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 Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT JAPAN, CHINA, BALI, AND LOVE’S EXECUTIONER A s I was checking into my Tokyo hotel in the fall of 1987, I encountered the English-speaking psychologist my Japanese hosts had flown in from New York to serve as translator. He was staying in the adjoining hotel room and would be available at all times for the entire week of my consultation. “Can you tell me exactly what I’ll be doing?” I asked. “The program director at the Hasegawa Hospital has told me nothing specific about your schedule this week.” “I wonder why. I’ve inquired but they’ve not replied: they seem almost to be deliberately secretive.” He simply looked at me, hunching his shoulders. The following morning when he and I arrived at the Hasegawa Hospital, I was greeted graciously with a huge bouquet of flowers by a large contingent of psychiatrists and administrators waiting inside the entrance. They said my first morning was a special occasion: the entire staff of the hospital would be in attendance to listen to my discussion of an inpatient therapy group meeting. They then guided me into an auditorium seating about four hundred people. Having commented on group meetings countless times, I felt relaxed and sat back anticipating a verbal description or a videotape of a group meeting. Instead I was stunned to see that the staff had elaborately prepared a dramatized re-creation of a group meeting. They had taped a group session held on one of the hospital wards the previous month, transcribed it, assigned roles to various staff members, and obviously spent a great many hours rehearsing the drama. It was a polished performance, but, alas, it portrayed one of the most dreadful group meetings I had ever seen. The leaders circled the group, offering advice and prescribing various exercises in turn to each member. Not once did a member of the group address another member—in my view, a clear example of how not to do group therapy. If it were only the taping of a real group session, I would have had no problem halting it and then describing alternative approaches. But how could I possibly stop a carefully choreographed production that must have required countless hours of rehearsal? It would have been a horrific insult, and so I sat and attended to the entire performance (with my translator whispering into my ear). Then, in my discussion, I gently, very gently, suggested some interpersonally based techniques. I tried my best to be a helpful teacher during my week in Tokyo, but I never felt I was being effective. I realized during that week that something deeply embedded in Japanese culture opposes Western psychotherapy, especially group psychotherapy: mainly, shame at revealing oneself or sharing one’s family secrets. I volunteered to lead a process group for therapists, but the idea was rejected, and, to be honest, I was relieved. I think there would have been such powerful silent resistance that we would have made little progress.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  " By my faith, it would be better sometimes to let some little defect appear," said Hircan, " than to hide it so carefully under the cloak of virtue." " It is true," said Ennasuite, " that a borrowed gar* ^.(j THE IIEPTAMERO!^ OF riTE [A^<77r/ §3. ment dishonours him who is obHged to return it, as much as it did him honour to wear it. There is a lady in the world whOj in her over-anxiety to hide a small fault, has :j committed a much greater one," " I think I know whom you mean," said Hircan ; j " but at least do not name her." ! "Oh ! you have my voice," said Geburon, "on condi- tion that when you have told the tale, you will tell us the names, which we will swear never to mention." " I promise it," said Ennasuite, " for there is noth- ing which may not be said decorously." NOVEL LIII. Madame de Neufchastel, by her dissimulation, forced the Prince of Belhoste to put her to such a proof as turned to her dis- honour. On one occasion, when King Francis I. went with but a small suite to spend some days at a very hand- some chateau, to enjoy the chase and other recreations, he was accompanied by the Prince of Belhoste, as much distinguished for every excellence of mind and person as any at court. He had married a wife who was not of a great family, but whom he loved as much as any hus- band can love a wife. He put such confidence in her that when he loved elsewhere he made no secret of it to her, well knowing that she had no other will than his. This lord conceived a strong regard for a widow named Madame de Neufchastel, who was considered the hand- somest woman of her time. If the prince was greatly Madame de Neufchastel. Photographed from Life. Copyright. 1902, by D. Trenor Sixth day.] QUEEN OF NA VARRE. 437 attached to this widow, the princess his wife was no less so, often invited her to table, and thought so highly of her that, far from being displeased that her husband loved her, she was delighted to see that he addressed his attentions to so worthy and virtuous an object. This friendship was of such long duration, and so perfect, that the prince busied himself with Madame de Neuf- chastel's affairs as much as with his own, and the prin- cess his wife did likewise.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  Is that what you have against us? That we're He smiled— smiled Hke someone who, faced with the total inadequacy of the opposition, is prepared to drop the argument. 'Peut-etre.* Tou people are impossible/ I said. 'You're the ' 50 James Baldwin ones who killed grandeur o£F, right here in this city, with paving stones. Talk about little fish— r He was grinning. I stopped. Don't stop/ he said, still grinning. 1 am lis- tening.' I finished my drink. Tou people dumped all this merde on us/ I said, sullenly, 'and now you say we're barbaric because we stink.' My suUenness delighted him. Tou're charm- ing/ he said. *Do you always speak like this?' TNfo/ I said, and looked down. 'Almost never.' There was something in him of the coquette. 1 am flattered then/ he said, with a sudden, disconcerting gravity, which contained, never- theless, the very faintest hint of mockery. 'And you/ I said, finally, liave you been here long? Do you like Paris?' He hesitated a moment and then grinned, suddenly looking rather boyish and shy. It's cold in the winter,' he said. 1 don't like that. And Parisians— I do not find them so very friendly, do you?' He did not wait for my answer. They are not like the people I knew when I was younger. In Italy we are friendly, we dance and sing and make love—but these people/ and he looked out over the bar, and then at me, and finished his Coca-Cola, 'these people, they are cold, I do not understand them.' 'But the French say/ I teased, 'that the Ital- ians are too fluid, too volatile, have no sense of measure— 'Measurer cried Giovanni, 'ah, these people — GIOVANNI'S ROOM 51 and their measure! They measure the gram, the centimeter, these people, and they keep piling all the little scraps they save, one on top of the other, year in and year out, all in the stocking or under the bed— and what do they get out of all this measure? A country which is falling to pieces, measure by measure, before their eyes. Measure. I do not like to offend your ears by saying all the things I am sure these people measure before they permit themselves any act whatever. May I offer you a drink now,' he asked suddenly, ^before the old man comes back? Who is he? Is he your uncle?* I did not know whether the word 'uncle' was being used euphemistically or not. I felt a very urgent desire to make my position clear but I did not know how to go about it. I laughed. 'No,' I said, lie is not my uncle. He is just somebody I know.'

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  GIOVANNrS ROOM 95 It is quite clear that she knows thisis not true. But she shrugs her shoulders again. Then she becomes, by the actof wrapping theshawl around her head, very formal,evena httleshy. Now that I seeshe is aboutto leave,I wish I could think of something to make herstay/ When she has gone back across theroad,the night will be blacker and longer thanever. I have something to say to her — to her? — but of course it will never be said.I feel thatI want to be forgiven;I want her to forgiveme. But Ido not know how to statemy crime. My crime, in some odd way,is in being a manandsheknows all about this already.It is terriblehownaked shemakesme feel, like a half -grown boy, naked beforehis mother. She puts out herhand. I takeit,awkwardly. 'Bon voyage,monsieur,1hopethat youwere happywhileyou werehere andthat,perhaps, one day, youwillvisit us again.'Sheissmiling andher eyesarekind but now thesmile is purely social, it isthe gracefultermination of a business deal. Thank you,' Isay. 'Perhaps I will beback nextyear.' She releases my handand wewalk to the door. *OhI' she says, atthe door, 'please do not wake me up in the morning. Putthekeys in my mail- box. I do not, any more, have any reason to get up soearly.' 'Surely.' I smile and open the door. 'Good- night, Madame.' 96 James Baldwin "Bonsoir, Monsieur. Adieu!" Shesteps out into the darkness. But there is ahght coming from myhouse and from her house across the road. The town lights glimmer beneath us and I hear, briefly, the sea again. She walks a little away from me, andturns. 'SouveneZ'Vous/ she tells me. 'One must make a httle prayer from time to time.' AndI close the door. She has made me realize that I have much to do before morning. I decide toclean thebath- room before I allow myself anotherdrink. And I begin to dothis, first scrubbing out the tub, then running waterinto the pailtomop the floor. The bathroom istiny andsquare, withone frosted window. It reminds meof thatclaustro- phobic roomin Paris.Giovannihad had great plans forremodelling the room and therewas a time,when he had actually begun todothis, whenwelivedwith plaster all over everything andbrickspiledonthe floor. We tookpackages of bricks out of thehouse at night and left them in thestreets. Isupposethey willcome for himearlyin the morning, perhaps just before dawn,so thatthe last thing Giovanni will eversee will bethat grey, lightless sky over Paris, beneath which we stumbled homeward togetherso many desperateand drunken mornings. PART TWO

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  ribaldries, their good-nature, their fellowship, the Ufe written on their hands and in their faces and in their eyes. They treated me as the son who has but lately been initiated into man- hood; but at the same time, with great distance, for I did not really belong to any of them; and they also sensed (or I felt they did) something else about me, something which it was no longer worth their while to pursue. This seemed to be in their eyes when I walked with Hella and GIOVANNI'S ROOM 89 they passed us on the road, saying, very respect- fully, Salut, Monsieur-dame, They might have been the sons of these women in black, come home after a lifetime of storming and conquer- ing the world, home to rest and be scolded and wait for death, home to those breasts, now dry, which had nourished them in their beginnings. Flakes of snow have drifted across the shawl which covers her head; and hang on her eye- lashes and on the wisps of black and white hair not covered by the shawl. She is very strong yet, though, now, a Uttle bent, a little breathless. 'Bonsoir, monsieur. Vous n'etes pas maladeV TMo/ I say, 1 have not been sick. Come in.' She comes in, closing the door behind her, and allowing the shawl to fall from her head. I still have my drink in my hand and she notices this, in silence. 'Eh Men," she says. Tant mieux. But we have not seen you for several days. You have been staying in the house?' And her eyes search my face. I am embarrassed and resentful; yet it is im- possible to rebuff something at once shrewd and gentle in her eyes and voice. Tes,' I say, 'the weather has been bad.' It is not the middle of August, to be sure,' says she, *but you do not have the air of an in- valid. It is not good to sit in the house alone.' 1 am leaving in the morning,' I say, desper- ately. 'Did you want to take the inventory?' Tes,' she says, and produces from one of her 90 James Baldwin pockets the list of household goods I signed upon arrival. It will not be long. Let me start from the back/ We start toward the kitchen. On the way I put my drink down on the night table in my bedroom. It doesn't matter to me if you drink/ she says, not turning around. But I leave my drink behind anyway. We walk into the kitchen. The kitchen is suspiciously clean and neat. Where have you been eating?' she asks, sharply. They tell me at the tabax) you have not been seen for days. Have you been going to town?'

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  As the Fourth Gospel tells of the spear thrust into the side of Jesus and the issue of the water and the blood, there comes the comment: `He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth' (19:35). At the end of the gospel comes the statement that it was the beloved disciple who testified of these things, `and we know that his testimony is true' (21:24). Here we are faced with rather a strange thing. In the Fourth Gospel, John is never mentioned; but the beloved disciple is, and in addition there is a witness of some kind to the whole story. It has never really been doubted in tradition that the beloved disciple is John. A few have tried to identify him with Lazarus, for Jesus is said to have loved Lazarus (John 1': 3, 5); or with the rich young ruler, of whom it is said that Jesus, looking on him, loved him (Mark 10:21). But although the gospel never says so in so many words, tradition has always identified the beloved disciple with John, and there is no real need to doubt the identification. But a very real point arises - suppose John himself actually did the writing of the gospel, would he really be likely to speak of himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved? Would he really be likely to pick himself out like this, and, as it were, to say: `I was his favourite; he loved me best of all'? It is surely very unlikely that John would confer such a title on himself. If it was conferred by others, it is a lovely title; if it was conferred by himself, it comes perilously near to an almost incredible self-conceit. Is there any way, then, that the gospel can be John's own eyewitness story, and yet at the same time have been actually written down by someone else? The Production of the Church In our search for the truth, we begin by noting one of the outstanding and unique features of the Fourth Gospel. The most remarkable thing about it is the long speeches of Jesus. Often they are whole chapters long, and are entirely unlike the way in which Jesus is portrayed as speaking in the other three gospels. The Fourth Gospel, as we have seen, was written about the year AD Too, that is, about seventy years after the crucifixion. Is it possible after these seventy years to look on these speeches as word-for-word reports of what Jesus said? Or can we explain them in some way that is perhaps even greater than that? We must begin by holding in our minds the fact of the speeches and the question which they inevitably raise.

• From Another Country (1962)

  She walked away and another, older and plainer girl, who was also, however, very carefully dressed and made-up, came over to Cass, wearing a very different smile: a bawdy, amused smile, full of complicity and contempt. Cass felt herself blushing. The girl pulled out boxes of scarves. They all seemed sleazy and expensive, but she was in no position to complain. She took one, paid for it, tied it around her head, and left. Her knees were shaking. She managed to find a cab at the corner and, after fighting a small duel with herself, gave the driver the address of the chapel: she had really wanted to tell him to take her home. The chapel was small and there were not many people in it. She entered as silently as she could, but heads turned at her entrance. An elderly man, probably an usher, hurried silently toward her, but she sat down in the first seat she saw, in the very last row, near the door. Vivaldo was sitting further up, near the middle; the only other white person, as far as she could tell, in the place. People sat rather scattered from each other—in the same way, perhaps, that the elements of Rufus’ life had been scattered—and this made the chapel seem emptier than it was. There were many young people there, Rufus’ friends, she supposed, the boys and girls who had grown up with him. In the front row sat six figures, the family: no amount of mourning could make Ida’s proud back less proud. Just before the family, just below the altar, stood the bier, dominating the place, mother of pearl, closed. Someone had been speaking as she came in, who now sat down. He was very young and he was dressed in the black robes of an evangelist. She wondered if he could be an evangelist, he did not seem to be much more than a boy. But he moved with great authority, the authority indeed of someone who has found his place and made his peace with it. As he sat down, a very thin girl walked up the aisle and the boy in black robes moved to the piano at the side of the altar.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  To my surprise the court was half full. Judge Stevens even was present, whom I had never seen in court before. About eleven the Judge informed the audience that I had passed a satisfactory examination, had taken out my first papers in due form and unless some lawyer wished first to put questions to me to test my capacity, he proposed to call me within the Bar. To my astonishment Judge Stevens rose: “With the permission of the Court”, he said, “I’d like to put some questions to this candidate who comes to us with high University commendation.” (No one had heard of my expulsion though he knew of it.) He then began a series of questions which soon plumbed the depths of my abysmal ignorance. I didn’t know what an action of account was at old English common law: I don’t know now, nor do I want to. I had read Blackstone carefully and a book on Roman law; Chitty on Evidence, too, and someone on Contracts—half a dozen books and that was all. For the first two hours Judge Stevens just exposed my ignorances: it was a very warm morning and my conceit was rubbed raw when Judge Bassett proposed an adjournment for dinner. Stevens consented and we all rose. To my surprise Barker and Hutchings and half a dozen other lawyers came round to encourage me: “Stevens is just showing off”, said Hutchings, “I myself couldn’t have answered half his questions!” Even Judge Bassett sent for me to his room and practically told me I had nothing to fear, so I returned at two o’clock, resolved to do my best and at all costs to keep smiling. The examination continued in a crowded court till four o’clock and then Judge Stevens sat down. I had done better in this session; but my examiner had caught me in a trap on a moot point in the law of evidence and I could have kicked myself. But Hutchings rose as the senior of my two examiners who had been appointed by the Court, and said simply that now he repeated the opinion he had already had the honor to convey to Judge Bassett, that I was a fit and proper person to practice law in the State of Kansas. “Judge Stevens”, he added, “has shown us how widely read he is in English common law; but some of us knew that before and in any case his erudition should not be made a purgatory to candidates: it looks”, he went on, “as if he wished to punish Mr. Harris for his superiority to all his classmates in the University. “Impartial persons in this audience will admit”, he concluded, “that Mr. Harris has come brilliantly out of an exceedingly severe test and I have the pleasant task of proposing, your Honor, that he now be admitted within the Bar, though he may not be able to practice till he becomes a full citizen two years hence.”

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  gone to her window to see what sort of weather it was. The window looked right over the upholsterer's garden, and the woman saw the game of the Innocents that was going on there, and was so shocked that she resolved to inform her good gossip, that she might no longer be the dupe of such a wicked husband and vicious servant. After the upholsterer had finished his fine game, he looked round to see if he had been noticed by anyone, and to his great vexation he saw his neighbour at her window. But as he knew how to give all sorts of colours to his tapestry, so he thought he should be able to put such a colour on this fact that his neighbour would be no less deceived than his wife. No sooner had he got to bed again than he made his wife get up in her shift, and took her to the very spot where he had been toying with the servant. He frolicked awhile with her at snow- ball throwing, as he had done with the servant ; next he gave her the Innocents as he had done to the other ; and then they went back to bed. The next time the upholsterer's wife went to mass, her neighbour and good friend failed not to meet her there, and entreated her, with very great earnestness, but without saying more, to discharge her servant, who was a good-for-nothing, dangerous creature. The up- holsterer's wife said she would do no such thing, un- less the other told her why she thought the wench so good-for-nothing and dangerous. The neighbour, thus pressed, stated at last that she had seen her one morn- ing in the garden with her husband. " It was I, gossip dearie," replied the good woman, laughing. " What ! " cried the neighbour. " Stripped to youf shift in the garden at four o'clock in the morning! " Fifth day.\ QUEEN OF NA FAR RE. 395 " Yes, gossip," said the upholsterer's wife. " In good sooth, it was myself." " They pelted each with snow," continued the neigh, hour, " and he played with her teaties and all that sort of thing as familiarly as you please." " Yes, gossip, it was myself." "But, gossip," rejoined the neighbour, "I saw them do upon the snow a thing that seems to me neither decent nor proper." " That may be, gossip dearie," replied the uphol- sterer's wife ; " but as I told you before and tell you again, it was myself and no one else that did all this ; for my good husband and I divert ourselves in that way together. Don't be shocked, pray. You know that we are bound to please our husbands,"

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  After making a light supper, the secretary retired in great dudgeon, and seeing that Bernard du Ha had not kept his word, he did not think himself bound by his own. Accordingly he went to the lieutenant criminel, intending co say everything bad he could of the merchant ; but the latter had been beforehand with him, and had already related the adventure to the lieutenant, who laughed in the secretary's face, and told him that he had learned to his cost what it was to play tricks on Gascons. And so all he got was the shame of having been the dupe of his own cunning. The same thing happens to many, who, wishing to deceive, find themselves deceived. Therefore it is best to do to others only as we would be done by. " I assure you," said Geburon, " that I have often witnessed such occurrences ; and those who pass for vil- lage boobies often overreach persons who think them- selves very clevef ; for there is no greater ninny than 0 2^8 THE HEFTAMERON OF THE \Novel 2<^ man who thinks himself cunning, nor any one wiser than he who knows that he is not so.' " He who knows his own incapacity, knows something, after all," said Parlamente. " For fear time should fail us, I give my voice to No- merfide," said Simontault. " I am sure she will not delay us long by her rhetoric." " You shall have from me the satisfaction you de- sire," said Nomerfide. " I am not surprised, ladies, if love inspires princes and well-educated persons with the art of extricating themselves from danger. In fact, they are brought up in intercourse with so many persons of knowledge, that it would be very surprising if they were ignorant of anything. But address in love appears with much greater lustre when those who display it are per- sons of less intelligence. I shall, then, relate to you a piece of cleverness exhibited by a priest through the prompting of love alone ; for he was so ignorant in all other things, that he could hardly say mass." NOVEL XXIX. A villager, whose wife intrigued with the parish priest, suffered himself to be easily deceived. There was at Carrelles, a village in the county of Maine, a rich husbandman, who in his old age married a handsome young wife, by whom he had no children ; but she consoled herself for this disappointment with several friends. When gentlemen and persons of mark failed her, she reverted to her last resource, which was the church, and chose for the accomplice of her sin him Third day\ Q UEEN OF NA VA RRE. 279

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  In the household of Madame de La Tremouille there was a lady named Roncex, who one day, when her mis- tress had gone to the Cordeliers, had a pressing need to go to the place to which she could not send her waiting- woman. She took with her a girl named La Mothe to keep her company, but from bashfulness and desire of secrecy left her in the chamber, and entered alone into a very dark privy, which was common to all the Cordeliers ; and they had rendered such good account there of all their victuals that the whole place, the seat and the floor, was covered with must of Bacchus and Ceres, passed through thebellies of the Cordeliers. The poor woman, who was so hard pressed that she had scarcely time to tuck up her skirts to sit down, unluckily seated herself on the filthiest spot in the whole place, and there she stuck as if she had been glued to it, and her poor buttocks, garments, and feet were so bewrayed that she durst not step or turn any way for fear of making herself still worse. Thereupon she began to cry out, as loud as she could, " La Mothe, my dear, I am undone and dishonoured ! " The poor girl, who had heard sundry tales of the wickedness of the Cordeliers, suspecting that some of them were hid there, and wanted to violate the lady, ran as fast as she could, saying to everyone she met, " Come and help Madame de Roncex ; the Cordeliers want to ravish her in that privy." They ran to the place with all speed, and found the poor dame De Roncex crying for help, desiring to have some woman who could clean her, and io8 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE \N(wd n. with her hinder parts all uncovered, for she was afraid to touch them with her garments lest she should befoul them. Rushing in at her cries, the gentlemen beheld that fine spectacle, and found no Cordelier molesting her, but only the ordure with which all her posteriors were glued. This did not pass without laughter on their part or great shame on hers ; for, instead of having women to clean her, she was waited on by men, who saw her naked in the worst condition in which a woman could show herself. Thereupon she dropped her clothes, and so dirtied what was still clean, forgetting the filth she was in for the shame she felt at seeing men. When she was out of that nasty place, it was necessary to strip her stark naked, and change all her clothes before she left the monastery. She was very much disposed to re- sent the help which La Mothe had brought her, but understanding that the poor girl believed her case was still worse, she forgot her anger and laughed like the rest.

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post, a southerner, saw confusion in figurative language, writing that all one had to do was to replace the sax with a banjo and Clinton became a pastiche of “white-trash tropes.” Journalist Joe Klein pushed the trope further in Primary Colors (1996), his thinly veiled novel about Clinton, who is called Jack Stanton in the book. Stanton violates the sexual taboo, sleeping with an underage black female, fathering an illegitimate child. In the Mike Nichols film based on Klein’s book, President Bubba was played by the unpolished John Travolta, instead of someone like the squeaky clean Tom Hanks. Was this fellow Stanton a symbol of blackness, or was he trailer trash? 33 • • • Clinton’s embarrassing second term evidently wasn’t read as a cautionary tale among Republicans, who plunged ahead with their own (effectively) white trash candidate in 2008, Alaska governor Sarah Palin. The devastatingly direct Frank Rich of the New York Times referred to the Republican ticket as “Palin and McCain’s Shotgun Marriage.” Did the venerable John McCain of Arizona, ordinarily a savvy politician, have a lapse in judgment here? Slate produced an online video of Palin’s hometown of Wasilla, painting it as a forgettable wasteland, a place “to get gas and pee” before getting back on the road. Wasilla was elsewhere described as the “punch line for most redneck jokes told in Anchorage.” Erica Jong wrote in the Huffington Post, “White trash America certainly has allure for voters,” which explained the photoshopped image of Palin that appeared on the Internet days after her nomination. In a stars-and- stripes bikini, holding an assault rifle and wearing her signature black-rimmed glasses, Palin was one-half hockey mom and one-half hot militia babe. 34 News of the pregnancy of Palin’s teenage daughter Bristol led to a shotgun engagement to Levi Johnston, which was arranged in time for the Republican National Convention. Us Weekly featured Palin on the cover, with the provocative title, “Babies, Lies, and Scandal.” Maureen Dowd compared Palin to Eliza Doolittle of My Fair Lady fame, in getting prepped for her first off-script television interview. Could there be any more direct allusion to her questionable class origins? The Palin melodrama led one journalist to associate the Alaska clan with the plot of a Lifetime television feature. The joke was proven true to life two years later, when the backwoods candidate gave up her gig as governor and starred in her own reality TV show, titled Sarah Palin’s Alaska. 35 Palin’s candidacy was a remarkable event on all accounts. She was only the second female of any kind and the first female redneck to appear on a presidential ticket.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  The pair having entered a cabaret, the advocate said to the servant girl, " Make us a good fire, and give us some good bread and good wine, and something nice with it ; " for he fancied he had wherewithal to pay. They were served to their liking ; but as they grew warm with eating and drinking, the sugar-loaf, which the advocate carried in his bosom, began to thaw, and gave out such a stench that, thinking it came from elsewhere, he said to the servant, " You have the most fetid and stinking house I ever was in." La Tireliere, who had his share of this fine perfume, said the same thing. The servant, incensed at thus being accused of sluttishness, replied, " By St. Peter, my masters, the house is so neat and clean that there is no nastiness in it but what you have brought in with you.'' The two friends rose from table, spitting and holding their noses, and stood near the fire ; and pres- ently, while warming himself, the advocate took his handkerchief out of his bosom, disgustingly smeared with the syrup of the melted sugar-loaf, which he pro- duced with it. You may well believe that the servant made fine fun of them after the insult they had offered her, and that the advocate was sorely confounded at find- ing himself the dupe of an apothecary's man, whom he had always made the butt of his wit. The servant, instead of taking pity on them, made them pay as hand- somely as they had been served ; and said that no doubt they must be greatly intoxicated, since they had drunk both by nose and mouth. The poor wights slunk away with their shame and their cost. They were no sooner in the street than they saw the apothecary's man going about and asking everyone if 28 434 ^■^^ HEPTAMERON OF THE \^'<n'el $2, diey had seen a loaf of sugar wrapped up in paper. They tried to avoid him, but he shouted to the advocate, " Monsieur, if you have my loaf of sugar I beg you will give it back to me ; for it is a double sin to rob a poor servant." His shouts brought many people to the spot out of curiosity to witness the dispute ; and the real state of the case was so well verified that the apothecary's man was as glad to have been robbed as the others were vexed at having committed such a nasty theft. They comforted themselves, however, with the hope of one day giving him tit for tat.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  My mother’s brother Vasiliy was in the diplomatic service, which he treated, however, far more lightly than my uncle Konstantin did. For Vasiliy Ivanovich it was not a career, but a more or less plausible setting. French and Italian friends, being unable to pronounce his long Russian surname, had boiled it down to “Ruka” (with the accent on the last syllable), and this suited him far better than did his Christian name. Uncle Ruka appeared to me in my childhood to belong to a world of toys, gay picture books, and cherry trees laden with glossy black fruit: he had glass-housed a whole orchard in a corner of his country estate, which was separated from ours by the winding river. During the summer, almost every day at lunchtime his carriage might be seen crossing the bridge and then speeding toward our house along a hedge of young firs. When I was eight or nine, he would invariably take me upon his knee after lunch and (while two young footmen were clearing the table in the empty dining room) fondle me, with crooning sounds and fancy endearments, and I felt embarrassed for my uncle by the presence of the servants and relieved when my father called him from the veranda: “Basile, on vous attend.” Once, when I went to meet him at the station (I must have been eleven or twelve then) and watched him descend from the long international sleeping car, he gave me one look and said: “How sallow and plain [jaune et laid] you have become, my poor boy.” On my fifteenth nameday, he took me aside and in his brusque, precise and somewhat old-fashioned French informed me that he was making me his heir. “And now you may go,” he added, “l’audience est finie. Je n’ai plus rien à vous dire.”

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  On the other hand, if I let my mother know that I knew what was happening and what these medical safaris were all about, I would have to answer her questions about how and wherefore I knew, since she hadn’t told me, divulging in the process the whole horrible and self-incriminating story of forbidden books and forged library notes and rooftops and stairwell conversations. A year after the rooftop incident, we moved farther uptown and I was transferred to a different school. The kids there seemed to know a lot more about sex than at St. Mark’s, and in the eighth grade, I had stolen money and bought Adeline a pack of cigarettes and she had confirmed my bookish suspicions about how babies were made. My response to her graphic descriptions had been to think to myself—there obviously must be another way that Adeline doesn’t know about, because my parents have children and I know they never did anything like that. But the basic principles were all there, and sure enough they were the same as I had gathered from The Young People’s Family Book. So in my fourteenth summer, on examining table after examining table, I kept my legs open and my mouth shut, and when I saw blood on my pants one hot July afternoon, I rinsed them out secretly in the bathroom and put them back on wet because I didn’t know how to break the news to my mother that both her worries and mine were finally over. (All this time I had at least understood that having your period was a sign you were not pregnant.) What then happened felt like a piece of an old and elaborate dance between my mother and me. She discovers finally, through a stain on the toilet seat left there on purpose by me as a mute announcement, what has taken place; she scolds, “Why didn’t you tell me about all of this, now? It’s nothing to get upset over, now you are a woman, not a child any more. Now you go over to the drugstore and ask the man for . . .” I was just relieved the whole damn thing was over with. It’s difficult to talk about double messages without having a twin tongue. But meanwhile all these nightmarish evocations and restrictions were being verbalized by my mother: “Now this means from now on you better watch your step and not be so friendly with every Tom Dick and Harry . . .” (which must have meant my staying late after school to talk with my girlfriends, because I did not even know any boys); and, “Now remember too, don’t leave your soiled napkins wrapped up in newspaper hanging around on the bathroom floor where your father has to see them, not that it’s anything shameful but all the same remember . . .” Along with all of these admonitions, there was something else coming from my mother that I almost could not define.

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  Convention Script,” New York Times, September 2, 2008; Stephanie Clifford, “Readers See Bias in Us Weekly’s Take on Sarah Palin,” New York Times, September 8, 2008; Maureen Dowd, “My Fair Veep,” New York Times, September 10, 2008; David Firestone, “Sarah Palin’s Alaskan Rhapsody,” New York Times, December 9, 2010. 36. It was discovered that Palin had spent “tens of thousands” more than the disclosed $150,000 and that $20,000 to $40,000 had been used for her husband’s clothes; see “Hackers and Spending Sprees,” Newsweek (November 5, 2008); also see Darling, “O Sister! Sarah Palin,” 24. 37. Sam Tanenhaus, “North Star: Populism, Politics, and the Power of Sarah Palin,” New Yorker (December 7, 2009); 84–89, esp. 89. 38. Maureen Dowd, “White Man’s Last Stand,” New York Times, July 15, 2009; on Gretchen Wilson, see Nadine Rubbs, “‘Redneck Woman’ and the Gendered Poetics of Class Rebellion,” Southern Cultures 17, no. 4 (Winter 2011): 44–77, esp. 56, and endnote 24 on page 69. For Palin as a hillbilly and prima donna, see Gail Collins, “A Political Manners Manual,” New York Times, November 8, 2008. 39. Justin Elliot, “Trig Trutherism: The Definitive Debunker: Salon Investigates the Conspiracy Theory: Is Sarah Palin Really the Mother of Trig Palin?,” Salon.com, April 22, 2011. 40. On her accent, see Jesse Sheildlower, “What Kind of Accent Does Sarah Palin Have? Wasillan, Actually,” Slate.com, October 1, 2008; Dick Cavett, “The Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla,” New York Times, opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com, November 14, 2008. 41. William Egginton, “The Best or Worst of Our Nature: Reality TV and the Desire for Limitless Change,” Configurations 15, no. 2 (Spring 2007): 177–91, esp. 191; David Carr, “Casting Reality TV, No Longer a Hunch, Becomes a Science,” New York Times, March 28, 2004; Jim Ruttenberg, “Reality TV’s Ultimate Jungle: Simulated Presidential Politics,” New York Times, January 9, 2004; also see Brenda R. Weber, Makeover TV: Selfhood, Citizenship, and Celebrity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 143–44. 42. Duck Dynasty was simply a modified version of The Real Beverly Hillbillies, a reality TV show that was canceled because of protests; see Appalachian Journal 31, no. 3/4 (Spring/Summer 2004): 438; Jonah Goldberg, “‘Duck Dynasty,’ Unreal Outrage,” New York Post, December 20, 2013. 43. Mary Elizabeth Williams, “What Will It Take for TLC to Dump ‘Honey Boo Boo’?,” Salon.com, October 23, 2014; Jenny Kutner, “‘Honey Boo Boo’ Star Mama June Reveals Father of Two Daughters Is a Sex Offender,” Salon.com, November 13, 2014. 44. Thomas Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2005), 1, 5–9, 14–15, 29, 51; also see James B. Stewart, “Thomas Sowell’s Quixotic Quest to Denigrate African American Culture: A Critique,” Journal of African American History 91, no. 4 (Autumn 2006): 459–66. Grady McWhiney, Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways of the Old South (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1988).

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  We again met in the nineteen-thirties, and were on quite amiable terms in 1938–1940, in Paris. He often dropped in for a chat, rue Boileau where I lodged in two shabby rooms with you and our child, but it so happened (he had been away for a while) that he learned of our departure to America only after we had left. My bleakest recollections are associated with Paris, and the relief of leaving it was overwhelming, but I am sorry he had to stutter his astonishment to an indifferent concierge. I know little of his life during the war. At one time he was employed as translator at an office in Berlin. A frank and fearless man, he criticized the regime in front of colleagues, who denounced him. He was arrested, accused of being a “British spy” and sent to a Hamburg concentration camp where he died of inanition, on January 10, 1945. It is one of those lives that hopelessly claim a belated something—compassion, understanding, no matter what—which the mere recognition of such a want can neither replace nor redeem. 3The beginning of my first term in Cambridge was inauspicious. Late in the afternoon of a dull and damp October day, with the sense of indulging in some weird theatricals, I put on my newly acquired, dark-bluish academic gown and black square cap for my first formal visit to E. Harrison, my college tutor. I went up a flight of stairs and knocked on a massive door that stood slightly ajar. “Come in,” said a distant voice with hollow abruptness. I crossed a waiting room of sorts and entered my tutor’s study. The brown dusk had forestalled me. There was no light in the study save for the glow of a large fireplace near which a dim figure sat in a dimmer chair. I advanced saying: “My name is—” and stepped into the tea things that stood on the rug beside Mr. Harrison’s low wicker armchair. With a grunt, he bent sideways from his seat to right the pot, and then scooped up and dumped back into it the wet black mess of tea leaves it had disgorged. Thus the college period of my life began on a note of embarrassment, a note that was to recur rather persistently during my three years of residence.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  The desire to have Jessie completely to myself again, was one reason why I gave up the job at the Bridge as soon as the month was up. I had over a hundred and fifty dollars clear in my pocket and I had noticed that though the pains in my ears soon ceased, I had become a little hard of hearing. The first morning I wanted to lie in bed and have one great lazy day, but I awoke at five as usual, and it suddenly occurred to me that I should go down and see Allison, the bootblack, again. I found him busier than ever and I had soon stripped off and set to work. About ten o’clock we had nothing to do, so I told him of my work under water; he boasted that his “stand” brought him in about four dollars a day: there wasn’t much to do in the afternoons, but from six to seven again he usually earned something more. I was welcome to come and work with him any morning on halves and I thought it well to accept his offer. That very afternoon I took Jessie for a walk in the Park, but when we had found a seat in the shade she confessed that her sister thought we ought to be engaged, and as soon as I got steady work we could be married: “A woman wants a home of her own”, she said, “and oh, Boy! I’d make it so pretty! and we’d go out to the theatres and have a gay old time.” I was horrified; married at my age, no, Sir! It seemed absurd to me and with Jessie. I saw she was pretty and bright, but she knew nothing, never had read anything: I couldn’t marry her. The idea made me snort. But she was dead in earnest, so I agreed to all she said, only insisting that first I must got regular work; I’d buy the engagement ring too: but first we must have another great evening. Jessie didn’t know whether her sister would go out, but she’d see. Meanwhile we kissed and kissed and her lips grew hot and my hand got busy, and then we walked again, on and on, and finally went into the great Museum. Here I got one of the shocks of my life. Suddenly Jessie stopped before a picture representing, I think, Paris choosing the Goddess of Beauty, Paris being an ideal figure of youthful manhood. “Oh, isn’t he splendid!” cried Jessie, “just like you”, she added with feminine wit, pouting out her lips as if to kiss me. If she hadn’t made the personal application, I might not have realized the absurdity of the comparison. But Paris had long, slim legs while mine were short and stout, and his face was oval and his nose straight, while my nose jutted out with broad, scenting nostrils.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  Fire-hazard considerations had led one to select for the show an obsolete nursery in a corner of which stood a columnar water heater, painted a bronzy brown, and a webfooted bath, which, for the occasion, had been chastely sheeted. The close-drawn window curtains prevented one from seeing the yard below, the stacks of birch logs, and the yellow walls of the gloomy annex containing the stables (part of which had been converted into a two-car garage). Despite the ejection of an ancient wardrobe and a couple of trunks, this depressing back room, with the magic lantern installed at one end and transverse rows of chairs, hassocks, and settees arranged for a score of spectators (including Lenski’s fiancée, and three or four governesses, not counting our own Mademoiselle and Miss Greenwood), looked jammed and felt stuffy. On my left, one of my most fidgety girl cousins, a nebulous little blonde of eleven or so with long, Alice-in-Wonderland hair and a shell-pink complexion, sat so close to me that I felt the slender bone of her hip move against mine every time she shifted in her seat, fingering her locket, or passing the back of her hand between her perfumed hair and the nape of her neck, or knocking her knees together under the rustly silk of her yellow slip, which shone through the lace of her frock. On my right, I had the son of my father’s Polish valet, an absolutely motionless boy in a sailor suit; he bore a striking resemblance to the Tsarevich, and by a still more striking coincidence suffered from the same tragic disease—hemophilia—so several times a year a Court carriage would bring a famous physician to our house and wait and wait in the slow, slanting snow, and if one chose the largest of those grayish flakes and kept one’s eye upon it as it came down (past the oriel casement through which one peered), one could make out its rather coarse, irregular shape and also its oscillation in flight, making one feel dull and dizzy, dizzy and dull. The lights went out. Lenski launched upon the opening lines: The time—not many years ago; The place—a point where meet and flow In sisterly embrace the fair Aragva and Kurah; right there A monastery stood. The monastery, with its two rivers, dutifully appeared and stayed on, in a lurid trance (if only one swift could have swept over it!), for about two hundred lines, when it was replaced by a Georgian maiden of sorts carrying a pitcher. When the operator withdrew a slide, the picture was whisked off the screen with a peculiar flick, magnification affecting not only the scene displayed, but also the speed of its removal. Otherwise, there was little magic. We were shown conventional peaks instead of Lermontov’s romantic mountains, which Rose in the glory of the dawn Like smoking altars, and while the young monk was telling a fellow recluse of his struggle with a leopard—

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  In this way, it was revealed that Joseph was to take Mary as his wife. Joseph at first was very unwilling. `I have sons,' he said, `and I am an old man, but she is a girl: lest I become a laughingstock to the children of Israel' (Protevangelium 9: 1). But in the end he took her in obedience to the will of God, and in due course Jesus was born. The material of the Protevangelium is, of course, simply legend, but it shows that by the middle of the second century the theory which was one day to bear the name of Epiphanius was widely held. There is no direct evidence for this theory whatsoever, and all the support produced in its favour is of an indirect character. (1) It is asked: would Jesus have handed the care of his mother to John, if she had other sons besides himself (John 19:26-7)? The answer is that, as far as we know, Jesus' family were quite out of sympathy with him, and it would hardly have been possible to hand the care of his mother to them. (2) It is argued that the behaviour of Jesus' `brothers' towards him is that of elder brothers towards a younger brother. They questioned his sanity and wanted to take him home (Mark 3:2I, 3:31-5); they were actively hostile to him (John 7:1-5). But it could just as well be argued that their behaviour was due to the simple fact that they found him an embarrassment to the family in a way that had nothing to do with age. (3) It is argued that Joseph must have been older than Mary because he vanishes completely from the gospel story and, therefore, probably had died before Jesus' public ministry began. The mother of Jesus was at the wedding feast at Cana of Galilee, but there is no mention of Joseph (John 2:I ). Jesus is called, at least sometimes, the son of Mary, and the implication is that Joseph was dead and Mary was a widow (Mark 6:3; but cf. Matthew 13:55). Further, Jesus' long stay in Nazareth until he was thirty years old (Luke 3:23) is most easily explained by the assumption that Joseph had died and that Jesus had become responsible for the support of the household. But the fact that Joseph was older than Mary does not by any means prove that he had no other children by her, and the fact that Jesus stayed in Nazareth as the village carpenter in order to support the family would much more naturally indicate that he was the eldest, and not the youngest, son.