Pride As Defense

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 Detransition, Baby (2021)

  He has enough experience with coming out to know that insisting he wasn’t doing anything to her would only escalate the moment. Instead, he fights an impulse to stoop and gather the printouts back into their folder. The Reddit forum printouts now seem more glaring, more deviant than if she had tossed all five months’ worth of their selfies and sexts. Still, he doesn’t move. She’s standing with one shoulder forward now, like a boxer, and although it’d be completely out of character, he’s not sure that if he leans down, she won’t pop him in the eye. But then, abruptly, she startles, and whirls. Josh, from the biz dev department, stares at them through the glass partition. When Katrina catches him gawking, he leans toward the kitchenette and snatches an apple from the wire basket hanging by the door. But he can’t help himself, and turns back to regard the office diorama through the glass. He gives Ames a quick yikes, bro face. Katrina stares at Josh. She’s visibly upset, her in-control-boss demeanor still largely disassembled. “Hello, Josh,” Katrina says curtly through the glass. Josh is so enthralled by the scene that he doesn’t seem to notice a break of the fourth wall. Decisively, she takes two steps, ignoring the scattered printouts, and opens the door. From the hallway, she spins and glares at Ames. “Can you please pick up that file I dropped”—she points at the papers scattered on the floor—“and bring it by my office in about an hour? I’m late for a call right now. But we can discuss this further then.” “Of course,” Ames says. “Can’t wait.” Ames stoops to gather the papers. Josh waits until Katrina has rounded the hallway corner, leans in the door left wide open by her exit, tosses the apple in the air, catches it, and smirks down at Ames. “Lover’s spat?” Josh asks. “Your fountain of youth doesn’t seem to have run dry yet,” observes Ames, sneaking a look at Reese’s face as they move into a shady eddy in the slowly drifting current of idlers taking in the April sun of Prospect Park. She looks to him much as she had in her twenties. In fact, she’s softer even—in her lavender-and-white-checked dress, she flaunts that pear shape that women’s magazines identify as a body type one must dress carefully to flatteringly de-emphasize, but that Reese always not-so-quietly prized as a marker of uncommon passibility. His own period of softly estrogenated vampire skin had slowed the onset of cracks and furrows, but when his skin roughened again and the stubble poked through once more, a few gray scouts had camped among the darker hairs. He had carefully shaved them this morning. Both as a man hiding any signs of aging before he sees an ex for the first time in years, and confusingly, out of a dormant sense of competitiveness, an urge to show himself off as still a beauty.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  He has put the women at a big table by the kitchen, and has been bringing out all sorts of delicate Italian desserts special for them, all of which taste to Reese like York Peppermint Patties dressed up in pretension, although the other less aggressively anointed women note for each other many other complex flavors, none of which are peppermint. Finally, the Empress of Dry Cleaning announces, “Okay, I can’t wait any longer. I have to know everything.” She is trying to be excited and bubbly, socially proper for some kind of impromptu baby shower, but the phrasing suggests a note of concern. Katrina explains with much less of a sales pitch than Reese was expecting. It’s not exactly like Reese wants Katrina to lie to her friends, but she doesn’t even try to soft-pedal it. Reese’s sense of her own gender does not allow her to make sports analogies, but like, Katrina is doing the thing where the guy who throws the ball does so with no spin whatsoever. What is Katrina doing? She has to know this is a weird thing to tell her friends. That she had an affair with her employee, who turned out to be hiding that he was a former transsexual woman, which is why he mistakenly thought he was sterile, and now Katrina is going to raise the baby with him and his ex-girlfriend, another transsexual. Katrina’s friends’ smiles have dimmed, and the creases of worry between their eyes have deepened. “It’s not as weird as it sounds,” Reese says, trying to make her voice bright. “Yes, it is,” Katrina says, “but that’s okay; that’s what I want to express. That, yes, it’s like, not how most people get pregnant, or how most people raise a family. But we’ve thought it through. It’s exciting. I’m excited not to do the heteronormative thing.” And suddenly Reese gets what is happening. That word “heteronormative” reveals the game to her. She thought that she was the one coming out. But no, Katrina is coming out as queer to her friends. That’s why she’s being so aggressive about it. This is the path of the baby queers. The borderline confrontational assertion: This is what I am, got a problem with it? It is delivered with all the zealotry of the recent convert, who has yet to be bludgeoned into weariness and compromise for her ways, who believes that the new religion holds the answers lacking in her old one. Even more revelatory to Reese: Katrina is defiantly excited! She thinks this queerness makes her interesting! Katrina’s friends trade discreet but doubtful expressions. They are still a few steps behind. “So the man”—Kathy tries—“the father, I mean, he is a man?” “What?” Katrina says. “She means is he coming or going?” clarifies the Empress of Dry Cleaning, then adds for Reese’s benefit, “No offense.”

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  "You don't understand," he said. "I have my mother and four sisters in St-Denis and I send it all to them." He made a new gesture he had at his disposal, parting his moustache with thumb and forefinger and sweeping his palm across his mouth in a way suggestive of secrecy or an only partial truth. It may sound odd but I liked the hint of pretence, it was a relief from his coltish openheartedness, even if I was the one to be exploited. "All right, I'll get you a coat," I said, knocking back the rest of my drink and handing him the empty glass. Alejo's shop was still open, though you wouldn't have known it from the shady discretion of the front, which gave it the air of a sex-shop or a turf-accountant. Cherif followed me hesitantly into the spotlit hallway, puzzled as I had been by the chic absence of stock. One could have, it seemed, a hanky, or a rubberised vest, or a single green shoe. Alejo himself was loitering at the counter, languidly folding a shirt. He looked captivating in racing silks and olive velvet breeches. "Hola, Alejo!" I called out gittishly, but it was enough to make him look and remember me. "Hello," he said, trotting forwards and kissing me Spanish-style on both cheeks. "This is my friend Cherif, he's feeling the cold, he wants an overcoat." They shook hands, and Alejo walked round him a couple of times appreciatively before leading him through the mirror that was a swing-door into the busy grotto of the shop. I followed on, warmed by my new role as patron, but also reaching down for a certain prudence, like a parent at a school outfitters. Through the speakers came Doris Day singing "Buttons and Bows". "Rudi, can you go on the till," he said to a little blond in braces; "I'll look after this one." Rudi whispered something and glanced across the room as he went out. "Trouble in number three," Alejo explained cryptically, and ran straight on with "Your friend is fabulous" "Do you like him?" I said, looking at Cherif as he walked along and shyly felt the sleeves of a rack of coats; maybe we could come to an arrangement. "Where did you find him? Are there any more?" "There must be some fairly similar. In the Town Museum, actually, looking at a picture of Heaven and Hell." "Well, I know which one you got!" I stroked my chin consideringly. "After the coat I'm going to interest him in some other things." And he sprang off to guide him, a hand confidentially round his upper arm, almost resting his cheek on his shoulder.

• From The City of God

  Chapter 24. --Of the One Only True Principle Which Alone Purifies and Renews Human Nature. Accordingly, when we speak of God, we do not affirm two or three principles, no more than we are at liberty to affirm two or three gods; although, speaking of each, of the Father, or of the Son, or of the Holy Ghost, we confess that each is God:and yet we do not say, as the Sabellian heretics say, that the Father is the same as the Son, and the Holy Spirit the same as the Father and the Son; but we say that the Father is the Father of the Son, and the Son the Son of the Father, and that the Holy Spirit of the Father and the Son is neither the Father nor the Son. It was therefore truly said that man is cleansed only by a Principle, although the Platonists erred in speaking in the plural of principles. But Porphyry, being under the dominion of these envious powers, whose influence he was at once ashamed of and afraid to throw off, refused to recognize that Christ is the Principle by whose incarnation we are purified. Indeed he despised Him, because of the flesh itself which He assumed, that He might offer a sacrifice for our purification,--a great mystery, unintelligible to Porphyry's pride, which that true and benignant Redeemer brought low by His humility, manifesting Himself to mortals by the mortality which He assumed, and which the malignant and deceitful mediators are proud of wanting, promising, as the boon of immortals, a deceptive assistance to wretched men. Thus the good and true Mediator showed that it is sin which is evil, and not the substance or nature of flesh; for this, together with the human soul, could without sin be both assumed and retained, and laid down in death, and changed to something better by resurrection. He showed also that death itself, although the punishment of sin, was submitted to by Him for our sakes without sin, and must not be evaded by sin on our part, but rather, if opportunity serves, be borne for righteousness' sake. For he was able to expiate sins by dying, because He both died, and not for sin of His own. But He has not been recognized by Porphyry as the Principle, otherwise he would have recognized Him as the Purifier. The Principle is neither the flesh nor the human soul in Christ but the Word by which all things were made. The flesh, therefore, does not by its own virtue purify, but by virtue of the Word by which it was assumed, when "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. " [420]For speaking mystically of eating His flesh, when those who did not understand Him were offended and went away, saying, "This is an hard saying, who can hear it? " He answered to the rest who remained, "It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing. " [421]The Principle, therefore, having assumed a human soul and flesh, cleanses the soul and flesh of believers. Therefore, when the Jews asked Him who He was, He answered that He was the Principle. [422]And this we carnal and feeble men, liable to sin, and involved in the darkness of ignorance, could not possibly understand, unless we were cleansed and healed by Him, both by means of what we were, and of what we were not. For we were men, but we were not righteous; whereas in His incarnation there was a human nature, but it was righteous, and not sinful. This is the mediation whereby a hand is stretched to the lapsed and fallen; this is the seed "ordained by angels," by whose ministry the law also was given enjoining the worship of one God, and promising that this Mediator should come. [420] John i. 14. [421] John vi. 60-64. [422] John viii. 25; or "the beginning," following a different reading from ours.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  7I do not know if the pimp’s album may not have been another link in the daisy-chain; but soon after, for my own safety, I decided to marry. It occurred to me that regular hours, home-cooked meals, all the conventions of marriage, the prophylactic routine of its bedroom activities and, who knows, the eventual flowering of certain moral values, of certain spiritual substitutes, might help me, if not to purge myself of my degrading and dangerous desires, at least to keep them under pacific control. A little money that had come my way after my father’s death (nothing very grand—the Mirana had been sold long before), in addition to my striking if somewhat brutal good looks, allowed me to enter upon my quest with equanimity. After considerable deliberation, my choice fell on the daughter of a Polish doctor: the good man happened to be treating me for spells of dizziness and tachycardia. We played chess: his daughter watched me from behind her easel, and inserted eyes or knuckles borrowed from me into the cubistic trash that accomplished misses then painted instead of lilacs and lambs. Let me repeat with quiet force: I was, and still am, despite mes malheurs, an exceptionally handsome male; slow-moving, tall, with soft dark hair and a gloomy but all the more seductive cast of demeanor. Exceptional virility often reflects in the subject’s displayable features a sullen and congested something that pertains to what he has to conceal. And this was my case. Well did I know, alas, that I could obtain at the snap of my fingers any adult female I chose; in fact, it had become quite a habit with me of not being too attentive to women lest they come toppling, bloodripe, into my cold lap. Had I been a français moyen with a taste for flashy ladies, I might have easily found, among the many crazed beauties that lashed my grim rock, creatures far more fascinating than Valeria. My choice, however, was prompted by considerations whose essence was, as I realized too late, a piteous compromise. All of which goes to show how dreadfully stupid poor Humbert always was in matters of sex.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  Amos and I set out to examine whether I was the only fool or a member of a majority of fools, by testing whether researchers selected for mathematical expertise would make similar mistakes. We developed a questionnaire that described realistic research situations, including replications of successful experiments. It asked the researchers to choose sample sizes, to assess the risks of failure to which their decisions exposed them, and to provide advice to hypothetical graduate students planning their research. Amos collected the responses of a group of sophisticated participants (including authors of two statistical textbooks) at a meeting of the Society of Mathematical Psychology. The results were straightforward: I was not the only fool. Every one of the mistakes I had made was shared by a large majority of our respondents. It was evident that even the experts paid insufficient attention to sample size. Amos and I called our first joint article “Belief in the Law of Small Numbers.” We explained, tongue-in-cheek, that “intuitions about random sampling appear to satisfy the law of small numbers, which asserts that the law of large numbers applies to small numbers as well.” We also included a strongly worded recommendation that researchers regard their “statistical intuitions with proper suspicion and replace impression formation by computation whenever possible.” A Bias of Confidence Over Doubt In a telephone poll of 300 seniors, 60% support the president. If you had to summarize the message of this sentence in exactly three words, what would they be? Almost certainly you would choose “elderly support president.” These words provide the gist of the story. The omitted details of the poll, that it was done on the phone with a sample of 300, are of no interest in themselves; they provide background information that attracts little attention. Your summary would be the same if the sample size had been different. Of course, a completely absurd number would draw your attention (“a telephone poll of 6 [or 60 million] elderly voters...”). Unless you are a professional, however, you may not react very differently to a sample of 150 and to a sample of 3,000. That is the meaning of the statement that “people are not adequately sensitive to sample size.” The message about the poll contains information of two kinds: the story and the source of the story. Naturally, you focus on the story rather than on the reliability of the results. When the reliability is obviously low, however, the

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  "Then Lord Gregory appeared. He materialized out of the dark in his grey velvet, with the gold on the edge of his cloak gleaming. I saw the shimmer of his boots, and the dull sheen of the leather strap he carried. More punishment, I thought wearily, but I must obey. I am a slave Prince and there is nothing to be done for it. Pray I have grace to bear it in silence and without struggling. "But he drew close to me and commenced to talk to me. He told me I had comported myself very well and asked me if I knew the name of the Princess who had tormented me. I said 'No, my Lord,' respectfully taking some relief that I had pleased him. He is very hard to please. Harder than the Queen. "He then told me her name was Princess Lynette, and she was new and had made a great impression on everyone. She was the personal slave of the Grand Duke Andre. 'What is this to me,' I thought, 'I serve the Queen.' But he asked me pleasantly enough if I had found her pretty. I winced. How could I help it? I could remember her breasts well enough when she pressed them to me while her paddle made me smart and groan. I could remember her dark blue eyes for the one or two instants when I had not been too ashamed to look at them. 'I don't know, my Lord. I would think she would not be here,' I said, 'were she not pretty.' "For that impertinence, he gave me at least five rapid cracks with his belt. I was sore enough to be immediately in tears. He has often said that if he had his way, he would keep all slaves that sore always. Then their buttocks would be so tender that all he would have to do was stroke them with a feather. But as I stood there, my arms stretched painfully above me, my body pushed off balance by his blows, I was aware that he was particularly angered and fascinated by me. Why else would he come here to torment me? He had a castle of slaves to torment. It gave me some strange satisfaction. "I was conscious of my body, its obvious muscularity, what to some eyes was surely its beauty...Well, he came around and he said to me that Princess Lynette was unsurpassed in many respects and that her attributes were fired with an unusual spirit. "I feigned boredom. I was to hang in this position all night. He was a gnat, I thought. But then he told me that he had been to the Queen and told her how well Princess Lynette had punished me, that Princess Lynette showed a flair for command and shrank from nothing. I began to grow afraid. Then he assured me the Queen had been glad to hear it.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  He was very well aware that he ran no risk of being ridiculous in the eyes of Betsy or any other fashionable people. He was very well aware that in their eyes the position of an unsuccessful lover of a girl, or of any woman free to marry, might be ridiculous. But the position of a man pursuing a married woman, and, regardless of everything, staking his life on drawing her into adultery, has something fine and grand about it, and can never be ridiculous; and so it was with a proud and gay smile under his mustaches that he lowered the opera-glass and looked at his cousin. “But why was it you didn’t come to dinner?” she said, admiring him. “I must tell you about that. I was busily employed, and doing what, do you suppose? I’ll give you a hundred guesses, a thousand ... you’d never guess. I’ve been reconciling a husband with a man who’d insulted his wife. Yes, really!” “Well, did you succeed?” “Almost.” “You really must tell me about it,” she said, getting up. “Come to me in the next _entr’acte._” “I can’t; I’m going to the French theater.” “From Nilsson?” Betsy queried in horror, though she could not herself have distinguished Nilsson’s voice from any chorus girl’s. “Can’t help it. I’ve an appointment there, all to do with my mission of peace.” “‘Blessed are the peacemakers; theirs is the kingdom of heaven,’” said Betsy, vaguely recollecting she had heard some similar saying from someone. “Very well, then, sit down, and tell me what it’s all about.” And she sat down again. Chapter 5 “This is rather indiscreet, but it’s so good it’s an awful temptation to tell the story,” said Vronsky, looking at her with his laughing eyes. “I’m not going to mention any names.” “But I shall guess, so much the better.” “Well, listen: two festive young men were driving—” “Officers of your regiment, of course?” “I didn’t say they were officers,—two young men who had been lunching.” “In other words, drinking.” “Possibly. They were driving on their way to dinner with a friend in the most festive state of mind. And they beheld a pretty woman in a hired sledge; she overtakes them, looks round at them, and, so they fancy anyway, nods to them and laughs. They, of course, follow her. They gallop at full speed. To their amazement, the fair one alights at the entrance of the very house to which they were going. The fair one darts upstairs to the top story. They get a glimpse of red lips under a short veil, and exquisite little feet.” “You describe it with such feeling that I fancy you must be one of the two.”

• From On Beauty (2005)

  It was in her nature to come across a high horse and ride it for as long as it would carry her. She was certainly riding high at the moment, for she had recast herself as the angel of mercy. It had been in her power, after all, to get both Monty and Howard fired. To Howard she had strongly suggested a sabbatical, which reprieve he had taken, gratefully. Zora had two years left at Wellington, and, the way she saw it, the college was no longer big enough for the both of them. Monty had been allowed to keep his job but not his principles. He did not contest the discretionaries and the discretionaries stayed, although Zora herself dropped out of the poetry class. These epic acts of unselfishness had lent Zora a genuinely unassailable moral superiority that she was enjoying immensely. The only cloud on her conscience was Carl. She had left the class so that he might stay, but in fact he never returned. He disappeared from Wellington altogether. By the time Zora felt brave enough to ring his cell it was out of order. She enlisted Claire’s help in trying to find him; they got his home address from the payment records, but letters sent there received no reply. When Zora dared a visit, Carl’s mother said only that he had moved out; she would say no more. She wouldn’t let Zora past the doorstep, and talked to her guardedly, apparently convinced that this light-skinned woman who spoke so properly must be a social worker or a police officer, somebody who could cause the Thomas family trouble. Five months later Zora continued to see Carl’s many doppel-ga¨ngers in the street, day after day – the hoodie, the baggy jeans, the box-fresh sneakers, the big black earphones – and each time she spotted a twin she felt his name soar from her chest to her throat. Sometimes she let it out. But the boy always walked on. ‘Anybody for a lift into town?’ asked Howard. ‘I’m happy to drop everybody where they need to go.’  On Beauty Two minutes later Howard rolled down the passenger window and beeped his horn at his three half-naked children walking down the hill. All of them gave him the finger. Howard drove through Wellington and out of Wellington. He watched the blistering day undulate outside his windshield; he heard the crickets’ string section. He listened, on his car stereo, to the Lacrimosa and, like a teenager, turned it up high and kept his windows down. Swish dah dah, swish dah dah . As the music slowed, he slowed, entering Boston and meeting up with the Big Dig. He sat in its maze of unmoving cars for forty minutes. After finally emerging from a tunnel as long as life itself, Howard’s phone rang. ‘Howard? Smith. Gosh, it’s great you finally went and got yourself a phone.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  However, I shall not bore my learned readers with a detailed account of Lolita’s presumption. Suffice it to say that not a trace of modesty did I perceive in this beautiful hardly formed young girl whom modern co-education, juvenile mores, the campfire racket and so forth had utterly and hopelessly depraved. She saw the stark act merely as part of a youngster’s furtive world, unknown to adults. What adults did for purposes of procreation was no business of hers. My life was handled by little Lo in an energetic, matter-of-fact manner as if it were an insensate gadget unconnected with me. While eager to impress me with the world of tough kids, she was not quite prepared for certain discrepancies between a kid’s life and mine. Pride alone prevented her from giving up; for, in my strange predicament, I feigned supreme stupidity and had her have her way—at least while I could still bear it. But really these are irrelevant matters; I am not concerned with so-called “sex” at all. Anybody can imagine those elements of animality. A greater endeavor lures me on: to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets. 30I have to tread carefully. I have to speak in a whisper. Oh you, veteran crime reporter, you grave old usher, you once popular policeman, now in solitary confinement after gracing that school crossing for years, you wretched emeritus read to by a boy! It would never do, would it, to have you fellows fall madly in love with my Lolita! Had I been a painter, had the management of The Enchanted Hunters lost its mind one summer day and commissioned me to redecorate their dining room with murals of my own making, this is what I might have thought up, let me list some fragments: There would have been a lake. There would have been an arbor in flame-flower. There would have been nature studies—a tiger pursuing a bird of paradise, a choking snake sheathing whole the flayed trunk of a shoat. There would have been a sultan, his face expressing great agony (belied, as it were, by his molding caress), helping a callypygean slave child to climb a column of onyx. There would have been those luminous globules of gonadal glow that travel up the opalescent sides of juke boxes. There would have been all kinds of camp activities on the part of the intermediate group, Canoeing, Coranting, Combing Curls in the lakeside sun. There would have been poplars, apples, a suburban Sunday. There would have been a fire opal dissolving within a ripple-ringed pool, a last throb, a last dab of color, stinging red, smarting pink, a sigh, a wincing child.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  “Oh,” said I to him, “art thou not Oderisi, the honour of Gubbio, and the honour of that art which in Paris is called ‘illuminating’?” “Brother,” said he, “more pleasing are the leaves which Franco Bolognese paints; the honour now is all his and mine in part. Truly I should not have been so courteous while I lived, because of the great desire of excelling whereon my heart was bent. For such pride here the fine is paid; and I should not yet be here, were it not that having power to sin, I turned me to God. O empty glory of human powers! How short the time its green endures upon the top, if it be not overtaken by rude ages! 4 Cimabue thought to hold the field in painting, and now Giotto hath the cry, so that the fame of the other is obscured. 5 Even so one Guido hath taken from the other the glory of our tongue; and perchance one is born who shall chase both from the nest. 6 Earthly fame is naught but a breath of wind, which now cometh hence and now thence, and changes name because it changes direction. What greater fame shalt thou have, if thou strip thee of thy flesh when old, than if thou hadst died ere thou wert done with pap and chink, 7

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  The family business was a worldwide chain of dancing schools which sold life memberships to lonely old people. It wasn’t exactly a racket any more than psychoanalysis or religion or encounter groups or Rosicrucianism can be said to be rackets, but, like them, it also promised an end to loneliness, powerlessness, and pain, and of course it disappointed many people. Charlie had worked in the dance-studio business for a few summers during college, but this was only a token gesture. He hated any kind of everyday job—even if it consisted of gliding across the dance floor with an eighty-year-old lady who had just become a life member to the tune of several thousand dollars. When I knew him, Charlie was very sensitive on the subject of ballroom dancing. He did not want it generally known that this was what his father did for a living. Nevertheless, he dropped his famous uncle’s name frequently among his friends and mine. Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own. But what did Charlie do? He prepared himself for greatness. He daydreamed about his conducting debut—which otherwise he did nothing much to hasten—and he began symphonies. They were—every one of them—unfinished symphonies. He also began sonatas and operas (based on works by Kafka or Beckett). These were unfinished bars (but which he always promised to dedicate to me). Perhaps to others he was a failure, but to himself he was a romantic figure. He spoke of “silence, exile, and cunning.” (Silence: the unfinished symphonies. Exile: he had left the Beresford for the East Village. Cunning: his affair with me.) He was going through the initial trials of all great artists. As a conductor, he had not yet had his break and was further handicapped, he thought, by the fact of not being a homosexual. As a composer, it was a question of learning to cope with the crisis of style which bedeviled the age. That too would come in time. One had to think in decades, not years.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  What I was doing in those spring months was once again steeling my social nerve. I was becoming popular—not in a big way, of course, but as a bit player. I started smoking cigarettes in order to join the Butt Club, a coterie of fascinating disreputables who’d obtained parental permission to meet for fifteen minutes after lunch and dinner and for half an hour before bedtime to smoke. Serious athletes, admired prefects, good school citizens—they all looked down on us. We were not square, we were bums, hoods, bad characters. One small windowless room in the basement had been set aside for our regrettable hobby. Someone pinned up the famous nude calendar pose of Marilyn Monroe on the cinderblock wall, but even her maraschino charms looked bilious under the low-wattage green bulb screwed into the ceiling for “atmosphere.” I had never been bad before. Of course I’d been intolerably wicked or maybe just sick in sleeping with other boys and men, but those transgressions were secret and solitary. Now at last I, who’d always been considered obedient, even docile, was rubbing shoulders with guys who were about to flunk out, who got drunk and totaled cars, who knocked up girls, who got into fistfights with their dads, who stole motorcycles and went off on joy rides, who had created such chaos at home they’d been banished to Eton. These boys accepted anyone at all so long as he was a smoker and a failure. Here came the hell raisers who sneaked off campus after lights-out, who downed a quart of vodka a day and nodded off in class, who faked medical excuses to get out of gym, who went weeks without showering (“Give us a break”), who jerked off in the back of class to the amazement of their neighbors (“Yuck”), who farted and popped their zits in assembly (“Ee—yuh”), who bought term papers from brains or beat the brains up, who in one case seduced a master’s wife (“Neat”), in another a fat Latvian wash-up girl with greasy braids on the kitchen staff (“Barf”).

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  They’d decided to be reasonable, Marty said, instead of getting divorced like three-quarters of their friends. They’d decided to give each other plenty of freedom. They’d done a lot of “group things,” as he put it, on Ibiza, where they’d spent the month of July. Poor bastard, he didn’t look very happy. He was repeating some swinging sexual catechism like a bar mitzvah boy. Adrian was grinning. Converts already. He could just take it from there. “How about you?” Judy asked. “We’re not married,” I said. “We don’t believe in it. He’s Jean-Paul Sartre and I’m Simone de Beauvoir.” Judy and Marty looked at each other. They’d heard those names somewhere, but couldn’t remember where. “We’re famous,” I said snidely. “Actually, he’s R. D. Laing and I’m Mary Barnes.” Adrian laughed, but I could see I’d lost Judy and Marty. Pure self-protection. I felt a showdown coming on, and I had to throw my intellectual weight around. It was all I had left. “Right,” said Adrian. “Why don’t we just swap for starters?” Marty looked crestfallen. It wasn’t very complimentary to me, but the truth was I didn’t much want him either. “Be my guests,” I said to Adrian. I wanted to see him hoist on his own petard—whatever the hell that means. (I never have been sure.) “I think I’ll sit this one out. If you want me to, I’ll watch.” I had decided to outdo Adrian at his own game. Cool. Uninvolved. All that crap. Marty then leapt up to protest his virility. “I think we should swap or nothing,” he stammered. “Sorry,” I said, “I don’t want to be a spoilsport, but I’m just not in the mood.” I was about to add, “Besides I may have clap...” but I decided not to ruin it for Adrian. Let him do his thing. I was tough. I could take it. “Don’t you think we should reach a group decision?” Judy said. Boy, was she ever the ex-girl scout! “I’ve already made my decision,” I said. I was awfully proud of myself. I knew what I wanted and I wasn’t going to back down. I was saying no and liking it. Even Adrian was proud of me. I could tell by the way he was grinning. Character building, that’s what he was doing. He’d always been interested in saving me from myself. “Well,” I said, “shall we watch you or just sit near the swimming hole and talk? I’m amenable to either.” “The swimming hole,” Marty said desperately. “I hope that’s not a pun,” I said. I waved cheerily to Adrian and Judy as they climbed into the Volkswagen camper and drew the curtains. Then I took Marty by the hand and led him to the old swimming hole where we sat down on a rock. “Do you want to tell me the story of your life, or just describe Judy’s affairs?”

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  And now take down the following important remark: the artist in me has been given the upper hand over the gentleman. It is with a great effort of will that in this memoir I have managed to tune my style to the tone of the journal that I kept when Mrs. Haze was to me but an obstacle. That journal of mine is no more; but I have considered it my artistic duty to preserve its intonations no matter how false and brutal they may seem to me now. Fortunately, my story has reached a point where I can cease insulting poor Charlotte for the sake of retrospective verisimilitude. Wishing to spare poor Charlotte two or three hours of suspense on a winding road (and avoid, perhaps, a head-on collision that would shatter our different dreams), I made a thoughtful but abortive attempt to reach her at the camp by telephone. She had left half an hour before, and getting Lo instead, I told her—trembling and brimming with my mastery over fate—that I was going to marry her mother. I had to repeat it twice because something was preventing her from giving me her attention. “Gee, that’s swell,” she said laughing. “When is the wedding? Hold on a sec, the pup—That pup here has got hold of my sock. Listen—” and she added she guessed she was going to have loads of fun … and I realized as I hung up that a couple of hours at that camp had been sufficient to blot out with new impressions the image of handsome Humbert Humbert from little Lolita’s mind. But what did it matter now? I would get her back as soon as a decent amount of time after the wedding had elapsed. “The orange blossom would have scarcely withered on the grave,” as a poet might have said. But I am no poet. I am only a very conscientious recorder. After Louise had gone, I inspected the icebox, and finding it much too puritanic, walked to town and bought the richest foods available. I also bought some good liquor and two or three kinds of vitamins. I was pretty sure that with the aid of these stimulants and my natural resources, I would avert any embarrassment that my indifference might incur when called upon to display a strong and impatient flame. Again and again resourceful Humbert evoked Charlotte as seen in the raree-show of a manly imagination. She was well groomed and shapely, this I could say for her, and she was my Lolita’s big sister—this notion, perhaps, I could keep up if only I did not visualize too realistically her heavy hips, round knees, ripe bust, the coarse pink skin of her neck (“coarse” by comparison with silk and honey) and all the rest of that sorry and dull thing: a handsome woman.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Here goes: O my Carmen, my little Carmen! Something, something those something nights, And the stars, and the cars, and the bars, and the barmen— And, O my charmin’, our dreadful fights. And the something town where so gaily, arm in Arm, we went, and our final row, And the gun I killed you with, O my Carmen, The gun I am holding now. (Drew his .32 automatic, I guess, and put a bullet through his moll’s eye.) 14 I had lunch in town—had not been so hungry for years. The house was still Lo-less when I strolled back. I spent the afternoon musing, scheming, blissfully digesting my experience of the morning. I felt proud of myself. I had stolen the honey of a spasm without impairing the morals of a minor. Absolutely no harm done. The conjurer had poured milk, molasses, foaming champagne into a young lady’s new white purse; and lo, the purse was intact. Thus had I delicately constructed my ignoble, ardent, sinful dream; and still Lolita was safe—and I was safe. What I had madly possessed was not she, but my own creation, another, fanciful Lolita—perhaps, more real than Lolita; overlapping, encasing her; floating between me and her, and having no will, no consciousness—indeed, no life of her own. The child knew nothing. I had done nothing to her. And nothing prevented me from repeating a performance that affected her as little as if she were a photographic image rippling upon a screen and I a humble hunchback abusing myself in the dark. The afternoon drifted on and on, in ripe silence, and the sappy tall trees seemed to be in the know; and desire, even stronger than before, began to afflict me again. Let her come soon, I prayed, addressing a loan God, and while mamma is in the kitchen, let a repetition of the davenport scene be staged, please, I adore her so horribly. No: “horribly” is the wrong word. The elation with which the vision of new delights filled me was not horrible but pathetic. I qualify it as pathetic. Pathetic—because despite the insatiable fire of my venereal appetite, I intended, with the most fervent force and foresight, to protect the purity of that twelve-year-old child. And now see how I was repaid for my pains. No Lolita came home—she had gone with the Chatfields to a movie. The table was laid with more elegance than usual: candlelight, if you please. In this mawkish aura, Mrs. Haze gently touched the silver on both sides of her plate as if touching piano keys, and smiled down on her empty plate (was on a diet), and said she hoped I liked the salad (recipe lifted from a woman’s magazine). She hoped I liked the cold cuts, too. It had been a perfect day. Mrs. Chatfield was a lovely person. Phyllis, her daughter, was going to a summer camp tomorrow. For three weeks.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  But, on the same day, in another gathering, and in the most private chamber of his heart, alwavs, the white American remains proud of that �ist�IJ: for wh.ich he does not wrsh to pay, and from which, materially, he has profited so much. On that same day, in another- gathering, ana in the most private chamber of his heart always, the black American finds himself tacing the terrible roster of his lost: The dead, black junkie; the defeated, black father; the unutterably weary, black mother; the unutterably ruined, black girl. And one begins to suspect an awful thing: that peopl e believe that they deserve their histQcy, and that when they operate on this belief , they perish:_ But one knows that they can scarcely avoid believing that they deserve it: one's short time on this earth is very m�·sterious and very dark and very hard. I have known many black men and women and black boys and girls who really believed that it was better to be white than black, whose lives were ruined or ended by this belief ; and I, myself, carried the seeds of this destruction within me for a long time. Now if I, as a black man, profoundly believe that I deserve my history and deserve to be treated as I am, then I must also, tatally, believe that white people deserve their history and de serve the power and the glory which their testimony and the evidence of my own senses assure me that they have. And if black people tall into this trap, the trap of believing that they deserve their tate, white people fall into the yet more stunning and intricate trap of believing that they deserve their fate, and their comparative safety and that black people, therefore, need onl�· do as white people have done to rise to where white people now are. But this simply cannot be said, not only for reasons of politeness or charity, but also because wb�t�g�e c� in them a carcli.rlly mutlled tear that black people long to do t<)othcrs what ha_s_be�r�_do-ne t<l then� Moreover, the history of white people has led them to a tearful, batlling place where they have begun to lose touch with reality-to lose touch, that is, with themsch-es-and where they certainly are not trul�· happy, for they know they arc not truly safe. They THE WH ITE MAN ' S GUIL T 725 do not know how this came about; they do not dare examine how this came about.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. Now let us shortly review what is signified by Christ’s temptations. The fasting is abstinence from things evil, hunger is the desire of evil, bread is the gratification of the desire. He who indulges himself in any evil thing, turns stones into bread. Let him answer to the Devil’s persuasions that man does not live by the indulgence of desire alone, but by keeping the commands of God. When any is puffed up as though he were holy he is led to the temple, and when he esteems himself to have reached the summit of holiness he is set on a pinnacle of the temple. And this temptation follows the first, because victory over temptation begets conceit. But observe that Christ had voluntarily undertaken the fasting; but was led to the temple by the Devil; therefore do you voluntarily use praiseworthy abstinence, but suffer yourself not to be exalted to the summit of sanctity; fly high-mindedness, and you will not suffer a fall. The ascent of the mountain is the going forward to great riches, and the glory of this world which springs from pride of heart. When you desire to become rich, that is, to ascend the mountain, you begin to think of the ways of gaining wealth and honours, then the prince of this world is shewing you the glory of his kingdom. In the third place He provides you reasons, that if you seek to obtain all these things, you should serve him, and neglect the righteousness of God. HILARY. When we have overcome the Devil and bruised his head, we see that Angels’ ministry and the offices of heavenly virtues will not be wanting to us. AUGUSTINE. (De Cons. Ev. ii. 16.) Luke has not given the temptations in the same order as Matthew; so that we do not know whether the pinnacle of the temple, or the ascent of the mountain, was first in the action; but it is of no importance, so long as it is only clear that all of them were truly done. GLOSS. (ap. Anselm.) Though Luke’s order seems the more historical; Matthew relates the temptations as they were done to Adam. 4:12–1612. Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, He departed into Galilee; 13. And leaving Nazareth, He came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim: 14. That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, 15. The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles; 16. The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up. RABANUS. Matthew having related the forty days’ fast, the temptation of Christ, and the ministry of Angels, proceeds, Jesus having heard that John was cast into prison.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  This was another time when Paula startled me by the frankness of her reply. Throwing herself back in her chair and regarding me from beneath long, hennaed bangs, she lit another cigarette. “You really want to know?” “It’s important that I understand,” I told her seriously. “He’s not really different from the others. He loves me, he’s kinda hyper, and he likes to party. He’s good in bed. He’s a really cute Italian guy. I think I was just ready to settle down. We were out to dinner and I said to him, ‘It’s my birthday, marry me.’ And he said, ‘Why not, let’s do it!’ So, we’re getting married.” “But you’re barely twenty-one,” I ventured again. “Why do you want to settle down? Many women feel they’re just getting started when they’re twenty-one.” Paula raised her eyebrows and snorted derisively. “Most women haven’t had the kind of life I’ve had. I’ve been sleeping with men since I was twelve. I’ve probably been with over seventy guys. I’ve hardly ever been without a boyfriend. Lots of times when I’d get the man then I’d be mean and they’d be nice and I didn’t like that. I’d end it if they were spineless jellyfish.” Paula grinned and raised a tightly clenched fist. “I mean, I’d hit them, not slap.” “Does this include Brad?” I asked. She nodded. “Yup, but he’s not spineless. He’s ambitious, he likes to work. He pushes the business. And he’s cute!” she finished triumphantly. I reminded Paula of our last meeting, when she had been in so much trouble in high school. Shortly after her interview with me when she was fifteen, Paula did get expelled. She went to an alternative school but dropped out when she was sixteen. She worked at part-time jobs—a gas station, a convenience store, and a number of restaurants. At age seventeen Paula’s mother offered her a new car as a reward if Paula went back and finished high school. Paula was able to follow through on her end of the bargain, although it took her several years. She got her diploma when she was nineteen and marriage license at age twenty-one.

• From The City of God

  41 Lecture 2 Transcript—Who Was Augustine of Hippo? role, and once that was over, his decks had been cleared to begin writing The City of God in late 411 or 412, and he kept at it, although often distracted by other work, until he completed the whole thing 15 years later, in 426 or 427. The last few years of his life were just as busy as the earlier ones, and he kept on writing, teaching, and even occasionally preaching up to a few weeks before his death on August 28, 430, with the Vandals besieging Hippo. And it is here, in his dealings with the Donatists and the Pelagians and his overall practice in the office of Bishop, where his critics find warrant for their charge that he is a fundamentally antidemocratic thinker; in fact, an authoritarian who gave the highest moral and theological imprimatur for the practices of coercion popular in the Middle Ages. And we will see again in these lectures, as in the accusations of his metaphysical anti-worldliness and his moral- psychological promotion of a guilt morality, that his reputed political authoritarianism is vastly overdrawn. In fact, in his role as a leader of the Latin Christian churches, he was anything but authoritarian. As a Bishop, he was more than just a religious leader; he was a political actor and a judicial figure, as well. Moreover, he became, as the historian Peter Brown has put it, a sort of one-man brain trust for the churches of Africa. Although his labors earned him great respect and veneration from others, he continued teaching what was effectively an anti-authoritarian vision of the Gospel, one that was quite suspicious of figures such as he was becoming. And he wasn’t afraid of attacking himself in this way. In one sermon, he said, and this is a quote: Don’t even think of regarding as canonical scripture any debate, or written account of a debate by anyone. If I have said something reasonable, then follow, not me, but reason itself; if I’ve proved it by the clearest divine testimonies, then follow, not me, but the divine scripture. I get angrier with that fan of mine who takes my book as