Embarrassment

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 Querelle (1953)

  ment, in front of the mirror, where he combed his hair, and once more became that powerful shadow, raw-boned and muscular, cheerful and young, which corresponded to his proper fonn, and sometimes to that of Dede as well. (As he watched Mario approach their meeting place, Dede sometimes told him, with a grin : "I like what I see, and I'd like to be it," but at other times his pride rebelled against such identification. That, then, was when he would attempt some timid gesture of revolt, but a smile or-a concise order would put him right back where he belonged, in Mario's shadow. ) "All right." He tried to sound tough, but for his own ears only. Stock-still for a second, to prove his absolute independence to himself, he let a puff of smoke drift in the direction of the window at which he was staring; one hand in his pocket he then turned abruptly toward Mario· and, looking him straight in the eye, extended his other hand, stiffly, at ann's length. "So long." He sounded positively funereal. With a more natural calm, Mario replied: "So long, buddy. Get back soon as you can." "And don't you feel too blue. Tain't worth it." He stood by the door. He opened it. The few items of clothing hanging from the door hook billowed out, sumptuously, 55 I QUEREllE while the stench from the open latrines on the outside landing penetrated the room. l\1ario noticed this sudden magnificent swirling of materials. With slight embarrassment he heard himself saying : "Stop play-acting." He was moved, but he could not permit himself to be moved. His sensitivity, carefully hidden and not really aware of formal and definitive beauty, but very much so of flashes of what we know only by the name "poetry," sometimes overtook and stunned him for a few seconds : it might be some docker, smiling such a smile as he was pocketing a pinch of tea in the warehouse. under his very eyes, that Mario felt like going on without a word, caught himself hesitating, almost regretting that he was the policeman instead of the thief: this hesitation never lasted long. He had hardly taken a step before the enormity of his behavior struck him. The law and order whose servant he was might be overthrown irreparably. A huge breach had already occurred. They might say he refrained from arresting the thief for purely esthetic reasons. At first his habitual watchdog temper would be checked by the grace of the docker, but once Mario became aware of the working of that charm, it was then obviously out of sheer hatred for the thief's beauty that he finally arrested him.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Sitting between them on the backseat, I was in the midst of passing along Jack Newfield’s useful advice when Talese leaned across me—as if I were neither talking nor present—and said to Bellow, You know how every year there’s a pretty girl who comes to New York and pretends to be a writer? Well, Gloria is this year’s pretty girl. Then they began to discuss the awful traffic. My initial response was to be embarrassed. Would Bellow regret having given an interview to someone now being called an unworthy writer? But once I was out of the taxi and away from their self-assured presence, I got angry. How could Talese behave as if I weren’t even there? Why didn’t I object? Yell? Get out and slam the door? —FOUR YEARS LATER I was volunteering for Eugene McCarthy’s primary bid for the Democratic nomination—not imagining I would ever write about it—when I climbed up to a barren, third-floor campaign headquarters in Manhattan. I sat in a circle of rickety chairs with other writers and editors who were helping with press releases and position papers for a candidate we hadn’t met. McCarthy had been the third choice of the anti–Vietnam War peace movement, but he was the only one who said yes to challenging President Johnson in New Hampshire, the first primary of the 1968 campaign. Senator Robert Kennedy and then Senator George McGovern had been asked first, but both had refused. For anyone opposed to the Vietnam War, this reserved, sardonic senator from Minnesota was the only game in town. All this helped to explain why we were such a disparate group, including a Republican woman who hoped that strengthening the antiwar cause would help a dovish Nelson Rockefeller beat the hawklike Nixon in the Republican primaries, and one other apostate Democrat I knew from our effort to organize writers and editors to withhold the percentage of our tax money going to Vietnam. Though we had imagined dire consequences, it turned out to be like punching a pillow: our unpaid taxes were just collected from our bank accounts, an odd form of voting. Because McCarthy was coming to town for a benefit, four of us volunteer writers were assigned to interview him and write a Sunday newspaper supplement for his New Hampshire campaign. We met him at his suite at the St. Regis Hotel, all prepared with questions on his key issues. As it turned out, we might as well have stayed home. Whatever we asked, McCarthy just turned to an aide and instructed him to find this or that quote from the past. He was aloof and cool. Unlike Bobby Kennedy, he didn’t seem to care whether we knew the answer or not—only that he had once given it. This awkward session became more so when he cautioned us not to write about Vietnam. Why?

• From Querelle (1953)

  46 I JEAN GENET anger was aggravated by impatience. The rims of his eyelids were burning. A blow received straightens a man up and makes the body move forward, to return that blow, or a punch-to jump, to get a hard-on, to dance: to be alive. But a blow re ceived may also cause you to bend over, to shake, to fall down, to die. When we see life, we call it beautiful. When we see death, we call it ugly. But it is more beautiful still to see one self living at great speed, right up to the moment of death. Detectives, poets, domestic servants and priests rely on abjec tion. From it, they d�w their power. It circulates in their veins. It nourishes them. "Being a cop's just a job like any other." Giving this answer to the slightly scornful friend of long standing who was asking him why he had joined the police force, Mario knew that he was lying. He did not much care for women, although it was easy for him to get a piece of the action from prostitutes. The fact of Dede's presence made the hatred he felt all around him in his life as a policeman seem like a heavy burden. Being a cop embarrassed him. He wanted to ignore the fact, but it enveloped him. Worse, it flowed in his vei ns. He was afraid of being poisone9 by it. Slowly at first, then with increasing force, he became involved with Dede. Dede could be the antidote. The Police in his veins circulated a little less strongly, grew weaker. He felt a little less guilty. The blood in his veins was then less black, and this made him a target for the scorn of the hoodlums and the vengeance of Tony. · Was it true that the prison of Bougen was filled with beauti ful female spies? Mario kept hoping that he would be called in for a case involving a theft of documents concerning national defense matters. In Dede's room, Rue Saint-Pierre, Mario was sitting, feet on the floor, on the divan bed covered with a plain fringed blue

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O V As they pass up the mountain, Dante’s shadow still excites the amazement of the souls; but Virgil bids him pay no heed to their exclamations. A group of souls chanting the Miserere breaks into a cry of wonder, and when two of them, sent out as messengers, have received Virgil’s statement that Dante is still in the first life, the whole group crowd around him. They tell him that they are souls of the violently slain, who repented and made their peace with God at the last moment. Virgil bids Dante pursue his path, but suffers him to promise to bear news of these souls to their friends on earth and implore their prayers. Dante hears the tale of Jacopo del Cassero. Then Buonconte da Montefeltro tells the story of his death at Campaldino, the struggle of the angel and the devil for his soul, and the fate of his deserted body. And lastly Pia rehearses, in brief pathetic words, the tragedy of her wedded life, and implores the Poet when he is rested from his long journey to bethink him of her. I WAS ALREADY parted from those shades, and was following my leader’s footsteps, when behind me, pointing his finger, one cried: “See, it seemeth not that the light shines on the left of him below, and he appears to demean himself like one alive.” Mine eyes I turned at sound of these words, and saw them gazing in astonishment at me alone, me alone, and at the light that was broken. “Why is thy mind so entangled,” said the Master, “that thou slackenest thy pace? what matters it to thee what they whisper here? Follow me and let the people talk; stand thou as a firm tower which never shakes its summit for blast of winds: for ever the man in whom thought wells up on thought, sets back his mark, because the one saps the force of the other,” What could I answer, save: “I come”? This I said, suffused somewhat with that colour which ofttimes makes a man worthy of pardon. And meanwhile across the mountain slope came people a little in front of us, chanting the Miserere 1 verse by verse alterne. When they perceived that I gave no place, because of my body, to the passage of the rays, they changed their chant to an Oh! long and hoarse; and two of them in the guise of messengers ran to meet us, and asked of us: “Make us to know of your condition.” And my Master: “Ye may go hence and bear back to those who sent you that the body of this man is very flesh.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Levin walked into the room, received a white ball, and followed his brother, Sergey Ivanovitch, to the table where Sviazhsky was standing with a significant and ironical face, holding his beard in his fist and sniffing at it. Sergey Ivanovitch put his hand into the box, put the ball somewhere, and making room for Levin, stopped. Levin advanced, but utterly forgetting what he was to do, and much embarrassed, he turned to Sergey Ivanovitch with the question, “Where am I to put it?” He asked this softly, at a moment when there was talking going on near, so that he had hoped his question would not be overheard. But the persons speaking paused, and his improper question was overheard. Sergey Ivanovitch frowned. “That is a matter for each man’s own decision,” he said severely. Several people smiled. Levin crimsoned, hurriedly thrust his hand under the cloth, and put the ball to the right as it was in his right hand. Having put it in, he recollected that he ought to have thrust his left hand too, and so he thrust it in though too late, and, still more overcome with confusion, he beat a hasty retreat into the background. “A hundred and twenty-six for admission! Ninety-eight against!” sang out the voice of the secretary, who could not pronounce the letter _r_. Then there was a laugh; a button and two nuts were found in the box. The nobleman was allowed the right to vote, and the new party had conquered. But the old party did not consider themselves conquered. Levin heard that they were asking Snetkov to stand, and he saw that a crowd of noblemen was surrounding the marshal, who was saying something. Levin went nearer. In reply Snetkov spoke of the trust the noblemen of the province had placed in him, the affection they had shown him, which he did not deserve, as his only merit had been his attachment to the nobility, to whom he had devoted twelve years of service. Several times he repeated the words: “I have served to the best of my powers with truth and good faith, I value your goodness and thank you,” and suddenly he stopped short from the tears that choked him, and went out of the room. Whether these tears came from a sense of the injustice being done him, from his love for the nobility, or from the strain of the position he was placed in, feeling himself surrounded by enemies, his emotion infected the assembly, the majority were touched, and Levin felt a tenderness for Snetkov. In the doorway the marshal of the province jostled against Levin.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Yes,” Levin answered, with proud satisfaction. “Yes, it’s rather strange,” he went on. “So we live without making anything, as though we were ancient vestals set to keep in a fire.” The landowner chuckled under his white mustaches. “There are some among us, too, like our friend Nikolay Ivanovitch, or Count Vronsky, that’s settled here lately, who try to carry on their husbandry as though it were a factory; but so far it leads to nothing but making away with capital on it.” “But why is it we don’t do like the merchants? Why don’t we cut down our parks for timber?” said Levin, returning to a thought that had struck him. “Why, as you said, to keep the fire in. Besides that’s not work for a nobleman. And our work as noblemen isn’t done here at the elections, but yonder, each in our corner. There’s a class instinct, too, of what one ought and oughtn’t to do. There’s the peasants, too, I wonder at them sometimes; any good peasant tries to take all the land he can. However bad the land is, he’ll work it. Without a return too. At a simple loss.” “Just as we do,” said Levin. “Very, very glad to have met you,” he added, seeing Sviazhsky approaching him. “And here we’ve met for the first time since we met at your place,” said the landowner to Sviazhsky, “and we’ve had a good talk too.” “Well, have you been attacking the new order of things?” said Sviazhsky with a smile. “That we’re bound to do.” “You’ve relieved your feelings?” Chapter 30 Sviazhsky took Levin’s arm, and went with him to his own friends. This time there was no avoiding Vronsky. He was standing with Stepan Arkadyevitch and Sergey Ivanovitch, and looking straight at Levin as he drew near. “Delighted! I believe I’ve had the pleasure of meeting you ... at Princess Shtcherbatskaya’s,” he said, giving Levin his hand. “Yes, I quite remember our meeting,” said Levin, and blushing crimson, he turned away immediately, and began talking to his brother. With a slight smile Vronsky went on talking to Sviazhsky, obviously without the slightest inclination to enter into conversation with Levin. But Levin, as he talked to his brother, was continually looking round at Vronsky, trying to think of something to say to him to gloss over his rudeness. “What are we waiting for now?” asked Levin, looking at Sviazhsky and Vronsky. “For Snetkov. He has to refuse or to consent to stand,” answered Sviazhsky. “Well, and what has he done, consented or not?” “That’s the point, that he’s done neither,” said Vronsky. “And if he refuses, who will stand then?” asked Levin, looking at Vronsky. “Whoever chooses to,” said Sviazhsky. “Shall you?” asked Levin. “Certainly not I,” said Sviazhsky, looking confused, and turning an alarmed glance at the malignant gentleman, who was standing beside Sergey Ivanovitch. “Who then? Nevyedovsky?” said Levin, feeling he was putting his foot into it.

• From Querelle (1953)

  213 I QUERELLE was. He had to get used to it. And he had to come out of hiding. Querelle got up and said: ··Don't worry, kid. You're doin' all right. In fact, you're doing pretty well, for a beginner, like. Just have to keep on going. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll go and talk to Nono." .. \Vhat, you haven't told him anything yet?" ··Don't worry. You don't think I could just take you to La Feria, or do you? Too many cops around. And you never know with those girls, .either. But we'll see what can be done. The thing is not to get too big-headed, you know. Don't think that the big guys will be falling over themselves to meet you, just because you snuffed somebody. You have to get a reputation as a real stick-up artist. \Vhat you did was just like a joy-killing. But don't you worry. I'll take care of things. Well, I've got to run now. See you later, kid." They shook hands, and, as he was leaving, Querelle turned around once more and said: .. \Vhat about that little friend of yours, has he been to see you?" .. I'm sure he'll show up any minute now." Querelle smiled. ••Tell me, he's got a crush on you, that bambino-or am I wrong?" Gil blushed. He thought that the sailor was pulling his leg, reminding him of the official motive for his killing Theo. It wasn't funny at all. His chest constricted, in a flat voice he replied: .. You're crazy. See, I had a go at his sister once. That's th e story. You're nuts, Jo. Don't believe everything they tell you. Cunt s is what I like." .. Hell, there ain't nothin' wrong with the kid having eyes for yo u. I'm a sailorboy, you know, I know wh at that's like. Well, bye again, Gil. Take it easy." 0 0 0

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  They walked along the path in two couples, Anna with Sviazhsky, and Dolly with Vronsky. Dolly was a little embarrassed and anxious in the new surroundings in which she found herself. Abstractly, theoretically, she did not merely justify, she positively approved of Anna’s conduct. As is indeed not unfrequent with women of unimpeachable virtue, weary of the monotony of respectable existence, at a distance she not only excused illicit love, she positively envied it. Besides, she loved Anna with all her heart. But seeing Anna in actual life among these strangers, with this fashionable tone that was so new to Darya Alexandrovna, she felt ill at ease. What she disliked particularly was seeing Princess Varvara ready to overlook everything for the sake of the comforts she enjoyed. As a general principle, abstractly, Dolly approved of Anna’s action; but to see the man for whose sake her action had been taken was disagreeable to her. Moreover, she had never liked Vronsky. She thought him very proud, and saw nothing in him of which he could be proud except his wealth. But against her own will, here in his own house, he overawed her more than ever, and she could not be at ease with him. She felt with him the same feeling she had had with the maid about her dressing jacket. Just as with the maid she had felt not exactly ashamed, but embarrassed at her darns, so she felt with him not exactly ashamed, but embarrassed at herself. Dolly was ill at ease, and tried to find a subject of conversation. Even though she supposed that, through his pride, praise of his house and garden would be sure to be disagreeable to him, she did all the same tell him how much she liked his house. “Yes, it’s a very fine building, and in the good old-fashioned style,” he said. “I like so much the court in front of the steps. Was that always so?” “Oh, no!” he said, and his face beamed with pleasure. “If you could only have seen that court last spring!” And he began, at first rather diffidently, but more and more carried away by the subject as he went on, to draw her attention to the various details of the decoration of his house and garden. It was evident that, having devoted a great deal of trouble to improve and beautify his home, Vronsky felt a need to show off the improvements to a new person, and was genuinely delighted at Darya Alexandrovna’s praise. “If you would care to look at the hospital, and are not tired, indeed, it’s not far. Shall we go?” he said, glancing into her face to convince himself that she was not bored. “Are you coming, Anna?” he turned to her. “We will come, won’t we?” she said, addressing Sviazhsky. “_Mais il ne faut pas laisser le pauvre Veslovsky et Tushkevitch se morfondre là dans le bateau._ We must send and tell them.”

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  He could only have remembered me as a child with my head in a book, refusing to sing along with his cheerful renditions of World War I songs, asking him to drive slowly past pretty houses and wishing aloud that we lived there. I fear he knew my childhood hope that I was adopted and that my real parents would come and take me to a home with a canopied bed and a horse to ride. In college, I tried to avoid the embarrassment of our atypical family by mining our odd life for stories like these: • My father was unable to resist swearing, and my mother had asked that he not swear around his daughters, so he named the family dog Dammit. When he felt something stronger was needed, he made up his own long composite word that he said at top speed: Goshdarn​Caloramorbus​AntonioCanova​ScipioAfrican​ustheYounger​theElder​theMiddleaged. Later when I discovered that Antonio Canova was a nineteenth-century Italian sculptor, Scipio Africanus the Elder had defeated Hannibal, and Scipio Africanus the Younger had sacked Carthage, I was impressed. But when I asked why he had chosen those names, he said, “I just liked their sound.” • At home in rural Michigan, we were missing our favorite nighttime programs due to a broken radio, and my father bet my mother that he could replace it, even though there were no stores within miles and all would be closed anyway. He got in his car—and was back in an hour with a huge brand-new model. He never told us how he did it. • As a connoisseur of extra-thick malteds, he knew all the best roadside sources from coast to coast. He also knew that if two customers came in together, each got half the contents of one tall malted mixer, in which two servings fit exactly. However, a solitary customer got the dividend in the bottom of the can. That’s why he gave me money as we sat in the car, and told me to go in, to order my own malted, and when he followed a few minutes later, to pretend I didn’t know him. Then we both got the dividend, though I doubt we were fooling anybody. If there was anything more delicious to a five- or six-year-old than a malted, it was pretending not to know your own father, and playing a part in a grown-up game. • In an elevator or any other public space, he coached me in routines like these: MY FATHER: “If you’re not a good girl, you won’t go to heaven.” ME: “I don’t want to go to heaven, Daddy. I want to go with you.” Or his all-time favorite: ME: “And then what happened, Daddy?” MY FATHER: “So I told the guy to keep his fifty thousand dollars!” • When I was about five and we were in a country store, I asked my father for a nickel. He asked me what for.

• From Querelle (1953)

  "Did you ever notice any goings-on between Vic and any particular buddy of his?" Seblon gave the reply-cut in half by a frog-in-the-throat that did not go unnoticed by the questioners- : "How exactly does one recognize such affairs?" His own, obviously overstated retort made him blush. His embarrassment grew. To Mario, the strangeness of the officer's replies was only too apparent. Since the Lieutenant's strength lay in his speech-his weakness, too-he now tried to regain the upper hand by this sorely undermined verbal ability. He said : ccHow can I keep track of what the boys do in their own time? Even if that crewman, Vic, got murdered because of some unsavory involvement, I just wouldn't know about it." "Of course not, Lieutenant. But, sometimes one happens to hear something." "You must be joking. I do not eavesdrop on my men. And you better realize that even if some of the young fellows did have dealings with revolting types such as you have in mind, they wouldn't boast about them. I should imagine their meetings arc shruuded in such secrecy . . . " He realized that he wasn't far from singing the praises of 9.Z I JEAN GENET homosexual affairs. He would have liked to keep his mouth shut, but being aware that a sudden silence would appear shange to the inspector, he added, in an offhand manner: "Those disgusting characters are wonderfully organized . . ." That was too much. He himself noticed the ambivalence of the opening statement, with the "wonderfully" striking a note of joyous defiance. The inspectors felt they had had enough. Without being able to distinguish exactly what it was that betrayed him, it seemed to them that his manner of speaking took pleasure in the manners and morals of precisely those elements whom he pretended- to condemn. Their thoughts might have been expressed in cliches like: "He talks about them quite sympathetically, doesn't he?" or ''It doesn't sound like he'd really detest them all that much." In short, he appeared suspect. Fortunately for him, he had an alibi, for he had been on board the night of the crime. When the interview was over, but before the two police officers had left the cabin, the Lieutenant wanted to put on his cloak of navy blue, and then did so with such coquetry-which he at once, and clumsily, corrected -that the total effect was not of just "putting it on," that would have been far too manly, but rather that of "wrapping himself in it" -which, indeed, was the way he thought of it himself. Again, he experienced embarrassment, and he made up his mind (once more ) never to touch a piece of· material again in public. Querelle donated ten francs, when they came round to collect for a wreath for Vic. And now some excerpts, picked at random, from the private diary. This journal can only be a book of prayers.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  When the kitchen was empty and everyone had settled down to eat, Lionel made his own plate of baked asparagus, brown rice, kale salad. He leaned against the flaking yellow counter and pushed the food around until it had all been drawn across and through itself. The kitchen was humid, redolent of people and their colognes, shampoos, lotions. But the open window let in a shaft of cold, clear air. The wind whistled as it caught stray openings in the screen. “Lionel!” the host called from the other room. “Lionel, what are you doing in there? Come on!” He felt silly being summoned. When he was in the doorway, the host clapped loudly in a way that made the overhead lights flicker brighter in Lionel’s vision. His teeth hurt. “There he is, there he is!” The others did not clap, which made the host’s gesture seem both pitiful and cruel. Lionel could see the full array of people who had come to the potluck. The chubby man on the floor between two chairs kept insisting that he was fine. A blond woman sat with both feet on her chair and a plate balanced on her knees. The host shared the chaise with a couple who looked like siblings, in matching black corduroy pants and gray socks. The woman had a messy topknot, and the man wore his scraggly hair down to his shoulders under a felt baseball cap. An androgynous person, tall, striking, with a platinum buzzcut and septum piercing gestured at a black woman in overalls with pierced cheeks. Some skinny gay men in Breton sweaters, one black-white, the other white-black, were flirting with an equally skinny black man wearing sunglasses. A woman in chinos sat scowling at the space between her knees. Their faces were a wall of pleasant, bland expressions, but then they sank back into their own conversations. The chatter rose above the low music. Near the defunct fireplace, over which someone had mounted a set of steer horns, Lionel squeezed into an opening on the floor next to a man in a burgundy turtleneck. The man was densely, unnecessarily muscular and looked like someone who enjoyed being looked at and could hold eye contact.

• From Querelle (1953)

  125 I QUERELLE sworn with a dagger in the other hand. Or perhaps they were about to cut each other's flesh, in order to then sew, or graft, themselves together forever. A police patrol appeared at the end of the street. "The cops! Break it up!" That was Mario, talking gruffiy and rapidly and hurling himself at Quere11e who· tried to push him aside; but Robert, after taking one look in the direction of the patrol, closed his knife and put it away. He was shaking. A little embarrassed and out of breath, he then turned to Dede-for a go-between still seemed necessary-and said: "Tell him to get outta here." But then, as time was of the essence, getting rid in one stroke of all the tragic protocol required by heroics, like an Emperor who addresses his enemy directly, ignoring the frills of warrior etiquette and the babble of generals and ministers, he spoke directly to his brother. With a matter-of-factness and authority only Querelle was capable of understanding, implying a secret familiarity that excluded all onlookers and bystanders from their conversation, he said: "Beat it. I'll get ahold of you. We'll � ettle this another time." For a moment Robert had thought of confronting the patrol on his own, but now it was approaching at ominous speed. He added: "All right. Take-off time.'' Nothing more was said, they did not even look at each other, but started walking along on the sidewalk with no cops on it. Dede followed Robert in silence. Now and again he looked at Querelle, whose right hand was smeared with blood. Talking to Robert, Nono regained his true manliness which he tended to lose a little when he was with Querelle. Not that he took on any homosexual mannerisms, but in the presence of

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Sitting between them on the backseat, I was in the midst of passing along Jack Newfield’s useful advice when Talese leaned across me—as if I were neither talking nor present—and said to Bellow, You know how every year there’s a pretty girl who comes to New York and pretends to be a writer? Well, Gloria is this year’s pretty girl. Then they began to discuss the awful traffic. My initial response was to be embarrassed. Would Bellow regret having given an interview to someone now being called an unworthy writer? But once I was out of the taxi and away from their self-assured presence, I got angry. How could Talese behave as if I weren’t even there? Why didn’t I object? Yell? Get out and slam the door? —FOUR YEARS LATER I was volunteering for Eugene McCarthy’s primary bid for the Democratic nomination—not imagining I would ever write about it—when I climbed up to a barren, third-floor campaign headquarters in Manhattan. I sat in a circle of rickety chairs with other writers and editors who were helping with press releases and position papers for a candidate we hadn’t met. McCarthy had been the third choice of the anti–Vietnam War peace movement, but he was the only one who said yes to challenging President Johnson in New Hampshire, the first primary of the 1968 campaign. Senator Robert Kennedy and then Senator George McGovern had been asked first, but both had refused. For anyone opposed to the Vietnam War, this reserved, sardonic senator from Minnesota was the only game in town. All this helped to explain why we were such a disparate group, including a Republican woman who hoped that strengthening the antiwar cause would help a dovish Nelson Rockefeller beat the hawklike Nixon in the Republican primaries, and one other apostate Democrat I knew from our effort to organize writers and editors to withhold the percentage of our tax money going to Vietnam. Though we had imagined dire consequences, it turned out to be like punching a pillow: our unpaid taxes were just collected from our bank accounts, an odd form of voting. Because McCarthy was coming to town for a benefit, four of us volunteer writers were assigned to interview him and write a Sunday newspaper supplement for his New Hampshire campaign. We met him at his suite at the St. Regis Hotel, all prepared with questions on his key issues. As it turned out, we might as well have stayed home. Whatever we asked, McCarthy just turned to an aide and instructed him to find this or that quote from the past. He was aloof and cool. Unlike Bobby Kennedy, he didn’t seem to care whether we knew the answer or not—only that he had once given it. This awkward session became more so when he cautioned us not to write about Vietnam. Why?

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  When she’d been with Peter, she had felt a rigid, formal distance between her and the men. But after Peter, something had changed, as if the center of gravity had collapsed, and their orbit around her became unstable. They spoke to her more, stopped by her cubicle, and stood there, holding their reports rather than simply dropping them and going. They looked her in the eye, and she saw in their smudged faces something faint, flickering, like hope. At first she thought she was imagining it, that it was nothing. But one afternoon, after Peter and before Sigrid, a man named Lenny came alongside the row of cubicles and stood at the edge of her desk. He was very tall but had the sullen posture of a small boy. She looked up from her computer and waited for him to ask her what he needed. Sometimes the men did that. When they didn’t know where to go, when the directions shuttled into their cubbies made no sense, they came to her, and she would set them on the right course. But Lenny had never done that. He’d always been one of the bright ones. “Marta,” he’d said. “How’s it hanging?” “It hangs, Lenny,” Marta had said. “What can I do you for?” Lenny coughed, turned red. The nape of Marta’s neck turned hot. “Not like that. You know what I meant.” “Of course,” Lenny said. “Well, I was wondering . . .” He leaned against the cubicle wall, and it buckled under his weight. He stepped away from it. Marta felt something tighten behind her eyes. “Oh, Lenny. We maybe shouldn’t,” she said. “You know, dinner would be fine, you know, fine, dinner, we could eat dinner, you know.” “Lenny—” Marta began, but Lenny was looking at the floor, crumpling the paper in his hands. “We could go someplace in Madison, someplace real nice. We could, the two of us, go, we could.” Marta drummed her fingers on the top of her desk. She glanced over the cubicle, where she could see some of her office mates looking back at them. When she looked at Lenny, she saw him staring at her, waiting for an answer. She didn’t have it in her to say no, not with the whole world watching. So she said yes, and they went to dinner in Madison that weekend. They ate fried chicken and potato salad, and on the way home Lenny put his hand on her knee while he drove. And Marta felt sick, flushed and sick and like she wanted to just fold in on herself. Lenny’s truck smelled like wet newspaper. His big toolbox rattled behind Marta’s seat. She hadn’t been in a truck like that in years.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “If I don’t paint them, I chew,” she said a little self-consciously. She pulled her hands away and put them behind her knees. She’d put her feet up on the chair again. “You were saying . . . the history test?” “Oh, yeah. There was this one kid who was really up my ass about security. He acted like I was spying on his data or something. They all have to write their student ID numbers down to sign in. As protocol, I guess.” Sophie nodded like it made all the sense in the world, and Lionel wasn’t sure if she was nodding because she thought the student had a point or if she agreed he’d made too much of it. “But after that, it was fine. I just had to write the words ‘French Absolutism’ on the board and wait until they were done.” “Wow. What if they have questions?” “I think that’s why they don’t have the history TAs do it? Because they might give them information they’re not supposed to have? They pick a total idiot like me.” She gave him a look. “Weren’t you, like, doing NASA research as a child or something? You’re not an idiot.” “No, that’s not me. I’d make a terrible engineer,” Lionel said too seriously. “I did go to math camp, though. Guilty by association.” “Math camp? That’s not just a movie trope?” Sophie made a show of leaning forward, putting her chin on her palms. “Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I went for, like, twelve years. The last as a counselor.” “Holy shit. What’s it like?” Lionel swirled the coffee in the cup, aware of the gesture as he performed it, knowing that it had little utility, that it was something performed to make him look a certain way, pensive, thoughtful.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Then he wondered if he should have waited for them to seat themselves and put away their study materials. So he erased his writing, turned to them. He pulled up the PDF with the class roster and instructions and saw that he was supposed to have them sign in. But he had not gone to the departmental office to pick up the slip for them to sign. “Does anyone have . . . ?” he motioned as if to write on air, and one of the students, tallish in some sort of gray sweatsuit, ripped a sheet of paper from his notebook and held it out between two fingers. Lionel took the sheet and then, realizing he’d forgotten to bring a pen, looked up and scribbled in the air again. The same boy rolled his eyes and offered Lionel his pen. Lionel took it, wrote the name and number of the course across the top of the sheet, then drew a line down the center and wrote two column headings: name and student id #. The boy wrote his name with a scratching swiftness and handed it over his shoulder. He wrestled himself out of his sweatshirt. His hair was oily and dirty blond, and he had greasy pit stains on the T-shirt he wore underneath. He had what looked to be four-day stubble. He stretched in his chair. The paper went back and up the next row, but then one of the boys said, “Uh, this isn’t like, secure.” “What do you mean?” Lionel asked. “Our ID numbers. Like, they’re right here. I could take a pic and use them.” The boy held the sheet up and gestured at it with his pen. “Do you plan to take a picture and use them?” “No, but I could. That’s the point. This isn’t secure. This is kind of a violation of privacy.” “I see your point,” Lionel said. “But, honor system, right? Nobody steal anyone’s identity.” There was a petty, pitying kind of amusement in the room at that joke. But the boy with the security issue wasn’t pleased. He squinted down at the sheet of paper and said, “Do you mind if I don’t? Like, I don’t feel comfortable.” “Sure,” Lionel said. “Okay. Whatever you want.”

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  When she’d been with Peter, she had felt a rigid, formal distance between her and the men. But after Peter, something had changed, as if the center of gravity had collapsed, and their orbit around her became unstable. They spoke to her more, stopped by her cubicle, and stood there, holding their reports rather than simply dropping them and going. They looked her in the eye, and she saw in their smudged faces something faint, flickering, like hope. At first she thought she was imagining it, that it was nothing. But one afternoon, after Peter and before Sigrid, a man named Lenny came alongside the row of cubicles and stood at the edge of her desk. He was very tall but had the sullen posture of a small boy. She looked up from her computer and waited for him to ask her what he needed. Sometimes the men did that. When they didn’t know where to go, when the directions shuttled into their cubbies made no sense, they came to her, and she would set them on the right course. But Lenny had never done that. He’d always been one of the bright ones. “Marta,” he’d said. “How’s it hanging?” “It hangs, Lenny,” Marta had said. “What can I do you for?” Lenny coughed, turned red. The nape of Marta’s neck turned hot. “Not like that. You know what I meant.” “Of course,” Lenny said. “Well, I was wondering . . .” He leaned against the cubicle wall, and it buckled under his weight. He stepped away from it. Marta felt something tighten behind her eyes. “Oh, Lenny. We maybe shouldn’t,” she said. “You know, dinner would be fine, you know, fine, dinner, we could eat dinner, you know.” “Lenny—” Marta began, but Lenny was looking at the floor, crumpling the paper in his hands. “We could go someplace in Madison, someplace real nice. We could, the two of us, go, we could.” Marta drummed her fingers on the top of her desk. She glanced over the cubicle, where she could see some of her office mates looking back at them. When she looked at Lenny, she saw him staring at her, waiting for an answer. She didn’t have it in her to say no, not with the whole world watching. So she said yes, and they went to dinner in Madison that weekend. They ate fried chicken and potato salad, and on the way home Lenny put his hand on her knee while he drove. And Marta felt sick, flushed and sick and like she wanted to just fold in on herself. Lenny’s truck smelled like wet newspaper. His big toolbox rattled behind Marta’s seat. She hadn’t been in a truck like that in years.

• From Querelle (1953)

  "You sure about that?" "But of course. Sailor's bags, the real thing, with a flap and all.'' "Well, if you don't believe us, there ain't much use telling you anything." Being at last able to discuss a certain and verifiable fact, they hastened to abandon their initially timid stance, their fawning humility in front of the police. They turned quite arrogant. They knew what they were talking about. As they were in a position to furnish the police with a proven fact that the authorities had overlooked, this had to elevate t_heir standing. The police had spent a whole night interrogating Roger with merciless insistence. All they found on him was his cheap pocketknife, broken and clumsily repaired. "What's this for?" Roger blushed, but the policeman thought this was. due to a fleeting sense of shame about the poor condition of the knife. He didn't pursue the matter. He had not realized that the weapon, being practically useless, was the more dangerous for being merely symbolic. In the keen edge of a true blade, in its accuracy and true balance, lies the very beginning of the true act of killing : thus it has to appear frightening to any child already living in a state of fear ( the child who invents symbols of fear for himself, using the materials we clumsily refer to as "reality" ) . On the other hand, the symbolic knife represents no practical danger at all, but as it is employed in a multitude of imaginary inner lives, it becomes a sure sign of its owner's acceptance of crime. The cops were unable to see that the knife was an endorsement of Gil's act of murder even before he had committed it. "Where did you know him from?" The boy denied ever having slept with the murderer or with Theo, saying that the day of t�e latter's death was the first time he had ever seen him. Then he admitted that he ,had gone to see his sister one night in the bistro where she was working as a 151 I QUERELLE waitress at that time. Gil had been standing at the bar, exchanging banter with her. At midnight, she finished work, and Gil walked both sister and brother back to their house. The next day Gil was there again. Roger had found him there on five subsequent occasions, and now and again, when they happened to meet, Gil had bought him a drink. "He never tried to sleep with you?" The interrogators were quite taken aback by Roger's wide-eyed, innocent look : "\Vith me? \Vhat for?" "He never made any advances to you?" ••Advances? Oh, no." He let his limpid gaze rest on the embarrassed police officers . .. He never touched you, like, down there?" ·�ever."

• From Escape (2007)

  The children piled back into the bus for our departure to Yuma. Faunita took a roll call and made sure no one was missing. Merril and his five other wives loaded into his van. He planned to check on his construction job in Yuma, hardly a big attraction for the rest of us. The mood in the van was chilly. We didn’t talk very much. At every rest stop, Ruth would get out and run around in circles. She progressed from running to skipping, then singing, and finally dancing. Merril made her take the big bunch of purple flowers out of her hair. I was so mortified by her behavior I stayed in the van. But her acting out was less frightening than what happened inside the van. Ruth’s baby, Ruthie, was about a year old. At one point the baby became fussy and started crying when she was hungry. Ruth decided she would breast-feed her. She had no milk since she’d stopped nursing her seven months before. But that didn’t faze her. Ruth started stripping in the van and was topless in moments. Then she tried to remove the rest of her clothes, but Tammy and Barbara were trying to put her clothes back on her as soon as she took them off. When Ruth asked for her baby, Tammy started to give the child to her, but then Merril ordered her to halt. Everything was chaotic. Poor Ruthie was crying and distressed and her mother was trying to take off her clothes to nurse her with breasts that had no milk. Merril couldn’t ignore Ruth’s behavior this time. He pulled over and became extremely angry, shouting and scolding her. He insisted she put her clothes back on, and she did. Cathleen was ready to throw herself out of the van. Tammy, the late prophet’s little princess, was also taken aback. Neither of them had ever seen anything this strange before. After seven months of marriage, I was more numb than shocked. Oh, well, Ruth stripped naked today and tried to nurse the baby she hadn’t nursed for months. Whatever. We stopped at the construction site in Yuma. For Merril, this was a photo op. We took pictures of Merril with all his wives on the job site. He spent time walking around and talking to men working on the job. We waited for him in the van and drove on to California. It was late at night when we arrived. Merril announced that I would be sleeping with him. He said goodnight to Tammy and Barbara and arrived at our room with five little children in tow. There were only two beds in the room and the five kids couldn’t fit in one. He told me to make a bed on the floor and two of his children slept there.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  They walked up the street together, the three of them. The sky was iridescent with cold. Out to their right, a shelf of white steam from the industrial park and the last of the academic buildings giving way to retail space and a few scraggly houses where the undergrads lived. To the left, the botanical gardens, Bascom’s high hill. Lionel hung back a little behind Sophie and Charles. They were talking about the rehearsal again. Sophie seemed kinder about it now. She listened to Charles with narrowed eyes. “It could be good for me,” Charles said. “Like, really good.” “Sure,” Sophie said. Their shoes scraped over the dry sidewalk. No trace of snow or ice here. The branches hanging over the sidewalk moved in the breeze from the cars. “I’m not being a bitch. I really mean it.” “Whatever, Sophie.” “Tell me about the piece.” “I really don’t feel like hearing you make fun of it,” he said quietly. “It’s embarrassing.” “If you’re embarrassed, it’s not because I made fun of it—not that I did. I mean, I said nothing about it, Charlie.” Charles grunted. Lionel felt a pang of sympathy for him. There were a million tiny ways to make someone feel bad about something that didn’t involve saying anything directly. “Come on,” Sophie said. She pulled on Charles’s arm, but he wouldn’t budge. They were passing into downtown proper then. Instead of going directly across East Campus Mall, Sophie wanted them go through the archways at the liberal arts building. Into its slanted catacombs. She pulled Charles, and while he continued to resist her, he shifted his hips slightly, pointing himself in her direction. Lionel followed, wondering still why he had let Sophie convince him that it was a good idea that he go back to her place for dinner. She had said to him, upon leaving the café, Don’t make it weird! It’ll be weird if you leave now. Charles had said nothing, had not looked at Lionel as they went down the stairs outside and into the snowy quad. Evening was rapidly closing in on them, and because Lionel didn’t want to make it weird, didn’t have anywhere else to be, he had walked with them without saying he’d follow them all the way. He had said yes only in action, reserving the right to change his mind and vanish while they were distracted. The liberal arts building was a pyramid of nested concrete rectangles connected by an interior set of stairs rising at steep angles, as if meant to discourage a siege by unruly masses. It posed an accessibility nightmare. In the summer, students used the steep interior walls for ramps, leaping up on the railings with their skateboards and bikes. People roamed the outside layers, setting up picnics in the shade of the buildings while they watched swallows and gulls shoot from terrace to terrace.