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 My Life on the Road (2015)

  magazine, who knows how to cut like a sculptor, joined Amy. Together, they turned Way Too Much into Just Enough. As they pointed out, I could keep on publishing road stories on a website. (Go to gloriasteinem.com .) I’ve also had the pleasure of watching Amy, my co-worker through three books and more than twenty years, become a writer of more books than I, a giver of more lectures than I, and a creative organizer here and in other countries. There is no one who could make me feel better about the present and more hopeful about the future. Finally, I thank Robin Morgan for reminding me, even when the road was causing me to write the least, that there is no better moment in life than finding the right word. [image "Notes" file=Image00026.jpg] INTRODUCTION: ROAD SIGNS 1. Marilyn Mercer, “Gloria Steinem: The Unhidden Persuader,” McCall’s, January 1972. 2. Robin Morgan, The Word of a Woman: Feminist Dispatches, 1968 –1992 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), pp. 275–77. 3. Margaret Atwood, “Headscarves to Die For,” New York Times Book Review, August 15, 2004. 4. Because only women’s ova pass on mitochondrial DNA and only men’s sperm pass on the Y chromosome, the mix in a current population indicates who came from afar and who didn’t. Natalie Angier, “Man vs. Woman: In History’s Travel Olympics, There’s No Contest,” New York Times, October 27, 1998; she is quoting from a study by the Harvard School of Public Health and Stanford University, reported in Mark T. Seilelstad, Eric Minch, and L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, “Genetic Evidence for a Higher Female Migration Rate in Humans,” Nature Genetics 20 (November 1998). 5. Douglas Martin, “Yang Huanyi, the Last User of a Secret Women’s Code,” New York Times, October 7, 2004. CHAPTER I: MY FATHER’S FOOTSTEPS 1. Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), p. 161. CHAPTER II: TALKING CIRCLES 1. Besides advertising campaigns and Hollywood movies that romanticized car ownership, Detroit lobbied for legislation against—and sometimes bought up and destroyed—public transportation, from the streetcars of eastern cities to the trains of the California coastline. In a parallel effort, the construction industry sold isolated houses over communal housing. See T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings, Homes of the Brave (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1954). 2. To hear exactly why—in very smart and angry observations of men on the Left that may still ring true—read the classic “Goodbye to All That” by Robin Morgan. Originally written for Rat Subterranean News in 1970, it has since been reprinted in The Word of a Woman: Feminist Dispatches, 1968 –1992 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992). 3. In checking history, I found that just before the march began, Josephine Baker, dressed in the uniform of the French Resistance, spoke about the racism that caused her move to France. Daisy Bates was the only woman officially listed as a speaker at the march.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  The therapist there explained that once women started talking to each other, they discovered that this happened a lot, especially but not only to girls. When survivors needed help but couldn’t afford therapy, this therapist helped them form a group—and I joined; it was six women and me. I discovered it wasn’t my fault. But when people in the town knew we were telling family secrets, even the women’s center had to turn the therapist out. Still, she kept on meeting with us on our own. But what really saved me was what you felt. I had dressed and lived as a girl until I was about eight, so I never felt I was a man like my grandfather. As my therapist put it, I never identified with the aggressor. If I had, I might have become an abuser myself. It’s terrible to be a victim, and to believe sex is the only thing you’re worth—without help, girls grow up to keep believing that. But some boys start abusing other people because that’s a way of being a man. That means guilt, being afraid you’ll get arrested if you tell the truth, cutting off all empathy—everything that makes it harder to get out. I wouldn’t say I was lucky—but it would have been worse if I thought I had to control and abuse other people. He is telling me his story to say thank you. Because the women’s movement was born of women talking to each other, childhood sexual abuse was revealed to be a fact, not a Freudian fantasy—and children began to be believed. We finish our coffee. He is a rare person—a man who knows what it is to be a woman—and also someone who has ended abuse in one generation. I thank him for surviving—and teaching. There are many kinds of lessons on a campus. • It’s 1995, and I am at the Dominican College, near San Francisco. Because an outdoor amphitheater on its campus holds a thousand people, it is about to be the site of a fund-raiser for Planned Parenthood. No one has uttered a peep of protest. Planned Parenthood clinics have provided health care for so many for so long that it has become one of the most trusted organizations in America. Even some anti-abortion protesters seem to have figured out that demonstrating against clinics only turns public opinion against them, especially since just 3 percent of Planned Parenthood services are related to abortion. But this is the calm before the storm. Archbishop John Quinn of San Francisco writes a letter to the college’s president condemning me as a “leading advocate for virtually unrestricted abortion in the United States.” Though the college gets not a penny from the Catholic Church, it was founded by Dominican nuns long ago. They are no longer around to speak for themselves, but the archbishop says their legacy is being betrayed. Everything just keeps going, both the accusations and the event.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  AT HOME IN NEW YORK CITY, 2010. COURTESY OF ANNIE LEIBOVITZ THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO: Dr. John Sharpe of London, who in 1957, a decade before physicians in England could legally perform an abortion for any reason other than the health of the woman, took the considerable risk of referring for an abortion a twenty-two- year-old American on her way to India. Knowing only that she had broken an engagement at home to seek an unknown fate, he said, “You must promise me two things. First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want to do with your life.” Dear Dr. Sharpe, I believe you, who knew the law was unjust, would not mind if I say this so long after your death: I’ve done the best I could with my life. This book is for you. When a book has taken shape over two decades, there are a lot of people to thank. Ann Godoff at Random House was the first to believe in an on-the-road book by a traveling feminist organizer. Then Kate Medina became my editor, and if there were an Olympics for kindness, support, and patience, she would win it. Hedgebrook, the women writers’ retreat on Whidbey Island, Washington, gave me solitude, a magical cabin, and time to discover and write the story of my father. Because I depended on memory as a curator of stories—the road is way too intense for journal keeping—I turned to the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College to supply places and times, and to Google to deliver everything my memory did not. I was lucky to have houseguests who volunteered as readers—especially Lenedra Carroll, who read it all, and also Agunda Okeyo. New York friends Kathy Najimy and Debra Winger read chapters. My friend Irene Kubota Neves, a journalist and an age peer, read and commented on every word, and even rescued some from the cutting-room floor. Through all of this, Robert Levine, my friend and literary agent, kept his faith that a book would get done, and gave the publishers faith, too. As the years stretched on, I could devote time each summer to writing, then I was traveling the rest of the year and starting over again the next summer. Stories were soon creating more than one book. Though I was often rescued by my colleague Amy Richards, who read and gave me advice, there was still way too much. Finally, Suzanne Braun Levine, the first editor of Ms. magazine, who knows how to cut like a sculptor, joined Amy. Together, they turned Way Too Much into Just Enough. As they pointed out, I could keep on publishing road stories on a website.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  My father and I lived together for far less time, but his faith in a friendly universe helped balance my mother’s fear of a threatening one. He gave me that gift. He let in the light. —AS DECADES PASSED AFTER his death, my father seemed so improbable that I sometimes wondered if I’d made him up. My mother died peacefully of heart problems just before her eighty-second birthday. I wrote a long essay about her called “Ruth’s Song: Because She Could Not Sing It.” I mourned her unlived life. Still, my father’s chosen life was less understandable. My sister was the only other witness—and she had left home when she was seventeen. My father’s friends were as spread out as his life, and were strangers to me. When I got two letters about my father out of the blue, I was older than he had been when he died. These generous correspondents had known my father when they themselves were boys. The first letter came from John Grover, by then a retired obstetrician. In high school, he had a summer job as a trombone player with the house band at Ocean Beach Pier. One Saturday night, the bandleader took all the cash the band had earned, leaped over the side of the pier, and swam away, leaving Grover and another teenage band member stranded. “Your father saved the summer for us by offering us a place to stay and enough cash to help us get food,” Grover wrote. “In return, we acted as ‘guardians’ of the pier at night. We slept on a mattress placed on a dance floor under the stars…and he found day jobs for us in a cement-block manufacturing plant….I also played third trombone with several bands as they passed through on weekends, providing a little more cash.” Before the end of the summer, Grover and his friend had found jobs as musicians with a traveling circus. Then they went home to finish high school. Grover, by then in his seventies, wrote: “I’ve always remembered your father’s solicitude in helping two homeless and broke West Virginia boys that summer….It is interesting that I, too, went into a field important to women and women’s rights. I spent a large part of my professional career helping to make the care of pregnant women and women in labor more humane. I was also deeply involved with the birth control and legal abortion movements in the state of Massachusetts during the 1960s.” At last, I had a witness to my father’s kindness. Though his solution to unjust rules was to ignore them, not change them, it was no accident that a young man he helped had grown up to help others. My father knew a good heart when he saw one. He himself was often dependent, in the timeless phrase of Tennessee Williams, “on the kindness of strangers.” A few years later, I got a letter from Hawaii and another physician. Dr.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  As the years stretched on, I could devote time each summer to writing, then I was traveling the rest of the year and starting over again the next summer. Stories were soon creating more than one book. Though I was often rescued by my colleague Amy Richards, who read and gave me advice, there was still way too much. Finally, Suzanne Braun Levine, the first editor of Ms. magazine, who knows how to cut like a sculptor, joined Amy. Together, they turned Way Too Much into Just Enough. As they pointed out, I could keep on publishing road stories on a website. (Go to gloriasteinem.com .) I’ve also had the pleasure of watching Amy, my co-worker through three books and more than twenty years, become a writer of more books than I, a giver of more lectures than I, and a creative organizer here and in other countries. There is no one who could make me feel better about the present and more hopeful about the future. Finally, I thank Robin Morgan for reminding me, even when the road was causing me to write the least, that there is no better moment in life than finding the right word. [image "Notes" file=Image00026.jpg] INTRODUCTION: ROAD SIGNS 1. Marilyn Mercer, “Gloria Steinem: The Unhidden Persuader,” McCall’s, January 1972. 2. Robin Morgan, The Word of a Woman: Feminist Dispatches, 1968 –1992 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), pp. 275–77. 3. Margaret Atwood, “Headscarves to Die For,” New York Times Book Review, August 15, 2004. 4. Because only women’s ova pass on mitochondrial DNA and only men’s sperm pass on the Y chromosome, the mix in a current population indicates who came from afar and who didn’t. Natalie Angier, “Man vs. Woman: In History’s Travel Olympics, There’s No Contest,” New York Times, October 27, 1998; she is quoting from a study by the Harvard School of Public Health and Stanford University, reported in Mark T. Seilelstad, Eric Minch, and L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, “Genetic Evidence for a Higher Female Migration Rate in Humans,” Nature Genetics 20 (November 1998). 5. Douglas Martin, “Yang Huanyi, the Last User of a Secret Women’s Code,” New York Times, October 7, 2004. CHAPTER I: MY FATHER’S FOOTSTEPS 1. Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), p. 161. CHAPTER II: TALKING CIRCLES 1. Besides advertising campaigns and Hollywood movies that romanticized car ownership, Detroit lobbied for legislation against—and sometimes bought up and destroyed—public transportation, from the streetcars of eastern cities to the trains of the California coastline. In a parallel effort, the construction industry sold isolated houses over communal housing. See T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings, Homes of the Brave (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1954). 2.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “I am very, very grateful to you, both for your deeds and for your words,” he said, when she had finished praying. Countess Lidia Ivanovna once more pressed both her friend’s hands. “Now I will enter upon my duties,” she said with a smile after a pause, as she wiped away the traces of tears. “I am going to Seryozha. Only in the last extremity shall I apply to you.” And she got up and went out. Countess Lidia Ivanovna went into Seryozha’s part of the house, and dropping tears on the scared child’s cheeks, she told him that his father was a saint and his mother was dead. Countess Lidia Ivanovna kept her promise. She did actually take upon herself the care of the organization and management of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s household. But she had not overstated the case when saying that practical affairs were not her strong point. All her arrangements had to be modified because they could not be carried out, and they were modified by Korney, Alexey Alexandrovitch’s valet, who, though no one was aware of the fact, now managed Karenin’s household, and quietly and discreetly reported to his master while he was dressing all it was necessary for him to know. But Lidia Ivanovna’s help was none the less real; she gave Alexey Alexandrovitch moral support in the consciousness of her love and respect for him, and still more, as it was soothing to her to believe, in that she almost turned him to Christianity—that is, from an indifferent and apathetic believer she turned him into an ardent and steadfast adherent of the new interpretation of Christian doctrine, which had been gaining ground of late in Petersburg. It was easy for Alexey Alexandrovitch to believe in this teaching. Alexey Alexandrovitch, like Lidia Ivanovna indeed, and others who shared their views, was completely devoid of vividness of imagination, that spiritual faculty in virtue of which the conceptions evoked by the imagination become so vivid that they must needs be in harmony with other conceptions, and with actual fact. He saw nothing impossible and inconceivable in the idea that death, though existing for unbelievers, did not exist for him, and that, as he was possessed of the most perfect faith, of the measure of which he was himself the judge, therefore there was no sin in his soul, and he was experiencing complete salvation here on earth.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  After Leo died, my father practiced for another year. He got into trouble, went to jail for a while, then retired….I’ve been working for myself for almost thirty years. I’ve become a general surgeon and often times, especially when I see gemstones, I remember my pal, Leo. I wonder: If you think of someone you love, do you become a little more like them? I would like to think so. I wrote back to the generous Dr. Peebles—who asked me to call him Larry in my father’s spirit—and thanked him with all my heart. For the first time, I knew that my father had seen two familiar faces in the hospital before he died. When I explained that I had arrived too late—something he hadn’t known—he wrote back to say that, years later, he arrived too late for his own father’s death. He assured me that my father “seemed to be okay with all of it. Like someone who had a good run.” Each of us knew we were comforting the other. —IF EVERYONE HAS A full circle of human qualities to complete, then progress lies in the direction we haven’t been. My father’s clear case of horreur du domicile was a fear of home so common, especially among men, that Baudelaire called it “La Grande Maladie.” My father had grown up in an apartment with meals served at the same time and no sound except a ticking clock on the mantelpiece. When psychologist Robert Seidenberg studied women in such changeless homes, he named the result “the trauma of eventlessness.” As a boy, I think my father suffered from this, too. That’s why he pushed his own life’s pendulum to the opposite extreme. Of course, his quixotic nature played a role, as did his optimism and his gift for excess, yet I doubt he would have chosen such a risky life if he hadn’t been fleeing an orderly one. My mother was also adventurous by nature. She had rebelled against a mother who thought that creating guilt in her two daughters was the path to their good behavior, and then rebelled against a church so strict that dancing was forbidden. She told me stories of wearing her father’s overalls to play basketball at a time when girls did neither, and learning to drive before anyone else on her block. She then worked her way through university by embroidering for a fancy linen shop and by teaching calculus. On campus, she met my devil-may-care father, the son of an upper-middle-class Jewish family. He made her laugh and was full of dreams—the very opposite of her unforgiving mother, and a father who was often away, working on the railroad. She married my father for his refusal to worry, then was left to worry alone. Both my mother and my father paid a high price for lives out of balance. Yet at least my father had been able to choose his own journey.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  (Go to gloriasteinem.com.) I’ve also had the pleasure of watching Amy, my co-worker through three books and more than twenty years, become a writer of more books than I, a giver of more lectures than I, and a creative organizer here and in other countries. There is no one who could make me feel better about the present and more hopeful about the future. Finally, I thank Robin Morgan for reminding me, even when the road was causing me to write the least, that there is no better moment in life than finding the right word. INTRODUCTION: ROAD SIGNS 1.Marilyn Mercer, “Gloria Steinem: The Unhidden Persuader,” McCall’s, January 1972. 2.Robin Morgan, The Word of a Woman: Feminist Dispatches, 1968–1992 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), pp. 275–77. 3.Margaret Atwood, “Headscarves to Die For,” New York Times Book Review, August 15, 2004. 4.Because only women’s ova pass on mitochondrial DNA and only men’s sperm pass on the Y chromosome, the mix in a current population indicates who came from afar and who didn’t. Natalie Angier, “Man vs. Woman: In History’s Travel Olympics, There’s No Contest,” New York Times, October 27, 1998; she is quoting from a study by the Harvard School of Public Health and Stanford University, reported in Mark T. Seilelstad, Eric Minch, and L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, “Genetic Evidence for a Higher Female Migration Rate in Humans,” Nature Genetics 20 (November 1998). 5.Douglas Martin, “Yang Huanyi, the Last User of a Secret Women’s Code,” New York Times, October 7, 2004. CHAPTER I: MY FATHER’S FOOTSTEPS 1.Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), p. 161. CHAPTER II: TALKING CIRCLES 1.Besides advertising campaigns and Hollywood movies that romanticized car ownership, Detroit lobbied for legislation against—and sometimes bought up and destroyed—public transportation, from the streetcars of eastern cities to the trains of the California coastline. In a parallel effort, the construction industry sold isolated houses over communal housing. See T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings, Homes of the Brave (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1954). 2.To hear exactly why—in very smart and angry observations of men on the Left that may still ring true —read the classic “Goodbye to All That” by Robin Morgan. Originally written for Rat Subterranean News in 1970, it has since been reprinted in The Word of a Woman: Feminist Dispatches, 1968–1992 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992). 3.In checking history, I found that just before the march began, Josephine Baker, dressed in the uniform of the French Resistance, spoke about the racism that caused her move to France. Daisy Bates was the only woman officially listed as a speaker at the march. She was substituting for Myrlie Evers, widow of Medgar Evers, who had been murdered in Mississippi just a month before, but Bates was unable to reach the Lincoln Memorial through the traffic. Male civil rights leaders marched on Pennsylvania Avenue with the press, while female leaders marched on Independence Avenue. Anna Arnold Hedgeman was the only woman on the planning committee for the 1963 march.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  I experienced the kindness of flight attendants who brought me back a dessert or a meal from first class, or let me lie down in the middle of an aisle when I had a back spasm, or took the armrests out of three-across seats so I could sleep coast to coast, or illegally moved me up to first class when there was an empty seat, or sent me off with a split of champagne to thank me for supporting their job struggles. They still are not part of the job ladder into the executive airline ranks, and they still are far more likely to take pay cuts than the almost totally male machinists and pilots even though about a quarter of flight attendants are now men. But ever since they won the right to work beyond marriage and beyond thirty, I’ve seen more and more whose stories had begun on flights decades before. A modern airliner is very different from a timeless village in India, but it dawned on me one day that all my air travel has much in common with long-ago village walking. If you do anything people care about, people will take care of you. [image "With my mother, Ruth Nuneviller Steinem, at Oberlin College, 1972. Courtesy of the Oberlin College Archives" file=Image00013.jpg] WITH MY MOTHER, RUTH NUNEVILLER STEINEM, AT OBERLIN COLLEGE, 1972. COURTESY OF THE OBERLIN COLLEGE ARCHIVES [image "IV." file=Image00014.jpg] One Big CampusH ow do I love campuses? Let me count the ways. I love the coffee shops and reading rooms where one can sit and talk or browse forever. I love the buildings with no addresses that only the initiated can find, and the idiosyncratic clothes that would never make it in the outside world. I love the flash parties that start in some odd spot and can’t be moved, and the flash seminars that any discussion can turn into. I love the bulletin boards that are an education in themselves, the friendships between people who would never otherwise have met, and the time for inventiveness that produces, say, an exercise bike that powers a computer. Most of all, I love graduations. They are individual and communal, an end and a beginning, more permanent than weddings, more inclusive than religions, and possibly the most moving ceremonies on earth. I’m often asked how many campuses I’ve visited. The truth is I have no idea. I’ve gone to several each month of my lifetime on the road, and I’ve gone back to many more than once. All I know for sure is that university and college campuses, with some high schools and prep schools added, have been the single largest slice of my traveling pie—and they still are. When I started traveling to campuses, protest against the draft and the war in Vietnam was empowering students as a political force—and there were many more movements to come.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Each way of being is more valued in the presence of the other. This balance between making camp and following the seasons is both very ancient and very new. We all need both. My father did not have to trade dying alone for the joys of the road. My mother did not have to give up a journey of her own to have a home. Neither do I. Neither do you. [image "At home in New York City, 2010. Courtesy of Annie Leibovitz" file=Image00024.jpg] AT HOME IN NEW YORK CITY, 2010. COURTESY OF ANNIE LEIBOVITZ THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO: Dr. John Sharpe of London, who in 1957, a decade before physicians in England could legally perform an abortion for any reason other than the health of the woman, took the considerable risk of referring for an abortion a twenty-two-year-old American on her way to India. Knowing only that she had broken an engagement at home to seek an unknown fate, he said, “You must promise me two things. First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want to do with your life.” Dear Dr. Sharpe, I believe you, who knew the law was unjust, would not mind if I say this so long after your death: I’ve done the best I could with my life. This book is for you. [image "Notes of Gratitude" file=Image00025.jpg] W hen a book has taken shape over two decades, there are a lot of people to thank. Ann Godoff at Random House was the first to believe in an on-the-road book by a traveling feminist organizer. Then Kate Medina became my editor, and if there were an Olympics for kindness, support, and patience, she would win it. Hedgebrook, the women writers’ retreat on Whidbey Island, Washington, gave me solitude, a magical cabin, and time to discover and write the story of my father. Because I depended on memory as a curator of stories—the road is way too intense for journal keeping—I turned to the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College to supply places and times, and to Google to deliver everything my memory did not. I was lucky to have houseguests who volunteered as readers—especially Lenedra Carroll, who read it all, and also Agunda Okeyo. New York friends Kathy Najimy and Debra Winger read chapters. My friend Irene Kubota Neves, a journalist and an age peer, read and commented on every word, and even rescued some from the cutting-room floor. Through all of this, Robert Levine, my friend and literary agent, kept his faith that a book would get done, and gave the publishers faith, too.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 2: It is the mark of a happy disposition to see good rather than evil. Wherefore if someone has conferred a favor, not as he ought to have conferred it, the recipient should not for that reason withhold his thanks. Yet he owes less thanks, than if the favor had been conferred duly, since in fact the favor is less, for, as Seneca remarks (De Benef. ii.) “promptness enhances, delay discounts a favor.” Reply to Objection 3: As Seneca observes (De Benef. vi), “it matters much whether a person does a kindness to us for his own sake, or for ours, or for both his and ours. He that considers himself only, and benefits because cannot otherwise benefit himself, seems to me like a man who seeks fodder for his cattle.” And farther on: “If he has done it for me in common with himself, having both of us in his mind, I am ungrateful and not merely unjust, unless I rejoice that what was profitable to him is profitable to me also. It is the height of malevolence to refuse to recognize a kindness, unless the giver has been the loser thereby.” Reply to Objection 4: As Seneca observes (De Benef. iii), “when a slave does what is wont to be demanded of a slave, it is part of his service: when he does more than a slave is bound to do, it is a favor: for as soon as he does anything from a motive of friendship, if indeed that be his motive, it is no longer called service.” Wherefore gratitude is due even to a slave, when he does more than his duty.

• From Escape (2007)

  James, who lived with rattlesnakes and stayed up all night and slept all day, cared more about me than anyone else in my world. No one else saw my situation with his clarity. No one else would dare suggest that I leave Merril. My parents knew I was unhappy, but both still believed my marriage was based on a revelation from God. Merril called a few days after my conversation with James and asked me to come home for a wedding. He was about to marry his seventh wife, Lorraine Steed. There was no way I could refuse. But I didn’t understand his urgency. His last two weddings had been top-secret. When I got home Tammy told me that Merril’s daughters—the ones he had married off to Uncle Rulon—had arranged the marriage because they wanted their father to marry someone nice. I felt revolted. Merril’s daughters weren’t supposed to be arranging marriages. I realized that my daughters were not going to be safe. How could I ever tell one of my girls that her marriage was the will of the prophet when, in fact, it was the will of her older sisters? My mother and grandmother had raised me to believe in the beauty of polygamy. I was taught that not only was it a more natural lifestyle, but a privileged one because it meant living a higher law of God, which always brought more happiness. A woman’s sister wives were her best friends who would always be there for her in sickness and in health. The love shared for the same man extended to the love wives shared for one another’s children. I grew up believing in the myth; my life proved it a lie. I knew I didn’t want to condemn my daughters to polygamy. But if I didn’t want them involved in polygamy, why was I staying? Merril’s wedding was full of pomp and grandeur. He was now in his mid-sixties; Lorraine was twenty years old. She went through the motions as robotically as I had, stiff, scared, and resigned. After the wedding I gathered up my four children and we drove back to the motel. Jason was out of the picture and I felt confident he wouldn’t be back. I wasn’t going to be separated from my children anymore. My cousin Jayne and her children came, too. When Jeremy got back to the motel after his vacation he told me Barbara had been badgering him about me. She was questioning him about all sorts of bizarre behavior she thought I was involved in. Why weren’t the daily reports longer? How much did I spend on cleaning supplies? Did I charge everyone who used the bathhouses? Did I give rooms free to my family? Was I underreporting room rentals and keeping the money for myself?

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  Still shirtless from the night's hunt, Jim stares at the garage. At the crumbling walls, the peeling boards, the discarded cans, the broken bottles, the cluttered dry weeds, the tangled barbed wire. Acknowledgments ACKNOWLEDGMENTS W ITHOUT IN ANY way indicating that they agree or disagree with any or all of the points of view expressed in this book, I would like to thank the following: Evelyn Hooker, for having waged “the fight” years ago, when it was truly dangerous to do so. The publishers of One Magazine, the organizers of The Mattachine Society, and all the other courageous “old fighters” (now often sadly ignored) of the advance guard—and the “new fighters” of Stonewall. The National Endowment for the Arts, for their grant during, but not specifically for, the writing of this book. Glenna Luschei, for her encouragement and for years-long friendship. Albert L. Gordon, for his strong opinions, which often conflicted with mine but always elicited constructive consideration. Bill Regan, for sharing his definite points of view. Barry Copilow, and many others, for important data, and trust. Don Allen, editor of my first four books, for his belief in me throughout the years. Floriano Vecchi, for so much friendship, and affection. Melodie Johnson, for her invaluable opinions—and a sustaining, uniquely warm friendship. And Marsha Kinder, for her encouragement and creative criticism—and for a very special loving friendship.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Fyodor, the young poet of The Gift, wonders, on a summer stroll, “what is concealed behind all this, behind the play, the sparkle, the thick, green greasepaint of the foliage? For there really is something, there is something! And one wants to offer thanks but there is no one to thank. The list of donations already made: 10,000 days—from Person Unknown” (p. 340). ON A BOOK ENTITLED LOLITA ON ... ENTITLED LOLITA: this Afterword was written to accompany the generous excerpts from Lolita which appeared in the 1957 edition of The Anchor Review, the novel’s American debut, made possible mainly by Jason Epstein and the review’s editor, Melvin J. Lasky. It was appended to the Putnam’s edition in 1958, and has since been included in most of the 25 or so translations. the poor creature’s cage: see I cannot ... starling. In Pale Fire, Kinbote tells John Shade, “with no Providence the soul must rely on the dust of its husk, on the experience gathered in the course of corporeal confinement, and cling childishly to small-town principles, local by-laws, and a personality consisting mainly of the shadows of its own prison bars” (pp. 226–227). Writing about Sirin—himself—in Conclusive Evidence (1951), in a sentence omitted from the second edition (Speak, Memory), Nabokov says, “His best works are those in which he condemns his people to the solitary confinement of their souls” (p. 217). Nabokov employed the prison trope in many ways. See my Introduction, here. best ... are not translated: this of course is no longer true. destroyed it ... after ... 1940: nor is this true. The story, titled “The Enchanter,” unexpectedly turned up among his papers in 1964, a fifty- four-page typescript rather than the thirty pages of memory. Two passages were made available to Andrew Field for use in his study Nabokov: His Life in Art (Boston, 1967). Newly translated versions are quoted in the Introduction, here. The book developed slowly: its design and order of events, however, were clearly in mind early in its composition, said Nabokov, although various sections were written well out of sequence, as was customary with him. See Introduction, here. “reality” (one of the few words which mean nothing without quotes): in Ada, Nabokov writes, “It would not be sufficient to say that in his love- making with Ada [Van] discovered the pang, the ogon,’ the agony of supreme ‘reality.’ Reality, better say, lost the quotes it wore like claws ...” (pp. 210–220). America: a corrected misprint (“American” in the 1958 edition). Palearctic ... Nearctic: one of the four world faunal regions, the Holarctic (arctic and temperate zones), is subdivided into Palearctic (Europe and Asia) and Nearctic (North America). The “suburban lawn” and “mountain meadow” above are open country for a lepidopterist, notes Diana Butler in “Lolita Lepidoptera,” New World Writing 16, p.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Speaking of busybodies, I had another visitor—friend Beale, the fellow who eliminated my wife. Stodgy and solemn, looking like a kind of assistant executioner, with his bulldog jowls, small black eyes, thickly rimmed glasses and conspicuous nostrils, he was ushered in by John who then left us, closing the door upon us, with the utmost tact. Suavely saying he had twins in my stepdaughter’s class, my grotesque visitor unrolled a large diagram he had made of the accident. It was, as my stepdaughter would have put it, “a beaut,” with all kinds of impressive arrows and dotted lines in varicolored inks. Mrs. H. H.’s trajectory was illustrated at several points by a series of those little outline figures—doll-like wee career girl or WAC—used in statistics as visual aids. Very clearly and conclusively, this route came into contact with a boldly traced sinuous line representing two consecutive swerves—one which the Beale car made to avoid the Junk dog (dog not shown), and the second, a kind of exaggerated continuation of the first, meant to avert the tragedy. A very black cross indicated the spot where the trim little outline figure had at last come to rest on the sidewalk. I looked for some similar mark to denote the place on the embankment where my visitor’s huge wax father had reclined, but there was none. That gentleman, however, had signed the document as a witness underneath the name of Leslie Tomson, Miss Opposite and a few other people. With his hummingbird pencil deftly and delicately flying from one point to another, Frederick demonstrated his absolute innocence and the recklessness of my wife: while he was in the act of avoiding the dog, she had slipped on the freshly watered asphalt and plunged forward whereas she should have flung herself not forward but backward (Fred showed how by a jerk of his padded shoulder). I said it was certainly not his fault, and the inquest upheld my view. Breathing violently through jet-black tense nostrils, he shook his head and my hand; then, with an air of perfect savoir vivre and gentlemanly generosity, he offered to pay the funeral-home expenses. He expected me to refuse his offer. With a drunken sob of gratitude I accepted it. This took him aback. Slowly, incredulously, he repeated what he had said. I thanked him again, even more profusely than before.

• From Escape (2007)

  Shurtleff shook his head in disbelief. Then he said that my case was going to be a high-profile one and he would find an attorney smart enough to protect my children. He was true to his word and moved fast. A few days later he put me in touch with a former judge, Lisa Jones, who had done custody cases for years and knew family law inside and out. She was now working for a major law firm and agreed to take my case pro bono. Mark Shurtleff is a Mormon but has no ties to fundamentalism. He later told me that for years people had come into his office complaining about polygamy. But state officials had always warned him that if he went after polygamists, it would cost him his career. Even though polygamy is a felony, he would be perceived as persecuting religion. Mark also told me that he didn’t sleep much the night after our meeting because he knew there was no turning back. He knew he had to deal with polygamy. Now when we give speeches together he says, “After I talked with Carolyn, I realized that I had been elected to do a job and I couldn’t ignore my responsibilities, even if it resulted in costing me my career.” His involvement was a turning point for my custody case. Mark began collaborating with Arizona’s attorney general. I met with investigators from that office, too. I met with Lisa Jones a few weeks later. She’s a small woman with a big presence. With her short red hair, she can come across as a firecracker. But the truth is that she’s much more of a heat-seeking missile that aims right at her target and rarely misses. While she’s tough, she was easy to work with and became my rock. Lisa told me at our first meeting that she didn’t believe in coincidences. She had planned on doing some writing and asked her firm to reduce her workload. She’d just managed to free up her schedule when Mark Shurtleff called and told her about me. Lisa said that after she spoke with him she understood that the way had been cleared for her not to write but to take my case. Merril’s attorney, Rod Parker, knew he’d be playing hardball now that Lisa Jones was involved. She was no pushover. When Lisa called Parker and reported another case of Merril’s abuse, Parker told Merril to cut it out—he could not pull these stunts any longer. Parker knew that with competent legal representation I would win in court. Merril and his minions began to back off. It began to feel as if the tide had turned in my favor. Shelter

• From Escape (2007)

  Harrison stabilized a few days after surgery and was started on IV therapy to suppress his immune system. It was critical that his spasms be controlled because they put him more at risk than anything else. His weight loss was another potentially life-threatening issue. He had a gastric tube, or G-tube, inserted to supply him with nutrition. We wouldn’t be allowed to leave the hospital until I knew how to use his G-tube. I learned how to insert it and keep it clean to prevent any chance of infection. Everyone at Phoenix Children’s Hospital was friendly and supportive toward me—despite my weird polygamist clothes. Their genuine concern touched me deeply. I couldn’t explain to them how strange and abusive my world really was. The claustrophobia I lived with every day had become second nature to me. It had been years since I experienced three weeks in a row of kindness and support, but it felt miraculous to me. When we were finally ready to go home Merril came to drive us back. It was an awful trip. We barely spoke. Harrison had a hard time. He was still screaming and I had to manage his feeding pump, which was quite a job. I was so glad to see my six other children when I got home. I had never been apart from them for so long. I was happy to see them looking so well and strong after my three weeks in a hospital, where each child seemed sicker than the next. What surprised me was that my bedroom was clean and all my children’s laundry had been recently washed and put away. This didn’t jibe with the fact that no one in the family was speaking to me. I was treated like a wicked woman. The other wives would answer a question if I asked, but otherwise I was shunned. God had spoken loudly to them through Harrison’s cancer. That weekend when Cathleen came home she brought coffee to me in my bedroom before I was up and dressed. I learned that she had cleaned my room and I thanked her for her kindness. Later I noticed that the family was now acting hostile toward her, too. She was seen as being out of harmony with Merril because she had been helping me. But she didn’t quit. For the first time in a long, long time, I felt like I had a friend in my own family. Harrison did well initially. When we first came home he was able to sleep, with medication, for six hours at a stretch. He never stopped screaming, but I didn’t feel he was getting into serious trouble until after we’d been home for two weeks. Something was terribly wrong. We went back to the doctor in St. George. In the first few weeks after his surgery it seemed we were constantly running back and forth to the hospital. Harrison would either need his pain medication adjusted or he sometimes needed IVs.

• From Escape (2007)

  Jan Johnson and Laurie Allen made it possible for me to even begin thinking about the book I dreamed of writing. Jan’s faith in me and the insight, guidance, and confidence she gave me were what I needed to start the ball rolling. She has my heartfelt gratitude, as does Laurie, who helped me at home when I most needed it so I could begin the long process of writing this book. My family members—Thelma and Arthur Blackmore, Cathleen and Darrel Blackmore, Linda and Theil Cooke, Annette and Robert Jessop, Karen and John Zitting, Jane and Isaac Wyler, and my good friend Kevin Belt, stood by me without ever flinching. The hope they gave me reinforced my own, and there were times when that really kept me going. My freedom meant nothing until I felt safe and won custody of my children. Mark Shurtleff, Utah’s attorney general, his spokesman Paul Murphy, and attorney Lisa Jones Reading did everything they could to support me and then even more. Words feel too small to express my deep gratitude to all of them. Audrey, Merril Jessop’s daughter, and her husband, Merlin Johnson, were the only relatives from my ex-husband’s family who reached out to me in kindness after my escape. Thank you. I found inspiration and hope from mentors like Jon Krakauer, Crystal Maggelet, and Dorothy and Bruce Solomon. They, too, had faith in me that often felt stronger than my own. A strange new world became less mysterious to me because of the generosity of their spirits and hearts. My children needed to be stabilized before they could even begin to face a new future, let alone function in it. Connie Crosby, Patty Whittaker, Mitzi and John Magleby, Rhoda Thompson, Lodeen and Paul Peterson, Lee D. Bird, Hill Dalde, Gary Engles, Jean Alport, and Lara and Paul Cox were the people most instrumental in helping them make a positive transition into new lives. Lorial Mousseau and each and every member of the American Association of the University of Women Wasatch Branch invited me to speak and then took me under their wing to support and encourage me. They believed in this book from the moment it was first mentioned, and their enthusiasm was invaluable. It meant a lot to me to hear them say that I had a story worth telling. Last, but by no means least, I want to thank the people whose kindness and generosity have made it possible for my family to have Christmases four years in a row. One year a church adopted us; another year a book club made sure we had presents. This helped relieve an annual pressure for me. I remember being so strapped one year I was saving my change to buy laundry detergent. Christmas presents would have been out of the question if it weren’t for the kindness of strangers.

• From Escape (2007)

  The FLDS is constructed on a scaffolding of lies. We were all brainwashed into believing that everyone in the outside world was evil. Every Christmas, when I see the delight in my children as they unwrap presents from people they never met, I realize what a monstrous lie we were taught to believe. For all the kindness, then, both large and small, that has come into our lives from so many directions I give thanks, again and again. READERS’ GUIDE 1. How is God used to justify FLDS beliefs about sex, marriage, and parenting? How do these beliefs affect the daily lives of FLDS members? How are women particularly affected by the risk of sexual shame? 2. What are the biggest differences in the way men and women are treated in the FLDS? How does this influence the relationships between spouses? 3. Discuss the dynamics among the wives described by Carolyn. How did their situations cause cruel behavior, often driven by scarce resources? What does it take to reduce humans to such destructive levels of competition? 4. Why do you think polygamy has continued to exist in the modern world? What did the media’s images of Yearning for Zion mothers indicate about why a woman would stay in a community that strips her of power? 5. How do Carolyn’s recollections of her childhood both sustain her and haunt her? What did her two mothers teach her about the role of women in the world? 6. How do the nusses at times act like typical teenagers? What alliances does Carolyn build with them? What does marriage do to the nusses’ sense of sisterhood? 7. Early on, Carolyn dreamed of becoming a doctor. In her Epilogue, she describes her former classmate, Lloyd Barlow, who now serves as a physician at Yearning for Zion, and she expresses concern that an in-house FLDS doctor might turn a blind eye to abuse. How would you explain the FLDS’s attitude toward healthcare? Ultimately, what forms of healing, emotional and physical, was Carolyn able to find? 8. How do FLDS children adapt to living in extremely large families? Do they typically accept their new brothers and sisters? How are favoritism and competition handled? How does this experience shape the way they view the world and their relationships with others? 9. How did you react when Carolyn described the ex-convict who began working at her husband’s motel? Why didn’t Merril care about her personal safety? How was Colorado City affected by the fact that the FLDS controlled local law enforcement? 10. Well into her marriage, at a later age than most FLDS women, Carolyn was allowed to receive the prophecy of her destiny. The reading predicted that she had special intellectual gifts that would be applied to unusual purposes. Why were such revelations of a woman’s destiny kept private? Do you believe she received any sort of true prophecy that day?

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  Some of this emphasis on political correctness, which visited the gay community a good decade before it beset the rest of America and England, was a useful corrective to unexamined prejudices, but gay writers often perceived gay critics as narrow and Stalinist. Of course gay writers were enjoying the benefits and prestige and excitement of being spokesmen for a newly emerging culture, but they were reluctant to have their freedom as artists trammeled by the same readers. One solution was to insist that gay critics did not speak for the general gay reader. In any event, this early clash between critics and novelists eventually developed into a much larger split, with gay academics and queer theorists on one side and the gay creative community on the other. In the 1980s, when queer theory was the most lively intellectual trend in the States, this split appeared particularly dramatic. Contemporary gay novelists were overshadowed by more glamorous queer theorists, who ignored them. When I wrote A Boy’s Own Story I was resolutely hostile to any external censorship. I had then—and still have—a philosophical devotion to the truth and a conviction not only that it will set us free but that it is in itself desirable and preferable to all comforting lies. For me this conviction is both moral and quasi-scientific, an urge to study social phenomena and intimate responses that have never been identified before. Every writer is grateful to have new subject matter; in the 1970s and ’80s gay public life and gay inner life were two previously underrepresented themes in fiction. Older gay fiction had sometimes looked at the underworld of Decadence or had shown isolated gay individuals or couples, but the privilege of the new gay fiction was to show the full range of gay experience (gay athletes, gay ranchers, gay businessmen) and of gay culture, especially in the ghetto. Larry Kramer’s Faggots, for instance, depicted gay friendship circles, whereas a gay novel of the preceding decades would have shown nothing but a romantic if doomed gay couple living outside all society. I had just written States of Desire: Travels in Gay America, which looked at the lives of many real gay men scattered across America. That book had been an attempt to show that gay men (at least the urban white males I met) had more in common with the heterosexual people in their region than they did with gays in general. It also attempted to detail the wide variety of values, goals, and jobs in gay America; we weren’t all just hairdressers or ribbon clerks in San Francisco or New York. The implicit burden of the book, I suppose, was to look at the new gay machismo, the birth of clone culture.