Fear

Passages

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

Page 153 of 529 · 20 per page

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  This the trifling and drunken old woman declared to the captive maiden, but I, poor ass, not standing far off, was not a little sorry in that I lacked pen and book to write so worthy a tale ; when by and by the thieves came home laden with treasure, and many of them which were of strongest courage being wounded : then (leaving behind such as were lame and hurt to heal and air themselves) said they would return back again to fetch the rest of their pillage which they had hidden in a certain cave. So they snatched up their dinner greedily, and brought forth me and my horse into the way to carry those goods, and beat us before them with staves, and about night (after that we were weary by passing over many hills and dales) we came to a great cave, where they laded us with mighty burdens, and would not suffer us to refresh ourselves any season, but brought us again in our way, and hied very fast homeward ; and what with their haste and cruel stripes wherewith they did belabour and drive me, I fell down upon a stone by the highway side. Then they beat me pitifully in lifting me up, hurting my right thigh and my left hoof, and one of them said : * How long shall we continue to feed this evil-favoured ass that is now alsolame?" Another said : * Since the time we had him first he never did any good, and I think he came into our house with evil luck ; for we have had great 285 LUCIUS APULEIUS cepimus sed vulnera et fortissimorum occisiones.” Alius iterum : “ Certe ego cum primum sarcinas istas quamquam invitus pertulerit, protinus eum vulturiis gratissimum pabulum futurum praecipitabo." Dum secum mitissimi homines altercant de mea nece, iam et domum perveneramus, nam timor ungu- las mihi alas fecerat. Tum quae ferebamus amoliti properiter, nulla salutis nostrae cura sed ne meae quidem necis habita, comitibus adscitis qui vulnerati remanserant, dudum recurrunt reliqua laturi! taedio, ut aiebant, nostrae tarditatis. Nec me tamen medio- eris carpebat scrupulus contemplatione comminatae mihi mortis, et ipse mecum: * Quid stas, Luci, vel quid iam novissimum expectas? Mors, et haec acerbissima, decreto latronum tibi comparata est. Nec magno conatu res indiget; vides istas rupinas proximas et praeacutas in his prominentes silices, quae te penetrantes antequam decideris, membratim dissipabunt. Nam et illa ipsa praeclara magia tua vultum laboresque tibi tantum asini, verum corium non asini crassum sed hirudinis tenue membranulum cireumdedit. Quin igitur masculum tandem sumis animum tuaeque saluti dum licet consulis? ^ Habes summam opportunitatem fugae, dum latrones absunt An custodiam anus semimortuae formidabis, quam licet claudi pedis tui calce unica finire poteris? Sed quo gentium capessetur fuga vel hospitium quis dabit ? Haec quidem inepta et prorsus asinina cogitatio : quis enim viantium vectorem suum non libenter auferat secum ? "

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  for Ay and Yea pair not better, than does the one case with the other, if with attentive mind the beginning and end of each be well accoupled. And as one thought from the other springs, so arose from that another then, which made my first fear double. I thus bethought me: “These through us are put to scorn, and with damage and mockery of such sort, as I believe must greatly vex them. If rage be added to their malice, they will pursue us, fiercer than the dog that leveret which he snaps.” Already I felt my hair all rise with fear; and was looking back intently, as I said: “Master, if thou do not hide thyself and me speedily, I dread the Malebranche: they are already after us; I so imagine them that I hear them now.” And he: “If I were of leaded glass, I should not draw thy outward image more quickly to me, than I impress that (image) from within. Even now thy thoughts were entering among mine, with similar act and similar face; so that of both I have made one resolve. In case the right coast so slopes, that we may descend into the other chasm, we shall escape the imagined chase.” He had not ended giving this resolve, when I saw them come with wings extended, not far off, in will to seize us. My Guide suddenly took me, as a mother—that is awakened by the noise, and near her sees the kindled flames— who takes her child and flies, and caring more for him than for herself, pauses not so long as even to cast a shift about her; and down from the ridge of the hard bank, supine he gave himself to the pendent rock, which dams up one side of the other chasm. Never did water run so fast through spout to turn a landmill’s wheel, when it approaches nearest to the ladles, as my Master down that bank, carrying me away upon his breast, as his son and not as his companion. Scarcely had his feet reached the bed of the depth below, when they were on the height above us; but no fear it gave him: for the high Providence, that willed to place them ministers of the fifth ditch, takes the power of leaving it from all. There beneath we found a painted people, who were going round with steps exceeding slow, weeping, and in their look tired and overcome. They had cloaks on, with deep hoods before their eyes, made in the shape that they make for the monks in Cologne. Outward they are gilded, so that it dazzles; but within all lead, and so heavy, that Frederick’s compared to them were straw.2 O weary mantle for eternity! We turned again to the left hand, along with them, intent upon their dreary weeping; but that people, tired by their burden, came so slowly that our company was new at every movement of the hip.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  As soon as the day shone bright and night was past, and the clear chariot of the sun had spread his bright beams on every coast, came one of the company of the thieves (for so his and their greeting did declare); who at his first entry into the cave (after he had breathed himself and was able to speak) told these tidings unto his companions in this sort: “Sirs, as touching the house of Milo of Hypata, which we forcibly entered and ransacked the last day, we may put away all fear, and doubt nothing atall; for after that you by force and arms had spoiled and taken away all things in the house, and so returned hither unto our cave, I (thrusting in amongst the press of the people and shewing myself as though I were sad and sorrowful for the mischance) consulted with them for the bolting out of the matter, whether and how far they would devise for the apprehension of the thieves, to the intent I might learn and see all that was done to make relation thereof unto you, as you willed me. The whole fact at length by manifest and evident proofs, as also by the common opinion and judgement of all the people, was laid to one Lucius’ charge, as manifest author of this committed robbery, who, a few days before, by false and forged letters and coloured honesty, had feigned himself to be a true man and had gotten himself so far in favour with this Milo that he entertained him into his house 299 LUCIUS APULEIUS hospitio susceptus inter familiares intimos haberetur, plusculisque ibidem diebus demoratus falsis amoribus ancillae Milonis animum irrepens ianuae claustra sedulo exploraverat et ipsa membra, in quis omne 2 patrimonium condi solebat, curiose perspexerat. Nec exiguum scelerati monstrabatur. indicium, quippe cum eadem nocte sub ipso flagitii momento idem profugisset nec exinde usquam compareret ; nam et praesidium fugae, quo velocius frustratis insecutoribus procul ac procul abderet sese, eidem facile suppedi- tasse: equum namque illum suum candidum vectorem futurum duxissesecum. Plane servum eius ibidem in hospitio repertum scelerum consiliorumque herilium . futurum indicem per magistratus in publicam custo- diam receptum, et altera die tormentis vexatum pluri- bus ac paene ad ultimam mortem excarnificatum nil quicquam rerum talium esse confessum, missos tamen in patriam Lucii illius multos numero qui reum poenas daturum sceleris inquirerent." Haec eo enarrante, veteris fortunae et illius beati Lucii praesentisque aerumnae et infelicis asini facta comparatione medullitus ingemebam, subiitque me non de nihilo veteris priscaeque doctrinae viros finx- isse ac pronuntiasse caecam et prorsus exoculatam esse Fortunam, quae semper suas opes ad malos et indignos conferat, nee unquam iudicio quemquam mortalium eligat, immo vero cum iis potissimum de- versetur, quos procul si videret, fugere deberet, quodque cunctis est extremius, varias opiniones, 300 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VII

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  By “ solipsizing ” Lolita, Humbert condemns her to the solitary confinement of his obsessional shadowland. “ She had entered my world, umber and black Humberland ,” says Humbert, who, by choosing to chase the figurative shadows that play on the walls of his “cave,” upends Plato’s famous allegory. Although Humbert has had the benefit of a journey in the sunny “upper world”—a Riviera boyhood, in fact, and a full-sized wife or two—he nevertheless pursues the illusion that he can recapture what is inexorably lost. As Humbert demonstrates, illusions are realities in their ability to destroy us. “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane,” writes John Shade in the opening lines of Pale Fire , while in Nabokov’s poem “An Evening of Russian Poetry” (1945), the speaker says: My back is Argus-eyed. I live in danger. False shadows turn to track me as I pass and, wearing beards, disguised as secret agents, creep in to blot the freshly written page and read the blotter in the looking-glass. And in the dark, under my bedroom window, until, with a chill whirr and shiver, day presses its starter, warily they linger or silently approach the door and ring the bell of memory and run away. Seventeen years later in Pale Fire the Shadows are the Zemblan “regicidal organization” who dispatch Gradus, one of whose aliases is d’Argus, to assassinate the exiled King Charles (Kinbote). But the Shadows’ secret agent accidentally kills Shade instead. Lolita offers the converse, for “Shade” (Humbert) purposely kills his “shadow” (Clare Quilty). Thus the delusive nature of identity and perception, the constricting burdens of memory, and a haunting sense of mutability are all capsuled in a reverberating pun. solecism : an irregularity or impropriety in speech and diction, grammar or syntax. Also in conduct, and therefore not an unwarranted definition in Humbert’s instance. presented intact : it is important to recognize how Nabokov belies the illusion of “realism” which both Ray and Humbert seem to create. See Lolita, light of my life and I have only words to play with . cognomen : its current definition, “a distinguishing nickname,” is fundamental, and the humorous incongruity of using so high-toned a Latin-ate word is heightened by its original meaning: “The third or family name of a Roman citizen.” this mask : “ Is ‘mask’ the keyword? ” Humbert later asks. In his Foreword to Pale Fire , Kinbote says of Shade: “His whole being constituted a mask.” remain unlifted : not quite; although the “real” name is never revealed, the mask does slip. See Chapter Twenty-six , the shortest in the book. her first name : Lolita’s given name is “Dolores.” See Dolores . “H.H.” ’s crime : the murder of Clare Quilty ( here ); Humbert’s grotesque alter ego and parodic Double. Humbert will henceforth be identified by his initials.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Being a murderer with a sensational but incomplete and unorthodox memory, I cannot tell you, ladies and gentlemen, the exact day when I first knew with utter certainty that the red convertible was following us. I do remember, however, the first time I saw its driver quite clearly. I was proceeding slowly one afternoon through torrents of rain and kept seeing that red ghost swimming and shivering with lust in my mirror, when presently the deluge dwindled to a patter, and then was suspended altogether. With a swishing sound a sunburst swept the highway, and needing a pair of new sunglasses, I pulled up at a filling station. What was happening was a sickness, a cancer, that could not be helped, so I simply ignored the fact that our quiet pursuer, in his converted state, stopped a little behind us at a café or bar bearing the idiotic sign: The Bustle: A Deceitful Seatful. Having seen to the needs of my car, I walked into the office to get those glasses and pay for the gas. As I was in the act of signing a traveller’s check and wondered about my exact whereabouts, I happened to glance through a side window, and saw a terrible thing. A broad-backed man, baldish, in an oatmeal coat and dark-brown trousers, was listening to Lo who was leaning out of the car and talking to him very rapidly, her hand with outspread fingers going up and down as it did when she was very serious and emphatic. What struck me with sickening force was—how should I put it?—the voluble familiarity of her way, as if they had known each other—oh, for weeks and weeks. I saw him scratch his cheek and nod, and turn, and walk back to his convertible, a broad and thickish man of my age, somewhat resembling Gustave Trapp, a cousin of my father’s in Switzerland—same smoothly tanned face, fuller than mine, with a small dark mustache and a rosebud degenerate mouth. Lolita was studying a road map when I got back into the car. “What did that man ask you, Lo?” “Man? Oh, that man. Oh yes. Oh, I don’t know. He wondered if I had a map. Lost his way, I guess.” We drove on, and I said: “Now listen, Lo. I do not know whether you are lying or not, and I do not know whether you are insane or not, and I do not care for the moment; but that person has been following us all day, and his car was at the motel yesterday, and I think he is a cop. You know perfectly well what will happen and where you will go if the police find out about things. Now I want to know exactly what he said to you and what you told him.” She laughed. “If he’s really a cop,” she said shrilly but not illogically, “the worst thing we could do, would be to show him we are scared. Ignore him, Dad.”

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Amongst whom there was one more mad then the rest, that let many deepe sighes from the bottome of his heart, as though he had beene ravished in spirite, or replenished with divine power. And after that, he somewhat returning to himselfe, invented and forged a great lye, saying, that he had displeased the divine majesty of the goddesse, by doing of some thing which was not convenable to the order of their holy religion, wherefore he would doe vengeance of himselfe: and therewithall he tooke a whip, and scourged his owne body, that the bloud issued out aboundantly, which thing caused me greatly to feare, to see such wounds and effusion of bloud, least the same goddesse desiring so much the bloud of men, should likewise desire the bloud of an Asse. After they were wearie with hurling and beating themselves, they sate downe, and behold, the inhabitants came in, and offered gold, silver, vessels of wine, milke, cheese, flower, wheate and other things: amongst whom there was one, that brought barly to the Asse that carried the goddesse, but the greedie whoresons thrust all into their sacke, which they brought for the purpose and put it upon my backe, to the end I might serve for two purposes, that is to say, for the barne by reason of my corne, and for the Temple by reason of the goddesse. In this sort, they went from place to place, robbing all the Countrey over. At length they came to a certaine Castle where under colour of divination, they brought to passe that they obtained a fat sheepe of a poore husbandman for the goddesse supper and to make sacrifice withall. After that the banket was prepared, they washed their bodies, and brought in a tall young man of the village, to sup with them, who had scarce tasted a few pottage, when hee began to discover their beastly customes and inordinate desire of luxury. For they compassed him round about, sitting at the table, and abused the young man, contrary to all nature and reason. When I beheld this horrible fact, I could not but attempt to utter my mind and say, O masters, but I could pronounce no more but the first letter O, which I roared out so valiantly, that the young men of the towne seeking for a straie Asse, that they had lost the same night, and hearing my voice, whereby they judged that I had beene theirs, entred into the house unwares, and found these persons committing their vile abhomination, which when they saw, they declared to all the inhabitants by, their unnatural villany, mocking and laughing at this the pure and cleane chastity of their religion. In the meane season, Phelibus and his company, (by reason of the bruit which was dispersed throughout all the region there of their beastly wickednesse) put all their trumpery upon my backe, and departed away about midnight.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  But when Psyches saw so glorious a body shee greatly feared, and amazed in mind, with a pale countenance all trembling fel on her knees and thought to hide the razor, yea verily in her owne heart, which doubtlesse she had done, had it not through feare of so great an enterprise fallen out of her hand. And when she saw and beheld the beauty of the divine visage shee was well recreated in her mind, she saw his haires of gold, that yeelded out a sweet savor, his neck more white than milk, his purple cheeks, his haire hanging comely behinde and before, the brightnesse whereof did darken the light of the lamp, his tender plume feathers, dispersed upon his sholders like shining flours, and trembling hither and thither, and his other parts of his body so smooth and so soft, that it did not repent Venus to beare such a childe. At the beds feet lay his bow, quiver, and arrowes, that be the weapons of so great a god: which when Psyches did curiously behold, she marvelling at her husbands weapons, took one of the arrows out of the quiver, and pricked her selfe withall, wherwith she was so grievously wounded that the blood followed, and thereby of her owne accord shee added love upon love; then more broyling in the love of Cupid shee embraced him and kissed him and kissed him a thousand times, fearing the measure of his sleepe. But alas while shee was in this great joy, whether it were for envy for desire to touch this amiable body likewise, there fell out a droppe of burning oyle from the lampe upon the right shoulder of the god. O rash and bold lampe, the vile ministery of love, how darest thou bee so bold as to burne the god of all fire? When as he invented thee, to the intent that all lovers might with more joy passe the nights in pleasure.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  In the café, I sat next to my suitcase and ordered another beer. I was dazed and exhausted—almost too exhausted to be as miserable as I knew I ought to be. I would have to look for a hotel. It was getting dark. My suitcase was terribly heavy and I might have to wander the streets dragging it behind me and climb all those spiral staircases to inquire about rooms which would turn out to be occupied. I put my head down on the table. I wanted to weep out of sheer exhaustion, but I knew I couldn’t make myself that conspicuous. Already I was attracting the kind of quizzical glances a woman alone attracts. And I was too tired and harassed to react with subtlety. If anyone tried to pick me up now, I would probably scream and begin swinging with my fists. I was beyond words. I was tired of reasoning and arguing and trying to be clever. The first man who approached me with a cynical or flirtatious look would get it: a knee in the balls or a punch in the jaw. I would not sit there cowering in fear as I had at age thirteen when exhibitionists started unzipping their pants at me on the deserted subway to high school. I actually used to be afraid they’d be insulted and take terrible revenge unless I remained rooted to my seat. So I stayed, looking away, pretending not to notice, pretending not to be terrified, pretending to be reading and hoping somehow that the book would protect me. Later, in Italy, when men followed me in the ruins or pursued me in cars down the avenues (opening their doors and whispering vieni, vieni), I always wondered why I felt so sullied and spat upon and furious. It was supposed to be flattering. It was supposed to prove my womanliness. My mother had always said how womanly she felt in Italy. Then why did it make me feel so hunted? There must be something wrong with me I thought. I used to try to smile and toss my hair to show I was grateful. And then I felt like a fraud. Why wasn’t I grateful for being hunted? But now I wanted to be alone, and if anybody interpreted my behavior differently, I’d react like a wild beast. Even Bennett, with all his supposed psychology and insight, maintained that men tried to pick me up all the time because I conveyed my “availability"—as he put it. Because I dressed too sexily. Or wore my hair too wantonly. Or something. I deserved to be attacked, in short. It was the same old jargon of the war between the sexes, the same old fifties lingo in disguise: There is no such thing as rape; you ladies ask for it. You ladies.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O I IEnd of the first day. Brief Invocation. Dante is discouraged at the outset, when he begins seriously to reflect upon what he has undertaken. That very day, his own strength had miserably failed before the Lion and the She-wolf. He bids Virgil consider well whether there be sufficient virtue in him, before committing him to so dreadful a passage. He recalls the great errands of Æneas and of Poul, and the great results of their going to the immortal world; and comparing himself with them, he feels his heart quail, and is ready to turn back. Virgil discerns the fear that has come over him; and in order to remove it, tells him how a blessed Spirit has descended from Heaven expressly to command the journey. On hearing this, Dante immediately casts off pusillanimity, and at once accepts the Freedom and the Mission that are given him. [image file=image_rsrcA5N.jpg] THE DAY was departing, and the brown air taking the animals, that are on earth, from their toils; and I, one alone, was preparing myself to bear the war both of the journey and the pity, which memory, that errs not, shall relate. O Muses, O high Genius, now help me! O Memory, that hast inscribed what I saw, here will be shown thy nobleness. I began: “Poet, who guidest me, look if there be worth in me sufficient, before thou trust me to the arduous passage. Thou sayest that the father of Syivius,1 while subject to corruption, went to the immortal world, and was there in body. But if the Adversary of all evil was propitious to him, considering the high effect, and who and what should come from him, it seems not unfitting to an understanding mind: for in the empyreal heaven, he was chosen to be the father of generous Rome, and of her Empire;2 both these, to say the truth, were established for the holy place, where the Successor of the greatest Peter sits.3 By this journey, for which thou honourest him, he learned things4 that were the causes of his victory, and of the Papal Mantle. Afterwards, the Chosen Vessel5 went thither, to bring confirmation of that Faith which is the entrance of the way of salvation. But I, why go? or who permits it? I am not Æneas, am not Paul; neither myself nor others deem me worthy of it. Wherefore, if I resign myself to go, I fear my going may prove foolish; thou art wise, and understandest better than I speak.” And as one who unwills what he willed, and with new thoughts changes his purpose, so that he wholly quits the thing commenced, such I made myself on that dim coast: for with thinking I wasted the enterprise, that had been so quick in its commencement. “If I have rightly understood thy words,” replied that shade of the Magnanimous, “thy soul is smit with coward fear,

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  When we had passed a great part of our journey, before the rising of the Sun, we came into a wild desart, where they conspired together to slay me. For after they had taken the goddesse from my backe and set her gingerly upon the ground, they likewise tooke off my harnesse, and bound me surely to an Oake, beating me with their whip, in such sort that all my body was mortified. Amongst whom there was one that threatened to cut off my legs with his hatchet, because by my noyse I diffamed his chastity, but the other regarding more their owne profit than my utility, thought best to spare my life, because I might carry home the goddesse. So they laded me againe, driving me before them with their naked swords, till they came to a noble City: where the principall Patrone bearing high reverence unto the goddesse, Came in great devotion before us with Tympany, Cymbals, and other instruments, and received her, and all our company with much sacrifice and veneration. But there I remember, I thought my selfe in most danger, for there was one that brought to the Master of the house, a side of a fat Bucke for a present, which being hanged behind the kitchin doore, not far from the ground, was cleane eaten up by a gray hound, that came in. The Cooke when he saw the Venison devoured, lamented and wept pitifully. And because supper time approached nigh, when as he should be reproved of too much negligence, he tooke a halter to hang himselfe: but his wife perceiving whereabout he went, ran incontinently to him, and taking the halter in both her hands, stopped him of his purpose, saying, O husband, are you out of your writs? pray husband follow my counsel, cary this strange Asse out into some secret place and kill him, which done, cut off one of his sides, and sawce it well like the side of the Bucke, and set it before your Master. Then the Cooke hearing the counsell of his wife, was well pleased to slay me to save himselfe: and so he went to the whetstone, to sharpe his tooles accordingly. THE NINTH BOOKE THE THIRTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER How Apuleius saved himselfe from the Cooke, breaking his halter, and of other things that happened.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  (They knew it was dirty, even if they didn’t understand all the details. They certainly knew something was wrong or else why would I be running to the bathroom a dozen times a day and why would that scary man be yelling at me?) We steamed toward New York leaving a trail of bloody Kotex for the fishes. In my thirteen-year-old mind, the Ile de France was the most romantic ship in the world because it made a cameo appearance in “These Foolish Things"—that dreamily romantic song (played by my dreamily romantic father on the piano): A tinkling piano in the next apartment Those stumbling words that told you What my heart meant… (The poetry I was raised on!) Somewhere in the song, “ The Ile de France with all the gulls around it …” is dreamily mentioned. Little did I know that the gulls would be diving after my bloody Kotex. And little did I know that by the time I got to sail on it, the Ile de France would be much the worse for wear and would rock and roll like an old tub, making nearly all the passengers seasick. The stewards were losing their minds. The dining room was practically empty at every sitting and the room-service bells kept ringing. I see my pudgy thirteen-year-old self clutching my clutch bag full of Kotex on the dipping and weaving decks and bleeding my way all the way home to Manhattan. Ladies and Gentlemen, my menarche. A year and a half later, I was starving myself to death and my periods had stopped dead in their tracks. The cause? Fear of being a woman, as Dr. Schrift put it. Well, why not? OK. I was afraid of being a woman. Not afraid of the blood (I really looked forward to that —at least until I got yelled at for it), but afraid of all the nonsense that went along with it. Like being told that if I had babies, I’d never be an artist, like my mother’s bitterness, like my grandmother’s boring concentration on eating and excreting, like being asked by some dough-faced boy if I planned to be a secretary. A secretary! I was determined never to learn to type. (And I never have. In college Brian typed my papers. Later I pecked with two fingers or paid to have things typed. Oh, it has greatly inconvenienced me and it has cost me ridiculous sums of money—but what are money and inconvenience where principle is concerned? The principle of the thing was: I was not and never would be a typist. Even for myself , no matter how much that would have eased my life.) So, if menstruating meant you had to type, I would stop menstruating! And stop typing! Or both!

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  I asked my mother. “No, darling. They only used them in the olden days when people were more barbaric. Civilization has progressed since then.” It was civilized 1955, only a decade or so since the Nazi holocaust; it was the era of atomic testing and stockpiling; it was two years after the Korean War, and only shortly after the height of the communist witchhunts, with blacklists containing the names of many of my parents’ friends. But my mother, smoothing the real linen sheets between which I trembled, insisted, that rainy night in London, on civilization. She was trying to spare me. If the truth was too hard to bear, then she would lie to me. “Good,” I said, closing my eyes. And Uncle Sam, who made so many things tax deductible, had just two years ago electrocuted the Rosenbergs in the name of civilization. Was two years ago the olden days? My mother and I conspired to pretend it was as we hugged each other before turning out the light. But where was my mother now? She hadn’t saved me then and she couldn’t save me now, but if only she’d appear, I’d surely be able to get through the night. Night by night, we get by. If only I could be like Scarlett O’Hara and think about it all tomorrow. FIVE A Report from the Congress of Dreams or Congressing I’m Isadora. Fly me. —National Airlines D r. Goodlove is chairing the meeting. In the damp cellar of the university, in a windowless basement amphitheater with clattery wooden seats, Adrian has put on his official English manners (and his same old holey shirt) and is enunciating syllables (English) to the candidates (polyglot) scattered through the tiers of seats. He looks like Christ at the Last Supper. To the right of him and to the left of him are somberly dressed analysts in ties and jackets. He is earnestly leaning toward the microphone, sucking his pipe, and summing up the earlier portion of the meeting—which we missed. One bare foot swings back and forth toward the audience while its tattered sandal rests under the table. I indicated to Bennett that I want to sit in the back row, near the door—and as far as possible from the heat generated by Adrian. Bennett gives me a sour look implying that that doesn’t suit him and marches to the front of the room where he sinks down next to some henna-haired candidate from Argentina. I sit in the last row staring at Adrian. Adrian stares back at me. He sucks on his pipe as if he were sucking on me. His hair falls over his eyes. He brushes it back. My hair falls over my eyes. I brush it back. He drags on his pipe.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  In this house the parents maintained a silence except for the father’s dreaded little comments, the sugar substitute of his sweetness, and the whole chirping menagerie of the mother’s comical voices. No one hovered over the kids. They came and went as they chose, they stayed home and studied or they went out, they ate dinner in or at the last moment they accepted the hospitality of other tables. But under this superficial ease of manner ran their dread of their father and their fear of offending him in some new way. He was a man far milder, far more (shall I say) ladylike than any other father I’d known, and yet his soft way of curling up on a couch and tucking his silk dressing gown modestly around his thin white shanks terrified everyone, as did his way of looking over the tops of his glasses and mouthing without sound the name of his son: “Tom-my”—the lips compressed on the double m and making a meal out of his swallowed, sorrowing disappointment. He was homely, tall, snowy-haired, hardworking, in bad health. He seemed to me the absolute standard of respectability, and by that standard I failed. My sister had coached me in some sort of charm, but no degree of charm, whether counterfeit or genuine, made an impression on Mr. Wellington. He was charm-proof. He disapproved of me. I was a fraud, a charlatan. His disapproval started with my mother and her “reputation,” whatever that might refer to (her divorce? her dates? the fact she worked?). He didn’t like me and he didn’t want his son to associate with me. When I entered his study I’d stand behind Tom. Only now does it occur to me that Tommy may have liked me precisely because his father didn’t. Was Tom’s friendship with me one more way in which he was unobtrusively but firmly disappointing his father? Once we closed Tom’s bedroom door we were immersed again in the happy shabbiness of our friendship. For he was my friend—my best friend! Until now other boys my age had frightened me. We might grab each other in the leaves and play Squirrel; Ralph might have hypnotized me, but those painful stabs at pleasure had left me shaken and swollen with yearning—I wanted someone to love me. Someone adult. Someone under my power. I had prayed I’d grow up as fast as possible.

• From The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (2023)

  168.Chapter Seven Money“It’s scary to think about my mother with no money to feed us or buy our clothes” : Judy Blume, It’s Not the End of the World (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Bradbury Press, 1972).John controlled the family’s finances and doled out cash : Box 34 of the Judy Blume Papers at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Accessed April 28, 2022.“The reason that divorce became the politicizing moment” : SK to RB, October 14, 2022.“They were really sort of economically displaced” : Ibid., October 14, 2022. “If there is any one thing that makes a feminist” : Betty Friedan, It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women’s Movement (New York: Norton, 1976), p. 414.“Women should be educated to do the work society rewards” : Ibid., p. 409.“Our movement to liberate women and men from these polarized, unequal sex roles” : Ibid., p. 414.“I don’t think I’ll ever get married,” she says : Judy Blume, It’s Not the End of the World , p. 1.“My mother has no money that I know of” : Ibid., p. 76.“Daddy can afford to” : Ibid., p. 153.“self-help reading, a guide for those troubled by divorce” : Lael Scott, “Divorce Juvenile-Style,” New York Times , September 3, 1972.about a mother who is so worried about her son’s meager appetite : Box 116 of the Judy Blume Papers at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Accessed April 28, 2022.It was a decision he’d eventually come to regret : Pat Scales, “Natural Born Editor,” School Library Journal , May 2001, pp. 50–53.who occasionally ate on the floor : Weidt, Presenting Judy Blume , p. 96.“Oh no! My angel! My precious little baby!” : Judy Blume, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (New York: Dutton Books, 1972). I worked from the 2007 reprint from Puffin Books, p. 112.“Someday she’ll grow up and go to school” : Judy Blume, Superfudge (New York: Dutton Books, 1980). I worked from the 2007 reprint from Puffin Books, p. 28.Chapter Eight Mothers“One thing I’m sure of is I don’t want to spend my life cleaning some house like Ma” : Judy Blume, Deenie (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Bradbury Press, 1973). I worked from the 2014 reprint published by Simon & Schuster, p. 44.“This ‘flare-up,’ as the doctors called it” : Judy Blume, Letters to Judy , p. 74.“I never want to see Boston again” : Lee, Judy Blume’s Story , p. 55.“The thing that really scares me is I’m not sure I want to be a model” : Judy Blume, Deenie , p. 4.“Deenie’s the beauty, Helen’s the brain” : Ibid., p. 3.“Nobody expects much from my schoolwork” : Ibid., p. 43.“they make your feet spread so your regular shoes don’t fit” : Ibid., p. 5.“She’s really fussy about what I eat” : Ibid., p. 15.“Most times I don’t even think about the way I look” : Ibid., p. 14.“This woman was falling apart” : Weidt, Presenting Judy Blume , p.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  The world is ending and you’re going to sleep through it! Listen to me! In his frenzy to have a constant audience he even slapped my cheek once or twice to awaken me. Dazed and bleary-eyed, I listened. And listened. And listened. After the fifth night, it was no longer possible to doubt that Brian had no plans for science fiction. He himself was the Second Coming. The recognition was slow to dawn. When it did, I wasn’t actually sure he wasn’t God. But, according to his logic, if he was Jesus, then I was the Holy Ghost. And bleary-eyed as I was, I knew that was crazy. On Friday, Brian’s boss left town for the weekend and delegated him to close an important deal with the makers of an oven-cleaning product called Miracle Foam. Brian was supposed to meet with the Miracle Foam people in the computer center on Saturday, but he never made it there. The Miracle Foam people waited. Then they called me. Then they called me again. Brian did not come. I phoned everyone I could think of and finally just sat at home chewing my nails and knowing something dreadful was going to happen. At five o’clock, Brian called to read me a “poem” he claimed to have written while walking across Central Park Lake. It went: If Miracle Foam is only a bubble, Why does it cause us so damned much trouble? If we don’t act soon the world will be rubble All for the sake of a silly bubble. “How do you like it, honey?” he asked, all naiveté. “Brian—do you realize that the Miracle Foam people have been trying to reach you all day?” “Isn’t it brilliant? It really sums the whole thing up, I think. I’m planning to send it to The New York Times. The only thing is I wonder whether The Times will print a poem with the word ‘damned’ in it. What do you think?” “Brian—do you realize that I’ve been sitting here all day answering calls from Miracle Foam? Where in hell have you been?” “That’s precisely where I’ve been.” “Where?” “In hell. Just as you’re in hell and I’m in hell and we’re all in hell. How can you worry about a mere bubble like Miracle Foam?” “What in God’s name are you going to do about the contract?” “Just that.” “Just what?” “In God’s name, I’m going to forget about it. I’m not going to do anything about it. Why don’t you come downtown and meet me and I’ll show you my poem.” “Where are you?” “In hell.” “OK, I know you’re in hell, but where should I meet you?” “You ought to know. You sent me here.” “Where?” “To hell. Where I am now. Where you are now. You’re pretty slow, baby.” “Brian, please be reasonable—” “I’m perfectly reasonable. You’re the one who cares about a mere bubble.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  What follows are notes I made about a figure who at an earlier point had populated her nightmares, a fantast she called The Broken Man and described so often and with such troubling specificity that I was frequently moved to check for him on the terrace outside her second-floor windows. “He has on a blue work shirt, like a repair man,” she repeatedly told me. “Short sleeves. He has his name always on his shirt. On the right-hand side. His name is David, Bill, Steve, one of those common names. I would guess this man is maybe age fifty to fifty-nine. Cap like a Dodger cap, navy blue, GULF on it. Brown belt, navy-blue pants, black really shiny shoes. And he talks to me in a really deep voice: Hello, Quintana. I’m going to lock you here in the garage. After I became five I never ever dreamed about him.” David, Bill, Steve, one of those common names? Name always on his shirt? On the right-hand side? Cap like a Dodger cap, navy blue, GULF on it? After she became five she never ever dreamed about him? It was when she said “I would guess this man is maybe age fifty to fifty-nine” that I realized my fear of The Broken Man to be as unquestioning as her own. 9On this question of fear. When I began writing these pages I believed their subject to be children, the ones we have and the ones we wish we had, the ways in which we depend on our children to depend on us, the ways in which we encourage them to remain children, the ways in which they remain more unknown to us than they do to their most casual acquaintances; the ways in which we remain equally opaque to them. The ways in which for example we write novels “just to show” each other. The ways in which our investments in each other remain too freighted ever to see the other clear. The ways in which neither we nor they can bear to contemplate the death or the illness or even the aging of the other. As the pages progressed it occurred to me that their actual subject was not children after all, at least not children per se, at least not children qua children: their actual subject was this refusal even to engage in such contemplation, this failure to confront the certainties of aging, illness, death. This fear. Only as the pages progressed further did I understand that the two subjects were the same. When we talk about mortality we are talking about our children. Hello, Quintana. I’m going to lock you here in the garage. After I became five I never ever dreamed about him. Once she was born I was never not afraid.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  In attendance: Joan Didion (piece o’ chicken at the café, show, and ladies’ cocktail hour). Hot humid day; stage temp: comfortable.” I have no memory of Ms. Redgrave nervous preshow. I have no memory of the ladies’ cocktail hour. I am told that it featured daiquiris, blended backstage by Vanessa’s dresser, and that I had one. I remember only that the hot humid day with the comfortable stage temperature was followed, for me, by a week of 103-degree fever, three weeks of acute pain in the nerves on the left side of my head and face (including, inconveniently, those nerves that trigger headaches, earaches, and toothaches), and after that by a condition the neurologist described as “postviral ataxia” but I could describe only as “not knowing where my body starts and stops.” I can only think that this may have been what Ntozake Shange meant by “corporeal ineptness.” I no longer had any balance. I dropped whatever I tried to pick up. I could not tie my shoes, I could not button a sweater or clip my hair off my face, the simplest acts of fastening and unfastening were now beyond me. I could no longer catch a ball. I mention the ball only because (I do not in fact normally catch balls during the course of the day) the single accurate description I would hear or read of these symptoms I was just then beginning to experience was that provided by a professional tennis player, James Blake, who, after a season of considerable stress—he had fractured a vertebra in his neck before the French Open and by the time he was healing his father was dying—woke one morning in his early twenties with similar symptoms. “Instantly, I realized just how many things were wrong,” he later wrote, in Breaking Back: How I Lost Everything and Won Back My Life, about his initial attempt to return to what had been his life. “Not only was my balance off, but my vision was messed up as well—I had a hard time tracking the ball from Brian’s and Evan’s rackets to my own. I could see them hit it, I’d sort of lose it for a moment, then suddenly it would register much closer to me. This was especially disconcerting because neither Brian nor Evan hit anywhere near as hard as the average tour player.” He tries to run right for a shot, and finds that his coordination has gone wherever his vision went. He tries to volley, just hit a few balls, and finds that the balls now hit him. He asks the neurotologist to whom he has been referred at Yale–New Haven how long he should expect these symptoms to last. “At least three months,” the neurotologist says. “Or it could take four years.” This is not what the professional tennis player wants to hear, nor is it what I want to hear. Still.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  . . . duel to the . . . or any of that – look, of course I know you and your family have ‘‘beliefs’’,’ began Howard uneasily, as if ‘beliefs’ were a kind of condition, like oral herpes. ‘You know . . . and I completely and utterly respect and tolerate that – I didn’t realize this was a surprise to you – ’ ‘Well, it is, yeah? It’s a fucking surprise!’ cried Michael, turning about him and whispering the swear word, as if in fear of being overheard. ‘So, OK . . . it’s a surprise, I appreciate that . . . Michael, please . . . I didn’t come here to have a row – let’s take it down a notch – ’ ‘If he’s touched – ’ began Michael, and Howard, over and above the madness of the conversation itself, began to feel genuinely afraid of him. The flight from the rational, which was everywhere in evidence in the new century, none of it had surprised Howard as it had surprised others, but each new example he came across – on the television, in the street and now in this young man – weakened him somehow. His desire to be involved in the argument, in the culture, fell off. The energy to fight the philistines, this is what fades. Now Howard’s eyes turned to the ground, in some expectation of being thumped or otherwise verbally abused. He listened to a sudden curve of wind swoop around the corner they were standing on and rustle the trees. ‘Michael – ’ ‘I don’t believe this.’  kipps and belsey The nobility Howard had first thought he detected in Michael’s face was rapidly being replaced by a hardening, the nonchalant manner supplanted by its exact opposite, as if some fluid poisonous to his system had been swapped for the blood in his veins. His head whipped back round; now Howard seemed no longer to exist for him. He began to walk with speed, almost to jog, down the street. Howard called out to him. Michael increased his pace, took a sudden, jerky right and kicked open an iron gate. He shouted ‘Jerome!’ and disappeared under and through a leafless bower that thrust twigs in all directions, like a nest. Howard followed him through the gate and under the bower. He stopped before an imposing double-fronted black door with a silver knocker. It was ajar. He paused again in the Victorian hallway, underfoot those black-and-white diamonds that no one had welcomed him on to. A minute later, upon hearing raised voices, he followed them to the furthest room, a high-ceilinged dining room with dramatic French doors, before which was a long table laid with five dinner settings. He had the sense of being in one of those horrid claustrophobic Edwardian plays, in which the whole world is reduced to one room.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Being a murderer with a sensational but incomplete and unorthodox memory, I cannot tell you, ladies and gentlemen, the exact day when I first knew with utter certainty that the red convertible was following us. I do remember, however, the first time I saw its driver quite clearly. I was proceeding slowly one afternoon through torrents of rain and kept seeing that red ghost swimming and shivering with lust in my mirror, when presently the deluge dwindled to a patter, and then was suspended altogether. With a swishing sound a sunburst swept the highway, and needing a pair of new sunglasses, I pulled up at a filling station. What was happening was a sickness, a cancer, that could not be helped, so I simply ignored the fact that our quiet pursuer, in his converted state, stopped a little behind us at a café or bar bearing the idiotic sign: The Bustle: A Deceitful Seatful. Having seen to the needs of my car, I walked into the office to get those glasses and pay for the gas. As I was in the act of signing a traveller’s check and wondered about my exact whereabouts, I happened to glance through a side window, and saw a terrible thing. A broad-backed man, baldish, in an oatmeal coat and dark-brown trousers, was listening to Lo who was leaning out of the car and talking to him very rapidly, her hand with outspread fingers going up and down as it did when she was very serious and emphatic. What struck me with sickening force was—how should I put it?—the voluble familiarity of her way, as if they had known each other—oh, for weeks and weeks. I saw him scratch his cheek and nod, and turn, and walk back to his convertible, a broad and thickish man of my age, somewhat resembling Gustave Trapp, a cousin of my father’s in Switzerland—same smoothly tanned face, fuller than mine, with a small dark mustache and a rosebud degenerate mouth. Lolita was studying a road map when I got back into the car. “What did that man ask you, Lo?” “Man? Oh, that man. Oh yes. Oh, I don’t know. He wondered if I had a map. Lost his way, I guess.” We drove on, and I said: “Now listen, Lo. I do not know whether you are lying or not, and I do not know whether you are insane or not, and I do not care for the moment; but that person has been following us all day, and his car was at the motel yesterday, and I think he is a cop. You know perfectly well what will happen and where you will go if the police find out about things. Now I want to know exactly what he said to you and what you told him.” She laughed. “If he’s really a cop,” she said shrilly but not illogically, “the worst thing we could do, would be to show him we are scared. Ignore him, Dad.”

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  towel under me to slow my fall, and then more wildly because that hadn’t worked, tumbling like Alice down the rabbit hole or like Elsa Schneider disappearing down into the infinite abyss in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The gray mist obscured my vision. Had I crossed the seal? Was the world crumbling? Calm, calm, I told myself. I could feel gravity sucking me deeper, time accelerating, the darkness around me, widening until I was somewhere else, somewhere with no horizon, an area of space that awed me in its foreverness, and I felt calm for just a moment. Then I recognized that I was floating without a tether. I tried to scream but I couldn’t. I was afraid. The fear felt like desire: suddenly I wanted to go back and be in all the places I’d ever been, every street I’d walked down, every room I’d sat down in. I wanted to see it all again. I tried to remember my life, flipping through Polaroids in my mind. “It was so pretty there. It was interesting!” But I knew that even if I could go back, if such a thing were possible with exactitude, in life or in dreams, there was really no point. And then I felt desperately lonely. So I stuck my arm out and I grasped onto someone—maybe it was Ping Xi, maybe it was a wakefulness outside myself—and that other hand steadied me somehow as I fell past whole galaxies, mercurial waves of light strobing through my body, blinding me over and over, my brain throbbing from the pressure, my eyes leaking as though each teardrop shed a vision of my past. I felt the wetness trickle down my neck. I was crying. I knew that. I could hear myself gasp and whimper. I focused on the sound and then the universe narrowed into a fine line, and that felt better because there was a clearer trajectory, so I traveled more peacefully through outer space, listening to the rhythm of my respiration, each breath an echo of the breath before, softer and softer, until I was far enough away that there was no sound, there was no movement. There was no need for reassurance or directionality because I was nowhere, doing nothing. I was nothing. I was gone. • • • ON JUNE 1, 2001, I came to in a cross-legged seated position on the living room floor. Sunlight was needling through the blinds, illuminating crisscrossed planes of yellow dust that blurred and waned as I squinted. I heard a bird chirp. I was alive. • • •