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 The Divine Comedy (1950)

  7 “O Lady, in whom my hope hath vigour, and who for my salvation didst endure to leave in Hell thy footprints; of all the things which I have seen I recognize the grace and might, by thy power and by thine excellence. Thou hast drawn me from a slave to liberty by all those paths, by all those methods by which thou hadst the power so to do. Preserve thy munificence 8 in me, so that my soul which thou hast made sound, may unloose it from the body, pleasing unto thee. So did I pray; and she, so distant as she seemed, smiled and looked on me, then turned her to the eternal fountain. And the holy elder said: “That thou mayest consummate thy journey perfectly—whereto prayer and holy love dispatched me,— fly with thine eyes throughout this garden; for gazing on it will equip thy glance better to mount through the divine ray. And the Queen of heaven for whom I am all burning with love, will grant us every grace, because I am her faithful Bernard.” 9 As is he who perchance from Croatia cometh to look on our Veronica 10 and because of ancient fame is sated not, but saith in thought, so long as it be shown; “My Lord Jesus Christ, true God, and was this, then, the fashion of try semblance?” such was I, gazing upon the living love of him who in this world by contemplation tasted of that peace. 11

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  I used to worry that Fear of Flying was so much more famous than my twenty or so other books that it dwarfed my life’s work. I used to worry that they would put zipless fuck on my tombstone. Such worries are behind me. It is rare for an object of paper and ink to become an event in people’s lives. This book has had that extraordinary luck. As its maker, I am humbled by a miracle. —ERICA JONG New York City 11 December 2002 Henry Miller on Fear of FlyingCertainly anyone whose book is on the bestseller list (even if at the bottom) needs no review, no boosting. These few words, therefore, are gratuitous, or, if you like, homage from one writer to another. Above all, a warm, heartfelt tribute to a woman writer, the likes of which I have never known. In some ways, this book—Fear of Flying—is the feminine counterpart to my own Tropic of Cancer. Fortunately, it is not as bitter and much funnier. The author has quite a gripe about shrinks, which most of us share with her. I say the author, but in my head I cannot separate the author from her chief protagonist, Isadora Zelda. In the case of Tropic of Cancer, on the other hand, critics and readers alike were inclined to think I had invented Henry Miller. To this day many people refer to it as a novel, despite the fact that I have said again and again that it is not. Erica Jong, the author, said to me in a letter that she thought it silly to make distinctions regarding the genre or category of a book. A book is a book is a book, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein. However, people do seem to concern themselves unnecessarily over this question of identity. As a rule, the autobiography is not as popular as the novel, unless it is sensational. I think, on the other hand, that publishers are always fearful of autobiographies, because of the threat of libel and slander, or defamation of character suits. But then publishers, in the main, are a timid lot, full of fears of every sort. The wonderful thing about Erica Jong’s book is that she or Isadora is full of fear, all kinds, but makes no bones about it and makes us laugh over her tragic moments.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  turn to revisit your own shores; commit you not to the open sea; for perchance, losing me, ye would be left astray. The water which I take was never coursed before; Minerva bloweth, Apollo guideth me, and the nine Muses point me to the Bears. Ye other few, who timely have lift up your necks for bread of angels whereby life is here sustained but wherefrom none cometh away sated,1 ye may indeed commit your vessel to the deep keeping my furrow, in advance of the water that is falling back to the level. The glorious ones who fared to Colchis not so marvelled as shall ye, when Jason turned ox-plough-man in their sight. The thirst, born with us and ne’er failing, for the godlike realm bore us swift almost as ye see the heaven. Beatrice was gazing upward, and I on her; and perchance in such space as an arrow stays and flies and is discharged from the nocking point, I saw me arrived where a wondrous thing drew my sight to it; and therefore she from whom my doing might not be hidden turning to me as much in joy as beauty, “Direct thy mind to God in gratitude,” she said, “who hath united us with the first star.” Meseemed a cloud enveloped us, shining, dense, firm and polished, like diamond smitten by the sun. Within itself the eternal pearl received us, as water doth receive a ray of light, though still itself uncleft. If I was body,2—and if here we conceive not how one dimension could support another, which must be, if body into body creep,— The more should longing enkindle us to see that Essence wherein we behold how our own nature and God unified themselves. There what we hold by faith shall be beheld, not demonstrated, but self-known in fashion of the initial truth which man believeth.3 I answered: “Lady, devoutly as I most may, do I thank him who hath removed me from the mortal world. But tell me what those dusky marks upon this body, which down there on earth make folk to tell the tale of Cain?”4 She smiled a little, and then: “And if,” she said, “the opinion of mortals goeth wrong, where the key of sense doth not unlock, truly the shafts of wonder should no longer pierce thee; since even when the senses give the lead thou see’st reason hath wings too short. But tell me what thou, of thyself, thinkest concerning it?” And I: “That which to us appeareth diverse in this high region, I hold to be produced by bodies rare and dense.”5 And she: “Verily, thou shalt see thy thought plunged deep in falsity, if well thou hearken to the argument which I shall make against it. The eighth sphere revealeth many lights to you, the which in quality, as eke in quantity, may be observed of diverse countenance.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  My gratitude to my first readers, Nick Laird, Jessica Frazier, Tamara Barnett-Herrin, Michal Shavit, David O’Rourke, Yvonne Bailey-Smith and Lee Klein. Their encouragement, criticism and good advice got the thing started. Thank you to Harvey and Yvonne for their support and to my younger brothers, Doc Brown and Luc Skyz, who offer advice on all the things I am too old to know. Thank you to my ex-student Jacob Kramer for notes on college life and East Coast mores. Thank you to India Knight and Elisabeth Merriman for all the French. Thank you to Cassandra King and Alex Adamson for dealing with all extra-literary matters. I thank Beatrice Monti for another stay at Santa Maddelena and the good work that came out of it. Thank you to my English and American editors, Simon Prosser and Anne Godoff, without whom this book would be longer and worse. Thank you to Donna Poppy, the cleverest copy editor a girl could hope for. Thank you to Juliette Mitchell at Penguin for all her hard work on my behalf. Without my agent, Georgia Garrett, I couldn’t do this job at all. Thank you, George. You’re a bobby dazzler. Thank you to Simon Schama for his monumental Rembrandt’s Eyes , a book that helped me to see paintings properly for the first time. Thank you to Elaine Scarry for her wonderful essay ‘On Beauty and Being Just’, from which I borrowed a title, a chapter heading and a good deal of inspiration. It should be obvious from the first line that this is a novel inspired by a love of E. M. Forster, to whom all my fiction is indebted, one way or the other. This time I wanted to repay the debt with hommage . Most of all, I thank my husband, whose poetry I steal to make my prose look pretty. It’s Nick who knows that ‘time is how you spend your love’, and that’s why this book is dedicated to him, as is my life. kipps and belsey We refuse to be each other. H. J. Blackham  One may as well begin with Jerome’s e-mails to his father: To: HowardBelsey@fas.Wellington.edu From: Jeromeabroad@easymail.com Date: 5 November Subject: Hey, Dad – basically I’m just going to keep on keeping on with these mails – I’m no longer expecting you to reply, but I’m still hoping you will, if that makes sense. Well, I’m really enjoying everything. I work in Monty Kipps’s own office (did you know that he’s actually Sir Monty??), which is in the Green Park area. It’s me and a Cornish girl called Emily. She’s cool.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  AS I’D REQUESTED BACK in January, Ping Xi had laid out a set of clothes for me on the dining table: sneakers, track pants, T-shirt, zip-up hoodie. My credit cards and driver’s license, passport, birth certificate, and a thousand dollars cash were in the envelope I’d sealed and given him to hold. There was a bottle of Evian, an apple in a plastic bag from the grocery store, and a sample-size tube of Neutrogena sunscreen—a thoughtful touch. The table had been cleared of all the Post-it notes, which I appreciated, but then I found the cluster in the trash, like a tossed-out bouquet of daisies. I picked one up and read it: “Don’t forget: clothes, shoes, the envelope, keys. Buy me some sunscreen, please.” And then on another one, “Thanks, good luck.” A smiley face. My old white fur coat hung on the hook by the front door. A Post-it note stuck to the wall read: “When I bought this for you, it was simply because I wanted you to have it. I’ll really miss working with you. PX.” The door was unlocked. I got dressed, put the coat on, went out and down the elevator to the lobby and made my way dizzily toward the light exploding through the glass doors onto the street. “Miss?” I heard the doorman say. “Can you hear me?” Then the stiff rustle of his uniform pants as he squatted down and cradled my head in his hands. I hadn’t realized that I’d hit the floor. Someone brought me a glass of water. A woman held my hand and sat me in a leather armchair in the lobby. The doorman gave me the egg salad sandwich from his brown-bag lunch. “Is there anyone we can call?” People were so nice. “No, there’s nobody. Thank you. I just had a dizzy spell.” It took another week until I had the strength to make it outside and walk around the block. The next day I walked to Second Avenue. The next day, all the way to Lexington. I ate prepackaged egg salad sandwiches from a deli on East Eighty-seventh. I sat for hours on a bench in Carl Schurz Park and watched the lapdogs doddling around a tiled, fenced-in area, their owners dodging the sun and clicking at their cell phones. Someone left a collection of books out on the curb one day on East Seventy-seventh Street, and I brought them home and read them all cover to cover. A history of drunk driving in America. An Indian cookbook. War and Peace. Mao II.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  so did that corner of Ausonia, down from where Tronto and Verde6 discharge into the sea, citied by Bari, Gaeta and Catona. Upon my brow already glowed the crown of the land the Danube watereth after it hath left its German banks; and fair Trinacria which darkeneth between Pachynus and Pelorus, o’er the gulf tormented most by Eurus, (not for Typheus, but for sulphur that ariseth there) would yet have looked to have its kings, sprung through me from Charles and Rudolf, had not ill lordship, which doth ever cut the heart of subject peoples, moved Palermo to shriek out: Die! die! And had my brother seen it in good time, he would already flee the greedy poverty of Catalonia, lest it should work him ill; and of a truth provision needs be made by him or by tnother, lest on his bark already laden heavier load be laid. His nature,—mean descendant from a generous forebears,—were in need of soldiery who should not give their care to storing in the chest.” “Sire, in that I believe the lofty joy which thy discourse poureth into me, there where every good hath end and hath beginning is seen by thee even as I see it, ’tis more grateful to me; and this too I hold dear, that thou discernest it looking on God.7 Thou hast rejoiced me, now enlighten me; for in speaking thou hast moved me to question how from sweet seed may come forth bitter.” Thus I to him; and he to me: “If I can show a certain truth to thee, thou wilt get before thine eyes the thing thou askest just as thou hast it now behind thy back. The Good which doth revolve and satisfy the whole realm thou art climbing, maketh its providence become a virtuous power in these great bodies;8 and not only is provision made for the diverse-natured creatures, by the mind that is perfection in itself, but for their weal too, co-related with them.9 Wherefore whate’er this bow dischargeth doth alight disposed to a provided end, even as a thing directed to its mark. Were this not so, the heaven thou art traversing would so bring its effects to being, that they would be not works of art, but ruins; and this may not be, if the intellects which move these stars be not defective, and defective, too, that primal one which failed to perfect them. Wouldst thou that this truth be more illuminated?” And I: “Not so, for I see ’tis impossible that nature, in the needful, should fall short.” Whence he again: “Now, say, would it be worse for man on earth were he no citizen?” “Yea,” I replied, “and here I ask no reason.” “And may that be, except men live below diversely and with diverse offices? No, if your master10 write the truth for you.” Up to this point he came deduction-wise; then the conclusion: “Therefore must needs the roots of your effects be diverse;

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Thank you to Donna Poppy, the cleverest copy editor a girl could hope for. Thank you to Juliette Mitchell at Penguin for all her hard work on my behalf. Without my agent, Georgia Garrett, I couldn’t do this job at all. Thank you, George. You’re a bobby dazzler. Thank you to Simon Schama for his monumental Rembrandt’s Eyes , a book that helped me to see paintings properly for the first time. Thank you to Elaine Scarry for her wonderful essay ‘On Beauty and Being Just’, from which I borrowed a title, a chapter heading and a good deal of inspiration. It should be obvious from the first line that this is a novel inspired by a love of E. M. Forster, to whom all my fiction is indebted, one way or the other. This time I wanted to repay the debt with hommage . Most of all, I thank my husband, whose poetry I steal to make my prose look pretty. It’s Nick who knows that ‘time is how you spend your love’, and that’s why this book is dedicated to him, as is my life. kipps and belsey We refuse to be each other. H. J. Blackham  One may as well begin with Jerome’s e-mails to his father: To: HowardBelsey@fas.Wellington.edu From: Jeromeabroad@easymail.com Date: 5 November Subject: Hey, Dad – basically I’m just going to keep on keeping on with these mails – I’m no longer expecting you to reply, but I’m still hoping you will, if that makes sense. Well, I’m really enjoying everything. I work in Monty Kipps’s own office (did you know that he’s actually Sir Monty??), which is in the Green Park area. It’s me and a Cornish girl called Emily. She’s cool. There’re also three more yank interns downstairs (one from Boston!), so I feel pretty much at home. I’m a kind of an intern with the duties of a PA – organizing lunches, filing, talking to people on the phone, that sort of thing. Monty’s work is much more than just the academic stuff: he’s involved with the Race Commission, and he has Church charities in Barbados, Jamaica, Haiti, etc. – he keeps me really busy. Because it’s such a small set-up, I get to work closely with him – and of course I’m living with the family now, which is like being completely integrated into something new. Ah, the family. You didn’t respond, so I’m imagining your reaction (not too hard to imagine . . .). The truth is, it was really just the most convenient option at the time. And they were totally kind to offer – I was being evicted from the ‘bedsit’ place in Marylebone.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘Yes, I’m Jerome’s mother – I think you bumped into my youngest today, Levi? I hope he wasn’t rude at all . . . he can be a little brash sometimes – ’ ‘I knew I was right. I knew it, you see.’ Kiki laughed in an unhinged way, still concentrating on taking in all the visual information about this much discussed, never before glimpsed entity, Mrs Kipps. ‘Isn’t it crazy? The coincidence of Jerome, and then you and Levi bumping – ’ ‘No coincidence at all – I knew him by his face the moment I saw him. They’re so alive to look at, your sons, so handsome.’ Kiki was vulnerable to compliments concerning her children, but she was also familiar with them. Three brown children of a certain height will attract attention wherever they go. Kiki was used to the glory of it and also the necessity of humility. ‘Do you think so? I guess they are – I always think of them still as babies, really, without any – ’ began Kiki happily, but Mrs Kipps continued over her, unheeding. ‘And now this is you,’ she said, whistling and reaching out to grab Kiki’s hand by the wrist. ‘Come here, come down.’ ‘Oh . . . OK,’ said Kiki. She crouched beside Mrs Kipps’s chair. ‘But I didn’t imagine you like this at all. You are not a little woman, are you?’ Going over it later, Kiki could not completely account for her own response to this question. Her gut had its own way of going about things, and she was used to its executive decisions; the feeling of immediate safety some people gave her, and, conversely, the nausea others induced. Maybe something in the shock of the question, as well as the natural warmth of it, and the apparently guileless nature of the intention behind it, impelled her to respond in kind – with the first thought she had. ‘Uh-uh. Ain’t nothing small on me. Not a thing. Got bosoms, got back.’ ‘I see. And you don’t mind it at all?’  kipps and belsey ‘It’s just me – I’m used to it.’ ‘It looks very well on you. You carry it well.’ ‘Thank you!’ It was as if a sudden gust of wind had lifted and propelled this odd little conversation and now, just as suddenly, let it go. Mrs Kipps looked straight ahead, into her garden. Her breathing was shallow and audible in her throat. ‘I . . .’ began Kiki, and waited again for some kind of recognition and received none. ‘I guess I wanted to say how sorry I was about all that unnecessary fuss last year – it all got so out of proportion . . . I hope we can all just put it . . .’ said Kiki, and trailed off as she felt Mrs Kipps’s thumb pressing down in the centre of Kiki’s own palm. ‘I hope you won’t offend me,’ said Mrs Kipps, her head shaking,

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Early reviews were mixed. Reviews were either wildly enthusiastic or horrified that a woman would “talk like that.” There were never enough copies in the pipeline. Whenever word of mouth took hold—for the novel was hotly debated from the time it appeared in galley proofs—it would go out of stock and be unavailable. There was a period of months when it clung to the lower reaches of the bestseller list and went out of stock again and again. Then John Updike praised it in the New Yorker and things began to shift. But unbeknownst to me, my publisher was preparing to leave the company. For several months his job as editor in chief and publisher was vacant while Fear of Flying became the book everyone had heard of but no one could obtain. At some point during that agonizing period, Henry Miller discovered Fear of Flying and wrote an enthusiastic essay about it in the New York Times. He called the novel the female version of Tropic of Cancer and predicted that it would change American writing. As a result of his generosity, he and I began a voluminous correspondence about writing. I discovered in Miller a literary soul mate whose friendship nurtured me in a chaotic time. When the paperback of Fear of Flying came out in November 1974, millions of copies were sold in the first few months. Eventually, Fear of Flying sold seven million copies in the U.S. alone and went on to become a bestseller all over the world. In the thirty years that have zoomed by, I have been struck by how similar the responses to the novel have been in vastly different cultures. Japanese, Chinese and Korean readers have been as enthusiastic about the book as French, Spanish, German, Italian and Yugoslavian readers. With the fall of communism, the novel became available in Poland, Czechoslovakia and the former Soviet Union. It has fascinated me to see how alike are the issues of sexual politics all over the world. Fear of Flying has been read by people who rarely read novels. For many aficionados, it is more than a book—it is a part of their lives. Often people will stop me on the street, on airplanes, in trains and tell me where they were when they first read “that book” and how it impacted their lives. “I remember I was in Greece, wondering whether to go to bed with a beautiful young man—and I did (or I didn’t), so thank you so much for changing my life.” One man I met at a New York dinner party exclaimed: “Whenever I saw that book on a woman’s night table, I knew I was gonna get lucky.” Isadora and I have been embraced (or denounced) as liberators, corrupters, teachers, friends. We have been banned and burned, but we have been read. And reread and underlined and passed along. For a writer, those are the ultimate compliments. I am more grateful than I can easily express.

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

  Thanks also to the rest of the team at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: Naomi Gibbs, Taryn Roeder, Ayesha Mirza, Leila Meglio, Lori Glazer, Pilar Garcia- Brown, Margaret Hogan, and Rachael DeShano. I realize that it might sound odd, but I also want to acknowledge the Internet for playing an important part in the writing of this book, which required integrating and synthesizing copious material from diverse fields rapidly. When I had an idea, I was able to investigate it instantly by downloading relevant research papers in minutes, or buying virtually any book with overnight shipping. So a hearty thank-you to the engineers who brought us Google, Amazon (though for the amount I spent, they should be thanking me), and the many scientific journal websites that make their papers available online. This book was created in part with open-source software, including Subversion and a suite of Linux-based tools. And let’s not forget those who kept my body budget solvent during the writing of this book. I am truly, deeply grateful for their love and encouragement to Ann Kring, Batja Mesquita, Barb Fredrickson, James Gross, Judy Edersheim, Karen Quigley, Angie Hawk, and Jeanne Tsai. They provided both intellectual challenge and comfort during the long months of writing, not to mention the continual influx of chocolates, coffee, and other treats to keep me going. Special thanks for vital social support also goes to Florin and Magdalena Luca, and Carmen Valencia. I am deeply thankful for my extended family’s support. This includes my sisters-in-law, Louise Greenspan and Deborah Barrett; my goddaughter, Olivia Allison; and my nephew, Zac Rodrigo; and of course the incomparable (Uncle) Kevin Allison, whom you met virtually in chapters 6 and 7. And my deepest thanks to Mike Alves, trainer extraordinaire, and Barry Meklir, my miracle-working physical therapist, who together kept me walking and typing after sitting for sixteen hours a day; and to Victoria Krutan, who embodies the best of what massage therapy has to offer. My daughter, Sophia, with grace and forbearance beyond her years, tolerated three years of my late-night, early-morning, and weekend preoccupations with her “little brother” (not to mention my occasional bouts of bad temper). If there was ever a justified case for sibling rivalry, this is it. Sophia, you are my girl. I wrote this book for you. I want you to understand the power of your own mind. When you were little, you would sometimes wake from a nightmare. We’d position your stuffed animals in a protective circle around your bed, and I would sprinkle some “fairy dust” and you’d get back to sleep. What’s remarkable is not that you believed in magic, but that you didn’t.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Knock that critical parent off your shoulder! Write for your own eyes only. If you think about the public, any public, you’re likely to be blocked. I still have occasion to remind myself of that whenever I start a new book. Fear of Flying was published in hardcover in November 1973. Contrary to popular belief, it was not an instantaneous blockbuster. Thought to be a literary first novel by a poet, it was given an arty cover and printed in a rather small edition. If it had not been for the enthusiasm of the paperback editor— Elaine Koster, now a literary agent—who fell in love with the novel and bought it to reprint the following year, it might not have been given more than a token hardcover printing. Early reviews were mixed. Reviews were either wildly enthusiastic or horrified that a woman would “talk like that.” There were never enough copies in the pipeline. Whenever word of mouth took hold—for the novel was hotly debated from the time it appeared in galley proofs—it would go out of stock and be unavailable. There was a period of months when it clung to the lower reaches of the bestseller list and went out of stock again and again. Then John Updike praised it in the New Yorker and things began to shift. But unbeknownst to me, my publisher was preparing to leave the company. For several months his job as editor in chief and publisher was vacant while Fear of Flying became the book everyone had heard of but no one could obtain. At some point during that agonizing period, Henry Miller discovered Fear of Flying and wrote an enthusiastic essay about it in the New York Times. He called the novel the female version of Tropic of Cancer and predicted that it would change American writing. As a result of his generosity, he and I began a voluminous correspondence about writing. I discovered in Miller a literary soul mate whose friendship nurtured me in a chaotic time. When the paperback of Fear of Flying came out in November 1974, millions of copies were sold in the first few months. Eventually, Fear of Flying sold seven million copies in the U.S. alone and went on to become a bestseller all over the world. In the thirty years that have zoomed by, I have been struck by how similar the responses to the novel have been in vastly different cultures. Japanese, Chinese and Korean readers have been as enthusiastic about the book as French, Spanish, German, Italian and Yugoslavian readers. With the fall of communism, the novel became available in Poland, Czechoslovakia and the former Soviet Union. It has fascinated me to see how alike are the issues of sexual politics all over the world. Fear of Flying has been read by people who rarely read novels. For many aficionados, it is more than a book—it is a part of their lives.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  In return, she was sent sculptures of phalluses and lewd drawings (one that I’ve seen is a picture of a hairy penis that says, “Erica Jong, Meet Eric, a Dong”). She walked through the streets of her native Manhattan, needing to answer for herself on every corner. She had to listen to screeds from men who blamed her for their now loudly miserable wives; lascivious catcalls and gestures; the kind of notoriety that makes it hard to find a small corner in this, the world’s largest city, to hide. But this was also a time when her mail landed at her back door at 11 a.m. with a thud and she could not stop herself from running to read it: heaps of envelopes that, yes, had some lascivious stuff in them, but, more than that, contained piles of long letters, sometimes addressed to her, but sometimes addressed to the narrator of Fear of Flying , Isadora Zelda White Stollerman Wing. She read letters from women who wanted advice; who wanted to know how to live; who wanted to know if they should stay married to their husbands, if they should run off with their husbands’ best friends, if they should go figure out how to be by themselves. They wanted to know if romantic love would ever sustain them, if marriage could ever really work. They wanted to know how to be free. They wanted her to know that they were liberated not just by her book, but by Isadora’s existence, which is to say Erica Jong’s. I joined these throngs eventually. Twenty years after the book’s publication, I was eighteen years old, on a gap year at an Israeli university program for Americans, when I found a used copy of Fear of Flying at an outdoor bookstand in Tel Aviv. It had a wrinkled bright yellow cover, faded but still eye-catching, with the same kind of chunky serif typeface with swash capitals as the Philip Roth books I was able to sneak past my mother, thanks to their lack of a cover image and their general appearance of literature. Best as I can figure now, this was the January 1976 paperback published by Panther Books, a British publisher that specialized mostly in sci-fi that had been bought by Granada, which then got merged into William Collins, Sons & Co., which got merged into HarperCollins, and onward and so on toward the monopsony of publishing we all live under now.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  When I first met her she had but recently divorced her third husband—and a little more recently had been abandoned by her seventh cavalier servant—the others, the mutables, were too numerous and mobile to tabulate. Her brother was—and no doubt still is—a prominent, pasty-faced, suspenders-and-painted-tie-wearing politician, mayor and booster of his ball-playing, Bible-reading, grain-handling home town. For the last eight years he had been paying his great little sister several hundred dollars per month under the stringent condition that she would never never enter great little Grainball City. She told me, with wails of wonder, that for some God-damn reason every new boy friend of hers would first of all take her Grainball-ward: it was a fatal attraction; and before she knew what was what, she would find herself sucked into the lunar orbit of the town, and would be following the flood-lit drive that encircled it—“going round and round,” as she phrased it, “like a God-damn mulberry moth.” She had a natty little coupé; and in it we traveled to California so as to give my venerable vehicle a rest. Her natural speed was ninety. Dear Rita! We cruised together for two dim years, from summer 1950 to summer 1952, and she was the sweetest, simplest, gentlest, dumbest Rita imaginable. In comparison to her, Valechka was a Schlegel, and Charlotte a Hegel. There is no earthly reason why I should dally with her in the margin of this sinister memoir, but let me say (hi, Rita—wherever you are, drunk or hangoverish, Rita, hi!) that she was the most soothing, the most comprehending companion that I ever had, and certainly saved me from the madhouse. I told her I was trying to trace a girl and plug that girl’s bully. Rita solemnly approved of the plan—and in the course of some investigation she undertook on her own (without really knowing a thing), around San Humbertino, got entangled with a pretty awful crook herself; I had the devil of a time retrieving her—used and bruised but still cocky. Then one day she proposed playing Russian roulette with my sacred automatic; I said you couldn’t, it was not a revolver, and we struggled for it, until at last it went off, touching off a very thin and very comical spurt of hot water from the hole it made in the wall of the cabin room; I remember her shrieks of laughter.

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

  We both knew it was pretend, and yet it worked. Your exuberant little four-year- old self had the superpower to create social reality with me, just as your courageous, funny, and insightful teenage self does now. You are an architect of your experience, even in times when you feel buffeted by the world. If Sophia was the reason that I began this book, then my husband, Dan, is the reason I completed it. Dan is often the calm behind my storm. For as long as I have known him, he has had an unshakeable belief in my ability to do the extraordinary. Dan read every word of every book draft, often several times, and made this book better than anything I could have managed on my own. My brain will never be free from his oft-asked question, “Is this for the 1 percent?” (by which he meant my scientific colleagues, as opposed to a general audience), although now I am more likely to smile when my brain is simulating it. Among his many superpowers is the ability to simultaneously edit this book, soothe my worries, rub my back, cook dinner, suspend our entire social life without a trace of bitterness, and collect enough takeout menus to sustain us during my final months of writing. He never flinched, not once, even after it became clear that I had gotten us into something much more challenging than either of us knew at the outset. Dan’s other superpower (beyond his uncanny ability to choose the right-sized Tupperware every time) is that he can make me laugh when no one else can, because he knows me in a way that no one else does. I awaken every day of my life filled with gratitude and awe that he is beside me. Appendix A Brain Basics Every Halloween, I create a life-sized model of the brain out of gelatin. I pour boiling water into peach-flavored gelatin, add condensed milk to make the mixture opaque, and dribble in some green food coloring to turn the brain a jiggly gray. The brain is a prop for an elaborate haunted house that my family and lab have designed and run since 2004 as a charity event. Visitors who make it through the haunted house always exclaim (once they can speak normally again) how realistic the brain looks, which is interesting because a real brain is nothing like a uniform blob of gelatin. It is a massive network composed of billions of brain cells wired together to pass information back and forth. 1 To get the most out of this book, you’ll need a few basic facts about the human brain. The most important type of brain cell for our discussion is the neuron.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  It was an African laugh, with the deep, resonant timbre of a gong. Felix was from Angola. The rest were Haitian and Dominican. And there was a Cuban too. And now there was a mixed-race American citizen, much to Felix’s surprise and much to Levi’s. It had taken a week of persistence to convince Felix he was serious about working with them. But now, looking at the way Felix held Levi’s hand and kneaded his back, Levi could tell Felix liked him. People tended to like Levi, and he was thankful for this fact without really knowing whom to be thankful to. With Felix and the guys, the clincher had definitely been that night at the Bus Stop. They just didn’t think he’d turn up. No way did they think he was going to show. They thought he was fly-by.  the anatomy lesson But he did turn up, and they’d respected him for it. He’d done more than turn up – he had demonstrated how helpful he could be. It was his own articulate English – comparatively speaking – that had got their tape played and convinced the MC to let ten guys on stage at the same time and made sure they were given the crate of beer each act is promised. He was in . Being in was a weird feeling. These past few days, coming to meet the guys after school, hanging with them, had been an eye-opener for Levi. Try walking down the street with fifteen Haitians if you want to see people get uncomfortable. He felt a little like Jesus taking a stroll with the lepers. ‘You come back again,’ said Felix, nodding. ‘OK’. ‘OK,’ said Levi. ‘Saturdays and Sundays you will come. Regular. And Thursdays?’ ‘No, man – Saturday and Sunday, yes. But not Thursdays. Just this Thursday. I got a free day today – if it’s cool.’ Felix nodded again, took a little notepad and a pen out of his pocket and wrote something down. ‘It’s cool if you work. It’s fucking cool if you work,’ he considered, putting his syllabic emphasis in various unnatural places. ‘I’m all about work, Fe.’ ‘All about work,’ repeated Felix appreciatively. ‘Very good. You’ll work other side,’ he said, pointing to the opposite corner of the street. ‘We have a new guy. You work with him. Fifteen per cent. Keep your eye to the city. Fucking cops all over. Keep your eye. The stuff is here.’ Levi obediently picked up two bed-sheet sacks and stepped off the sidewalk, but Felix called him back. ‘Take him. Chouchou.’ Felix pushed a young man forward.

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

  I am indebted to the funding agencies and fellowships that made it feasible for me to write this book. These include fellowships from the American Philosophical Society and the James McKeen Cattell Fund from the Association for Psychological Science, as well as generous support from the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences; in particular, I am most grateful to Paul Gade, who was my program officer at ARI at the time, and who has continued to offer me encouragement and moral support. The research reported in this book was additionally funded by the generous support of granting agencies under the helpful guidance of their program officers. This includes the National Science Foundation, particularly Steve Breckler, who gave me my first neuroscience grant; the National Institute of Mental Health, particularly Susan Brandon, who oversaw my K02 Independent Scientist Award, Kevin Quinn, and Janine Simmons; the National Institute on Aging, particularly Lis Nielsen; the National Cancer Institute, particularly Paige Green and Becky Ferrer; the National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award; the National Institute of Child Health and Development; the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, particularly Paul Gade, Jay Goodwin, and Greg Ruark; and the Mind and Life Institute, particularly Wendy Hasenkamp and Arthur Zajonc. I owe a very special debt of gratitude to the people who handled the legal, administrative, and logistical aspects of the book: Fred Polner (my attorney) and Michael Healy (attorney at Brockman, Inc.); Emma Hitchcock and Jiahe Zhang for creating some of the brain images contained in this book; Rosemary Marrow at Redux Pictures; Chris Martin and Elyna Anderson at the Paul Ekman Group; Beverly Ornstein, Rona Menashe, and Dick Guttman for permission to use Martin Landau’s photograph; Nicole Betz, Anna Neumann, Kirsten Ebanks, and Sam Lyons for ultra-fast search and retrieval of research papers on request; and Jeffrey Eugenides for his wonderful conceptual combinations for much-needed emotion concepts. I’m also grateful to Ronda Heilig, an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Peter DiDomenica, who developed the TSA’s Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) program while director of security policy at Boston Logan International Airport, for speaking with me about the ways that the classical view informed training at their respective agencies.

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

  I’m also grateful to Ronda Heilig, an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Peter DiDomenica, who developed the TSA’s Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) program while director of security policy at Boston Logan International Airport, for speaking with me about the ways that the classical view informed training at their respective agencies . Thanks also to the rest of the team at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: Naomi Gibbs, Taryn Roeder, Ayesha Mirza, Leila Meglio, Lori Glazer, Pilar Garcia-Brown, Margaret Hogan, and Rachael DeShano. I realize that it might sound odd, but I also want to acknowledge the Internet for playing an important part in the writing of this book, which required integrating and synthesizing copious material from diverse fields rapidly. When I had an idea, I was able to investigate it instantly by downloading relevant research papers in minutes, or buying virtually any book with overnight shipping. So a hearty thank-you to the engineers who brought us Google, Amazon (though for the amount I spent, they should be thanking me), and the many scientific journal websites that make their papers available online. This book was created in part with open-source software, including Subversion and a suite of Linux-based tools. And let’s not forget those who kept my body budget solvent during the writing of this book. I am truly, deeply grateful for their love and encouragement to Ann Kring, Batja Mesquita, Barb Fredrickson, James Gross, Judy Edersheim, Karen Quigley, Angie Hawk, and Jeanne Tsai. They provided both intellectual challenge and comfort during the long months of writing, not to mention the continual influx of chocolates, coffee, and other treats to keep me going. Special thanks for vital social support also goes to Florin and Magdalena Luca, and Carmen Valencia. I am deeply thankful for my extended family’s support. This includes my sisters-in-law, Louise Greenspan and Deborah Barrett; my goddaughter, Olivia Allison; and my nephew, Zac Rodrigo; and of course the incomparable (Uncle) Kevin Allison, whom you met virtually in chapters 6 and 7 . And my deepest thanks to Mike Alves, trainer extraordinaire, and Barry Meklir, my miracle-working physical therapist, who together kept me walking and typing after sitting for sixteen hours a day; and to Victoria Krutan, who embodies the best of what massage therapy has to offer. My daughter, Sophia, with grace and forbearance beyond her years, tolerated three years of my late-night, early-morning, and weekend preoccupations with her “little brother” (not to mention my occasional bouts of bad temper). If there was ever a justified case for sibling rivalry, this is it. Sophia, you are my girl. I wrote this book for you. I want you to understand the power of your own mind. When you were little, you would sometimes wake from a nightmare. We’d position your stuffed animals in a protective circle around your bed, and I would sprinkle some “fairy dust” and you’d get back to sleep.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Her own background had been international, privileged and emotionally austere; she had grown up among American intellectuals and European aristocrats, a cultivated but cold mix. Five languages , went the line in a very early poem, the kind of doggerel she wrote in the early seventies, And no way to say I love you . Or, more importantly, I hate you. In Chantelle’s family both expressions were slung around the house with operatic regularity. But Claire would learn nothing of all that this evening. Instead she was to be the net over which Ron and Daisy and Zora lobbed wisecracks. She settled into her cushions and tried to make the best of it. The present conversation concerned a television show so famous even Claire had heard of it (although she’d never seen it); it was being satirized by her three students, taken apart to reveal unpleasant subtexts; dark political motives were assigned to it, and complex theoretical tools used to dismantle its simple, sincere fac¸ade. Every now and then the discussion swerved and slowed down until it ran alongside actual politics – the President, the administration – at which point the door was opened and Claire invited in for the ride. She was grateful when the waiter came to take their orders. A little hesitation hovered over the ordering of drinks – all but one of her students, a grad, were under the legal limit. Claire made it clear they were free to do as they wished.  On Beauty Stupid, faux sophisticated drinks – all incompatible with a Moroccan meal – were then ordered: a whiskey and ginger, a Tom Collins, a Cosmopolitan. Claire ordered a bottle of white wine for herself. The drinks were brought swiftly. Even after one gulp, she could see her students freeing themselves of the formality of the classroom. It wasn’t the drink itself but merely the licence it gave. ‘Oh, I so needed that,’ came from the adjacent booth, as a mousy little thing called Lena lowered a simple bottle of beer from her lips. Claire smiled to herself and looked at the table top. Every year more students, same but different. She listened with interest to the young men from her class ordering whatever it was they wished to eat. Then came the girls.

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

  What’s remarkable is not that you believed in magic, but that you didn’t. We both knew it was pretend, and yet it worked. Your exuberant little four-year-old self had the superpower to create social reality with me, just as your courageous, funny, and insightful teenage self does now. You are an architect of your experience, even in times when you feel buffeted by the world. If Sophia was the reason that I began this book, then my husband, Dan, is the reason I completed it. Dan is often the calm behind my storm. For as long as I have known him, he has had an unshakeable belief in my ability to do the extraordinary. Dan read every word of every book draft, often several times, and made this book better than anything I could have managed on my own. My brain will never be free from his oft-asked question, “Is this for the 1 percent?” (by which he meant my scientific colleagues, as opposed to a general audience), although now I am more likely to smile when my brain is simulating it. Among his many superpowers is the ability to simultaneously edit this book, soothe my worries, rub my back, cook dinner, suspend our entire social life without a trace of bitterness, and collect enough takeout menus to sustain us during my final months of writing. He never flinched, not once, even after it became clear that I had gotten us into something much more challenging than either of us knew at the outset. Dan’s other superpower (beyond his uncanny ability to choose the right-sized Tupperware every time) is that he can make me laugh when no one else can, because he knows me in a way that no one else does. I awaken every day of my life filled with gratitude and awe that he is beside me. Appendix D Evidence for the Concept Cascade I’ve described the brain in two ways that look like hierarchies. (They are metaphors to help understand brain activity; neurons are not wired in a strict hierarchy.) The first hierarchy in chapter 6 illustrates how the brain uses sensory input to form concepts, as a hierarchy of similarities and differences. This hierarchy is bottom-up and should be familiar to neuroscientists. Your primary sensory regions are at the bottom; their neurons fire to represent the different sensory details of bodily sensations, changing wavelengths of light, changes in air pressure, and so on, that make up a particular instance. The neurons at the top of the hierarchy represent the highest-level, efficient, multisensory summary of the instance. The second hierarchy in chapter 4 illustrates how concepts unpack as predictions, based on the structure of the cortex.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  “A lot of psychic diseases get passed around in confined public spaces. I sense your mind is too porous. Do you have any hobbies?” “I watch movies.” “That’s a fun one.” “How’d they get the rats to meditate?” I asked her. “You’ve seen rodents breed in captivity? The parents eat their babies. Now, we can’t demonize them. They do it out of compassion. For the good of the species. Any allergies?” “Strawberries.” With that, Dr. Tuttle put her pen down and stared off into space, deep in thought, it seemed. “Some rats,” she said after a while, “probably deserve to be demonized. Certain individual rats.” She picked her pen back up with a flourish of the purple feather. “The moment we start making generalizations, we give up our right to self-govern. I hope you follow me. Rats are very loyal to the planet. Try these,” she said, handing me a sheath of prescriptions. “Don’t fill them all at once. We need to stagger them so as not to raise any red flags.” She got up stiffly and opened a wooden cabinet full of samples, flicked sample packets of pills out onto the desk. “I’ll give you a paper bag for discretion,” she said. “Fill the lithium and Haldol prescriptions first. It’s good to get your case going with a bang. That way later on, if we need to try out some wackier stuff, your insurance company won’t be surprised.” I can’t blame Dr. Tuttle for her terrible advice. I elected to be her patient, after all. She gave me everything I asked for, and I appreciated her for that. I’m sure there were others like her out there, but the ease with which I’d found her, and the immediate relief that her prescriptions provided, made me feel that I’d discovered a pharmaceutical shaman, a magus, a sorcerer, a sage. Sometimes I wondered if Dr. Tuttle were even real. If she were a figment of my imagination, I’d find it funny that I’d chosen her over someone who looked more like one of my heroes—Whoopi Goldberg, for example. “Dial 9-1-1 if anything bad happens,” Dr. Tuttle told me. “Use reason when you feel you can. There’s no way to know how these medications will affect you.” At the beginning of this, I’d look up any new pills she gave me on the Internet to try to learn how much I was likely to sleep on any given day. But reading up on a drug sapped its magic. It made the sleep seem trite, just another mechanical function of the body, like sneezing or shitting or bending at the joint. The “side effects and warnings” on the Internet were discouraging, and anxieties over them amplified the volume of my thoughts, which was the exact opposite of what I hoped the pills would do.