Excitement

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 Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  a trilogy of what he usefully terms ‘the masters of suspicion’, the predecessor being Karl Marx and the successor Sigmund Freud: those who gathered together the two previous centuries of questions posed to Christian authority, and persuaded much of the Western world that there was no authority there at all. Behind all three lies Ludwig Feuerbach, who first voiced the idea that God might be part of humanity’s creation, rather than vice versa.109 There is thus a deep contradiction in the period. The nineteenth century has usually been seen as principally the time of these ‘masters of suspicion’ in Europe: a century of disenchantment with Christianity and the supernatural in an age of science, a period of ebbing of European faith. Yet it was crowded with visionaries both Catholic and Protestant, full of excitement about the End Times, noisy with the sound of building for new churches and monasteries and the voices of furious quarrels about the best way forward for Christian renewal. It saw the beginning of a move towards virtual extinction for ancient non-Chalcedonian Christian Churches in their homelands, and the posing of profound questions for the authority of Western Christianity. Yet as we will discover, it was also the period in which the Christian faith triumphantly spread its reach into every continent with a vigour never before witnessed and in which Christian governments came to support one of the most profound changes in Christian morality since the Crusades first sanctified full-scale warfare in the name of Christ.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  He was trying to lull us into complacency, but it would not work. Tonight, we were invincible. Exhausted, we stopped with three strings left and hoped we’d given the Colonel enough time. We ran for a few more minutes, until we found the bank of the creek. It was so dark and so still that the tiny stream of water seemed to roar, but I could still hear our hard, fast breaths as we collapsed on wet clay and pebbles beside the creek. Only when we stopped did I look at Takumi. His face and arms were scratched, the fox head now directly over his left ear. Looking at my own arms, I noticed blood dripping from the deeper cuts. There were, I remembered now, some wicked briar patches, but I was feeling no pain. Takumi picked thorns out of his leg. “The fox is fucking tired,” he said, and laughed. “The swan bit my ass,” I told him. “I saw.” He smiled. “Is it bleeding?” I reached my hand into my pants to check. No blood, so I smoked to celebrate. “Mission accomplished,” I said. “Pudge, my friend, we are indefuckingstructible.” We couldn’t figure out where we were, because the creek doubles back so many times through the campus, so we followed the creek for about ten minutes, figuring we walked half as fast as we ran, and then turned left. “Left, you think?” Takumi asked. “I’m pretty lost,” I said. “The fox is pointing left. So left.” And, sure enough, the fox took us right back to the barn. “You’re okay!” Lara said as we walked up. “I was worried. I saw the Eagle run out of hees house. He was wearing pajamas. He sure looked mad.” I said, “Well, if he was mad then, I wouldn’t want to see him now.” “What took you so long?” she asked me. “We took the long way home,” Takumi said. “Plus Pudge is walking like an old lady with hemorrhoids ’cause the swan bit him on the ass. Where’s Alaska and the Colonel?” “I don’t know,” Lara said, and then we heard footsteps in the distance, mutters and cracking branches. In a flash, Takumi grabbed our sleeping bags and backpacks and hid them behind bales of hay. The three of us ran through the back of the barn and into the waist-high grass, and lay down. He tracked us back to the barn, I thought. We fucked everything up. But then I heard the Colonel’s voice, distinct and very annoyed, saying, “Because it narrows the list of possible suspects by twenty-three! Why couldn’t you just follow the plan? Christ, where is everybody?” We walked back to the barn, a bit sheepish from having overreacted. The Colonel sat down on a bale of hay, his elbows on his knees, his head bowed, his palms against his forehead.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  rocket designer, Wernher von Braun, appeared on a nationally televised Disney special, Man in Space. Von Braun showed viewers a prototype space suit like the one Americans would wear “when we make the trip to the Moon,” and he revealed his model for a four-stage orbital rocket ship —about the coolest thing any of the 42 million people watching the program had ever seen. For the next two years, Lovell flew jets at sea and trained pilots while Marilyn raised the children in California. In 1957, he applied to the test pilot school at the Naval Air Test Center at Patuxent River, Maryland. The job of testing experimental aircraft built with the most advanced technology seemed a natural fit. Marilyn backed his decision and packed the Lovells to go. The training program at Pax River lasted for six months. At graduation, Lovell ranked first in his class. His gift from Marilyn was a new daughter, Susan, making them a family of five. Soon after, in 1958, Lovell and some other pilots at Pax River received a telex from a new government agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, ordering them to a meeting in Washington, D.C. They were to dress in civilian clothes and not tell anyone, including family, where they were going, or even that they were going at all. When he arrived, Lovell joined dozens of other military pilots for a briefing in a government office. Robert Gilruth, head of NASA’s Space Task Group, explained that the agency was looking for astronauts for Project Mercury, a program designed to put a manned spacecraft into orbit around Earth and recover it safely. He laid out NASA’s vision, talking of rockets and capsules and head-spinning speeds. Think things over tonight, Gilruth told the men, then report back tomorrow for more. Some participants questioned the wisdom of abandoning a Navy career to enroll in an astronaut program that hadn’t yet started and might not even exist in a few years. As for Lovell, he could hardly believe his luck. Several days later he was in New Mexico, enduring six days of torturous physical exams. At the end, doctors failed him—or rather, his body—for having a bit too much bilirubin, a pigment produced by the liver and found in bile. They didn’t think the level dangerous, but that didn’t matter; what they seemed to demand was physical perfection.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  potential landing sites for the lucky successors who would be the first to step onto its surface. Low saw the beauty in Kraft’s upgrade to his plan. The two men hurried to the offices of other top managers at NASA’s Houston buildings, who quickly agreed that sending Apollo 8 to the Moon in December might be the boldest and riskiest and most important mission NASA ever attempted. Now they needed to know whether their NASA counterparts— in Washington, D.C., at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and at the Launch Control Center at Cape Kennedy in Florida— would agree. On that very same morning, Friday, August 9, Low, Kraft, and other top brass in Houston scheduled a meeting with leaders from all the primary NASA centers. Ordinarily, it would have taken a week or more to get all these men together. On this day, they were given until 2:30 P.M. to pack a sandwich, find an airplane, and get to Huntsville, where the meeting would take place. Everyone arrived on time. Gathered around a conference table, the twelve men in the room represented a murderers’ row of NASA brass. Among them was Wernher von Braun, the world’s most renowned rocket designer and the director of the Marshall Space Flight Center. Von Braun had been a member of the Nazi Party and was instrumental in developing rockets, including the infamous V-2 that Hitler launched against targets in Europe. Von Braun surrendered to the Americans in 1945 and went to work for the United States Army, designing rockets. But it was in 1960 that he was charged with one of the most important tasks in the history of space exploration— developing the Saturn super booster that would take men to the Moon. He became the chief architect of the Saturn V—the most powerful machine ever built—and the only vehicle in the world capable of making George Low’s vision for Apollo 8 come true. Notably absent from this meeting was NASA’s administrator and top boss, James E. Webb, who was attending a conference in Vienna, Austria. Given the sacrilege that was about to be discussed, it seemed just as well that Webb was thousands of miles away. Low and others from Houston made their pitch to send Apollo 8 into lunar orbit on a flight scheduled for December. Spirited discussions broke

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  stamp featuring the Earthrise image. In a year of historic photographs— of the street execution of a Vietnamese prisoner; of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s associates pointing in the direction of his assassin; of Robert F. Kennedy lying mortally wounded in a busboy’s arms; of the Black Power salute at the Summer Olympics—the image of Earthrise captured the world’s imagination. In case anyone had missed it, President Johnson sent a print of Earthrise to every world leader. Grateful for the attention the photograph produced, the Hasselblad company, which made the cameras used by the astronauts aboard Apollo 8, offered a brand-new one to Anders. A stickler for regulations, he declined; by his reading, government rules made it illegal to accept gifts. As America rang in the new year, NASA continued a series of debriefings with the crew of Apollo 8. Borman, Lovell, and Anders were together for these meetings with agency officials, where they provided comments on every aspect of Apollo 8 and made recommendations for future missions. Some remarks were matter-of-fact, as when Anders suggested better light control settings on television cameras. Others reflected excitement, as when Lovell said, “There are a tremendous amount of craters that are not picked up in Earth-based or Earth-orbital- based photography. There are many more new craters to be seen in lunar orbit,” or when Borman described reentry: “The whole spacecraft was lit up in an eerie iridescent light very similar to what you’d see in a science fiction movie. I remember looking over at Jim and Bill once and they were sheathed in a white glow. It was really fantastic.” As fascinating as these descriptions were, the agency wanted to complete their investigations into the flight as soon as possible, as the astronauts had a busy January on their hands. It began at the White House on January 9, where the astronauts each received NASA’s Distinguished Service Medal from President Johnson. From there, Borman, Lovell, and Anders rode in their motorcade through flag-waving throngs to Capitol Hill, where they provided an informal briefing to a joint session of Congress and the Supreme Court (and received a two-and-a-half-minute standing ovation). Lovell told the distinguished audience that a few days after returning from the flight, he’d walked outside his home in Houston and gazed up at the Moon. “I could scarcely believe I was there,” he said. The men then moved to the

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  Thirty minutes later, Apollo 8 prepared for another of its critical maneuvers. Until now, the spacecraft had flown with one of its sides exposed to the Sun and the other side facing away. But that arrangement couldn’t last much longer without damaging the ship by broiling one side and freezing the other. To solve the problem, NASA had developed a procedure called passive thermal control, in which the commander slowly rotated the ship on its long axis, making one full revolution every hour as the craft journeyed through space. In that way, temperatures would become evenly distributed as the spacecraft turned on its invisible rotisserie spit. The maneuver had earned the nickname “barbecue mode” at NASA, and as Borman tapped a thruster, Apollo 8 became the first to use it in space. So slow was the roll that the crew hardly sensed it. Now, as they continued to streak toward the Moon, the astronauts prepared for emancipation. More than eight hours and 45,000 miles into their mission, the time had come for the men to slip out of their bulky space suits. They had been wearing them since long before launch in order to breathe pure oxygen. Doing so helped to purge nitrogen from their bodies, and that had been critical during launch. As expected, the cabin’s internal air pressure dropped rapidly as the spacecraft ascended. If the crew had not purged the nitrogen from their systems, the sudden drop in pressure could have caused the nitrogen to form bubbles in their tissues that could press on nerves, lungs, spine, even the brain—a painful and potentially deadly condition common to deep-water scuba divers who surface too quickly, and known as the bends. Once in space, the astronauts had been so busy with equipment checks and the translunar injection burn that they hadn’t had a chance to remove the suits. Until now. The crew doffed their suits and stowed them in bags under their seats, where they would remain for the duration of the flight. Suddenly unbound, Anders was free to test his new superpower: weightlessness. A breath of a touch, just enough to light an elevator button, propelled him to any destination inside the cabin. If there were twists and turns in his way, he simply bent or hunched or corkscrewed to conform to the openings, flowing through them like water. Using his fingertips for thrusters, Anders visited navigation instruments, storage areas, labyrinths of valves. His lightweight coveralls, made of fire-resistant Teflon beta cloth, were perfectly white except for a large American flag

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  had been canceled in a reorganization after the fire). This would be the first test of the massive Saturn V booster, a rocket that was orders of magnitude more powerful than any NASA had ever launched, and the only one capable of taking a man to the Moon. The agency dared not put a man on board. At 7 A.M., the rocket’s five enormous engines ignited, sending shock waves of sound and light and energy in every direction as 7.5 million pounds of thrust lifted the six-million-pound behemoth up and away from the launchpad. Three miles away, plaster dust fell from the ceiling in the Launch Control Center, while windows shook at the Howard Johnson’s Motel twelve miles from the launch site. Describing the event for a live television audience, CBS anchor Walter Cronkite grabbed the plate glass window of his booth to keep it from collapsing. “Our building is shaking here!” Cronkite said with uncharacteristic exuberance. “Oh, it’s terrific! The building’s shaking! This big blast window is shaking and we’re holding it with our hands! Look at that rocket go into the clouds at three thousand feet! The roar is terrific! Look at it going!” The flight worked, every part of it, almost perfectly. It was clear now that America stood a fighting chance, not just of putting a man on the Moon, but of doing it by a long-dead president’s impossible deadline. — NASA kicked off 1968 by flying Apollo 5 in January, an unmanned test of the lunar module, the landing craft that would shuttle astronauts between the orbiting spacecraft and the lunar surface. The mission used a smaller rocket, and despite a few problems it was classified a success. And then came Apollo 6. It would be just the second test of the Saturn V, a necessary step before NASA would certify the booster for manned flight. Lift-off was proceeding normally on the morning of April 4, 1968, but just a few minutes into the flight, things started to go wrong. The rocket’s first stage began to “pogo”—to shake violently up and down. Pieces of the spacecraft flew off. Later in the flight, two of the five engines on the second stage shut down prematurely. Still, the third stage struggled into orbit, but its

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  The more I read about the odyssey of Apollo 8, the more startling it seemed that so little had been written about it. This is the best space story of them all, I thought, and I wasn’t the only one. Early in my research, I came across interviews with the late Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the Moon (and a backup crew member for Apollo 8). He remembered how excited all the astronauts and NASA personnel had been for Apollo 8, how it changed the course of the entire American space program. “It was an enormously bold decision,” he told an interviewer on film. It was the way he said the word “enormously” that stayed with me. In ways, it sounded like Armstrong thought Apollo 8 to be an even bigger leap for mankind than landing on the Moon. Other astronauts and NASA personnel said as much directly. Several called Apollo 8 the riskiest and most thrilling of all the Apollo missions. Few remembered having dry eyes as Borman, Lovell, and Anders spoke to the world on Christmas Eve as they circled the Moon. All of them—along with billions of others around the world, more than any than had ever listened to a human voice at once—remembered what these three astronauts said. As I pushed deeper into researching Apollo 8, I found another story, one with striking parallels to life in America today. Apollo 8 flew at the end of 1968, one of the most terrible and divisive years in the country’s history. Assassinations, riots, war, and other events split the country and turned neighbor against neighbor, Republican against Democrat, young against old. When Apollo 8 flew at the end of December, it looked like nothing could heal a nation so badly wounded from the inside. Nearly fifty years later, the United States seemed torn apart again. As candidates launched their presidential campaigns in 2015, the country stood divided by a world of political and cultural differences, some of which manifested in violence or ugly public displays. Many people had never seen their country so fractured, their fellow citizens so furious with one another, and it only got worse as the election approached and then a new president was elected. But to those old enough to remember, it all looked so much like 1968. There was one significant difference between 1968 and modern-day America, however. In 1968, there was Apollo 8. When Borman, Lovell, and Anders returned from the Moon, few could argue—no matter their

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  And there was more, Borman said. Apollo 8 would go without a lunar module. And it would orbit the Moon. Lovell could not fight back his smile. Oh, man, this is great! he thought. This is what I’ve been dreaming about. He could see the genius in the plan right away. And the personal benefits weren’t lost on him, either. A lunar mission would spare him another Earth-orbital flight, two of which he’d made already as part of the Gemini program. Best of all, it positioned him to do what he loved most— explore and pioneer—and there seemed no better way to do it than by becoming the first man ever to fly to the Moon. Anders saw it differently. This new mission would kneecap his chances for landing on the Moon. He’d trained as a lunar module pilot; unless he messed that up, it meant he would walk on the Moon one day. But this new mission had no lunar module, so his duties would shift to the command module, and guys who flew command modules didn’t land on the Moon. Five minutes ago, Anders would have put his chances of walking on the lunar surface at 80 percent. Now they’d slipped to between slim and none. It was a Saturday and the end of the workweek for all of them. The men packed away their gear and climbed into their T-38s, Borman and Lovell in one, Anders by himself in another, and took off into the clouds. In the backseat of Borman’s plane, Lovell began sketching an image on his kneepad—a big Earth in the foreground, a smaller Moon in the background, with a figure eight drawn around the two bodies—it formed both the mission trajectory and its designated number—eight. “What a natural thing for Apollo 8,” he thought, and he knew this would be a fine insignia for the patch the crew would wear on their way—on mankind’s way—to the Moon. — It was just a few minutes’ drive from Ellington Air Force Base to the astronauts’ homes in the suburbs. Each man would have preferred more than the usual one day per week at home with his family, but the rigors of training required subordinating family—and everything else—to the

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  orbit. Even now, they were just 400 miles or so above the lunar surface, yet they couldn’t see anything in the blackness because the light of the Sun and its reflected shine from Earth were blocked by the Moon. A few minutes later, the spacecraft emerged into sunlight, at just the moment NASA planners had predicted. With less than two and a half minutes to go before SPS ignition, Lovell called out: “Hey! I got the Moon! Right below us!” Anders pushed for a closer look, but all he could see were streaks of oil rolling down his window. Then it hit him. Those streaks weren’t oil. They were lunar mountains. “Look at that!” Anders said. “See it? Fantastic!” It was the first time human beings had laid eyes on the far side of the Moon. Borman’s commander instincts kicked in. “All right, all right, come on. You’re going to look at that for a long time.” He needed to keep the mission focused. They had a rocket to fire soon, one that had to work. “Twenty hours—is that it?” Anders asked, sounding as though he could look forever. Inside, he could only say to himself, That’s the Moon! Lovell prepared for the firing of the SPS engine, looking for an indicator from the display panel that signaled all was ready. Five seconds before ignition, he got it—the number 99 began flashing, the computer asking for the go-ahead to proceed. Lovell pushed the button. The astronauts felt a vibration, then the weight of their bodies pressed against their restraints as the spacecraft began to decelerate. The engine had lit, that much was certain. Now it had to burn against the direction of travel for just over four minutes to slow the ship’s speed from around 5,100 miles per hour to less than 3,700 miles per hour, which would allow the Moon’s gravity to capture the spacecraft for orbit. Inside the cabin, the men could hear the external thrusters firing as the computer worked to keep the craft straight. Borman checked the instruments, which indicated the engine looked good. But no one on board seemed reassured. “Jesus, four minutes?” Borman asked two minutes into the burn.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  something more individual. Her first vision in middle age in 1792 led to a large- scale apocalyptic movement which remained resolutely female in its leadership during her lifetime, despite frequently manipulative interventions from maverick men. It challenged the male Church establishment by treasuring a box of Joanna’s prophecies which could only be opened in the presence of twenty-four Anglican bishops; this cousin of the hidden last prophecy of Our Lady of Fátima may still be waiting in Bedford, England.31 Of greater long-term significance were the experiences of two charismatic Scottish sisters from Clydeside, Isabella and Mary Campbell. Isabella built up a reputation as a person of exceptional holiness, and after her early death, crowds were drawn to her home by an enthusiastic memoir of her published by her parish minister. Amid this excitement, Mary began making pronouncements in an unknown language, inspiring others in her neighbourhood to do likewise, and also undergoing a miraculous cure from apparently terminal ill health. Reports of these Scottish displays of ‘gifts of the Spirit’ deeply interested an influential group of Evangelical friends in their regular meetings in the elegant rural seclusion of Albury in Surrey. One of the Albury regulars, Edward Irving, a well-known and extrovert minister of the Church of Scotland, was inspired to begin a spiritual journey into prophecy which had consequences for the Christian Church worldwide. The Campbells and their impact on Irving had unknowingly provided the first glimmers of the modern Pentecostal movement (see pp. 910–14).32 More commonly women’s activity followed the logic of the earlier English Protestant feminists like Mary Astell (see pp. 793–4). That was easier in those Churches not burdened with established status and with a strong ethos of congregational decision-making. In one case which attracted a great deal of interest, a congregation of Seventh Day Baptists in London was reduced by death and its choosiness about membership to seven women without a minister. After much conflict with the congregation’s male trustees and repeated assertions that leadership functions were reserved by divine resolution to men, male Baptist ministers reviewed the dispute in 1831. They looked at the congregational logic of Baptist theology on the nature of the Church, and decided nineteen to eleven (in the face of warnings that they would be laughed at) that women were perfectly capable of forming a Church and calling a (male) minister.33 In 1853 a Congregational Church in South Butler, New York, extended the same logic in ordaining Antoinette Brown as minister, the first woman outside the countercultural Quakers to hold such an office in modern Christianity. Evangelical Protestantism, influenced by the optimistic social activism of

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  We smoked in the bathrooms and on the street. We played hookey from school and forged notes for each other in our mothers’ handwriting. We hid out at Gennie’s house and toasted marshmallows in her mother’s bed. We stole nickels from our mothers’ purses and roamed Fifth Avenue singing union songs. We played sexy games with the Latino boys up in the bluffs of granite above Morningside Park. And, we did a lot of talking. The Berlin Airlift was just beginning, and the state of Israel represented a newly born hope for human dignity. Our budding political consciousness had already soured us on Coca-Cola democracy. Gennie had been trained in classical ballet. I never saw her dance except privately, for me. In the beginning of our junior year she left Hunter so she could have more time to dance, she said. Actually it was because she hated to do schoolwork. Our friendship, then, became less connected with school. Gennie was the first person in my life that I was ever conscious of loving. She was my first true friend. The summer of 1948 was a time of powerful change all over the world. Gennie and I felt ourselves a part of it, as did most of the girls at Hunter High. We envied the girls who were Jewish, and who already were making plans to go to Israel and work on a kibbutz in the new nation. The mild-mannered skinny little man in the white sheet had prevailed, and India was finally free, but they had killed him for it. There was no longer any doubt in anybody’s mind that China would soon be Red China, and three cheers for the communists. My revolutionary fervor that had begun with a white waitress refusing to serve my family ice cream in the nation’s capital was becoming a clearer and clearer position, a lens through which to view the world. We had huddled under schooldesks for air-raid drills, and had shaken with terror at the idea of a whole city instantly destroyed by a bomb of atoms. We had danced in the streets and listened to the horns of the fire engines and tugboats in the river the day the War was over. For us in 1948, Peace was a very real and vivid issue. Thousands of american boys had died to make the world safe for democracy, even though my family and I couldn’t be served ice cream in Washington, D. C. But we were going to change all that, Gennie and I, in our full skirts and ballet slippers, the New Look. There was a wind blowing all over the world, and we were a part of it.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  2. It began in the early 1960s: people would come to Andy Warhol's New York studio, soak up the atmosphere, and stay awhile. Then in 1963, the artist moved into a new Manhattan space and a member of his entourage covered some of the walls and pillars in tin foil and spray-painted a brick wall and other things silver. A red quilted couch in the center, some five-foot-high plastic candy bars, a turntable that glittered with tiny mirrors, and helium-filled silver pillows that floated in the air completed the set. Now the L-shaped space became known as The Factory, and a scene began to develop. More and more people started showing up—why not just leave the door open, Andy reasoned, and come what may. During the day, while Andy would work on his paintings and films, people would gather—actors, hustlers, drug dealers, other artists. And the elevator would keep groaning all night as the beautiful people began to make the place their home. Here might be Montgomery Clift, nursing a drink by himself; over there, a beautiful young socialite chatting with a drag queen and a museum curator. They kept pouring in, all of them young and glamorously dressed. It was like one of those children's shows on TV, Andy once said to a friend, where guests keep dropping in on the endless party and there's always some new bit of entertainment. And that was indeed what it seemed like—with nothing serious happening, just lots of talk and flirting and flashbulbs popping and endless posing, as if everyone were in a film. The museum curator would begin to giggle like a teenager and the socialite would flounce about like a hooker. By midnight everyone would be packed together. You could hardly move. The band would arrive, the light show would begin, and it would all careen in a new direction, wilder and wilder. Somehow the crowd would disperse at some point, then in the afternoon it would all start up again as the entourage trickled back. Hardly anyone went to The Factory just once. It is oppressive always to have to act the same way, playing the same boring role that work or duty imposes on you. People yearn for a place or a moment when they can wear a mask, act differently, be someone else. That is why we glorify actors: they have the freedom and playfulness in relation to their own ego that we would love to have. Any environment that offers a chance to play a different role, to be an actor, is immensely seductive. It can be an environment that you create, like The Factory. Or a place where you take your target. In such environments you simply cannot be defensive; the playful atmosphere, the sense that anything is allowed (except seriousness), dispels any kind of reactiveness. Being in such a place becomes a drug. To re-create the effect, remember Warhol's metaphor of the children's TV

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  Toward the end of Jim’s senior year of high school in 1946, he visited a Milwaukee fairground. There, he witnessed a wonder. On display, close enough to touch, was the spent engine of a captured V-2 German rocket, the one designed by Wernher von Braun and used by the Nazis to attack European cities at the end of World War II. The rocket could travel 200 miles, carry a ton of explosives, reach an altitude of 50 miles, and attain speeds of more than 3,300 miles per hour. Electrified by the encounter, Jim wrote to the American Rocket Society, which had already existed for twenty years, and asked for advice on careers. They replied with a friendly letter telling him that universities didn’t yet offer majors in rocket technology, but that he’d be well served to take college courses in thermodynamics, aerodynamics, and mathematics. To that end, the society advised, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or the California Institute of Technology would make excellent choices. Jim had no money for college. His mother encouraged him to apply to the Naval Academy at Annapolis, from which his uncle had graduated in 1913, and Jim did that, but the best the Navy could offer was a position as a third alternate on the admissions waitlist. The Navy, however, did need pilots. To get them, they were willing to pay for a student to go to college. If that student did well, the Navy would make him a military aviator. All of it would be paid for by Uncle Sam. The idea of being in command of his own aircraft thrilled Jim. He signed up for the Navy program and enrolled at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he loaded up on mechanical engineering courses and saved most of his fifty-dollar-a-month stipend for weekends when Marilyn came to visit. After two years in Madison, Lovell moved to Pensacola for flight training. Halfway through the preflight segment, he received orders to report to the Naval Academy; a few days later, Lovell was just another plebe at Annapolis. None of his credits from Wisconsin was eligible for transfer. He was starting from scratch. In November, Lovell invited Marilyn to the Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia. By that time, he knew he wanted to marry Marilyn, and he asked her to move out east near the Naval Academy. At the time, Marilyn was attending a teacher’s college at home in Milwaukee, but she

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? Back at the assembly plant in California, later in the day on August 10, Borman found his two partners and pulled them aside. Jim Lovell had joined NASA along with Borman in 1962 as part of the “New Nine,” the second group of astronauts enlisted by the agency. Like Borman, he was forty years old and a test pilot, but the similarities seemed to end there. Since boyhood, Lovell had been thrilled by rockets and the idea of space travel (he’d gone so far as to attempt to build a liquid-oxygen-powered booster while in high school), and he remained dazzled by the idea of exploring the cosmos. He was also, by most everyone’s account, as warm and friendly a guy as one could meet. Bill Anders was just thirty-four, five and a half years younger than his two crewmates. He’d come up through the ranks as a fighter pilot, not a test pilot. That alone generated contempt from some of the older astronauts, most of whom were test pilots and didn’t fully see the daring in climbing into already proven machines. Perhaps even worse for Anders, he was an intellectual among men more immediate and visceral, a holder of an advanced degree in nuclear engineering, and who the hell needed that on the way to the Moon? Still, when people saw him fly they knew they were watching something special. And while it was true he’d flown airplanes already certified by the likes of his colleagues, others could see that he could turn those birds around and shoot most anyone’s ass out of the sky. Borman gathered his crew outside the test bay where they’d been working on the command module. “Things have changed,” Borman said. “If everything goes right with Apollo 7, they want to send Apollo 8 to the Moon by the end of the year. And we are now Apollo 8.” It took a few moments for Lovell and Anders to process what they were hearing. The Moon? By December? Us?

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Start a chain reaction— everyone is doing it. People who seem to be desired by others are immediately more seductive to their targets. Apply this to the soft seduction. You need to act as if you have already excited crowds of people; your behavior will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Seem to be in the vanguard of a trend or life-style and the public will lap you up for fear of being left behind. Spread your image, with a logo, slogans, posters, so that it appears everywhere. Announce your message as a trend and it will become one. The goal is to create a kind of viral effect in which more and more people become infected with the desire to have whatever you are offering. This is the easiest and most seductive way to sell. Tell people who they are. It is always unwise to engage an individual or the public in any kind of argument. They will resist you. Instead of trying to change people's ideas, try to change their identity, their perception of reality, and you will have far more control of them in the long run. Tell them who they are, create an image, an identity that they will want to assume. Make them dissatisfied with their current status. Making them unhappy with themselves gives you room to suggest a new life-style, a new identity. Only by listening to you can they find out who they are. At the same time, you want to change their perception of the world outside them 446 • Appendix B: Soft Seduction: How to Sell Anything to the Masses by controlling what they look at. Use as many media as possible to create a kind of total environment for their perceptions. Your image should be seen not as an advertisement but as part of the atmosphere. Some Soft Seductions 1. Andrew Jackson was a true American hero. In 1814, in the Battle of New Orleans, he led a ragtag band of American soldiers against a superior English army and won. He also conquered Indians in Florida. Jackson's army loved him for his rough-hewn ways: he fed on acorns when there was nothing else to eat, he slept on a hard bed, he drank hard cider, just like his men. Then, after he lost or was cheated out of the presidential election of 1824 (in fact he won the popular vote, but so narrowly that the election was thrown into the House of Representatives, which chose John Quincy Adams, after much deal making), he retired to his farm in Tennessee, where he lived the simple life, tilling the soil, reading the Bible, staying far from the corruptions of Washington. Where Adams had gone to Harvard, played billiards, drunk soda water, and relished European finery, Jackson, like many Americans of the time, had been raised in a log cabin. He was an uneducated man, a man of the earth.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  Chapter Fourteen MAMA EXITED THE FREEWAY AND GUIDED THE FORD INTO A LABYRINTH of suburban streets. Gary and I bounced up and down on the front car seat. “We’re here. We’re in Houston.” My mother was a self-described high-strung woman. Put her in a car with two attention-starved kids for five-hundred-plus miles and those strings were ratcheted about as tight as they could go. Each time she stopped the car in the middle of the street and consulted the directions she had scribbled on the corner of a page she had torn from a phone book, she breathed a little harder. She backed up and turned onto another street that led nowhere. “Oh, sh-i-t.” Gary and I stopped bouncing and looked intently up and out the front window. He pointed at an airplane low in the sky without saying anything. I nodded. Mama said she had been here once before, last month, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember how she got to the house; besides, all these streets looked the same. A few more stops and starts and she pulled into a driveway, turned off the engine, and let go a long sigh. “Finally.” Our house—we claimed it as ours at once—was a slightly run-down replica of all the other houses in that unfinished but slightly run-down neighborhood of chain-link fences and dead-end streets. It was a rental with dark brown trim and, as my mother pointed out, “a real picture window” that looked out on the field across the street. I flung open the car door and Gary and I ran to the front door. Mama stood on the stoop and fumbled through her keys, trying one, then another. “This one? No. Maybe this one. That looked like the one, no, must be the other one. I know it’s one of these.” Gary and I twitched and shuffled until the key clicked and we stumbled through the front door. It was clean and modern with dark paneled walls, avocado-colored drapes, and a breakfast counter. We rushed to the gold sofa and honey-colored end tables, then down the hall to the two bedrooms, one with a double bed, the other with two singles. I stood in the hallway, stretched my legs and arms as far apart as they would go, and touched my fingers to the doorways of both bedrooms, ours and Mama’s.

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  The watchman is used to writers coming and going at strange hours, and doesn’t have the energy to worry about two more drunks. He points to the freight elevator and then goes back to his wrestling magazine. He doesn’t even ask about the suitcase. When the elevator begins to ascend, shrill, birdlike noises issue from the bag. The sound of the animal’s distress gives you pause. This is probably a bad idea. You’re not particularly worried about Clara, but you feel sorry for Fred the Ferret in his role of unwitting accomplice. “Pas de sweat,” Tad says. “This is almost too easy. Maybe we should have tried for the wolf cub.” Initially Tad wanted to get hold of a bat, but when you mentioned the ferret his eyebrows climbed his forehead in delight. The door opens on the twenty-ninth floor. You both stand inside the elevator, listening. It’s quiet. Tad looks at you inquisitively. You nod and step out into the reception area. Tad follows. The whoosh of the elevator doors sounds like a passing freight train. There is a hollow echo of cables and gears, and then it’s quiet again. Tad leans over and whispers in your ear, “Take no prisoners.” You lead the way down the hall, carrying the suitcase. Up to the corner all the offices are dark, but you remain anxious. The Druid is known for his insane hours and you briefly picture yourself turning the corner and facing him. You would die of mortification. Still, the challenge of the caper has got your adrenaline going. No thrills without chills. The forty-five-degree mirror at the corner shows no lights on farther up. Clara’s door is locked, but that’s no problem. You have a key to the Department office, and a key to her office is hidden behind—what else?—volume K of the Encyclopaedia Britannica . It’s the work of a moment. You let yourselves into Clara’s office and close the door. “They entered the lair of the dragon,” Tad whispers. You turn on the light. “You call this an office?” he says. “It looks like an uppity maid’s room.” Now that you’re here, you’re not quite sure what to do. The ferret is scratching wildly inside the suitcase. “Where’s the leash,” you ask. “I don’t have it.” “I gave it to you.” “We don’t need the leash. It’ll be a better surprise to have the sucker pop out from a desk drawer.” Tad lays the suitcase on the floor and flips the latches, then stands back. “Let him out,” he says. You lift the top. Things happen quickly after that. The animal sinks its teeth into your hand. You jerk your arm away. There’s a foot of ferret still attached. The pain is terrific. You shake your arm savagely, flinging the thing toward Tad.

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  She and Tammy met me at the bus. The weather was warmer and sunnier than in the District, and there was a much more relaxed air about the town square. As soon as the bus pulled into the square, I recognized the tall blond american woman and the tanned smiling young girl beside her. Frieda looked like she sounded over the phone, a calm, intelligent, and forthright woman in her early forties. Frieda and Tammy had lived in Cuernavaca for nine years, and Frieda was always hungry for news from New York, her original home. “Is the Essex Street Market still open, and what are the writers doing?” We spent the morning talking about mutual acquaintances and then wandered through the markets on Guerrero buying foodstuffs for dinner, which Tammy brought back to their housekeeper to cook. Later, we sat drinking foamy café con leche at a table in the open-air cafe that occupied one whole corner of the town square. Strolling musicians were tuning their guitars in the afternoon sun, and the chamaquitos , street urchins, descended upon us begging for pennies, then ran away laughing as Tammy engaged them in rapid spanish. In short order, other americans, all of them white and most of them women, strolled over to our table to see who was this new face in town. Frieda introduced me to a host of cordial welcomes. After the day spent in the easy beauty of Cuernavaca and easy-going company of Frieda and her friends, it took little urging on Frieda’s part to persuade me to consider moving down to Cuernavaca. I was still anxious to find cheaper lodgings than the Hotel Fortin. I could commute to the District for classes, she assured me. Many people in Cuernavaca worked in Mexico City, and transportation by bus or group taximetro was very inexpensive. “I think you’ll be happier living here than in Mexico City,” Frieda offered. “It’s a lot quieter. You can probably get one of the small houses in the compound over at Humboldt Number Twenty-four, which is a pretty place to live.” Tammy, who was twelve, was delighted to have somebody come to town who was closer to her age than Frieda and her friends. “And Jesús can help you with your things from the District,” Frieda added. With her divorce settlement, Frieda had bought a small farm in Tepotzlán, a tiny village further up the mountain. Jesús managed the farm, she explained. They had once been lovers. “But that’s all quite different now,” Frieda said brusquely, as Tammy called to us from the patio to come see her patoganso , a duck so big it could have been a goose. I went to see about the little house in the compound that same afternoon.

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  You begin to feel better once you’re in motion. As you pull up to Odeon, Tad is coming out the door with his friend Jimmy Q from Memphis. Luckily, Jimmy has a limo. You climb in. Jimmy gives the driver an address. The Caddy floats over the downtown streets. You can tell you are moving only by the passage of lights across the tinted windows. Some of the lights have dim halos and others spill crystalline shards into the night. The car stops in front of a warehouse. You hear the party throbbing like a helicopter above the deserted street. You can’t wait to get up there. You drum your fingers on the doorframe as you wait for the elevator. “Take it easy,” Tad says. “You’re wired to detonate.” You ask whose party it is. Tad provides a name he claims belongs to the heir of a fast-food fortune. The elevator door opens directly into the loft, which is roughly the size of a Midwestern state and at least as populous. There are windows on three sides and mirrors on the fourth. A bar and buffet is set up at one end. The dance floor is down at the other end, somewhere near New Jersey. At the bar, Tad introduces you to a woman, Stevie, who wears a slinky black gown with a scalloped hemline. She is very tall. Long blond hair, tasseled white silk scarf wrapped around her neck. Stevie says, “Do you dance?” “You bet.” You take Stevie’s hand and make for the dance floor, where you add yourselves to the confusion. Elvis Costello says pump it up when you don’t really need it. Stevie carves sinuous figures between the beat. You do your patented New York Torque. The music is just about loud enough to drive everything between your ears down through the spinal column into your bones, and possibly you can shake it out via your fingertips, femurs and toes. Stevie puts her arms on your shoulders and kisses you. When she says she has to go to the Ladies’, you head for the bar to get drinks. Tad awaits you. “Have you seen our friend?” “Which friend?” “Your formerly deceased not-yet-ex wife.” You look up from the bottles and scan the immediate vicinity. “Amanda?” “Sure enough. The face that launched a thousand trips to Bloomingdale’s.” “Where?” Tad puts his hand behind your head and directs your gaze to a group near the elevator. She is standing in profile, not twenty feet away. At first you think this is just a close resemblance, then she lifts her hand to her shoulder and begins to twirl a strand of hair between the tips of her fingers. Her agent used to tell her she’d ruin her hair that way. There is no doubt. Not now, you think. She’s wearing toreador pants and a silver flak jacket. Beside her, a Mediterranean hulk in a white silk shirt emanates a proprietary air.