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.

Page 29 of 79 · 20 per page

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘Dad – you OK, man?’ whispered Levi and brought his strong, massaging hand to the cleft between his father’s shoulders. But Howard ducked this touch, stood up and left the church through the doors Carlene had entered. It was bright when the service began; now the sky was overcast. The congregation were more talkative departing from the church than they had been before – sharing anecdotes and memories – but still did not know how to end conversations respectfully; how to turn the talk from the invisibles of the earth – love and death and what comes after – to its practicalities: how to get a cab and whether one was going to the cemetery, or the wake, or both. Kiki did not imagine she was welcome at either, but, as she stood by the cherry tree with Jerome and Levi, Monty Kipps came over to them and expressly invited her. Kiki was taken aback. ‘Are you sure? We really wouldn’t want to intrude in any way whatsoever.’ Monty’s response was cordial. ‘There’s no question of intrusion. Any friend of my wife is welcome.’ ‘I was her friend,’ said Kiki, perhaps too keenly, for Monty’s smile shrank and tightened. ‘I mean, I didn’t know her real well, but what I knew . . . well, I really loved what I knew. I’m so sorry for your loss. She was an amazing person. Just so generous with people.’ ‘She was, yes,’ said Monty, a queer look passing over his face. ‘Of course, one worried sometimes that people would take advantage of exactly that quality.’ ‘Yes!’ said Kiki, and impulsively touched his hand. ‘I felt that too. But then I realized that that would always be a deadly shame on the person who did it, I mean, who took advantage – never on her.’ Monty nodded quickly. Of course he must have many other  on beauty and being wrong people to speak to. Kiki drew her hand back. In his low, musical voice he gave her directions to the cemetery and to the Kippses’ house, where the wake was to be, nodding briefly at Jerome to acknowledge his prior acquaintance with the place. Levi’s eyes widened during the instructions. He had no idea these funeral things had second and third acts. ‘ Thank you, really. And I’m . . . I am so sorry about Howard having to leave during the . . . he had a stomach . . . thing,’ said Kiki, motioning unconvincingly in front of her own belly. ‘I’m really just very sorry about that.’ ‘Please,’ said Monty, shaking his head. He smiled again briefly and moved away into the crowd. They watched him go. He was stopped every few feet by well-wishers and dealt with each of them with the same courtesy and patience he had shown the Belseys. ‘What a big man,’ said Kiki admiringly to her sons. ‘You know?

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  After that I began a long rationalizing speech about marriage and my sexual needs and how I was a poet not a secretary. I stood at the lectern and ranted at the audience. Mrs. McIntosh looked soberly disapproving. Then I was picking my way down the steep steps, half crouching and terrified of falling. I looked into the sea of faces and suddenly realized that I had forgotten to take my scroll. In a panic I knew that I had forfeited everything: graduation, my fellowship grant, my harem of three husbands. The final dream I remember is strangest of all. I was walking up the library steps again to reclaim my diploma. This time it was not Mrs. McIntosh at the lectern, but Colette. Only she was a black woman with frizzy reddish hair glinting around her head like a halo. “There is only one way to graduate,” she said, “and it has nothing to do with the number of husbands.” “What do I have to do?” I asked desperately, feeling I’d do anything. She handed me a book with my name on the cover. “That was only a very shaky beginning,” she said, “but at least you made a beginning.” I took this to mean I still had years to go. “Wait,” she said, undoing her blouse. Suddenly I understood that making love to her in public was the real graduation, and at that moment it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. Very aroused, I moved toward her. Then the dream faded. EIGHTEENBlood Weddings or Sic Transit The real trouble about women is that they must always go on trying to adapt themselves to men’s theories of women. —D. H. Lawrence Iawakened at noon to find the blood welling up between my legs. If I parted my thighs even a little, the blood would gush down and stain through to the mattress. Foggy and half-dazed as I was, I knew to keep my legs together. I wanted to get up to search for a Tampax, but it was hard to get out of that sagging bed without parting my legs at least a little. I stood suddenly and blackish-red rivulets began to inch their way down the inside of my thighs. A dark spot of blood glistened on the floor. I ran to my suitcase leaving a trail of glistening spots. I felt that heavy and familiar pull in my lower belly. “Fuck,” I said, fumbling for my glasses so I could see to rummage for a Tampax. But I couldn’t even find my goddamned glasses. I thrust my hand into my suitcase and began feeling around. In exasperation, I started tossing the clothes out onto the floor. “Damn it to hell,” I screamed. The floor was beginning to look like the aftermath of a car wreck. How was I ever going to clean up all that blood? I wasn’t. I was going to beat it out of Paris before the management got wise.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  She had antique brass headboards and window shades that matched the wallpaper and pink and red towels in the bathrooms when pink and red was still considered an avant-garde combination. Her fear of ordinariness came out most strongly in her clothes. After the four of us got older, she and my father traveled a lot for business, and she picked up odd accessories everywhere. She wore Chinese silk pajamas to the theater, Balinese toe-rings on her sandaled feet, and tiny jade Buddhas mounted as dangling earrings. She carried an oiled rice-paper parasol in the rain and had toreador pants made out of Japanese fingernail tapestries. At one point in my adolescence it dawned on me that she would rather look weird and ugly than common and pretty. And she often succeeded. She was a tall, rail-thin woman with high cheekbones and long red hair, and her strange get-ups and extreme makeup sometimes gave her a Charles Addamsy look. Naturally, I longed for a bleached-blond, mink-coated Mama who played bridge, or at least for a dumpy brunette PTA Mom in harlequin glasses and Red Cross shoes. “Couldn’t you please wear something else?” I pleaded when she was dressing for Parents’ Day in tapestried toreador pants and a Pucci pink silk sweater and a Mexican serape. (My memory must be exaggerating—but you get the general idea.) I was in seventh grade, and at the height of my passion for ordinaries. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” What wasn’t wrong with it! I shrank back into her walk-in closet, looking in vain for something ordinary. (An apron! A housedress! An angora sweater set! Something befitting a mother in a Betty Crocker ad, a Mother with a capital M.) The closet reeked of Joy and mothballs. There were cut velvet capes and feather boas and suede slacks and Aztec cotton caftans and Japanese silk kimonos and Irish tweed knickers, but absolutely nothing like an angora sweater set. “It’s just that I wish you’d wear something more plain,” I said sheepishly, “something people won’t stare at.” She glowered at me and drew herself up to her full height of five feet ten inches. “Are you ashamed of your own mother? Because if you are, Isadora, I feel sorry for you. I really do. There is nothing good about being ordinary. People don’t respect you for it. In the last analysis, people run after people who are different, who have confidence in their own taste, who don’t run with the herd. You’ll find out. There is nothing gained by giving in to the pressures of group vulgarity….” And we left for school in a cab trailing whiffs of Joy, and with Mexican fringes flapping, figuratively, in the wind.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  . . . You can call me or whatever,’ said Levi, rather too keenly. ‘You live in Roxbury?’ asked Carl doubtfully.  On Beauty ‘Not really . . . but I’m there a lot – Saturdays, especially.’ ‘What are you, fourteen?’ asked Carl. ‘No, man. I’m sixteen! How old are you?’ ‘Twenty.’ This answer immediately inhibited Levi. ‘You at college or . . . ?’ ‘Nah . . . I’m not an educated brother, although . . .’ He had a theatrical, old-fashioned way of speaking, which involved his long, pretty fingers turning circles in the air. His whole manner reminded Levi of his grandfather on his mother’s side and his tendency to speechify , as Kiki called it. ‘I guess you could say I hit my own books in my own way.’ ‘Scene.’ ‘I get my culture where I can, you know – going to free shit like tonight, for example. Anything happening that’s free in this city and might teach me something, I’m there .’ Levi’s family were waving at him. He was hoping that Carl would go in another direction before they reached the gate, but of course there was only one way out of the park. ‘ Finally ,’ said Howard, as they approached. Now it was Carl’s turn to grow inhibited. He pulled his baseball cap down low. He put his hands in his pockets. ‘Oh, hey,’ said Zora, acutely embarrassed. Carl acknowledged her with a nod. ‘So I’ll call you,’ said Levi, trying to bypass the introduction he feared was moments away. He was not quick enough. ‘Hi!’ said Kiki. ‘Are you a friend of Levi?’ Carl looked distraught. ‘Er . . . this is Carl. Zora stole his Discman.’ ‘I didn’t steal any – ’ ‘Are you at Wellington? Familiar face,’ said Howard distractedly. He was looking out for a taxi. Carl laughed, a strange artificial laugh that had more anger in it than good humour. ‘Do I look like I’m at Wellington?’ ‘Not everybody goes to your stupid college,’ countered Levi, blushing. ‘People do other shit than go to college. He’s a street poet.’  kipps and belsey ‘Really?’ asked Jerome with interest. ‘That ain’t really accurate, man . . . I do some stuff, Spoken Word – that’s all. I don’t know if I be calling myself a street poet, exactly.’ ‘Spoken Word?’ repeated Howard. Zora, who considered herself the essential bridge between Wellington’s popular culture and her parents’ academic culture, stepped in here. ‘It’s like oral poetry . . . it’s in the African-American tradition – Claire Malcolm’s all into it. She thinks it’s vital and earthy , etcetera, etcetera. She goes to the Bus Stop to check it out with her little Cult of Claire groupies.’ This last was sour grapes on Zora’s part; she had applied for, but not been accepted into, Claire’s poetry workshop the previous semester.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  kipps and belsey few more at each corner. At the square, the power of independent movement was taken away from them; they were as one mass with hundreds of others. It had been a mistake to bring Murdoch. The festival was at its most populated point, lunchtime, and inside the crush everybody was too hot and grouchy to be interested in stepping aside for a small dog. With difficulty the three of them made their way to the less populated sidewalk. Kiki stopped at a stall selling sterling silver – earrings, bracelets, necklaces. The stallholder was a black man, exceptionally skinny, in a green string vest and grubby blue jeans. No shoes at all. His bloodshot eyes widened as Kiki picked up some hoop earrings. She had only this brief glimpse of him, but Kiki suspected already that this would be one of those familiar exchanges in which her enormous spellbinding bosom would play a subtle (or not so subtle, depending on the person) silent third role in the conversation. Women bent away from it out of politeness; men – more comfortably for Kiki – sometimes remarked on it in order to get on and over it, as it were. The size was sexual and at the same time more than sexual: sex was only one small element of its symbolic range. If she were white, maybe it would refer only to sex, but she was not. And so her chest gave off a mass of signals beyond her direct control: sassy, sisterly, predatory, motherly, threatening, comforting – it was a mirror-world she had stepped into in her mid forties, a strange fabulation of the person she believed she was. She could no longer be meek or shy. Her body had directed her to a new personality; people expected new things of her, some of them good, some not. And she had been a tiny thing for years and years! How does it happen? Kiki held the hoops up to each ear. The stall guy proffered a small oval mirror, raising it up to her face, but not quickly enough for her sensitivities. ‘Excuse me, brother – a few inches higher with that – Thank you – they don’t wear jewellery – sorry ’bout that. Just the ears.’ Jerome recoiled from this joke. He dreaded his mother’s habit of starting conversations with strangers. ‘Honey?’ she asked Jerome, turning to him. Again with the shrugging. In comic response, Kiki turned back to the stall guy and  On Beauty shrugged, but he only said ‘Fifteen’ loudly and stared at her. He was unsmiling and intent upon a sale. He had a brutal, foreign accent. Kiki felt foolish. Her right hand passed quickly over a number of items on the table. ‘OK . . . And these?’

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I swallowed a sleeping pill, and presently, a dream that was not a sequel but a parody revealed to me, with a kind of meaningful clarity, the lake I had never yet visited: it was glazed over with a sheet of emerald ice, and a pockmarked Eskimo was trying in vain to break it with a pickaxe, although imported mimosas and oleanders flowered on its gravelly banks. I am sure Dr. Blanche Schwarzmann would have paid me a sack of schillings for adding such a libidream to her files. Unfortunately, the rest of it was frankly eclectic. Big Haze and little Haze rode on horseback around the lake, and I rode too, dutifully bobbing up and down, bowlegs astraddle although there was no horse between them, only elastic air—one of those little omissions due to the absent-mindedness of the dream agent. Saturday. My heart is still thumping. I still squirm and emit low moans of remembered embarrassment. Dorsal view. Glimpse of shiny skin between T-shirt and white gym shorts. Bending, over a window sill, in the act of tearing off leaves from a poplar outside while engrossed in torrential talk with a newspaper boy below (Kenneth Knight, I suspect) who had just propelled the Ramsdale Journal with a very precise thud onto the porch. I began creeping up to her—“crippling” up to her, as pantomimists say. My arms and legs were convex surfaces between which—rather than upon which—I slowly progressed by some neutral means of locomotion: Humbert the Wounded Spider. I must have taken hours to reach her: I seemed to see her through the wrong end of a telescope, and toward her taut little rear I moved like some paralytic, on soft distorted limbs, in terrible concentration. At last I was right behind her when I had the unfortunate idea of blustering a trifle—shaking her by the scruff of the neck and that sort of thing to cover my real manège, and she said in a shrill brief whine: “Cut it out!”—most coarsely, the little wench, and with a ghastly grin Humbert the Humble beat a gloomy retreat while she went on wisecracking streetward. But now listen to what happened next. After lunch I was reclining in a low chair trying to read. Suddenly two deft little hands were over my eyes: she had crept up from behind as if re-enacting, in a ballet sequence, my morning maneuver. Her fingers were a luminous crimson as they tried to blot out the sun, and she uttered hiccups of laughter and jerked this way and that as I stretched my arm sideways and backwards without otherwise changing my recumbent position. My hand swept over her agile giggling legs, and the book like a sleigh left my lap, and Mrs.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Then suddenly I remember that everything which stands between me and destitution is in my handbag: passport, American Express card, traveler’s checks—and I hobble back to the room. Then out into the hall again, knock-kneed, barefoot, clutching my bag, and I seize the doorknob of the toilet and begin rattling. “Un moment, s’il vous plaît,” comes an embarrassed male voice. American accent. It’s August, after all, and there probably aren’t any French people within miles of Paris. “It’s OK,” I say, holding my diaper in place with my thighs. “Pardon?” He hasn’t heard me. He’s still trying to come up with French phrases as he squeezes out the last dollop of shit. “It’s OK,” I yell, “I’m American.” “Je viens, je viens,” he mutters. “Je suis Americaine!” “Pardon?” This is getting embarrassing. At this rate neither one of us will know what to do when he finally emerges. I decide to hotfoot it down to the next floor and try that toilet. So I hobble down the winding stairs again. The toilet on the floor below isn’t locked, but there’s no paper at all, so it’s down still another flight. Actually, I’m beginning to get pretty good at this. What adaptability we show in moments of stress! Like when I had my broken leg and devised all those ingenious positions for screwing with a long leg cast. Voilà! Paper! But what atrocious paper! Talk about the history of the world through toilets—this toilet resembles nothing so much as an oubliette , and the paper seems to have dead bedbugs embedded in it. I lock the door, heave open the tiny window, toss Bennett’s bloody T-shirt out into the courtyard (thinking momentarily about sympathetic magic and all those tribal customs mentioned in The Golden Bough… will some evil sorcerer find Bennett’s T-shirt drenched with my blood and use it to cast a spell on both of us?). Then I sit down on the pot and begin devising a sort of sanitary napkin for myself with layers of toilet paper. The absurdities our bodies subject us to! Other than being doubled over with diarrhea in some stinking public toilet, I know of nothing more ignominious than getting your period when you have no Tampax. The odd thing is that I didn’t always feel this way about menstruation. I actually looked forward to my first period, longed for it, wanted it, prayed for it. I used to pore over words like “period” and “menstruation” in the dictionary. I used to recite a little prayer which went: please let me get my period today. Or, because I was afraid someone would hear me, I said: P.L.M.G.M.P.T., P.L.M.G.M.P.T., P.L.M.G.M.P.T. I used to chant this on the toilet seat, wiping myself again and again and hoping to find at least a tiny spot of blood.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Sometimes you get a flash of what you look like to other people. This one was unpleasant: a black woman in a headwrap, approaching with a bottle in one hand and a plate of food in the other, like a maid in an old movie. The real staff – Monique, and an unnamed friend of hers who was meant to be handing out drinks – were nowhere to be seen. The living room revealed only one other person, Meredith, a fat and pretty Japanese-American girl, constant – you assumed platonic – companion of Christian. She had an extraordinary outfit on and her back to the room, engrossed in reading the spines of Howard’s art books on the opposite wall. Kiki was reminded that, although Howard’s fan club within the university was extremely small, it had an intensity in inverse proportion to its size. Because of the stringency of his theories and his dislike of his colleagues, Howard was nowhere near as successful or as popular or as well paid as his peers in Wellington. He  kipps and belsey had, instead, a miniature campus cult: Christian was the preacher; Meredith was the congregation. If there were others, Kiki had never met them. There was Smith J. Miller, Howard’s teaching assistant, a sweet-tempered white boy from the Deep South – but Smith was paid for his services by Wellington. Kiki opened the living-room door wide with her heel, wondering again where Monique, who might have thought to wedge the thing open, was hiding. Christian did not yet turn to acknowledge her, but he was already pretending to like Murdoch playing around his ankles. He leaned forward with the clumsy loom of the natural pet-hater and child-fearer, all the time clearly hoping for an intervention before he reached the dog. His elongated, lean body struck Kiki as a comic, human version of Murdoch’s own. ‘He bothering you?’ ‘Oh, no. Mrs Belsey, hello. No, not at all, not really. If anything, I was concerned that he might choke on my laces.’ ‘Really?’ said Kiki, looking down dubiously. ‘No, I mean it’s fine . . . it’s fine.’ Christian’s features abruptly morphed into his pinched attempt at a ‘party-face’. ‘And anyway: happy anniversary! It’s so amazing.’ ‘Well, thank you so much for coming – ’ ‘My God,’ said Christian, with that clipped, puzzlingly European inflection he had. He had been raised in Iowa. ‘I’m simply privileged to be invited. It must be a very special occasion for you. What a milestone.’ Kiki sensed that he hadn’t said any of this to Howard, and indeed Howard’s eyebrows now raised a little, as if he had not heard Christian speak like this before. The banalities, obviously, were saved for Kiki. ‘Yeah, I guess . . . and it’s just a nice thing – beginning of the semester and everything . . . shall I get the dog away from you?’

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Howard’s always having some fight or another.’ She smiled awkwardly at this understatement. ‘So . . . OK – well, come on – kisses – we gotta go. So lovely to see you guys.’ Kiki kissed Warren and was hugged too tightly by Claire; she waved and called goodbye and did all the necessaries on behalf of Jerome, who stood oblivious next to her on the blue doorstep of a Moroccan restaurant. To stave off the inevitable discussion, Kiki watched the couple walk away for as long as she could. ‘ Fuck ,’ said Jerome once again, loudly. He sat down where he was. The sky had misted over slightly, allowing the sun to cast itself in a misleading godly role. It shone beneficence in thin rods of Renaissance light, thrusting through a landscaped cloud that seemed designed for this purpose. Kiki tried to figure the blessing in it all, a way to spin bad news as good. Sighing, she removed her headwrap. Her heavy plait collapsed down her back, but it was good to have the sweat ooze from the scalp down her face. She sat down next to her son. She said his name, but he stood up and began to walk away. A family searching each other’s backpacks for some lost item blocked his progress; Kiki caught up. ‘Don’t do that, don’t make me run after you.’ ‘Er . . . free citizen, moving through the world?’ said Jerome, pointing to himself. ‘You know, I was just about to sympathize, but actually I think I want to tell you to grow the hell up .’ ‘Fine.’ ‘No, it is not fine. Baby, I know you were hurt badly – ’ ‘I’m not hurt. I’m embarrassed. Let’s skip it.’ He pinched his brow with his fingers, a gesture so like one of his father’s that it was ridiculous. ‘I forgot your burrito, sorry.’ ‘Forget the burrito – can we talk?’ Jerome nodded, but they walked the left side of Wellington Square in silence. Kiki paused, and made Jerome pause, by a stall selling pin-cushions. These were shaped like fat Oriental gentlemen, complete with two diagonal dashes for their eyes and tiny yellow coolie hats with black fringes. Their pulvinate bellies were red satin,  kipps and belsey and it was here that the needles pierced. Kiki picked one up, rolling it in her hand. ‘These are cute aren’t they? Or are they awful?’ ‘Do you think he’ll bring his whole family?’ ‘Honey, I really don’t know. Probably not. But if they do come, we’re all going to have to be real grown up about it.’ ‘You’re tripping if you think I’m hanging around.’ ‘Good,’ said Kiki with facetious cheeriness. ‘You can go back to Brown, problem solved.’ ‘No, I mean . . . like maybe I’ll go to Europe or whatever.’

• From On Beauty (2005)

  OK? Bye now.’ ‘Mine’s recordable too – it’s my own mix,’ said the young man firmly. ‘Levi . . . We’ve got to get to the car.’ ‘Listen to it – ’ said Levi to Zora. ‘ No .’ ‘Listen to the damn CD, Zoor.’ ‘What’s going on over there?’ called Howard, twenty yards away. ‘Can we get going, please?’ ‘Zora, you freak – just listen to the CD, settle this.’ Zora made a face and pressed play. A little spring of sweat burst over her forehead. ‘Well, this isn’t my CD. It’s some kind of hip-hop,’ she said sharply, as if the CD itself were somehow to blame. The young man stepped forward cautiously, with one hand up as if to show he meant no harm. He turned the Discman over in her hand and showed her the sticky patch. He lifted his hoodie and the T-shirt beneath it to reveal a well-defined pelvic bone and drew a second Discman from his waistband. ‘This one’s yours.’ ‘They’re exactly the same.’ ‘Yeah, I guess that’s where the confusion came from.’ He was grinning now and the fact that he was stupidly good-looking could no longer be ignored. Pride and prejudice, however, connived in Zora to make a point of ignoring it anyway.  kipps and belsey ‘Yeah, well, I put mine under my chair,’ she said tartly, and turned and walked off in the direction of her mother, who stood hands on hips another hundred yards away. ‘Phew. Tough sister,’ said the young man, laughing lightly. Levi sighed. ‘Yo, thanks, man.’ They clapped hands. ‘Who you listening to anyway?’ asked Levi. ‘Just some hip-hop.’ ‘Bro, can I check it out – I’m all into that.’ ‘I guess . . .’ ‘I’m Levi.’ ‘Carl.’ How old is this boy, Carl wondered. And where’d he learn that you just ask some strange brother you never seen before in your life if you can listen to his Discman? Carl had figured a year ago that if he started going to events like this he would meet the kind of people he didn’t usually meet – couldn’t have been more right about that one. ‘It’s tight, man. There’s a nice flow there. Who is it?’ ‘Actually, that track is me,’ Carl said, neither humbly nor proudly. ‘I got a very basic sixteen-track at home. I do it myself.’ ‘You a rapper?’ ‘Well . . . it’s more like Spoken Word, as it happens.’ ‘Scene.’ They talked all the way over the green towards the gates of the park. About hip-hop generally, and then about recent shows in the Boston area. How few and far they were. Levi asked question after question, sometimes answering himself as Carl opened his mouth to reply.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘I’ve done the Bus Stop, several times,’ said Carl quietly. ‘It’s a good place. It’s about the only cool place for that stuff in Wellington. I did some stuff there just Tuesday night past.’ Now he put a thumb to the brim of his cap and lifted it a little so that he might get a good look at these people. Was the white guy the father? ‘Claire Malcolm goes to a bus stop to hear poetry . . .’ began Howard, bewildered, busy looking up and down the street. ‘Shut up, Dad,’ said Zora. ‘Do you know Claire Malcolm?’ ‘Nope . . . can’t say I do,’ replied Carl, releasing another one of his winning smiles, just nerves probably, but each time he did, you warmed to him further. ‘She’s like a poet poet,’ explained Zora. ‘Oh . . . A poet poet.’ Carl’s smile disappeared. ‘Shut up, Zoor,’ said Jerome. ‘Rubens,’ said Howard suddenly. ‘Your face. From the four African heads. Nice to meet you, anyway.’ Howard’s family stared at him. Howard stepped off the sidewalk to wave down a cab that passed him by. Carl pulled his hoodie over his cap and began to look around himself. ‘You should meet Claire,’ said Kiki enthusiastically, trying to patch the thing up. It’s remarkable what a face like Carl’s makes  On Beauty you want to do in order to see it smile again. ‘She’s very respected – everybody says she’s very good.’ ‘Cab!’ yelled Howard. ‘It’s going to pull up on the other side. Come on.’ ‘Why do you say it like Claire’s a country you’ve never been to?’ demanded Zora. ‘You’ve read her – so you can have an opinion, Mom, it won’t kill you.’ Kiki ignored this. ‘I’m sure she’d love to meet a young poet, she’s very encouraging – you know actually we’re having a party – ’ ‘Come on, come on,’ droned Howard. He was in the middle of the traffic island. ‘Why would he even want to go to your party?’ asked Levi, mortified. ‘It’s an anniversary party.’ ‘Well, baby, I can ask , can’t I? Besides, it’s not just an anniversary party. And between me and you,’ she added faux confidentially to Carl, ‘we could do with a few more brothers at this party.’ It had not escaped anybody’s attention that Kiki was flirting. Brothers? thought Zora crossly, since when does Kiki say brothers ? ‘I got to be going,’ said Carl. He passed a flat hand over his forehead, smearing the droplets of sweat. ‘I got your man Levi’s number – we might hang out some time, so – ’ ‘Oh, OK . . .’ They all waved vaguely at his back and said bye quietly, but there was no denying he was walking away from them as fast as he could. Zora turned to her mother and opened her eyes wide. ‘What the hell? Rubens? ’ ‘Nice boy,’ said Kiki sadly. ‘Let’s get in the car,’ said Levi.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  That’s another book that uses an autobiographical New York City setting but also takes the protagonist on a journey that is mythical. Q. Is this a book only a young writer could write? Is there anything in the book that embarrasses you now? A. The rambunctiousness of this novel screams youth. It reads like a manifesto of liberation. As an author ages, things seem less black and white. We gain in subtlety but sometimes we lose a certain youthful madness. Sometimes, at readings, I perform an excerpt from the book and I blush at my own youthful recklessness. Sometimes I wish I could be that reckless now. Q. You went on to write two more books about Isadora Wing. What makes a character someone you want to revisit? A. Isadora became an icon for women searching for freedom. I wanted to show how she dealt with motherhood, divorce, addiction, new relationships. Because she was so important to so many readers, I felt her story had to go on. Q. Some readers think Isadora has a casual approach to marriage. How does her marriage reflect your own views? A. The generation that came of age in the sixties married too young and without much of an idea of the burdens of marriage. Then we discovered how tough marriage is, how much compromise is required. Often we divorced our first spouses. Now our kids, who often grew up with divorced parents, are more realistic about marriage, more cautious about commitments. In general, that’s a good thing. They see marriage more realistically than we did. I think their chances of successful marriages are greater than ours were. Q. Did it bother you that Fear of Flying was seen by some as a scandalous book? A. Initially I was troubled by some people’s emphasis on sex in the novel. I never thought it was a book about sex. I thought it was a book about freedom. As time went on I came to see that Isadora’s fierce honesty about her sexual feelings had so impacted readers that conservatives felt they had to denounce her—and me. There’s less fornication in the book than there is fantasy. Perhaps it’s as threatening to have a woman talk and think freely about sex as to actually do it. At any rate, Isadora’s openness did change the way both women and men thought, talked, and wrote about sex. Q. You said somewhere that when you were writing Fear of Flying, you thought of killing off Isadora but were determined that she not die for her sins. Why? A. So many novels—Anna Karenina and Madame Bo-vary are but two examples—punish female sexuality with death. I found myself fantasizing that Isadora’s answer to her dilemma would be suicide. I think I was influenced by the cultural archetype in which women die for sexual passion. But then I realized I had to transform that archetype. I thought it was important to grant women the possibility of passion without draconian punishment.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  In the thirty years since Fear of Flying was published, the line between autobiography (or memoir) and fiction has blurred. Fear of Flying was at the forefront of this trend. But it was never a literal autobiography though it had autobiographical elements. It’s not unusual for a first novel to have such elements. Early on, some critics (like John Updike) saw similarities between my novel and Catcher in the Rye. That’s another book that uses an autobiographical New York City setting but also takes the protagonist on a journey that is mythical. Q. Is this a book only a young writer could write? Is there anything in the book that embarrasses you now? A. The rambunctiousness of this novel screams youth. It reads like a manifesto of liberation. As an author ages, things seem less black and white. We gain in subtlety but sometimes we lose a certain youthful madness. Sometimes, at readings, I perform an excerpt from the book and I blush at my own youthful recklessness. Sometimes I wish I could be that reckless now. Q. You went on to write two more books about Isadora Wing. What makes a character someone you want to revisit? A. Isadora became an icon for women searching for freedom. I wanted to show how she dealt with motherhood, divorce, addiction, new relationships. Because she was so important to so many readers, I felt her story had to go on. Q. Some readers think Isadora has a casual approach to marriage. How does her marriage reflect your own views? A. The generation that came of age in the sixties married too young and without much of an idea of the burdens of marriage. Then we discovered how tough marriage is, how much compromise is required. Often we divorced our first spouses. Now our kids, who often grew up with divorced parents, are more realistic about marriage, more cautious about commitments. In general, that’s a good thing. They see marriage more realistically than we did. I think their chances of successful marriages are greater than ours were. Q. Did it bother you that Fear of Flying was seen by some as a scandalous book? A. Initially I was troubled by some people’s emphasis on sex in the novel. I never thought it was a book about sex. I thought it was a book about freedom. As time went on I came to see that Isadora’s fierce honesty about her sexual feelings had so impacted readers that conservatives felt they had to denounce her—and me. There’s less fornication in the book than there is fantasy. Perhaps it’s as threatening to have a woman talk and think freely about sex as to actually do it. At any rate, Isadora’s openness did change the way both women and men thought, talked, and wrote about sex. Q. You said somewhere that when you were writing Fear of Flying, you thought of killing off Isadora but were determined that she not die for her sins. Why? A.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  I thought you were in Paris for Christmas.’ ‘I was – we were staying at the Crillon – what a hotel that is, that hotel is a beautiful place – and I got a phone call from Brockes, Lord Brockes,’ added Erskine breezily. ‘But Howard, you know I’ve known our friend Monty for a very long time. Either he was the first Negro at Oxford or I was – we can never agree on that. But even if we haven’t always seen eye to eye, he is civilized and I am civilized. So here I am.’  on beauty and being wrong ‘Of course ,’ said Kiki in rather an emotional way and took hold of Erskine’s hand. ‘And of course Caroline insisted ,’ continued Erskine mischievously, nodding to his wife’s lean form across the way. She was standing in the archway of the church, engaged in conversation with a famous black British newscaster. Erskine looked mock-fondly after her. ‘She is an awesome woman, my wife. She is the only woman I know who can power-broke at a funeral.’ Here Erskine turned the volume down on his big Nigerian laugh. ‘ Anybody who’s anybody will be there ,’ he said, badly impersonating his wife’s Atlanta twang, ‘though I fear there aren’t as many somebodies here as she had hoped. Half these people I have never seen before in my life . But there we are. In Nigeria we weep at funerals – in Atlanta apparently they network. It’s marvellous! Actually, I’m rather surprised to see you here. I thought you and Sir Monty were drawing swords for January.’ Erskine’s umbrella turned into a rapier. ‘So says the college grapevine. Yes, Howard. Don’t tell me you’re not here for your own ulterior motives, eh? Eh? But have I said the wrong thing?’ asked Erskine as Kiki’s hand dropped from his own. ‘Umm . . . I guess Mom and Carlene were pretty close,’ murmured Jerome. Erskine held a hand dramatically to his breast. ‘But you should have stopped me speaking out of turn! Kiki – I had no idea you even knew the lady. Now I am very embarrassed.’ ‘Don’t be,’ said Kiki, but looked at him coldly. Erskine was paralysed by social friction of any kind. He looked now as if he were in physical pain. It was Zora who came to his rescue. ‘Hey, Dad – isn’t that Zia Malmud? Weren’t you guys at school with him?’ Zia Malmud, cultural commentator, ex-socialist, anti-war campaigner, essayist, occasional poet, thorn in the side of the present government and regular TV presence, or, as Howard succinctly put it, ‘typical rent-a-quote wanker’, was standing by the monument, smoking his trademark pipe.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  Without a concept for “Fear,” you cannot experience fear. Without a concept for “Sadness,” you cannot perceive sadness in another person. You could learn the necessary concept, or you could construct it in the moment through conceptual combination, but your brain must be able to make that concept and predict with it. Otherwise, you will be experientially blind to that emotion. I realize this idea might sound counterintuitive, so let’s start with a few examples. You are probably unfamiliar with an emotion called liget. It’s a feeling of exuberant aggression experienced by a headhunting tribe from the Philippines, the Ilongot. Liget involves intense focus, passion, and energy while pursuing a hazardous challenge with a group of people who are competing against another group. The danger and energy instill a sense of togetherness and belonging. Liget is not just a mental state but a complex situation with social rules about which activities bring it on, when it is appropriate to feel, and how other people should treat you during an episode. To a member of the Ilongot tribe, liget is every bit as real an emotion as happiness and sadness are to you. Westerners surely do experience pleasant aggression. Athletes feel it in the heat of competition. Videogame players cultivate it during first-person shooter games. But these people are not experiencing liget with all its meaning, prescribed actions, body-budget changes, communication, and social influence unless they can construct “ Liget ” using conceptual combination. Liget is the whole conceptual package, and if your brain cannot make this concept, then you cannot experience liget, although you can experience parts of it: the pleasant, high arousal affect; the aggression; the thrill of pursuing a risky challenge; or the feeling of brother- or sisterhood that comes from being part of a group. Next, consider an emotion concept that’s more recently adopted by U.S. culture. In a recent meeting with my lab members, I learned that an acquaintance (call him Robert) failed in his bid to win a Nobel prize. Robert had treated me poorly in the past (which is polite scientist-speak for “he acted like an ass”), so when I heard the news, I have to admit that I had a complex emotional experience: I felt some empathy for Robert, plus a small measure of gratification about his misfortune, plus a large wave of guilt at my pettiness, as well as embarrassment that someone might discover my uncharitable feeling. Imagine if I’d described my conceptual combination to my lab members: “Robert probably feels horrible about his failure, and I am pleased about that.”

• From On Beauty (2005)

  whiteness as they all pressed past him; he was like a tourist making his way through a crowded Caribbean alleyway. At last he made his seat. He had a passing pornographic thought, as he sat down, of slipping his fingers into Vee under this table, of bringing her in this way to climax. Reality asserted itself. She was wearing trousers. And she was busy, speaking very loudly, addressing the shy girl, the boy next to her, and the boy next to him. Their faces suggested to Howard that Victoria had not stopped speaking since he left the table. ‘But then, that’s just the kind of person I am ,’ she was saying. ‘I’m the kind of person who feels that kind of behaviour is beyond the pale, that’s just the way I am. I don’t make any apologies. I feel I deserve that respect. I’m very clear about my boundaries . . .’ Howard picked up the piece of card in front of him to find out what was to follow on the menu. Singing Corn-fed chicken wrapped in parma ham on a bed of sweet-pea risotto The company is addressed by Dr Emily Hartman Key Lime Pie Of course, Howard had known it was coming. But he had not known it would come so soon. He felt he had not had the chance to compose himself properly. It was too late now to leave again; the bell was ringing. And here they came, those boys in their gold waistcoats with their F. Scott Fitzgerald heritage haircuts and ruddy faces. They made their way to the stage amid much applause – one might say they jogged towards it. Once again they arranged themselves in staggered formation, tallest at the back, blonds in the middle and the fat guy front and centre. The fat guy opened his mouth and let out that bell-like note, alive with Old Boston money. His fellows harmonized perfectly. Howard felt the familiar trouble coming on, behind his eyes, which had instantly filled with  on beauty and being wrong water. He bit his lip and pressed his knees together. This was all going to be made much worse by the fact he had not emptied his bladder. Around his table, nine perfectly straight faces directed themselves to the stage, awaiting entertainment. The room was silent apart from the tremulous chord. Howard felt Victoria touch his knee under the table. He removed her hand. He had to concentrate all his energies now into bringing his overdeveloped sense of the ridiculous under the control of his will. How strong was his will? There are two different kinds of glee club in this world. The first type sing barbershop favourites and Gershwin tunes, they swing gently, moving from side to side and sometimes clicking their fingers and winking. Howard could basically deal with that type. He had got through occasions graced by glee clubs of that type.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘ ‘‘Levi’s Mix’’,’ she read from a sticker on the CD case. She shook her head at him sadly. ‘Looks like the enemy’s within,’ she said. Of course she was bright. Jerome wouldn’t be able to stand a stupid girl, not even one this gorgeous. This was a problem Howard had never had in his own youth. It was only later that brains began to mean something to him. ‘What was wrong with what was on before?’ She stared at him. ‘Were you listening?’ ‘Kraftwerk . . . nothing wrong with Kraftwerk.’ ‘Two hours of Kraftwerk?’ ‘There’s other stuff, surely.’ ‘Have you seen this collection?’ ‘Well, yes – it’s mine.’ She laughed and shook her hair out. It was new hair, pulled back into a pony-tail and then falling down her back in a cascade of synthetic curls. She shifted her position to face him and then sat down on her heels again. The shiny purple material pulled tight  kipps and belsey across her chest. She seemed to have large nipples, like the old tenpence coins. Howard looked to the floor, feigning shame. ‘Like, how did you come by this one, exactly?’ She held up a CD of lyric-less electronica. ‘I bought it.’ ‘You bought it under duress. Gunman leading you to the counter.’ She mimed this. She had a dirty, cackling laugh, pitched low like her voice. Howard shrugged. He was annoyed by the lack of deference. ‘So we’re sticking with hectic?’ ‘ ’Fraid so, Professor.’ She winked. The eyelid came down in slow motion. The lashes were extravagant. Howard wondered whether she was drunk. ‘I’ll report back,’ he said, and turned to go. He almost tripped over a lifted ridge in the rug, but his second step righted him. ‘Whoa, there.’ ‘Whoa . . . there,’ repeated Howard. ‘Tell them to calm themselves. It’s only hip-hop. It won’t kill them.’ ‘Right,’ said Howard. ‘Yet,’ he heard her say as he left the room. the anatomy lesson To misstate, or even merely understate, the relation of the universities to beauty is one kind of error that can be made. A university is among the precious things that can be destroyed . Elaine Scarry  Summer left Wellington abruptly and slammed the door on the way out. The shudder sent the leaves to the ground all at once, and Zora Belsey had that strange, late-September feeling that somewhere in a small classroom with small chairs an elementary school teacher was waiting for her. It seemed wrong that she should be walking towards town without a shiny tie and a pleated skirt, without a selection of scented erasers. Time is not what it is but how it is felt, and Zora felt no different. Still living at home, still a virgin. And yet heading for her first day as a sophomore.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  He’d come from playing ball on Wellington’s big, free, college court (you just walked right in and acted liked you belonged there); midway through the game Levi had called him and said the party was tonight. Strange date to pick for a party, but then each to their own. The brother had sounded kind of funny, like he was pissed about something, but he was definitely real adamant about Carl coming down here. Sent him the address, like, three times. Carl could have gone back home to change first, but that would have been an epic round trip. He’d figured that on a hot night like this, no one would care. ‘Hope so. I’m here for the party.’ Howard watched him put both hands either side of his ball so that the slender, powerful contours of his arms were outlined in the security light. ‘Right . . . this is a private party.’ ‘Your man, Levi? I’m a friend of his.’ ‘I see . . . um, look, well, he’s . . .’ said Howard, turning and pretending to seek his son in the hallway. ‘He’s not about just now . . . But if you give me your name, I’ll tell him you stopped by . . .’ Howard jerked back as the boy bounced his ball once, hard on the doorstep. ‘Look,’ said Howard rudely, ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but Levi shouldn’t really have been inviting his . . . friends – this is really quite a small affair – ’ ‘Right. For poet poets.’ ‘Excuse me?’  On Beauty ‘Shit, I don’t know why I even came here – forget it,’ said Carl. He was off immediately down the drive and out the gate, a proud, quick, bouncy walk. ‘Wait – ’ called Howard after him. He was gone. Extraordinary, said Howard to himself, and closed the door. He went into the kitchen in search of wine. He heard the bell go again, and Monique answer, and people come in, and then more people right behind them. He poured his glass – the bell again – Erskine and his wife, Caroline. And then another crowd could be heard relieving themselves of their coats just as Howard thumped the cork back in the bottle. The house was filling up with people he was not related to by blood.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Something befitting a mother in a Betty Crocker ad, a Mother with a capital M.) The closet reeked of Joy and mothballs. There were cut velvet capes and feather boas and suede slacks and Aztec cotton caftans and Japanese silk kimonos and Irish tweed knickers, but absolutely nothing like an angora sweater set. “It’s just that I wish you’d wear something more plain,” I said sheepishly, “something people won’t stare at.” She glowered at me and drew herself up to her full height of five feet ten inches. “Are you ashamed of your own mother? Because if you are, Isadora, I feel sorry for you. I really do. There is nothing good about being ordinary. People don’t respect you for it. In the last analysis, people run after people who are different, who have confidence in their own taste, who don’t run with the herd. You’ll find out. There is nothing gained by giving in to the pressures of group vulgarity....” And we left for school in a cab trailing whiffs of Joy, and with Mexican fringes flapping, figuratively, in the wind. When I think of all the energy, all the misplaced artistic aggression which my mother channeled into her passion for odd clothes and new decorating schemes, I wish she had been a successful artist instead. Three generations of frustrated artists: my grandfather fucking models and cursing Picasso and stubbornly painting in the style of Rembrandt, my mother giving up poetry and painting for arty clothes and compulsive reupholstering, my sister Randy taking up pregnancy as if it were a new art form she had invented (and Lalah and Chloe following after her like disciples). There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but, having no outlet, it implodes in a great black fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul. Horrible as successful artists often are, there is nothing crueler or more vain than a failed artist. My grandfather, as I’ve said, used to paint over my mother’s canvases instead of going out to buy new canvas. She switched to poetry for a while, to escape him, but then met my father who was a song writer and stole her images to use in lyrics. Artists are horrible. “Never, never get involved with a man who wants to be an artist,” my mother used to say, who knew. Another interesting sidelight is that both my mother and my grandfather have a way of dismissing the efforts of anybody who seems to be having a good time working at something or having a moderate success at it.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  It was the first time Victoria had spoken. Zora was surprised by her voice, which, like her father’s, was loud and low and forthright, out of sync with her coquettish appearance. ‘Victoria is currently reading the French philosophers . . .’ said her father drily, and began to list contemptuously several of Zora’s own lodestars. ‘Right, right, I see . . .’ murmured Zora through this. She had drunk one glass of wine too many. One extra glass made her like this, nodding in agreement before a person’s point was finished,  On Beauty and always aiming for exactly this tone, that of the world-weary almost European bourgeois, for whom, at nineteen, all things were familiar. ‘. . . And I’m afraid it’s making her hate art in a dull way. But hopefully Cambridge will straighten her out.’ ‘ Dad .’ ‘And in the meantime she will audit some classes here – I’m sure you’ll run across each other, from time to time.’ The girls looked at one another without much enthusiasm at the prospect. ‘I don’t hate ‘‘art’’, anyway – I hate your art,’ countered Victoria. Her father patted her shoulder soothingly, a move she shrugged off as a much younger child might. ‘I guess we don’t really hang much stuff around the house,’ said Zora, looking around at the empty walls, wondering how she got on to the one topic she had wanted to avoid. ‘Dad’s more into conceptual art, of course. We have totally extreme taste in art – like most of the pieces we own, we can’t really show in the house. He’s into the whole evisceration theory, you know – like art should rip your fucking guts out.’ There was not time for the fallout from this. Zora felt a pair of hands on her shoulders. She couldn’t remember ever being more pleased to see her own mother. ‘Mom!’ ‘You been taking care of our guests?’ Kiki stretched out her invitingly podgy hand, glittering with bangles at the wrist. ‘It’s Monty, isn’t it? In fact, I think your wife was telling me it’s now Sir Monty . . .’ The smoothness with which she proceeded from here impressed her daughter. It turned out that some of those much maligned (by Zora) traditional Wellington interpersonal skills – avoidance, denial, politic speech and false courtesy – had their uses. Within five minutes everybody had a drink, everyone’s coat had been hung, and small talk was proceeding apace. ‘Mrs Kipps . . . Carlene, she’s not with you?’ said Kiki. ‘Mom, I’m just going to . . . excuse me, nice to meet you,’ said  kipps and belsey Zora, vaguely pointing across the room and then following her own finger. ‘She didn’t make it?’ repeated Kiki. Why did she feel so disappointed? ‘Oh, my wife very rarely attends these things,’ said Monty. ‘She doesn’t enjoy social conflagration.