Joy

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 103 of 299 · 20 per page

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  And back in Vietnam. I start grinning idiotically right away, beginning with the warm welcome from Linh, waiting for me by customs, and continue on the ride into town. Out the window are rice paddies, narrow two-story homes decorated with rows of drying corn, gray skies, and bright red banners everywhere, most bearing the Tet (lunar new years) greeting: Chuc Mung Nam Moi; others are flags, yellow star on bright red field, anticipating Monday's anniversary of the founding of the Vietnamese Communist Party. (Though it's sometimes easy to forget it, this is still a communist country.) The road into town is crowded on both sides with motorbikes, bicycles, and scooters, most overloaded with passengers dressed in their Tet best: jackets and ties, children swaddled in blankets or netting, women with scarves and face masks covering everything below the eyes. Everyone is smiling and loaded down with holiday goodies. They carry fruit, flowers, traditional chung cakes still wrapped in artfully tied leaves, shimmering gold paper trees, bundles of bright red joss sticks. The center of the road is for four-wheeled vehicles, meaning that cars and trucks barrel at full speed, headlong into each other's paths down the center line, beeping maniacally, pulling out only at the last second. I am supposed to head straight to the Sofitel Metropole Hotel to check in, but Linh is a Hanoi native, anxious to show me the best of his hometown, and as soon as we pass the long, Russian-built Dragon Bridge over the Red River in the inner city, we pull over to an open bia hoi joint. Eight or nine people sit at low tables on tiny plastic chairs outside what looks like an out-of-business garage. A large square keg of bia hoi, the legendary, fresh draft "bubble beer" of Hanoi, is situated prominently out front by the curb. You won't find this stuff in Saigon. The beer is made fresh daily, trucked or hauled to area shops—and quickly consumed. Most places serving it run out by four p.m., and what's trucked outside the city seems not to make it too far south. I haven't even taken a seat yet and the proprietor hurries to fill two glasses, challenges me to a chug-a-lug. I drain my glass and we repeat the process two more times before I've even settled into my little chair. The man's wife wants to show me her child, dressed up in his holiday best. An ancient Vietnamese gentleman in a weathered tweed jacket and jaunty beret, smoking from a bamboo pipe at the next table, offers me a puff and another beer. "Je suis un cineaste," he says. "Nous sommes tout cineastes." He indicates a few other smiling septuagenarians around him. Soon the beer is coming fast and furious. The owner insists on changing to a fresh keg. "How did you know this place would be open?" I ask Linh.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  There had been quite a heated discussion with Anna, because Stephen had insisted on riding astride. In this she had shown herself very refractory, falling off every time she tried the side-saddle —quite obvious, of course, this falling off process, but enough to subjugate Anna. And now Stephen would spend long hours at the stables, swaggering largely in corduroy breeches, hobnobbing with Williams, the old stud groom, who had a soft place in his heart for the child. She would say: ‘Come up, horse!’ in the same tone as Williams; or, pretending to a knowledge she was far from possessing: ‘Is that fetlock a bit puffy? It looks to me puffy, supposing we put on a nice wet bandage.’ Then Williams would rub his rough chin as though thinking: ‘Maybe yes—maybe no—’ he would temporize, wisely. She grew to adore the smell of the stables; it was far more enticing than Collins’ perfume—the Erasmic she had used on her afternoons out, and which had once smelt so delicious. And the pony! So strong, so entirely fulfilling, with his round, gentle eyes, and his heart big with courage—he was surely more worthy of worship than Collins, who had treated you badly because of the footman! And yet—and yet—you owed something to Collins, just because you had loved her, though you couldn’t any more. It was dreadfully worrying, all this hard thinking, when you wished to enjoy a new pony! Stephen would stand there rubbing her chin in an almost exact imitation of Williams. She could not produce the same scrabbly sound, but in spite of this drawback the movement would soothe her. Then one morning she had a bright inspiration: ‘Come up, horse!’ she commanded, slapping the pony, ‘Come up, horse, and let me get close to your ear, ’cause I’m going to whisper something dreadfully important.’ Laying her cheek against his firm neck she said softly: ‘You’re not you any more, you’re Collins!’ So Collins was comfortably transmigrated. It was Stephen’s last effort to remember. 2 Came the day when Stephen rode out with her father to a meet, a glorious and memorable day. Side by side the two of them jogged through the gates, and the lodgekeeper’s wife must smile to see Stephen sitting her smart bay pony astride, and looking so comically like Sir Philip. ‘It do be a pity as her isn’t a boy, our young lady,’ she told her husband. It was one of those still, slightly frosty mornings when the landing is tricky on the north side of the hedges; when the smoke from farm chimneys rises straight as a ramrod; when the scent of log fires or of burning brushwood, though left far behind, still persists in the nostrils.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  Avec intends (as its name implies) that its impressive collection of wine be "best enjoyed with food, with friends, with company." From a wood-burning oven and single stovetop just across the long counter, an astonishingly good assortment of house-made salamis, artisan cheeses, and large and small plates like slow-roasted pork shoulder, smoked quail, lamb brochette, and whole roasted fish are slapped down by energetic and spectacularly knowledgeable servers who seem positively exuberant in their detailed descriptions of wine, cheese, and cured meat options. It's a great meal—and again, fun. As at L'Atelier, you look around and see people smiling, actually talking to each other, nicking food off each other's plates, and having what has been missing from so many moribund and pretentious dining rooms: a good time. There was a "well, what were you waiting for" feel when Mario Batali and his chef Andy Nusser opened Casa Mono in New York. By now, it seemed entirely right that we needed a place to eat perfectly wonderful small plates of Spanish- style tripes and cockscombs, blood pudding, and cured hams at a bare lunch counter. Great ingredients done right, by cooks standing a few inches away. Order a lot and dig in. That Mario himself is often to be seen happily picking from plates with his fingers sets an inspiring tone. But the boldest, wackiest, most reactionary of the defectors to casual counter- style services has to be Montreal's enfant terrible, Martin Picard. At the crowded, chaotic, and giddily retro Au Pied de Cochon, he's stood everything on its head. The one-time chef of the city's "best restaurant," the more twee and traditional "big plate/little serving/cappuccino of whatever" Toque, Picard broke entirely from his precious, haute roots and opened a rude, crude, over-the-top fabulous ode to excess, specializing in insanely mammoth portions of Quebecois sugar- shack-style indulgence. You know from the very beginning what you are in for: Bar snacks are oreilles de crisses, ear-shaped tidbits of fried pork rind. Picard himself, usually unshaven—looking more lumberjack than chef—is to be found, usually in food-stained T-shirt, presiding over the madness by a roaring wood- burning oven. Dino-sized plates of pot-au-feu (a whole game bird, four marrow bones, stacked with boudin noir and foie gras), cassoulet, pig's-foot stew, duck "in the can" (a half duck breast, foie gras, and cabbage, slow cooked in a can and poured over a crouton topped with celeriac puree), and poutine—the Picard version of the classic Quebec guilty-pleasure fave of frites drowning in demi- glace and cheese curds, topped with a thick slab of melting foie gras—all are prepared in front of you by Picard's fellow transgressors, a crew of T-shirted and funny-hat-wearing cooks with similarly impressive resumes. There are a few tables, stuffed between wall and counter, but the fun is to be had watching the dedicated but underdressed cooks in the crowded, nearly unworkable-looking open kitchen, gleefully lopping slabs of foie and throwing them around like cheap shortening.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  The glorious tradition of "one cook, one dish" continues: one lone artisan, or a family of artisans, making the same wonderful dish—and no other—year after year, frequently generation after generation. That kind of close identification with a particular dish—that continuity—is nearly always a guarantee that one can expect something fresh and tasty. Case in point: A few days later, Linh pulls the car over unexpectedly on the side of a major artery. We head down an embankment to a shabby, litter-strewn neighborhood and proceed down a forlorn-looking alleyway to the smoky back entrance of Luon Nong Ong Tre, the Eel Shop. An open kitchen is heaped with dirty dishes. Two big pots steam on an outdoor charcoal grill. A few hard- drinking Vietnamese men are way over their limit inside, singing and shouting. On worn, brown bamboo matting outside, facing an unpaved intersection of narrow alleyways and disused heavy machinery, are a few low plastic chairs, a ratty umbrella or two, a few wobbly wooden tables. Neighborhood kids, squealing with delight, pick unripe oranges off an anemic-looking tree and hurl them at each other. Linh is rubbing his hands with anticipation. "What do you eat here?" I inquire. "Eel," he replies. "This is the Eel Shop. Only eel." "How did you find this place?" I ask. "A friend took me here. He knows I like eel—and he heard about it from a friend." I explain to Linh what the word "foodie" means and he seems very pleased. "Yes," he agrees. "Often, you must go off the road. You must investigate." As we wait for the food, we watch the comings and goings of the neighborhood, a small, rural village existing in the midst of a major city. A trash collector (a woman, naturally), in peaked round hat, face mask, and gloves, picks up trash bags and piles them onto an overloaded handcart. Bicycles containing improbably balanced display racks of housewares are pedaled slowly by. Women carry yokes of fresh vegetables and fruit, men sell lottery tickets, a man pulls up on a motorbike to collect spent cooking oil from the eel shop, another takes away edible waste for sale to pig farmers. Aluminum cans are whisked away to makeshift recycling operations, where they are heated in works and stamped on by sandaled feet. The impurities are sold for paint, the metal, of course, reshaped, reformed, reused. Apparently, a number of viet kieu (overseas Vietnamese) and their partners are becoming rather wealthy on the unofficial recycling of trash and garbage, prompting, it is said, one Central Committee member to muse chidingly, "We—all of us—always ask only the big questions. It took just one foreigner to ask a small question: 'Where does the garbage go?'" In the kitchen, live eels are quickly divested of their bones, sauced lightly, and stuffed into lengths of hollow bamboo with garlic. Both ends are plugged with blanched morning glory leaves and the bamboo is charred slowly over the outdoor charcoal grill.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  And there's nowhere you'd rather be. Not to rub it in or anything, but on my most recent visit to Masa, I had it even better than that. Sometimes it's good to be a chef. I rolled into Masa with Le Bernardin's four-starred chef, Eric Ripert, on one flank and the well-known author of such professional foodie classics as Soul of a Chef, Michael Ruhlman, on the other. Michael had just emerged from a long day observing the kitchen operations at Per Se, down the hall. In case you didn't know, that's Thomas Keller's breathlessly anticipated, just-opened temple of haute cuisine. Michael coauthored The French Laundry Cookbook with Keller, and I guess that experience left a reservoir of goodwill because on entering Masa, we were immediately followed by Per Se's sommelier, who for the full span of the evening kept us lubricated with a progression of jaw-droppingly good wines. I'm talking wines that never in my life will I be either smart enough, or wealthy enough, to order again. As always, there was nothing on the bar but napkins and chopsticks. A glass of wine for each of us—and for chef Takayama—and in the hushed, reverential silence, it began. First, some raw crayfish tossed with cucumber, served, like all the courses to follow, in simple earthenware vessels designed by the chef. Next, a lovely lighter-than-air softshell crab tempura. Wine. Then more wine. A thick, nearly pureed disk of raw toro tuna, heaped with a giggle-inducing pile of osetra caviar, followed by bonito rolled around radish sprouts—I think (the wine beginning to kick in now). Then a simmering stoneware hotpot, a bowl of combu broth in which we were invited to dip slices of fresh foie gras and lobster, before shoveling them greedily into our faces. The broth, now beaded with tiny golden pearls of foie gras fat, was then served in soup bowls. Keller's sommelier was pouring heavily, each wine, each course leading beautifully to the next unbelievable thing . . . and then the next. (I'm relying increasingly on Ruhlman's notes here, as I was by this point pleasurably drunk.) Masa put a dark gray slate square down in front of each of us and my favorite part of the meal began: sushi. One piece at a time. Don't even think about soy or dipping sauce or that hideous, electric-green wasabi paste you see in most sushi bars. Each warm, ethereal pillow of rice and fish came preseasoned, with yuzu or sea salt or soy or freshly grated wasabi, as the chef felt appropriate. Fresh water eel. . . then sea eel. . . screamingly fresh mackerel. . . buttery, unctuous otoro tuna that seemed to sigh as it relaxed onto the rice in front of me. The three of us were eating with our hands now, eyes glazed, begging for seconds.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  There is no stunt food. If you see me eating it on camera, I'm really eating it. All of it. Often with seconds. A lot of very nice people go to a lot of trouble to give me their best, and I try to be a good guest. If I look happy on TV, I'm probably happy shooting the scene. If I look cranky, sweaty, nauseated, and unhappy, then that's probably my mood at the time. There is no makeup, obvious from the ever-changing panorama of pimples, bug bites, and scars visible on my rapidly aging mug, and if I haven't shaved for a scene, it probably means I just couldn't get it together that morning, 'cause my hands were shaking too badly. Chris, Lydia, and I spend a lot of time together on the road, both working and hanging out. After all the hours in crummy hotels and airports, shooting scenes that just don't "work" but that we continue to "French shoot" (meaning they turn off the camera but mime shooting anyway to be polite), a sort of hysteria sets in. Some tiny little detail will become endlessly hilarious. While in Japan, the word chanko—for no good reason at all—had us all spastic with uncontrollable laughter for hours. I am now often referred to in internal memos—or when being difficult—as my evil, egomaniacal action-film-star alter ego, "Vic Chanko"—as in "Vic doesn't want to come out of his trailer" (though we of course don't have trailers). If I'm unhappy, I will torment them by referring to myself in the third person, as in: "Vic doesn't like this scene. Vic is checking out and checking in to the fucking Sofitel down the road." For episodes with a disturbingly homoerotic subtext (as in the Rio show), I become Vic's porn-star brother "Tad Chanko." It doesn't—as you've probably guessed—take a lot for us to laugh, not afterwe've been softened up by countless "hang-yourself-in-the-shower-stall" hotel rooms. Speaking of hotels, you definitely don't want to know how much time we spend talking about lower intestinal activity and the peculiarities of the local plumbing. In Brazil, for instance, the "capacity" of the hotel toilets is lamentably weak. Used toilet paper, horrifyingly, is to be deposited in a plastic bucket next to the crapper. This goes against the grain of everything we've come to believe in in American urban upbringing—who wants the room-service maid giving you the thumbs-up on a good day, or looking worriedly at you after the results of too much dende oil? Such matters should be between you and your porcelain, n'est- ce pas? Not on the road. We are all-too-familiar with our respective contributions, and the viability of our flushing apparatus.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  MILITANT SOCIETY The Compostela route was only part of a growing Western enterprise of mass pilgrimage, new not in character but in scale; it became one of the defining features of Western Latin devotion right up to the sixteenth-century Reformation. This search for holy places and the route to salvation that they might offer was enticingly open to anyone who chose to undertake it (that might include the growing proportion of Europeans who were serfs, or other unfree people, if they could seize or were granted the opportunity). Choice, it is true, was not always part of the package: we have already noted in Chapter 11 that, from the beginning of the new penitential discipline in Ireland or Wales, one penitential possibility was an order to go on pilgrimage to seek the forgiving power of a saint. That became standard in medieval Europe’s repertoire of penance, an early spiritual variant on the modern proposition that travel broadens the mind. [2] Pilgrimage afforded the same opportunities to women as to men, and, despite all the problems that medieval women might face in travel, they took full advantage of it; one estimate of Western pilgrim activity in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries considers that women were almost as numerous as men among those known to have undertaken pilgrimages. Naturally all this activity created its own economy of service industries for support, entertainment and accommodation, besides very considerable financial benefit for the shrine churches themselves. [3] Unusually, the devotional activism of pilgrimage put laypeople on the same footing as clergy during a devotional revolution that in so many ways gave clergy a privileged position in society. Indeed, holy travelling gave laity the advantage over monks and nuns who observed their commitment to sacred enclosure. In the fourteenth century, Geoffrey Chaucer’s pilgrim Prioress did exploit seniority to exempt herself from enclosure for her cheerful journey to Canterbury, but her sisters would have had to make do with journeys of the mind. Accordingly, some late medieval nunneries resourcefully equipped themselves with a series of pictures of goals of pilgrimage for pleasantly profitable contemplation amid their other spiritual amenities. The Poor Clares of Villingen in south Germany outclassed most others by enriching their precinct with no fewer than 210 representations of places to visit in Rome and Jerusalem, and a generous papal grant gave them all benefits of indulgences just like a ‘real’ visit to these shrines (they all burst into tears with dutiful pleasure when this grant was read out to them). This was the ultimate tribute to the power of the pilgrimage. [4] Those travelling to the actual scenes of Christ’s life, death and resurrection in Jerusalem and the Holy Land had to face the reality of Muslim rule. From the beginning of the eleventh century, the growing numbers of Western pilgrims provoked rising tension, fuelled by the development of a new land-route through Hungary especially useful for northern Europeans. An unusual flashpoint occurred in 1009 when, in the course of steadily more deranged general behaviour, the Fatimid Caliph al-Hākim ordered the complete destruction of the magnificent Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, built long before in the time of the Emperor Constantine I. Even after Byzantine reconstruction in the 1030s and 1040s, the evidence of al-Hākim’s demolition was still obvious to travellers, and memories of it fed into an increasingly vocal call for revenge and for the Christian sites to be liberated from Muslim rule. [5] Loudest among those voices were monk-historians associated with Cluny’s rebranding of Benedictine life in its own image, Rodolph Glaber (‘the Bald’) and Adémar of Chabannes. They also banged the drum for the cosmic significance of the world turning its millennium of 1000 CE , a chronological detail that may not have excited those beyond Cluny’s influence quite so much. [6] The link of these themes to Cluny was no accident, given its management of pilgrimages to the westernmost extreme of Christendom at Compostela. The shrine of St James the Apostle, now safe from Muslim expansion as Christian armies successfully pushed back Muslim territory in Iberia, was itself a proof that God approved of warfare directed against the Church’s enemies. (In the Americas, where Spain and Portugal forcibly established new empires in the sixteenth century, a thousand years later James the Apostle still doubles as a symbol of the defeat of ‘Moors’ by Iberian Christians, as I have myself observed as a festal processional float passed me in rural Mexico: there was James

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  My brain needs cleansing. Two days earlier, I was the guest of a man called Wild Bill of Zam's Swamp Tours, sitting on his cramped houseboat in the bayou as he deep-fried alligator nuggets. His nephew, a delightful young tyke with an impressive blond mullet, kept sticking a baby gator's face into mine, provoking it to snap at my nose. Mosquitoes clogged my ears and nostrils and nearly blocked out the light from the bare lightbulbs as I sampled alligator piquante and grilled alligator kebabs and listened carefully for the first strains of dueling banjos. The smell of frying alligator still clogs my pores. But I've confirmed my hypothesis about enjoying yourself in a new and unfamiliar town. First rule: Run away from the hotel, as far and as fast as you can. Rule Two: Avoid anyplace where people like you (meaning out-of-towners or tourists) congregate. Rule Three: When you find a crummy bar clogged with locals who seem to be enjoying themselves, go in, sit down, and start drinking. Be sure to buy a few rounds for your fellow drinkers. At the appropriate moment, inquire of the best places to eat, emphasizing your criteria to go where no tourists have gone before. "Where do you eat?" is a good starting point. If you hear the same name twice, take note. Rule Four: If in New Orleans, call Hazelden ahead of time and make a reservation. You'll be needing it. A VIEW FROM THE FRIDGE I am a chef. Though I can be a terror in my kitchen, in the dining room of other restaurants I'm a pussycat. I am scrupulously polite and effusive in my praise. And I always tip twenty percent (at least). I'm also, I am told, not the most attentive of dinner companions. I can't help but be attuned—almost painfully at times—to every nuance around me: the ebb and flow of waiters and busboys, hosts and sommeliers, bartenders and cooks. After twenty-seven years in the restaurant business, the choreography of dining room service, any dining room's service, has become hard-wired into my nervous system. I know that there are a number of simple, avoidable things that can throw off the rhythms of even the best-run places. When that happens, a memorable evening can be remembered for all the wrong reasons. I've learned plenty about what makes a wonderful dining experience from eating at great restaurants, but not nearly as much as I've learned from working in them. What have all my hours of standing before a stove taught me about sitting at a table? I'll tell you. If the people at the table beside mine summon a busboy (the first available person in a uniform), unable to distinguish him from their waiter, I cringe.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  In my quest for "authentic local" food in New Orleans, I've managed to completely avoid the French Quarter. No boobs, no beads, no Bourbon Street for me. No cloud of fryer grease, hordes of slow-moving tourists, no eggs Benedict or oysters Bienville in the famous coliseums of Galatoire's, Brennan's, or Commander's Palace. Okay, I did nick into the quarter for a quick dozen oysters at the Acme; and I did call out from my hotel room to the legendary Verdi Mart, where locals can order a quick, late-night delivery of bourbon and cigarettes and the bigger-than-your-head muffuletta sandwiches. But otherwise I've managed to pretty much stay away from the usual suspects. That said, every time locals ask where I've been eating and I tell them, there is disagreement. "Why didn't you try . . ." or "You should try . . ." is pretty much the standard reaction. But I think I've been doing pretty well. I had a fabulously greasy breakfast at the grim flophouse like Hummingbird Hotel and Grill. I ate sublime sno-cones at the legendary Hansen's Sno-Bliz Sweet Shop, where the ice is shaved on a nearly century-old hand-cranked device, flavored in stages, and heaped in a cup topped with sweetened condensed milk. I had the crawfish pie, pralines, and jambalaya at Tee-Eva's; the "Feed Me" red-sauce-heavy assault at Tony Angello's; the tweaked classics and gumbo variations and best-in-world fried chicken at Jacques-Imo's; and the ham hock with collards and grits at the Harbor. Before arriving to face imminent destruction at Snake and Jake's, I drank local beer and ate red beans and rice and listened to jazz and blues at Vaughn's, an ancient bar in the Ninth Ward, and when the trumpet player took a break between sets to grill rabbit sausage and ribs on an outdoor pickup-truck barbecue, the other customers filling the streets, drinking from "go-cups," I met Tony, grinning evilly under a streetlight. Some of the cooks with me shook their heads. They knew what came next. Oh, what a wonderful town. Bars are open twenty-four hours. Nearly everyone seems to drink heavily (I'm told that if you mention New Orleans as a residence, you go right to the head of the line at Betty Ford), and at a few bars, like Checkpoint Charlie's, you can wash the blood and hair from last night's misadventures off your clothes in the conveniently located on-premises launderette while you begin new ones out front. Fried batter is a menu item. And everybody, it seems, either cooks, eats seriously, or has opinions about both. I'm enjoying the Jager shots.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  Few people on earth are as enthusiastic about food and eating as the Chinese. Show up with an open mind and an empty stomach, willing to try anything that comes your way, and enthusiasm is indeed enough. You will find yourself welcomed—and well fed—again and again, a passenger on a deliriously colorful joyride. The old joke that the Chinese will eat anything inadvertently reveals what is best about them: There are few "good" ingredients and "bad" ingredients in China. There are the often expensive ingredients that are easy to cook, and the other stuff, the tongues, feet, and odd bits that take a little time—a few thousand years of trial and error—to figure out how to make good. Like any great culinary tradition, the driving engine is the need to transform the humble, the tough, the unlovely into the delicate and sublime, or to figure out what was good about an ingredient all along. In this way, it can be said that deep inside every good cook, be they French, Italian, or American, beats the heart of a Chinese. With this in mind, I recently ventured my first few little bites out of a very large country. At Huang Cheng Lao Ma restaurant, in Chengdu, Szechuan's frenetically developing capital, a large cauldron of murky and bubbling palm oil sits center table: the notorious Szechuan hotpot. Bobbing on the roiling surface of the dark, viscous liquid is a logjam of tongue-scalding dried Szechuan chilies. Less noticeable, but just as plentiful, are a fistful of hua jiao, smaller, darker "flower" peppercorns. The dried chilies are pure burn. The peppercorns, though aromatic, are pure freeze. They numb the mouth, at times the whole face, as they go down (which explains why they are a popular remedy for toothache). My friend David, a Chengdu native, points at the spicy hellbroth with his chopsticks and says, "It gets stronger as it cooks." He points across the large communal table at a family of locals gathered around a similar witches' brew. The mother is red faced and holds a fist to her chest. The father is mopping sweat from his neck. David grins and dips a slice of raw beef into the hotpot, swirling it around to cook for a few seconds before a secondary dunk in cooler oil, then pops it in his mouth. "Diarrhea tomorrow," he promises. "For me, or for you?" I ask, assuming that it's my delicate Western metabolism he's concerned about. "Oh no. Everybody pays tomorrow," he laughs. "Still. We come back again. You'll see. It's addictive." Plates of uncooked chicken, shrimps, sliced kidney, quail eggs, noodles, and vegetables arrive. Each will find their way in increments into the increasingly volcanic oil before disappearing down our throats. It's like a lethal fondue. We've ordered the strongest, "hottest" variety, in a town famous for its profligate way with peppers, and it hurts so good.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  One would expect to see those two here. But oeufs a la neige? Peche Melba!? These were preparations you had to go digging for in old copies of Le Repertoire de la Cuisine or Larousse to find. This was madness! This was insane! This was absolutely fantastic! One might think—considering the sight of me giggling at Le Veau d'Or—that perhaps I was appreciating this dino-era menu in a modern, post-ironic way. That I was somehow snickering at the proprietor and his improbable, almost irrationally unsellable choice of menu items, that there was something funny about how out of touch, days-gone-by, stubbornly incongruous and French Le Veau d'Or's menu was—the height of unfashionable, only a few feet from Bloomingdale's and Madison Avenue. But one would be wrong. My eyes filled with real tears. My heart sang. And as I ate my celeri remoulade and my proudly ungarnished rognons de veau, and later, my ties flottantes, I was bursting with admiration for the place. This was the good old stuff. This was roots cooking, the kind of French food I first came to know and love, the wellspring from which I—and many cooks like me—came. And I know that I am not alone in my affection. In Paris, of course, they continue to serve this kind of fare sansirony. On a recent trip, I found myself walking in the Saint-Germain-des-Pres with my editor, who'd grown up in the neighborhood. Every few blocks, she'd stop and excitedly point out a forlorn-looking storefront and say, "Oh! That place there makes the best rognons de veau flambee\" or "the boeuf aux carottes there is superb!" This is akin to walking through suburban New Jersey with an American and having them passionately expound on the glories of diner meatloaf, or coffee-shop tuna salad. I love the French. Their maniacal obsession with the simple act of lunch has, I think, made the world a better place. But what about us? What's left of the once common, even de rigeur, yet now forgotten cuisine bourgoise, and the more upscale "continental" classics that seem to have gone down with the Titanic? Who still loves them? Who continues to uphold the glorious tradition, against the forces of time and trend and simple good sense? Riffing on old-school classics is something well-known American chefs have been doing for some time. It's been decades since you could find a "napoleon" in a restaurant that in any way resembles the original pastry. Thomas Keller serves a faux "blanquette" (of lobster), and Eric Ripert serves a "croque monsieur" (of caviar and smoked salmon), and other hotshot modernists both here and abroad have been freely pilfering the kernels of forgotten classics for ages. They're not serving the "real deal." But they're not laughing, either.

• From Naked Lunch (1959)

  As continuity would have it, they are sprung at the same time more or less and take up residence in a flat on the Lower East Side. ...And cook in and both are working legit modest jobs. ...So Brad and Jim know happiness for the first time. "Enter the powers of evil.... Lucy Bradshinkel has come to say all is forgiven She has faith in Brad and wants to set him up in a studio. Of course, he will have to move to the East Sixties.... 'This place is impossible, dahling; and your friend...' And a safe mob wants Jim back to drive a car. This is a step up, you dig? Offer from citizens hardly see him before. "Will Jim go back to crime? Will Brad succumb to the blandishments of an aging vampire, a ravening Maw?... Needless to say, the forces of evil are routed and exit with ominous snarls and mutterings. " 'The Boss isn't going to like this.' " 'I don't know why I ever wasted my time with you, you cheap, vulgar little fairy.' "The boys stand at the tenement window, their arms around each other, looking at the Brooklyn Bridge. A warm spring wind ruffles Jim's black curls and the fine hennaed hair of Brad. " 'Well, Brad, what's for supper?' " 'You just go in the other room and wait.' Playfully he shoos Jim out of the kitchen, and puts on his apron. "Dinner is Lucy Bradshinkel's cunt saignant cooked in kotex papillon. The boys eat happily looking into each other's eyes. Blood runs down their chins." Let the dawn blue as a flame cross the city.... The backyards are clean of fruit, and the ash pits give up their hooded dead.... "Could you show me the way to Tipperary, lady?" Over the hills and far away to Blue Grass.... Across the bone meal of lawn to the frozen pond where suspended goldfish wait for the spring Squaw Man. The screaming skull rolls up the back stairs to bite off the cock of erring husband taking dour advantage of his wife's earache to do that which is inconvenient. The young landlubber dons a southwester, beats his wife to death in the shower.... BENWAY: "Don't take it so hard, kid.... 'Jeder macht eine kleine Dummheit.'" (Everyone makes a little dumbness. ) SCHAFER: "I tell you I can't escape a feeling... well, of evil about this." BENWAY: "Balderdash, my boy... We're scientists. ...Pure scientists. Disinterested research and damned be him who cries 'Hold, too much !' Such people are no better than party poops." SCHAFER: "Yes, yes, of course... and yet... I can't get that stench out of my lungs...." BENWAY (irritably): "None of us can.... Never smelled anything remotely like it.... Where was I? Oh yes, what would be result of administering curare plus iron lung during acute mania?

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Everything went giddy with joy in Varenukha’s head, his face beamed, and, not knowing what he was saying, he began to murmur: ‘Verily . . . that is, I mean to say . . . Your ma . . . right after dinner . . .’ Varenukha pressed his hands to his chest, looking beseechingly at Azazello. ‘All right. Home with you!’ the latter said, and Varenukha dissolved. ‘Now all of you leave me alone with them,’ ordered Woland, pointing to the master and Margarita. Woland’s order was obeyed instantly. After some silence, Woland said to the master: ‘So it’s back to the Arbat basement? And who is going to write? And the dreams, the inspiration?’ ‘I have no more dreams, or inspiration either,’ replied the master. ‘Nothing around me interests me, except her.’ He again put his hand on Margarita’s head. ‘I’m broken, I’m bored, and I want to be in the basement.’ ‘And your novel? Pilate?’ ‘It’s hateful to me, this novel,’ replied the master, ‘I went through too much because of it.’ ‘I implore you,’ Margarita begged plaintively, ‘don’t talk like that. Why do you torment me? You know I put my whole life into this work.’ Turning to Woland, Margarita also added: ‘Don’t listen to him, Messire, he’s too worn out.’ ‘But you must write about something,’ said Woland. ‘If you’ve exhausted the procurator, well, then why not start portraying, say, this Aloisy . . .’ The master smiled. ‘Lapshennikova wouldn’t publish that, and, besides, it’s not interesting.’ ‘And what are you going to live on? You’ll have a beggarly existence.’ ‘Willingly, willingly,’ replied the master, drawing Margarita to him. He put his arm around her shoulders and added: ‘She’ll see reason, she’ll leave me . . .’ ‘I doubt that,’ Woland said through his teeth and went on: ‘And so, the man who wrote the story of Pontius Pilate goes to the basement with the intention of settling by the lamp and leading a beggarly existence?’ Margarita separated herself from the master and began speaking very ardently: ‘I did all I could. I whispered the most tempting thing to him. And he refused.’ ‘I know what you whispered to him,’ Woland retorted, ‘but it is not the most tempting thing. And to you I say,’ he turned, smiling, to the master, ‘that your novel will still bring you surprises.’ ‘That’s very sad,’ replied the master. ‘No, no, it’s not sad,’ said Woland, ‘nothing terrible. Well, Margarita Nikolaevna, it has all been done. Do you have any claims against me?’ ‘How can you, oh, how can you, Messire! . . .’ ‘Then take this from me as a memento,’ said Woland, and he drew from under the pillow a small golden horseshoe studded with diamonds. ‘No, no, no, why on earth!’ ‘You want to argue with me?’ Woland said, smiling. Since Margarita had no pockets in her cloak, she put the horseshoe in a napkin and tied it into a knot.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  families shrieked, wept and rolled on the ground in their sense of transformation, and their delight that someone – not just their Saviour, but the Revd John Wesley – cared about them. Such behaviour was liable to break out repeatedly in Methodist revivals throughout the century, provoking in the increasingly institutionalized Wesleyan leadership a mixture of alarm, embarrassment and delighted wonder at God’s power. [35] Wesley’s answer was to establish an annual ‘Conference’ of his Connexional preachers, meeting under his own direction in various cities and towns through the kingdom. Conference exercised tight central control on these preachers, whose ministry was purposefully itinerant, and who were encouraged to be celibate to make that easier – the whole organization was remarkably like a Protestant version of the Society of Jesus. [36] The awful warning as to where uncontrolled emotional release might go was the crisis that hit the Moravians in the late 1740s in the middle of their transatlantic expansion. [37] This was the Moravian ‘Sifting Time’ – an uninformative label hiding a very considerable trauma that the Church in its denominational history long sought to obscure. Moravian community life and worship were centred on joyful celebration; equally important was their free use of medieval mystical themes that re-emerged in Lutheranism during the seventeenth century, despite the fact that Luther himself had largely rejected them. Moravian concentration on the wounds of Christ produced a great deal of cringe-making reference to his ‘side-hole’, pierced on the cross by the Roman soldier’s spear, but it was a different New Testament theme, the bridal union of Christ and his Church, that fatally excited the rapidly rising emotional temperature. Many activists in the Unitas Fratrum were very young to be placed in positions of leadership. Among them was Count von Zinzendorf’s son Christian Renatus, just out of his teens when made a presbyter in the Church, together with von Zinzendorf’s son-in-law Johannes von Watteville, regarded by many as the major actor in the disaster. Not for the first time in Christian history, many believers framed their perception of Christ’s forgiveness of sins as an absolute gift that included sins still to be committed – an ‘antinomianism’ (freedom from moral law) which was a dangerously logical extension of Martin Luther’s rejection of good works in salvation. They experienced union with Christ not merely through the joys of marriage, but in extramarital sex as well – their stripping-away of gender in mystical joy further extended to same-sex kisses and embraces. Young people plunged with delight into this proof of their freely given salvation. This was a repeat of the mystical promiscuity of Swiss radicals in the 1520s, and it has not proved the last time that new groups of Christians have improvised ethical codes encouraged by leaders with more charisma than self-discipline, threatening institutional and personal collapse. In this case, von Zinzendorf himself belatedly perceived where his own enthusiasms had led his movement.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  the opportunity arose in 1661–2 to revise Cranmer’s Prayer Book after Charles II’s restoration to the throne and the return of an episcopal Church of England, it is noticeable that one of the few wins that the triumphant bishops allowed Puritans in revising the Prayer Book was to make wedding Communion so optional as to become a dead letter; bishops were clearly not that concerned to defend it. The custom then more or less disappeared, but by then it had produced a cheering architectural consequence in the widespread preservation of medieval chancels in English parish churches, screened off as spaces for wedding Communions as well as Communions for the whole parish two or three times a year (see Plate 25). [54] Out of all this variety came the universal Protestant celebration of marriage and the family as nuanced by the progress of Reformation. Archbishop Cranmer did make one interesting innovation when he put into liturgical form a common sentiment in late medieval discussion of the family, taking it beyond Augustine’s bleak justifications of marriage as fides, proles, sacramentum (above, Chapter 9). From 1549 onwards, England’s wedding service affirmed that a major purpose of marriage was ‘for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other’ – the Scottish First Book of Discipline was clearly in the same frame of mind. Contemporary Catholic sources would not have disagreed, and indeed echoed the idea without giving it liturgical expression. What was different with Protestants was that theologians who overwhelmingly were married were saying this, and not only without a balancing exaltation of celibacy but with every evidence of personal delight. [55] One of the most charming examples comes from mid-seventeenth-century England: Jeremy Taylor, a bishop in the Church of Ireland in the latter years of his ministry. Taylor was one of the first English Protestant theologians whose work represented that distinctive Church of England evolution of a theology consciously negotiating between Protestantism and Catholicism, what would later be called ‘Anglicanism’. Repeatedly the twice-married Taylor revealed his delight in family life: no man can tell but he that loves children, how many delicious accents make a man’s heart dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges; their childishness, their stammering, their little angers, their innocence, their imperfections, their necessities, are so many little emanations of joy and comfort to him that delights in their persons and society. On another occasion early in his career, Taylor preached a sermon that may have startled a dozing congregation by enthusiastically urging mothers to offer their own ‘exuberant fontinels’ to breastfeed their infants rather than relying on wet-nurses. This was not a sentiment to have enthused St Jerome. [56] THE PAPAL CHURCH : DEFENCE AND

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  The room smelled of perfume. Besides that, the smell of a red-hot iron was coming from somewhere. Margarita Nikolaevna sat in front of the pier-glass, with just a bathrobe thrown over her naked body, and in black suede shoes. A gold bracelet with a watch lay in front of Margarita Nikolaevna, beside the box she had received from Azazello, and Margarita did not take her eyes from its face. At times it began to seem to her that the watch was broken and the hands were not moving. But they were moving, though very slowly, as if sticking, and at last the big hand fell on the twenty-ninth minute past nine. Margarita’s heart gave a terrible thump, so that she could not even take hold of the box right away. Having mastered herself, Margarita opened it and saw in the box a rich, yellowish cream. It seemed to her that it smelled of swamp slime. With the tip of her finger, Margarita put a small dab of the cream on her palm, the smell of swamp grass and forest grew stronger, and then she began rubbing the cream into her forehead and cheeks with her palm. The cream spread easily and, as it seemed to Margarita, evaporated at once. Having rubbed several times, Margarita glanced into the mirror and dropped the box right on her watch crystal, which became covered with cracks. Margarita closed her eyes, then glanced once again and burst into wild laughter. Her eyebrows, plucked to a thread with tweezers, thickened and lay in even black arches over her greening eyes. The thin vertical crease cutting the bridge of her nose, which had appeared back then, in October, when the master vanished, disappeared without a trace. So did the yellowish shadows at her temples and the two barely noticeable little webs of wrinkles at the outer corners of her eyes. The skin of her cheeks filled out with an even pink colour, her forehead became white and clear, and the hairdresser’s waves in her hair came undone. From the mirror a naturally curly, black-haired woman of about twenty was looking at the thirty-year-old Margarita, baring her teeth and laughing impetuously. Having laughed her fill, Margarita jumped out of her bathrobe with a single leap, dipped freely into the light, rich cream, and with vigorous strokes began rubbing it into the skin of her body. It at once turned pink and tingly. That instant, as if a needle had been snatched from her brain, the ache she had felt in her temple all evening after the meeting in the Alexandrovsky Garden subsided, her leg and arm muscles grew stronger, and then Margarita’s body became weightless. She sprang up and hung in the air just above the rug, then was slowly pulled down and descended. ‘What a cream! What a cream!’ cried Margarita, throwing herself into an armchair. The rubbings changed her not only externally.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Stephen rested her elbow on the mantelpiece and stood gazing at Mary with her chin on her hand. As she did so she was struck once again by the look of youth that was characteristic of Mary. She looked much less than her twenty-two years in her simple dress with its leather belt—she looked indeed little more than a schoolgirl. And yet there was something quite new in her face, a soft, wise expression that Stephen had put there, so that she suddenly felt pitiful to see her so young yet so full of this wisdom; for sometimes the coming of passion to youth, in spite of its glory, will be strangely pathetic. Mary rolled up the stockings with a sigh of regret; alas, they would not require darning. She was at the stage of being in love when she longed to do womanly tasks for Stephen. But all Stephen’s clothes were discouragingly neat; Mary thought that she must be very well served, which was true—she was served, as are certain men, with a great deal of nicety and care by the servants. And now Stephen was filling her cigarette case from the big box that lived on her dressing table; and now she was strapping on her gold wrist watch; and now she was brushing some dust from her coat; and now she was frowning at herself in the glass for a second as she twitched her immaculate necktie. Mary had seen her do all this before, many times, but to-day somehow it was different; for to-day they were in their own home together, so that these little intimate things seemed more dear than they had done at Orotava. The bedroom could only have belonged to Stephen; a large, airy room, very simply furnished—white walls, old oak, and a wide, bricked hearth on which some large, friendly logs were burning. The bed could only have been Stephen’s bed; it was heavy and rather austere in pattern. It looked solemn as Mary had seen Stephen look, and was covered by a bedspread of old blue brocade, otherwise it remained quite guiltless of trimmings. The chairs could only have been Stephen’s chairs; a little reserved, not conducive to lounging. The dressing table could only have been hers, with its tall silver mirror and ivory brushes. And all these things had drawn into themselves a species of life derived from their owner, until they seemed to be thinking of Stephen with a dumbness that made their thoughts more insistent, and their thoughts gathered strength and mingled with Mary’s so that she heard herself cry out: ‘Stephen!’ in a voice that was not very far from tears, because of the joy she felt in that name. And Stephen answered her: ‘Mary—’

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  The signature dish of stuffed pig's trotters is exactly that: two enormous pig's feet, absolutely jammed with foie gras and sauced with a rich onion cream sauce. It's too much. It's too loud. The kitchen looks like a train wreck. The portions are crippling. You won't want to think about foie gras for weeks after eating there. And it's an absolute joy to experience. Everyone—from customers, to cooks, to service staff, to the chef—seems happy to be there. The cooks will tell you so themselves, as they race to fill orders from postage-stamp-size work spaces, elbowing each other to get at one of the endlessly refilled crocks of mashed potatoes. There's no "attitude." It's about food—and company—and the enjoyment of both. It may well be the antidote to every other restaurant in North America. A LIFE OF CRIME "Why didn't you give him a beatin' then?" "Well, 'cause . . . uh . . ." "I told ya. Forget this other shit. Give him a fuckin' beatin'." "Well, the uh . . . I was waiting to hear from you." "I told you yesterday . . . What are you, Chinese? Hit him. This guy's nobody, and if he's somebody, I don't give a fuck." —John Gotti, former Gambino crime family boss , discussing debt restructuring with an associate I love reading about crime. I like writing about crime. I like listening to wiretap recordings of gangsters, hearing the marvelously loopy, repetitive, elliptical, and wildly profane patois of two semiarticulate career criminals who think they just might be being recorded by the FBI, but have business to conduct anyway. It's poetry to me. In my apartment, CourtTV, the twenty-four-hour criminal justice cable network, is always on; the sounds of badly miked witnesses, recorded emergency calls, droning coroners, and preening lawyers are the background music to my leisure hours. While I sip my morning coffee in bed, friends are betraying friends on the stand, pathologists coldly recite the particulars of damage to bones and tissue, stone killers affectlessly describe the circumstances leading up to murder, dismemberment, arson . . . and worse. Lawyers aggressively examine and cross-examine, shrieking with feigned outrage, while outside my windows, car alarms whoop and wail—the occasional urban percussion of shattering safety glass when yet another young entrepreneur makes off with a car stereo. It's like jazz to me, and I miss it when I'm away. The familiar criminal sounds are almost comforting. A lot of crime buffs favor the lone sociopath, the serial killer, the pathological narcissist.

• From Soaking Wet: Lesbian Sex Stories (2014)

  My hips rose and fell; moans, one after the other, ripped from my throat. “Fuck, yeah. Fuck, fuck .” And then the spiraling coil deep inside my belly loosened. I sucked in a deep breath and rode the high, clutching her head with both hands. When my fingers slipped away, Kari withdrew the cock and turned it off. Then she crawled upward to rest on her side next to me. She caressed a breast, bending to kiss one of the hard little spikes. “You know we have to talk,” she whispered. I sighed. “Yeah, we do.” “I want more,” she said quietly. “More what?” The words came out flat, with a tinge of annoyance. I winced inside, but I don’t take rejection well. “More…company.” “You want to see other people?” I closed my eyes, bracing for it. I could do this. I could share her. I just didn’t want to lose her completely. Maybe that made me weak, but I was falling for her. “Do you?” I peeked at her from beneath the fringe of my eyelashes, trying to gauge what her idle-sounding question really meant. If I said no, would she be afraid to be honest? But I didn’t want to see anyone else. Kari with her spritelike body and small kitten face was the only one I wanted to hover over while I fucked her. I gave her a cowardly shrug. My throat was too tight to push words out. She blew out an exasperated breath. “Dammit, Margot. You aren’t easy, are you?” “How can you say that? Didn’t you have my pants off an hour after we met?” “Don’t be smug. I’m serious. Things have to change.” I sat up and raked a hand through my hair, feeling frustrated and grumpy. “Can we table this until after I make you come?” Maybe if I proved to her that she wasn’t going to get any better than me, she’d be satisfied. Or maybe she’d just forget about this conversation. I could keep her busy all weekend with my mouth and fingers, keep her turned inside out and fuck-fogged. Then maybe we could put off talking until she loved me as much as I loved her. Her mouth twisted and her eyes filled. I bent quickly and kissed her, cupping her head and taking her mouth gently. “Don’t you cry,” I said harshly when I pulled back. Her mouth crimped tighter. I shoved her to her back and crawled on top, trapping her legs between mine, wrapping my hands around her wrists and pinning her to the floor. “This is good. What we have could be fucking great.” She made a noise, but I didn’t want to hear a protest, and I covered her mouth again, eating her lips the way I wanted to eat her pussy. “Just shut up. Talk later. Told you, I wanna taste.” When I came up for air, she whispered, “Sometimes, you’re such a bitch.” “Who’s talking dirty now?”

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  the end of traditional family life when God flooded the whole earth in the time of Noah: ‘they ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage, until the day when…the flood came and destroyed them all’ (Luke 17.27, echoed in Matt. 24.38–39). [25] In the new end-time set of relationships that Jesus creates around him, we read of a mixture of male and female disciples and apostles, supplemented by a record of two sparky but positive conversational encounters between Jesus and resourceful foreign women, who both made a good account of themselves in the exchanges. [26] Among the disciples and apostles who followed Jesus, the Twelve had to be male, because they represented the male identities of the Twelve Tribes. Others did not bear this symbolism, and the biblical text may contain more females than are at first apparent – for instance, only unthinking assumptions about one important story lead the reader to identify as male both of the disciples who encountered the risen Christ on a road to Emmaus. [27] Among the most important followers were sisters from a village called Bethany, Mary and Martha, along with their brother Lazarus, clearly a particular favourite of Jesus, though Lazarus says nothing recorded in the Gospels. Then there is the stand-out figure of Mary Magdalen; all four Gospels name her as among the first witnesses of the Resurrection. Mary Magdalen’s role is particularly enhanced in John’s dramatic presentation. She meets the risen Jesus alone – first in deep distress mistaking him for a gardener, and then in deep joy, recognizing the reality (John 20.11–18). For this reason, she has often been called ‘Apostle to the Apostles’, for she passes the astonishing news on to the wider disciple-group. In the course of later history, she has undergone almost as many transformations as her familial opposite number, Mary the Mother of the Lord. John the Evangelist is responsible also for the theme that there was one special male disciple whom Jesus ‘loved’. It sits untidily beside the motif recorded in the Synoptics that Jesus sternly rebuked some of the Twelve for seeking a special place in Heaven (Mark 10.35–45; Matt. 20.20–28; Luke 22.24–27). The beloved disciple is never named in John’s Gospel, though it says that he provided its textual content (John 21.24); traditionally the character has been elided into the person of John the Evangelist himself. Other identifications have been suggested, such as Lazarus, but the indications are that the final editor wished the content of his Gospel to be seen as coming from John, son of Zebedee; John was one of the Twelve, and was actually one of those whom the Synoptic Jesus rebuked for seeking special treatment. This language of love and particular favour has inevitably aroused interest in those aware of Graeco-Roman institutions of same-sex relationships. Like the turbulence built into the picture of Mary Magdalen, the resonance passed down the centuries for those inclined to find it (see Plate 19).