that spur one to make the leap of faith." When we were outside again, he had the air of someone who has dragged you to see a cult movie at a remote suburban cinema and suspects that it wasn't an unqualified success. "That was very fascinating," I said. "I'd hoped to show you something else; but we can't wait all day. It's simply that this church is still used by the prostitutes. I'd hoped some painted ladies might be praying to St Vaast." "I think I've got a much better picture of what happened without seeing the real thing." Though it was true I didn't quite feel the thrill or shock of it as Paul clearly hoped.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Stowe's mind, for the reason that it had never entered her mind that the Negro could conceivably be an equal. She knew nothing about the Africa, to which projects were made to send him, as, when writing Uncle Tom's Cabin, she had known nothing of slavery beyond what she had gathered by reading and one or two short trips to Kentucky. Perhaps if she had known more about the slave's condition, and what this condition docs to a people, she (and the nation) would have had a more realistic, more responsible view of what would probably happen when thousands of unlettered, abruptly homeless, totally vulnerable and unprepared people were turned loose upon the body pol itic. Mr. Furnas is not being unjust when he observes that the righteous zeal of Mrs. Stowe, like that of most of the Aboli tionists, resembled that of an anti-vivisectionist committee. It had not entered their heads that they were fighting for the rights of men like themselves. They were fighting for the right of the "sons of Ethiopia, whatever . . . their natural stupidity ... to stretch forth their hands to God." Of the right of the "sons of Ethiopia" to conquer that unquestioned "natural stupidity," of their right to work, live, vote, marry, and even to become unbelievers, they had never thought. We arc until today struggling with many of the results of this righteous zeal in action. One of the results is the continuing bitterness felt by the descendants of those "sons of Ethiopia," whom we have never yet, wholly, managed to regard as men. Perhaps nothing in THE CRUSADE OF INDIGNATION 613 Goodbye To Uncle Tom more justifies the title than Mr. Furnas' unsentimental insistence that this must be done, and now, for no other reason than our common humanity, and that the way to begin is by taking a hard look at oneself. The Nation, July 7, 1956 Sermons and Blues SELECTED POEMS OF LANGSTON HUGHES. Drawings by E. McKnight Kauffcr. 297 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $ s . E VERY TIME I read Langston Hughes I am amazed all over again by his genuine gifts-and depressed that he has done so little with them. A real discussion of his work de mands more space than I have here, but this book contains a great deal which a more disciplined poet would have thrown into the waste-basket (almost all of the last section, for example). There arc the poems which almost succeed but which do not succeed, poems which take refuge, finally, in a fake sim plicity in order to avoid the very difficult simplicity of the experience! And one sometimes has the impression, as in a poem like "Third Dcgrcc"-which is about the beating up of a ::\lcgro boy in a police station-that Hughes has had to hold the experience outside him in order to be able to write at all. And certainly this is understandable.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  As a result, tragically but predictably, Billy forfeited his chance for a good relationship with a decent man who tried to befriend him. His stepfather essentially remained “the man my mom married, my mom’s husband but nothing for me.” For many children and stepfathers, this is a sad lost opportunity. However, given the difficulty of moving into a family midstream, it may represent the best compromise that the family can reach. Certainly it is a very common solution. This kind of relationship was the outcome in a full half of the remarriages in the study. Many stepfathers have little interest in the new wife’s children and heartily wish that the woman had come unencumbered. Others resent living with or caring for another man’s offspring. It is by no means a given that a man who wants to marry a woman can be expected to embrace her children as well. And in fact, some women recognizing this potential problem sent their children to live with their father when they remarried whether or not the father had indicated that he was eager or able to accept them. There are tensions in remarriage that we did not anticipate. The ChildFROM THE CHILD’S point of view, a stepfather (or live-in lover) is not immediately welcome. After all, he’s a mysterious masked stranger who sweeps onstage in the middle of the second act to seize a commanding position. But the first act of the play, which was the child’s life before the stranger galloped in, had a full cast of characters, including a mother and father and children in well-defined roles. Why is the stranger here? Is he good or bad news for my sibs and me? Will he take my dad’s place at the head of the table and in my mom’s bed? Will he try to usurp my dad’s place with me? Will he take my mom away from me? Most children don’t want the play changed. They certainly don’t want new leading actors. They like the simplicity of the first act. The powerful forces swirling around them make children feel fragmented, not whole. This is a major reason why children hold on to the hope that their parents will reconcile. Mom and Dad together represent the inner sense of wholeness that the child is losing because of divorce. But the stepfather’s arrival is a powerful statement that the divorce is here to stay. This is unwelcome news for the many children who in their heart of hearts cling to the hope that Dad will walk in the door and resume his place at the head of the table.