Mortification

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 A History of God (1993)

  They rejected mysterious doctrines about him that were abhorrent to reason. But their belief in a Supreme Being remained intact. Voltaire built a chapel at Ferney with the inscription “Deo Erexit Voltaire” inscribed on the lintel and went so far as to suggest that if God had not existed it would have been necessary to invent him. In the Philosophical Dictionary, he had argued that faith in one god was more rational and natural to humanity than belief in numerous deities. Originally people living in isolated hamlets and communities had acknowledged that a single god had control of their destinies: polytheism was a later development. Science and rational philosophy both pointed to the existence of a Supreme Being: “What conclusion can we draw from all this?” Voltaire asks at the end of his essay on “Atheism” in the Dictionary. He replies: That atheism is a monstrous evil in those who govern; and also in learned men even if their lives are innocent, because from their studies they can affect those who hold office; and that, even if it is not as baleful as fanaticism, it is nearly always fatal to virtue. Above all, let me add that there are fewer atheists today than there have ever been, since philosophers have perceived that there is no vegetative being without germ, no germ without design etc. 22 Voltaire equated atheism with the superstition and fanaticism that the philosophers were so anxious to eradicate. His problem was not God but the doctrines about him which offended against the sacred standard of reason. The Jews of Europe had also been affected by the new ideas. Baruch Spinoza (1632–77), a Dutch Jew of Spanish descent, had become discontented with the study of Torah and had joined a philosophical circle of Gentile freethinkers. He evolved ideas which were profoundly different from conventional Judaism and which had been influenced by scientific thinkers such as Descartes and the Christian scholastics. In 1656, at the age of twenty-four, he was formally cast out of the synagogue of Amsterdam. While the edict of excommunication was read out, the lights of the synagogue were gradually extinguished until the congregation was left in total darkness, experiencing for themselves the darkness of Spinoza’s soul in a God-less world: Let him be accursed by day and accursed by night; accursed in his lying down and his rising up, in going out and in coming in. May the Lord never more pardon or acknowledge him! May the wrath and displeasure of the Lord burn against this man henceforth, load him with all the curses written in the book of the law, and raze out his name from under the sky. 23 Henceforth Spinoza belonged to none of the religious communities of Europe. As such, he was the prototype of the autonomous, secular outlook that would become current in the West.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  15. Johannes Cochlaeus (“Georg Sachsen”), Hertzog Georgens zu Sachssen Ehrlich vnd grundtliche entschuldigung, wider Martin Luthers Auffruerisch vn[d] verlogenne brieff vnd Verantwortung, Dresden 1533 [VD 16 C 4323], fo. B iii (v). This pasquil went out under the name of Duke Georg of Saxony but was actually written by Luther’s long-standing enemy Cochlaeus. He repeated it in his prefatory letter to his biography of Luther, which was more widely read and appeared in 1549. The same accusation had also been made by Georg Witzel, and by Petrus Sylvius, Die Letzten zwey beschlisslich und aller krefftigest büchleyn M. Petri Sylvii, so das Lutherisch thun an seiner person…(Leipzig, 1534); Ian Siggins, “Luther’s Mother Margarethe,” Harvard Theological Review 71 (1978): 125–50, 132. 16. Siggins, “Luther’s Mother,” 133: He referred to it again in 1543 in On the Jews and their Lies; and see WT 3, 3838: In 1538 Luther recalled how Duke Georg called his mother a bath maid and him a wechselbalck, referring to the pamphlet written by Cochlaeus under the name of Duke Georg in 1533. 17. LW Letters, I, 145; WB 1, 239, 14 Jan. 1520, 610:20–23. 18. Topp, Historia, 8: There were of course other versions of this story. 19. Ibid., 6–32; Bergmann, Kommunalbewegung, 11–15; 33–37. 20. Topp, Historia, 10–13; see also Stadtarchiv Eisenach, Bestand Chroniken, 40:1/9:1 Chronik Joh. Michael Koch. 21. Chronik Eisenachs bis 1409 (ed. H. Helmbold), 27–40; Kremer, Beiträge. 22. WB 1, 157, 24(?), Feb. 1519, 353:29–30; WT 3, 3626; 3653. 23. Topp, Historia, 15. 24. Topp recounts the story of a statue of the Madonna and child in St. Paul’s monastery in the town, where, if one prayed before the image, Jesus would turn his back as if rejecting the sinner. But if one promised a donation to the monastery, Jesus would turn his face, and if one offered more money, he would bless the worshipper: Topp, Historia, 15. 25. LW 44, 172; WS 6, 438:18–22; WB 2, 262, Feb. 29, 1520. The discomfort about begging was long-standing: Luther later reminisced how, back at Mansfeld, with a fellow pupil, he went begging for sausage at carnival as was customary, but when a burgher teased them they fled, and the householder had to run after them with the sausages: WT 1, 137: Luther uses this story as a parable of the believer’s relationship to God; and he couples it, interestingly, with the story of his terror of the sacrament when Staupitz carried it in procession at Eisleben. 26. Brecht, Luther, I, 18. 27. The family gave so many donations to the monastery that it was locally known as the “Collegium Schalbense.” See Kremer, Beiträge, esp. 69 and 89. 28. Scherf, Bau- und Kunstdenkmale, 9.

• From Satyricon (1)

  “Gone are those locks that to thy beauty lent such lustrous charm And blighted are the locks of Spring by bitter Winter’s sway; Thy naked temples now in baldness mourn their vanished form, And glistens now that poor bare crown, its hair all worn away Oh! Faithless inconsistency! The gods must first resume The charms that first they granted youth, that it might lovelier bloom! Poor wretch, but late thy locks did brighter glister Than those of great Apollo or his sister! Now, smoother is thy crown than polished grasses Or rounded mushrooms when a shower passes! In fear thou fliest the laughter-loving lasses. That thou may’st know that Death is on his way, Know that thy head is partly dead this day!” CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND TENTH. It is my opinion that he intended favoring us with more of the same kind of stuff, sillier than the last, but Tryphaena’s maid led Giton away below and fitted the lad out in her mistress’ false curls; then producing some eyebrows from a vanity box, she skillfully traced out the lines of the lost features and restored him to his proper comeliness. Recognizing the real Giton, Tryphaena was moved to tears, and then for the first time she gave the boy a real love-kiss. I was overjoyed, now that the lad was restored to his own handsome self, but I hid my own face all the more assiduously, realizing that I was disfigured by no ordinary hideousness since not even Lycas would bestow a word upon me. The maid rescued me from this misfortune finally, however, and calling me aside, she decked me out with a head of hair which was none the less becoming; my face shone more radiantly still, as a matter of fact, for my curls were golden! But in a little while, Eumolpus, mouthpiece of the distressed and author of the present good understanding, fearing that the general good humor might flag for lack of amusement, began to indulge in sneers at the fickleness of women: how easily they fell in love; how readily they forgot even their own sons! No woman could be so chaste but that she could be roused to madness by a chance passion! Nor had he need to quote from old tragedies, or to have recourse to names, notorious for centuries; on the contrary, if we cared to hear it, he would relate an incident which had occurred within his own memory, whereupon, as we all turned our faces towards him and gave him our attention, he began as follows: CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVENTH.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  was an English Augustinian canon, exercised because when he had been admitted to the Augustinian Order he had taken on a new name, Augustine. He worried that if people offered prayers for him as ‘Augustine’, the prayer would not be as effective as if they had used his baptismal name of Henry, and he wanted his old name back. Rome gravely assured him that since the pope himself took a new name on assuming his office, there was no cause for concern.23 Naturally the unified Church of Gregory’s reforms needed a single system of law by which universal justice could be given, and the twelfth century was the first age when this began to be put in systematic form as canon law. There had once been just such a system of universal law: that of the Roman Empire. Now a great stimulus was the rediscovery in Italy around 1070 of two copies of a compilation of imperial law, the great Digest of Roman laws ordered by the Emperor Justinian (see pp. 433–4); this prompted a flourishing of legal studies in Italy, especially in the city of Bologna.24 If an emperor could once have gathered a definitive volume of laws, so now could the Bishop of Rome. The chief collection of existing laws and papal decisions which codifies canon law comes from mid-twelfth-century Bologna, and goes under the name of Gratian, about whom nothing else is known and who may only have been the mastermind behind one draft of what remained an unwieldy and disjointed document. Even though Gratian’s Decretum only gained official status from papal publication as late as 1917, from its earliest days it was the basis of Roman canon law – not least because of the vision which it embodied of a pyramid of Church authority culminating in the pope. Gratian made much use of the earlier fictions of pseudo-Isidore about papal authority (see pp. 351–2).25 The Decretum and canon law in general also specifically embodied that principle of the Gregorian Revolution that there were two classes of Christians, clerical celibates and laypeople. Only a century ago, this could still be pithily spelled out in an official papal pronouncement: ‘The Church is essentially an unequal society, that is, a society comprising two categories of persons, the pastors and the flock, those who occupy a rank in the different degrees of the hierarchy and the multitude of the faithful.’26 Given the new importance of canon law, it was no coincidence that every pope of significance between 1159 and 1303 was trained primarily as a canon lawyer.27 Bishops likewise developed their own administrations for local justice and Church order in their dioceses which reflected what was now happening centrally in Rome. The balance of local power in the Church between diocese and monastery was now tipping back in favour of bishops, after centuries in which abbots and indeed abbesses had characteristically been the leading figures

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  advanced scholarship of his day: he founded the University of Alcalá out of his own resources, and funded the printing of a great number of books particularly aimed at introducing the writings of his favourite mystics to a literate public. At the same time, he was responsible for burning thousands of non-Christian books and manuscripts, and he became Inquisitor-General in 1507, the same year that he was made cardinal. In the aftermath of the fall of Granada the Inquisition became central to the programme of eliminating the rival civilizations of the peninsula. It was not going to let up on the converso population just because conversos claimed to be Christian. This illogicality was aided by a sinister feature of the supposed martyrdom of the ‘Holy Child of La Guardia’ in 1490: the alleged perpetrators had been a mixed group of professed Jews and New Christians.56 The Inquisition not only sought out evidence of continued secret practice of Islam or Judaism, but reinforced an existing tendency in Spanish society to regard heresy and deviation as hereditary. So it became increasingly necessary for loyal Spanish Catholics to prove their limpieza de sangre (purity of blood), free of all mudéjar or Jewish taint. Evidence of converso descent ended one’s chances of receiving major promotion in the Church, such as a canonry in the chapter of Spain’s premier cathedral, Toledo. The main religious orders started insisting on limpieza de sangre, starting in 1486 with the influential native order much patronized by the nobility, the Jeronimites, closely followed by the Franciscans and Dominicans, as well as the secular clergy – in the end the Inquisition even required this assurance for its ‘familiars’, its network of spies and helpers. The authorities in Rome never liked the custom and did their best without much success to dismantle it, and there were ironies in this ideological use of genealogy: few of the higher Spanish nobility could claim such purity of blood, and they found themselves excluded from high office in the Church in favour of social inferiors who could prove their lack of taint.57 The Inquisition’s work was justified in the eyes of the reliably Catholic population, and led to a steady stream of spontaneously volunteered information, because there were real continuing challenges to Christian Spain, both internal and external. The general perception of Spain in the rest of Europe was that it remained an exotic place, full of Moors and Jews: a mortifying image for hypersensitive Catholic Spaniards (and so for the many in Europe who came to loathe Spanish power, also a useful theme with which to annoy them). Rebellions from the Morisco population continued well into the sixteenth century, and in 1609 there was finally a general expulsion order against 300,000 Moriscos, more than a century after Granada had fallen, the largest population expulsion anywhere in early modern Europe. After 1492, the Christianity of

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  reveals some interestingly individual features. Some of the mosaics in Sant’ Apollinare are contemporary with its construction in the early sixth century. Two sequences depicting the Court of Theoderic and notables at his port city of Classis both now make no visual sense, as the figures have rather ineptly been replaced by abstract mosaic designs; these heroic portrayals of a heretical monarch and his retinue could not be allowed a place of honour in what had become a Catholic building. One intact sequence of original mosaic friezes, safely remote from the viewer at the very highest level of the walls, although it spans the whole length of the church on either side of the nave, seems to emphasize the Arian view of the nature of Christ. It tells stories of Jesus Christ’s life on earth: on the north side of the church the miracle worker and teller of parables is depicted as a young beardless man, while on the south side, which shows the Passion and Resurrection, he is portrayed as older and bearded. So the Redeemer lives his life and grows and matures as a truly human being who suffers as a human and yet is resurrected for our sakes (see Plate 19). Theoderic thus proclaimed his Arian faith to the world with all the resources of Christian art and architecture. Despite bombing hits in both world wars of the twentieth century, Sant’ Apollinare and the other Ostrogothic survivals in Ravenna are among the few witnesses to Arian culture and literature, when virtually everything else produced by the Arians has been deliberately erased from the record. Here we glimpse the splendour and richness of Arian Christianity, elsewhere so successfully obliterated by the medieval Latin Church of the West. Alongside his lavish gifts to the Arian Church, Theoderic allowed the Catholic Church to flourish, and used the skills of Roman and Catholic aristocrats in his administration. The most distinguished and learned of them, Boethius, was also one of the least fortunate: his service at Court ended around 524 with his execution on charges of treasonous intrigue with the Byzantines. Yet he played a great part in shaping the future of Christian culture in the West. Boethius had a fluency in Greek which was increasingly rare in the West: he knew its literature widely and intimately. He had planned to undertake a major programme of translations of Plato and Aristotle into Latin; in the end he completed only a few of Aristotle’s treatises on logic, but books which could provide a structured framework for clear thinking were precious enough amid the increasingly scarce resources of scholarship in the West. Equally significant was the treatise which Boethius wrote in prison while awaiting execution, The Consolation of Philosophy. There is not much that is Christian about the Consolation: it is the work of a man whose intellectual formation has been in Neoplatonism. Yet that was part of its value. It embedded Plato in Western thought for the next few

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  Oxford Movement and its offshoots, so apparently backward-looking and medievalizing in both their origins and some of their later posturing, that they have found it much easier to cope with the Enlightenment than has Anglican Evangelicalism. Moreover, there is an often camp mischief about High Church Anglicanism. Many Anglo-Catholic clergy and laity have relished shocking bishops by their extravagant borrowings from Roman Catholic ritual. Since Anglo-Catholicism also borrowed from Rome an emphasis on clerical celibacy new to the Anglican tradition, celibate vocation to the priesthood created Victorian England’s only profession which did not raise an eyebrow at lifelong abstention from marriage. That frequently aroused the fears of the Victorian paterfamilias, paralleling the neurosis of the Catholic layman since the High Middle Ages that his wife or daughter would be seduced in the confessional by lustful celibate priests. The worries were generally groundless, partly because the unprecedented singleness of many Anglo-Catholic clergy had a rather different dimension. From its earliest phases in its eponymous university, the Oxford Movement came to host a male homosexual subculture which even the sexual liberation movements from the 1970s did not entirely absorb or supplant.69 ORTHODOXY: RUSSIA AND OTTOMAN DECAY While the nineteenth century saw victory for new centripetal forces in Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy’s renewal took place against the background of two very different experiences: in Russia, within an already monolithic Russian Church, and to the south, amid much institutional fragmentation caused by the decline of the Ottoman Empire. From the time of the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–74, the victorious Russian tsars claimed to be protectors of all Orthodox Christians under the sultan’s rule, and Catherine the Great extended Russian control over the kingdom of Georgia in the 1780s, taking care to leave intact its ancient independent Church, while bringing it under her control with a seat on the Holy Synod. As the Ottoman Empire further decayed, an exhilarating prospect emerged that an Orthodox tsar might ultimately take the sultan’s place and outdo the sway which Byzantine emperors once enjoyed in Orthodoxy; or that an assortment of Christian monarchs would once more rule Orthodox lands still under Ottoman control. Both these alternatives nevertheless pointed to a steep decline in the power which the Oecumenical Patriarch exercised among the various nationalities constituting Orthodoxy. He had long been so identified with the privilege and

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  “You must learn your place!” Dunsmore barked. “Accustom yourself to your future duties, create issue.” Sebastian shook his head. “Stay out of my life and my business. Stay away from my wife. I won’t tell you again.” Her father reached for her. “Come, Olivia. We’re leaving.” “She goes nowhere without me,” Sebastian warned without taking his eyes from his father. “You are welcome to stay in my home if you like, Mr. Lambert, but Olivia’s place is with her husband. With me.” “I don’t even know you!” Jack bellowed. “How can I trust my daughter to your care?” “Father!” she beseeched, alarmed at his vehemence. She had no wish to defy him, but Sebastian was her life now. She prayed she wouldn’t be forced to choose between the only two people who mattered. “Please!” “You shall have plenty of opportunity to become acquainted with me,” Sebastian said as he returned to her side and reclaimed her arm in an obvious declaration of possession. “My father is correct. It is far too late for an annulment.” His implication was clear—she’d been compromised. Olivia flushed, mortified. Her father searched her face, his own tight with concern. “Livy?” “Come with us, Father.” She glanced at Lord Dunsmore. “I do not think I can remain here another moment.” Sebastian nodded. “I agree. We’ve finished our business.” He gestured with his free hand toward the door. “Mr. Lambert. Will you join us?” “Of course.” He shot a furious glare at the marquess. “I am not done with you, my lord. You should have held a care for your reputation. I care only for Olivia.” Dunsmore arched a scornful brow. “Of course. You care so much for your daughter, you would marry her to a stranger without even an introduction. You’re a paragon of paternal affection.” Jack flushed. “I considered her welfare. You cared only for your own.” Olivia stared at the marquess and was certain she’d never met a man as devoid of emotion. He appeared to care nothing for the enmity directed toward him from all sides. She shivered merely from being in the same room with him and wondered how a man as warm and vibrant as her husband could have come from such a father. “Where is your gratitude, Sebastian?” the marquess asked. “I procured you a beautiful bride and a hefty dowry. Of course, she’s not but a merchant’s daughter, but since you weren’t here to see to the matter yourself, you should be appreciative in any case. In fact, you strike me as unfashionably smitten, which suits the rest of your appearance.” The hatred that poured from Sebastian poisoned the air. “You may insult me at your leisure, Father, but keep your talons out of my wife. It is only my . . . appreciation for her that prevents me from tearing you apart with my bare hands.”

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  Crap! I feel my cheeks heating, so I distract her with flattery, always a good ploy. “You probably would have gotten a lot more out of him.” “I doubt that, Ana. Come on—he practically offered you a job. Given that I foisted this on you at the last minute, you did very well.” She glances up at me speculatively. I make a hasty retreat into the kitchen. “So what did you really think of him?” she calls after me. Damn, she’s inquisitive. Why can’t she just let this go? Think of something—quick. “He’s very driven, controlling, arrogant—scary, but very charismatic. I can understand the fascination,” I add truthfully, hoping this will shut her up once and for all. “You, fascinated by a man?” She snorts. “That’s a first.” I start gathering the makings of a sandwich so she can’t see my face. “Why did you want to know if he was gay? Incidentally, that was the most embarrassing question. I was mortified, and he was pissed to be asked, too.” I scowl at the memory. “Whenever he’s in the society pages, he never has a date.” “It was embarrassing. The whole thing was embarrassing. I’m glad I’ll never have to lay eyes on him again.” “Oh, Ana, it can’t have been that bad. I think he sounds quite taken with you.” Taken with me? Now Kate’s being ridiculous. “Would you like a sandwich?” “Please.” We talk no more of Christian Grey that evening, much to my relief. Once we’ve eaten, I’m able to sit at the dining table with Kate, and while she works on her article, I work on my essay on Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Damn, that woman was in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong century. By the time I finish, it’s midnight, and Kate has long since gone to bed. I make my way to my room, exhausted but pleased that I’ve accomplished so much for a Monday. I curl up in my white iron bed, wrap my mother’s quilt around me, close my eyes, and am instantly asleep. That night, I dream of dark places; bleak, cold white floors, and gray eyes. For the rest of the week, I throw myself into my studies and my job at Clayton’s. Kate is busy, too, compiling her last edition of the student newspaper before she has to relinquish it to the new editor while also cramming for her finals. By Wednesday, she’s much better, and I no longer have to endure the sight of her pink-flannel-with-too-many-rabbits PJs.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Lancelot could hardly contain his joy at the thought of finally being in his lady's presence. But to his shock, she seemed angry, and would not look at her rescuer. She told Meleagant's father, "Sire, in truth he has wasted his efforts. I shall always deny that I feel any gratitude toward him." Lancelot was mortified but he did not complain. Much later, after undergoing innu- merable further trials, she finally relented and they became lovers. One day he asked her: when she had been abducted by Meleagant, had she heard the story of the cart, and how he had disgraced knighthood? Was that why she had treated him so coldly that day? The queen replied, "By delaying for two steps you showed your unwillingness to climb into it. That, to tell the truth, is why I didn't wish to see you or speak with you." Interpretation. The opportunity to do your selfless deed often comes upon you suddenly. You have to show your worth in an instant, right there on the spot. It could be a rescue situation, a gift you could make or a favor you could do, a sudden request to drop everything and come to their aid. What matters most is not whether you act rashly, make a mistake, and do some- thing foolish, but that you seem to act on their behalf without thought for yourself or the consequences. At moments like these, hesitation, even for a few seconds, can ruin all the hard work of your seduction, revealing you as self-absorbed, unchival- rous, and cowardly. This, at any rate, is the moral of Chrétien de Troyes's twelfth-century version of the story of Lancelot. Remember: not only what you do matters, but how you do it. If you are naturally self-absorbed, learn to disguise it. React as spontaneously as possible, exaggerating the ef- fect by seeming flustered, overexcited, even foolish—love has driven you to that point. If you have to jump into the cart for Guinevere's sake, make sure she sees that you do it without the slightest hesitation. 5. In Rome sometime around 1531, word spread of a sensational young woman named Tullia d'Aragona. By the standards of the period, Tullia was not a classic beauty; she was tall and thin, at a time when the plump and voluptuous woman was considered the ideal.

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  I do not know of any other contemporary scientific debate in which one side has actually been branded as wicked! Not even cold fusion! Clearly, this is not an everyday scientific debate. In a striking reprise of St. George Mivart’s moralizing tone, Grafen’s outsized response indicates the intellectual magnitude of what is at stake. Darwin’s really dangerous idea—aesthetic evolution—is so threatening to adaptationism that it must be branded as wicked. Nearly one hundred years after Wallace advocated his pure form of Darwinism, Grafen deploys the same Wallacean insistence to try to win the debate again. Grafen’s reasoning struck a chord. Although personal comfort is not a scientifically justifiable criterion, many people, including scientists, do want to believe that the world is filled with “rhyme and reason.” So, even though Grafen merely demonstrated that there were conditions under which the handicap principle could work, he so discredited the Fisherian theory that most evolutionary biologists concluded that the handicap principle not only could work but would work—all the time. If belief in the alternative hypothesis is “wicked,” there’s little choice to make. Adaptive mate choice has dominated the scientific discourse ever since. In comparing the intellectual styles of Zahavi and Fisher, Grafen wrote that “Fisher’s idea is too clever by half” but that “Zahavi’s upward struggle from fact will triumph.” This distinction between cleverness and fact also lent itself to a narrative in which the proponents of arbitrary Fisherian mate choice were cast as pointy-headed mathematicians with no appreciation of the natural world, while adaptationist advocates of the handicap principle were seen as salt-of-the-earth natural historians. Matt Ridley brought this distinction to vivid life in his 1993 book, The Red Queen: The split between Fisher and Good-genes began to emerge in the 1970s once the fact of female choice had been established to the satisfaction of most. Those of a theoretical or mathematical bent—the pale, eccentric types umbilically attached to their computers—became Fisherians. Field biologists and naturalists—bearded, besweatered, and booted—gradually found themselves to be Good-geners. Ironically, I find that I have been written out of the historical narrative of my own discipline. I have spent cumulative years of my life in tropical forests on multiple continents studying avian courtship displays. I have been as “bearded, besweatered, and booted” as any field biologist. Yet I have also been an ardent and inquisitive “Fisherian” since the mid-1980s. According to the Grafen and Ridley narrative, I do not exist. Neither does Darwin, a naturalist who certainly put in his time in the field. Odder still, neither does Grafen, who is primarily a mathematician. Unfortunately, Ridley’s scenario also eliminates from consideration all female field biologists and naturalists. (Sorry, Jane Goodall and Rosemary Grant!) Of course, the function of this kind of intellectual fable is to obscure the actual complexity of the issues, to use rhetoric to claim the higher ground by portraying adaptationists as romantic figures with deeper personal connections to nature and to knowledge.

• From Querelle (1953)

  "Just what us old sea dogs ought to chomp on," he said to himself, ((the balls of handsome young men." Circumspectly, he turned round again . In front of the sprawling sailors, who from this distance looked like one great blob of virility, stood Querclle, his back to the Lieutenant. And Seblon caught just the righ t moment to see him bending his strong legs in their white ducks, hands resting on buttocks, straining ( the Lieutenant envisaged the congested face and the smile of the crewman waiting for deliverance, his eyes bulging out of his head, his smile freezing ) , straining even harder, and then letting fly-straight at him-a barraee of sonorous, lively, roughand-tumble farts-so loud that they seemed to rend those glorious white bell-bottoms truly from top to bottom ( Querelle did, indeed, refer to them as his "farting-gear" ) -greeted by a thousand cheers and salutes, the gales of laugh ter emitted by his buddies. 1\.,tortified, the Lieutenant quickly averted his eyes and 136 I JEAN GENET moved off. Querelle accomplished the most dangerous of his delights without consciously choosing to include a mistake ·in them, but as soon as he left the scene of a robbery, or even a murder, he immediately perceived the mistakes-at times, the several mistakes-he had, inadvertently, made. Quite often they weren't anything much. Some slight slip in the very act, a shaky hand, a cigarette lighter left behind in the dead man's fingers, a · silhouette shadow he had cast on some bright surface that he thought might have remained there permanently; bagatelles, certainly, yet sometimes he even feared that his eyes-having taken in the image-might render his victim visible to others. After each one of his crimes he reviewed it in his mind. That was when he discovered the mistake. His amazing retrospective lucidity uncovered the only one he had made. (There always was at least one. ) And then, so as not to be devoured by despair, with a smile on his lips, Querelle offered up this mistake, this error of his, to his guardian star. He convinced himself of the affective equivalent of this thought: "We'll see. I did it on purpose. On purpose. And isn't that a big joke." But instead of being down in the mouth with fear, he felt elated by it, living, as he did, in a deep, violent and finally organic belief in his lucky star. His smile was an act of sympathetic magic, directed at that star. He was certain that such a deity, the protector of assassins, was a joyful one-the sadness one could see, and even he could sometimes discern in that smile, rising into his consciousness only in those moments when he felt aware of the absolute loneliness such a most particular destiny imposed on him. "What would I do if I hadn't got it?" Which was as much as to say : "What would I be, without it?

• From Escape (2007)

  We took the shuttle bus to our hotel. I sat next to Merril, which sent Tammy into the stratosphere. She started badgering him. “Father, are Cathleen and I part of this trip, too?” Merril was unresponsive. Tammy continued, “Father, who are you planning on sleeping with tonight?” Her questions got more specific. “Why are you sitting by Carolyn again? Are you only going to have sex with her? Do we get to be included?” The other tourists were trying not to stare at this freak show. I was mortified. Even the other couples from Colorado City seemed to be embarrassed. My father was blushing. I knew Tammy’s bizarre talk made him uncomfortable. Merril acted as though he were somewhere else. He did not react as Tammy dredged up all of our dirty laundry and flung it in his face. When we got to the hotel, Merril said he had a bad headache. He told Cathleen and me to take one of the two rooms and kissed us both good night. Tammy felt like she’d just been crowned queen. Cathleen was in a terrible mood, still frothing mad about the way she had been treated on the plane. I tried to talk to her, but she refused. Not much time had passed before Tammy was knocking on our door. She was extremely upset and agitated. Merril had told her he had a headache and went right to sleep. He refused to have sex with her. She wanted our sympathy because we were both pregnant and she was not. But she did not get it. She was maddening, manipulative, and mean. Cathleen and I ordered dinner from room service. She refused to speak to me, so we ate in silence. Welcome to paradise. Early the next morning, Merril knocked on our door and asked if we were ready for breakfast. We followed him to an exquisite garden restaurant overlooking the ocean. I was awed by the beauty surrounding us. The air smelled salty and the breeze, silky. I wanted to drink in the intense colors, but the day’s first fiasco was already launched—who would get to sit next to Merril? Tammy had taken one seat and I the other. In the confrontation that ensued, Cathleen ended up refusing even to eat at our table. Tammy continued her rant: “You sat next to him on the plane and on the shuttle bus….” The waitress came to take our order, but she had to wait until Tammy’s tirade subsided. We finally ordered, ate, and left for our first day of sight-seeing. The other couples rented snappy convertibles to zip around Oahu. But Merril rented a van. I think he was determined that none of us would enjoy the trip. It was his way of retaliating for not being able to bring Barbara along.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Kitty felt that Anna was looking at her with hostile eyes. She ascribed this hostility to the awkward position in which Anna, who had once patronized her, must feel with her now, and she felt sorry for her. They talked of Kitty’s illness, of the baby, of Stiva, but it was obvious that nothing interested Anna. “I came to say good-bye to you,” she said, getting up. “Oh, when are you going?” But again not answering, Anna turned to Kitty. “Yes, I am very glad to have seen you,” she said with a smile. “I have heard so much of you from everyone, even from your husband. He came to see me, and I liked him exceedingly,” she said, unmistakably with malicious intent. “Where is he?” “He has gone back to the country,” said Kitty, blushing. “Remember me to him, be sure you do.” “I’ll be sure to!” Kitty said naïvely, looking compassionately into her eyes. “So good-bye, Dolly.” And kissing Dolly and shaking hands with Kitty, Anna went out hurriedly. “She’s just the same and just as charming! She’s very lovely!” said Kitty, when she was alone with her sister. “But there’s something piteous about her. Awfully piteous!” “Yes, there’s something unusual about her today,” said Dolly. “When I went with her into the hall, I fancied she was almost crying.” Chapter 29 Anna got into the carriage again in an even worse frame of mind than when she set out from home. To her previous tortures was added now that sense of mortification and of being an outcast which she had felt so distinctly on meeting Kitty. “Where to? Home?” asked Pyotr. “Yes, home,” she said, not even thinking now where she was going.

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

  Margo has casually dated around since her divorce. Her ex wanted “a Stepford Wife… a plastic princess,” she explains, and she isn’t eager to get married again. But after turning forty, she resolved to find herself a “steady man.” “No more affairs going nowhere,” she reminds herself early in her and Andrew’s courtship. “From now on she was only interested in men who wanted to settle down… He would have plenty of experience with women, her steady man, and with life, so that settling down with her would be a pleasant relief.” When Andrew’s sublet is up just a few months after they’ve been dating, Margo invites him to move in. She knows it’s quick but as soon as the words are out of her mouth, she’s excited. “She tried to think reasonably, but she couldn’t,” she says. “She wanted to jump up and shout, Yes, move in with me but a mature adult did not react solely on an emotional level. A mature adult thought things through, considered both sides of the issue.” So Margo checks herself. “There would be a million complications,” she admits. Good-naturedly, Andrew agrees, but they resolve to go on the adventure anyway. The complications are real, and they include B.B., Sara—who openly wants to Parent Trap her mom and dad—Stuart, and, topping the list, Michelle. Michelle is horrified that her mother is letting Andrew move in with them, and she isn’t shy about telling her so. Ten days after Andrew has officially become the new roommate, Margo throws a dinner party with a few friends. Everything is rolling along smoothly until a conversational lull, when Michelle seizes on the chance to chat up Andrew in front of the group. “Did you know when we first moved to town my mother joined Man-of-the-Month club?” she asks sarcastically, before rattling off the names of Margo’s former lovers. Margo is mortified but Andrew takes it in stride. “Oh, those were just alternative selections, Michelle,” he jokes. “They don’t count.” Soon, we find out that Michelle is hazing Andrew as a way of protecting her family. “Michelle had set out to test Andrew as soon as he’d moved in, because it was better to find out now if he could take it, and if he couldn’t, to get rid of him quickly, before she got to know him and like him.” As she confesses to Stuart, Michelle is tired of riding her mother’s emotional roller coaster, sick of being ignored when Margo is happy and getting dragged down with her when she’s miserable. “I’m the one who has to suffer through it every time one of her love affairs fizzles,” Michelle tells her brother defensively, after he scolds her for being obnoxious at dinner. “Me… not you!” We learn that Michelle is harboring quieter resentments, too, ones she doesn’t admit to Stuart. Michelle writes poems that she’d like to show to Margo but she talks herself out of it. “One day, Margo would be sorry,” Michelle says.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Zora rested her backside on the lip of the kitchen table. ‘And I’ve got a bombshell for the next faculty meeting.’  On Beauty Howard put on his interested face – but it was spring, and he wanted to go into the garden and sniff the flowers, and maybe take his first swim of the year and towel off upstairs, and lie naked on the marital bed he had so recently been allowed to return to, and pull his wife on to that bed with him and make love to her. ‘The discretionaries?’ said Zora. She lowered her eyes to avoid the bright, reflected sun streaming through the house. It dappled the walls and made the whole place look like it was underwater. ‘I don’t think that’s going to be a problem any more.’ ‘Oh, no? How so?’ ‘Well . . . it turns out that Monty’s fucking Chantelle – a student,’ said Zora, speaking the expletive with particular vulgarity. ‘One of the discretionaries he was trying to get rid of.’ ‘ No .’ ‘Yes. Can you believe it? A student. He was probably fucking her before his wife even died.’ Howard slapped the sides of his chair jubilantly. ‘Well, my God . What a tricky bastard. Moral majority my arse . Well, you’ve got him. My God! You should go in there and spit-roast him. Destroy him!’ Zora forced her fake nails, left over from the party, into the underside of the table top. ‘That’s your advice?’ ‘Oh, absolutely. How could you resist? His head’s on a platter! Deliver him up.’ Zora looked up to the ceiling, and when she looked down a tear was working its way down her face. ‘It’s not true, is it, Dad?’ Howard’s face stayed the same. It took a minute. The Victoria incident was so happily concluded in his mind that it was a mental stretch to remember that this did not mean the incident was not a real thing in the world, capable of discovery. ‘I saw Victoria Kipps last night. Dad? ’ Howard held his expression in place. ‘And Jerome thinks . . .’ said Zora, with difficulty, ‘somebody said something and Jerome thinks . . .’ Zora hid her wet face behind her elbow. ‘It’s not true, is it?’  on beauty and being wrong Howard put a hand over his mouth. He had just seen the step after this and the step after that, all the way to the awful end. ‘I . . . oh, God, Zora . . . oh, God . . . I don’t know what to say to you.’ Here Zora used an ancient English expletive, very loudly. Howard stood up and took a step towards her. Zora put her arm out to stop him. ‘Defended,’ said Zora, opening her eyes very wide in amaze-ment, letting the tears course down. ‘Defended and defended and defended you .’ ‘Please, Zoor – ’ ‘Against Mom! I took your side !’

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  To which we mounted, making, I remember, the most civilized small talk on the way and even continuing it for some moments after we were in the room in which there was certainly nothing to be seen but the familiar poverty and disorder of that precarious group of people of whatever age, race, country, calling, or intention which Paris recognizes as les ctudia nts and sometimes, more ironically and precisely, as les nonconformistes. Then he moved to my bed, and in a terrible flash, not quite an instant before he lifted the bedspread, I understood what he was looking for. We looked at the sheet, on which I read, for the first time, lett ered in the most brilliant scarlet I have ever seen, the name of the hotel from which it had been stolen. It was the first time the word stolen entered my mind. I had certainly seen the hotel mon ogram the day I put the sheet on the bed. It had simply meant nothing to me. In New York I had seen hotel monograms on evel)'t hing from silver to soap and towels. Taking things from New York hotels was practically a custom, though, I suddenly EQUAL IN PARIS 105 realized, I had ne,·er known anyone to take a sheet. Sadly, and without a word to me, the inspector took the sheet from the bed, folded it under his arm, and we started back downstairs. I und erstood that I was under arrest. And so we passed through the lobby, four of us, two of us ,·ery clearly criminal, under the eyes of the old man and his daughter, neither of whom said a word, into the streets where a light rain was falling. And I asked, in French, "But is this very serious?" For I was thinking, it is, after all, only a sheet, not e\·en new. "No," said one of them. "I t's not serious ." "It's nothing at all," said the other. I took this to mean that we would recei,·e a reprimand at the police station and be allowed to go to dinner. Later on I concluded that they were not being hypocritical or e,·en trying to comf ort us. They meant exactly what they said. It was only that they spoke another language. In Paris e,·erything is ,·ery slow. Also, when dealing \\ith the bureaucracy, the man you are talking to is ne,·er the man you ha,·e to see. The man you ha,·e to see has just gone off to Belgium, or is busy "ith his family, or has just discovered that he is a cuckold; he "ill be in next Tuesday at three o'clock, or sometime in the course of the afternoon, or pos sibly tomorrow, or, possibly, in the next fh·e minutes. But if he is coming in the next fi,•e minutes he "ill be far too busy to be able to see you today.

• From Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition (2004)

  471 Oscar Wilde Lecture 72 Having made a sensation with his novel, Wilde turned to the writing of plays. Of these the most notorious is Salome, written in French and fi rst published in France in 1893. In the following summer, a London production of the play with Sarah Bernhardt in the title role was banned by the Lord Chamberlain, the licenser of plays. B orn in Dublin and educated—after early schooling in Ireland— at Oxford, Wilde distinguished himself for his dandi fi ed dress, fl amboyant behavior, contempt for conventional morality, and command of classical literature. After publishing a volume of poems and a novel and writing several plays about London society, as well as one about Salome, he wrote his wittiest play, The Importance of Being Earnest, which opened in London in the winter of 1895. In this play, Wilde puts his own special twist on a theme long established in English literature: the theme of the foundling. Though Jack Worthing is a foundling with no idea who his parents are, he’s fabulously rich and, by the middle of the play, freshly engaged to the young woman he wants to marry. His only problem lies in his name, which is not Ernest—until a last-minute revelation shows that it really is Ernest, which makes his marriage possible and punningly demonstrates, at the very end of the play, “the vital Importance of Being Ernest.” But Wilde’s own end was anything but witty. Arrested, tried, and convicted for homosexual activity, he was sentenced to two years at hard labor, and not long after his release, he died a broken man. Lady Bracknell’s interrogation of Jack in the fi rst act of The Importance of Being Earnest shows how Wilde puts his own special twist on the well- established theme of the foundling. Interviewing Jack Worthing, who hopes to marry her daughter, Lady Bracknell is dismayed to learn that he is a foundling. He has no idea who his parents are. He knows only that he was found in a handbag left at London’s Victoria Station. In the classic version of the foundling story, a child of obscure parentage who has been humbly raised turns out to come from noble parents and is

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  The first day of the third week, the lawyer came out of his office, stiffer than usual, his eyes lit up in a peculiar, stalking way. He was carrying one of my letters. He put it on my desk, right in front of me. “Look at it,” he said. I did. “Do you see that?” “What?” I asked. “This letter has three typing errors in it, one of which is, I think, a spelling error.” “I’m sorry.” “This isn’t the first time either. There have been others that I let go because it was your first few weeks. But this can’t go on. Do you know what this makes me look like to the people who receive these letters?” I looked at him, mortified. There had been a catastrophe hidden in the folds of my contentment for two weeks and he hadn’t even told me. It seemed unfair, although when I thought about it I could understand his reluctance, maybe even embarrassment, to draw my attention to something so stupidly unpleasant. “Type it again.” I did, but I was so badly shaken that I made even more mistakes. “You are wasting my time,” he said, and handed it to me once again. I typed it correctly the third time, but he sulked in his office for the rest of the day. This kind of thing kept occurring all week. Each time, the lawyer’s irritation and disbelief mounted. In addition, I sensed something else growing in him, an intimate tendril creeping from one of his darker areas, nursed on the feeling that he had discovered something about me. I was very depressed about the situation. When I went home in the evening I couldn’t take a nap. I lay there looking at the gray weather poodle and fantasized about having a conversation with the lawyer that would clear up everything, explain to him that I was really trying to do my best. He seemed to think that I was making the mistakes on purpose. At the end of the week he began complaining about the way I answered the phone. “You’re like a machine,” he said. “You sound like you’re in the Twilight Zone. You don’t think when you respond to people.” When he asked me to come into his office at the end of the day, I thought he was going to fire me. The idea was a relief, but a numbing one. I sat down and he fixed me with a look that was speculative but benign, for him. He leaned back in his chair in a comfortable way, one hand dangling sideways from his wrist. To my surprise, he began talking to me about my problems, as he saw them. “I sense that you are a very nice but complex person, with wild mood swings that you keep hidden. You just shut up the house and act like there’s nobody home.” “That’s true,” I said. “I do that.”

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  I stood there for another twenty minutes, trying to convince her to come inside, but she kept saying “no.” She wouldn’t get out of the car. Finally, I said, “Okay, I’ll be right back.” I ran inside and found Bongani. “Where have you been?” he said. “I’m here! But my date’s in the car and she won’t come in.” “What do you mean she won’t come in?” “I don’t know what’s going on. Please help me.” We went back out to the parking lot. I took Bongani over to the car, and the second he saw her he lost it. “Jesus in Heaven! This is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. You said she was beautiful, Trevor, but this is insane.” In an instant he completely forgot about helping me with Babiki. He turned and ran back inside and called to the guys. “Guys! You gotta come see this! Trevor got a date! And she’s beautiful! Guys! Come out here!” Twenty guys came running out into the parking lot. They clustered around the car. “Yo, she’s so hot!” “Dude, this girl came with Trevor?” Guys were gawking at her like she was an animal at the zoo. They were asking to take pictures with her. They were calling back to more people inside. “This is insane! Look at Trevor’s date! No, no, no, you gotta come and see!” I was mortified. I’d spent four years of high school carefully avoiding any kind of romantic humiliation whatsoever, and now, on the night of the matric dance, the night of all nights, my humiliation had turned into a circus bigger than the event itself: Trevor the undatable clown thought he was going to have the most beautiful girl at the dance, but he’s crashing and burning so let’s all go outside and watch. Babiki sat in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead, refusing to budge. I was outside the car, pacing, stressed out. A friend of mine had a bottle of brandy that he’d smuggled into the dance. “Here,” he said, “have some of this.” Nothing mattered at that point, so I started drinking. I’d fucked up. The girl didn’t like me. The night was done. Most of the guys eventually wandered back inside. I was sitting on the pavement, taking swigs from the brandy bottle, getting buzzed. At some point Bongani went back over to the car to try one last time to convince Babiki to come in. After a minute his head popped up over the car with this confused look. “Yo, Trevor,” he said, “your date does not speak English.” “What?” “Your date. She does not speak any English.” “That’s not possible.” I got up and walked over to the car. I asked her a question in English and she gave me a blank stare. Bongani looked at me. “How did you not know that your date does not speak English?” “I…I don’t know.” “Have you never spoken to her?” “Of course I have—or, wait…have I?”