Grief

Passages

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

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

  But as you’ve learned, emotion categories have no consistent, biological fingerprints. Emotions are always constructed from some perceiver’s point of view. So the question “Was Rowdy angry?” is actually two separate scientific questions: “Was Rowdy angry from the boy’s perspective?” “Was Rowdy angry from his own perspective?” These questions have substantially different answers. The first question asks, “Could the boy construct a perception of anger from Rowdy’s actions?” Absolutely. When we observe a dog’s behavior, we use our own emotion concepts to make predictions and construct perceptions. Rowdy was angry, from a human perspective, if the boy constructed a perception of anger. Was the boy correct in his assessment? Accuracy for categories of social reality, you may remember, is a matter of consensus. Let’s say that you and I are walking past Rowdy’s house and he growls loudly. You experience him as angry. I don’t. Accuracy could be: Do we agree? Do our experiences of Rowdy agree with his owner Angie’s experience, as she knows him best? Do our experiences of Rowdy match the social norms of the situation, because this is social reality after all? If we agree, then our constructions are in sync. Now let’s consider the second question, regarding Rowdy’s experience. Did he feel anger when he growled? Was he able to construct an experience of anger from his sensory predictions? The answer is almost certainly no. Dogs do not have the human emotion concepts necessary to construct an instance of anger. Lacking a Western concept of “Anger,” dogs cannot categorize their interoceptive and other sensory information to create an instance of emotion. Nor can they perceive emotion in other dogs or in humans. Dogs do perceive distress and pleasure and a handful of other states, a feat that requires only affect. Dogs may well have some emotion-like concepts. For example, a number of scientists now suspect that very social animals, such as dogs and elephants, have some concept of death and can experience some kind of grief. This grief need not have exactly the same features as human grief, but both could be rooted in something similar: the neurochemical basis of attachment, body budgeting, and affect. In humans, the loss of a parent, lover, or close friend can wreak havoc with your budget and cause much distress that operates similarly to drug withdrawal. When one creature loses another who helped to keep its body budget on track, the first creature will feel miserable from the budget imbalance. So Brian Ferry of the rock band Roxy Music was right—love is a drug. 40 Rowdy’s misadventure has a backstory that may have affected his behavior on that fateful day.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Dr. Steven Pearlmutter walked in at five—all apologies and sweaty palms. From then on our life was in the hands of the doctors and their smug little categories. My husband, Brian, Dr. Pearlmutter assured me, was “a very sick young man.” He was going to “try to help him.” He began by trying to give him a shot of Thorazine—at which point Brian bolted and ran down the back stairs (all thirteen floors) and into Riverside Park. The doctor and I chased him, found him, stopped him, cajoled him, watched him bolt again, chased him again, cajoled him again and so on. The rest of the details are as sordid as they are common. From then on hospitalization became inevitable. Brian was now completely panicked and his delusions became more and more colorful. The days that followed were nightmarish. Brian’s parents flew in from California and promptly declared that Brian was perfectly OK but that I was crazy. They tried to prevent him from taking any medication and they constantly made fun of the doctors (which, admittedly, wasn’t very hard to do). They urged him to leave me and come home to California—as if being away from me would automatically make him all better. Dr. Pearlmutter had referred Brian to a psychiatrist who tried for five gallant days to keep him out of the hospital. It was no use. Between Brian’s mother and father, Brian’s boss, the Miracle Foam people, Brian’s well-meaning former professors and the doctors, our lives were no longer our own. Brian was hounded by his would-be caretakers and each day he flipped out more. On the fifth morning after Dr. Pearlmutter’s visit, Brian took all his clothes off near Belvedere Tower in Central Park. Then he tried to climb on King Jagiello’s bronze horse along with bronze King Jagiello (crossed swords and all). The police finally took him to the psycho ward at Mount Sinai (sirens screaming, Thorazine flowing like wine), and except for a few weekend passes, we never lived together again. It took another eight months or so for our marriage to sputter out completely. After Brian got to Mount Sinai, his parents moved in with me, denounced me day and night, went to the hospital with me every evening, and never allowed us more than ten minutes alone together. Visiting hour was only from six to seven anyway, and they were determined to keep us apart even then. Besides, when I was alone with Brian, all he did was attack me. I was a Judas, he said. How could I have locked him up? Didn’t I know that I would go to the Seventh Circle—the circle of the traitors? Didn’t I know that mine was the lowest crime in Dante’s book? Didn’t I know I was already in hell?

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Behind a line of yew trees in the northern part of this cemetery, Carlene Kipps was buried. Walking away from the grave, the Belseys kept a distance from the rest of the party. They felt themselves to be in a strange social limbo. They knew no one except the family, and yet they were not close to the family. They had no car (the cabbie having refused to wait), and no clear idea of how to get to the wake. They kept their eyes to the ground and tried to walk at the proper funereal pace. The sun was so low that the stone crosses on one line of graves cast their spectral shadows on the plots of graves in front of them. In her hand Zora held a little leaflet she’d taken out of a box at the entrance. It featured an incomprehensible map of the cemetery and a list of the notable dead. Zora was interested in seeking out Iris Murdoch or Wilkie Collins or Thackeray or Trollope or any of the other artists who, as the poet put it, went to paradise by way of Kensal Green. She tried suggesting this literary detour to her mother. Through her tears (that had not stopped since the first scattering of earth was thrown over the coffin), Kiki glared. Zora tried falling behind a little, veering slightly off course to check out any grave that looked likely. But her instincts were all wrong. The twelve-foot mauso-leums with winged angels on top and laurels at their base are for sugar merchants, property dealers and military men – not writers. She could have searched all day and not found Collins’s grave, for example: a simple cross atop a block of plain stone. ‘Zora!’ hissed Kiki, in that powerful scream of hers that yet had no volume. ‘I’m not going to tell you again. Keep up .’ ‘ Okay .’ ‘I want to get out of here tonight.’ ‘ Okay! ’ Levi tucked his arm around his mother. She was not right in herself, he could tell. Her long plait swung against his hand like a horse’s tail. He grabbed it and gave it a playful tug. ‘I’m sorry about your friend,’ he said. Kiki brought his hand from behind her back and kissed the knuckles.  On Beauty ‘Thank you, baby. It’s crazy . . . I don’t even know why I’m so upset. I barely knew the woman, you know? I mean, I really didn’t know her at all.’

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  The thing was—I agreed with him. Certainly the doctors’ categories of health and sickness were almost crazier than Brian’s. Certainly their banality was such that if Brian were God, they wouldn’t know it. “It’s all a question of faith,” he said. “It has always been a question of faith. My word, or the word of the multitude? You chose the multitude. But that doesn’t make it right. And what’s more—you know it. I feel sorry for you. You’re so damned weak. You never did have any guts.” He pounded the clay into a thin pancake. “Brian—you have to try to understand my position. I felt I was going to crack under the strain. Your parents were screaming at me all the time. The doctors were preaching. I stopped knowing who I was—” “You were under a strain? You! Who got locked up—you or me? Who got dosed with Thorazine—you or me? Who got sold down the river—you or me?” “Both of us,” I said crying. Great big salty drops were running down my face and into the corners of my mouth. They tasted good. Tears have such a comforting taste. As if you could weep a whole new womb and crawl into it. Alice in her own sea of tears. “Both of us! That’s a laugh!” “It’s true,” I said, “we both got hurt. You don’t have the monopoly on pain.” “Go,” he said, picking up the flattened clay and beginning to roll it into a snake, “get thee to a nunnery, Ophelia. Drown yourself for all I care—” “You never seem to remember that you made an attempt on my life, do you?” I knew I shouldn’t say this, but I was just so angry. “Your life! If you loved me—if you knew the goddamned meaning of sacrifice—if you weren’t such a spoiled brat, you wouldn’t give me this shit about your life!” “Brian, don’t you remember?” “Remember what? I remember how you got me locked up—that’s what I remember—” Suddenly it dawned on me that there were two versions of the nightmare we had been through—his version and my version—and that they coincided in no way at all. Brian not only had no empathy for my unhappiness; he had no awareness of it. He didn’t even remember the events which had sent him to the hospital. How many other versions of our reality were there? My version, Brian’s, his parents’, my parents’, the doctors’, the nurses’, the social workers’...There were an infinite number of versions, an infinite number of realities. Brian and I had been through a nightmare together, and now it turned out that we had been through nothing together. We had entered an experience through the same door, but then wandered off into separate tunnels, staggered through separate darknesses alone, and emerged finally at opposite ends of the earth.

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

  All it takes are a couple of highly negative experiences for children to feel like they are living in a combat zone, reducing the size of their body-budgeting regions by the time they reach adulthood. Growing up in a family that is harsh or chaotic, with a lot of conflict or verbal criticism, increases inflammation in adolescent girls and places kids on a trajectory toward chronic disease; it’s almost as bad for the development of these networks as childhood abuse or neglect. Ditto for suffering as the target of a bully. Kids who were bullied as children show low-grade inflammation that persists into adulthood, which predisposes them to a host of psychiatric and physical diseases. These are the myriad ways that an imbalanced body budget sculpts your brain, translating into a higher lifetime risk of heart disease, arthritis, diabetes, cancer, and other diseases. 1 4 On the positive side, the link between emotion and stress suggests that you can reduce inflammation by applying techniques from the previous chapter. More emotionally intelligent people with cancer, for example, appear to have lower levels of proinflammatory cytokines. In studies, when patients said that they frequently categorize, label, and understand their emotions, they were less likely to have increased cytokines during recovery from prostate cancer, or after a stressful event, and the highest levels of circulating cytokines were found in men who expressed a lot of affect that they didn’t label. Female breast cancer survivors who explicitly label and understand their emotions also have better health and fewer medical visits for cancer-related symptoms. This means that over time, people who effectively categorize their interoceptive sensations as emotion might be better protected against chronic inflammatory processes that lead to poor health. 1 5 … Pain, like stress and emotion, is a word that describes a population of diverse experiences—the ache of a twisted ankle, the steady pounding of a headache, the irritation of a mosquito bite, and, of course, the agony of pushing a thirty-five-centimeter head through a ten-centimeter cervix. You might think that when your body is harmed, information simply radiates from the afflicted area to your brain, leading you to swear loudly and reach for the ibuprofen and bandages. It’s true that your nervous system sends sensory input to your brain when your muscles or joints are injured, or your body tissues are damaged by excessive heat or cold, or in response to a chemical irritation like a pinch of pepper in your eye. This process is called nociception. And in the past, scientists believed that your brain simply received and represented nociceptive sensations and, voilà, you experience pain. But the inner workings of pain are more complex in a predictive brain.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Lo-lee-ta: the middle syllable alludes to “Annabel Lee” (1849), by Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849). H.H. will lead one to believe that “Annabel Leigh” is the cause of his misery: “Annabel Haze, alias Dolores Lee, alias Loleeta,” he says. References to Poe are noted in Pym, Roland, Virginia … Edgar, “Edgar”… “writer and explorer”, Vee … and Bea, Dr. Edgar H. Humbert and daughter, Edgar, and Favor; while “Annabel Lee” is variously invoked here, here, and here, and otherwise as noted princedom by the sea, noble-winged seraphs, envied, powdered Mrs. Leigh … Vanessa van Ness, point of possessing, Riviera love … over dark glasses, phocine, of my darling … my bride, ribald sea monsters, and Frigid Queen … Princess. But rather than identify every “Annabel Lee” echo occurring in the first chapter and elsewhere, the text of the poem is provided: It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee;— And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. She was a child and I was a child, In this kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love that was more than love— I and my Annabel Lee— With a love that the winged seraphs of Heaven Coveted her and me. And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud by night Chilling my Annabel Lee; So that her high-born kinsmen came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea. The angels, not half so happy in Heaven, Went envying her and me:— Yes! that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud, chilling And killing my Annabel Lee. But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we— Of many far wiser than we— And neither the angels in Heaven above Nor the demons down under the sea Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:— For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride In her sepulchre there by the sea— In her tomb by the sounding sea.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  She represents love, beauty, purity, the ideal female and the moon . . . and she’s the mystère of jealousy, vengeance and discord, and , on the other hand, of love, perpetual help, goodwill, health, beauty and fortune.’ ‘Phew. That’s a lot of symbolizing.’ ‘Yes, isn’t it? It’s rather like all the Catholic saints rolled into one being.’ ‘That’s interesting . . .’ began Kiki shyly, giving herself a moment to remember a thesis of Howard’s, which she now wished to reproduce as her own for Carlene. ‘Because . . . we’re so binary, of course, in the way we think. We tend to think in opposites, in the Christian world. We’re structured like that – Howard always says that’s the trouble.’ ‘That’s a clever way to put it. I like her parrots.’ Kiki smiled, relieved she did not need to go any further down this uncertain path. ‘ Good parrots. So, does she avenge herself on men?’ ‘Yes, I believe so.’ ‘I need to get me some of that,’ said Kiki, half under her breath, not really meaning for it to be heard.  On Beauty ‘I think . . .’ murmured Carlene and smiled tenderly at her guest, ‘I think that would be a shame.’ Kiki closed her eyes. ‘Wow. I hate this town sometimes. Everybody knows everybody’s business. Too small by a long way.’ ‘Oh, but I’m so glad to see that your spirits haven’t been destroyed by it.’ ‘Oh!’ said Kiki, and felt moved by the unsolicited concern. ‘We’ll get by. I’ve been married an awful long time, Carlene. Takes a giant to hurt me.’ Carlene leant back in her chair. Her eyes were pink round their rims and wet. ‘But why shouldn’t you be hurt by it, dear? It’s very hurtful.’ ‘Yes . . . of course it is – but . . . I guess I mean that’s not all my life is about. Right now I’m trying to understand what my life’s been for – I feel I’m at that point – and what it will be for. And . . . that’s just a lot more essential for me right now. And Howard’s got to ask those questions for himself. I don’t know . . . we break up, we don’t break up – it’s the same.’ ‘I don’t ask myself what did I live for,’ said Carlene strongly. ‘That is a man’s question. I ask whom did I live for.’ ‘Oh, I don’t believe you believe that.’ But, looking into her grave eyes, Kiki saw clearly that this is exactly what the woman opposite her did believe, and she felt suddenly vexed by the waste and stupidity of it. ‘I have to say, Carlene, you know . . .

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Round about him appeared a trampling and throng of horsemen and the eagles in gold above him moved visibly to the wind. The poor creature among all these seemed to say: “Lord, do me vengeance for my son who is slain, whereby my heart is pierced.” And he to answer her: “Now wait until I return.” And she, like a person in whom grief is urgent: “My Lord, if thou do not return?” And he: “One who shall be in my place will do it for thee.” And she: “What to thee will be another’s good deed if thou forget thine own?” Wherefore he: “Now comfort thee, for needs must I fulfill my duty ere I stir; justice wills and pity holds me back.” He, who ne’er beheld a new thing, wrought this visible speech, new to us because here it is not found. While I was rejoicing to look on the images of humilities so great and for their Craftsman’s sake precious to see, “Lo here,” murmured the Poet, “much people, but few they make their steps; these will send us on to the high stairs.” Mine eyes, that were intent on gazing to see new things whereof they are fain, were not slow in turning towards him. I would not, reader, that thou be scared from a good purpose through hearing How God wills that the debt be paid. Heed not the form of the pain; think what followeth, think that at worst beyond the great judgment it cannot go. I began: “Master, that which I see moving towards us seems not persons to me, yet I know not what, so wanders my sight.” And he to me: “The grevious state of their torment doubles them down to earth so that mine eyes at first thereat were at strife. But look steadily there and disentwine with thy sight what is coming beneath those stones; already thou canst discern how each one beats his breast.” O ye proud Christians, wretched and weary, who, sick in mental vision, put trust in backward steps, perceive ye not that we are worms, born to form the angelic butterfly that flieth to judgment without defence? Why doth your mind soar on high, since ye are as ’twere imperfect insects, even as the grub in which full form is wanting? As to support ceiling or roof is sometimes seen for corbel a figure joining knees to breast, which of unreality begetteth real discomfort in him who beholds it; in such wise saw I these when I gave good heed. True it is that more and less were they contracted, according as they had more or less upon them, and he who had most patience in his bearing, weeping seemed to say: “I can no more.”

• From On Beauty (2005)

  They had no car (the cabbie having refused to wait), and no clear idea of how to get to the wake. They kept their eyes to the ground and tried to walk at the proper funereal pace. The sun was so low that the stone crosses on one line of graves cast their spectral shadows on the plots of graves in front of them. In her hand Zora held a little leaflet she’d taken out of a box at the entrance. It featured an incomprehensible map of the cemetery and a list of the notable dead. Zora was interested in seeking out Iris Murdoch or Wilkie Collins or Thackeray or Trollope or any of the other artists who, as the poet put it, went to paradise by way of Kensal Green. She tried suggesting this literary detour to her mother. Through her tears (that had not stopped since the first scattering of earth was thrown over the coffin), Kiki glared. Zora tried falling behind a little, veering slightly off course to check out any grave that looked likely. But her instincts were all wrong. The twelve-foot mauso-leums with winged angels on top and laurels at their base are for sugar merchants, property dealers and military men – not writers. She could have searched all day and not found Collins’s grave, for example: a simple cross atop a block of plain stone. ‘Zora!’ hissed Kiki, in that powerful scream of hers that yet had no volume. ‘I’m not going to tell you again. Keep up .’ ‘ Okay .’ ‘I want to get out of here tonight.’ ‘ Okay! ’ Levi tucked his arm around his mother. She was not right in herself, he could tell. Her long plait swung against his hand like a horse’s tail. He grabbed it and gave it a playful tug. ‘I’m sorry about your friend,’ he said. Kiki brought his hand from behind her back and kissed the knuckles.  On Beauty ‘Thank you, baby. It’s crazy . . . I don’t even know why I’m so upset. I barely knew the woman, you know? I mean, I really didn’t know her at all.’ ‘Yeah,’ said Levi thoughtfully, as his mother pulled his head softly into her shoulder. ‘But sometimes it’s like you just meet someone and you just know that you’re totally connected, and that this person is, like, your brother – or your sister,’ adjusted Levi, for he had been thinking of somebody else entirely. ‘Even if they don’t, like, recognize it, you feel it. And in a lot of ways it don’t matter if they do or they don’t see that for what it is – all you can do is put the feeling out there. That’s your duty. Then you just wait and see what comes back to you.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Her hair, in the manner of old English ladies, was both voluminous and transparent, each golden curl (blue rinses having recently vanished from these isles) like gauze through which Howard could see the hallway behind. ‘Sorry – is Harold in? Harold Belsey?’ ‘Harry? Yes, ’course. These are his,’ she said, shaking the flowers, rather roughly. ‘Come in, dear.’ ‘ Carol ,’ Howard heard his father call from the little lounge they were swiftly approaching, ‘ who is that? Tell them no.’ He was in his armchair, as usual. With the telly on, as usual. The room was, as ever, very clean and, in its way, very beautiful. It never changed. It was still frowsty and badly lit, with only one double-glazed window facing the street, but everywhere there was colour. Bright and brazen yellow daisies on the cushions, a green sofa, and three dining chairs painted pillar-box red. The wallpaper was an elaborate, almost Italianate paisley swirl of pinks and browns, like Neapolitan ice-cream. The carpet was hexagons of orange and brown and, in each hexagon, circles and diamonds had been drawn in black. A three-bar fire, portable, tall, like a little robot, had its metal back painted blue, bright as the Virgin’s cloak. There was probably something richly comic about all this s exuberance (left by the previous tenant) settling itself around the present, grey-suited, elderly tenant, but Howard couldn’t laugh. It hurt his heart to note the unchanging details. How circumscribed must a life have become when a candy-coloured postcard of Mevagissey Harbour, Cornwall, is able to hold its place on the mantelpiece for four years! The pictures of Howard’s mother, Joan, were likewise  On Beauty unmoved. A series of photos of Joan at London Zoo remained gathered in the one frame, overlapping each other. The one of her holding a pot of sunflowers still rested on top of the television. The one of her being blown about with her bridesmaids, veil flapping in the wind, remained hanging right by the light switch. She had been dead forty-six years, but every time Harold switched the light on, he saw her again. Now Harold looked up at Howard. The older man was already crying. His hands shook with emotion. He struggled to get up from his chair and, when he did, embraced his son delicately around his middle, for Howard towered above him, now more than ever. Over his father’s shoulder. Howard read the little notes resting on the mantelpiece, written on scraps of paper in a faltering hand. Gone to Ed’s for my haircut. Back soon. To the Co-op to return kettle. Back in  mins. Gone shopping for nails. Back in  mins. ‘I’ll make the tea, then. Put these in a vase,’ said Carol shyly behind them, and went off to the kitchen. Howard put his hands on Harold’s.

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

  2015). [back] 14. more of this critical wiring: Goodman 1999. See also heam.info/evolution-2 . [back] 15. making a mental inference: Vallacher and Wegner 1987; Gilbert 1998. thinking, desiring, or feeling: Martin and Santos 2014. [back ] 16. mental similarities amid perceptual differences: For example, Tomasello 2014; Hare and Woods 2013. just an action; it’s a goal: According to Michael Tomasello (2014, 27–29), great apes create concepts that go beyond mere perceptual similarities, and they represent information about the situation (e.g., whether food is present or not). Most likely, they also create concepts in a generative way, meaning they can use bits and pieces of prior experience to create a novel prediction, up to a point (ibid., 28). A discussion of the concept “To Climb” can be found in ibid., 29. have a shared mental goal: The default mode networks in human and chimp brains are similar in the brain regions that are connected to one another but not in the microscopic wiring; see heam.info/chimp-1 . way that human infants do: Scientists actively debate the brain mechanisms for human language; see heam.info/language-2 . [back] 17. “wanting to have some”: Tomasello 2014, 105. See also heam.info/animals-2 . in order to request rewards: Famous attempts to teach language to apes are described at heam.info/animals-3 . [back] 18. use symbols on their own: That is, just by exposing chimps to symbol-based language, without explicit rewards (e.g., Matsuzawa 2010; Hillix and Rumbaugh 2004). the symbol to unfamiliar tools: Tanaka 2011. Chimps seem to be able to recognize that different-looking objects can achieve the same function, as long as that function involves some sort of direct motor action. For example, chimps may understand that a stick can be used to obtain food in multiple ways: retrieving termites from the ground, opening a can of food, or shaking fruit from a tree. They might even understand that a ladder is a “Tool” to shake fruit from a tree. But would they understand that completely dissimilar objects, when employed with very dissimilar actions, are both “Tools,” like a rock for cracking nuts and a ladder for reaching fruit in a tree? Would they understand that the same rock is also a “Tool” when used for non-food-related purposes, like weighting down light objects to keep them from blowing away in the wind? If a chimp uses a stick to threaten a subordinate, or if the chimp requests food from a human, would it understand that the stick and the human are “Tools” as well? [back] 19. waiting at the other end: Herb Terrace, personal communication, June 6, 2015. alone are not worth learning: If an event or object does not perturb an animal’s body budget, and is not relevant to energy regulation, then there is less need to invest the resources to build a concept for it. Research by the cognitive psychologist Patricia K.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Other things of hers were harder to relinquish. Up to the end of 1949, I cherished and adored, and stained with my kisses and merman tears, a pair of old sneakers, a boy’s shirt she had worn, some ancient blue jeans I found in the trunk compartment, a crumpled school cap, suchlike wanton treasures. Then, when I understood my mind was cracking, I collected these sundry belongings, added to them what had been stored in Beardsley—a box of books, her bicycle, old coats, galoshes—and on her fifteenth birthday mailed everything as an anonymous gift to a home for orphaned girls on a windy lake, on the Canadian border. It is just possible that had I gone to a strong hypnotist he might have extracted from me and arrayed in a logical pattern certain chance memories that I have threaded through my book with considerably more ostentation than they present themselves with to my mind even now when I know what to seek in the past. At the time I felt I was merely losing contact with reality; and after spending the rest of the winter and most of the following spring in a Quebec sanatorium where I had stayed before, I resolved first to settle some affairs of mine in New York and then to proceed to California for a thorough search there. Here is something I composed in my retreat: Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze. Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet. Age: five thousand three hundred days. Profession: none, or “starlet.” Where are you hiding, Dolores Haze? Why are you hiding, darling? (I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze, I cannot get out, said the starling). Where are you riding, Dolores Haze? What make is the magic carpet? Is a Cream Cougar the present craze? And where are you parked, my car pet? Who is your hero, Dolores Haze? Still one of those blue-caped star-men? Oh the balmy days and the palmy bays, And the cars, and the bars, my Carmen! Oh Dolores, that juke-box hurts! Are you still dancin’, darlin’? (Both in worn levis, both in torn T-shirts, And I, in my corner, snarlin’). Happy, happy is gnarled McFate Touring the States with a child wife, Plowing his Molly in every State Among the protected wild life. My Dolly, my folly! Her eyes were vair, And never closed when I kissed her. Know an old perfume called Soleil Vert? Are you from Paris, mister? L’autre soir un air froid d’opéra m’alita: Son félé—bien fol est qui s’y fie! Il neige, le décor s’écroule, Lolita! Lolita, qu’ai-je fait de ta vie? Dying, dying, Lolita Haze, Of hate and remorse, I’m dying. And again my hairy fist I raise, And again I hear you crying. Officer, officer, there they go— In the rain, where that lighted store is! And her socks are white, and I love her so, And her name is Haze, Dolores. Officer, officer, there they are— Dolores Haze and her lover!

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  What I heard was but the melody of children at play, nothing but that, and so limpid was the air that within this vapor of blended voices, majestic and minute, remote and magically near, frank and divinely enigmatic—one could hear now and then, as if released, an almost articulate spurt of vivid laughter, or the crack of a bat, or the clatter of a toy wagon, but it was all really too far for the eye to distinguish any movement in the lightly etched streets. I stood listening to that musical vibration from my lofty slope, to those flashes of separate cries with a kind of demure murmur for background, and then I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita’s absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that concord. This then is my story. I have reread it. It has bits of marrow sticking to it, and blood, and beautiful bright-green flies. At this or that twist of it I feel my slippery self eluding me, gliding into deeper and darker waters than I care to probe. I have camouflaged what I could so as not to hurt people. And I have toyed with many pseudonyms for myself before I hit on a particularly apt one. There are in my notes “Otto Otto” and “Mesmer Mesmer” and “Lambert Lambert,” but for some reason I think my choice expresses the nastiness best. When I started, fifty-six days ago, to write Lolita, first in the psychopathic ward for observation, and then in this well-heated, albeit tombal, seclusion, I thought I would use these notes in toto at my trial, to save not my head, of course, but my soul. In mid-composition, however, I realized that I could not parade living Lolita. I still may use parts of this memoir in hermetic sessions, but publication is to be deferred. For reasons that may appear more obvious than they really are, I am opposed to capital punishment; this attitude will be, I trust, shared by the sentencing judge. Had I come before myself, I would have given Humbert at least thirty-five years for rape, and dismissed the rest of the charges. But even so, Dolly Schiller will probably survive me by many years. The following decision I make with all the legal impact and support of a signed testament: I wish this memoir to be published only when Lolita is no longer alive. Thus, neither of us is alive when the reader opens this book. But while the blood still throbs through my writing hand, you are still as much part of blessed matter as I am, and I can still talk to you from here to Alaska. Be true to your Dick. Do not let other fellows touch you.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Having a child is one of our grand aspirations. In a way we reproduce, be it biologically or through the other ways we create a family, so as not to die. We carve a place in the cycle of life and become inscribed in the course of history. We extend ourselves beyond mortality by leaving something, some one, behind: a representative of our union. In this way, having a child speaks of desire. It is a pure, life-affirming act. How cruel to see it erode the force that brought it into being. There is no question that children make the erotic connection more difficult to sustain. There are the demands for routine without which family life cannot function, but which undermine sexual spontaneity. There is the undeniable stress on the couple’s resources: less time, money, and energy to spend on each other. There is the sexual invisibility of the American mother, which is so deeply rooted in our psyche that men and women alike conspire to deny maternal sexuality. There are the many ways we shut ourselves down sexually in the family, acting under the assumption that we need to keep sex hidden from children in order to protect them. For many parents, the idea of a secret garden inspires everything from acute guilt and anxiety to the more benign gradations of embarrassment. We are afraid that our adult sexuality will somehow damage our kids, that it’s inappropriate or dangerous. But whom are we protecting? Children who see their primary caregivers at ease expressing their affection (discreetly, within appropriate boundaries) are more likely to embrace sexuality with the healthy combination of respect, responsibility, and curiosity it deserves. By censoring our sexuality, curbing our desires, or renouncing them altogether, we hand our inhibitions intact to the next generation. There are so many reasons to give up on sex that those who don’t are champions in their own right. The brave and determined couples who maintain an erotic connection are, above all, the couples who value it. When they sense that desire is in crisis, they become industrious, and make intentional, diligent attempts to resuscitate it. They know that it is not children who extinguish the flame of desire; it is adults who fail to keep the spark alive. 9 Of Flesh and FantasyIn the Sanctuary of the Erotic Mind We Find a Direct Route to Pleasure The whole fauna of human fantasies, their marine vegetation, drifts and luxuriates in the dimly lit zones of human activity, as though plaiting thick tresses of darkness. Here, too, appear the lighthouses of the mind, with their outward resemblance to less pure symbols. The gateway to mystery swings open at the touch of human weakness and we have entered the realms of darkness. One false step, one slurred syllable together reveal a man’s thoughts. —Louis Aragon

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  When the queen discovered that her squid was gone, she was enraged. But once her anger receded, she knew what she needed to do. So the queen sat down and wrote the squid a letter. “My dearest creature,” she wrote. “Before I begin, I must ask you to keep an open mind and an open heart about the following missive. “I love you, and I will always love you. The fact that you refuse to come to my chambers, even just as a companion and not as a lover, stills my heart. You seem to believe that the fact that our love has ended means we can never be in proximity to each other, and I beg you to reconsider. I have loved many creatures in my lifetime—a goat, a honeybee, an owl—and despite the fact that our love did not endure, I still see them regularly. We are still friends. Just because I have found happiness in the companionship of a bear does not mean that our time together meant nothing. “I am sorry that things did not work out between us. I have, as I hope you would agree, behaved honorably and beyond reproach. I am filled with grief and sorrow that you do not believe in amicable partings. I would have thought that you—intelligent creature that you are—would know better. “The truth is that you have been with me during a very difficult period of my life, and I am sorry that I have not been on my best behavior. But such is love! What we have will transcend this messy business, and we will be in each other’s lives forever. Does that not please you? None of this jealousy or betrayal; just a friendship based on mutual trust. I hope one day we can meet each other in some neutral space, our pain limned with understanding, with all of this behind us. I faithfully await your reply.” When the squid did not reply, the queen wrote another letter:

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  De Waal’s views are based on many decades of observing aggression in primate societies. He noticed that after fights between two chimps, other chimpanzees would appear to console the loser—a behavior requiring both the capacity for empathy and a significant level of self-awareness. De Waal also describes female chimpanzees poignantly removing stones from the hands of males readying to fight so as to head off the brawl or at least to prevent them from inflicting mortal harm. Such “reconciliation” efforts may preserve group solidarity, thus diminishing vulnerability from outside attackers. Human morality organizes around questions of right, wrong and justice. According to de Waal and others,111 it originates with concern for others and in understanding and respecting social rules. This is seen in a multitude of mammalian groups. The orchestration of such premoral behaviors requires a highly sophisticated level of emotional and social functioning. Marc Hauser, an evolutionary biologist working at Harvard University, has extended these notions and regards the brain as having genetically shaped mechanisms whose function is the acquisition of moral rules based in complex feeling states.112 In the face of such robust observations, the social sciences often appear to manifest their distaste for the human-as-animal supposition, most notably by sanitizing their terminology around the concepts of instinctual behavior. In fact, the word instinct is rarely found in modern psychological literature. Rather it is purged and replaced with terms such as drives, motivations and needs. While instincts are still routinely drawn upon to explain animal behaviors, we have somehow lost sight of how many human behavior patterns (though modifiable) are primal, automatic, universal and predictable. For example, as the World Trade Center towers crashed to the ground, instinctually driven people ran until their feet were bleeding. They ran for their lives like their ancestors who were chased by the predatory cats on the ancient Serengeti. They then regrouped, seeking the safety of their dens and communities, as they walked in an orderly fashion, over bridges leading to each of the five boroughs. When we collapse in grief at the death of a loved one, we share this innate response to loss with the other highly developed mammals. Jane Goodall’s description of the matriarch Flo’s death and the subsequent self-starvation of her young male offspring in the tree above her corpse is one such example.‡ Yet another comparable instance of a grief response comes to mind with the listless pets we frequently return to after what seemed to us a short weekend away from home. Road rage and sexual fixations are disturbing manifestations of other instincts—in these cases, instincts gone awry. Grief, anger, fear, disgust, lust, mating, nurturing of young and even love (as well as all the action patterns that go with them) are universals among humans. All bear a remarkable resemblance to similar behaviors in mammals.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  There, I thought. A dream is starting. My eyes were closed. I felt myself begin to drift. And then, as though she’d timed it, as though she’d heard my thoughts, Reva was banging on my door. I opened my eyes. Slivers of white, snowy light striped the bare floor. It felt like the crack of dawn. “Hello? It’s me, Reva.” Had I slept at all? “Let me in.” I got up slowly and made my way down the hall. “I’m sleeping,” I hissed through the door. I squinted into the peephole: Reva looked bedraggled and deranged. “Can I come in?” she asked. “I really need to talk.” “Can I just call you later? What time is it?” “One fifteen. I tried calling,” she said. “Here, the doorman sent up your mail. I need to talk. It’s serious.” Maybe Reva had been involved somehow in my Infermiterol escapade downtown. Maybe she had some privileged information about what I’d done. Did I care? I did, a little. I unlocked the door and let her in. She wore, as I’d imagined, her mother’s huge beaver coat. “Nice sweater,” she said, slicking past me into the apartment, a whiff of cold and mothballs. “Gray is in for spring.” “It’s still January, right?” I asked, still paralyzed in the hallway. I waited for Reva to confirm but she just dumped the armful of mail on the dining table, then took off her coat and draped it over the back of the sofa next to my fox fur. Two pelts. I thought of Ping Xi’s dead dogs again. A memory arose from one of my last days at Ducat: a rich gay Brazilian petting the stuffed poodle and telling Natasha he wanted “a coat just like this, with a hood.” My head hurt. “I’m thirsty,” I said, but it came out like I was just clearing my throat. “Huh?” The floor shifted slightly beneath my feet. I felt my way into the living room, my hand skimming the cool wall. Reva had made herself comfortable in the armchair already. I steadied myself, hands free, before staggering toward the sofa. “Well, it’s over,” Reva said, “It’s officially over.” “What is?” “With Ken!” Her bottom lip trembled. She crooked her finger under her nose, held her breath, then got up and came toward me, cornering me against the end of the sofa. I couldn’t move. I felt slightly ill watching her face turn red from lack of oxygen, holding in her sobs, then realized that I was holding my breath, too. I gasped, and Reva, mistaking this for an exclamation of compassionate woe, put her arms around me. She smelled like shampoo and perfume. She smelled like tequila. She smelled vaguely of French fries. She held me and shook and cried and snotted for a good minute. “You’re so skinny,” she said, between her sniffles. “No fair.” “I need to sit down,” I told her. “Get off.” She let me go.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  He that should be the husband of this maiden, but especially her brother, advertised of her cruel death, came to the place where she was slain, and after great lamentation and weeping they caused her to be buried honourably. The young man,her brother, taking in il] part the miserable death of his sister, and especially the unnatural source whence it came, as it was convenient he should, conceived so great dolour within his mind, and was stricken with so pestilent fury of bitter anguish, that he fell into the burning passions of a dangerous ague ; whereby he seemed in such necessity that he needed to have some speedy remedy to save his life. The woman that slew the maiden, having lost the name of wife together with her faith, went to a certain traitorous physician, who could number many such triumphs as the work of his hands, and promised him fifty pieces of gold if he would sell her a present poison that she might buy the death of her husband out of hand. This done, in presence of her husband she feigned that it was necessary for him to receive a certain kind of drink, which the masters and doctors of physic do call a sacred potion, to the intent he might purge colour and scour the interior parts of his body. But 517 26 LUCIUS APULEIUS subditur alia Proserpinae sacra Saluti, Iamque praesente familia et nonnullis amicis et affinibus aegroto medicus poculum probe temperatum manu sua porrigebat Sed audax illa mulier, ut simul et conscium sceleris amoliretur et quam desponderat pecuniam lucraretur, coram detento calice, “Non prius," inquit * Medicorum optime, non prius caris- simo mihi marito trades istam potionem, quam de ea bonam partem hauseris ipse. Unde enim scio an noxium in ea lateat venenum ? Quae res utique te, tam prudentem tamque doctum virum, nequaquam offendet, si religiosa uxor circa salutem mariti sol- licita necessariam affero pietatem." Qua mira de- speratione truculentae feminae repente perturbatus medicus, excussusque toto consilio et ob angustiam temporis spatio cogitandi privatus, antequam trepi- datione aliqua vel cunctatione ipsa. daret malae conscientiae suspicionem, indidem de potione gus- tavit ampliter : quam fidem secutus adolescens etiam, sumpto calice, quod offerebatur hausit, Ad istum modum praesenti transacto negotio medicus quam celerrime domum remeabat salutifera potione pestem praecedentis veneni festinans extinguere: nec eum obstinatione sacrilega, qua semel coeperat, truculenta mulier ungue latius a se discedere passa est, ** Prius- 518 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK X

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  He mourned his mourning. The rigid expression he wore on his face was a kind of death mask. So many people he had loved (but also hated) had died, and he wore this mask in penance. Why should he be alive when they were dead? So he made his life resemble death. And his death was my death too. I learned to keep myself alive by writing. That was the winter I began to write in earnest. I began to write as if it were my only hope for survival, for escape. I had always written, after a fashion. I had always worshipped authors. I used to kiss their pictures on the backs of books when I finished reading. I regarded anything printed as a holy relic and authors as creatures of superhuman knowledge and wit. Pearl Buck, Tolstoy, or Carolyn Keene, the author of Nancy Drew. I made none of the snotty divisions you learn to make later. I could happily go from Through the Looking Glass to a horror comic, from Great Expectations or The Secret Garden to Mad Magazine. Growing up in my chaotic household, I quickly learned that a book carefully arranged before your face was a bulletproof shield, an asbestos wall, a cloak of invisibility. I learned to take refuge behind books, to become, as my mother and father called me, “the absentminded professor.” They screamed at me, but I couldn’t hear. I was reading. I was writing. I was safe. Bennett’s grandfather—that courageous old man who came from China at the age of twenty, who was converted to Christianity by a missionary who promised to teach him English (and never did), who preached the gospel to Chinese laborers in mining camps of the Northwest, who finally ended his days keeping a gift shop on Pell Street—and never in all his 99 or 100 years learned to speak more than a few words of intelligible English, much less write it—launched me on my career as a writer by dying. Sometimes death is the beginning of things. While Bennett mourned in silence through the long winter, I wrote. I threw out all my college poems, even the ones that had been published. I threw out all my false starts at stories and novels. I wanted to make myself anew, to make a new life for myself by writing. I immersed myself in the work of other writers. I used to send for books from Foyle’s in London or ask my friends or parents to send them from New York. I would study one contemporary poet or novelist at a time, reading and rereading their books, studying how they had changed from book to book, imitating a different author’s style every few months. The whole time I was terrified and regarded myself as a failure.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  He felt the little rough patches of psoriasis. He felt the ancient wedding ring embedded in skin. ‘Dad, sit down.’ ‘Sit down? How can I sit down ?’ ‘Just . . .’ said Howard, pressing him back softly into his chair and taking the sofa for himself. ‘Just, sit down.’ ‘Are the family with you?’ Howard shook his head. Harold assumed his vanquished position, hands in lap, head bowed, eyes closed. ‘Who’s that woman?’ asked Howard. ‘That’s not the nurse, surely. Who are those notes for?’ Harold sighed profoundly. ‘You didn’t bring the family. Well . . . there it is. They didn’t want to come, I’m sure . . .’ ‘Harry, that woman in there – who is that?’  on beauty and being wrong ‘Carol?’ repeated Harold, his face the usual mix of perplexity and persecution. ‘But that’s Carol.’ ‘Right. And who’s Carol?’ ‘She’s just a lady who comes by. What does it matter?’ Howard sighed and sat down on the green sofa. The moment his head connected with the velvet he felt like he’d been sitting here with Harry these forty years, the both of them still tied up in the terrible incommunicable grief of Joan’s death. For they fell into the same patterns at once, as if Howard had never gone to university (against Harry’s advice), never left this piss-poor country, never married outside his colour and nation. He’d never gone anywhere or done anything. He was still a butcher’s son and it was still just the two of them, still making do, squabbling in a railway cottage in Dalston. Two Englishmen stranded together with nothing in common except a dead woman they had both loved. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to talk about Carol ,’ said Harry anxiously. ‘You’re here! I want to talk about that! You’re here .’ ‘I’m just asking you who she is !’ Now Harold was exasperated. He was a little deaf and when troubled his voice could suddenly get very loud, without his realizing it. ‘She’s church-GOING. Pops round few times a week for tea. Just looks in, SEE IF I’M ALL RIGHT. Nice woman. Now, but how are you ?’ he said, adopting an anxiously jovial smile. ‘That’s what we’re all wanting to know, aren’t we? How’s New York?’ Howard clenched his jaw. ‘We pay for a nurse, Harry.’ ‘What, son?’ ‘I said we pay for a nurse . Why do you let these bloody people in? They’re just bloody proselytizers.’ Harold rubbed his hand over his forehead. It took almost nothing to work him into a state of physical and mental panic, the kind normal people suffer when they can’t find their child and then a policeman comes to the door. ‘Prosler-what? What are you SAYING?’ ‘Christian nutters – pushing their crap on you.’ ‘But she doesn’t mean anything by it!