Longing

Passages

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

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• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  “When are you coming back?” “I don’t know.” “For the holidays?” “They don’t celebrate Thanksgiving here.” “Christmas?” “Phoebe’s coming for Christmas.” “Then when?” “Maybe never.” “Don’t say that.” Caitlin’s voice turned low, seductive. “Do you miss me?” “You know I do.” “I miss you, too. Is Harvard all it’s supposed to be?” “It’s tough, if that’s what you mean. I’m just trying to keep up.” “What about Bru?” “What about him?” “Do you get to see each other?” “We talk on the phone.” “Is that enough?” “What do you think?” Every time she heard Caitlin’s voice she felt an ache, a longing for something, she didn’t know what. Even though it was almost a relief to be on her own with no one looking over her shoulder, no one questioning her every move, she missed her. To Vix she was still Caitlin Somers, the Most Influential Person in My Life. “Does she have to call in the middle of the night?” Maia asked. “I need my sleep. I can’t function with less than seven hours. Could you please tell her she’s not just waking you, she’s waking me, too.” But the next time Caitlin called and Vix asked if she could call before eleven P.M. Caitlin said, “Overnight rates are less expensive. I’m on a budget, you know. I’m learning to manage my money.” “You’re serious?” Vix asked. “Of course I’m serious.” “Okay ... I’ll try to explain that to my roommate.”

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  But I told her I looked like I was wearing a big pillowcase with elephant trunks sticking out of the sides. Lori refused to wear hers outdoors, or even indoors, and Mom had to agree that sewing wasn’t the best use of our creative energy—or our money. The cheapest cloth we could find cost seventy-nine cents a yard, and you needed more than two yards for a dress. It made more sense to buy thrift-store clothes, and they had the armholes in the right places. Mom also tried to make the house cheerful. She decorated the living room walls with her oil paintings, and soon every square inch was covered, except for the space above her typewriter reserved for index cards. We had vivid desert sunsets, stampeding horses, sleeping cats, snow-covered mountains, bowls of fruit, blooming flowers, and portraits of us kids. Since Mom had more paintings than we had wall space, Dad nailed long shelf brackets to the wall, and she hung one picture in front of another until they were three or four deep. Then she’d rotate the paintings. “Just a little redecorating to perk the place up,” she’d say. But I believed she thought of her paintings as children and wanted them to feel that they were all being treated equally. Mom also built rows of shelves in the windows and arranged brightly colored bottles to catch the light. “Now it looks like we have stained glass,” she announced. It did, sort of, but the house was still cold and dank. Every night for the first few weeks, lying on my cardboard mattress and listening to the sound of rainwater dripping in the kitchen, I dreamed of the desert and the sun and the big house in Phoenix with the palm tree in the front and the orange trees and oleanders in the back. We had owned that house outright. Still owned it, I kept thinking. It was ours, the one true home we’d ever had. “Are we ever going home?” I asked Dad one day. “Home?” “Phoenix.” “This is home now.” SEEING AS HOW WELCH was our new home, Brian and I figured we’d make the best of it. Dad had shown us the spot near the house where we were going to put the foundation and basement for the Glass Castle. He’d measured it off and marked it with stakes and string. Since Dad was hardly ever home—he was out making contacts and investigating the UMW, he told us—and never got around to breaking ground, Brian and I decided to help. We found a shovel and pickax at an abandoned farm and spent just about every free minute digging a hole. We knew we had to dig it big and deep. “No point in building a good house unless you put down the right foundation,” Dad always said. It was hard work, but after a month we’d dug a hole deep enough for us to disappear in.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  La puerta de su habitación está abierta y puedo ver su cama directamente al frente, la cabecera contra la pared opuesta mientras me dirijo hacia su habitación. Cada vez que he pasado por aquí para darme una ducha esta última semana, se sintió extraño. Estar sola en su habitación. No fisgoneo, pero es tentador. Su cama siempre está hecha. Unas sábanas acomodadas descuidadamente en un apuro, pero no puedo evitar estar un poco sorprendida. Sino fuera por mi madrastra, la cama de mi padre nunca estaría hecha. Dirigiéndome hacia al baño, veo las fotografías de Cole, retratos desde su nacimiento hasta su último año alineadas en el marco del espejo de su tocador. Una pantalla plana cuelga de la pared, el cable eléctrico está colgando y desconectado. El modelo de un barco está sobre su cómoda con solo con una fina capa de polvo sobre las velas blancas. Y un reloj viejo con una desgastada correa de piel que nunca lo he visto ponerse está sobre un plato en su cómoda. No hay otra joyería en ningún otro lugar. Además de la cama, las dos cómodas, la televisión y las mesitas de noche, la habitación es minimalista. Nada en las paredes, por supuesto, una lámpara negra con una pantalla gris y la fuerte luz de la tarde filtrándose a través de las grietas en las persianas parcialmente abiertas. Odio que viviera aquí solo durante tanto tiempo. Alguien necesita alegrar un poco este lugar. No mi hermana. Cerrando la puerta del baño detrás de mí, la bloqueo y estiro mi brazo hacia la ducha, abriendo el agua. Dejo mi cambio de ropa en el mostrador del lavabo y me desnudo, sacando una toalla del armario y colgándola en el gancho afuera de la regadera. ¿Ya estás celosa? Sacudo mi cabeza, mi ira despierta de nuevo mientras entro en la regadera y cierro la puerta de cristal. No estoy celosa. Simplemente no quiero verla mangoneándolo como sé que definitivamente puede hacerlo. Mayormente es un juego para mi hermana y esconde sus inseguridades detrás de un comportamiento caprichoso y sarcasmo. Pike no es así. Necesita a alguien tranquilo. Alguien que sepa cómo mantenerlo tranquilo. Alguien que pueda envolver sus brazos alrededor de su cuello y hacer que el resto del mundo desaparezca.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  que él creyó todo lo que salió de su boca, que ella era la víctima en cada situación, y yo era el enemigo. Ella no podía equivocarse, y yo no podía hacer nada bien. Después de un tiempo, decidí estar allí para él. Con el tiempo se dará cuenta, y lo superaremos. Verá a través de sus mentiras, y solo necesito esperar. Sin importar cuánta paciencia vaya a necesitar o las discusiones, mientras tanto. Al menos Jordan es bastante buena. Será un buen amortiguador entre nosotros. Incluso si casi me caigo de culo cuando descubrí quién era. Cierro los ojos, apoyo el dorso de mi mano sobre mis ojos y pienso en esa noche. Me divertí saliendo con ella en el cine. Sus respuestas, su humor, lo fácil que fue hablar con ella... La forma en que se relajó a mi lado durante la película fue tan jodidamente cómodo y natural. La forma en que su sonrisa se sintió en mí... No la habría invitado a salir. Es demasiado joven y sabía que tenía novio. Pero fue difícil no pensar en la idea por un momento. Ella es genial. Y luego, cuando descubrí quién era, casi me enojé. Recuerdo haberla escuchado durante esa llamada telefónica y apretar los dientes con tanta fuerza que me dolió la mandíbula al darme cuenta. Estaba enojado, porque en ese momento estaba celoso de mi hijo. Estaba celoso de cualquier chico que tuviera diecinueve años y tuviera la oportunidad de estar con ella. Su piel perfecta y su nariz respingona. Su magnífico labio inferior que creo que me atrapó mirándolo. La forma en que inclinó la cabeza hacia atrás, levantó los pies, y podía estar simplemente a mi lado. Todo se sintió fácil. Pero la chica de mis sueños está fuera de los límites. Es de Cole, y tiene diecinueve años. No hay forma. Es una niña, y mis pensamientos breves y sórdidos permanecerán escondidos en mi cabeza. Mi teléfono vibra sobre la mesita de noche, extiendo la mano y lo agarro, mirando la pantalla. Y gimo. Ahora no. Pero deslizo el botón verde de todos modos y cierro los ojos, sosteniendo el teléfono en la oreja.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  I dare say that if she had been a mouse, and he a cat, he would have pounced straight away. He would have been the cat who got the cream. He was so lost in love and longing that, when he went around with the collection bowl, he would not take a penny from any of the young women. Out of courtesy, he said. I think he was in a daze. Excuse me - At this point the Miller stopped, and refreshed himself with some ale; he put the flagon to his lips, and almost choked on it. The sound of his coughing and retching was horrible. But then he resumed his tale. That night, under the light of the full moon, Absolon took up his guitar; he fully expected to stay awake all night for the sake of love. So he wandered abroad, amorous and willing, and made his way to the house of the carpenter. Just before dawn, at the crowing of the cock, he stood beneath one of the casement windows. There he began softly to play the guitar and to sing this accompaniment: ‘Now, dear lady, if it pleases you, have pity on me.’ But his voice woke up the carpenter, who turned to his wife lying beside him. ‘Alison,’ he said. ‘Wake up. Can you hear the voice of Absolon? He is singing right beneath the window.’ All she said was, ‘Yes, John, I hear him. I hear him very clearly.’ So, as you would expect, matters took their course. Absolon, the unsuccessful wooer, becomes deeply unhappy. He fritters away the day and stays awake

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  Foucault’s theory of sexuality offered in The History of Sexuality, Volume I is in some ways contradicted by his short but significant introduction to the journals he published of Herculine Barbin, a nineteenth-century French hermaphrodite. Herculine was assigned the sex of “female” at birth. In h/er early twenties, after a series of confessions to doctors and priests, s/he was legally compelled to change h/er sex to “male.” The journals that Foucault claims to have found are published in this collection, along with the medical and legal documents that discuss the basis on which the designation of h/er “true” sex was decided. A satiric short story by the German writer, Oscar Panizza, is also included. Foucault supplies an introduction to the English translation of the text in which he questions whether the notion of a true sex is necessary. At first, this question appears to be continuous with the critical genealogy of the category of “sex” he offers toward the conclusion of the first volume of The History of Sexuality.17 However, the journals and their introduction offer an occasion to consider Foucault’s reading of Herculine against his theory of sexuality in The History of Sexuality, Volume I. Although he argues in The History of Sexuality that sexuality is coextensive with power, he fails to recognize the concrete relations of power that both construct and condemn Herculine’s sexuality. Indeed, he appears to romanticize h/er world of pleasures as the “happy limbo of a non-identity” (xiii), a world that exceeds the categories of sex and of identity. The reemergence of a discourse on sexual difference and the categories of sex within Herculine’s own autobiographical writings will lead to an alternative reading of Herculine against Foucault’s romanticized appropriation and refusal of her text. In the first volume of The History of Sexuality, Foucault argues that the univocal construct of “sex” (one is one’s sex and, therefore, not the other) is (a) produced in the service of the social regulation and control of sexuality and (b) conceals and artificially unifies a variety of disparate and unrelated sexual functions and then (c) postures within discourse as a cause, an interior essence which both produces and renders intelligible all manner of sensation, pleasure, and desire as sex-specific. In other words, bodily pleasures are not merely causally reducible to this ostensibly sex-specific essence, but they become readily interpretable as manifestations or signs of this “sex.”18

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  The significant difference between Foucault’s position in the first volume of The History of Sexuality and in his introduction to Herculine Barbin is already to be found as an unresolved tension within the History of Sexuality itself (he refers there to “bucolic” and “innocent” pleasures of intergenerational sexual exchange that exist prior to the imposition of various regulative strategies [31]). On the one hand, Foucault wants to argue that there is no “sex” in itself which is not produced by complex interactions of discourse and power, and yet there does seem to be a “multiplicity of pleasures” in itself which is not the effect of any specific discourse/power exchange. In other words, Foucault invokes a trope of prediscursive libidinal multiplicity that effectively presupposes a sexuality “before the law,” indeed, a sexuality waiting for emancipation from the shackles of “sex.” On the other hand, Foucault officially insists that sexuality and power are coextensive and that we must not think that by saying yes to sex we say no to power. In his anti-juridical and anti-emancipatory mode, the “official” Foucault argues that sexuality is always situated within matrices of power, that it is always produced or constructed within specific historical practices, both discursive and institutional, and that recourse to a sexuality before the law is an illusory and complicitous conceit of emancipatory sexual politics. The journals of Herculine provide the opportunity to read Foucault against himself, or, perhaps more appropriately, to expose the constitutive contradiction of this kind of antiemancipatory call for sexual freedom. Herculine, called Alexina throughout the text, narrates a story about h/er tragic plight as one who lives a life of unjust victimization, deceit, longing, and inevitable dissatisfaction. From the time s/he was a young girl, s/he reports, s/he was different from the other girls. This difference is a cause for alternating states of anxiety and self-importance through the story, but it is there as tacit knowledge before the law becomes an explicit actor in the story. Although Herculine does not report directly on h/er anatomy in the journals, the medical reports that Foucault publishes along with Herculine’s own text suggest that Herculine might reasonably be said to have what is described as either a small penis or an enlarged clitoris, that where one might expect to find a vagina one finds a “cul-de-sac,” as the doctors put it, and, further, that she doesn’t appear to have identifiably female breasts. There seems also to be some capacity for ejaculation that is not fully accounted for within the medical documents. Herculine never refers to anatomy as such, but relates h/er predicament in terms of a natural mistake, a metaphysical homelessness, a state of insatiable desire, and a radical solitariness that, before h/er suicide, is transformed into a full-blown rage, first directed toward men, but finally toward the world as such.

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  In the case of the incest taboo, Lacan argues that desire (as opposed to need) is instituted through that law. “Intelligible” existence within the terms of the Symbolic requires both the institutionalization of desire and its dissatisfaction, the necessary consequence of the repression of the original pleasure and need associated with the maternal body. This full pleasure that haunts desire as that which it can never attain is the irrecoverable memory of pleasure before the law. Lacan is clear that that pleasure before the law is only fantasized, that it recurs in the infinite phantasms of desire. But in what sense is the phantasm, itself forbidden from the literal recovery of an original pleasure, the constitution of a fantasy of “originality” that may or may not correspond to a literal libidinal state? Indeed, to what extent is such a question decidable within the terms of Lacanian theory? A displacement or substitution can only be understood as such in relation to an original, one which in this case can never be recovered or known. This speculative origin is always speculated about from a retrospective position, from which it assumes the character of an ideal. The sanctification of this pleasurable “beyond” is instituted through the invocation of a Symbolic order that is essentially unchangeable.49 Indeed, one needs to read the drama of the Symbolic, of desire, of the institution of sexual difference as a self-supporting signifying economy that wields power in the marking off of what can and cannot be thought within the terms of cultural intelligibility. Mobilizing the distinction between what is “before” and what is “during” culture is one way to foreclose cultural possibilities from the start. The “order of appearances,” the founding temporality of the account, as much as it contests narrative coherence by introducing the split into the subject and the fêlure into desire, reinstitutes a coherence at the level of temporal exposition. As a result, this narrative strategy, revolving upon the distinction between an irrecoverable origin and a perpetually displaced present, makes all effort at recovering that origin in the name of subversion inevitably belated. 3 SUBVERSIVE BODILY ACTSDOI: 10.4324/9780203824979-3

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  We are subject to the bad aspects of Saturn, in the turning of the spheres, and cannot escape our destiny. What is the saying? “He must need swim that is borne up to the chin.” So stood the heavens on the day that we were born. We must endure.’ Palamon answered him, shaking his head. ‘Cousin, you have received the wrong impression of my woe. It was not our confinement that made me cry out. My new torment entered my heart through my eye, where very likely it will kill me. I am woeful because of her. With the flowers. Below us.’ He went over to the window again, and looked down at Emily. ‘The fairness of this lady that I see, walking to and fro through the castle garden, is the cause of all my pain and lamentation. I cannot tell whether she is a woman or a goddess. My guess is that she is Venus, come to earth.’ Thereupon he fell to his knees and prayed aloud. ‘Venus, great goddess, if it be your will to reveal yourself in this garden before me, a wretched and sorrowful creature, I beseech you to deliver us from this dark prison. Yet if it be my destiny to remain in durance vile, imprisoned by divine decree, then turn your piteous eye upon my family that has been brought so low by tyranny.’ And as he prayed Arcite walked over to the window and beheld Emily wandering in the garden. The sight of her beauty affected him so greatly that, if Palamon had been wounded, Arcite almost expired. He sighed deeply, and could not refrain from speaking out. ‘This perfect beauty, this vision of her that walks within the garden, has slain me suddenly. Unless I obtain her mercy and her grace, unless at the very least I am permitted to see her, I am as good as dead. There is nothing else to say.’ When Palamon heard his complaint, he became angry. ‘Are you serious? Or is this a joke?’ ‘I am in deadly earnest. God help me, I have no reason to play.’ ‘It does not reflect well on your honour, you know, to be false and treacherous to your cousin.’ He was frowning at Arcite as he spoke. ‘We have both sworn deep oaths that we would never cross each other in love, and would each seek our common good. We have both sworn that we would rather die under torture than oppose or hinder one another. We would remain true till death do us part. That was my oath. I presume that it was yours. I don’t think you will deny it. But now what has happened? You are aware of my love for the lady in the garden, but you have decided that you also wish to be her lover. No chance. I will love and serve this lady until the day of my death. That will not be your fate, Arcite, I swear it!

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  Kathy and Ginnie Sue were also working on the bird, but soon they stopped to watch me. From the tail, I pulled that nice piece of meat that everybody misses. I turned the carcass upside down and scraped off the jellied fat and meat flecks with my fingernails. I stuck my arm elbow-deep into the bird to excavate any meat clinging to the rib cage. “Girl,” Ginnie Sue said, “in all my days, I have never seen no one pick a chicken clean like you.” I held up the spear-shaped cartilage in the breast bone, which most people don’t eat, and bit down with a satisfying crunch. Ginnie Sue scraped the meat into a bowl, mixed it with mayonnaise and Cheez Whiz, then crushed a handful of potato chips and added them. She spread the mixture onto two slices of Wonder bread, then rolled each slice into a cylinder and passed them to us. “Birds in a blanket,” she said. They tasted great. “Mama, Jeannette lived in California,” Kathy said. “That so?” Ginnie Sue said. “Live in California and be a stewardess, that was my dream.” She sighed. “Never got beyond Bluefield.” I told her and Kathy about life in California. It quickly became clear they had no interest in desert mining towns, so I told them about San Francisco and then about Las Vegas, which wasn’t exactly in California, but they didn’t seem to care. I made the days we had spent there seem like years, and the showgirls I’d seen from a distance seem like close friends and neighbors. I described the glittering casinos and the glamorous high rollers, the palm trees and the swimming pools, the hotels with ice-cold air-conditioning and the restaurants where hostesses with long white gloves lit flaming desserts. “It don’t get no better than that!” Ginnie Sue said. “No, ma’am, it sure don’t,” I told her. Sweet Man came in crying, and Ginnie Sue picked him up and let him suck some mayonnaise off her finger. “You did good on that bird,” Ginnie Sue told me. “You strike me as the kind of girl who’s one day going to be eating roast chicken and those on-fire desserts just as much as you want.” She winked. It was only on the way home that I realized I hadn’t gotten answers to any of my questions. While I was sitting there talking to Ginnie Sue, I’d even forgotten she was a whore. One thing about whoring: It put a chicken on the table. WE FOUGHT A LOT in Welch. Not just to fend off our enemies but to fit in.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  I wanted to be back in Phoenix, sitting under the orange trees behind our adobe house, riding my bike to the library, eating free bananas in a school where the teachers thought I was smart. I wanted to feel the desert sun on my face and breathe in the dry desert air and climb the steep rock mountains while Dad led us on one of the long hikes that he called geological survey expeditions. I asked if we could all go, but Dad said he and Mom were making a quick trip, strictly business, and we kids would only get in the way. Besides, he couldn’t go taking us out of school in the middle of the year. I pointed out that it had never bothered him before. Welch wasn’t like those other places we had lived, he said. There were rules that had to be followed, and people didn’t take it kindly when you flouted them. “Do you think they’ll come back?” Brian asked as Mom and Dad drove off. “Of course,” I said, though I had been wondering the same thing. These days we seemed more of an inconvenience than we used to be. Lori was already a teenager, and in a couple of years, Brian and I would be, too. They couldn’t toss us into the back of a U-Haul or put us in cardboard boxes at night. Brian and I started running after the Oldsmobile. Mom turned once and waved, and Dad stuck his hand out the window. We followed them all the way down Court Street, where they picked up speed and then turned the corner. I had to believe they’d come back, I told myself. If I didn’t believe, then they might not return. They might leave us forever. • • • After Mom and Dad left, Erma became even more cantankerous. If she didn’t like the look on our faces, she would hit us on the head with a serving spoon. Once she pulled out a framed photograph of her father and told us he was the only person who had ever loved her. She talked on and on about how much she’d suffered as an orphan at the hands of her aunts and uncles who hadn’t treated her half as kindly as she was treating us. About a week after Mom and Dad left, we kids were all sitting in Erma’s living room watching TV. Stanley was sleeping in the foyer. Erma, who’d been drinking since before breakfast, told Brian that his britches needed mending. He started to take them off, but Erma said she didn’t want him running around the house in his skivvies or with a towel wrapped around him looking like he was wearing a goddamn dress. It would be easier for her to mend the britches while he was still wearing them. She ordered him to follow her into Grandpa’s bedroom, where she kept her sewing kit.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  Someone once said to me, “I am trying to learn to stay in the now—not the last now, not the next now; this now.” Which “now” do your characters dwell in? What are your characters teaching their children by example and by indoctrination? For instance, I was teaching Sam peace chants for a long time, when he was only two. It was during the war in the Persian Gulf; I was a little angry. “What do we want?” I’d call to Sam. “Peace,” he’d shout dutifully. “And when do we want it?” I’d ask. “Now!” he’d say, and I’d smile and toss him a fish. The words were utterly meaningless to him, of course. I might as well have taught him to reply “Spoos!” instead of “Peace” and “August!” instead of “Now.” My friends loved it, though; all three of his grandparents loved it. Now, how much does this say about me and my longings? I think something like this would tell a reader more about a character than would three pages of description. It would tell us about her current politics and the political tradition from which she sprang, her people-pleasing, her longing for peace and her longing to belong, her way of diluting rage and frustration with humor, while also using her child as a prop, a little live Charlie McCarthy. The latter is horrifying, but it’s also sort of poignant. Maybe thirty-five years ago this woman had to perform for her parents’ friends. Maybe she was their little Charlie McCarthy. Maybe she and her therapist can discuss it for the next few months. And did this woman stop using her kid, once she realized what she was doing? No, she didn’t, and this tells us even more. She kept at it, long after the war was over, until one day she called to her three-and-a-half-year-old son, “Hey—what do we want?” And he said plaintively, “Lunch.” I once asked Ethan Canin to tell me the most valuable thing he knew about writing, and without hesitation he said, “Nothing is as important as a likable narrator. Nothing holds a story together better.” I think he’s right. If your narrator is someone whose take on things fascinates you, it isn’t really going to matter if nothing much happens for a long time. I could watch John Cleese or Anthony Hopkins do dishes for about an hour without needing much else to happen. Having a likable narrator is like having a great friend whose company you love, whose mind you love to pick, whose running commentary totally holds your attention, who makes you laugh out loud, whose lines you always want to steal. When you have a friend like this, she can say, “Hey, I’ve got to drive up to the dump in Petaluma—wanna come along?” and you honestly can’t think of anything in the world you’d rather do.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  Someone once said to me, “I am trying to learn to stay in the now—not the last now, not the next now; this now.” Which “now” do your characters dwell in? What are your characters teaching their children by example and by indoctrination? For instance, I was teaching Sam peace chants for a long time, when he was only two. It was during the war in the Persian Gulf; I was a little angry. “What do we want?” I’d call to Sam. “Peace,” he’d shout dutifully. “And when do we want it?” I’d ask. “Now!” he’d say, and I’d smile and toss him a fish. The words were utterly meaningless to him, of course. I might as well have taught him to reply “Spoos!” instead of “Peace” and “August!” instead of “Now.” My friends loved it, though; all three of his grandparents loved it. Now, how much does this say about me and my longings? I think something like this would tell a reader more about a character than would three pages of description. It would tell us about her current politics and the political tradition from which she sprang, her people-pleasing, her longing for peace and her longing to belong, her way of diluting rage and frustration with humor, while also using her child as a prop, a little live Charlie McCarthy. The latter is horrifying, but it’s also sort of poignant. Maybe thirty-five years ago this woman had to perform for her parents’ friends. Maybe she was their little Charlie McCarthy. Maybe she and her therapist can discuss it for the next few months. And did this woman stop using her kid, once she realized what she was doing? No, she didn’t, and this tells us even more. She kept at it, long after the war was over, until one day she called to her three-and-a-half-year-old son, “Hey—what do we want?” And he said plaintively, “Lunch.” I once asked Ethan Canin to tell me the most valuable thing he knew about writing, and without hesitation he said, “Nothing is as important as a likable narrator. Nothing holds a story together better.” I think he’s right. If your narrator is someone whose take on things fascinates you, it isn’t really going to matter if nothing much happens for a long time. I could watch John Cleese or Anthony Hopkins do dishes for about an hour without needing much else to happen. Having a likable narrator is like having a great friend whose company you love, whose mind you love to pick, whose running commentary totally holds your attention, who makes you laugh out loud, whose lines you always want to steal. When you have a friend like this, she can say, “Hey, I’ve got to drive up to the dump in Petaluma—wanna come along?” and you honestly can’t think of anything in the world you’d rather do.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  Lamb HE KEEPS ASKING Trisha if she can handle it when he doesn’t know how to handle it himself! Abby’s pushing for him to take a stand, to insist Vix come back. She goes on and on about responsibility, making his head ache. He can see for himself Caitlin is miserable without Vix. Quit her job. Just sails the Sunfish all day. If he asks her anything she answers, What is this ... the Spanish Inquisition? What’s he supposed to do? Trisha tells him Vix is okay. She’s keeping an eye on things. The boy is from a decent family. They’re using birth control. Birth control! He doesn’t want to think of some boy taking advantage of Vix ... or Caitlin. And he remembers very well what boys of that age are after ... SOMETIMES VIX would get a pang, realizing it was already the middle of August, that summer would be over in a couple of weeks and she’d be thousands of miles away from Bru, a schoolgirl again. Maybe she should stay on island for senior year. She was sure Trisha would welcome the company, and if not, she and Bru could get a cabin. He’d been talking about moving out of his uncle’s house. She’d find an after-school job and help pay their expenses. That way they wouldn’t have to be apart. But she never had to make that decision because three weeks after she’d packed up and left Caitlin, while she was setting up tables for dinner, the manager came over and whispered that someone was here to see her, outside. Her first thought was Bru. But no ... it was Caitlin and, a few steps behind her, Lamb and Abby. Vix saw it right away, in the expression on

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  So on this particular holy day Absolon came out swinging his censer, and made sure to point it in the direction of the females of the parish. He could have pointed something else at them, too. He looked them up and down as they were wreathed in sweet smoke, and then presently he noticed the carpenter’s young wife. Wow. He could look at her all day. She was so pretty, so sweet, so, so, inviting. I dare say that if she had been a mouse, and he a cat, he would have pounced straight away. He would have been the cat who got the cream. He was so lost in love and longing that, when he went around with the collection bowl, he would not take a penny from any of the young women. Out of courtesy, he said. I think he was in a daze. Excuse me - At this point the Miller stopped, and refreshed himself with some ale; he put the flagon to his lips, and almost choked on it. The sound of his coughing and retching was horrible. But then he resumed his tale. That night, under the light of the full moon, Absolon took up his guitar; he fully expected to stay awake all night for the sake of love. So he wandered abroad, amorous and willing, and made his way to the house of the carpenter. Just before dawn, at the crowing of the cock, he stood beneath one of the casement windows. There he began softly to play the guitar and to sing this accompaniment: ‘Now, dear lady, if it pleases you, have pity on me.’ But his voice woke up the carpenter, who turned to his wife lying beside him. ‘Alison,’ he said. ‘Wake up. Can you hear the voice of Absolon? He is singing right beneath the window.’ All she said was, ‘Yes, John, I hear him. I hear him very clearly.’ So, as you would expect, matters took their course. Absolon, the unsuccessful wooer, becomes deeply unhappy. He fritters away the day and stays awake all night. He never stops combing his hair and looking at himself in the mirror. He sends notes to her by go-betweens and messengers. He swears to serve her faithfully. He sings to her, trilling like some nightingale. He sends her spiced wine, mead and ale; he even offers her money, to spend in town. Some women can be won by cash, you see, just as some can be lured by kindness or taken by force. It depends on the circumstances.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  It was reassuring for them that it was a real friendship, and not just a schoolgirl mash, that had me travelling so often to the Palace, and spending all my savings on the train fare; and yet, I thought I heard them ask themselves, what manner of friendship could there be between a handsome, clever music-hall artiste, and the girl in the crowd that admired her? When I said that Kitty had no young man (for I had found this out, early on, amongst the pieces of her history) Davy said that I should bring her home, and introduce her to my handsome brother - though he only said it when Rhoda was near, to tease her. When I spoke of brewing her pans of tea and tidying her table, Mother narrowed her eyes: ‘She’s doing all right out of you by the sound of it. It’s a little more help with the tea and the tables we could do with, from you, home here ...’ It was true, I suppose, that I rather neglected my duties in the house for the sake of my trips to the Palace. They fell to my sister, though she rarely complained about it. I believe my parents thought her generous, allowing me my freedom at her own expense. The truth was, I think, that she was squeamish of mentioning Kitty now - and by that alone I knew that it was she, more than any of them, who was uneasy. I had said nothing more to her about my passion. I had said nothing of my new, strange, hot desire to anyone. But she saw me, of course, as I lay in my bed; and, as anyone will tell you who has been secretly in love, it is in bed that you do your dreaming - in bed, in the darkness, where you cannot see your own cheeks pink, that you ease back the mantle of restraint that keeps your passion dimmed throughout the day, and let it glow a little. How Kitty would have blushed, to know the part she played in my fierce dreamings - to know how shamelessly I took my memories of her, and turned them to my own improper advantage !

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  Love, then, requires connection. This means that when you’re alone, thinking about those you love, reflecting on past loving connections, yearning for more, or even when you’re practicing loving-kindness meditation or writing an impassioned love letter, you are not in that moment experiencing true love. It’s true that the strong feelings you experience when by yourself are important and absolutely vital to your health and well-being. But they are not (yet) shared, and so they lack the critical and undeniably physical ingredient of resonance. Physical presence is key to love, to positivity resonance. The problem is that all too often, you simply don’t take the time that’s needed to truly connect with others. To the contrary, contemporary society, with its fast-changing technology and oppressive workloads, baits you to speed through your day at a pace that’s completely antithetical to connection. Feeling pressured to accomplish more each day, you multitask just to stay afloat. Any given moment finds you plotting your next move. What’s next on your never-ending to-do list? What do you need and from whom? Increasingly, you converse with others through e-mails, texts, tweets, and other ways that don’t require speaking, let alone seeing one another. Yet these can’t fulfill your body’s craving for connection. Love requires you to be physically and emotionally present. It also requires that you slow down. My second-born was such a good sleeper that my husband or I could place him in his crib awake and he’d happily drift off to sleep all on his own. Our firstborn was altogether different. He needed to be in our arms while he drifted off. He also needed a particular motion, one that we couldn’t achieve in the comfort of a rocking chair, but only by walking. For at least the first year of his life, then, my husband or I would slowly pace across the tiny nursery, holding him in our arms, for up to thirty minutes or more. He trained us well. We learned that we could only place him in his crib after he’d succumbed to a deep sleep. Anything less would lead to another long bout of pacing.

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  that “the desire for the mother or the sister, the murder of the father and the sons’ repentance undoubtedly do not correspond to any fact or group of facts occupying a given place in history. But perhaps they symbolically express an ancient and lasting dream.” 11 In an effort to affirm the psychoanalytic insight into unconscious incestuous fantasy, Lévi-Strauss refers to the “magic of this dream, its power to mould men’s thoughts unbeknown to them ... the acts it evokes have never been committed, because culture opposes them at all times and all places.” 12 This rather astonishing statement provides insight not only into Lévi-Strauss’s apparent powers of denial (acts of incest “have never been committed”!), but the central difficulty with assuming the efficacy of that prohibition. That the prohibition exists in no way suggests that it works. Rather, its existence appears to suggest that desires, actions, indeed, pervasive social practices of incest are generated precisely in virtue of the eroticization of that taboo. That incestuous desires are phantasmatic in no way implies that they are not also “social facts.” The question is, rather, how do such phantasms become generated and, indeed, instituted as a consequence of their prohibition? Further, how does the social conviction, here symptomatically articulated through Lévi-Strauss, that the prohibition is efficacious disavow and, hence, clear a social space in which incestuous practices are free to reproduce themselves without proscription? For Lévi-Strauss, the taboo against the act of heterosexual incest between son and mother as well as that incestuous fantasy are instated as universal truths of culture. How is incestuous heterosexuality constituted as the ostensibly natural and preartificial matrix for desire, and how is desire established as a heterosexual male prerogative? The naturalization of both heterosexuality and masculine sexual agency are discursive constructions nowhere accounted for but everywhere assumed within this founding structuralist frame. The Lacanian appropriation of Lévi-Strauss focuses on the prohibition against incest and the rule of exogamy in the reproduction of culture, where culture is understood primarily as a set of linguistic structures and significations. For Lacan, the Law which forbids the incestuous union between boy and mother initiates the structures of kinship, a series of highly regulated libidinal displacements that take place through language. Although the structures of language, collectively understood as the Symbolic, maintain an ontological integrity apart from the various speaking agents through whom they work, the Law reasserts and individuates itself within the terms of every infantile entrance into culture. Speech emerges only upon the condition of dissatisfaction, where dissatisfaction is instituted through incestuous prohibition; the original jouissance is lost through the primary repression that founds the subject. In its place emerges the sign which is similarly barred from the signifier and which seeks in what it signifies a recovery of that irrecoverable pleasure. Founded through that prohibition, the subject speaks only to displace desire onto the metonymic substitutions for that irretrievable pleasure.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  He dug into his pocket and pulled out a turquoise and silver ring. “It’s for you,” he said. I took it and turned it over in my hand. Mom had a collection of turquoise and silver Indian jewelry that she kept at Grandma’s house so Dad wouldn’t pawn it. Most of it was antique and very valuable—some man from a museum in Phoenix kept trying to buy pieces from her—and when we visited Grandma, Mom would let me and Lori put on the heavy necklaces and bracelets and concha belts. Billy’s ring looked like one of Mom’s. I ran it across my teeth and tongue like Mom had taught me to. I could tell by the slightly bitter taste that it was real silver. “Where’d you get this?” I asked. “It used to be my mom’s,” Billy said. It sure was a pretty ring. It had a simple thin band and an oval-shaped piece of dark turquoise held in place by snaking silver strands. I didn’t have any jewelry and it had been a long time since anyone had given me a present, except for the planet Venus. I tried on the ring. It was way too big for my finger, but I could wrap yarn around the band the way high school girls did when they wore their boyfriend’s rings. I was afraid, however, that if I took the ring, Billy might start thinking that I had agreed to be his girlfriend. He’d tell all the other kids, and if I said it wasn’t true, he’d point to the ring. On the other hand, I figured Mom would approve, since accepting it would make Billy feel good about himself. I decided to compromise. “I’ll keep it,” I said. “But I’m not going to wear it.” Billy’s smile spread all across his face. “But don’t think this means we’re boyfriend and girlfriend,” I said. “And don’t think this means you can kiss me.” • • • I didn’t tell anyone about the ring, not even Brian. I kept it in my pants pocket during the day, and at night I hid it in the bottom of the cardboard box where I kept my clothes. But Billy Deel had to go and shoot his mouth off about giving me the ring. He started telling the other kids things like how, as soon as I was old enough, me and him were going to get married. When I found out what he was saying, I knew accepting the ring had been a big mistake. I also knew I should return it. But I didn’t. I meant

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  The horse was free at one bound. It wriggled its arse And chewed on the grass. Fodder was solace. ‘Woe is me,’ Thopas lamented, ‘Why am I so demented For love? I dreamed last night That I had caught a bright Elf-queen under the sheets. What sexual feats I accomplished! ‘If my dreams could come true What deeds would I do. I really need a fairy queen, No mortal girl is worth a bean. All other women I forsake, A fairy girl is all I’ll take In country or in town.’ Then up on to his steed He jumped, in need Of action with a fairy queen. He rode along each hill and dale Looking for that certain female. Then quite by chance he found A secret spot of magic ground, The kingdom of the fairies. In truth it was a little scary And wild. And desolate. He was not surprised to see a giant Whose name was Oliphiant. He had a mace Which he aimed at the face Of Thopas, saying, ‘Get out Or I will give your horse a clout. The queen of fairy Lives in this aery Abode. It is not for you. Your horse is unwelcome, too.’ Sir Thopas turned red as rhubarb pie And said in angry voice ‘I defy You, Oliphiant, and I swear To aim my lance here where It hurts. Come out at break of day And I will show you my way Of dealing with giants.’