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.

Page 85 of 189 · 20 per page

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  I saw myself riding shotgun beside Skipper in this fast, beautiful red car, the two of us having adventures along the way and helping people out of situations too tough for them to handle by themselves. They would want us to stay afterward but we would always move on, leaving them to stare at our dust as we receded down the highway. It seemed to me that Mexico, a barren place with unseen trumpet players wandering in the background, was a long way off, and that we would be a long time gone. I told Arthur I was going. I also told a few other kids, and some of the people on my paper route. As we were eating dinner one night Dwight said, “Say there, mister, what’s this I hear about you going to Mexico?” He was looking at me. Pearl said, “If he gets to go, I get to go too.” My mother laughed. “Mexico! Who said anything about Mexico?” “He did,” Dwight told her. “Jack, is that true?” my mother asked. “Did you tell someone you were going to Mexico?” “Skipper said I could,” I told her. “Huh?” Skipper said. “I said what?” I looked at him and remembered for the first time in days that he hadn’t actually said I could go along. “You said you’d think about it,” I told him. “No kidding? I said that?” I nodded. “Solly, Cholly,” he said. “No can do.” He must have seen the effect these words had on me, because he went on to explain that his friend Ray was planning to go along. They’d be sleeping in the car to save money and that meant there was only room for the two of them. “It’s a moot point,” Dwight said. It’s a moot point was one of his favorite weighty utterances, that and It’s academic . “Some other time,” Skipper said. Pearl asked him to get her a sombrero. “I want castanets,” Norma said. She wiggled her shoulders and sang “La Cucaracha” until Dwight told her to pipe down. SKIPPER AND I shared the smallest room in the house. We used the same desk, the same dresser, the same closet. A space of five or six feet separated our beds. But I never felt cramped in there until Skipper left for Mexico. Because he took up so much room when he was home, I could not forget that he was gone, and that led me to think about him and his friend Ray out on the road, free as birds. And those thoughts made me feel cheated and confined. I believed that Skipper should have taken me instead of Ray. I had asked first and, after all, I was his brother. This meant something to me but I saw that it meant nothing to him.

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  She instead tried to alleviate any concerns by minimizing her level of involvement with the group. By the end of the first day, we had covered quite a bit of ground, including research about cults in general and particularly about the larger organization, to which her group was historically linked. We also discussed in some depth the doomsday teachings of the leader of her group and noted that they were similar to groups called “doomsday cults.” There were several contradictions in the group leader’s teachings that didn’t seem to make any sense. By the end of our day of discussion, the wife tacitly acknowledged that these contradictions existed and expressed some concern about them. We agreed to meet the following morning to begin our discussion again. The second day, when the husband picked me up at my hotel, he said his parents would not be participating any further. He explained that they felt awkward and uncomfortable and had decided to leave. This was a disappointment that certainly compromised the effectiveness of the continuing intervention effort. And this is why it’s so important to make sure anyone agreeing to participate in an intervention is completely supportive and will see it through to the conclusion. Unfortunately the husband’s parents decided to do otherwise. When we arrived at the house, his wife seemed greatly changed. She was curt and argumentative rather than the courteous, open person I had met the previous day. We picked up the discussion about the leader’s teachings and how at times they seemed confusing and contradictory. The wife’s response now appeared almost rehearsed. When I pressed the wife about what source of information she relied on to form her opinions, she admitted that she had studied the group’s website overnight. The husband had failed to disconnect the Internet access, as we had agreed. When I tried to unwind the group’s explanation of seemingly contradictory teachings for the purpose of closer examination, the wife became angry. Rather than engage in an analysis of the material posted at the group website, the wife insisted that we end our conversation and soon left the room. Now only the husband was there to persuade his wife to resume the dialogue. He couldn’t convince her to continue. The intervention ended in failure. In my opinion this intervention effort primarily failed for two reasons. First, the family couldn’t pull together consistently and support the effort all the way through. Having the right people involved when undertaking an intervention is vitally important. If someone is ambivalent about the effort, he or she shouldn’t become involved. Instead, hopefully others can be found who can be more supportive and consistently provide a better basis for success. In addition, despite my warnings, the husband decided not to disconnect Internet access at the house.

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  If indeed theology reflects the cultural and philosophical milieu of a people, then we should not be surprised when a highly individualistic society imposes this characteristic on the biblical texts and reduces the human-divine relationship to a personal one. An example of this can be noted in the call to conversion made by Billy Graham, perhaps the best-known evangelist of the second half of the twentieth century. Dr. Graham writes, If you are willing to repent for your sins and receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you can do it now. At this moment you can…say this little prayer: O God, I acknowledge that I have sinned against You. I am sorry for my sins. I am willing to turn from my sins. I openly receive and acknowledge Jesus Christ as my Savior. I confess Him as Lord. From this moment on I want to live for Him and serve Him. In Jesus’ name. Amen.2 The first thing that is obvious about this approach is that the relationship is centered on the individual. The individual is the agent of all the verbs used in the above-quoted invitation to become born again. The Deity is either the object of the verb or a possessive pronoun, to be possessed by the individual. Our own language betrays the way in which we place ourselves as the principal actor in the encounter between the individual and the divine. Also to be noted is that the emphasis is on the act of God in Jesus Christ as Savior. No attention is given to Jesus’ human actions toward those who were marginalized during his time. Hence no connection is made concerning the obligation of converts toward those who are oppressed today. Those privileged by our social structures are free to continue their quest for power and riches without having to fear for their salvation, regardless of how it affects those who are marginalized. This is not to minimize or negate the importance of a conversion experience for Christians who claim to have a relationship with Jesus Christ. The danger exists when salvation is reduced solely to an act where the individual makes the choice of accepting Jesus, as if the divine needs our acceptance or recognition to be a force in the lives of humans. One of the religious marks of a hyperindividualistic society is an emphasis on a personal relationship with God. At times, this evangelistic approach ignores the relationship between praxis and faith. Being a Christian is reduced to an issue of belief. Solely to believe in Jesus is sufficient for salvation. While belief is important, if not crucial, it alone is inadequate. This is made clear within the biblical text, as illustrated in the encounter Jesus had with three separate individuals seeking salvation.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  And for Christ’s sake get these bottles out of here.” He sat next to my mother on the couch and smiled steadily at me while Judd stuck his fingers into the bottles and carried them clinking away. Judd returned with a dish of nuts and left with the rest of the bottles. “There you go, Jack. Dig in! Dig in!” He watched me eat a few handfuls, nodding to himself as if I were acting in accordance with some prediction he had made. “You’re an athlete,” he said. “It’s written all over you. The eyes, the build. What do you play, Jack, what’s your game?” “Baseball,” I said. This was somewhere in the neighborhood of truth. In Florida I’d played nearly every day, and gotten good at it. But I hadn’t played much since. I wasn’t an athlete and I didn’t look like one, but I was glad he thought so. “Baseball!” he cried. “Judd, what did I tell you?” Judd had taken a chair on the other side of the room, apart from the rest of us. He raised his eyebrows and shook his head at the other man’s perspicacity. My mother laughed and said something teasing. She called the man Gil. “Wait a minute!” he said. “You think I’m just shooting the bull? Judd, what did I say about Jack here? What did I say he played?” Judd crossed his dark legs. “Baseball,” he said. “All right,” Gil said. “All right, I hope we’ve got that straightened out. Jack. Back to you. What other activities do you enjoy?” “I like to ride bikes,” I said, “but I don’t have one.” I saw the good humor leave my mother’s face, just as I knew it would. She looked at me coldly and I looked coldly back at her. The subject of bicycles turned us into enemies. Our problem was that I wanted a bike and she didn’t have enough money to buy me one. She had no money at all. She had explained this to me many times. I understood perfectly, but not having a bike seemed too hard a thing to bear in silence. Gil mugged disbelief. He looked from me to my mother and back to me. “No bike? A boy with no bike?” “We’ll discuss this later,” my mother told me. “I just said—” “I know what you said.” She frowned and looked away. “Hold on!” Gil said. “Just hold on. Now what’s the story here, Mom? Are you seriously telling me that this boy does not have a bicycle?” My mother said, “He’s going to have to wait a little longer, that’s all.” “Boys can’t wait for bikes, Rosemary. Boys need bikes now!” My mother shrugged and smiled tightly, as she usually did when she was cornered. “I don’t have the money,” she said quietly. The word money left a heavy silence in its wake. Then Gil said, “Judd, let’s have another round.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  Find, in any terrain, exactly those plants that would nourish me and toss them up in a mouthwatering salad. And I actually could have done some of those things. The details began to fade as soon as I got the badges, but I had learned a rough kind of competence and ease in the woods. It was a gift of priceless worth. But I did not guess its value then. Then I was mainly interested in covering myself with enough insignia to look sharp, which, to my way of thinking, I did. The swimming meet was held in the morning. I got bumped after the first couple of heats. This surprised me, though it shouldn’t have—I always got bumped. But I started every meet believing that I was going to win, and ended it believing that I should have won, that I was the best swimmer there. After I got bumped I spent a long time in the shower, feeling low, then took a tour of the other events. The big sensation at this year’s Gathering was the close-order drill competition. It was dominated by a troop from Ballard led by a Scoutmaster who wore a black garrison cap with silver piping and a military-looking jacket with battle ribbons. It was not a uniform I had ever seen before, or would ever see again. His troop wore their pant legs tucked into the tops of gleaming black boots. They also sported black garrison caps. Their boots clapped resoundingly as the troop marched back and forth across the asphalt yard behind the school. The Scoutmaster shouted commands in a harsh voice, watching his troop with a fierce, imperious expression. Our troop didn’t have a drill team and neither did most of the rest. There were only five or six other teams, and each of these was clearly outclassed by the Ballard troop. They were all business, these Ballard boys—crisp, erect, poker-faced, responsive to nothing but their Scoutmaster’s voice. They drew an enormous crowd. I saw Dwight across the yard, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully. “What a bunch of dildos,” Arthur said. I ignored him. They lost the competition, disqualified for wearing nonregulation caps and boots. The crowd booed the judges; the Ballard troop had won, hands down. Their Scoutmaster went into a rage. He cussed at the judges and threw his cap on the ground, and when the judges didn’t yield he marched his team off the yard and refused to form them up again for the awards ceremony. I saw three boys from the Ballard troop in the cafeteria later on. They looked tough in their uniforms. I joined them at their table and told them how badly I thought they’d been screwed, and they agreed, and we got to talking. Over many such Gatherings and Councils I had developed a bluff conventioneer’s talent for working the floor and “establishing ties” with boys from other troops.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  I was just a couple of points away from winning the whole top shelf when Smoke pushed the wallet back to me. “You’re a little short, Jackson.” It was empty. I knew the Ballard boys didn’t have any money. Arthur was watching me from the small crowd that had gathered around the booth, but I knew he didn’t have any money either. I asked Smoke if I could have one last deal. “Sorry, Jack. No pay, no play.” “Just one? Please?” His eyes went past me. He smiled at the the kids watching. “You saw it happen right here,” he said. “Man almost walked off with the store. You there, Carrot-top—that’s right, you—don’t be shy, come on up, first game’s on the house. Used to be a Scout myself.” “No free games!” Rusty said. “The boss’ll kill us.” “Please, Smoke,” I said. Still smiling, he shuffled the disks. He didn’t exactly ignore me; I wasn’t even there. “Here,” Rusty said, and shoved something at me. “Take a ride or something.” It was a stuffed animal, a big pink pig with black trotters and a ring in its nose. I carried it up the midway, walking with the Ballard boys but unable to talk for the thickness in my throat. Sounds reached me from a distance. I floated without consciousness of movement. We walked here and there. At some point the Ballard boys climbed on a ride together and I lost them. I never even got their addresses. AFTER THE PARK closed I stood by the gate with some other Scouts from my troop. Except for me, they had driven down to Seattle that morning in groups of five and six with parents who had relatives they could visit until it was time to drive home. Dwight and I had come down by ourselves. While we waited to get picked up I tried to persuade Arthur to drive back with me and Dwight. I knew that Dwight would be drunk, and I didn’t want to be alone with him. But Arthur wouldn’t talk to me. As I spoke he looked away. I begged him shamelessly and at last he said, “Why should I?” I said, “I’d do it for you.” “Hah,” he said. But it was true, and he knew it. After a while he said, “Outstanding performance, Wolff. Truly outstanding.” We were among the last to go. When I saw the car coming I held the pig out to Arthur. I had not been able to think of an explanation for it. “Here,” I said. “You can have it.” “What do I want that thing for?” “Come on, take it. Please.” He said, “Well, we’re being very polite tonight, aren’t we?” But he took it. And that was what Dwight stared at as we walked toward him through the blaze of the headlights, this glowing pink pig carried by the sissy Arthur Gayle.

• From Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (2022)

  Wilkinson maintained his belief that continuing to pour money into Flow was justified because of the quality of Flow’s product. “We started burning money on ads and hiring sales people just to keep a toe hold, but mostly we focused on making the product better than theirs. Our one remaining advantage.” As they continued to add features to the product, more bugs started to appear (a well-known issue in software development). Despite the regular cash infusions, the engineering and design team was understaffed and overworked. They found themselves unable to keep up with the endless stream of bug reports from customers. Month-over-month growth slowed from 20% to 5%. In September 2015, Asana launched a new version, which didn’t remotely resemble the product Wilkinson had viewed so negatively in its original form. It now had all the features Flow had and all those he wished Flow had. It worked on more platforms and, in contrast to Flow, was not plagued by bugs. By this time, Flow’s burn rate was $150,000 per month. Wilkinson’s total investment was more than $5 million, with no end in sight. The world was telling him that in this case, a scrappy, bootstrapped company trying to fight a well-funded, venture-backed company was a losing battle. Yet, he still didn’t shut it down, continuing on for seven more years, until he had eventually put $11 million into the company. During this period, he saw revenue growth slow and then stop, while Asana (along with other competitors in the space) kept making their product better. In the midst of all this, he fielded an offer to acquire Flow for $6 million. He refused, because he had $11 million into it and he didn’t want to have to realize the sure loss of $5 million. Classic sunk cost fallacy. Finally, after twelve years and, as Wilkinson put it, “$10MM+ lit on fire,” he saw what had long been clear to everyone else. Asana was better by every measure: marketing, product, features, support, integrations. Flow downsized to a shadow of its former self, breaking even (with little growth) on less than a third of its former annual recurring revenue. More significantly, Andrew Wilkinson let go of his aspirations for Flow. As of 2021, it was still technically operating but he had realized that he would never make his investment back and Flow would never own a large chunk of the productivity-tool market.

• From The History of World Literature (2007)

  287 Fletcher, Beryl S. and John Fletcher. A Student’ s Guide to the Plays of Samuel Beckett. 2nd ed. Boston: Faber and Faber, 1985. These are good introductions to the plays, featuring contextual information as well as annotations and commentary. Fowler, Doreen and Ann J. Abadie, eds. Faulkner and the Craft of Fiction: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha County. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1989. A collection of papers delivered at a Faulkner conference; the emphasis is on themes, narrative strategies, and structures in a number of different Faulkner works. Hart, Clive, ed. James Joyce’ s Dubliners: Critical Essays. New York: Viking, 1969. A collection of essays by various hands from various perspectives on different aspects of the stories. Hassumani, Sabrina. Salman Rushdie: A Postmodern Reading of His Major Works. Madison, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002. As its title suggests, this book considers Rushdie as a Postmodernist writer. Innes, C. L. and Bernth Lindfors, eds. Critical Perspectives on Chinua Achebe. Washington, D. C.: Three Continents Press, 1978. This is a collection of essays on various aspects of Achebe’s work, including the one by Gareth Grif¿ ths referred to in Lecture 45 and a very good one by A. G. Stock on the ways in which Achebe uses the Yeats poem of the title in Things Fall Apart. Jackson, John Wyse and Bernard McGinley, eds. James Joyce’ s Dubliners: An Illustrated Edition with Annotations. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. Each story is generously documented with notes and photographs which give a detailed sense of the Dublin in which it is set and suggest the ways in which many of the items function symbolically. Each story is followed by a short interpretive essay. Kennedy, Andrew K. Samuel Beckett. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. This book features both a broad look at Beckett’s career as well as chapters on each major play and novel.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  Then there were the deadbeats. They either told me sob stories about lost checks and doctor bills or turned off the lights and the TV when they heard me coming, then whispered and peered out the blinds until I gave up and left. In the winter my shoes were always wet and my head stuffed up, my nose chapped and red. I was bored crazy. One of my ways of distracting myself was to tally up over and over again, to the last penny, the money I had made. I said, “What happened to it?” My mother shrugged and said, “Beats me.” She was ready for a change of subject. Her tolerance was good for most things, but she had no time for crybabies. Whining turned her to ice. I didn’t stop. “That was my money,” I said. “I know,” she said. “He stole it.” “He probably meant to pay you back. I don’t know. It’s gone. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about that. I said I’d pay the school bills.” I pulled a face. “It’s probably a little my fault too.” She said she should have known better than to let Dwight handle the money, she should have insisted on a joint account. But it was a point of pride with him to deal with the finances and she hadn’t wanted to get him all worked up over it. She’d wanted all of us to get along. We finished our Cokes and walked up the street to the car, my mother moving with the buoyancy of someone who has just dropped a burden. When she was worried she wore a pale, tight-lipped mask. Lately it had started to become her own face. Now the mask was gone. She looked young and pretty. The day was warm, the air hazy with cement dust. Logging trucks banged past us through the town, grinding gears and spewing black exhaust. As we walked we made plans. Considered different possibilities. We were ourselves again—restless, scheming, poised for flight. CHUCK CONGRATULATED ME when I told him about the scholarship, but I was careful not to let my happiness show too much. His day of reckoning was at hand and he might well have wondered why we should have drawn such different cards. This question would have crossed my mind if I had been in his place. But he probably thought nothing of the kind. He didn’t want what I wanted, and he was a lot more interested in what was going to become of himself than in what was going to become of me. Then the sheriff paid his last visit. He hadn’t dropped by in over a week, and he had left that night in an angry mood, fed up with Chuck’s bullheadedness. He’d given Chuck an ultimatum: Get with the program or else. If Chuck did not call him with the answer he wanted by such and such a day, he was going to let justice take its course.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  At the end of the opera, when the scattered bodies had risen for their applause, R. seemed less moved than bemused, looking at me as if to say is that all? The ovations were long and generous, especially for Lakmé, who left the stage half-interred by flowers. Then, before we could rise, an announcement was made that in twenty minutes the spektakul zvuk i svetlina, the sound and light show over Tsarevets, would begin. This was famous enough that R. had heard of it, and he wanted to go, even though it was cold now, the chill had deepened through the performance, and we were both tired after the day. I had been disappointed by the light show the year before, and I wasn’t excited at the thought of sitting through it again; but it was short, fifteen minutes or so, and I resigned myself to it as we began to move with the crowd down the hill. There weren’t any lights to guide us, except for the beams of one or two flashlights some members of the audience had known to bring. There was stumbling and cursing, but also a kind of good cheer, people were laughing and chatting, and in the dark I slipped my arm through R.’s, pressing him against me. I knew he had been disappointed by the opera, which hadn’t brought about the closeness between us I had hoped for, and I felt in some obscure way that I had failed. A group of young people nudged us aside as they passed, raucous, singing melodies from the opera and swinging two-liter plastic bottles of beer: music students from the university, who seemed to know their way well enough in the dark.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I had a fucking miserable year, N. said when his turn came, I mean I knew it would be awful but it was fucking miserable. I told you, Z. said, I knew you weren’t cut out to be a lawyer, and the girl next to him said That’s true, and everyone at the table loudly agreed, making N. raise his hands in surrender. Hey, he said, I wasn’t the one who wanted it, but even Gospodinut—and here he waved one of his hands toward me—couldn’t convince my mother it was a terrible idea. It was true that I had tried, at the beginning of N.’s senior year, when his mother came in for her quarterly conference. She never missed these meetings, even though it meant a two-hour drive from her home in Plovdiv, losing half a day of work. She was a serious woman, invariably dressed in a pants suit, dark navy or gray, her black hair cut in a severe line just above her shoulders. She was gracious, too, and she had thanked me once for my influence, as she put it; You are the only teacher he works hard for, she said, this is the only class he likes. He isn’t a stupid boy, she said, as she always did when we discussed his poor grades, his late or missing assignments, but oh, he is so lazy. But this time I demurred, It isn’t exactly that he’s lazy, I said. I saw her face tighten slightly with the wariness I often saw in parents when I began to speak about their children, a knitting of the brow that might have meant a special kind of attention but was usually the opposite, was usually their attention shutting down. When N. is interested he will work, I said, if it’s something he likes—and here she turned her head to the side, she made a thick sound with her tongue in the back of her throat. Please, N.’s mother said, turning back to me, her tone at once dismissive and imploring, please, if he likes it? What will he do when he has a job, he can’t only work when he wants to. I nodded and started to speak but she went on, Please, she said, I know what you will say, N. has told me many times, you tell them they should do what they love, it’s beautiful what you tell them. I see why they like you so much, she said, with a tight, conciliatory smile.

• From Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (2022)

  You might assume that, after finally recognizing that addressing the two bottlenecks will be uncertain and, possibly, both intractable and prohibitively expensive, the Authority would figure out the details of solving those challenges before doing any additional building. After all, if you can’t figure out how to connect LA to San Francisco at a cost in the realm of what taxpayers are willing to bear, what’s the point of building any other track? Yet, in 2019, instead of seizing what seemed like, from the perspective of an outsider looking in, the perfect moment to shut the whole thing down, Governor Gavin Newsom approved a plan to complete a section of track connecting Bakersfield to Merced in the north, completely unconnected with the two engineering bottlenecks. Merced is 110 miles from San Francisco, on the wrong side of the Pacheco Pass. And Bakersfield is 100 miles from LA, on the wrong side of the Tehachapi Mountains. Once they complete that track, the plan is to turn their attention to construction connecting San Francisco and Silicon Valley, two areas already pretty well connected by roadways. Even worse than the redundancy of building that section of the route, both areas sit to the north of the Pacheco Pass. So, in a move that defies common sense, the plan is to keep building without addressing the issues that will eventually be responsible for at least 80% of the cost of the bullet train. Because it is cheaper and easier, they are going to build a very fast train that won’t actually go from anywhere or to anywhere, at least not anywhere people reasonably expected from the promise at the outset of the project in 2008. This approach makes about the same amount of sense as executing a plan to put condos on the moon by building the condos on Earth first and waiting until they are built to figure out the whole “How do we get them on the moon?” part. Consequently, the current projections of initiating service in 2029 or completing the line in 2033 seem wildly optimistic and, essentially, meaningless. That also applies to any value placed on the projections of the cost of the bullet train itself. As of June 2021, the Authority had spent more than $8.5 billion in planning and building high-speed rail infrastructure. And the estimated cost to complete the system has already exploded from $33 billion to as much as $105 billion.

• From The History of World Literature (2007)

  124 Lecture 29: Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and that seems to be true in Emma’s case. The book in fact can be understood as a laboratory experiment which asks what happens if this particular woman is placed in these particular circumstances. The result, while not an illustration of fate as something that works from outside, is as inevitable as if it were, and it illustrates the power of character and environment—their inexorability—for the Realists. Madame Bovary is made up of a series of brilliantly depicted scenes, each of them done in the precise and abundant detail be ¿ tting a Realist writer, for whom environment is partly responsible for what happens to a protagonist. There are many stunningly good scenes in the novel: Emma’s wedding, an evening at a ball in the neighborhood, the agricultural fair, Emma’s ¿ rst ride in the forest with Rodolphe, the scene where she ¿ rst experiences the excitement of being an adulteress, and many others. One scene happens when Emma meets Léon, a former À ame, at an opera in Rouen. The description of the events of the next day, when Léon and Emma meet at Rouen Cathedral and then take a mad cab ride back and forth across the city, is brilliantly done; the author does not need to tell us what happened, since the details of the scene make that perfectly clear. Flaubert manages to turn many of the precise details of setting and environment into symbols. For example, at one point in the novel, Emma, already bored with her marriage, throws her dried-up wedding bouquet into the ¿ re piece by piece, and watches the pieces, like black butter À ies, sail up the chimney. At another point, the sound of the stable boy’s wooden leg as he walks by becomes a symbol of Charles’s medical incompetence, since it was his bungled effort to correct the boy’s clubfoot that led to gangrene and the necessity for amputation. In [Emma’s] world full of complacent and smug … people whose only goals are respectability and acquisition, she’s the only one who thinks … there must be a place for … being really alive.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I drew away from him after a moment. Let’s go, I said, taking his hand and pulling him toward the stairs; I wanted to escape the house and the weight of what filled it. When we climbed from the basement we found the woman waiting for us in the main room, standing hopefully at the glass table that served for a counter. There was a slight wilting in her frame when she saw we were empty-handed, something like a wave receding, though her smile never faltered as she asked whether we had enjoyed what we had seen. Oh yes, I said, very much, so many wonderful things, as if I were trying to make amends for the thoughts I had just had. It felt wrong to leave so quickly, having stayed so long, and I asked if she had a card, saying we would love to see the studio they kept in Sofia. She didn’t, she said, but she took a sheet of paper from a drawer, on which she wrote in beautiful Cyrillic an address we promised to visit. She kept smiling as she handed this to me, but I could see she didn’t believe what I had said; her gaze had gone a little unfocused, she was already staring past us at the empty street.

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  Abraham refused because of the great gulf separating heaven from hell. The rich man then asked to have Lazarus go back to his family to warn them of the danger of their riches. This too was denied, for, as Abraham stated, “if they were not willing to hear Moses and the prophets, even if one from the dead should rise, they will not be persuaded.” Nowhere in the text does it tell us that the rich man's wealth was accumulated unjustly or that he was directly oppressing Lazarus. His judgment and condemnation to hell were based solely on the fact that he was rich and failed to share his resources with those, like Lazarus, who lacked the basics for survival. In this case, God's judgment was not based on anything the rich man did or any belief system he confessed; rather, it was based on what he failed to do. He failed to use his resources so that others could also enjoy an abundant life. Mary's Magnificat, found in Luke, is fulfilled: “[God] pulled down potentates from their thrones and exalted the humble. God filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty” (1:52–53). Why? As Proverbs states, “The one oppressing the poor curses their Creator, but the one honoring God has mercy on the needy” (14:31). One's relationship with the poor is linked to one's relationship with God, a concept that will be explored in greater detail in chapter 6 , above. The Bible does not call for the giving of our spare change to the poor; rather, it calls for a radical restructuring of our economic structures, which privilege 5 percent of the world's population with the greatest wealth and riches ever known to humanity while the vast majority of the world struggles for its daily bread. Vast economic differences in the distribution of wealth create structural injustice, where the wealthy continue to enrich themselves and the poor sink into greater want. Present extremes in wealth and poverty contradict the very nature of the Year of Jubilee as explained in Leviticus 25 and Deuteronomy 15. Simply stated, the Bible required that all lands be returned to their original owners every fifty years and all debts be forgiven every seven years. Under such a system, the rich never became exceedingly rich nor the poor exceedingly poor. Every fifty years, the Bible required a redistribution of resources to prevent the hoarding of goods. In his 1776 book The Wealth of Nations , which has been foundational for the present U.S. economic system, Adam Smith concludes by exhorting the pursuit of economic self-interest, believing that an “invisible hand” will insure economic benefits for all of society within the context of unfettered supply and demand. Smith was confident that the enlightened self-interest of the capitalist would never lead the market economy to abuses like monopolies. Hence, no government had the right to interfere in the natural laws of supply and demand that determined the prices of goods, including wages.

• From Post Office (1971)

  He had trouble with the employment agencies. And there was a guy he met in a bar—he seemed like a very learned type-but his friend kept borrowing money from him which he never paid back. It was honest writing. Maybe I have misjudged this man, I thought. I was hoping for him as I read. Then the novel fell apart. For some reason the moment he started writing about the post office, the thing lost reality. The novel got worse and worse. It ended up with him being at the opera. It was intermission. He had left his seat in order to get away from the coarse and stupid crowd. Well, I was with him there. Then, rounding a pillar, it happened. It happened very quickly. He crashed into this cultured, dainty, beautiful thing. Almost knocked her down. The dialogue went like this: “Oh, I’m so sorry!” “It’s quite all right …” “I didn’t mean to … you know … I’m sorry …!” “Oh, I assure you, it’s all right!” “But I mean, I didn’t see you … I didn’t mean to …” “It’s all right. It’s quite all right …” The dialogue about the bumping went on for a page and a half. The poor boy was truly mad. It turned out this broad, although she’s wandering around among the pillars alone, well, she’s really married to this doctor, but the doc didn’t comprehend opera, or for that matter, didn’t even care for such simple things as Ravel’s Bolero . Or even The Three-Cornered Hat Dance by de Falla. I was with the doc there. From the bumping of these two true sensitive souls, something developed. They met at concerts and had a quickie afterwards. (This was implied rather than stated, for both of them were too delicate to simply fuck.) Well, it ended. The poor beautiful creature loved her husband and she loved the hero (Janko). She didn’t know what to do, so, of course, she committed suicide. She left both the doc and Janko standing in their bathrooms alone. I told the kid, “It starts well. But you’ll have to take out that bumping-around-the-pillar dialogue. It’s very bad …” “NO! EVERYTHING STAYS!” The months went by and the novel kept coming back. “JESUS CHRIST!” he said, “I CAN’T GO TO NEW YORK AND SHAKE THE HANDS OF THE PUBLISHERS!” “Look, kid, why don’t you quit this job? Go to a small room and write. Work it out.” “A GUY LIKE YOU CAN DO THAT,” he said, “BECAUSE YOU LOOK LIKE A WINO. PEOPLE WILL HIRE YOU BECAUSE THEY FIGURE YOU CAN’T GET A JOB ANYWHERE ELSE AND YOU’LL STAY.

• From Post Office (1971)

  And Matthew would stand at his case, erect and clean, scrubbed and well-slept, shoes gleaming victoriously, and he would fan those letters into the case with joy. “You’re a real carrier, Matthew!” “Thank you, Mr. Jonstone!” One 5 a.m. I walked in and sat down to wait behind The Stone. He looked a bit slumped under that red shirt. Moto was next to me. He told me: “They picked up Matthew yesterday.” “Picked him up?” “Yeah, for stealing from the mails. He’d been opening letters for the Nekalayla Temple and taking money out. After 15 years on the job.” “How’d they get him, how’d they find out?” “The old ladies. The old ladies had been sending in letters to Nekalayla filled with money and they weren’t getting any thank-you notes or response. Nekalayla told the P.O. and the P.O. put the Eye on Matthew. They found him opening letters down at the soak-box, taking money out.” “No shit?” “No shit. They caught him in cold daylight.” I leaned back. Nekalayla had built this large temple and painted it a sickening green, I guess it reminded him of money, and he had an office staff of 30 or 40 people who did nothing but open envelopes, take out checks and money, record the amount, the sender, date received and so on. Others were busy mailing out books and pamphlets written by Nekalayla, and his photo was on the wall, a large one of N. in priestly robes and beard, and a painting of N., very large too, looked over the office, watching. Nekalayla claimed he had once been walking through the desert when he met Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ told him everything. They sat on a rock together and J.C. laid it on him. Now he was passing the secrets on to those who could afford it. He also held a service every Sunday. His help, who were also his followers, rang in and out on timeclocks. Imagine Matthew Battles trying to outwit Nekalayla who had met Christ in the desert! “Has anybody said anything to The Stone?” I asked. “Are you kidding?” We sat an hour or so. A sub was assigned to Matthew’s case. The other subs were given other jobs. I sat alone behind The Stone. Then I got up and walked to his desk. “Mr. Jonstone?” “Yes, Chinaski?” “Where’s Matthew today? Sick?” The Stone’s head dropped. He looked at the paper in his hand and pretended to continue reading it. I walked back and sat down. At 7 a.m. The Stone turned: “There’s nothing for you today, Chinaski.” I stood up and walked to the doorway. I stood in the doorway. “Good morning, Mr. Jonstone. Have a good day.” He didn’t answer. I walked down to the liquor store and bought a half pint of Grand Dad for my breakfast. 13The voices of the people were the same, no matter where you carried the mail you heard the same things over and over again.

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  For example, the dominant culture refers to the black cop, the Hispanic teacher, or the Asian mechanic. Seldom does it refer to the white cop, the white teacher, or the white mechanic, mostly because the norm of whiteness makes everyone white unless otherwise stated. Yet, when children reach adulthood, they must begin to deal with the contradictory racial statements, emotions, and mental states that arise from reconciling the need to belong to their group with how they are taught to deal with those of other groups.4 The societal structures that cause oppression are not reducible to a formula where only those who are marginalized are the victims. Although it is impossible to equate the suffering of those who are disenfranchised with those who are privileged, it is important to note that those at the center of society are also victims of these structures. They too are indoctrinated to believe they deserve, or earn, or have a right to power and privilege. They are trapped into living up to the false ideal of superiority and so require the same liberation yearned for by the disenfranchised. Even those who are not economically privileged are taught to dream upward, aspiring to become wealthy and to associate with the society's elite, even as they blame downward, accusing those who are marginalized of stealing their jobs and depressing wages, thus preventing them from achieving their rightful place in society. This is a primary reason programs designed to rectify societal structures, like affirmative action, face such vehement resistance. Cheap Forgiveness In the above dialogue between husband and wife, the wife attempted to discuss what was bothering her. No doubt, the husband probably did not enjoy such encounters, hearing how he caused her pain. Most who find themselves in similar situations desire to be forgiven so as to avoid the unpleasantry of a matrimonial conflict. Whatever insincere apology that can be mustered is gladly given to pacify her. Regardless of how many apologies offered, the wife in the above dialogue refused to offer a forgiveness that fell short of dealing with the recurring learned behavior that needed alteration. She was determined instead to seek reconciliation so that these problems could indeed be put behind them, allowing them the opportunity to renew their relationship and grow together. Likewise, those who call themselves Christians and desire to become one body in Christ must seek reconciliation rather than cheap forgiveness. At times forgiveness must be withheld before reconciliation can occur. In Matthew 5:23–24, Jesus instructs the faithful to move beyond religiosity by reconciling with those who hold grievances: “If, then, you offer your gift on the altar, and there remember that your companion has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go. First be reconciled to your companion, and then come offer your gift.” The emphasis is not on whether the religious person remembers committing an offense but, rather, on whether the offended party had a complaint against the worshiper.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  Tents had been set up to sell wine and refreshments, and genteel white folding chairs were arrayed on wooden platforms in front of the stage, where men in costumes, doubling as stagehands, were arranging scenery and props. A few potted plants and a painted backdrop sketched an idea of a forest, while complicated wooden scaffolding scaled the medieval wall, at the top of which a large statue of Ganesh reached out his many arms. I tried to take it in while R. flipped through the program: the ruins, the socialist-era trucks, the European refinement of the audience, the nineteenth-century sets, the ancient god serenely gazing; it was like a palimpsest with no original text, just endless layers peeling away, and I felt a quick shudder of vertigo, as though the ground might swing open beneath me. I was surprised by how large an audience there was for a summer opera in a little town, and for an opera not quite in the standard repertoire. R. didn’t know anything about it, of course, and as we waited for the performance to start, listening to the clatterings of the invisible orchestra, the occasional brass instrument clearing its throat, I gave him a sketch of the story, how a British soldier falls in love with a young priestess, who betrays her vows and then, when she’s betrayed in turn, kills herself in a sacred grove. Well, that sounds awful, R. said. It’s really not the best choice for a first opera, I said, wanting to lower his expectations, feeling protective of the experience I had been so eager to share. But I loved it when I was a kid, I said, and it has some beautiful music; though I worried that even the music would be less transporting than I remembered. And I was right, there was something a little embarrassing about it; everything seemed hopelessly dated, the sentimental music and oriental fantasy of a plot, and the first notes of the overture made clear that the performance wouldn’t be very good. Bulgaria had a storied history in opera, it had produced some of the best singers I had listened to in my bedroom as a teenager, my hoarded recordings; but musicians too were fleeing westward, now that they could, leaving behind them anyone whose talents couldn’t buy them a ticket out. It was a cruel thought, I was ashamed of it even as I cringed at the poorly tuned strings and splattered brass, the wooden movements of chorus and dancers. Most of the singers were past whatever prime they had had, though the oldest were the most impressive, I thought, an almost elderly bass and especially a mezzo whose voices, however they wobbled or frayed, had retained some ambered texture of accomplishment.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  At the end of the opera, when the scattered bodies had risen for their applause, R. seemed less moved than bemused, looking at me as if to say is that all? The ovations were long and generous, especially for Lakmé, who left the stage half-interred by flowers. Then, before we could rise, an announcement was made that in twenty minutes the spektakul zvuk i svetlina, the sound and light show over Tsarevets, would begin. This was famous enough that R. had heard of it, and he wanted to go, even though it was cold now, the chill had deepened through the performance, and we were both tired after the day. I had been disappointed by the light show the year before, and I wasn’t excited at the thought of sitting through it again; but it was short, fifteen minutes or so, and I resigned myself to it as we began to move with the crowd down the hill. There weren’t any lights to guide us, except for the beams of one or two flashlights some members of the audience had known to bring. There was stumbling and cursing, but also a kind of good cheer, people were laughing and chatting, and in the dark I slipped my arm through R.’s, pressing him against me. I knew he had been disappointed by the opera, which hadn’t brought about the closeness between us I had hoped for, and I felt in some obscure way that I had failed. A group of young people nudged us aside as they passed, raucous, singing melodies from the opera and swinging two-liter plastic bottles of beer: music students from the university, who seemed to know their way well enough in the dark.