Guilt

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 Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  It wouldn’t go to the Moon, but it would put Anders in position to make that journey—and to walk on the lunar surface—on a subsequent Apollo flight. Anders spent long stretches away from home during training. Valerie was raising their five children (the family had welcomed another son, Eric, after Anders joined NASA) in El Lago, a small town near Houston where many astronauts lived, making Bill’s paycheck go seven ways. One day, Anders calculated the amount of time he spent with each of his kids: eleven minutes per week per child. He regretted it, and didn’t consider himself to be a good father because of all the time he spent away. But for now, beating the Russians was more important than being an ideal family man. Valerie saw it much the same way. She would have preferred her husband to be home more often, but she believed in NASA’s mission, and in winning the Space Race. Even if it wasn’t easy running a household by herself, things never got boring for Valerie. She was interested in science and technology, and in astronomy, so she watched with special interest as America worked its way to the Moon, and she made sure her kids watched, too. One day she took all five of them to Ellington Air Force Base to see Bill fly the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle, or LLRV, the closest thing engineers could build to approximate the lunar module astronauts would land on the Moon. It was the weirdest ship any of them had ever seen, with a gimbal-mounted J-35 jet engine, sixteen lift rockets, and seating for the pilot that looked like an outhouse without a door. Tubular arms and legs jutted in every direction. Together, the jet engine and lift rockets could simulate flying in one-sixth gravity—equal to that on the Moon. Anders and Neil Armstrong took turns as pilot, making it look as if they were descending to the lunar surface. Aboard the ship, Anders felt like NASA’s golden boy, one of the few who’d already been chosen to land on the Moon. When the flying ended, three-year-old Eric picked up a loose screw and swallowed it. NASA doctors took X rays—a child never received a more state-of-the-art examination. It was a day unlike any Valerie had experienced. Twenty-four hours later, on May 6, 1968, a system failure caused Armstrong to lose control while he was flying the LLRV. At an altitude of less than two hundred feet, the machine pitched sideways and plummeted toward the ground. Armstrong ejected just moments before the craft impacted and burst into flames. Even with his parachute, his descent lasted only ten seconds. When Anders told Valerie the story, she didn’t get upset or ask her husband to reconsider his mission. She thought, as she often did, This is the life we’ve signed up for . In August 1968, Anders told Valerie that he was going to the Moon.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  Eric, after Anders joined NASA) in El Lago, a small town near Houston where many astronauts lived, making Bill’s paycheck go seven ways. One day, Anders calculated the amount of time he spent with each of his kids: eleven minutes per week per child. He regretted it, and didn’t consider himself to be a good father because of all the time he spent away. But for now, beating the Russians was more important than being an ideal family man. Valerie saw it much the same way. She would have preferred her husband to be home more often, but she believed in NASA’s mission, and in winning the Space Race. Even if it wasn’t easy running a household by herself, things never got boring for Valerie. She was interested in science and technology, and in astronomy, so she watched with special interest as America worked its way to the Moon, and she made sure her kids watched, too. One day she took all five of them to Ellington Air Force Base to see Bill fly the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle, or LLRV, the closest thing engineers could build to approximate the lunar module astronauts would land on the Moon. It was the weirdest ship any of them had ever seen, with a gimbal-mounted J-35 jet engine, sixteen lift rockets, and seating for the pilot that looked like an outhouse without a door. Tubular arms and legs jutted in every direction. Together, the jet engine and lift rockets could simulate flying in one-sixth gravity—equal to that on the Moon. Anders and Neil Armstrong took turns as pilot, making it look as if they were descending to the lunar surface. Aboard the ship, Anders felt like NASA’s golden boy, one of the few who’d already been chosen to land on the Moon. When the flying ended, three-year-old Eric picked up a loose screw and swallowed it. NASA doctors took X rays—a child never received a more state-of-the-art examination. It was a day unlike any Valerie had experienced. Twenty-four hours later, on May 6, 1968, a system failure caused Armstrong to lose control while he was flying the LLRV. At an altitude of less than two hundred feet, the machine pitched sideways and plummeted toward the ground. Armstrong ejected just moments before the craft impacted and burst into flames. Even with his parachute, his descent lasted only ten seconds. When Anders told Valerie the story, she

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  The marquess laughed. “I believe you could do it, too. Look at you! You’re like a savage. Dark-skinned, long-haired, and built like an ape.” Olivia whimpered in agony, knowing that Sebastian was bleeding from wounds she had helped to inflict. She had teased him with those same descriptions, but now he would wonder and think himself less of a man, when in fact he was more of one than anyone she had ever met. “He’s beautiful,” she snapped. “You’re a fool for failing to see how wonderful he is. The loss is yours.” She tugged at Sebastian. With a jerky nod, he gestured for her father to precede them. Just as quickly as they’d arrived, they departed, her father following in his carriage. As they jolted forward, she moved to sit beside Sebastian, wrapping her arms around his stiff body. She watched Dunsmore House roll by the window, wishing it and the man inside a good riddance. Chapter Five Sebastian paced the length of his room in furious strides, damning himself for a fool for thinking he could return to England and survive the experience unscathed. Over and over he played the afternoon’s events in his mind. What would have happened had he not intercepted Olivia’s ship? Would she have arrived and been duped into thinking Carr was her husband? The ruse wouldn’t have lasted long. His father must have intended for Olivia to go straight to Dunsmore House. A few months to assure a pregnancy, and she would have been too devastated to ever leave. The thought made him sick, it was so heinous. And he’d brought his wife back to this cesspool. Now she knew just how vile was the blood that flowed in his veins. The adjoining door opened softly behind him. When Sebastian turned to face Olivia, he stilled, devastated to see her attired in a white lace night rail and robe that had to be part of her trousseau. Her dark eyes skimmed over him, noting that he was still fully dressed. “You’re leaving,” she said flatly. He stood there, sweat instantly misting his skin. He wanted to say something, anything, to erase the wounded look from her eyes, but his mouth was too dry. “When?” she asked in a pained whisper. “Now?” His voice came colder than he’d intended. “You said you wanted an absent husband.” “I know what I said.” She stared at him, her heart in her eyes. Against his will, Sebastian held out his hand to her, and she ran into his arms, her softness and redolence enveloping his senses. How had he thought this would be easy? “I don’t want to leave you,” he murmured into her hair, and then hated himself for admitting the weakness. “Can you wait?” she begged. “Allow me to settle Father’s concerns. A week or two at most, and then I’ll go with you.”

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  a two-seat helicopter after midnight and flew with the pilot to search for the downed plane and survivors. The men found a tiny patch of solid ground on which to set down. Borman jumped from the chopper and into the waters of the swamp, which rose to his chest. All around, he heard moans and cries for help. He worked to unpin victims from wreckage, helped the injured into arriving rescue helicopters, searched with a woman for her missing baby. Working a system of flashlights, he set up a local flight control, guiding choppers in and out of the scene. He departed on one of the last rescue craft out of the area, flying to the hospital to monitor the treatment of survivors. Of the 176 passengers and crew aboard Flight 401, 98 died in the accident. Borman, who traveled constantly for work, was on assignment in New York in the fall of 1973 when he received a phone call telling him that Susan was very ill and advising him to return home immediately. It was past midnight, but he found an Eastern jet and jumped a ride on the empty plane. He had no idea what was wrong with his wife or how she was doing. It proved the longest and most helpless flight of his life. When he reached Susan’s bedside the next morning, it became clear she’d had a nervous breakdown. “I can’t live like this, Frank,” she told him. “I’m very sick but I’ll do whatever it takes to get better.” Borman didn’t know what to do. The doctor at Eastern Airlines did. “If you leave her here she’s never going to get better, because she’ll still be Mrs. Frank Borman of Eastern Airlines,” he told Borman. The doctor had already made arrangements for Susan to go to the Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut, for treatment of her alcohol addiction, and for intensive psychotherapy. On the flight to Hartford, Susan was nearly catatonic and didn’t speak. At the treatment facility, the chief psychiatrist told Frank that Susan would need to be isolated and that Frank couldn’t see or talk to her for a month. Frank couldn’t imagine a more painful fate. Even at the Moon, she’d been with him every moment. When doctors finally allowed him to visit, Frank found Susan much improved. They walked hand in hand across the grounds, and they talked. Frank felt a crushing guilt. All these years, he’d been selfish—mission had

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  team. But his best night of high school came during senior year at a local dance in Tucson, when he spent the evening moonstruck by a golden- haired sophomore named Susan Bugbee. She’d been voted the most beautiful girl in her class, and Frank, a longtime believer in democracy, thought the voters had gotten it right. He was aching to ask her out, but this young man who stared down thunderstorms in small airplanes couldn’t stomach the idea of rejection. Instead, he came up with a plan. A friend of Frank’s would call Susan on the phone. Pretending to be Frank, he would ask her for a date. That way, if she said no, Frank wouldn’t hear it. Susan said yes. Frank wished he’d heard it. The two began dating, and right away Frank sensed he’d met his soul mate. Susan was bright and quick-witted, warm and fun, and loyal to her friends. Sometimes she wrote “Susan Bugaboo” instead of “Bugbee” in her notebooks. She had a mischievous gleam in her eye, the same as when she’d been in elementary school and pulled the fire alarm during a rainstorm as a prank (the nuns were not happy; Susan’s father loved it and smoothed things over with the sisters). Susan’s parents were both college graduates, rare in those days. Her mother was Tucson’s first female dental hygienist, her father a surgeon who’d moved to Arizona after losing a lung to tuberculosis. Susan had been very close to her father, who took her on house calls and had her join him on his volunteer work to help the underprivileged. They often went on adventures together: on his days off, he would drive her outside the Tucson city limits to the ends of dusty roads, where they would capture tortoises together (she’d keep them as pets for a while, then release them), and Dr. Bugbee would buy his daughter turquoise jewelry from Native Americans who sold their wares from the backs of old pickup trucks. Susan was never as close to her mother, who seemed to resent her for all the attention people paid to her. One day, when Susan was thirteen, her father had an asthma attack. His oxygen bottle was empty, so Susan’s mother told her to run to Johnson’s Drugstore and get a new one. Susan got the pharmacist to drive her home, to save time and in case he could help. But by the time she returned, her father lay dead on the floor. “You’re late,” Susan’s mother said. “You killed your father.”

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  A few months later Kaoru managed to find the house in the mountains where Ukifune lived. He visited her there, and she did not disappoint. "I once had a glimpse of you through a crack in a door," he told her, and "you have been very much on my mind ever since." Then he picked her up in his arms and carried her to a waiting carriage. He was taking her back to the shrine, and the journey there brought back to him the image of Oigimi; again his eyes clouded with tears. Looking at Ukifune, he silently compared her to Oigimi—her clothes were less nice but she had beautiful hair. When Oigimi was alive, she and Kaoru had played the koto together, so once at the shrine he had kotos brought out. Ukifune did not play as well as Oigimi had, and her manners were less refined. Not to worry—he would give her lessons, change her into a lady. But then, as he had done with Oigimi, Kaoru returned to court, leaving Ukifune languishing at the shrine. Some time passed before he visited her again; she had improved, was more beautiful than before, but he could not stop thinking of Oigimi. Once again he left her, promising to bring her to court, but more weeks passed, and finally he received the news that Ukifune had disappeared, last seen heading toward a river. She had most likely committed suicide. At the funeral ceremony for Ukifune, Kaoru was wracked with guilt: why had he not come for her earlier? She deserved a better fate. Kaoru and the others appear in the eleventh-century Japanese novel The Tale of Genji, by the noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu. The characters are based on people the author knew, but Kaoru's type appears in every culture and period: these are men and women who seem to be searching for an ideal partner. The one they have is never quite right; at first glance a person excites them, but they soon see faults, and when a new person crosses their path, he or she looks better and the first person is forgotten. These types often try to work on the imperfect mortal who has excited them, to improve them culturally and morally. But this proves extremely unsatisfactory for both parties. The truth about this type is not that they are searching for an ideal but that they are hopelessly unhappy with themselves. You may mistake their dissatisfaction for a perfectionist's high standards, but in point of fact nothing will really satisfy them, for their unhappiness is deep-rooted. You can recognize them by their past, which will be littered with short-lived, stormy romances. Also, they will tend to compare you to others, and to try to remake you. You may not realize at first what you have gotten into, but people like this will eventually prove hopelessly anti-seductive because they cannot see your individual qualities. Cut the romance off before it happens.

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  Clara’s door is closed and dark, as is the door which leads to the secret chambers of the Druid. There’s a light on in Fact. You proceed cautiously. Megan is at her desk. She looks up when you come in, goes back to her reading. “Remember me?” “I remember something about a lunch date.” She keeps her eyes on her desk. “Oh, no. I’m sorry.” She looks up. “You’re always sorry.” “There was this thing I had to do.” “A sweet young thing?” “An old thing gone sour.” “I have feelings, too, you know.” “Damn it, I’m sorry.” “I know you’ve had a lot on your mind lately,” Megan says. “How about dinner?” “One more meal with you could be the death of me.” She’s smiling now. “Just let me pack up my things here. Won’t take a minute.” Once you open the drawers of your desk you realize it could take all night. There is a vast quantity of flotsam: files, notebooks, personal and business correspondence, galleys and proofs, review books, matchbooks, loose sheets with names and phone numbers, notes to yourself, first drafts of stories, sketches and poems. Here, for instance, is the first draft of “Birds of Manhattan.” Also the “U.S. Government Abstract of Statistics on Agriculture, 1981,” indispensable in researching the three-part article on the death of the family farm, and on the back of which you have written the name Laura Bowman and a telephone number. Who is Laura Bowman? You could dial the number and ask for her, ask her where she fits into your past. Tell her you are suffering from amnesia and looking for clues. In the top drawer you discover two empty rectangular packets. Actually, one of them is not quite empty; inside the black paper is a fine dusting of white. You scrape it onto the desk with a credit card, using the edge of the card to rake up two clean lines. You look over at Megan. She’s reading. You could quietly hoover the lines and she’d never know the difference. You extract a bill from your wallet and roll it into a tight cylinder between thumb and forefinger. One apiece isn’t going to do much for either of you. On the other hand, two won’t do much for you, either; one will make you want another, and another will only initiate a chain reaction of desperate longings. Is this self-knowledge? In any case, you want to do something nice for Megan. For her it might be a treat, something out of the ordinary. “Meg. Come over here a minute.” Now you are committed. You hold out the bill. She raises her eyebrows. “This will make you forget you didn’t eat lunch.” “What is it?” “The powder that made Bolivia famous.” She lifts the bill tentatively to her nose and bends over the desk. “Do the other one, too,” you say when she offers you the bill.

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  When you talk to him on the phone you tell him everything is swell. You believe your filial duty is to appear happy and prosperous. It is the least you can do for him after all he’s done for you. You don’t want him to feel bad, and as it is, he has plenty to worry about. Then, too, you feel that spilling the beans would be irrevocable. He would never be able to forgive Amanda. As long as there is a chance she might still return, you don’t want him to know about her treachery. You want to tough it out on your own. You plead work, commitments, parties with Nobel Prize-winners as your reasons for staying in the city, even though home is only two hours away. Sooner or later you will have to go, but you want to put it off as long as possible. • • • You stand in front of Saks Fifth Avenue and stare at the mannequin. Sometime last week, when you started shouting at it, a policeman came over and told you to move along. This is just how she looked at the end, the blank stare, the lips tight and reticent. When did she become a mannequin? Back at the office, your resolution to pursue the facts of the recent French elections has staled. A little nap in one of the upstairs offices would be the thing. But you’ve got to hang in there. You make yourself a cup of instant espresso with four tablespoons of Maxim. Megan tells you there have been three calls for you: one from the president of the Polar Explorers, one from France and another from your brother Michael. You go into Clara’s office to snag the page proofs but they’re not on the desk. You ask Rittenhouse about this, and he tells you that Clara called and asked to have the proofs delivered to Typesetting. She also told him to messenger a photocopy down to her apartment. “Well,” you say, not sure whether you are horrified or relieved. “That’s that, I guess.” “Do you have any last-minute changes,” Rittenhouse asks. “I’m sure there’s time for some last-minute changes.” You shake your head. “I’d have to go back about three years to make all the necessary changes.” “I don’t suppose you remembered that bagel,” Megan says. “Not to worry. I’m not really hungry anyway. I shouldn’t be eating lunch.” You apologize. You beg her pardon. You tell her there are so damn many things on your mind. You have a bad memory for details. You can tell her the date of the Spanish Armada, but you couldn’t even guess at the balance of your checkbook. Every day you misplace your keys or your wallet. That’s one of the reasons you’re always late. It’s so hard just getting in here every morning, let alone remembering all that you’re supposed to do. You can’t pay attention when people talk to you. So many little things.

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  She’s going to burn her fingers off before she’s through.” The women lowered their voices as I came back from the cage with a fresh box of crystals. But Ada, who had stopped by for a brief chat, did not care whether or not I heard her parting words. “I don’t know what she’s doing with them crystals, but I bet she’s not reading them!” She was right. I could not even tell Ginger how I was managing to pull down such high bonuses, although she often asked. The truth was, I would slip crystals into my socks every time I went to the bathroom. Once inside the toilet stall, I chewed them up with my strong teeth and flushed the little shards of rock down the commode. I could take care of between fifty and a hundred crystals a day in that manner, taking a handful from each box I signed out. I knew Ginger was hurt by my silence, and by what she saw as my disloyalty to the other RR women. I was angered by the feeling of persistent guilt that her words aroused in me, but I could say nothing. I could also say nothing about the increasing time she and Ada spent together. I longed for a chance to be alone, to enjoy the privacy that was not possible once I started to share the sunporch on Walker Road. I hated the amount of time I spent thinking about Ginger and Ada. I began to feel more and more desperate to get out of Stamford, and my bonuses went up. One day in the beginning of March, I saw Rose talking to Bernie, the plant’s efficiency expert, and looking after me speculatively as I came out of the john. I knew my days at Keystone were numbered. That week I made forty dollars in bonuses. On Friday, Rose told me that the plant was cutting back readers and they were going to have to let me go. Since I was a member of the union, they gave me two weeks severance pay, so I would leave immediately and not make a fuss. Even though it was what I wanted to happen, I still cried a little on the way home. “Nobody likes to be fired,” Ginger said and held my hand. Cora was sorry to lose the extra income. Ginger said she’d miss me, but I could tell she was also secretly relieved, as she confided to me months later. I made plans to return to New York City. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography 20 I don’t know why I was seized with such a desire to go to Mexico.

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  Your mother never turned away a stray dog, or heard about the plight of children in other parts of the world without volunteering her time or reaching for her checkbook, and she greeted Amanda as if she were a refugee. Amanda’s need to belong was part of her attraction. It was as if you came across one of those magazine ads—“You could turn the page, or you could save a child’s life”—and the child in question was right there , charming and eager to please. Long before the wedding she took to calling your parents “Mom and Dad,” and the house in Bucks County “home.” You were all suckered. Your father once asked you if you didn’t think the vast difference in your backgrounds might be a problem in the long haul, the only expressed reservation you remember. Before you had given the subject much thought, there was on all sides the imminent assumption of marriage. After two years of living together, it seemed the thing to do. You were uneasy—had you lived enough of your life yet?—but your scrutiny of the situation yielded no decisive objections. Amanda was desperate for it. She was always saying she knew you would leave her someday, as if you had to behave like all the other swine in her life, and apparently she thought that marriage would delay or perhaps even cancel your flight. You did not feel that you could open quite all of your depths to her, or fathom hers, and sometimes you feared she didn’t have any depths. But you finally attributed this to an unrealistic, youthful idealism. Growing up meant admitting you couldn’t have everything. The proposal was not entirely romantic. It came about after you had stayed out late with some friends at a party Amanda did not choose to attend. You crept in toward dawn and found her awake watching TV in the living room. She was furious. She said you acted like a single man. She wanted someone who would make a commitment. She didn’t want the kind of bum her mother kept bringing home. Your guilt was aggravated by a headache. The sun was coming up and you felt that she was right. You were a bad boy. You wanted to amend your life. You wanted to make it up to Amanda for the shitty life she had had as a kid. You told her you would marry her, and, after sulking de rigueur , she accepted. You arrived in New York with the question of what Amanda was going to do. She had talked about college, but lost interest when it came time to fill out the applications. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. For several months she watched TV. People were always telling Amanda she could be a model. One day she stopped in at one of the agencies and came home with a contract. At the start she hated modeling and you took this as a sign of character.

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  The subway entrance is half a block up. You take the steps two at a time, dodging the zombies trudging up the stairs. An uptown train with open doors waits at the platform. A line at the token booth. You vault the turnstile. A metallic voice issues from the speaker on the booth: “Hey, you! ” You dash inside as the doors close. People are staring. When the train begins to move they return to their Posts and their private sorrows. Looking out the sooty windows at the receding platform and seeing Michael standing outside the turnstiles, you duck away from the window. You don’t want to see him. It’s not that he’s a bad guy. You feel guilty of everything. Even now, a transit cop with a walkie-talkie may be striding through the cars to arrest you. You sit down and allow the racket of the train to fill your head. You close your eyes. Soon the noise doesn’t seem like noise and the motion doesn’t feel like motion. You could fall asleep. You open your eyes and look at the ads. TRAIN FOR AN EXCITING NEW CAREER. BE AN INSTANT WINNER WITH WINGO! SOFT AND LOVELY HAIR RELAXER. BE A MODEL—OR JUST LOOK LIKE ONE . At Fiftieth you get off and walk up the stairs to the street. Walking east, you cross abrupt thermoclines as you move between the cool shadows of tall buildings and brief regions of direct sunlight. At Fifth Avenue you stand on the corner and look over at the long row of windows fronting Saks. You cross the street to the third window down from the uptown corner. The mannequin is gone. You count windows again. Where the Amanda mannequin had been is a new one with brunette acrylic on its head and a delicately upturned nose. You walk up and down the block, examining each of the mannequins. For a moment you think you have found it on Fiftieth Street, but the face is too angular and the nose is wrong. You came here with a notion of demonstrating to yourself that the icon was powerless, yet you are unsettled now that it is gone. What does this mean? You decide that it has disappeared because you were through with it, and you consider this a good omen. • • • On Madison you pass a construction site, walled in by acres of plywood on which the faces of various rock stars and Mary O’Brien McCann are plastered. Thirty stories above you, a crane dangles an I-beam over the street beside the skeleton of a new building. From the sidewalk the crane looks like a toy, but a few months back you read about a pedestrian who was killed at this site when a cable broke. DEATH FALLS FROM SKY , the Post said. You pass the Helmsley Palace—the shell of old New York transparently veiling the hideous erection of a real estate baron.

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  “Are you sure?” “Sure.” You just wish she would hurry up and finish it off. Meg twists her nose like a rabbit and sniffles. “Thanks.” You shovel the contents of the top drawer onto the desk and wonder how, exactly, to deal with all this paper. Some of it may be significant. Most of it is junk. How do you tell the difference? “We had some trouble here this morning,” Megan says. She sits down on the edge of your desk. You resist the urge to jump out of the chair and run down the hall with your jacket pulled over your head. No comment . All day you have been stifling the memory of your drunken-commando raid on Clara’s office. You want to explain to Megan that it was a joke, you were drunk, it was Tad’s idea. It wasn’t really you, just a clownish alter ego over whom you have no control. You don’t do things like that. You’re not that kind of guy at all. If Alex were seriously hurt, though, Meg probably would have said so already. You keep your eyes fixed on a pamphlet entitled “Manual of Factual Verification.” “What do you mean, trouble?” “Well, when Rittenhouse came in this morning he found Alex Hardy passed out on the floor of Clara’s office.” You find it difficult to talk. “Really? Is he all right?” “I don’t imagine he feels terrific. He’ll be fine once his blood detoxifies. He’s taking the cure up at McLean’s. Famous Drinking Writers’ Club.” “Didn’t he hurt himself when he fell?” “That’s the strange thing. There was no sign of injury, but there was blood on the floor of Clara’s office. And on the walls, too. Very peculiar.” “Did he say anything? I mean, about what happened?” “Nothing coherent. He said something about being attacked by pygmies.” “They didn’t call the, uh, police, did they?” “Why would they?” “Just wondering. Sounds to me like a weird deal all around.” You start to relax. Alex is okay and the visions of cops at your door are fading. “Another odd thing,” Megan says. “There was a mink in the mailroom.” “A mink? ” “It was hiding in a mail bag full of rejected manuscripts. When the mail guy hoisted the bag this morning it started biting him. They had to call the ASPCA.” “Really strange.” Poor Fred, you think. “How are you coming?” she says, pointing at the desk. “I think this calls for drastic measures.” You stand up and collect all the wastebaskets in the room, lining them up beside the desk. You take a book from the desk and hand it to Megan. “Could you give this to Alex for me? Tell him it’s one of the Young Turks.” She takes the book. You pull open the drawers one by one and dump the contents, entire, into the steel buckets. “That’s done. Let’s eat.” In the cab, you ask Megan where she wants to eat.

• From Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life (2005)

  153 beauty and establish its own way in art, literature, philosophy, and wisdom. Faust’s attempt to return to the classical past has failed. Faust returns to Germany and the Holy Roman Emperor. The imperial economy has collapsed, and the empire is about to be overrun. Faust, aided by the devil, creates a phantom army that drives out the enemy and saves the empire. As a reward, Faust wants a new kingdom, a land bordering on the sea, in which to create a new world. Faust rules over a vast domain. He has drained the sea and created new land. People labor on his behalf, but they enjoy peace and prosperity because he protects them. He feels that his life has been rewarded. He realizes that he wanted power to do good things. Faust hears a church bell and asks the devil to destroy the chapel where the bell is housed. The devil, with some henchmen, burns the chapel and kills the people who lived there. Faust realizes that his request has caused their deaths. The devil informs Faust that his death is approaching. Faust reminds the devil that his contract states that he can live until he says that everything is perfect, which he is unwilling to do, but he sees beauty in human striving. The devil claims Faust. A chorus from heaven is heard, and a shower of roses (a symbol of love) appears. Gretchen is praying to Mary for the salvation of Faust’s soul. Faust is saved, the devil loses his prey, and Faust ascends to heaven. The chorus sings, “It’s a mystery, we can never understand life; …all we can say is that the eternal feminine raises us to heaven.” ■ Goethe, Faust, Part II. Sharpe, Cambridge Companion to Goethe. 1. How do you interpret the religious ending of Faust? Essential Reading Supplementary Reading Questions to Consider 154 Lecture 29: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part 2 2. Can the character of Faust be taken in any sense as an allegory for each and every human life?

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  with me whether you want to or not.” “Okay.” “Where are you keeping the Healey?” he says. “Little problem there. A friend of mine totaled it.” “You let some guy wreck your car?” “Actually, I told him just to put a few dents in it but he got carried away.” He shakes his head and sighs. He has learned to expect no better from you. Finally he takes a seat, a good sign. He looks around the apartment, which he has never seen before, and shakes his head at the mess. Then he looks at you. “Tomorrow is the anniversary, in case you’ve forgotten. One year. We’re going to spread her ashes in the lake. Dad wants you to be there.” You nod your head. You knew this was coming. You weren’t watching the calendar but you could feel it coming on. You close your eyes and lean your head back against the couch. You surrender. “Where’s Amanda?” he says. “Amanda?” You open your eyes. “Your wife. Tall, blond, slender.” “She’s shopping,” you say. For what seems like a long time you sit across from each other in silence. You think of your mother. You try to remember the way she was before she got sick. “You’ve just forgotten Mom completely, is that it?” “Don’t get righteous with me.” “And Dad, who you haven’t seen since Christmas.” “How about if you just shut up.” “You never had to exert yourself for anything and you’re not about to start now. School, girls, awards, fancy jobs—it all just falls in your lap, doesn’t it? You don’t even have to go out and look for it. Mom and Dad certainly couldn’t do enough for you. So I guess it gets pretty easy to take people for granted when you’re Mr. Everything.”

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  I put out my cigarette, even though I wasn’t quite finished, because I felt spooked. I’d never suspected Alaska could be disloyal. Moody, yes. But not a rat. “No, and he can’t know, because he’ll go crazy and get her expelled. The Colonel takes all this honor and loyalty shit pretty seriously, if you haven’t noticed.” “I’ve noticed.” Takumi shook his head, his hands pushing aside leaves to dig into the still- wet dirt beneath. “I just don’t get why she’d be so afraid of getting expelled. I’d hate to get expelled, but you have to take your lumps. I don’t get it.” “Well, she obviously doesn’t like home.” “True. She only goes home over Christmas and the summer, when Jake is there. But whatever. I don’t like home, either. But I’d never give the Eagle the satisfaction.” Takumi picked up a twig and dug it into the soft red dirt. “Listen, Pudge. I don’t know what kind of prank Alaska and the Colonel are going to come up with to end this, but I’m sure we’ll both be involved. I’m telling you all this so you can know what you’re getting into, because if you get caught, you had better take it.” I thought of Florida, of my “school friends,” and realized for the first time how much I would miss the Creek if I ever had to leave it. I stared down at Takumi’s twig sticking erect out of the mud and said, “I swear to God I won’t rat.” I finally understood that day at the Jury: Alaska wanted to show us that we could trust her. Survival at Culver Creek meant loyalty, and she had ignored that. But then she’d shown me the way. She and the Colonel had taken the fall for me to show me how it was done, so I would know what to do when the time came. fifty-eight days before ABOUT A WEEK LATER I woke up at 6:30—6:30 on a Saturday!—to the sweet melody of Decapitation: automatic gunfire blasted out above the menacing, bass- heavy background music of the video game. I rolled over and saw Alaska pulling the controller up and to the right, as if that would help her escape certain death. I had the same bad habit. “Can you at least mute it?” “Pudge,” she said, faux-condescending, “the sound is an integral part of the artistic experience of this video game. Muting Decapitation would be like reading only every other word of Jane Eyre. The Colonel woke up about half an hour ago. He seemed a little annoyed, so I told him to go sleep in my room.” “Maybe I’ll join him,” I said groggily. Rather than answering my question, she remarked, “So I heard Takumi told you. Yeah, I ratted out Marya, and I’m sorry, and I’ll never do it again.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Most of this came naturally to Villiers, but you will probably have to use some calculation. Fortunately, all of us have strong childish tendencies within us that are easy to access and exaggerate. Make your gestures seem spontaneous and unplanned. Any sexual element of your behavior should seem innocent, unconscious. Like Villiers, don't push for favors. Parents prefer to spoil children who don't ask for things but invite them in their manner. Seeming nonjudgmental and uncritical of those around you will make everything you do seem more natural and naive. Have a happy, cheerful demeanor, but with a playful edge. Emphasize any weaknesses you might have, things you cannot control. Remember: most of us remember our early years fondly, but often, paradoxically, the people with the strongest attachment to those times are the ones who had the most difficult childhoods. Actually, circumstances kept them from getting to be children, so they never really grew up, and they long for the paradise they never got to experience. James I falls into this category. These types are ripe targets for a reverse regression. Symbol: The Bed. Lying alone in bed, the child feels unprotected, afraid, and needy. In a nearby room, there is the parent's bed. It is large and forbidding, site of things you are not supposed to know about. Give the seduced both feelings—h elplessness and transgression— as you lay them into bed and put them to sleep. Reversal To reverse the strategies of regression, the parties to a seduction would have to remain adults during the process. This is not only rare, it is not very pleasurable. Seduction means realizing certain fantasies. Being a mature and responsible adult is not a fantasy, it is a duty. Furthermore, a person who remains an adult in relation to you is harder to seduce. In all kinds of seduction—political, media, personal—the target must regress. The only danger is that the child, wearying of dependence, turns against the parent and rebels. You must be prepared for this, and unlike a parent, never take it personally. Stir Up the Transgressive and Taboo There are always social limits on what one can do. Some of these, the most elemental taboos, go back centuries; others are more superficial, simply defining polite and acceptable behavior. Making your targets feel that you are leading them past either kind of limit is immensely seductive. People yearn to explore their dark side. Not everything in romantic love is supposed to be tender and soft; hint that you have a cruel, even sadistic streak. You do not respect age differences, marriage vows, family ties. Once the desire to transgress draws your targets to you, it will be hard for them to stop. Take them further than they imagined— the shared feeling of guilt and complicity will create a powerful bond. The Lost Self

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Interpretation. Professor Mut and Rosa Fröhlich are characters in the novel The Blue Angel, written by Heinrich Mann in 1905, and later made into a film starring Marlene Dietrich. Rosa's seduction of Mut follows the classic oedipal regression pattern. First, the woman treats the man the way a mother would treat a little boy. She scolds him, but the scolding is not threatening; it is tender, and has a teasing edge. Like a mother, she knows she is dealing with someone weak, who cannot help his naughty behavior. She mixes plenty of praise and approval in with her taunts. Once the man begins to regress, she adds physical excitement—some bodily contact to excite him, subtle sexual overtones. As a reward for his regression, the man may get the thrill of finally sleeping with his mother. But there is always an element of competition, which the mother figure must heighten. The man gets to possess her all on his own, something he could not do with father in the way, but he first has to win her away from others. The key to this kind of regression is to see and treat your targets as children. Nothing about them intimidates you, no matter how much authority or social standing they have. Your manner makes it clear that you feel you are the stronger party. To accomplish this it may be helpful to imagine or visualize them as the children they once were; suddenly, powerful people do not seem so powerful and threatening when you regress them in your imagination. Keep in mind that certain types are more vulnerable to an Effect a Regression • 343 oedipal regression. Look for those who, like Professor Mut, seem outwardly the most adult—straitlaced, serious, a little full of themselves. They are struggling to repress their regressive tendencies, overcompensating for their weaknesses. Often those who seem the most in command of themselves are the ripest for regression. In fact they are secretly longing for it, because their power, position, and responsibilities are more a burden than a pleasure. 3. Born in 1768, the French writer François René de Chateaubriand grew up in a medieval castle in Brittany. The castle was cold and gloomy, as if inhabited by the ghosts of its past. The family lived there in semiseclusion.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  Does that mean I have a reprobate mind?”She said she didn’t know, but that I needed to kneel beside the bed and ask God for forgiveness. We prayed, and I cried so much I thought surely my sins had been washed away. Wrong. The next morning Sister Coleman announced Gary and I could no longer play together without adult supervision.I was confused. “What do you mean? What do we do?”She gave me a long, meaningful look. “Nothing. That’s the point. You do nothing. You stay away from each other unless there is a grown-up in the room.”I thought she might relent, but she didn’t. When Gary started kindergarten a few months later, she would not let us walk to school together. She made him leave first and let me go a few minutes later. She didn’t know that Gary waited for me behind a bush just around the corner and that we finished the walk together. The more Sister Coleman knew about me, the less she liked me. One day after meeting with my first-grade teacher after school, she strolled into the empty classroom where I waited, grabbed my arm, and squeezed it hard. Her voice was steady and even.“Get to the car now.”I stumbled through the hallway and into the parking lot, with her hand heavy on my shoulder. Once we were in the car, she turned the key in the ignition and pumped the gas pedal. The engine sputtered to life and she turned and glared at me.“Why are you disappearing into the woods with boys during recess?”“I’m not.”“They’ve seen you.”“It’s boys and girls.”She gripped the wheel and gunned the engine. “You are a perverse child.”I didn’t know the word “perverse,” but I could tell it didn’t mean anything good. I tried to explain.“We go into the woods so they can repent and give their hearts to the Lord. I’m doing God’s work.”It was true. I witnessed to my classmates during recess, then took them into the woods, where I had them kneel down and ask Jesus to be their personal savior. Tammy, the prettiest girl in my class, had almost gotten the Holy Ghost after only a few minutes of coaching.“One boy said you kissed him.”“He said he wouldn’t repent if I didn’t.”She put the car in gear and we pulled out of the parking lot and away from the school.“If you’re so concerned about the Lord’s work, why did you steal cookies from another little girl? And why did you lie when the teacher asked you about it? She knows you did it.”There it was, another sin. Two with the lie. Three if you counted the kiss, and I had to, considering how much I liked that boy.I was not surprised when Sister Coleman began to favor Gary over me.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  incalculable weakness: one château, and wrote him to that effect; he reluctantly agreed, but on one challenges the other to be condition—that she allow him to write to her from Paris. She consented, as taken i n . . . . • T o seduce long as the letters were not offensive. When he told Madame de Rose-is to appear weak. To seduce is to render weak. monde that he was leaving, the Présidente felt a pang of guilt: his host-We seduce with our ess and aunt would miss him, and he looked so pale. He was obviously weakness, never with suffering. strong signs or powers. In seduction we enact this Now the letters from Valmont began to arrive, and Tourvel soon re-weakness, and this is what gretted allowing him this liberty. He ignored her request that he avoid the gives seduction its strength. subject of love—indeed he vowed to love her forever. He rebuked her for • We seduce with our her coldness and insensitivity. He explained his bad path in life—it was not death, our vulnerability, and with the void that his fault, he had had no direction, had been led astray by others. Without haunts us. The secret is to her help he would fall back into that world. Do not be cruel, he said, you know how to play with are the one who seduced me. I am your slave, the victim of your charms death in the absence of a gaze or gesture, in the and goodness; since you are strong, and do not feel as I do, you have noth-absence of knowledge or ing to fear. Indeed the Présidente de Tourvel came to pity Valmont—he meaning. • Psychoanalysis seemed so weak, so out of control. How could she help him? And why was tells us to assume our fragility and passivity, but she even thinking of him, which she now did more and more? She was a in almost religious terms, happily married woman. No, she must at least put an end to this tiresome turns them into a form of correspondence. No more talk of love, she wrote, or she would not reply. resignation and acceptance His letters stopped coming. She felt relief. Finally some peace and quiet. in order to promote a well- tempered psychic One evening, however, as she was seated at the dinner table, she sud-equilibrium. Seduction, by denly heard Valmont's voice from behind her, addressing Madame de Rose-contrast, plays trumph- monde. On the spur of the moment, he said, he had decided to return for antty with weakness, making a game of it, with a short visit. She felt a shiver up and down her spine, her face flushed; he its own rules. approached and sat down beside her. He looked at her, she looked away, — J E A N BAUDRILLARD, and soon made an excuse to leave the table and go up to her room. But she SEDUCTION, TRANSLATED BY

• From Middlesex (2002)

  self and prays, while in the other a seven-year-old girl is also praying, praying for forgiveness, because it was clear to me that I was respon- . And I am promising sible. It was what I did . never to do anything like that again and asking Please don't let papou die and swearing It was Clementine's fault. She made me do it. . what Lefty saw . . . (And now it's time for Mr. Stark's heart to have its moment. Its arteries coated with what looks like foie gras, it seizes up one day. Clementine's father crumples forward in the shower. Down on the first floor, sensing something, Mrs. Stark stops doing leg lifts; and three weeks later she sells the house and moves her daughter away. I never saw Clementine again . . .) Lefty did recover and came home from the hospital. But this was only a pause in the slow but inevitable dissolution of his mind. Over the next three years, the hard disk of his memory slowly began to be erased, beginning with the most recent information and proceeding backward. At first Lefty forgot short-term things like where'd he put down his fountain pen or his glasses, and then he forgot what day it was, what month, and finally what year. Chunks of his life fell away, so that while we were moving ahead in time, he was moving back. In 1969 it became clear to us that he was living in 1968, because he kept shaking his head over the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. By the time we crossed over into the valley of the seventies, Lefty was back in the fifties. Once again he was excited about the completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway, and he stopped re- ferring to me altogether because I hadn't been born. He reexperi- enced his gambling mania and his feelings of uselessness after retiring, but this soon passed because it was the 1940s and he was running the bar and grill again. Every morning he got up as though he were going to work. Desdemona had to devise elaborate ruses to satisfy him, telling him that our kitchen was the Zebra Room, only redecorated, and lamenting at how bad business was. Sometimes she invited ladies from church over who played along, ordering coffee and leaving money on the kitchen counter. In his mind Lefty Stephanidcs grew younger and younger while in actuality he continued to age, so that he often tried to lift things he couldn't or to tackle stairs his legs couldn't climb. Falls ensued. Things shattered. At these moments, bending to help him up, Desde- 267 mona would see a momentary clarity in her husband's eyes, as if he were playing along too, pretending to relive his life in the past so as not to face the present. Then he would begin to cry and Desdemona would lie down next to him, holding him until the fit ended.