Gratitude

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

  In a similar vein, I owe a very special debt of gratitude to my distinguished colleague Bob Levenson. It is a gift when someone with a different point of view engages you in honest conversation, and Bob truly embodies this spirit of scientific exploration every time we meet. His curiosity and insightful observations consistently challenge me, and I consider him one of my most valued colleagues. I also have a deep appreciation and respect for Paul Ekman, who helped to chart the course of research on emotion for the past five decades. We may not agree on the scientific details, but I admire his courageous path. When Paul began presenting his findings in the 1960s, he was shouted down at meetings, called a fascist and a racist, and generally disrespected due to prevailing attitudes of the time. * He showed formidable tenacity to pursue his vision of the classical view, and ultimately he brought the science of emotion into the public eye. Back in the village of constructed emotion, I offer my heartfelt thanks to the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory at Northeastern University and Massachusetts General Hospital, which I direct with Karen Quig ley. Our lab is one of the enduring pleasures and sources of pride in my career as a scientist. The community of hard-working, talented research assistants, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and research scientists contributed immeasurably to the body of knowledge that made this book possible. All the members (past and present) can be found at affective-science.org/people.shtml . Those whose valuable contributions are specifically cited in this book include Kristen Lindquist, Eliza Bliss-Moreau, Maria Gendron, Alexandra Touroutoglou, Christy Wilson-Mendenhall, Ajay Satpute, Erika Siegel, Elizabeth Clark-Polner, Jennifer Fugate, Kevin Bickart, Mariann Weierich, Suzanne Oosterwijk, Yoshiya Moriguchi, Lorena Chanes, Eric Anderson, Jiahe Zhang, and Myeong-Gu Seo. In addition to their important scientific contributions, I am grateful to the lab members for their endless patience and encouragement. They never once complained about my periodic absences (at least when I was in earshot) and occasionally endured long delays in their own progress as I raced to complete this book. I am especially grateful to my collaborators for their friendship, commitment, and rompingly insightful discussions as we pursued some of the research you’ve just read about. First and foremost, my deepest thanks to Larry Barsalou for his foundational work on concepts; Larry is one of the most creative, rigorous thinkers of his generation, and I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to work with him. Nothing can convey the gratitude that I feel toward Jim Russell, who, when I was a young assistant professor, took my ideas seriously when many of our colleagues thought I was nuts.

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  The furniture was in the room my brother and I shared. I still have some of the pieces. 86 This photograph is heavily retouched. A wood-body station wagon is posed in front of one of the model houses in the picture. Otherwise, the scene is deserted. It is unclear if the photograph will help sell the houses or if it commemorates the street light in the foreground. The concrete pole, light globe, and the clouds overhead have been inserted into the picture. Street lights were a selling point, since the county did not require street lighting when the houses were built. The parks, the shopping center, and the nine-foot-wide panels of grass and trees dividing residential streets from cross-town traffic weren’t required either. 87 Drive from the ocean to Los Angeles, and you’ll stay on the same grid of streets. The drive passes through suburb after suburb without interruption. It is a distance of fifteen miles, over land so worthless a hundred years ago that house lots on it could not be given away. What later redeemed the land—and determined its limits—are the subdivision maps filed in the county recorder’s office. 88 Every map is a fiction. Every map offers choices. It’s even possible to choose something beautiful. 89 For this photograph my father sat on the lawn of his house playing with my brother. Behind him, the wood railing of the porch was unobscured by the pyracantha bushes. Over the years, the pyracanthas swelled out of the limits of the garden. Both my parents are dead; my older brother moved away to repair cars. I live in the house that belonged to the three of them, the house my parents bought for $6,700, and into which my brother was born as their first gift. I have taken their places, displacing everything of theirs except the way in which they succeeded in fitting into this small house before I was born. My brother and I, who shared a room for almost twenty years, slept in identical beds. Our bedspreads were always the same. We slept east to west in our room and less than fourteen feet from our parents, in their bedroom at the front of the house. Only once did I hear their lovemaking, although I was a fitful sleeper and lay awake hours every night looking up at the ceiling, imagining other houses in which to live. Now I sleep better in this house, and I am grateful. 90 After work at city hall, I walk home on straight, flat sidewalks. Their lines converge ahead of me into a confusion of trees and lawns. The sidewalk is four feet wide. The street is forty feet wide. The strip of lawn between the street and the sidewalk is seven feet. The setback from curb to house is twenty feet. This pattern—of asphalt, grass, concrete, grass—is as regular as any thought of God’s.

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  Sometimes, it would reappear after a few drinks among the couples my parents invited over to watch television or play cards. Some of the couples gave up their Pentecostal religion for milder forms of faith. They never lost their appreciation for the climate, however. It expressed itself in the fruit trees in the backyards in my neighborhood. Plums, apricots, oranges, nectarines, and pomegranates were shared over fences in paper bags saved from the grocery store. 305 When I was growing up, to call another boy an Okie, whether he was one or not, would require him to fight. It was a word that hung in the air between two angry boys like a cocked fist, like the word “nigger.” 306 There was very little that distinguished the border Southerners in my neighborhood from my father, who had grown up in Manhattan, or my mother, who had lived on Long Island and worked in New York. There was very little that distinguished any of us living here. We lived in what we were told was a good neighborhood. Our eleven-hundred-square-foot houses were nearly the same. We shopped at the same stores. We watched the same television programs. From September to June, my brother and I wore Catholic grade-school uniforms of dark gray corduroy pants, and light gray short-sleeve shirts. In summer, we wore white cotton T-shirts, denim pants, and high-top tennis shoes. Every boy in my neighborhood did. Our parents were anxious to do what was expected of them, even when the expectation was not altogether clear. 307 My parents were grateful that they lived among strangers who made about as much money as they did, and who could be counted on, out of friendliness, to help rig a television antenna or dig the footing for a concrete patio. 308 At first, there was no Catholic church in the suburb Louis Boyar, Ben Weingart, and Mark Taper were building, despite what the sales brochure implied. Mass was said in a movie theater across the street from the Douglas plant. There was no synagogue either. In 1952, Boyar had part of the building that housed the subdivision’s sales office moved to an empty lot the Jewish community had recently bought. Boyar donated the rest of the building for use as a post office substation. The temporary building wasn’t big enough for a Sunday school. There were too many children. Rabbi Herbert Rosner set up a network of home schools, staffed by Jewish parents. The parents assembled in a weekly class to develop a lesson plan for the following Sunday and to learn how to handle a room full of restless children for an hour and a half. Rabbi Rosner recruited thirty-five parents and enrolled one hundred students. There was a waiting list to enroll more. 309 My father taught in the religious classes offered at our parish church. The classes were for students who attended public school because their parents couldn’t afford the tuition at a Catholic grade school.

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  Sometimes, it would reappear after a few drinks among the couples my parents invited over to watch television or play cards. Some of the couples gave up their Pentecostal religion for milder forms of faith. They never lost their appreciation for the climate, however. It expressed itself in the fruit trees in the backyards in my neighborhood. Plums, apricots, oranges, nectarines, and pomegranates were shared over fences in paper bags saved from the grocery store. 305 When I was growing up, to call another boy an Okie, whether he was one or not, would require him to fight. It was a word that hung in the air between two angry boys like a cocked fist, like the word “nigger.” 306 There was very little that distinguished the border Southerners in my neighborhood from my father, who had grown up in Manhattan, or my mother, who had lived on Long Island and worked in New York. There was very little that distinguished any of us living here. We lived in what we were told was a good neighborhood. Our eleven-hundred-square-foot houses were nearly the same. We shopped at the same stores. We watched the same television programs. From September to June, my brother and I wore Catholic grade-school uniforms of dark gray corduroy pants, and light gray short-sleeve shirts. In summer, we wore white cotton T-shirts, denim pants, and high-top tennis shoes. Every boy in my neighborhood did. Our parents were anxious to do what was expected of them, even when the expectation was not altogether clear. 307 My parents were grateful that they lived among strangers who made about as much money as they did, and who could be counted on, out of friendliness, to help rig a television antenna or dig the footing for a concrete patio. 308 At first, there was no Catholic church in the suburb Louis Boyar, Ben Weingart, and Mark Taper were building, despite what the sales brochure implied. Mass was said in a movie theater across the street from the Douglas plant. There was no synagogue either. In 1952, Boyar had part of the building that housed the subdivision’s sales office moved to an empty lot the Jewish community had recently bought. Boyar donated the rest of the building for use as a post office substation. The temporary building wasn’t big enough for a Sunday school. There were too many children. Rabbi Herbert Rosner set up a network of home schools, staffed by Jewish parents. The parents assembled in a weekly class to develop a lesson plan for the following Sunday and to learn how to handle a room full of restless children for an hour and a half. Rabbi Rosner recruited thirty-five parents and enrolled one hundred students. There was a waiting list to enroll more. 309 My father taught in the religious classes offered at our parish church. The classes were for students who attended public school because their parents couldn’t afford the tuition at a Catholic grade school.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Those anthropologists willing to acknowledge the realities of human sexuality see its social benefits clearly. Beckerman and Valentine point to the fact that partible paternity defuses potential conflicts between men, noting that such antagonisms tend to be unhelpful to a woman’s long-term reproductive interests. Anthropologist Thomas Gregor reported eighty-eight ongoing affairs among the thirty-seven adults in the Mehinaku village he studied in Brazil. In his opinion, extramarital relationships “contribute to village cohesion,” by “consolidating relationships between persons of different [clans]” and “promoting enduring relationships based on mutual affection.” He found that “many lovers are very fond of one another and regard separation as a privation to avoid.”27 Rather than risk overwhelming you with dozens more examples of this community-building, conflict-reducing human sexuality, we’ll conclude with just one more. Anthropologists William and Jean Crocker visited and studied the Canela people—also of the Brazilian Amazon region—for more than three decades, beginning in the late 1950s. They explain: It is difficult for members of a modern individualistic society to imagine the extent to which the Canela saw the group and the tribe as more important than the individual. Generosity and sharing was the ideal, while withholding was a social evil. Sharing possessions brought esteem. Sharing one’s body was a direct corollary. Desiring control over one’s goods and self was a form of stinginess. In this context, it is easy to understand why women chose to please men and why men chose to please women who expressed strong sexual needs. No one was so self-important that satisfying a fellow tribesman was less gratifying than personal gain [emphasis in original].28 Recognized as a way to build and maintain a network of mutually beneficial relationships, nonreproductive sex no longer requires special explanations. Homosexuality, for example, becomes far less confusing, in that it is, as E. O. Wilson has written, “above all a form of bonding…consistent with the greater part of heterosexual behavior as a device that cements relationships.”29 Paternity certainty, far from being the universal and overriding obsession of all men everywhere and always, as the standard narrative insists, was likely a nonissue to men who lived before agriculture and resulting concerns with passing property through lines of paternal descent. CHAPTER SEVENMommies DearestThe diffused sense of parental responsibility resulting from these intersecting webs of sexual interaction extends to mothers as well as fathers. Anthropologist Donald Pollock tells us that while the Kulina believe the fetus to have originally been formed of accumulated semen (men’s milk, in Kulina), they attribute the baby’s growth after birth to women’s milk. “Any number of women might nurse the child,” he writes. “It is particularly common for a group of sisters…to share nursing functions; it is not unknown for the mother’s mother to allow an infant to nurse, even if the grandmother is no longer lactating, to quiet a crying child whose mother is occupied.” When he asked whether these other women were also mothers of the child, Pollock was told this was “obviously so.”1

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  300 According to their Senate testimony, Louis Boyar and Ben Weingart made more than $2 million from constructing just two tracts of “mutual homes” under their interpretation of Section 213. They made another $1 million on each 600-acre section of empty land they sold to the nonprofit cooperatives they controlled. The three developers may have made as much as $12 million by the time they dissolved their corporation. 301 Louis Boyar died in 1976, after he had raised billions of dollars for Israel as a cofounder and chairman of Israel Bonds. He built a high school for gifted children in Jerusalem and named it for his wife. He built the Truman Center for the Advancement of Peace at Hebrew University. Ben Weingart died in 1980. The charitable foundation he and his wife set up in 1951 gave my city at least $12 million in cash grants and land. The foundation’s gifts came after Weingart had been declared incompetent by a judge, and after his business associates took control of his charitable foundation. Some of the foundation’s gifts came after Weingart was dead. Weingart’s foundation helped construct a community center, a senior citizens center, a library, and a new YMCA. Mark Taper died in 1994. Boyar is remembered at the synagogue in my city because his first contributions were to its building fund. Weingart is remembered because the city gratefully put his name on the community facilities his foundation financed. Taper is remembered for his gift of either a fish tank—or the fish—at the county library next to city hall. The librarians don’t know which. 302

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  my city using an obscure section of the National Housing Act. Under Section 213, the FHA would provide 100-percent financing for construction, but only if the houses were built by a nonprofit cooperative of property owners. The amount of land one of these cooperatives could develop and the size of its FHA loan were limited by law. The maximum number of houses that could be built under section 213 was 501. Section 213 was a New Deal program. It assisted rural communities by encouraging property owners to organize a nonprofit building association to put up affordable housing. Boyar and Weingart used Section 213 to finance the largest suburban development in the nation. There was nothing illegal about it. 294 Just before Thanksgiving in 1952, the regional director of the FHA held a brief ceremony in the middle of a street of recently built houses. The ceremony celebrated the completion of another 3,125 housing units in the suburb the three developers were building. The FHA regional director explained how restrictions on lending had ended no-down-payment mortgages at the start of the Korean War. The restrictions had stopped construction of the new suburb until FHA mortgage guarantees were arranged under Section 213. He reminded the audience that 75 percent of the homeowners in the project were buying a house for the first time. Louis Boyar and Mark Taper spoke. They expressed their appreciation to federal and county officials for their assistance. County Supervisor Herbert Legg also spoke, as did the city manager of Long Beach, the president of the Chamber of Commerce, and the publisher of the Long Beach newspaper. Don Rochlen was the master of ceremonies. He told the audience that the new suburb now had seven elementary schools with four more under construction. He told them the average family head in the new suburb was thirty-two years old and that he made $4,313 a year.

• From The Art of the Graphic Memoir: Tell Your Story, Change Your Life (2018)

  COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My many thanks to the hundreds of people who have supported my work over the course of twenty-five years, too many to mention. My many thanks to the artists and publishers in this book who have inspired me and allowed me to reprint their art. Smile artwork © 2010 Raina Telgemeier, used with permission of Scholastic. Barefoot Justine artwork © 2018 Justine Mara Andersen, provided courtesy the artist. Theth artwork © 2014 Josh Bayer, provided courtesy the artist. Perfect Example artwork © 2000 John Porcellino, provided courtesy Drawn & Quarterly. Silly Daddy artwork © 2004 Joe Chiappetta, used with permission of the artist. 100 Demons artwork © 2017 Lynda Barry, provided courtesy Drawn & Quarterly. Kampung Boy artwork © 2006 Lat, provided courtesy First Second. NonNonBa artwork © 2012 Shigeru Mizuki, provided courtesy Drawn & Quarterly. We Can Fix It! artwork © 2013 Jess Fink, provided courtesy the artist. Graffiti Kitchen artwork © 1993 Eddie Campbell; used with permission of the artist. David Chelsea in Love artwork © 1993 David Chelsea, used with permission of the artist. Dance by the Light of the Moon artwork © 2010 Judith Vanistendael, used with permission of the artist. How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less, artwork © 2011 Sarah Glidden, provided courtesy Drawn & Quarterly. Make Me a Woman artwork © 2010 Vanessa Davis, provided courtesy Drawn & Quarterly. July Diary and Truth Is Fragmentary artwork © 2012 and 2014 Gabrielle Bell, provided courtesy Uncivilized Books. To the Heart of the Storm artwork copyright © 1991 by Will Eisner. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Fun Home and Are You My Mother? artwork © 2007 and 2012 Alison Bechdel, provided courtesy the artist. Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? artwork © 2014 Roz Chast, used with permission of the artist. Soldier’s Heart artwork © 2015 Carol Tyler, provided courtesy Fantagraphics Books. Epileptic artwork © 2006 by David B. and L’Association. Monsters artwork © 2009 Ken Dahl, provided courtesy the artist. Why I Killed Peter artwork © 2008 Oliver Ka and Alfred, provided courtesy NBM Publishing. Calling Dr. Laura artwork © 2013 Nicole J. Georges, used with permission of the artist. The Photographer artwork © 2009 Emmanuel Guibert and Didier Lefèvre, provided courtesy First Second. Maus and MetaMaus artwork © 1993 and 2011 Art Spiegelman, Pantheon Books. Many thanks to Meg Thompson, Lauren Jablonski, Michael Homler, and Amelie Littell. Thanks to Jim Harrison for design assistance. Interior handwriting font by Jess Ruliffson. Cover art by Gabrielle Bell. Extra thanks to Carol Tyler, Gabrielle Bell, Josh Bayer, Justine Andersen and the students of SAW for wisdom, inspiration and guidance. Tom Hart is the author/artist of Rosalie Lightning and the executive director of The Sequential Artists Workshop (SAW), a not-for-profit comics school and organization. sawcomics.org Also by Tom Hart Rosalie Lightning: A Graphic Memoir

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  Rabbi Herbert Rosner set up a network of home schools, staffed by Jewish parents. The parents assembled in a weekly class to develop a lesson plan for the following Sunday and to learn how to handle a room full of restless children for an hour and a half. Rabbi Rosner recruited thirty-five parents and enrolled one hundred students. There was a waiting list to enroll more. 309 My father taught in the religious classes offered at our parish church. The classes were for students who attended public school because their parents couldn’t afford the tuition at a Catholic grade school. On Monday nights, my father taught a class for teenage Catholics who attended public high school. On Sunday mornings, he went to the county juvenile hall in Downey to instruct young men for their first Communion, something that usually occurs in the second grade. My father also arranged the more elaborate ceremonies of the year at our parish church. No one else in the parish knew how. Our parish priests, some ordained in Ireland only a year or two before, were mainly responsible for building a church and the school. My father had been a member of a religious order. He had been a sacristan and knew the rubrics of the Holy Week services that took place only once a year. My father instructed the boys who served on the altar, including my brother and me. He explained to the pastor and his assistants how they should walk in procession and what each should do during the ceremony. On the afternoon before Easter Sunday, he laid out the priests’ vestments, the beeswax candles, and the charcoal for lighting the new fire of Easter. 310 My father didn’t give very much to the city in which he lived. He didn’t join the Lions Club or the Kiwanis. He didn’t coach one of the park sports leagues that the city set up in 1957 to meet the overwhelming demand for recreational activities for children.

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My neighbors are in this book. I’ve tried to tell the part of their stories I know, and I’ve tried to respect as much of their privacy as I can. Some of their names are given in full. Either they have entered the historical record or died or they allowed me the privilege of identifying them. Some names are only a letter. Behind that anonymity is a real life, however, not a composite. This new edition includes an introduction and an afterword. John Balzar and Thomas Curwen, writers for the Los Angeles Times and homeowners in neighborhoods not far from mine, inspired the afterword’s questions and answers. Joan Didion quoted from Holy Land in an article in The New Yorker in 1993. I am indebted to her persistent regard for this book. Historian Kevin Starr offered additional encouragement, which also has continued through the years. Randy Burger took an early interest in these stories that parallel his boyhood in southern California. Among those who gave the gift of their time to read drafts of Holy Land were Emily Adams, Steven Carter, Howard Chambers, Killarney Clarey, Lucha Corpi, Brad Crenshaw, Greg Critser, Thomas Curwen, Deborah Gorlin, Marilyn Hacker, Paul Jenkins, Bret Lott, David Lynn, Allan Mayer, Thomas McGonigle, Liam and Mary Alice McLoughlin, Sheryl Musicant Stewart, Ray Potter, Sandi Ruyle, Jane Somerville, Michael and Patricia Stover, Renee Vogel, and Peggy Young. Janine Perkins was my invaluable research assistant. Julie Aharoni and Karen Kennedy, granddaughters of Louis Boyar, did me the great kindness of recognizing their beloved grandfather in those sections of Holy Land that deal with the original developers of Lakewood. Portions of Holy Land previously appeared in the Kenyon Review, the Georgetown Review, the Massachusetts Review, and BUZZ magazine. Bringing this book to readers was entirely due to the skill and care of Chris Calhoun of Sterling Lord Literistic and Jill Bialosky, my editor at W. W. Norton. Brendan Curry at Norton oversaw this new edition. Gary Young made this book possible. He read and reread each section, raising questions and offering advice through innumerable exchanges of manuscript pages and phone conversations. Every page of Holy Land reflects his generosity as a teacher, poet, and artist. Far more than an editor, he was my collaborator. All that is good here shows his wisdom. I wrote this book for Maureen and Catherine McLoughlin when they were very young. I told them some of these stories then, and my stories always began the same way, as stories often told do: “When I was a boy and my brother was a boy...” The McLoughlin sisters are growing up in my suburb, their lives intersecting with the grid of its streets and the habits built into its houses. I hope they find in them their own holy land. February 1996–February 2005 D. J. Waldie Lakewood, California

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  Contents Introduction Acknowledgments Chapter One Holy Land A Conversation About the Author Photographs Further Praise for Holy Land Copyright Page INTRODUCTION I live where a majority of Americans live: a tract house on a block of other tract houses in a neighborhood of even more. My place is at the extreme southeast corner of Los Angeles County in a 957-square-foot house of wood frame and stucco construction put up hastily during the Second World War on dead-level farmland just far enough from a Douglas Aircraft plant so that bombs dropped by Japanese planes might miss it. My parents bought this house in 1946, less than a year after the war ended, and they felt extraordinarily lucky. Maybe you wouldn’t regard a house like mine as a place of pilgrimage, but my parents did. Perhaps their one big move, from the Depression in New York and through the world war to California, had been enough. Their lives afterward seemed to be about that, too—about the idea of enough. Their neighbors had the same idea. The critics later said that all suburban places were about excess. But they were wrong. Despite everything that may have been ignored or squandered here, I believe a kind of dignity was gained. More men than just my father have said to me that living here gave them a life made whole and habits that did not make them feel ashamed. They knew what they had found and lost. Mostly, they found enough space to reinvent themselves, although some men finally knew that their work of reinvention had gone badly. Urban planners tell me that my neighborhood was supposed have been bulldozed away years ago. Yet these small houses on small lots resist, loyal to an idea of how a neighborhood could be made. There are plenty of toxic places in the gated enclaves and McMansion wastelands of America. They don’t have enough of the play between life in

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  Janine Perkins was my invaluable research assistant. Julie Aharoni and Karen Kennedy, granddaughters of Louis Boyar, did me the great kindness of recognizing their beloved grandfather in those sections of Holy Land that deal with the original developers of Lakewood. Portions of Holy Land previously appeared in the Kenyon Review , the Georgetown Review , the Massachusetts Review , and BUZZ magazine. Bringing this book to readers was entirely due to the skill and care of Chris Calhoun of Sterling Lord Literistic and Jill Bialosky, my editor at W. W. Norton. Brendan Curry at Norton oversaw this new edition. Gary Young made this book possible. He read and reread each section, raising questions and offering advice through innumerable exchanges of manuscript pages and phone conversations. Every page of Holy Land reflects his generosity as a teacher, poet, and artist. Far more than an editor, he was my collaborator. All that is good here shows his wisdom. I wrote this book for Maureen and Catherine McLoughlin when they were very young. I told them some of these stories then, and my stories always began the same way, as stories often told do: “When I was a boy and my brother was a boy…” The McLoughlin sisters are growing up in my suburb, their lives intersecting with the grid of its streets and the habits built into its houses. I hope they find in them their own holy land. February 1996–February 2005 D. J. Waldie Lakewood, California [image "Image" file=Image00001.jpg] 1 That evening he thought he was becoming his habits, or—even more—he thought he was becoming the grid he knew. He knew his suburb’s first 17,500 houses had been built in less than three years. He knew what this must have cost, but he did not care. The houses still worked. He thought of them as middle class even though 1,100-square-foot tract houses on streets meeting at right angles are not middle class at all. Middle-class houses are the homes of people who would not live here. 2 In a suburb that is not exactly middle class, the necessary illusion is predictability. 3 When he thinks of his parents, he remembers them as they were in their early middle age—energetic, strong, and more capable than any other adult he knew. He is older now than his parents had been then, and he is less competent than his father and mother seemed to him, even less competent than they were in fact. This thought rarely troubles him. 4 Whether liked or disliked, it is for himself, and not for what he has done, that others judge him. He has generally done nothing at all. 5 It rained once for an entire week in 1953, when I was five. The flat streets flooded. Schools closed. Only the rain happened, while I waited at the window. Waiting was one of the first things I understood fully. Rain and the hydrogen bomb were two aspects of the same loss.

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  It was a word that hung in the air between two angry boys like a cocked fist, like the word “nigger.” 306 There was very little that distinguished the border Southerners in my neighborhood from my father, who had grown up in Manhattan, or my mother, who had lived on Long Island and worked in New York. There was very little that distinguished any of us living here. We lived in what we were told was a good neighborhood. Our eleven-hundred-square-foot houses were nearly the same. We shopped at the same stores. We watched the same television programs. From September to June, my brother and I wore Catholic grade-school uniforms of dark gray corduroy pants, and light gray short-sleeve shirts. In summer, we wore white cotton T-shirts, denim pants, and high-top tennis shoes. Every boy in my neighborhood did. Our parents were anxious to do what was expected of them, even when the expectation was not altogether clear. 307 My parents were grateful that they lived among strangers who made about as much money as they did, and who could be counted on, out of friendliness, to help rig a television antenna or dig the footing for a concrete patio. 308 At first, there was no Catholic church in the suburb Louis Boyar, Ben Weingart, and Mark Taper were building, despite what the sales brochure implied. Mass was said in a movie theater across the street from the Douglas plant. There was no synagogue either. In 1952, Boyar had part of the building that housed the subdivision’s sales office moved to an empty lot the Jewish community had recently bought. Boyar donated the rest of the building for use as a post office substation. The temporary building wasn’t big enough for a Sunday school. There were too many children.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  One is Linda Joy Traitz, who at nineteen was a waitress at Café Figaro, where Cosby dropped in occasionally because he was its part owner. He offered her a ride home, then, in his car, she says that she was confronted by a briefcase full of drugs and booze, plus his sexual assault. I wish Flo were here to learn her instincts were right. Eighteen years older than I, with a life that stretched from seeing her parents threatened by the Ku Klux Klan to becoming a civil rights and show business lawyer, she was nearly always right. Traveling with her was better than any college education. I once saw her buy a purple pantsuit for a young white salesgirl in a small-town dress shop, something the salesgirl wanted but could never have afforded. When I went back after Flo’s death, that now middle-aged woman told me Flo’s generosity had opened up a new view of life. • In 1980 I board a crowded plane for Detroit and find myself seated among a group of Hasidic Jews. The men are wearing wide-brimmed black fedoras over their yarmulkes, the women are in dark-haired wigs and long-sleeved dresses, and the children are as neat and well behaved as miniature grown-ups. I notice some hurried rearranging of seats. The goal seems to be that no woman sits next to a man not her husband—or next to me. My seatmate turns out to be the oldest man, stooped and gentle, reading his prayer book. Knowing that no Hasidic man is allowed to touch a woman outside his family, not even to shake hands, I do my best to be respectful and keep my arm off our shared armrest. Still, I’m surprised that separating me from the women seemed to be a higher priority than isolating me from the men. I hear the word feminist in English amid the Yiddish from two young men sitting in front of us, and they peer back at me between the seats. When we arrive at the Detroit airport, I go into a ladies’ room—and there are the wives and daughters. The youngest wife checks the stalls into which the older ones have disappeared, looks me straight in the eye, and smiles. “Hello, Gloria,” she says firmly. “My name is Miriam.” That smile is worth the whole trip. • It’s 1996, and I’m in Kansas, home state of U.S. senator Robert Dole, who has just run for president of the United States. I turn on the television in my motel. Dole is on camera, smiling, talking about his ED—erectile dysfunction—in a paid commercial for Viagra. As Liz Smith, the smart and funny Manhattan gossip columnist, always says, “You can’t make this stuff up.” • Just as the millennium is about to end, I’m in a car with two women students on our way to a political meeting in Arizona.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “I beg you to hear me out; it is necessary. I must explain my feelings, the feelings that have guided me and will guide me, so that you may not be in error regarding me. You know I had resolved on a divorce, and had even begun to take proceedings. I won’t conceal from you that in beginning this I was in uncertainty, I was in misery; I will confess that I was pursued by a desire to revenge myself on you and on her. When I got the telegram, I came here with the same feelings; I will say more, I longed for her death. But....” He paused, pondering whether to disclose or not to disclose his feeling to him. “But I saw her and forgave her. And the happiness of forgiveness has revealed to me my duty. I forgive completely. I would offer the other cheek, I would give my cloak if my coat be taken. I pray to God only not to take from me the bliss of forgiveness!” Tears stood in his eyes, and the luminous, serene look in them impressed Vronsky. “This is my position: you can trample me in the mud, make me the laughing-stock of the world, I will not abandon her, and I will never utter a word of reproach to you,” Alexey Alexandrovitch went on. “My duty is clearly marked for me; I ought to be with her, and I will be. If she wishes to see you, I will let you know, but now I suppose it would be better for you to go away.” He got up, and sobs cut short his words. Vronsky too was getting up, and in a stooping, not yet erect posture, looked up at him from under his brows. He did not understand Alexey Alexandrovitch’s feeling, but he felt that it was something higher and even unattainable for him with his view of life. Chapter 18

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Oh, I ought to give you a sketch of the company you will meet with us,” she went on. “I’ll begin with the ladies. Princess Varvara—you know her, and I know your opinion and Stiva’s about her. Stiva says the whole aim of her existence is to prove her superiority over Auntie Katerina Pavlovna: that’s all true; but she’s a good-natured woman, and I am so grateful to her. In Petersburg there was a moment when a chaperon was absolutely essential for me. Then she turned up. But really she is good-natured. She did a great deal to alleviate my position. I see you don’t understand all the difficulty of my position ... there in Petersburg,” she added. “Here I’m perfectly at ease and happy. Well, of that later on, though. Then Sviazhsky—he’s the marshal of the district, and he’s a very good sort of a man, but he wants to get something out of Alexey. You understand, with his property, now that we are settled in the country, Alexey can exercise great influence. Then there’s Tushkevitch—you have seen him, you know—Betsy’s admirer. Now he’s been thrown over and he’s come to see us. As Alexey says, he’s one of those people who are very pleasant if one accepts them for what they try to appear to be, _et puis il est comme il faut_, as Princess Varvara says. Then Veslovsky ... you know him. A very nice boy,” she said, and a sly smile curved her lips. “What’s this wild story about him and the Levins? Veslovsky told Alexey about it, and we don’t believe it. _Il est très gentil et naïf_,” she said again with the same smile. “Men need occupation, and Alexey needs a circle, so I value all these people. We have to have the house lively and gay, so that Alexey may not long for any novelty. Then you’ll see the steward—a German, a very good fellow, and he understands his work. Alexey has a very high opinion of him. Then the doctor, a young man, not quite a Nihilist perhaps, but you know, eats with his knife ... but a very good doctor. Then the architect.... _Une petite cour!_” Chapter 20 “Here’s Dolly for you, princess, you were so anxious to see her,” said Anna, coming out with Darya Alexandrovna onto the stone terrace where Princess Varvara was sitting in the shade at an embroidery frame, working at a cover for Count Alexey Kirillovitch’s easy chair. “She says she doesn’t want anything before dinner, but please order some lunch for her, and I’ll go and look for Alexey and bring them all in.”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Darya Alexandrovna carried out her intention and went to see Anna. She was sorry to annoy her sister and to do anything Levin disliked. She quite understood how right the Levins were in not wishing to have anything to do with Vronsky. But she felt she must go and see Anna, and show her that her feelings could not be changed, in spite of the change in her position. That she might be independent of the Levins in this expedition, Darya Alexandrovna sent to the village to hire horses for the drive; but Levin learning of it went to her to protest. “What makes you suppose that I dislike your going? But, even if I did dislike it, I should still more dislike your not taking my horses,” he said. “You never told me that you were going for certain. Hiring horses in the village is disagreeable to me, and, what’s of more importance, they’ll undertake the job and never get you there. I have horses. And if you don’t want to wound me, you’ll take mine.” Darya Alexandrovna had to consent, and on the day fixed Levin had ready for his sister-in-law a set of four horses and relays, getting them together from the farm and saddle-horses—not at all a smart-looking set, but capable of taking Darya Alexandrovna the whole distance in a single day. At that moment, when horses were wanted for the princess, who was going, and for the midwife, it was a difficult matter for Levin to make up the number, but the duties of hospitality would not let him allow Darya Alexandrovna to hire horses when staying in his house. Moreover, he was well aware that the twenty roubles that would be asked for the journey were a serious matter for her; Darya Alexandrovna’s pecuniary affairs, which were in a very unsatisfactory state, were taken to heart by the Levins as if they were their own. Darya Alexandrovna, by Levin’s advice, started before daybreak. The road was good, the carriage comfortable, the horses trotted along merrily, and on the box, besides the coachman, sat the counting-house clerk, whom Levin was sending instead of a groom for greater security. Darya Alexandrovna dozed and waked up only on reaching the inn where the horses were to be changed.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  brato ministerio ac matutino peracto sacrificio, de opertis adyti profert quosdam libros litteris ignora- bilibus praenotatos, partim figuris cuiuscemodi animalium concepti sermonis compendiosa verba suggerentes, partim nodosis et in modum rotae tortuosis capreolatimque condensis apicibus a curiosat profanorum lectione munita: indidem mihi praedicat quae forent ad usum teletae necessario praeparanda. 23 Ea protinus naviter et aliquanto liberalius partim ipse, partim per meos socios coemenda procuro. Iamque tempore, ut aiebat sacerdos, id postulante, stipatum me religiosa cohorte deducit ad proxumas balneas, et prius sueto lavacro traditum, praefatus. deum veniam, purissime circumrorans abluit, rursum- que ad templum reductum, iam duabus diei partibus transactis, ante ipsa deae vestigia constituit, secre- toque mandatis quibusdam quae voce meliora sunt, illud plane cunctis arbitris praecipit, decem continuis ilis diebus cibariam voluptatem cohercerem neque ullum animal essem et invinius essem. Quis vener- abili continentia rite servatis, iam dies aderat divino destinatus vadimonio, et sol curvatus intrahebat vesperam : tum ecce confluunt undique turbae sacra- torum? ritu vetusto variis quisque me muneribus honorantes. Tune semotis procul profanis omnibus linteo rudique me. contectum amicimine arrepta manu sacerdos deducit ad ipsius sacrarii penetralia, 1 The MSS have curiositate, which is difficult, if not im- possible, to construe. s ? MMS saerorwm. 1 think Brant's emeudation saeratorun, * initiates, adepts, priosts " is necessary 578 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK XI

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  And then he called his maid which was named Fotis, and said, Carry this Gentlemans packet into the chamber, and lay it up safely, and bring water quickly to wash him, and a towel to rub him, and other things necessary, and then bring him to the next Baines, for I know that he is very weary of travell. These things when I heard, I partly perceived the manners of Milo, and endeavouring to bring my selfe further into his favour, I sayd, Sir there is no need of any of these things, for they have been everywhere ministred unto mee by the way, howbeit I will go into the Baines, but my chiefest care is that my horse be well looked to, for hee brought mee hither roundly, and therefore I pray thee Fotis take this money and buy some hay and oats for him. THE SEVENTH CHAPTER How Apuleius going to buy fish, met with his companion Pythias.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  An Oklahoma mining company was founded in the 1930s for the sole purpose of burrowing into and looting Indian burial mounds. Local newspapers compared its “finds” to the treasures of Egyptian tombs, a description that enticed souvenir hunters but made the burial mounds seem even more remote from local Native families whose ancestors had been interred there. This company traveled the country selling looted artifacts—flint knives as big as swords, copper bowls, pipes made to look like animals, shells carved into jewelry, pearls—everything for a few dollars or even pennies. Since they assumed there was little market for cloth or wood items, they piled them up and burned them. Only after a couple of years did the Oklahoma legislature bow to outrage from archaeologists and Native families by passing a law against this looting. In revenge, the mining company strung dynamite through the mounds and blew them up. I will remember this day in Oklahoma for the vengefulness of that dynamite and the importance of that grandmother’s story. When I return to my hotel room, there is another reason. A woman I have not met but who cares about the fate of Ms. magazine calls to say that she will help us buy it out of bondage. Her yes puts us over the top. As the last of a dozen women investors, she makes its continuation possible. She also remarks on what a coincidence it is to find me in Oklahoma City, where her family comes from, and where she grew up. She is the feminist granddaughter of that very conservative family that owns the Oklahoma City newspaper with the Bible verses on the front page. She fled Oklahoma but took with her the spirit of the land, not the newspaper. • In Arizona where I’ve been speaking, I’m invited to Thanksgiving dinner by Leslie Silko, a Laguna Pueblo novelist and filmmaker whose writing seems to link all eras and living things. I know her only from spending one odd weekend with her and her screenwriting partner, Larry McMurtry, at a hotel near the Dallas/Fort Worth airport. We had met to talk about working on a possible film project together, but never could solve the problem of how to do the script. As compensation, we bought exotic cowboy boots. Dinner is with Leslie and her mother at home, a small sun-bleached wooden house that looks as if it grew out of the desert. After dinner, Leslie gives me the memorable gift of a ride on one of her Indian ponies. Among the things I discover, as we amble along at the ponies’ own pace, is that the Serpent Woman of the Midwest is called Spider Woman here in the Southwest—but she is the same source of creation and energy. I remember Spider Woman from the first page of Leslie’s novel Ceremony. She is the Thought Woman who names things and so brings them into being.