Hope

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.

Page 37 of 216 · 20 per page

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  suffer, and—to the other—had already suffered. 12 For the one from hell,—where none returneth ever to right will, came back unto its bones, and this was the reward of living hope; 13 the living hope which put might into the prayers made unto God to raise him up, that his will might have power to be moved. 14 The glorious soul, whereof is the discourse, returning to the flesh where it abode short space, believed in him who had the power to aid it; and believing kindled into so great flame of very love, that at the second death it was worthy to come unto this mirth. The other, by that grace which welleth from so deep a fountain that never creature thrust eye down to its first wave, set all his love below on righteousness, wherefore from grace to grace God opened his eye to our redemption yet to come; 15 whereat he believed therein, and thenceforth endured not the mire of paganism, and reproved the folk perverse concerning it. Those three dames 16 stood as baptism for him, whom thou didst see at the right wheel, more than a thousand years before baptizing. O predestination, how far withdrawn is thy root from such vision as sees not the first cause entire! And ye mortals, hold yourselves straitly back from judging; for we who see God, know not as yet all the elect; and sweet to us is such defect because our good in this good is refined, that what God willeth we too will.” So by this divine image to clear my curtailed vision was given me sweet medicine. And as on a good singer a good harpist maketh the quivering of the chord attend, wherein the song gaineth more pleasantness, so whilst he spake I mind me that I saw the two blessed lights, just as the beating of the eyes concordeth, making their flames to quiver to the words. 1. It was the general belief that the light of all the stars was reflected from the Sun. 2. A much disputed passage. It is taken in the translation to mean, “As the flute is played on by the breath of the musician, so these spirits were played upon by their own holy thoughts, wherein that same divine love which clad them with the smiling brightness of joy, breathed upon them.” 3. Contains by implication Dante’s doctrine of inspiration. The human instrument of the Divine Spirit has a genuine part to play. 4. Cf. Purg. 1. 5. 2 Kings xx. 1-11. 6. The donation of Constantine, called by Bryce “the most stupendous of all mediaeval forgeries,” set forth how Constantine, when cured of his leprosy by Pope Sylvester, resolved to transfer his capital to Constantinople (“made himself a Greek”) in order to leave to the Pope and his successors the sovereignty over Italy. Dante, while accepting the supposed fact, regarded it as one of the most disastrous events of history. (Cf. Inf. xix and Purg.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  A broad pair of shoulders had been clapped like football padding onto his previously sloped body. Last year he’d worn his fussy, dandified clothes from Paris even when he was alone in his room, and I had often found him rooting about in sachet-scented drawers full of paisley foulards, mauve pocket squares, silk shirts, horrible black garters and knee-length ribbed stockings. Now everything was different. Now he was getting himself up in button jeans, cowboy boots and bright checked shirts, a style that flattered his newly acquired height and slimness. He still wore his crooked horn-rimmed glasses (which looked preposterous the one time he donned his ten-gallon hat in my presence), he was still shy and still refused to undress in front of me or even to walk about in his underwear, but this shyness, so to speak, had now gained confidence and he no longer needed to disguise his shyness as belligerence. Along with his cowboy clothes he had taken up a gentle Western manner. No longer did he inveigh against Jews in high finance, he no longer denounced our idiot teachers, parents, classmates, the entirely barbaric hemisphere we were unfortunate enough to have been born on. The Juliette Greco record had been banished in favor of one by the black folk singer Odetta. Howie himself had taken up the guitar and he favored the old songs of the IWW period. His change in height had led to a change of wardrobe that had in turn inspired a change in his politics. No longer did he pore over hagiographies of the Führer; now he was reading Emma Goldman’s Living My Life . And this change was as temperamental as ideological, for suddenly he seemed sensitive to the labor of the many gardeners and cooks and janitors at Eton who were always in the background of everyone’s snapshots and who maintained the miles and miles of grounds. We’d stroll past a frosted-over greenhouse on a cold November afternoon and through the cloudy glass we’d see the Scottish gardeners hovering and stretching and reaching as they bedded down bulbs for the winter or repotted plants or misted giant tropical ferns, and Howie would start grumbling about the unfairness of things: “Why should they have to work so hard to make things beautiful for us?” I felt like pointing out that a gardener’s life was pleasantly varied by the seasons and offered chances for self-expression and in any event was a skilled craft, but Howie’s sympathy for what he called “the poor” came as such a welcome relief to last year’s fascism that I scarcely wanted to discourage it. Any sign of suffering moved Howie, even to the point of tears. He was also treating me with kindness and for the first time was willing to listen to me when I talked about my shrink or my homosexuality or my infatuation with the Scotts, although he was dubious about most of my enthusiasms.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  “I hope so,” said Charlotte entering the water. It soon reached the gooseflesh of her thick thighs; and then, joining her outstretched hands, shutting her mouth tight, very plain-faced in her black rubber headgear, Charlotte flung herself forward with a great splash. Slowly we swam out into the shimmer of the lake. On the opposite bank, at least a thousand paces away (if one could walk across water), I could make out the tiny figures of two men working like beavers on their stretch of shore. I knew exactly who they were: a retired policeman of Polish descent and the retired plumber who owned most of the timber on that side of the lake. And I also knew they were engaged in building, just for the dismal fun of the thing, a wharf. The knocks that reached us seemed so much bigger than what could be distinguished of those dwarfs’ arms and tools; indeed, one suspected the director of those acrosonic effects to have been at odds with the puppet-master, especially since the hefty crack of each diminutive blow lagged behind its visual version.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  After dinner I found myself alone with Father Burke. Tim was taking his nap and the Scotts had rather stagily gone out for a walk. The priest was by no means the dour figure I had pictured him to be. He was small, clubby, wore a gold seal ring, swilled his brandy in a snifter and inhaled its fumes with his eyes closed and eyebrows raised as though he were hearing a tenor float a high note. When he spoke he did so with a faint Tidewater accent. Like other upper-class Southerners he had an interest in history and acted as though he were on an intimate footing with the famous dead. The Roman Republic had been discussed over the pumpkin pie and Father Burke had winked at me and said, “You know that Julius Caesar was a terribly attractive man. He made conquests wherever he went, and not just among the ladies.” I dared to hope he meant Caesar had loved men as well, although possibly ladies were being contrasted to sluts. Assuming Burke had meant men, was his wink a way of showing me the Scotts had told him about my homosexual problem and that he was too worldly to be appalled by it? I’d never known this particular shade of Christianity before. I’d met know-nothing Fundamentalists, or at least heard them rave over the radio. Higher up the social ladder came the suburban Presbyterians and Unitarians and Congregationalists who joined a vanilla-pudding sort of earnestness to a complete lack of charity. Fortunately, they had no urge to proselytize, since they maintained their faith as a closed club, a Rotary lodge for well-heeled businessmen. Then I had had my brush with Marilyn’s Catholicism, but it was all rapture and votive candles and tears, something I filed in my imagination next to Puccini arias and the names of expensive perfumes (Poème d’Extase). The Scotts, however, were serious people. They cared about the poor. They liked their pleasures. They were well read. And they were spiritually on the make; they wanted me to convert. Father Burke himself was both cerebral and sensuous, unshockable. He had small dark eyes that he would let deliberately cloud over only so that they could suddenly clarify. As I spoke he’d tap his fingertips together and wear a wan smile that said, “I’ve heard this all a hundred times before. Please continue.” At the moment I was spelling out for him my objection to God, an argument I’d worked out previously but that the wine was muddling: “But if God is all-knowing He must have foreseen from the beginning how people would suffer, and if He foresaw it, then we didn’t really ever have a choice, and if He was all good, then why did He let us suffer, wait a minute, wait a minute …”

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Daisy came to the cheap motel where Christina and Jack were staying until they found an apartment to rent, urged her out of bed, helped her into the shower and chose a sundress for her to wear to lunch at the Flamingo, a swell hotel with a pool, owned by some of Dr. O’s friends. “What have I done?” Christina asked Daisy, once they were seated with menus in front of them. She let Daisy order for both of them. “What am I doing here?” “I’d say you’re homesick, sweetie, but that will pass. Remember, you can always go back. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to buy an open ticket on a plane from here to New York and keep it in my office drawer. It’s yours, anytime you want it.” Daisy reached across the table and touched Christina’s hand. “Thank you, Daisy. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” She picked up her burger and took a bite. She’d forgotten how hungry she was. “Um…good,” she said. Daisy laughed and took a bite of hers. “It is, isn’t it?” After lunch Daisy said, “I have something to show you.” They drove in Daisy’s new white Ford convertible to a long, low building, just out of town. “Welcome to the Las Vegas Medical Arts Building,” Daisy said. Inside, she walked Christina through the hall to a large, almost finished suite of offices. “This will be your new home-away-from-home. The dental offices of Dr. Arthur Alan Osner and Associates.” Christina was overwhelmed by the scope of the project, by the newness of everything. “We’re interviewing dentists and dental assistants every day,” Daisy told her. “All trained at the best dental schools in the country. General dentistry, orthodontia, oral surgery, periodontics, all in one section of the building. It’s going to be a big operation. The biggest and best in the area. And you, Christina Demetrious, are my second in command.” “McKittrick,” Christina said. “What?” Daisy asked. “Christina McKittrick. I’m married. Remember?” “Of course,” Daisy said. “Christina McKittrick.” There was no office furniture yet. But there were two card tables set up, each holding a typewriter. “This will be my station,” Daisy said, leaning against one of the card tables. “And the other will be yours.” “I have my own station?” Christina asked. “My own typewriter?” “You do.” “Can I try it?” Daisy passed her a sheet of paper. Christina removed the cover from the new Smith-Corona and rolled in the paper. She stood as she typed CHRISTINA MCKITTRICK. MRS. JACK MCKITTRICK. CHRISTINA AND JACK MCKITTRICK OF LAS VEGAS, NEVADA. She wasn’t alone, she reminded herself. She had Jack. She had Daisy. And Dr. O and his new family would be here soon. They would be her new family. Hers and Jack’s. It would be okay. Never mind that Mama had fallen to her knees, wailing, when Christina left.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Miri Miri found out from Dr. O that Mason refused to go to Las Vegas with Christina and Jack. He’s not going because I’m going, she thought. Well, guess what? She’d decided to stay home with Irene and Henry. Henry and Leah could have Rusty’s upstairs apartment and she’d move in with Irene, downstairs. So Mason could go with Jack and she’d never have to see him again. Until Henry broke the news that he’d accepted a job with The Washington Post and he and Leah were moving to D.C. after the wedding. Just like that. He promised that when she visited, he’d take her to see the White House and all the other sites. Okay, then she’d stay with Irene, and Ben could move in upstairs. When she announced her plan, Rusty said, “But Irene and Ben are coming with us.” “I don’t believe you!” Miri ran downstairs to find Irene. Irene said, “I should let my girls go without me? Are you crazy? Never!” Ben said, “There’s plenty of real estate opportunities in Las Vegas. Not that I need the money, but I like the idea.” — LATER, at the twice-postponed pizza supper, once because of Miri, once because Dr. O couldn’t make it, Dr. O said, “I can promise you this, Mirabelle. I’ll love your mother and take care of her, and you, as long as I live. And I’ll never give either one of you a bum steer.” “What about Natalie? Would you give her a bum steer?” “Miri,” Rusty warned. “It’s okay,” Dr. O said to Rusty. “Mirabelle doesn’t trust me yet. But I’m hoping, in time, I’ll earn it.” “Stop calling me that,” she said to Dr. O. He looked hurt. “What would you like me to call you?” “Miri.” “Okay,” Dr. O said. “From now on it’s Miri.” —

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  vest. Natalie wore dungarees, her new western boots and a fringed jacket she’d seen in a shopwindow on Fremont Street. All that was missing was a ten-gallon hat. “Mommy’s going to be surprised to see you wearing that,” Fern said. “That’s the idea,” Natalie told her. “She’s going to be mad.” “That’s the idea.” “Are you going to be mean forever?” Fern asked. “Maybe yes, maybe no,” Natalie said, laughing. Miri would have hugged her for old times’ sake, but Natalie kept her distance, turning once, halfway out the tarmac to the plane, to wave to her. “So long, cowgirl,” she called. “I’ll see you in my dreams.” “Not if I see you first,” Miri called back. Dr. O was accompanying the girls to Birmingham. They’d have to change planes and he didn’t think they were experienced enough travelers to do it on their own. Natalie disagreed. Rusty was teary-eyed saying goodbye to him. “I’ll be back in five days,” he promised. “That’s five days too many,” Rusty said. When Dr. O kissed Rusty goodbye, Miri looked away. Getting used to her mother in love was going to take time. Getting used to her mother pregnant— that was a whole different story. The plane’s engines revved up. It taxied to the runway, then picked up speed until it rose into the air. Into the air, Junior Birdman, she imagined Fern singing, her hands making upside-down goggles over her eyes. Miri waved at the plane even though the passengers couldn’t see her. Inside her head she said a little prayer to keep them safe, to return Dr. O to Rusty, and the girls to Corinne. Rusty took a cracker from her pocket, put it in her mouth and chewed. “I think I’m starting to feel better,” she said to Miri. “I’m glad.” They stood together, mother and daughter, their hair blowing back in the wind. “I think I’ll learn to ride a horse,” Miri said. Rusty didn’t miss a beat. “I think I’ll learn to drive a car.” “We can learn together because you can get a license here at fifteen.” “Fifteen? Who told you that?” “This girl I met at the Flamingo.” “You made a friend?” “It’s too soon to call her a friend.” Rusty drew her close. “We’re going to be okay. This is all going to work out. I can feel it in my bones.” Miri wished she could feel it, too. Until she could, she hoped Rusty was right.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  He felt that the harvest was ripe, but there were few to reap it. Past history had come to its culmination, but there were few who understood the situation and were prepared to cope with it. He bade his disciples to pray for laborers for the harvest, and then made them answer their own prayers by sending them out two by two to proclaim the kingdom of God. That was the beginning of the world-wide mission of Christianity. The situation is repeated on a vaster scale to-day. If Jesus stood to-day amid our modern life, with that outlook on the condition of all humanity which observation and travel and the press would spread before him, and with the same heart of divine humanity beating in him, he would create a new apostolate to meet the new needs in a new harvest-time of history. To any one who knows the sluggishness of humanity to good, the impregnable intrenchments of vested wrongs and the long reaches of time needed from one milestone of progress to the next, the task of setting up a Christian social order in this modern world of ours seems like a fair and futile dream. Yet in fact it is not one tithe as hopeless as when Jesus set out to do it. When he told his disciples, “Ye are the salt of the earth; ye are the light of the world,” he expressed the consciousness of a great historic mission to the whole of humanity. Yet it was a Nazarene carpenter speaking to a group of Galilæan peasants and fishermen. Under the circumstances at that time it was an utterance of the most daring faith,—faith in himself, faith in them, faith in what he was putting into them, faith in faith. Jesus failed and was crucified, first his body by his enemies, and then his spirit by his friends; but that failure was so amazing a success that today it takes an effort on our part to realize that it required any faith on his part to inaugurate the kingdom of God and to send out his apostolate. To-day, as Jesus looks out upon humanity, his spirit must leap to see the souls responsive to his call. They are sown broadcast through humanity, legions of them. The harvest-field is no longer deserted. All about us we hear the clang of the whetstone and the rush of the blades through the grain and the shout of the reapers. With all our faults and our slothfulness we modern men in many ways are more on a level with the real mind of Jesus than any generation that has gone before. If that first apostolate was able to remove mountains by the power of faith, such an apostolate as Christ could now summon might change the face of the earth. The apostolate of a new age must do the work of the sower.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  We arranged a time to meet on Monday when I could hand over the money (I had it at home squirreled away in the secret compartment of a wood tray I’d made the previous year in shop). Then on Tuesday morning at 6 A.M. he’d meet me at the corner near but not in sight of my house. He’d have his brother’s car and we’d proceed quickly to the 6:45 bus bound East—a long haul to New Yawk, he said, oh, say twenty hours, no, make that twenty-one. “And in New York?” I asked timidly, not wanting to seem helpless and scare him off but worried about my future. Would I be able to find work? I was only sixteen, I said, adding two years to my age. Could a sixteen-year-old work legally in New York? If so, doing what? “Waiter,” he said. “A whole hog heaven of resty-runts in New Yawk City.” Sunday it rained a hot drizzle all day and in the west the sky lit up a bright yellow that seemed more the smell of sulfur than a color. I played the piano with the silencer on lest I awaken my father. I was bidding the instrument farewell. If only I’d practiced I might have supported myself as a cocktail pianist; I improvised my impression of sophisticated tinkling—with disappointing results. As I took an hour-long bath, periodically emptying an inch of cold water and replacing it with warm, I thought my way again through the routine: greeting the guests, taking their orders, serving pats of butter, beverages, calling out my requests to the chef … my long, flat feet under the water twitched sympathetically as I raced about the restaurant. If only I’d observed waiters all those times. Well, I’d coast on charm. As for love, that, too, I’d win through charm. Although I knew I hadn’t charmed anyone since I was six or seven, I consoled myself by deciding people out here were not susceptible to the petty larceny of a beguiling manner. They responded only to character, accomplishments, the slow accumulations of will rather than the sudden millinery devisings of fancy. In New York I’d be the darling boy again. In that Balzac novel a penniless young man had made his fortune on luck, looks, winning ways. New Yorkers, like Parisians, I hoped and feared, would know what to make of me. I carried the plots and atmosphere of fiction about with me and tried to cram random events into those ready molds. But no, truthfully, the relationship was more reciprocal, less rigorous—life sang art’s songs, but art also took the noise life gave and picked it out as a tune (the cocktail pianist obliging the humming drunk). Before it closed I walked down to a neighborhood pharmacy and bought a bottle of peroxide.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  I have six brothers. Every one of us served overseas. I’m the youngest.” “I thought there was a rule about not allowing all the sons in a family to serve.” “Well, they took us. We wanted to serve. And we all came back.” He smiled at her. “What about you?” She didn’t feel like telling him she was a dancer. So she said, “My fiancé is in Miami. He was in the war, too. I’m going down for the holidays to stay with him and his family.” The look on his face said it all. Surprise and disappointment. After all, she wasn’t wearing a ring. She felt bad. He seemed like a nice boy but there was no point. “I’ll bet you’ll have a great time in Miami,” she said. “Do you have any single friends there?” he asked. “Maybe your fiancé has a sister?” “No, sorry. But I’m sure you won’t have any trouble meeting girls. You’re a very nice-looking young man.” “Not so young. I’ll be twenty-five on my next birthday.” “I never would have guessed.” “How about you?” “Twenty-two.” “Could have fooled me.” “Younger or older?” “Younger, of course.” She laughed. “Of course.” “I’m Paul Stefanelli, by the way,” he said, holding out his hand. “Ruby Granik,” she told him, letting him shake hers. “How’s the book, Ruby?” He nodded at the book on her lap. “Can’t put it down,” she said. “So if you’ll excuse me…” “Sure. I get it.” He got up and wandered away. LeahLeah Cohen was hoping Henry Ammerman would pop the question soon, maybe over the holidays. She was going to his house later today to celebrate his sister Rusty’s birthday. Henry’s mother sold Volupté compacts wholesale. A girl could never have too many Voluptés. She’d probably get a few from the mothers of the children in her second-grade class. Last year she did. They sure beat fruitcakes, which she gave away, or bad perfume, which she poured down the toilet. She knew in order to win Henry she’d have to win the rest of his family, and she felt she was doing a pretty good job of it, mainly by keeping her mouth shut. They thought she was shy, quiet, a nice girl from a nice Cleveland family. A teacher. And she was all that, wasn’t she? She’d been seeing Henry for almost eighteen months. She’d met him at a party given by one of the other teachers at her school after she’d moved to New Jersey to live with her aunt Alma. Her mother swore the only way she’d let Leah leave Cleveland was if she lived with family. Alma, her mother’s sister, liked the idea of Leah sharing her house and helping with the expenses. As far as Leah was concerned, anything was better than staying in Cleveland and living with her parents. Aunt Alma was a retired school secretary who’d never married.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Monsky,” the rabbi continued, “your wife is Jewish?” “She’s a convert, Rabbi. The boys are being raised Jewish. It’s a way of life for us.” The rabbi said, “Good, very good.” Henry stood and shook hands with the rabbi. So did the others. Then Henry shook hands with Mike Monsky. When Mike extended his hand to Rusty, she didn’t want to take it, Miri could tell, but finally, with Henry’s urging, she held out her hand. Mike Monsky took it and said, “You’re even more beautiful now than you were then.” Rusty gave him a kind of ha, without smiling. “You haven’t changed,” she said. “You’ve still got a line a mile long.” “It was always the truth,” Mike Monsky told her, “whether you believed it or not.” Rusty turned, took Henry’s arm and walked out the door. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Frekki said to Miri. “I guess that depends on who you ask,” Miri told her. Mike Monsky put his hand on Miri’s shoulder. “I hope you’ll decide to give me a chance. I hope you’ll come for a visit this summer, like the rabbi suggested.” “Maybe,” Miri said. “I’ll write,” Mike Monsky said. Miri nodded. “Can I have a hug?” he asked. “Not here. Not now.” And she hurried to catch up to Rusty and Henry. —LEAH HAD INVITED them to stop at Aunt Alma’s house for brunch after the meeting. Before she got out of the car, Rusty changed from her new pumps into her comfy weekend flats. Leah came outside to greet them. Henry said something to her in private, probably telling her how it went at Rabbi Beiderman’s, probably warning her not to bring up the subject. Alma’s house was small, and neat like her, barely big enough for two. Once Leah and Henry were married, she’d have it back to herself again. Miri wondered if she’d be sorry or glad to see Leah go. Inside, it was decorated in old-world style, with crocheted doilies on the arms of the sofas and chairs. Rusty took one look at the whitefish salad, the lox and bagels, and said, “This looks like an after-funeral lunch.” Leah looked hurt. Henry put his arm around her. “Come on, Rusty—nobody’s died.” Rusty was quick to apologize. “I’m sorry, Leah. I didn’t mean…it’s very sweet of you and Alma to have us over.” “I hear Irene is in Miami Beach,” Alma said. “With that nice Mr. Sapphire.” “Yes,” Rusty said. “And she seems to be enjoying it.” “Mr. Sapphire’s apartment has two bedrooms,” Miri said, feeling she had to defend Irene’s honor. “Maybe he could invite me down to stay in the second bedroom,” Alma said. “I wouldn’t mind getting away from this crazy weather. Spring or winter. Winter or spring. You never know from day to day. Pneumonia weather.” “Well,” Henry said, “I’m famished. Let’s eat.” “Me, too,” Miri said. Even Rusty helped herself to a bagel piled with lox, cream cheese and tomato. They’d made it through.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  I assured him it had in that it had removed me from my dependency on my mother. Paraphrasing Dr. O’Reilly, I added, “But you see, Daddy, I’ve internalized my mother and when I fall in love I merely project her introjected image—” “Love?” I could hear the wires singing between us as they dipped and rose in rhythmic arcs over the cindered sidings of railroad tracks or plunged underground and threaded their way through the entrails of American cities. Instantly I recognized that in such a big, hardworking country and in the vocabulary of such a sober man the word love took on a coy, neurasthenic ring. Women lived for love and talked about it and made their decisions by its guttering, scented light; men (at least a real man like my dad) took the love that came their way gratefully but suffered its absence in silence. Certainly no real man ever discussed love or made a single move to woo it. “Let me put my thoughts on paper,” I said, for by now I’d learned he preferred personal transactions to resemble business invoices. That night during study period, as I sat in my cold room at my desk, my pen flew over page after page as I drew in a portrait of myself as an adolescent desperate for medical attention. Once again I wrote on my special parchment, once again I was petitioning someone. But this time I had more confidence, for I felt I was within my rights. I knew Dr. O’Reilly was my one chance to escape the cage and treadmill of neurosis, to head out, ears up and whiskers twitching, into the enchanting unknown. The dorm master tiptoed past my open door. He was on the lookout for boys breaking rules. Across the hall from me at his own desk a square-jawed German lad—who wrestled for the team, excelled at trig and played records of music he called “easy listening”—was working a slide rule and jotting down figures in his minuscule hand. His glasses blazed when he cocked his head at a certain angle, as though the numerical intelligence projected light rather than drank it in. On the wall above his head was an Eton pennant, placed with mathematical precision at the correct, casual angle, Gustav’s concession to frivolity. The master tiptoed back past my door. In fact, he was cutting up, taking giant, slow-motion steps, his hands raised high as a marionettists’s, his mouth turned down as though he himself were a truant who feared making a floorboard squeak—good for a chuckle. In my letter to my father I used the word homosexuality , thereby breaking a taboo and forcing two responses from him: silence and the money I wanted.

• From The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (2023)

  “And she’s rearranging it to follow a man around.” Katherine’s grandmother, played by Romanian actress Erika Chambliss, ultimately supplies the film’s intended takeaway in a scene between her and Katherine, in which Katherine expresses regret about the breakup. “You didn’t ruin anything,” her grandmother reassures her. “You found out something about yourself. About men. About life. Think how much more you’ll know the next time. You’ll be a woman of the world.” In the language of the movie, a woman of the world isn’t a literal traveler. She’s taking in the landscape—as Katherine and her grandmother are at that moment—with kind and intelligent eyes, sharpened by her experiences. She’s open to love, but responsible with her heart and her body. She’s strong enough to walk herself into Planned Parenthood, but still soft with the people she keeps closest to her. Judy loved the adaptation—of course she did! She got to see her progressive ideas about young men and women pumped out into people’s living rooms by way of the small screen. Unlike the literary Michael, the movie’s male protagonist ultimately forgives Katherine for breaking up with him, proving that he was worthy of her all along. And Butler said he enjoyed every minute of filming it. The movie didn’t change his life but it opened doors in the industry, and he nabbed a starring role on Little House on the Prairie less than a year later. He said no one stopped him on the street after Forever premiered, but his dad’s reaction to seeing it was particularly memorable. “I remember my father looking at me afterwards and saying, ‘Boy, I wish I had your job,’ ” he said. When it came to pop culture in 1978, there was very little that felt off-limits. That year the film Pretty Baby , which serves up a doe-eyed eleven-year-old Brooke Shields as a child prostitute on an actual platter, landed in theaters. The same spring, audiences flocked to see Paul Mazursky’s An Unmarried Woman , where a newly divorced woman named Erica, played by Jill Clayburgh, discovers her inner strength through a series of sexual and romantic affairs. National Lampoon’s manic, raunchy campus comedy Animal House commanded rave reviews from serious critics including Roger Ebert and Frank Rich. Disco—glittering, sticky, breathless, gender-bending—was having an honest-to-God moment all over the country. Quickly, Judy’s face and name got aligned with this version of America, where sexuality came out of hiding to stay. But outside of movie theaters and nightclubs and beyond magazine covers, a new conservative movement was bubbling. Phyllis Schlafly, a Missouri-based mother of six and attention-grabbing anti-feminist activist, had already founded the Eagle Forum, a political interest group that promoted “traditional” family values. Prominent Baptist minister Jerry Falwell Sr. had been traveling the country for years promoting his fundamentalist vision of Christianity, which was anti-abortion, anti-gay, and anti–premarital sex. And in California, a charismatic former actor turned politician had made a name for himself on a national stage as a popular governor.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘Er . . . Levi – sorry to . . .’ said Tom from Folk Music. ‘I just heard that you were . . . is there . . . like a meeting? I just heard you were trying to organize some kind of . . .’ Tom was cool. Levi disagreed with him in matters of music in every possible way two young men can disagree, but he could also see that Tom was cool in a lot of other ways. Cool about this crazy war, cool about not letting customers stress him out – plus he was easy to be around. ‘Yo, my man Tom – how’s it hanging,’ said Levi and tried to knock fists with Tom, always a mistake. ‘For real – we’re having a meeting. I’m heading there now. This Christmas Day thing is bullshit.’ ‘Good, it’s total bullshit,’ said Tom, pushing his thick blond bangs back off his face. ‘It’s cool that you’re taking . . . you know . . . a stand and everything.’  On Beauty But sometimes Levi found Tom a little too fretfully deferential, like right now – always anxious to award Levi a prize that Levi didn’t even know he was in the running for. It was immediately noticeable that only the white kids had showed up for the meeting. Gloria and Gina, the two Hispanic girls, were absent, as was Jamal, the brother who worked in World Music, and Khaled, a Jordanian, who worked in the music DVD section. It was just Tom, Candy and a short, freckly guy Levi didn’t know too well called Mike Cloughessy who worked in Pop on the third floor. ‘Where is everybody?’ asked Levi. ‘Gina said she was coming but . . .’ explained Candy. ‘She has a supervisor up her ass, following her around, so.’ ‘But she said she was coming?’ Candy shrugged. Then she looked at him hopefully, as did the others. It was the same weird sense he had in his prep school: that unless he spoke no one else would. He was being gifted with an authority, and it was something complex and unspoken to do with being the black guy – deeper than that he could not penetrate. ‘I’m just like, there’s gotta be a line that we don’t cross – where we don’t go. And working on Christmas Day is that line, man. That’s it, right there,’ he said, employing his hands a little more than was natural to him because they seemed to expect it. ‘My point is we got to protest, with action. ’Cos right now, as it stands, anybody who’s working part time who refuses to work Christmas is looking at losing their job. And that’s bullshit – in my opinion.’ ‘But what does that mean . . . protest with action?’ asked Mike. He was jittery, moving a lot when he spoke. Levi wondered what it would be like to be such a small, pink, funny-looking, nervy guy.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  The sympathy in his eyes caused me to say, “Yes.” Once I had, I realized that this single lie had made me into a character in a story—just like one of the marionettes. “I want them to—yes.” I felt my face become more beautiful. I hoped the minister would invite me to his house and take care of me, or at least tell my mother how wonderful I was. I hoped the minister would tell his congregation about the wonderful little boy who had visited him one rainy afternoon. “Is there anything I can do? To bring them back together?” I asked. “Probably not. You can pray for them, for both of them to make the best possible decision.” I lowered my eyes but thought prayer sounded rather useless. I stood and thanked him. He walked me to the door and told me to come back. I wondered if he would pick me up into his arms, but he didn’t. I was small enough, but he didn’t. Instead he gave me his hand to shake, which I didn’t really like since I was uncertain about how to shake it. The gesture was also, I recognized, a way of treating me with respect as an independent young man. I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted to be. This precocious role I took in the world was possible only because the world seemed so unreal, the stage transected by lights, its fourth wall missing in order to afford a view to thronged but shadowy spectators. Everything I did was being watched. If I turned right rather than left, someone took careful notice. If I repeated a magic phrase, the words were recorded and obeyed. Those spectators were certainly real, though I did not know them yet, but what they were watching, this dumb show in which I played such a decisive role—it was merely a simulacrum of actual feelings. These tears were paste. What was slowly dawning on me was my extreme importance, something the audience had long ago suspected. Who were they, these spectators? I’d look up into the evening sky to see them ranked in blowing white robes, the hems wet with blood. When I had a fever I could hear them. We moved to a city several hundred miles to the north and there we lived in a luxury hotel, sedate and respectable, a place with goldfish in a low marble pool in the lobby and a small velvet settee on the elevator. On the top floor a valet steamed and pressed clothes in a closet beside the double doors that opened onto a ballroom.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I kept an eye on Judge Norton to make sure he was still engaged, and he seemed visibly affected by the proceedings. I believed the concerned look on his face revealed confusion about what he was going to do in light of this evidence, and I considered the judge’s newfound confusion and concern to be real progress. All of the witnesses we called during the first day were white, and none had any loyalties to Walter McMillian. It seemed that Judge Norton had not expected that. When Clay Kast acknowledged that the truck the state witnesses described as a “low-rider” wasn’t modified until close to seven months after the crime took place, the judge furiously scribbled notes, the worry lines on his face deepening. When Woodrow Ikner announced that he had been fired for trying to be honest about the evidence against McMillian, the judge seemed shaken. This was the first evidence we presented that suggested that people in law enforcement had been so focused on convicting Walter that they were prepared to ignore or even hide evidence that contradicted their case. After Woodrow Ikner completed his testimony, it was deep into the afternoon. The judge looked at the clock and called it a day. I wanted to keep going, to continue until midnight if necessary, but I realized that that wasn’t going to happen. I walked over to Walter. “We have to stop now?” he asked worriedly. “Yes, but we’ll just pick up and keep going tomorrow morning.” I smiled at him, and I was pleased when he smiled back. Walter looked at me excitedly. “Man, I can’t tell you how I’m feeling right now. All this time I’ve been waiting for the truth and been hearing nothing but lies. Right now feels incredible. I just—” A uniformed deputy walked over and interrupted us. “We need to take him back to the holding cell, you’ll have to talk there.” The middle-aged white officer seemed provoked. I didn’t pay it much attention and told Walter I’d come down later. As people filed out of the courtroom you could see hope growing among Walter’s family. They came up to me and gave me hugs. Walter’s sister Armelia, his wife Minnie, and his nephew Giles were all talking excitedly about the evidence we’d presented. When we got back to the hotel, Michael was pumped up, too. “Chapman should just call you and say he wants to drop the charges against Walter and let him go home.” “Let’s not hold our breath waiting for that call,” I replied. Chapman had seemed troubled as we left the courthouse. I still had some hope that he might turn around on this and even help us, but we definitely couldn’t plan on that. — I arrived at the courthouse early the next morning to visit Walter in his basement cell before the proceedings began.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  Using the same ill-fated parchment on which I’d written Helen, I indicted a love poem to Mr. Pouchet. I didn’t sign it and I was careful to disguise my handwriting, to imitate laboriously the long, lean eccentricities of an italic script I traced out of a copybook. His compliance in going to church with me every Sunday and his reluctance to talk to me about his private life (if he had one) had enabled me to fancy he was quite prepared to love me—his compliance and reticence were the soft wax I impressed with the intaglio of my daydreams. In the afternoon, when I knew he’d be with the track team, I flew by his room and pushed the poem under his locked door. Now it was done. Would he read it and search me out after supper, invite me to drive with him into town where we’d sit in a dirty hamburger joint and feed nickels into the miniature jukebox at our table? Would he frown and pretend to be studying the song titles on the movable cards revolving under the smudged glass while he muttered his love for me, almost as though he were angry at me or embarrassed? Or would he really be angry? Would he grab my arm as I came out of the dining hall and sadistically dig his nails into my biceps as he steered me down brick walkways glittery with ice and gritty with cast sand until we reached the deserted gymnasium, where he would unlock door after door, pushing me ahead of him onto a varnished, echoing, suddenly floodlit basketball court and would order me to do hundreds of pushups and jumping jacks in expiation, hours and hours of exercise as punishment and cure? But he never lifted his long-lashed eyes at dinner except to wisecrack with one of his kids and to hand out the pudding. I kept looking at him from my table. He was illegible. Had he, come to think of it, been able to read my fancy writing? Was he so dim he didn’t recognize, in spite of my flimsy precautions, that I was the author of this great love poem? Did he—oh, many questions, one fear: he would hate me. I never found out. He didn’t mention the poem to me. He didn’t invite me to go churching with him the next Sunday, nor did I seek him out. We both attended our fatuous chaplain’s service. “Dearly beloved,” the chaplain said, his eyebrows bouncing roguishly, “let us pray,” and then, since he had no style for seriousness, he became horribly boring. He bowed his head and spoke in a monotone so dull it repelled attention. A rich person’s smell of wet wool and perfume pressed down on us. The dismal leaking of the hushed organ trickled out around us. Sunlight came and went behind a rose window coarsely stenciled in lead, harshly colored with aniline shades, an industrial rose.

• From The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (2023)

  Jody slips up and has a one-night stand with her ex. She picks a fight with Lyle’s ultrareligious older sister. The pair break up but in the end they both take a leap of faith—Lyle invites her to play tennis again and Jody lets herself really feel something. “I wish I could be looking back ten years from now so I could know if Lyle will be someone important, someone who’s still there, or someone whom I’ll just remember because he was the first,” she says. “Not the first in one sense, but the first in terms of being all-out in love.” All-out love, for Jody, is far more vulnerable than sex. Even though the novel is explicit about lovemaking, It’s OK if You Don’t Love Me is about a young woman setting her heart free. But for a vocal contingent of readers, all they could see was the body parts. And these body parts, they argued, didn’t belong in school libraries. Chapter Twenty Censorship “I willed myself not to give in to the tears of frustration and disappointment I felt coming.” The temperature was unusually mild the day of January 20, 1981, in Washington, DC. For the first time ever, the inauguration was set to take place on the Capitol’s west front, facing the National Mall and providing more room for spectators. There, the newly elected president of the United States stood to take his oath of office. The onetime governor of California placed his left hand on the Bible and repeated after the then–chief justice of the Supreme Court, a white-haired Warren E. Burger. “I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God,” he said. Reagan then went on to kiss his wife on the cheek—an impeccable Nancy Reagan dressed in a matching red Adolfo dress coat and pillbox hat—and delivered his inaugural address. “As great as our tax burden is, it has not kept up with public spending,” Reagan announced, his folksy, Midwestern rhythms burnished by the years he’d spent as an actor in Hollywood. “For decades we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children’s future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals.” His hair pomade-slick, Reagan was the picture of the elder statesman. “I believe we, the Americans of today, are ready to act worthy of ourselves,” he went on, in response to a quoted passage from the Massachusetts physician Joseph Warren, a Founding Father. The faintest smile played at Reagan’s lips during an otherwise somber delivery.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Now the rain washes them, and the wind stirs them, beyond the Realm, hard by the Verde, whither he translated them with tapers quenched. By curse of theirs man is not so lost, that eternal love may not return, so long as hope retaineth aught of green. True is it, that he who dies in contumacy of Holy Church, even though at the last he repent, needs must stay outside this bank thirty fold for all the time that he hath lived in his presumption, if such decree be not shortened by holy prayers. Look now, if thou canst make me glad, by revealing to my good Constance how thou hast seen me, and also this ban: for here, through those yonder, much advancement comes.” 1. evening is the last of the four divisions of the day, from 3 to 6 P.M. (cf. Conv. iii. 6; iv. 23). When it is 3 P.M. in Italy, it is 6 P.M. at Jerusalem and 6 A.M. in Purgatory. 2. This tradition is recorded by Virgil’s biographers, Donatus and Suetonius. The body was transferred by order of Augustus (cf. Canto vii). 3. Be satisfied that it is, without asking the reason why. “Demonstration is two-fold: the one demonstrates by means of the cause, and is called propter quid … the other by means of the effect, and is called the demonstration quia” (Thomas Aquinas).4. Had human reason been capable of penetrating these mysteries, there would have been no need for the revelation of the Word of God.5. Lerici and Turbia are at the eastern and western extremities of Liguria, respectively.6. The mountain was on their right, and the sun on their left.7. This is Manfred (ca. 1231-1266), grandson of the Emperor Henry VI and of his wife Constance (for whom see Par. iii), and natural son of the Emperor Frederick II. Manfred’s wife, Beatrice of Savoy, bore him a daughter who (in 1262) married Peter III of Aragon (for whom and for whose sons see Canto vii; cf. also Par. xix). Manfred became King of Sicily in 1258, usurping the rights of his nephew Conradin. The Popes naturally opposed him, as a Ghibelline, and excommunicated him; and in 1265, Charles of Anjou came to Italy with a large army, on the invitation of Clement IV, and was crowned as counter King of Sicily. On February 26, 1266, Manfred was defeated by Charles at Benevento (some thirty miles north-east of Naples), and slain. He was buried near the battlefield, beneath a huge cairn (each soldier of the army contributing a stone); but his body was disinterred by order of the Pope, and deposited on the banks of the Verde (now the Garigliano, cf. Par. viii), outside the boundaries of the Kingdom of Naples and of the Church States, and with the rites usual at the burial of those who died excommunicated.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  The sympathy in his eyes caused me to say, “Yes.” Once I had, I realized that this single lie had made me into a character in a story—just like one of the marionettes. “I want them to—yes.” I felt my face become more beautiful. I hoped the minister would invite me to his house and take care of me, or at least tell my mother how wonderful I was. I hoped the minister would tell his congregation about the wonderful little boy who had visited him one rainy afternoon. “Is there anything I can do? To bring them back together?” I asked. “Probably not. You can pray for them, for both of them to make the best possible decision.” I lowered my eyes but thought prayer sounded rather useless. I stood and thanked him. He walked me to the door and told me to come back. I wondered if he would pick me up into his arms, but he didn’t. I was small enough, but he didn’t. Instead he gave me his hand to shake, which I didn’t really like since I was uncertain about how to shake it. The gesture was also, I recognized, a way of treating me with respect as an independent young man. I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted to be. This precocious role I took in the world was possible only because the world seemed so unreal, the stage transected by lights, its fourth wall missing in order to afford a view to thronged but shadowy spectators. Everything I did was being watched. If I turned right rather than left, someone took careful notice. If I repeated a magic phrase, the words were recorded and obeyed. Those spectators were certainly real, though I did not know them yet, but what they were watching, this dumb show in which I played such a decisive role—it was merely a simulacrum of actual feelings. These tears were paste. What was slowly dawning on me was my extreme importance, something the audience had long ago suspected. Who were they, these spectators? I’d look up into the evening sky to see them ranked in blowing white robes, the hems wet with blood. When I had a fever I could hear them. We moved to a city several hundred miles to the north and there we lived in a luxury hotel, sedate and respectable, a place with goldfish in a low marble pool in the lobby and a small velvet settee on the elevator. On the top floor a valet steamed and pressed clothes in a closet beside the double doors that opened onto a ballroom.