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.

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• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  57 Not only is the illness figured as the “gay disease,” but throughout the media’s hysterical and homophobic response to the illness there is a tactical construction of a continuity between the polluted status of the homosexual by virtue of the boundary-trespass that is homosexuality and the disease as a specific modality of homosexual pollution. That the disease is transmitted through the exchange of bodily fluids suggests within the sensationalist graphics of homophobic signifying systems the dangers that permeable bodily boundaries present to the social order as such. Douglas remarks that “the body is a model that can stand for any bounded system. Its boundaries can represent any boundaries which are threatened or precarious.” 58 And she asks a question which one might have expected to read in Foucault: “Why should bodily margins be thought to be specifically invested with power and danger?” 59 Douglas suggests that all social systems are vulnerable at their margins, and that all margins are accordingly considered dangerous. If the body is synecdochal for the social system per se or a site in which open systems converge, then any kind of unregulated permeability constitutes a site of pollution and endangerment. Since anal and oral sex among men clearly establishes certain kinds of bodily permeabilities unsanctioned by the hegemonic order, male homosexuality would, within such a hegemonic point of view, constitute a site of danger and pollution, prior to and regardless of the cultural presence of AIDS. Similarly, the “polluted” status of lesbians, regardless of their low-risk status with respect to AIDS, brings into relief the dangers of their bodily exchanges. Significantly, being “outside” the hegemonic order does not signify being “in” a state of filthy and untidy nature. Paradoxically, homosexuality is almost always conceived within the homophobic signifying economy as both uncivilized and unnatural. The construction of stable bodily contours relies upon fixed sites of corporeal permeability and impermeability. Those sexual practices in both homosexual and heterosexual contexts that open surfaces and orifices to erotic signification or close down others effectively reinscribe the boundaries of the body along new cultural lines. Anal sex among men is an example, as is the radical re-membering of the body in Wittig’s The Lesbian Body. Douglas alludes to “a kind of sex pollution which expresses a desire to keep the body (physical and social) intact,” 60 suggesting that the naturalized notion of “the” body is itself a consequence of taboos that render that body discrete by virtue of its stable boundaries. Further, the rites of passage that govern various bodily orifices presuppose a heterosexual construction of gendered exchange, positions, and erotic possibilities. The deregulation of such exchanges accordingly disrupts the very boundaries that determine what it is to be a body at all. Indeed, the critical inquiry that traces the regulatory practices within which bodily contours are constructed constitutes precisely the genealogy of “the body” in its discreteness that might further radicalize Foucault’s theory.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  ring in his lap, and turned and walked away. I heard the click and clunk of the car door opening and closing behind me. I kept walking. Then I felt a sharp sting on the back of my head as if a little rock had hit me. Billy had thrown the ring at me. I kept walking. “Guess what?” Billy shouted. “I raped you!” I turned around and saw him standing there by the car, looking hurt and angry but not as tall as usual. I searched my mind for a cutting comeback, but since I didn’t know what “rape” meant, all I could think to say was “Big deal!” At home I looked up the word in the dictionary. Then I looked up the words that explained it, and though I still couldn’t figure it out completely, I knew it wasn’t good. Usually, when I didn’t understand a word, I’d ask Dad about it, and we’d read over the definition together and discuss it. I didn’t want to do that now. I had a hunch it would cause problems. • • • The next day Lori, Brian, and I were sitting at one of the spool tables in the depot, playing five-card draw and keeping an eye on Maureen while Mom and Dad spent some downtime at the Owl Club. We heard Billy Deel outside, calling my name. Lori looked at me, and I shook my head. We went back to our card game, but Billy kept on, so Lori went out on the porch, which was the old platform where people used to board the train, and told Billy to go away. She came back in and said, “He’s got a gun.” Lori picked up Maureen. One of the windows shattered, and then Billy appeared framed in it. He used the butt of his rifle to knock out the remaining pieces of glass, then pointed the barrel inside. “It’s just a BB gun,” Brian said. “I told you you’d be sorry,” Billy said to me and pulled the trigger. It felt like a wasp had stung me in the ribs. Billy started firing at us all, working the pump action quickly back and forth before each shot. Brian pushed over the spool table and we all crouched behind it. The BBs pinged off the tabletop. Maureen was howling. I turned to Lori, who was the oldest and in charge. She was biting her lower lip, thinking. She handed Maureen to me and took off running across the room. Billy got her once or twice—Brian stood up to try to draw the fire—but she made it upstairs to the second floor. Then she

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Él y sus amigos se escurren por la puerta principal, se dirigen a The Cue para jugar al billar, pero Jay echa una mirada en mi dirección mientras se dirige a la puerta, pasando su brazo alrededor de Shawna Abbot. Sus ojos se posan en mi pecho y luego vuelven a subir, mirándome con una parte de deseo y tres partes de amenaza. Y durante dos años ha sido solo eso. Recibir las miradas asquerosas que me lanza por miedo de reaccionar otra vez. Sin embargo, me ha dejado en paz, así que simplemente lo evito y finjo que no está allí. Ambos grupos se van, decidiendo encontrar su diversión en otro lugar, pero antes que la puerta de entrada tenga la oportunidad de cerrarse, mi hermana la atraviesa, y un par de compañeras de trabajo la siguen. Todos los ojos en la habitación se vuelven hacia ellas, mirando a las mujeres sexys en sus diminutas blusas y tacones altos. The Girl Gets Around, de Sammy Hagar, suena en la máquina de discos, y Cam se dirige a la barra, sosteniéndose en el borde y haciendo un pequeño baile mientras canta en play-back para mí. Es todo un personaje. —¿Ya terminaste? —pregunto por sobre la música, mirando el reloj en la pared—. No me iré por al menos otra hora. —Está bien. —Cam le resta importancia con un gesto mientras se estira y saca el ron y los vasos limpios frente a mí—. Necesitamos relajarnos antes de ir a casa a dormir de todos modos. Sirve un solo trago, vuelve a colocar la botella y toma la pistola de soda, llenando su vaso con Coca-Cola Light. Saco la pala del recipiente de hielo y agrego unos cubos a su vaso antes de bajar por la barra, revisando a los clientes. Sustituyo las cervezas de Grady y Rich, vuelvo a servirle al marido de Shel jugando al video póker, y mezclo tres Cosmos para unas pocas damas que dejaron sus ediciones de The Gift de Deepak Chopra en su mesa, las que traen todas las semanas para que sus maridos piensen que, de hecho, están en una reunión del club literario. —¿Quieres saltar aquí atrás? —grita Shel a Cam—. Necesito reponer cerveza. Lanza una mirada a Shel, pero se levanta y va detrás de la barra. Shel va por el pasillo donde se guarda el refrigerador y la cerveza. —Saca todas las propinas y comienza a llenar el jarro otra vez —digo a mi hermana desde el otro extremo—. No tendrás una parte de las mías. Se ríe, mirándome con aire de suficiencia mientras se lleva las manos a las caderas. Me vuelvo para mezclar un Screwdriver3 para otro cliente, y lo siguiente que sé es que hay un rollo de dinero en mi rostro. —Como si necesitara tus diez centavos y cinco monedas, nena —responde con aire de suficiencia. Abro los ojos de par en par, mientras miro boquiabierta.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Me inclino, mirando sus oscuros ojos marrones, mientras al mismo tiempo, saco las llaves del bar de mi bolsillo trasero. —No te pedí que vinieras. Y como dije, tengo quien me lleve. Dando media vuelta, me apresuro a la entrada de Grounders y abro la puerta rápidamente. —¡Jordan! —Lo escucho gritar. Abro la puerta de un tirón y entro, lanzándole una mirada dura mientras todavía está sentado en el auto. —Vete a casa. Y cierro la puerta de nuevo, girando la cerradura y retrocediendo como si fuera a intentar derribarla. Me quedo allí, respirando con dificultad y temblando. No permitirá que eso pase. No hará nada esta noche, porque hubiera salido del auto más rápido de lo que yo hubiera podido llegar a la puerta del bar si fuera a intentarlo, pero estará lo suficientemente enojado como para no olvidarlo. Fue un error de seis meses que cometí en la escuela secundaria, pero no volveré a ser tan estúpida. Mi guardia está arriba ahora. Y no vino a llevarme a casa esta noche. No directamente, de todos modos. Tal vez después de haber terminado conmigo. Cierro los ojos, tratando de ahogar el recuerdo de él golpeando la ventana de mi auto una noche mientras yo trataba frenéticamente de poner la llave en el contacto. Todavía puedo sentir el fuego en mi cuero cabelludo donde jaló mi cabello. Me doy la vuelta y abro los ojos, alejando los pensamientos. Después de un momento, escucho el rugido del motor más allá de la barra y los neumáticos chirriando por la calle. Se ha ido. Pongo mi bolso en la barra y corro por el pasillo, deslizándome por los baños, revisando las cerraduras de la puerta trasera, abriéndola y volviendo a cerrarla, tirando del mango para asegurarme que no abre, y luego vuelvo a correr al frente y reviso la puerta de entrada nuevamente y las ventanas. Sacando el teléfono de mi bolso, me siento en un taburete de la barra, agarrándolo con mi puño. ¿A quién llamo? Probablemente Jay esté diciendo la verdad. Cole está borracho de nuevo. ¿Por qué haría eso? Sabía que estaba contando con él para que me buscara. Estoy segura que no sabe que Jay fue quien vino en su lugar, pero aun así… podría malditamente matarlo. Trago el dolor que sube por mi garganta. Llamo a mi hermana, pero como siempre, va al correo de voz. Probablemente ya está saliendo del trabajo o está en casa durmiendo. ¿Mi papá? ¿Madrastra? Ni siquiera han llamado desde que los llamé hace una semana. No pueden hacer nada sin actuar como si fuera una gran imposición. Pedirles algo es deberles. Es una carga. Soy una carga. Pike cruza por mi mente. No tengo dudas que vendría.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  So they rode through the village. Just as they came to the edge of it, the summoner rode up to his companion and whispered in his ear again. ‘There is an old woman living around here, who would sooner risk her neck than lose a penny. I’ll get some money out of her, so help me. Otherwise she will end up in court. She hasn’t done anything wrong, of course, but that doesn’t matter. The important thing is to get her. You haven’t had much luck so far, but I’ll show you how it’s done. Just watch.’ When they came up to the old widow’s door, the summoner began beating on it. ‘Come out, you old trout!’ he shouted. ‘Have you got some priest or friar with you? You old hag!’ ‘Who is knocking?’ The old woman opened the door a fraction. ‘God save us! What do you want, dear sir?’ She knew that he was the summoner. ‘I have a bill of summons here,’ he said. ‘On pain of excommunication I command you to attend the archdeacon’s court tomorrow. There you will have to respond to certain charges made against you.’ ‘May God be my witness,’ she said, ‘I have done nothing wrong. I have been ill for a long time, in any case, and I cannot go very far. I can only hobble and, sir, I could no more get on a horse than on your back. The pain in my side is something dreadful. Can you not give me a written statement of the case? Then I can get someone to answer the charges for me in open court.’ ‘If you pay up now, I’ll consider it. Now let me see. Yes. Twelve pence should do it. If you pay me those twelve pence, I’ll drop all charges. I shan’t make much profit myself. It all goes to my lord and master. But for your sake I’ll do it. Come on. Cough up. Where’s the money?’ ‘Twelve pence!’ she exclaimed. ‘Mary, Mother of God save me from ruin! If I were to gain the whole world by it, I still haven’t got the money. Twelve pence? I’ve never seen so much money in my life. You can see well enough, sir, what I am. Have pity on a poor old hag.’ ‘No way. If I let you off, may the devil take me! Pay up, even if it kills you.’ ‘In God’s truth, I don’t have any money.’ ‘Pay me now. Otherwise I will confiscate your brand-new frying pan. The one I can see lying in the corner. Don’t you remember the debt you owe me for cheating on your husband? I paid your fine then to the archdeacon.’

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  As you learn who your characters are, compassion for them will grow. There shouldn’t be just a single important character in your work for whom you have compassion. You need to feel it even for the villain—in fact, especially for the villain. Life is not like formula fiction. The villain has a heart, and the hero has great flaws. You’ve got to pay attention to what each character says, so you can know each of their hearts. Only in the comics and formula movies do we get any pleasure from destroying totally evil and sinister villains, because in those cases they’ve been systematically depersonalized. They commit only acts of atrocity and sociopathology, and they say terribly evil things, and then we get to ritually kill them. There can be, at the end of the book, the relief that comes with justice. You can’t write down your intellectual understanding of a hero or villain and expect us to be engaged. You probably have got to find these characters within the community of people who live in your heart. For instance, just to mix media for a moment, if Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs hadn’t had an emotional understanding of Hannibal Lector’s heart, his mannerisms would not have rung so true or been so terrifying. The first time we see him, he’s simply standing there, expressionless, with his arms by his side. It is just chilling. I felt like I might break out in welts from sheer anxiety. I felt like my neck had developed a life of its own and was going to wait for me out in the lobby. To have this effect on us, Hopkins must have sympathized with something inside Lector, must have understood something about his heart. The writer needs to try to understand each of his or her characters in this way. The only thing to do when the sense of dread and low self-esteem tells you that you are not up to this is to wear it down by getting a little work done every day. You really can do it, really can find these people inside you and learn to hear what they have to say. For example, let’s say you have a main character whose feelings can be hurt if he’s spoken to sharply—unlike you, ha-ha-ha. Say he is also a little like you in the sense that when he gets a bit depressed or tense, he heads for a rib joint to eat a pound of burned, fatty meat. So he is perhaps also a little overweight—not that you are overweight. I’m sure your weight is just fine.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  But it was a hard, exhausting process. It began in Athens, where the mystai fasted for two whole days, sacrificed a piglet in honor of Persephone, and set off in a huge throng on the long, hot march to Eleusis. By this time, they were weak and apprehensive. The epoptai, who had been initiated the previous year, walked with them, abusing and threatening the mystai while they called hypnotically on Dionysus, god of transformation, driving the crowd into a frenzy of excitement. By the time the mystai arrived in Eleusis, confused, elated, exhausted, and scared, it was evening, and they were herded to and fro through the streets by flickering torchlight until, thoroughly disoriented, they finally plunged into the pitch darkness of the initiation hall. From this point, we have only brief, disconnected glimpses of the rites. Animals were sacrificed; there was a shocking event— a child may have been pushed, like little Demophon, into the fire, only to be reprieved at the eleventh hour—and a “revelation.” Something—a sheaf of corn, perhaps—was lifted out of a covered basket. But the Mystery ended joyfully, with tableaux depicting Persephone’s return from the world of the dead and her reunion with her mother. No secret doctrine was imparted in which the mystai had to “believe.” The “revelation” was significant only as the culmination of the intense ritual experience. In a superb summary of the religious process, Aristotle would later make it clear that the mystai did not go to Eleusis to learn (mathein) anything but to have an experience (pathein) and a radical change of mind (diatethenai).13 The rites seem to have left a powerful impression. No mystes could fail to be stunned by a ceremony so “overwhelming in its beauty and size,” wrote the Greek rhetorician Dio of Prusa (50–117 CE); he would behold “many mystic views and hear many sounds of the kind, with darkness and light appearing in sudden changes and other innumerable things happening;” it was impossible that he would “experience just nothing in his soul, and that he should not come to surmise that there is some wiser insight or plan in all that is going on.”14 The historian Plutarch (c. 46–120 CE) thought that the initiation was a foretaste of death. It began with the dissolution of one’s mental processes, disorientation, frightening paths that seemed to lead nowhere, and, just before the end, “panic, shivering, sweat and amazement.” But finally a “wonderful light … pure regions and meadows are there to greet you, with sounds and dances and solemn sacred words and holy views.”15

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  The fear of such a “regression” to homosexuality is, then, a fear of losing cultural sanction and privilege altogether. Although Kristeva claims that this loss designates a place prior to culture, there is no reason not to understand it as a new or unacknowledged cultural form. In other words, Kristeva prefers to explain lesbian experience as a regressive libidinal state prior to acculturation itself, rather than to take up the challenge that lesbianism offers to her restricted view of paternally sanctioned cultural laws. Is the fear encoded in the construction of the lesbian as psychotic the result of a developmentally necessitated repression, or is it, rather, the fear of losing cultural legitimacy and, hence, being cast, not outside or prior to culture, but outside cultural legitimacy, still within culture, but culturally “out-lawed”? Kristeva describes both the maternal body and lesbian experience from a position of sanctioned heterosexuality that fails to acknowledge its own fear of losing that sanction. Her reification of the paternal law not only repudiates female homosexuality, but denies the varied meanings and possibilities of motherhood as a cultural practice. But cultural subversion is not really Kristeva’s concern, for subversion, when it appears, emerges from beneath the surface of culture only inevitably to return there. Although the semiotic is a possibility of language that escapes the paternal law, it remains inevitably within or, indeed, beneath the territory of that law. Hence, poetic language and the pleasures of maternity constitute local displacements of the paternal law, temporary subversions which finally submit to that against which they initially rebel. By relegating the source of subversion to a site outside of culture itself, Kristeva appears to foreclose the possibility of subversion as an effective or realizable cultural practice. Pleasure beyond the paternal law can be imagined only together with its inevitable impossibility. Kristeva’s theory of thwarted subversion is premised on her problematic view of the relation among drives, language, and the law. Her postulation of a subversive multiplicity of drives raises a number of epistemological and political questions. In the first place, if these drives are manifest only in language or cultural forms already determined as Symbolic, then how is it that we can verify their pre-Symbolic ontological status? Kristeva argues that poetic language gives us access to these drives in their fundamental multiplicity, but this answer is not fully satisfactory. Since poetic language is said to depend upon the prior existence of these multiplicitous drives, we cannot, then, in circular fashion, justify the postulated existence of these drives through recourse to poetic language. If drives must first be repressed for language to exist, and if we can attribute meaning only to that which is representable in language, then to attribute meaning to drives prior to their emergence into language is impossible. Similarly, to attribute a causality to drives which facilitates their transformation into language and by which language itself is to be explained cannot reasonably be done within the confines of language itself.

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  the prohibitive paternal law is foundational to culture itself. Hence, the subversion of paternally sanctioned culture can not come from another version of culture, but only from within the repressed interior of culture itself, from the heterogeneity of drives that constitutes culture’s concealed foundation. This relation between heterogeneous drives and the paternal law produces an exceedingly problematic view of psychosis. On the one hand, it designates female homosexuality as a culturally unintelligible practice, inherently psychotic: on the other hand, it mandates maternity as a compulsory defense against libidinal chaos. Although Kristeva does not make either claim explicitly, both implications follow from her views on the law, language, and drives. Consider that for Kristeva poetic language breaks the incest taboo and, as such, verges always on psychosis. As a return to the maternal body and a concomitant deindividuation of the ego, poetic language becomes especially threatening when uttered by women. The poetic then contests not only the incest taboo, but the taboo against homosexuality as well. Poetic language is thus, for women, both displaced maternal dependency and, because that dependency is libidinal, displaced homosexuality. For Kristeva, the unmediated cathexis of female homosexual desire leads unequivocally to psychosis. Hence, one can satisfy this drive only through a series of displacements: the incorporation of maternal identity—that is, by becoming a mother oneself—or through poetic language which manifests obliquely the heterogeneity of drives characteristic of maternal dependency. As the only socially sanctioned and, hence, nonpsychotic displacements for homosexual desire, both maternity and poetry constitute melancholic experiences for women appropriately acculturated into heterosexuality. The heterosexual poet-mother suffers interminably from the displacement of the homosexual cathexis. And yet, the consummation of this desire would lead to the psychotic unraveling of identity, according to Kristeva—the presumption being that, for women, heterosexuality and coherent selfhood are indissolubly linked. How are we to understand this constitution of lesbian experience as the site of an irretrievable self-loss? Kristeva clearly takes heterosexuality to be prerequisite to kinship and to culture. Consequently, she identifies lesbian experience as the psychotic alternative to the acceptance of paternally sanctioned laws. And yet why is lesbianism constituted as psychosis? From what cultural perspective is lesbianism constructed as a site of fusion, self-loss, and psychosis? By projecting the lesbian as “Other” to culture, and characterizing lesbian speech as the psychotic “whirl-of-words,” Kristeva constructs lesbian sexuality as intrinsically unintelligible. This tactical dismissal and reduction of lesbian experience performed in the name of the law positions Kristeva within the orbit of paternal-heterosexual privilege. The paternal law which protects her from this radical incoherence is precisely the mechanism that produces the construct of lesbianism as a site of irrationality. Significantly, this description of lesbian experience is effected from the outside and tells us more about the fantasies that a fearful heterosexual culture produces to defend against its own homosexual possibilities than about lesbian experience itself. In claiming that lesbianism designates a loss of self, Kristeva appears to be delivering a psychoanalytic truth about the repression necessary for individuation.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  A LOT OF OUR NEIGHBORS on North Third Street were kind of weird. A clan of Gypsies lived down the block in a big, falling-apart house with plywood nailed over the porch to create more indoor space. They were always stealing our stuff, and one time, after Brian’s pogo stick had disappeared, he saw one of the old Gypsy women bouncing down the sidewalk on it. She wouldn’t give it back, so Mom got into a big argument with the head of the clan, and the next day we found a chicken with its throat cut on our doorstep. It was some kind of Gypsy hex. Mom decided, as she put it, to fight magic with magic. She took a ham bone out of the beans and went down to the Gypsies’ house, waving it in the air. Standing on the sidewalk, she held up the bone like a crucifix at an exorcism, and called down a curse on the entire Gypsy clan and their house, vowing that it would collapse with the lot of them in it and that the bowels of the earth would open up and swallow them forever if they bothered us again. The next morning Brian’s pogo stick was lying in the front yard. The neighborhood also had its share of perverts. Mostly, they were shabby, hunched men with wheedling voices who hung around on street corners and followed us to and from school, trying to give us boosts when we climbed a fence, offering us candy and loose change if we would go play with them. We called them creeps and hollered at them to leave us alone, but I worried about hurting their feelings because I couldn’t help wondering if maybe they were telling the truth, that all they wanted was to be our friends. At night Mom and Dad always left the front door and the back door and all the windows open. Since we had no air-conditioning, they explained, we needed to let the air circulate. From time to time, a vagrant or a wino would wander through the front door, assuming the house was deserted. When we woke up in the morning, we’d find one asleep in a front room. As soon as we roused them, they shambled off apologetically. Mom always assured us they were just harmless drunks. Maureen, who was four and had a terrible fear of bogeymen, kept dreaming that intruders in Halloween masks were coming through the open doors to get us. One night when I was almost ten, I was awakened by someone running his hands over my private parts. At first it was confusing. Lori and I slept in the same bed, and I thought

• From The Case for God (2009)

  At a Pentecostal service, men and women fell into tranced states, were seen to levitate, and felt that their bodies were melting in ineffable joy. They saw bright streaks of light in the air and sprawled on the ground, felled by a weight of glory. 20 This was a form of positivism, because Pentecostalists relied on the immediacy of sense experience to validate their beliefs. 21 But the meteoric explosion of this type of faith indicated widespread unhappiness with the modern rational ethos. It developed at a time when people were beginning to have doubts about science and technology, which had shown their lethal potential during the Great War. Pentecostalists were also reacting against the more conservative Christians who were trying to make their Biblebased religion entirely reasonable and scientific. As A. C. Dixon, one of the founding fathers of Protestant fundamentalism, explained in 1920, “I am a Christian because I am a Thinker, a Rationalist, a Scientist.” His faith depended upon “exact observation and correct thinking.” Doctrines were not theological speculations but facts. 22 Evangelical Christians still aspired to the early modern ideal of absolute certainty based on scientific verification. Yet fundamentalists would also see their faith experiences— born-again conversions, faith healing, and strongly felt emotional conviction—as positive verification of their beliefs. Dixon’s almost defiant rationalism indicates, perhaps, a hidden fear. With the Great War, an element of terror had entered conservative Protestantism in the United States. Many believed that the catastrophic encounters at the Somme and Passchendaele were the battles that, according to scripture, would usher in the Last Days; many Christians were now convinced that they were on the front line of an apocalyptic war against Satan. The wild propaganda stories of German atrocities seemed proof positive that they had been right to fight the nation that had spawned the Higher Criticism. 23 But they were equally mistrustful of democracy, which carried overtones of the “mob rule” and “red republic” that had erupted in the atheistic Bolshevik revolution (1917). 24 These American Christians no longer saw Jesus as a loving savior; rather, as the leading conservative Isaac M. Haldeman proclaimed, the Christ of Revelation “comes forth as one who no longer seeks either friendship or love. ... He descends that he may shed the blood of men.” 25 Every single fundamentalist movement that I have studied in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is rooted in profound fear. 26 For Dixon and his conservative Protestant colleagues, who were about to establish the first fundamentalist movement of modern times, it was a religious variation of the widespread malaise that followed the Great War, and it made them distort the tradition they were trying to defend. They were ready for a fight, but the conflict might have remained in their own troubled minds had not the more liberal Protestants chosen this moment to launch an offensive against them.

• From City of Night (1963)

  They stood momentarily at the draped door, the two cops, looking back into the bar as if to engrave each face here threateningly—indelibly—on their minds: the look of someone who says: “This is only the beginning of the game—a hint; we’ll get you eventually; if not here, then somewhere else.”... Typically cop-swaggering, armed with invisible bully-sticks, they walked out. The frozen scenes about me resume, as if a movie film had begun again at the exact point at which it had paused. The blackhaired woman says to me: “They try to bug everyone before the tourists come in. Mostly the hustlers,” she added pointedly. “But after a while, the closer it gets to Mardi Gras, it cools off; they lose control—too many to take care of.” Coming from a woman—a woman with whom I havent even spoken—those words, aimed so surely at me, embarrass me curiously. “Where are you really staying?” she asked me. “At the Y,” I told her. “You sure?” Then: “Look, boy, Im not trying to pry. I know your scene. And I dont give a damn. But if you dont have a pad, theyll bust you for vag.... Hey! Desdemonal Drusilla!” she calls out to the two look-alike queens. “Theyre real sisters,” she explains to me, “twins: Desdemona and Drusilla Duncan. And theyre cool.” “You callin us, sweetheart?” one queen says, and they both slide off their stools simultaneously and come over demurely. The woman introduced us. “Chawmed,” says Desdemona Duncan. “Dee-lighted, Ahm sure,” says Drusilla Duncan. “I really have a place,” I said to the woman, realizing why shes asked the two queens over. The two queens perched on nearby schools. “Too bad,” sighed Desdemona and Drusilla Duncan almost at the same time. The woman shrugged. The bartender refilled her glass—with Seven-Up. “Im Sylvia,” the woman introduced herself. “I own this bar.” “And shes a real darling, too,” trilled Drusilla Duncan. Someone entered. Sylvia squinted, leaned forward. Then she turned away. “I hate the vice cops as much as you do,” she told me. 2 Two youngmen near the Bourbon House face each other on the street—one, blackhaired and meanfaced, threatening the other with a large stick; the other, a small blond boy of about 18 (turned-up nose, cleft-chin, blue eyes, masses of blond hair over his forehead—a replica of the current, boyish, blond-faced teenage idols of rock-n-roll), tensely and imminently uncertainly menacing the other with a knife poised gleaming in the blind sun. Behind the dark one hovers a small skinny girl like an anxious vulture. Her painted mouth seems to have been slashed carelessly across her pinched face in a gaping, scarlet gash. The stick and the knife are ready to attack. Eyes starved for violence, the girl shouts malevolently to her dark boyfriend, pushing him forward: “Go, man! Kill the motherfucker!”

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  Gus HE WOULD HAVE gone but he’s got a paper due Monday and on top of that his grandmother’s sick. It doesn’t look good. They’re keeping a bedside vigil. He can’t stand the idea of her suffering even though they keep telling him she’s not in pain. He and his grandmother have a special bond. He doesn’t want to lose his Baboo. And he knows how badly she wants to make it to his graduation. He calls during the party to wish Lamb a happy fiftieth. Just before they hang up he asks to speak to Vix. Hello, she says. Hey, Cough Drop ... how’s it going? What? she says. There’s a lot of noise. I can’t hear you. Gus Kline, he shouts. Just wanted to say hello. Is this really Gus? He laughs. Because if it is ... I can’t hear a thing. Never mind, he says. He’d like to see her again. He’s curious. AFTER THE CHAMPAGNE and cake, the poems and songs and silly gifts, Vix went upstairs with Caitlin, to the room that had always been reserved for her visits. Like Caitlin’s room on the Vineyard, Abby hadn’t touched this one either. Caitlin sat on the edge of the bed and hugged a pillow to her chest. “I suppose you can tell I had an abortion.” Vix was stunned. “God, Caitlin, I had no idea! Why didn’t you tell me?” “Do you tell me everything?”

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  The uproar of the people continued. There were shouts and oaths resounding through the streets, and Nero could hear them asking one another: ‘Where is that false tyrant? Where is Nero?’ He was almost out of his mind with fear. He prayed to his heathen gods for help, but of course they could not assist him. He knew that he was about to die, and he ran into a nearby garden to hide himself. There he found two peasants, sitting around a large bonfire. He begged and pleaded with these two men to kill him and to cut off his head. He did not want to be recognized and shamefully mutilated after his death. Then he killed himself in front of them. He had no choice. Dame Fortune looked down, and laughed at his fate. Holofernes Behold Holofernes, the general of Nebuchadnezzar. There was no king’s soldier more famous or more victorious. There was no one stronger in battle. There was no one more filled with pride and presumption. Fortune kissed him, fondled him and then led him to a place where his head was cut off. It happened before he knew it. For the sake of their wealth, and their liberty, men held him in fearful respect; he made his enemies renounce their faith. ‘Nebuchadnezzar is your god,’ he told them. ‘You shall worship no other deity.’ No one dared to disobey him - except in one city under siege, Bethulia, where an elder named Joachim was the high priest. Take heed of the death of mighty Holofernes. One night as he lay drunk among his army outside Bethulia, lying in a tent as spacious as a great barn, he was murdered by a woman. Despite his power and his strength Judith hacked off his head and, unknown to anyone, crept out of the tent and brought the severed head back to the town. The illustrious king Antiochus What need is there to describe the sovereign power of this man, proud in intent and evil in deed? There was no one in the world like him. You can read of him in the Book of Maccabees. You can read there, too, all of his vainglorious words. Then you will learn of his ruin and fall, and of his death on a bare hillside. Dame Fortune had so favoured him that he thought that he could touch the stars with his hand; he believed that he could lift mountains, and command the waves of the sea. Of all the people on the earth he hated God’s chosen; he tortured and killed them, believing that their God had no power over him. When he received the news of the defeat of his generals, Nicanor and Timotheus, he burned with wrath and hatred. He commanded that his chariot be prepared, and swore that he would not leave it until he had come to the gates of Jerusalem, where he would wreak his vengeance. But God forestalled him.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  In the years after the Thirty Years’ War, when religion seemed so badly compromised, it was thought that reason alone could create the conditions of a sustainable peace. The German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was also a diplomat who worked tirelessly to bring the new nation-states of Europe together.27 One of his chief projects was the construction of a universal language based on mathematical principles that would enable people to converse clearly and distinctly. The English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) was convinced that the religious intolerance that had rent Europe apart was simply the result of an inadequate idea of God. If people were allowed to use their rational powers freely, they would discover the truth for themselves, because the natural world gave ample evidence for God. There was no further need for revelation, ritual, prayer, or superstitious doctrines. Where premodern theologians had been continually alert to the danger of God becoming an idolatrous projection, Locke argued that “when we would frame an Idea, the most suitable we can to the Supreme Being, we enlarge every one of these [Simple Ideas] with our Idea of Infinity, and so putting them together, make our complex Idea of God.”28 But the French mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623–62), a passionately religious man, returned to the older idea that God was hidden in nature and that it was no use trying to find him there.29 In fact, the mechanical universe was godless, frightening, and devoid of meaning: When I see the blind and wretched state of man, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.30 Certainty did not come from the rational contemplation of “clear” and “distinct” ideas but from the “heart,” the inner core of the human person. In the “Memorial” stitched into the lining of his doublet, Pascal recorded an experience that had filled him with “certainty, certainty, heartfelt joy, peace.” It had come from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not the God “of philosophers and scholars.”31

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Dreadful Satan, you have been watchful and malicious ever since you fell from heaven. You know how to entrap women. It was you who tempted Eve, the source of all our woe. Now you wish to destroy this Christian marriage. And what will be the instrument of your guile? Alas it will be another woman. I will get on with the story. So the evil sultaness, having dismissed her council with an oath of secrecy, rode out to visit her son. She informed him that she was willing to renounce her faith, and receive baptism at the hands of the Christian priests. She was sorry, she said, that she had remained a heathen for such a long time! Then she asked permission to organize a great feast for the visiting Christians. ‘I will do everything in my power,’ she said, ‘to make them welcome.’ ‘It shall be done as you wish,’ he replied. Then he kneeled down before her and thanked her for her thoughtfulness. He was overcome. She kissed her son, and went on her way. PART TWO So, after a long journey by sea and land, the Christian legation eventually arrived in Syria. They were an impressive gathering of dignitaries. As soon as the sultan heard of their approach he sent a message to his mother, telling her that his new wife had come and urging her to welcome Constance nobly for the honour of the realm. He also announced the news to the rest of the country. The throng was great, and the show very splendid, when the Syrians and the Christians finally greeted each other. The sultaness could not have been more charming or more gracious in her greeting to them all. She was especially nice to Constance, whom she received as tenderly as any mother would receive her favourite child. So they proceeded slowly towards the city, riding side by side in perfect amity. I know nothing about the triumphal processions of Julius Caesar, except for the description in Lucan’s Pharsalia. But I do not suppose that they were any more rich, or more spectacular, than the procession of Constance into Damascus. Yet this was the time when the scorpion of Syria, the wicked demon of the royal family, was preparing herself. The sultaness, for all her smiles and gracious words, was getting ready to use her deadly sting. The sultan himself then rode out to greet his bride with great fanfare and display. He welcomed her with joy, and wonder, at her beauty. So, for the time being, I will leave them to their happiness. I will come soon enough to the heart of the matter. The rest of the day was spent in revelry and sport, until the company agreed that it was time to rest. Then the moment arrived for the banquet that the sultaness had organized. All of the Christians, young and old alike, were invited to attend.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  him to go talk to the woman lying out on the porch. Brian was almost six by then, a year younger than me, and wasn’t afraid of anything. He hitched up his pants, handed me his half-eaten SweeTart for safekeeping, walked across the street, and went right up to the woman. She had long black hair, her eyes were outlined with black mascara thick as tar, and she wore a short blue dress printed with black flowers. She had been lying on her side on the porch floor, her head propped up on one arm, but when Brian walked up to her, she rolled over on her stomach and rested her chin on her hand. From my hiding place, I could see that Brian was talking with her, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Then she reached out a hand to Brian. I held my breath to see what this woman who did bad things inside the Green Lantern was going to do to him. She put her hand on his head and ruffled his hair. Grown-up women always did that to Brian, because his hair was red and he had freckles. It annoyed him; he usually swatted their hands away. But not this time. Instead, he stayed and talked with the woman for a while. When he came back across the highway, he didn’t look scared at all. “What happened?” I asked. “Nothing much,” Brian said. “What did you talk about?” “I asked her what goes on inside the Green Lantern,” he said. “Really?” I was impressed. “What did she say?” “Nothing much,” he said. “She told me that men came in and the women there were nice to them.” “Oh,” I said. “Anything else?” “Naw,” Brian said. He started kicking at the dirt like he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “She was kinda nice,” he said. After that, Brian waved to the women on the porch of the Green Lantern, and they smiled real big and waved back, but I was still a little afraid of them.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Ignoro su mano y la pregunta, impulsándome para sentarme en el borde otra vez. Si me vio entrar al agua, entonces supongo que probablemente se esté preguntando qué estaba haciendo ahí, pero aun así… Casi supero el desafío. La camisa me cuelga pesada y mojada, pero no puedo quitármela. No hay nada debajo. Toso otra vez, aclarando mi garganta y recuperando el aliento. Él se detiene junto a mí, en silencio. ―Los escuché a Cole y a ti peleando ―dice finalmente. ¿Desde afuera? Genial. Se sienta a mi lado, frente al agua. No puedo imaginar lo que debe estar pensando. Estoy peleando con su hijo, y después estoy buceando completamente vestida en la piscina. Claro… Respiro profundo, asegurándome de suavizar mi tono para tranquilizarlo. ―Hago tratos conmigo misma ―le digo pero no encuentro sus ojos―. Si puedo hacer algo que no quiero hacer, entonces todo estará bien. Si hago algo que me asusta, entonces puedo soportar cualquier cosa que venga. ―Sonrío a medias―. No me gusta nadar sola. Me asusta. Especialmente de noche. Finalmente dirijo mi mirada hacia él. Está mirando la piscina, escuchando. —Es algo que juego conmigo misma ―le digo. Asiente, entendiendo. ―Cole no me quiere aquí ―digo, dejando caer mi mirada mientras el dolor se extiende por mi garganta―. No creo que me quiera en absoluto. No sé por qué estoy diciéndole esto, pero escucha. En las raras ocasiones en que hemos hablado, parece querer escuchar. Es fácil con él. ―Es joven ―explica―. Todos hacemos y decimos cosas egoístas cuando pensamos que somos dueños del mundo. ―¿Yo soy así? ―replico. Quiero decir, no soy un ángel, pero sé que trato a Cole mejor de lo que él me trata. Pike no dice nada, pero puedo verlo mirándome. Soy una presa fácil. Me alejé de mi ex y mis padres, pero nunca les di su merecido. Nunca luché. Solo corrí. Además de mi hermana, Cole es todo lo que tengo, y permito esta mierda porque era más que solo un novio para mí. ―¿Puedo hacerte una pregunta? ―dice Pike. Lo miro, y mi corazón se salta un latido al ver que sus ojos se ciernen sobre mí. El reflejo del agua los hace parecer azul. ―¿Cómo se conocieron Cole y tú? ―pregunta. Y a pesar de mi irritación, sonrío un poco. Mis ojos van a la cicatriz en mi pulgar. ―Cuando tenía dieciséis, trabajaba en un auto lavado ―le digo―. No había otras chicas trabajando allí, pero fue todo lo que pude encontrar, así que lo hice con un equipo lleno de chicos. Siento el calor de su cuerpo junto a mí, mido el subir y bajar de su pecho, y me encuentro emparejándolo. —Tuve mucha mierda ―continúo, recordando los comentarios sarcásticos cada vez que me inclinaba o me recargaba en un auto―. Los adolescentes pueden ser… ―Sí ―termina Pike por mí concordando, sin humor en su voz. Intercambiamos una sonrisa. Él también solía ser un adolescente, después de todo, supongo.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Protestant fundamentalism was chiefly exercised by theological questions that had been challenged by the new scientific discoveries. Fundamentalisms in other traditions have been sparked by entirely different problems and are not preoccupied with “belief” in the same way. In Judaism, the state of Israel has inspired every one of the Jewish fundamentalisms, because this has been the form in which secularism has chiefly impacted on Jewish religious life. Some are passionately for the state of Israel and regard its army, political institutions, and every inch of the Holy Land as sacred; others are either vehemently opposed to the notion of a secular state or adopt a deliberately neutral stance toward it. In the Muslim world, the political state of the ummah, the “community,” has become an Achilles’ heel. The Qur’an insists that the prime duty of a Muslim is to build a just and decent society, so when Muslims see the ummah exploited or even terrorized by foreign powers and governed by corrupt rulers, they can feel as religiously offended as a Protestant who sees the Bible spat upon. Islam has traditionally been a religion of success: in the past, Muslims were always able to surmount disaster and use it creatively to rise to new spiritual and political heights. The Qur’an assures them that if their society is just and egalitarian, it will prosper—not because God is tweaking history on their behalf but because this type of government is in line with the fundamental laws of existence. But Muslims have been able to make little headway against the secular West, and some have found this as threatening as Darwinism seems to fundamentalist Christians. Hence there have been ever more frantic efforts to get Islamic history back on track. Because fundamentalists feel under threat, they are defensive and unwilling to entertain any rival point of view, yet another expression of the intolerance that has always been part of modernity. Christian fundamentalists take a hard line on what they regard as moral and social decency. They campaign against the teaching of evolution in public schools, are fiercely patriotic but averse to democracy, see feminism as one of the great evils of the day, and conduct a crusade against abortion. Some extremists have even murdered doctors and nurses who work in abortion clinics. Like evolution, abortion has become symbolic of the murderous evil of modernity. Christian fundamentalists are convinced that their doctrinal “beliefs” are an accurate, final expression of sacred truth and that every word of the Bible is literally true—an attitude that is a radical departure from mainstream Christian tradition. They believe that miracles are an essential hallmark of true faith and that God will give the believer anything he asks for in prayer.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Thomas Aquinas’s contemplation of the cosmos had revealed the existence of a mystery. But Newton hated mystery, which he equated with sheer irrationality: “‘Tis the temper of the hot and superstitious part of mankind in matters of religion,” he wrote irritably, “ever to be fond of mysteries & for that reason to like best what they understand least.”62 It was positively dangerous to describe God as a mystery, because this “conduces to the rejection of his existence. It is of concern to theologians that the conception [of God] be made as easy and as agreeable as possible, so as not to be exposed to cavils and thereby called into question.”63 For the early modern rationalist, truth could not be obscure, so the God that was Truth must be as rational and plausible as any other fact of life. Newton’s scientific theology quickly became central to the campaign against “atheism.” During these anxious years, people saw “atheists” everywhere, but they were still using the term to describe anybody they disapproved of, regardless of his or her beliefs; “atheism” thus functioned as an image of deviancy that helped people to place themselves on the shifting moral spectrum of early modernity.64 In the 1690s, an “atheist” could be recognized by his drunkenness, fornication, or unsound politics. It was not yet possible to sustain unbelief. Certainly people experienced doubts from time to time. John Bunyan (1628–88) described the “storms,” “flouds of Blasphemies,” “confusion and astonishment” that descended on him when he wondered “whether there were in truth a God or no.”65 But it was wellnigh impossible to maintain such skepticism on a permanent basis, because the conceptual difficulties were insurmountable.66 The doubter would find no support in the most advanced thought of the time, which insisted that the natural laws brilliantly uncovered by the scientists required a Lawgiver.67 Until there was a body of cogent reasons, each based on another cluster of scientifically verified truths, outright atheistic denial could only be a personal whim or passing impulse. But the fear of “atheism” persisted, and when theologians tried to counter the “heresies” of Spinoza or the Levelers, they turned instinctively to the new scientific rationalism. The French priest and philosopher Nicholas de Malebranche (1638–1715) based his anti-atheistic riposte on Descartes. Others followed Newton. The Irish physicist and chemist Robert Boyle (1627–91), founding member of the Royal Society, was convinced that the intricate motions of the mechanistic universe proved the existence of a divine Engineer. He commissioned a series of lectures designed to counter atheism and superstition by presenting the public with the discoveries of the new science. Christian leaders, such as John Tillotson, archbishop of Canterbury (1630–94), were eager to embrace this scientific religion, because they regarded reason as the most reliable path to truth. The Boyle lecturers were all ardent Newtonians, and Newton himself gave his support to the venture.68