Disgust

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  But very soon I saw that I was in a dark and dirty place, full of the grease and soot of the cooking where the pots were always boiling and dozens of menials were at work at the chopping of vegetables and the cleaning or plucking of the fowl, and all the other tasks that go to produce the banquets served here. "No sooner was I brought in that they rejoiced to have a little amusement. I was surrounded by the crudest beings I had ever seen. 'But what is this to me,' I thought. 'I obey no one.' "But in moments, I realized these creatures were no more interested in my compliance than they were interested in the compliance of the fowl they slaughtered, or the carrots they scrubbed, or the potatoes they threw in the pot. I was a plaything to them and seldom did they even address me as though I had ears to hear or sense to comprehend what they said about me. "I was at once collared in leather, this collar linked to the cuffs on my wrists, and my wrists to my knees so that I could not rise from my hands-and-knees position. A bit with a bridle was placed in my mouth, and bound so securely to my head that I might be pulled forward by leather straps with little ability to resist, my limbs reluctantly allowing me to follow. "I refused to stir. I was dragged about on the dirty kitchen floor while they howled with laughter. They had their paddles out, and were soon punishing me mercilessly. Nothing was spared, of course, but my buttocks in particular delighted them. And the more I bucked or struggled, the more they found it hilarious. I was no more than a dog to them. And that was precisely how they treated me. But this was only the beginning. I was soon unshackled enough to be thrown over a great barrel. And there I was raped by one and all of the men, the women looking on with laughter. I was sore from this, and so dizzy from the motion of the barrel that I was sick, but this again they thought most amusing. "But when they were done with me, and had to return to their work, they shackled me above the open hogshead that received the garbage. My feet were deposited firmly in the waste of cabbage leaves and carrot tops, onion peels, and chicken feathers that made up the refuse of the day's work and, as they added to it, it rose around me. The stench was terrible and when I writhed and struggled, again they laughed, and thought of other ways to torment me." "O, this is too dreadful," Beauty gasped.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Each spring, thousands of American university students celebrate with wet T-shirt contests, foam parties, and Jell-O wrestling on the beautiful beaches of the I Do Not Understand You Peninsula. But confusion mistaken for knowledge isn’t limited to spring break. We all fall into this trap. (One night, over dinner, a close friend mentioned that her favorite Beatles song is “Hey Dude.”) Despite their years of training, even scientific types slip into thinking they are observing something when in fact they are simply projecting their biases and ignorance. What trips up the scientists is the same cognitive failing we all share: it’s hard to be certain about what we think we know, but don’t really. Having misread the map, we’re sure we know where we are. In the face of evidence to the contrary, most of us tend to go with our gut, but the gut can be an unreliable guide. You Are What You Eat Take food, for example. We all assume that our craving or disgust is due to something about the food itself—as opposed to being an often arbitrary response preprogrammed by our culture. We understand that Australians prefer cricket to baseball, or that the French somehow find Gérard Depardieu sexy, but how hungry would you have to be before you would consider plucking a moth from the night air and popping it, frantic and dusty, into your mouth? Flap, crunch, ooze. You could wash it down with some saliva beer. How does a plate of sheep’s brain sound? Broiled puppy with gravy? May we interest you in pig’s ears or shrimp heads? Perhaps a deep-fried songbird that you chew up, bones, beak, and all? A game of cricket on a field of grass is one thing, but pan-fried crickets over lemongrass? That’s revolting. Or is it? If lamb chops are fine, what makes lamb brains horrible? A pig’s shoulder, haunch, and belly are damn fine eatin’, but the ears, snout, and feet are gross? How is lobster so different from grasshopper? Who distinguishes delectable from disgusting, and what’s their rationale? And what about all the exceptions? Grind up those leftover pig parts, stuff ’em in an intestine, and you’ve got yourself respectable sausages or hot dogs. You may think bacon and eggs just go together, like French fries and ketchup or salt and pepper. But the combination of bacon and eggs for breakfast was dreamed up about a hundred years ago by an advertising agency hired to sell more bacon, and the Dutch eat their fries with mayonnaise, not ketchup.

• From Querelle (1953)

  Querelle did not reply. The smell of the opium packet lying on the bed disgusted him. And there the rod was already, entering. He recalled the Armenian he had strangled in Beirut, his softness, his lizard- or birdlike gentleness. Querelle asked himself whether he should try to please the executioner with caresses. Having no fear of ridicule now, he might as well try out that sweetness the murdered pederast had exuded. "He did call me the fanciest names I ever did hear, that's for sure. One of the softest, he was, too," he thought. But what gestures of affection were appropriate? What caresses? His muscles did not know which way to bend to obtain a curve. Norbert was crushing him. Slowly he penetrated him up to the point where his belly touched Querelle, whom he was holding close, with sudden, fearsome intensity, his hands clasped round the sailor's belly. He was surprised how warm it was inside of Querelle. He pushed in farther, very carefully, the better to savor his pleasure and his strength. Querelle was astonished at suffering so little pain. · QUERELLE "He's not hurting me. Have to admit he knows how to do 't 1 • , \Vhat he felt was a new nature entering into him and establishing itself there, and he was exquisitely aware of his being changed into a catamite. "\Vhat's he going to say to me afterwards? Hope he doesn't want to talk." In a vague way he felt grateful toward Norbert for protecting him, in thus covering him. A sense of some degree of affection for his executioner occurred to him. He turned his head slightly, hoping, after all, and despite his anxiety, that Norbert might kiss him on the mouth; but he couldn't even manage to see his face. The boss had no tender feelings for him whatsoever, nor would it ever have entered his head that a man could kiss another. Silently, his mouth half-open, Norbert was taking care of it, like of any serious and important business. He was holding Querelle with seemingly the same passion -a female animal shows when holding the dead body of her young offspring-the attitude by which we comprehend what love is : consciousness of the division of what previously was one, of what it is to be thus divided, while you yourself are watching yourself. The two men heard nothing but the sound of each other's breathing. Querelle felt like weeping over the skin he had sloughed and abandoned-where? at the foot of the city wall of Brest?-but his eyes, open in one of the deep folds of the velvet bedcover, remained dry. "Here it comes."

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  And she called that servant maid’s room a “semi-studio”! Let’s get out of here at once, I firmly said to myself as I pretended to deliberate over the absurdly, and ominously, low price that my wistful hostess was asking for board and bed. Old-world politeness, however, obliged me to go on with the ordeal. We crossed the landing to the right side of the house (where “I and Lo have our rooms”—Lo being presumably the maid), and the lodger-lover could hardly conceal a shudder when he, a very fastidious male, was granted a preview of the only bathroom, a tiny oblong between the landing and “Lo’s” room, with limp wet things overhanging the dubious tub (the question mark of a hair inside); and there were the expected coils of the rubber snake, and its complement—a pinkish cozy, coyly covering the toilet lid. “I see you are not too favorably impressed,” said the lady letting her hand rest for a moment upon my sleeve: she combined a cool forwardness—the overflow of what I think is called “poise”—with a shyness and sadness that caused her detached way of selecting her words to seem as unnatural as the intonation of a professor of “speech.” “This is not a neat household, I confess,” the doomed dear continued, “but I assure you [she looked at my lips], you will be very comfortable, very comfortable, indeed. Let me show you the garden” (the last more brightly, with a kind of winsome toss of the voice). Reluctantly I followed her downstairs again; then through the kitchen at the end of the hall, on the right side of the house—the side where also the dining room and the parlor were (under “my” room, on the left, there was nothing but a garage). In the kitchen, the Negro maid, a plump youngish woman, said, as she took her large glossy black purse from the knob of the door leading to the back porch: “I’ll go now, Mrs. Haze.” “Yes, Louise,” answered Mrs. Haze with a sigh. “I’ll settle with you Friday.” We passed on to a small pantry and entered the dining room, parallel to the parlor we had already admired. I noticed a white sock on the floor. With a deprecatory grunt, Mrs. Haze stooped without stopping and threw it into a closet next to the pantry. We cursorily inspected a mahogany table with a fruit vase in the middle, containing nothing but the still glistening stone of one plum. I groped for the timetable I had in my pocket and surreptitiously fished it out to look as soon as possible for a train. I was still walking behind Mrs.

• From Querelle (1953)

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

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “The most utterly loathsome and coarse: I can’t tell you. It’s not unhappiness, or low spirits, but much worse. As though everything that was good in me was all hidden away, and nothing was left but the most loathsome. Come, how am I to tell you?” she went on, seeing the puzzled look in her sister’s eyes. “Father began saying something to me just now.... It seems to me he thinks all I want is to be married. Mother takes me to a ball: it seems to me she only takes me to get me married off as soon as may be, and be rid of me. I know it’s not the truth, but I can’t drive away such thoughts. Eligible suitors, as they call them—I can’t bear to see them. It seems to me they’re taking stock of me and summing me up. In old days to go anywhere in a ball dress was a simple joy to me, I admired myself; now I feel ashamed and awkward. And then! The doctor.... Then....” Kitty hesitated; she wanted to say further that ever since this change had taken place in her, Stepan Arkadyevitch had become insufferably repulsive to her, and that she could not see him without the grossest and most hideous conceptions rising before her imagination. “Oh, well, everything presents itself to me, in the coarsest, most loathsome light,” she went on. “That’s my illness. Perhaps it will pass off.” “But you mustn’t think about it.” “I can’t help it. I’m never happy except with the children at your house.” “What a pity you can’t be with me!” “Oh, yes, I’m coming. I’ve had scarlatina, and I’ll persuade mamma to let me.” Kitty insisted on having her way, and went to stay at her sister’s and nursed the children all through the scarlatina, for scarlatina it turned out to be. The two sisters brought all the six children successfully through it, but Kitty was no better in health, and in Lent the Shtcherbatskys went abroad. Chapter 4

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Princess Tverskaya did not get out of her carriage, but her groom, in high boots, a cape, and black hat, darted out at the entrance. “I’m going; good-bye!” said Anna, and kissing her son, she went up to Alexey Alexandrovitch and held out her hand to him. “It was ever so nice of you to come.” Alexey Alexandrovitch kissed her hand. “Well, _au revoir_, then! You’ll come back for some tea; that’s delightful!” she said, and went out, gay and radiant. But as soon as she no longer saw him, she was aware of the spot on her hand that his lips had touched, and she shuddered with repulsion. Chapter 28 When Alexey Alexandrovitch reached the race-course, Anna was already sitting in the pavilion beside Betsy, in that pavilion where all the highest society had gathered. She caught sight of her husband in the distance. Two men, her husband and her lover, were the two centers of her existence, and unaided by her external senses she was aware of their nearness. She was aware of her husband approaching a long way off, and she could not help following him in the surging crowd in the midst of which he was moving. She watched his progress towards the pavilion, saw him now responding condescendingly to an ingratiating bow, now exchanging friendly, nonchalant greetings with his equals, now assiduously trying to catch the eye of some great one of this world, and taking off his big round hat that squeezed the tips of his ears. All these ways of his she knew, and all were hateful to her. “Nothing but ambition, nothing but the desire to get on, that’s all there is in his soul,” she thought; “as for these lofty ideals, love of culture, religion, they are only so many tools for getting on.” From his glances towards the ladies’ pavilion (he was staring straight at her, but did not distinguish his wife in the sea of muslin, ribbons, feathers, parasols and flowers) she saw that he was looking for her, but she purposely avoided noticing him. “Alexey Alexandrovitch!” Princess Betsy called to him; “I’m sure you don’t see your wife: here she is.” He smiled his chilly smile. “There’s so much splendor here that one’s eyes are dazzled,” he said, and he went into the pavilion. He smiled to his wife as a man should smile on meeting his wife after only just parting from her, and greeted the princess and other acquaintances, giving to each what was due—that is to say, jesting with the ladies and dealing out friendly greetings among the men. Below, near the pavilion, was standing an adjutant-general of whom Alexey Alexandrovitch had a high opinion, noted for his intelligence and culture. Alexey Alexandrovitch entered into conversation with him.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  This apparent need to punish female sexual desire as something evil, dangerous, and pathological is not limited to medieval times or remote Mayan villages. Recent estimates by the World Health Organization suggest that more than 100 million girls and women are living with the consequences of genital mutilation. The Force Required to Suppress It A fire is never sated by any amount of logs, nor the ocean by rivers that flow into it; death cannot be sated by all the creatures in the world, nor a fair-eyed woman by any amount of men. THE KAMA SUTRA Before the war on drugs, the war on terror, or the war on cancer, there was the war on female sexual desire. It’s a war that has been raging far longer than any other, and its victims number well into the billions by now. Like the others, it’s a war that can never be won, as the declared enemy is a force of nature. We may as well declare war on the cycles of the moon. There is a pathetic futility animating the centuries-long insistence—against overwhelming evidence to the contrary—that the human female is indifferent to the insistent urgings of libido. Recall the medical authorities in the antebellum South who assured plantation owners that slaves trying to break out of their chains were not human beings deserving of freedom and dignity, but sufferers of Drapetomania, a medical disorder best cured with a good lashing. And who can forget the “well-intentioned” Inquisition that forced Galileo to disown truths as obvious to him as they were offensive to minds calcified by power and doctrine? In this ongoing struggle between what is and what many post-agricultural patriarchal societies insist must be, women who have dared to renounce the credo of the coy female are still spat upon, insulted, divorced, separated from their children, banished, burned as witches, pathologized as hysterics, buried to their necks in desert sand, and stoned to death. They and their children—those “sons and daughters of bitches”—are still sacrificed to the perverse, conflicted gods of ignorance, shame, and fear. If psychiatrist Mary Jane Sherfey was correct when she wrote, “The strength of the drive determines the force required to suppress it” (an observation downright Newtonian in its irrefutable simplicity), then what are we to make of the force brought to bear on the suppression of female libido?11 CHAPTER NINETEENWhen Girls Go WildFemale Copulatory Vocalization Here’s a question we ask the audience every time we give a public presentation: If you’ve ever heard a heterosexual couple having sex (and who hasn’t?), which partner was louder? The answer we get every time, every place—from men, women, straight, gay, American, French, Japanese, and Brazilians—is always the same. Hands down. No question about it. Not even close. We don’t have to tell you because you already know, don’t you? Yes, the “meek,” “demure,” “coy” sex is the source of the high-decibel moaning, groaning, and calling out to the good Lord above, neighbors be damned.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The two girls used to meet several times a day, and every time they met, Kitty’s eyes said: “Who are you? What are you? Are you really the exquisite creature I imagine you to be? But for goodness’ sake don’t suppose,” her eyes added, “that I would force my acquaintance on you, I simply admire you and like you.” “I like you too, and you’re very, very sweet. And I should like you better still, if I had time,” answered the eyes of the unknown girl. Kitty saw indeed, that she was always busy. Either she was taking the children of a Russian family home from the springs, or fetching a shawl for a sick lady, and wrapping her up in it, or trying to interest an irritable invalid, or selecting and buying cakes for tea for someone. Soon after the arrival of the Shtcherbatskys there appeared in the morning crowd at the springs two persons who attracted universal and unfavorable attention. These were a tall man with a stooping figure, and huge hands, in an old coat too short for him, with black, simple, and yet terrible eyes, and a pockmarked, kind-looking woman, very badly and tastelessly dressed. Recognizing these persons as Russians, Kitty had already in her imagination begun constructing a delightful and touching romance about them. But the princess, having ascertained from the visitors’ list that this was Nikolay Levin and Marya Nikolaevna, explained to Kitty what a bad man this Levin was, and all her fancies about these two people vanished. Not so much from what her mother told her, as from the fact that it was Konstantin’s brother, this pair suddenly seemed to Kitty intensely unpleasant. This Levin, with his continual twitching of his head, aroused in her now an irrepressible feeling of disgust. It seemed to her that his big, terrible eyes, which persistently pursued her, expressed a feeling of hatred and contempt, and she tried to avoid meeting him. Chapter 31 It was a wet day; it had been raining all the morning, and the invalids, with their parasols, had flocked into the arcades. Kitty was walking there with her mother and the Moscow colonel, smart and jaunty in his European coat, bought ready-made at Frankfort. They were walking on one side of the arcade, trying to avoid Levin, who was walking on the other side. Varenka, in her dark dress, in a black hat with a turn-down brim, was walking up and down the whole length of the arcade with a blind Frenchwoman, and, every time she met Kitty, they exchanged friendly glances. “Mamma, couldn’t I speak to her?” said Kitty, watching her unknown friend, and noticing that she was going up to the spring, and that they might come there together.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  "I can't tell you how degrading this was to me. His body was nothing but my enemy. And yet I was to fetch a bowl of warm water, a sea sponge, and with my teeth only to hold it, bathe his genitals. "He was positioned on a low table for this, kneeling obediently as I washed his buttocks, dipped the sponge again, bathed his scrotum and finally his penis. But the Queen wanted more than this. I must now use my tongue to cleanse him. I was horrified, and shedding tears like any Princess. But she was adamant. With my tongue I licked his penis, the balls, and then delved into the crack of his buttocks, even entering into his anus, which had a sour, almost salty taste to it. "All the while he showed his obvious pleasure and longing. "His buttocks were sore, of course. And it gave me great satisfaction that the Queen seldom spanked him anymore herself, but rather had it done by his groom before he was brought into her presence. So he didn't suffer for her; rather he suffered in the Slaves' Hall, ignored by those around him. Yet it was mortifying to me that my tongue stroking his welts and red marks gave him pleasure. "Finally, the Queen ordered him to kneel up, his hands behind his back, and told me I should now fully reward him. I knew what this meant, yet I pretended I did not. She told me to take his penis in my mouth and drain it. "I can't explain how I felt then. I felt I could not do it. And yet within seconds I had obeyed, so afraid of displeasing her as I was, and his thick penis was pushing against the back of my throat, my lips and jaws aching as I tried to suck it properly. The Queen gave me instructions, to make my strokes long, to use my tongue, and to go faster and faster. She spanked me unmercifully as I obeyed, her smacking blows in perfect rhythm with my sucking. At last his seed filled my mouth. I was commanded to swallow it. "But the Queen was not at all pleased with my reticence. She said that I must show no disinclination towards anything." Beauty nodded, remembering the Prince's words to her in the Inn, that even the lowly must be served for his pleasure. "So she sent for all those Princes who had been tortured over a day's time in the Hall of Punishments, and led me to a large adjoining parlor. "When six young men were brought in on their knees, I begged her to be merciful the only way I could, with my moans and kisses. I can't tell you how their presence affected me. I'd been mistreated by the peasants in the kitchen; I'd humbly, greedily, obeyed a rude stable boy. But these seemed both lower and higher than those others.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  An advertisement in a lewd magazine landed me, one brave day, in the office of a Mlle Edith who began by offering me to choose a kindred soul from a collection of rather formal photographs in a rather soiled album ( “ Regardez-moi cette belle brune! ”). When I pushed the album away and somehow managed to blurt out my criminal craving, she looked as if about to show me the door; however, after asking me what price I was prepared to disburse, she condescended to put me in touch with a person qui pourrait arranger la chose . Next day, an asthmatic woman, coarsely painted, garrulous, garlicky, with an almost farcical Provençal accent and a black mustache above a purple lip, took me to what was apparently her own domicile, and there, after explosively kissing the bunched tips of her fat fingers to signify the delectable rosebud quality of her merchandise, she theatrically drew aside a curtain to reveal what I judged was that part of the room where a large and unfastidious family usually slept. It was now empty save for a monstrously plump, sallow, repulsively plain girl of at least fifteen with red-ribboned thick black braids who sat on a chair perfunctorily nursing a bald doll. When I shook my head and tried to shuffle out of the trap, the woman, talking fast, began removing the dingy woolen jersey from the young giantess’ torso; then, seeing my determination to leave, she demanded son argent . A door at the end of the room was opened, and two men who had been dining in the kitchen joined in the squabble. They were misshapen, bare-necked, very swarthy and one of them wore dark glasses. A small boy and a begrimed, bowlegged toddler lurked behind them. With the insolent logic of a nightmare, the enraged procuress, indicating the man in glasses, said he had served in the police, lui , so that I had better do as I was told. I went up to Marie—for that was her stellar name—who by then had quietly transferred her heavy haunches to a stool at the kitchen table and resumed her interrupted soup while the toddler picked up the doll. With a surge of pity dramatizing my idiotic gesture, I thrust a banknote into her indifferent hand. She surrendered my gift to the ex-detective, whereupon I was suffered to leave.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I put a gentle hand to my chest as I surveyed the situation. The turquoise blue swimming pool some distance behind the lawn was no longer behind that lawn, but within my thorax, and my organs swam in it like excrements in the blue sea water in Nice. One of the bathers had left the pool and, half-concealed by the peacocked shade of trees, stood quite still, holding the ends of the towel around his neck and following Lolita with his amber eyes. There he stood, in the camouflage of sun and shade, disfigured by them and masked by his own nakedness, his damp black hair or what was left of it, glued to his round head, his little mustache a humid smear, the wool on his chest spread like a symmetrical trophy, his naval pulsating, his hirsute thighs dripping with bright droplets, his tight wet black bathing trunks bloated and bursting with vigor where his great fat bullybag was pulled up and back like a padded shield over his reversed beasthood. And as I looked at his oval nut-brown face, it dawned upon me that what I had recognized him by was the reflection of my daughter’s countenance—the same beatitude and grimace but made hideous by his maleness. And I also knew that the child, my child, knew he was looking, enjoyed the lechery of his look and was putting on a show of gambol and glee, the vile and beloved slut. As she made for the ball and missed it, she fell on her back, with her obscene young legs madly pedalling in the air; I could sense the musk of her excitement from where I stood, and then I saw (petrified with a kind of sacred disgust) the man close his eyes and bare his small, horribly small and even, teeth as he leaned against a tree in which a multitude of dappled Priaps shivered. Immediately afterwards a marvelous transformation took place. He was no longer the satyr but a very good-natured and foolish Swiss cousin, the Gustave Trapp I have mentioned more than once, who used to counteract his “sprees” (he drank beer with milk, the good swine) by feats of weight- lifting—tottering and grunting on a lake beach with his otherwise very complete bathing suit jauntily stripped from one shoulder. This Trapp noticed me from afar and working the towel on his nape walked back with false insouciance to the pool. And as if the sun had gone out of the game, Lo slackened and slowly got up ignoring the ball that the terrier placed before her. Who can say what heartbreaks are caused in a dog by our discontinuing a romp?

• From On Beauty (2005)

  fields – Kiki, my God . . . unbelievable ideas he was having out there  kipps and belsey – he’s basically going to be able to prove definitively that there’s cross – cross – oh, God, cross-dissemination – insemination – you know what I mean – which is what this damn government has been lying through its teeth about – but it’s really the science that’s just – ’ Here Claire made a noise and a gesture to signify the top of one’s head coming off, revealing the inner cranium to the universe. ‘Warren, tell Kiki about it – I get it all mixed up, but it’s absolutely phenomenal science – Warren?’ ‘It’s not really so fascinating,’ said Warren flatly. ‘We’re trying to find a way to pin down the government regarding these crops – a lot of the lab work has already been done, but it hasn’t been put together – just needs someone to harness the solid evidence – Oh, Claire, it’s too damn hot – boring subject . . .’ ‘Oh, no . . .’ protested Kiki faintly. ‘It is not boring – ’ cried Claire. ‘I had no idea about the extent of this technology and what it’s actually doing to the biosphere . I don’t mean in ten years or fifty years, I mean right now . . . It’s so vile, so vile. ‘‘Infernal’’ is the word I keep getting caught on, do you know what I mean? We’ve reached a new ring somehow. A very low infernal ring. The planet is finished with us, at this point – ’ ‘Right, right,’ Kiki kept saying through all of this, as Claire kept talking. Kiki was impressed by her but also slightly wearied – there was no subject she could not enthusiastically dissect or embroider. Kiki was reminded of that famous poem of Claire’s about an orgasm that seemed to take apart all the different elements of an orgasm and lay them out along the page, the way a mechanic dismantles an engine. It was one of the few poems by Claire that Kiki had felt she understood without having to be talked through it by her husband or her daughter. ‘Honey,’ said Warren. He touched Claire’s hand lightly but with intent. ‘So where’s Howard?’ ‘Missing in action,’ said Kiki, and smiled at Warren warmly. ‘Probably in a bar with Erskine.’ ‘God – I haven’t seen Howard in for ever ,’ said Claire. ‘Working on the Rembrandt still, though?’ persisted Warren. He was the son of a fireman, and Kiki liked this best about him,  On Beauty although she knew all the other ideas she connected with this one were romantic notions on her part, not relevant to the real lived existence of a busy biochemist. He asked questions, he was interested and interesting, he rarely spoke of himself. He had a calm voice for the worst accidents and emergencies.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  His main trait was his passion for tantalization. Goodness, what a tease the poor fellow was! He challenged my scholarship. I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all; and I daresay I missed some elements in that cryptogrammic paper chase. What a shiver of triumph and loathing shook my frail frame when, among the plain innocent names in the hotel recorder, his fiendish conundrum would ejaculate in my face! I noticed that whenever he felt his enigmas were becoming too recondite, even for such a solver as I, he would lure me back with an easy one. “Arsène Lupin” was obvious to a Frenchman who remembered the detective stories of his youth; and one hardly had to be a Coleridgian to appreciate the trite poke of “A. Person, Porlock, England.” In horrible taste but basically suggestive of a cultured man—not a policeman, not a common goon, not a lewd salesman—were such assumed names as “Arthur Rainbow”—plainly the travestied author of Le Bateau Bleu—let me laugh a little too, gentlemen—and “Morris Schmetterling,” of L’Oiseau Ivre fame (touché, reader!). The silly but funny “D. Orgon, Elmira, NY,” was from Molière, of course, and because I had quite recently tried to interest Lolita in a famous 18th-century play, I welcomed as an old friend “Harry Bumper, Sheridan, Wyo.” An ordinary encyclopedia informed me who the peculiar looking “Phineas Quimby, Lebanon, NH” was; and any good Freudian, with a German name and some interest in religious prostitution, should recognize at a glance the implication of “Dr. Kitzler, Eryx, Miss.” So far so good. That sort of fun was shoddy but on the whole impersonal and thus innocuous. Among entries that arrested my attention as undoubtable clues per se but baffled me in respect to their finer points I do not care to mention many since I feel I am groping in a border-land mist with verbal phantoms turning, perhaps, into living vacationists. Who was “Johnny Randall, Ramble, Ohio”? Or was he a real person who just happened to write a hand similar to “N.S. Aristoff, Catagela, NY”? What was the sting in “Catagela”? And what about “James Mavor Morell, Hoaxton, England”? “Aristophanes,” “hoax”—fine, but what was I missing?

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  He saw—smiling —through everything and everybody, because he was not like me and her but a genius. A great guy. Full of fun. Had rocked with laughter when she confessed about me and her, and said he had thought so. It was quite safe, under the circumstances, to tell him ... Well, Cue—they all called him Cue— Her camp five years ago. Curious coincidence—... took her to a dude ranch about a day’s drive from Elephant (Elphinstone). Named? Oh, some silly name—Duk Duk Ranch—you know just plain silly—but it did not matter now, anyway, because the place had vanished and disintegrated. Really, she meant, I could not imagine how utterly lush that ranch was, she meant it had everything but everything, even an indoor waterfall. Did I remember the redhaired guy we (“we” was good) had once had some tennis with? Well, the place really belonged to Red’s brother, but he had turned it over to Cue for the summer. When Cue and she came, the others had them actually go through a coronation ceremony and then—a terrific ducking, as when you cross the Equator. You know. Her eyes rolled in synthetic resignation. “Go on, please.” Well. The idea was he would take her in September to Hollywood and arrange a tryout for her, a bit part in the tennis-match scene of a movie picture based on a play of his—Golden Guts—and perhaps even have her double one of its sensational starlets on the Klieg-struck tennis court. Alas, it never came to that. “Where is the hog now?” He was not a hog. He was a great guy in many respects. But it was all drink and drugs. And, of course, he was a complete freak in sex matters, and his friends were his slaves. I just could not imagine (I, Humbert, could not imagine!) what they all did at Duk Duk Ranch. She refused to take part because she loved him, and he threw her out. “What things?” “Oh, weird, filthy, fancy things. I mean, he had two girls and two boys, and three or four men, and the idea was for all of us to tangle in the nude while an old woman took movie pictures.” (Sade’s Justine was twelve at the start.) “What things exactly?” “Oh, things ... Oh, I—really I”—she uttered the “I” as a subdued cry while she listened to the source of the ache, and for lack of words spread the five fingers of her angularly up-and-down-moving hand. No, she gave it up, she refused to go into particulars with that baby inside her.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  One is entirely photos of Asian women. Another offers a $69 experience with “Mature Women, 30’s, 40’s, 50’s & 60’s+ Experience Counts.” In my role as wife explorer, I ask if this is for older men like my husband, but the guide says no, older men want younger women. This is a specialty for men who want to fuck their mothers. On my way to the airport, I pick up more magazine-sized adult directories with photos of women in gynecological positions; the most frequent motto is “I can be in your room in 20 minutes!” But the worst revelation comes after I arrive in Denver, Colorado. There I am meeting friends who have rented a house, and we are going to campaign in that crucial swing state for the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States. It all seems very distant from the tawdry glare of Las Vegas. I ask one of the activists about prostitution and sex trafficking, only because they happen in every major city, and, unasked, she mentions Las Vegas. Because prostitution is legal there, it’s a place where trafficked girls and women are taken to be “broken in”—that is, sold for more if they are virgins and, in any case, gang-raped and kept isolated until they believe that their survival is dependent on a pimp or brothel keeper. This trail of tears has been traced between Nevada and other states, including Colorado. What happens in Las Vegas doesn’t stay there. I also realize that I am campaigning for one of the few male candidates for the presidency of the United States whom I can’t imagine being so hooked on “masculinity” that he would buy sex. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but in truth, I can imagine others, from a wartime Eisenhower to a Hollywood Reagan and a Texas “good old boy” George W. Bush, being so addicted to dominance that they would pay for sex. Even Richard Nixon was rumored to have been bought a call girl by his rich supporter Bebe Rebozo. When I was traveling with the press corps on the Nixon campaign plane, reporters made jokes about it. They imagined Nixon going into a bedroom with the call girl, counting out the expected amount of time, and then emerging, pretending to be “one of the boys,” as he so desperately wanted to be. But not Barack Obama. I could not imagine him with such lack of empathy. He was a whole human being who had married a friend and colleague—someone who was his boss when they first met—and they were both raising their two daughters to be whole human beings, too. If he were to be elected, I realized that this might be the first happy and equal family I’d ever seen in the White House. In truth, only about 20 percent of men in the United States have purchased sex. Around the world, the more there is equality between women and men, the less there is prostitution.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  She placed him over her lap and proceeded to deliver a naked-handed spanking as she did to you, and I could see his erect penis, and how he tried to keep it away from her leg for fear he would spill his passion and displease her. He was utterly compliant and devoted to her. He had no dignity in his surrender at all, but scampered to obey her every command, his beautiful little face always flushed, his skin pink and white and full of blushes where he'd been punished. I couldn't take my eyes off him. I thought I can never be made to do these things. Never -- I should die first. Yet I watched him, and I watched her punish him and prod him and kiss him. "And when he had pleased her well, how she rewarded him! She had brought in six Princes and Princesses from whom he must choose with whom he would couple. Of course his choices were to please her. He chose the Princes always. "And as she presided over him with the paddle, he would mount one of these who knelt for it obediently enough and, receiving the Queen's blows, he would achieve ecstasy. It was a tantalizing spectacle. His own plump little buttocks being soundly spanked, the red-faced submissive slave on his knees to receive Prince Gerald, and the boy's erect cock going in and out of the undefended anus. Sometimes the Queen spanked the little victim first, gave him a merry chase about the room, a chance to escape his fate if he could fetch a pair of slippers for her in his teeth before she could achieve ten good cracks of the paddle. The victim would scurry to obey. But seldom was he able to find the slippers and bring them to the proper place before the Queen had soundly paddled him. So he had to bed over for Prince Gerald, who was too well endowed for sixteen surely. "Of course I told myself all this was disgusting and beneath me. I should never play such games." He laughed softly, and squeezed Beauty against his chest with his arm, kissed her forehead. "I've played them enough since," he said. "But now and then, too, Prince Gerald did choose a Princess. This angered the Queen, though only slightly. She had the little girl victim perform some hopeless tasks in the hope of escape, the same game with the slippers, or the getting of a hand mirror or the like, all the while driving her mercilessly with the paddle. Then she would be thrown down on her back and taken by the lusty little Prince for the Queen's amusement. Or she might be doubled and hung as in the Hall of Punishments. Beauty winced at this.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  yonder.” Thus Beatrice; and I, who was all obedient at the feet of her commands, gave mind and eyes whither she willed. Ne’er did fire from dense cloud descend, with motion so swift, when it falls from that confine which is most remote, as I saw Jove’s bird swoop down through the tree, rending its bark, likewise its flowers and its new leaves; and he smote the car with all his might; whereat it reeled like a vessel in a storm, beaten by the waves, now to starboard, now to larboard. 16 Then saw I a she-fox, that seemed fasting from all good food, leap into the body of the triumphal vehicle. But, rebuking her for foul sins, my lady put her to flight, as swift as the fleshless bones did bear. 17 Then, from thence whence he first had come, I saw the eagle descend down into the body of the car, and leave it feathered with his plumage. And as a voice comes from a heart that sorroweth, such voice came from heaven, and thus it spake: “O my little bark, how ill art thou laden!” 18 Then it seemed to me that the earth opened ’twixt the two wheels, and I saw a dragon come forth that fixed his tail up through the car; and like a wasp, that draws back her sting, drawing to him his spiteful tail he wrenched out part of the bottom and went his vagrant way. 19 That which remained—even as teeming land with grass,—with those plumes, haply offered with sincere and kind intent, did again cover itself, and both wheels and the pole were covered again by them, such time that a sigh keeps the mouth open longer. 20 Thus transformed, the sacred edifice put forth heads above its parts, three over the pole, and one at each corner. The first were horned like an ox, but the four had one single horn at the forehead; such monster never yet was seen. 21 Seated upon it, secure as a fortress on a steep hill, a shameless harlot appeared to me, with eyes quick around. And, as though she should not be taken from him, a giant I saw erect at her side, and from time to time each kissed the other; but, because her lustful and vagrant eye she turned upon me, that fierce paramour did scourge her from head to feet. Then filled with jealousy and cruel with rage, he loosed the monster, and dragged it so far through the wood, that of this alone he made a screen between me and the harlot and the strange beast. 22 1. Cf. Canto xxx, notes 19 and 20. 2. “[Thou art gazing on Beatrice] too fixedly.” 3. These lines perhaps mean that Christ guides His Church, not by force or external means, but with the spirit only. 4. The right wheel; for the whole procession had turned to the right. 5. murmur = “reproachfully murmur.” See Rom. v.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Food, beer, and wine are more expensive here than in town, and each song on the jukebox costs a dollar. Pay is docked for everything, even the cross-country bus rides that bring workers to this seasonal job. That’s why Mitch has been collecting used clothing, bedding, and food from the community. We distribute all we have to workers Mitch knows—mostly single black men from the South and a few Puerto Rican families—under the watchful eyes of labor bosses, who lean back in their chairs at a distance. He explains that migrant workers around here pick every kind of vegetable, fruit, herb, and flower in a billion-dollar agribusiness. This camp is focused on harvesting, washing, and bagging the potatoes for which Long Island is famous. Workers board trucks at dawn, work all day, and are trucked back to this camp at dusk. Without cash or a car, they haven’t seen any other place on this island, not a bar or a church or a beach. They might as well be in a foreign country. Later, when the elderly George Catalan sees these camps, he says they look worse than the barracks in California where Japanese Americans were interned during World War II, and that now house migrant farmworkers. I think these camps also look worse than those in The Grapes of Wrath . There are no white workers or even gang bosses, and definitely no role for Henry Fonda. As my mother said, for some people, the Depression never ends. After more efforts by Mitch to distribute donated food and clothes, he is arrested for being in the same car with a gun, though it’s not his gun and its owner is not arrested. Some of the Long Island police have been recruited from the Deep South. I make bail for him, but I’m not surprised when, a week later, he calls me from Canada. I know he will be the same activist there as he was here, and will live a fine life, but this country has lost a great heart. I will never again believe that secrets can’t be hidden in the places we think we know best. —IN THE FOUR DECADES after Marion comes to sleep on my couch, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and other advocates raise national consciousness as well as local labor standards. They gradually make the plight of migrant farmworkers less of a secret. On the other hand, hostility to undocumented workers keeps growing as their numbers increase, and as they move into southern and midwestern states to take up the slack in restaurant work, construction, landscaping, child and elder care, and more. I don’t have to tell you that ever since the terrorism panic of 9/11, some Americans’ fear of foreigners just keeps increasing. Even though the number of immigrant workers falls as the mortgage bubble bursts and triggers the Great Recession, this fear goes on. In Arizona, Alabama, and Georgia, laws are passed barring undocumented immigrants from schools, housing, and even hospitals.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  An Oklahoma mining company was founded in the 1930s for the sole purpose of burrowing into and looting Indian burial mounds. Local newspapers compared its “finds” to the treasures of Egyptian tombs, a description that enticed souvenir hunters but made the burial mounds seem even more remote from local Native families whose ancestors had been interred there. This company traveled the country selling looted artifacts—flint knives as big as swords, copper bowls, pipes made to look like animals, shells carved into jewelry, pearls—everything for a few dollars or even pennies. Since they assumed there was little market for cloth or wood items, they piled them up and burned them. Only after a couple of years did the Oklahoma legislature bow to outrage from archaeologists and Native families by passing a law against this looting. In revenge, the mining company strung dynamite through the mounds and blew them up. I will remember this day in Oklahoma for the vengefulness of that dynamite and the importance of that grandmother’s story. When I return to my hotel room, there is another reason. A woman I have not met but who cares about the fate of Ms. magazine calls to say that she will help us buy it out of bondage. Her yes puts us over the top. As the last of a dozen women investors, she makes its continuation possible. She also remarks on what a coincidence it is to find me in Oklahoma City, where her family comes from, and where she grew up. She is the feminist granddaughter of that very conservative family that owns the Oklahoma City newspaper with the Bible verses on the front page. She fled Oklahoma but took with her the spirit of the land, not the newspaper. • In Arizona where I’ve been speaking, I’m invited to Thanksgiving dinner by Leslie Silko, a Laguna Pueblo novelist and filmmaker whose writing seems to link all eras and living things. I know her only from spending one odd weekend with her and her screenwriting partner, Larry McMurtry, at a hotel near the Dallas/Fort Worth airport. We had met to talk about working on a possible film project together, but never could solve the problem of how to do the script. As compensation, we bought exotic cowboy boots. Dinner is with Leslie and her mother at home, a small sun-bleached wooden house that looks as if it grew out of the desert. After dinner, Leslie gives me the memorable gift of a ride on one of her Indian ponies. Among the things I discover, as we amble along at the ponies’ own pace, is that the Serpent Woman of the Midwest is called Spider Woman here in the Southwest—but she is the same source of creation and energy. I remember Spider Woman from the first page of Leslie’s novel Ceremony. She is the Thought Woman who names things and so brings them into being.