Pride

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 The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Without his having to ask them overtly, the children started quitting school, one after the other, very early. Worn away by my father’s daily reminders of their expense, frightened by his asthma attacks, they felt guilty and spontaneously began to want to find a job. When I managed insidiously to persuade them to stay till the sixth year, all they gained thereby was a final examination at the end of the year. Convinced of their failure in spite of the heavy sacrifices already made, they were sure that the struggle was futile, and didn’t even dare turn up for the test. But I myself had now gone too far and was too conscious of my own ambition to turn back. On the contrary, the constant aggression, the mournful speeches which ceaselessly strengthened my feelings of guilt, all this gave a considerable importance to my studies. I brought to them a kind of passion, an avidity that my schoolmates could not understand, pleasant amateurs that they were. Like Loriot’s chocolates, so expensive for me, I swallowed as much of it all as I could. For whole years, I raced against time, making each day, each hour of my life count and conform literally to a strict schedule. I wanted to come up in the world, to succeed, but succeed at what? I wasn’t sure, but still had to keep going. I set myself provisional goals, stations on the long road I traveled: to win this prize and get ahead of that student. Since, at that age, knowledge and experience are so easily confused, my teachers believed me very mature and told me so. My major teacher in the third year noted “an energetic intellect” on my report card at the end of the year. I had the highest average in the second year and was probably Marrou’s best student in the first. The kids at school told me, and they would certainly not have made it up to please me, that Poinsot, our philosophy teacher, had said: “He’s the most intelligent student I’ve ever had, and I’ve been teaching for sixteen years.” One day I read that intellectual and sexual precociousness went together, and that many famous men had also been sexually very gifted. After questioning my friends, I came to believe that I was clearly ahead of them there too. I no longer doubted my genius and my pride was thereby increased. The appreciations expressed by my teachers filled my heart with happiness and made me laugh when I was alone. Sometimes, when I thought of these compliments as I walked along the street, I had to clench my teeth until they hurt in order not to smile like an idiot.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  But before that climactic moment, what else do we know about Paul’s biographical identity? BETWEEN TARSUS AND DAMASCUS First, with regard to religious and educational status, Paul and Luke agree that Paul was a fervent Pharisaic Jew. That may seem obvious, but some of his fellow Jews and fellow Christians—then and now—judged Paul an apostate from both Judaism and Christianity. But in his own mind, heart, and conscience, he lived and died as a Jew—a Messianic or Christian Jew, to be sure—but with both adjective and noun inextricably interlinked. Listen to his own words: I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. (Rom. 11:1) Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I. (2 Cor. 11:22) I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. (Gal. 1:14) Circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee;…as to righteousness under the law, blameless. (Phil. 3:5–6) Also, in 2 Corinthians 11:26 Paul lists the dangers he has faced, one of which is “danger from my own people (genous ).” Notice that the danger is not from “Jews,” but from “my own people.” Luke’s Acts has similar information, but it is given there as autobiographical information on Paul’s own lips: I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of an important city. (21:39) I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city [Jerusalem] at the feet of Gamaliel, educated strictly according to our ancestral law, being zealous for God, just as all of you are today. (22:3) I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. (23:6) I have belonged to the strictest sect of our religion and lived as a Pharisee. (26:5) To understand the term “Pharisees” you must ignore the bitter polemical (because closely intrafamilial?) attacks against them in the gospels. Think, instead, of their purity laws as the visible and sacramental signs of invisible and spiritual sanctity, of being, as the Lukan Paul says, “zealous for God.” We also think that Luke is probably upgrading rather than just describing Paul’s religio-educational status by naming him not only “a Pharisee,” but a “son of Pharisees,” and having him “brought up in this city [Jerusalem] at the feet of Gamaliel.” It seems much more likely that Paul received his higher religious education at Damascus rather than Jerusalem. But in any case, if Gamaliel were his teacher at Jerusalem, Paul did not follow his master’s advice on how to handle dissident Christian Jews. Gamaliel proposed to “keep away from these men and let them alone” (Acts 5:38), but Paul, as we see below, persecuted them.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  But now let us leave this and look somewhat to the first principles of things, whereby thou wilt see that we all get our flesh from one same stock and that all souls were by one same Creator created with equal faculties, equal powers and equal virtues. Worth it was that first distinguished between us, who were all and still are born equal; wherefore those who had and used the greatest sum thereof were called noble and the rest abode not noble. And albeit contrary usance hath since obscured this primary law, yet is it nowise done away nor blotted out from nature and good manners; wherefore he who doth worthily manifestly showeth himself a gentleman, and if any call him otherwise, not he who is called, but he who calleth committeth default. Look among all thy gentlemen and examine into their worth, their usances and their manners, and on the other hand consider those of Guiscardo; if thou wilt consent to judge without animosity, thou wilt say that he is most noble and that these thy nobles are all churls. With regard to his worth and virtue, I trusted not to the judgment of any other, but to that of thy words and of mine own eyes. Who ever so commended him as thou didst in all those praiseworthy things wherefor a man of worth should be commended? And certes not without reason; for, if mine eyes deceived me not, there was no praise given him of thee which I saw him not justify by deeds, and that more admirably than thy words availed to express; and even had I suffered any deceit in this, it is by thyself I should have been deceived. An, then, thou say that I have committed myself with a man of mean condition, thou sayst not sooth; but shouldst thou say with a poor man, it might peradventure be conceded thee, to thy shame who hast so ill known to put a servant of thine and a man of worth in good case; yet poverty bereaveth not any of gentilesse; nay, rather, wealth it is that doth this. Many kings, many great princes were once poor and many who delve and tend sheep were once very rich. The last doubt that thou broachest, to wit, what thou shouldst do with me, drive it away altogether; an thou in thine extreme old age be disposed to do that which thou usedst not, being young, namely, to deal cruelly, wreak thy cruelty upon me, who am minded to proffer no prayer unto thee, as being the prime cause of this sin, if sin it be; for of this I certify thee, that whatsoever thou hast done or shalt do with Guiscardo, an thou do not the like with me, mine own hands shall do it. Now begone; go shed tears with women and waxing cruel, slay him and me with one same blow, an it seem to thee we have deserved it.'

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  The way the book of 2 Maccabees is constructed suggests that this was what the writer intended to say. Right after this horrible scene of torture and death, Judas Maccabeus and his followers begin their surprisingly successful revolt against Antiochus Epiphanes. This leads to the establishment of the Maccabean (or “Hasmonean”) family as rulers of the independent kingdom of Judaea for the next century and more. This was the more remarkable in that, though they were a priestly family (1 Macc. 2:1), there is little evidence that they were Zadokites, that is, from the high-priestly family itself; and, naturally, if as priests they were descended from Aaron, they could not claim to be descendants of David. They nevertheless functioned as priest-kings, in fact, as a “royal priesthood.” Our earlier discussion of the renewed human vocation, as in Revelation 1, 5, and 20 and other parts of the New Testament, comes suddenly into new focus as a matter of history, not simply of literary imagination: here, through the suffering of the martyrs, the defeat of the pagans, and the cleansing the Temple is a kingdom of priests! The claim of the seventh brother in 2 Maccabees 7 emphasizes the first point. The victory and the cleansing came because the suffering of the martyrs somehow brought to an end the sufferings of the people as a whole, which had been caused by their sins. Now the victory over the pagans could begin. I do not suppose that the author of Revelation was consciously alluding to the Hasmonean priest-kings. Nor do I imagine that 1 Peter 2:9, which also invokes Exodus 19:6, had in mind the claims of that dynasty, which by the middle of the first century AD had passed into ignominious history, having failed to prevent the Roman invasion, the rise of Herod, and many other ills. But the parallel does indicate the ways in which the larger implicit story of Israel, anchored in the ancient scriptures, could be brought back to life not just in theory but also in concrete practice. The hundred-year reign of the Maccabean priest-kings may be seen as a distant cousin of the thousand-year reign of the Messiah’s people, the “reigning priesthood,” in Revelation 20:6. The theoretical basis for the claims made by 2 Maccabees about the effect of the martyrs’ sufferings is explained in a revealing passage that has some additional similarities to early Christian reflection. The terrible sufferings that the Jews endured during the period of Syrian domination, says the writer, had a particular purpose.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  I pretended, however, to reject too pure, too refined a language, one that follows rules that are too strict. It was the meaning that mattered and must by itself dictate the words that would describe this meaning. I would use slang or invent my own words, or put down blatantly incorrect ones if the proper ones seemed ineffective. I no longer know whether I was really sincere. Perhaps I felt that, despite all my efforts, I would never be as adept at the language as my companions whom birth had endowed with an almost perfect linguistic equipment. The monthly report for Monsieur Bismuth reminded me that my efforts were not entirely for myself. The envious respect of the other students was a source of pleasure for me, and the compliments of my teacher for all my work were a compensation. I saw how the others looked around when I volunteered to recite in class, and how the teacher smiled. In these looks and smiles I could see myself victorious, like a young god. True, I worked like a brute; it was largely for this taste of revenge that I struggled so relentlessly for prizes and honors. But none of the other boys ever suspected what these things meant to me. What I wanted was more than their processed schoolbook learning. I began to discover the world of books and to catalogue it; I read tons of printed paper, at meals, in the street until the school bell rang, in bed until one in the morning. Sometimes, in my assignments, I would quote an author who was not in our required readings and, in fact, well beyond the normal range of an adolescent. My surprised teachers would then ask me to see them after class; after paying me an initial compliment, they generally tried to discourage me from such precocious readings. Of these meetings, I retained nothing but the attention that had been paid to me and the pleasure given my gratified pride; and I continued to read. In this manner I changed very quickly and began to regain my self-confidence, but remained all the more easily offended and hurt, and all the more resentful.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Would I have dared to tell you about all this foolishness if I had not ultimately realized that intelligence and work cannot themselves guarantee the happiness or the value of a man? At that time, however, I believed firmly that they could; I had to believe it. For it was only through my struggles in school that I could triumph, assert myself, and vindicate myself. The quarterly report cards were my bulletins of victory. The pleasure and pride I took in them gave me the greatest satisfactions of my adolescence. They made my family’s sighs and my father’s asthma attacks bearable to me. My homework was done in a room where six children played, shrieked, and argued; sometimes they were joined by little friends and cousins, and by the shrieking, vulgar, and piercing voices of my aunts. I scarcely dared to silence them because they always suspected me of impertinence. Occasionally, I was so exasperated by a difficult assignment in Latin or mathematics that I jumped from my chair and shouted at the children. The hypocritical women then scolded the children gently and pretended to sympathize with me, but calmly went on with the shindy on their own account. The children would remain quiet for a while, but, soon carried away by their games, became as noisy as before; and the noise would go on. Finally, I reached the point where I could read a difficult book on a seat in the street in the midst of clanging streetcars or traffic or the screaming Mediterranean crowds, surely the noisiest in the world. Could I have continued without my fierce will and my ability to ignore my surroundings? Yet, at what nervous cost did I achieve it! With these same efforts, the same passion, I might have become a successful man. You can, of course, succeed in spite of all difficulties, but you must relinquish a piece of fur or of flesh at each contest and, more often than not, you die somewhere along the road. Sometimes you end up elsewhere; then you realize that the goal you had set yourself wasn’t really so worthwhile after all.

• From White Oleander (1999)

  Though your letter as poetry leaves something to be desired, at least it indicates a spark, a capacity for fire which I never would have believed you possessed. But really, you cannot think you will cut yourself free of me so easily. I live in you, in your bones, the delicate coils of your mind. I made you. I formed the thoughts you find, the moods you carry. Your blood whispers my name. Even in rebellion, you are mine. You want my penitence, demand my shame? Why would you want me to be less than I am, so you could find it easier to dismiss me? I’d rather you think me grotesque, florid with fantasy. I’m out of segregation, thank you for asking. Waiting for me on my restoration to Barneburg B was, among other missives, a letter from Harper’s. Oh the praise, a jailhouse Plath! (Although I am no suicide, no baked poetess with my head among the potatoes.) Do not give up on me so soon, Astrid. There are people who are interested in my case. I will not molder here like the Man in the Iron Mask. This is the millennium. Anything can happen. And if I had to be wrongly imprisoned to be noticed by Harper’s —well… you could almost say it was worth it. And to think, when I was out, a good day was a handwritten rejection from Dog Breath Review. They’re taking a long poem on bird themes—the prison crows, migratory geese, I even used the doves, remember them? On St. Andrew’s Place. Of course you do. You remember everything. You were afraid of the ruined dovecote, wouldn’t go out into the yard until I’d prodded among the clumps of ivy to scare off snakes. You were always frightened of the wrong thing. I found the fact that the doves returned, though the chicken wire had long since given way to ivy, a far more troubling prospect. You want to write me off? Try. Just realize when you’re cutting off the plank upon which you stand, which end of it is nailed to the ship. I will survive, but will you? I have a following—I call them my children. Young pierced artists avid with admiration, they make their pilgrimage here from Fontana and Long Beach, Sonoma and San Bernardino, they come from as far away as Vancouver, B.C. And if I can say so, they are much more to my taste than trembling actresses with two-carat wedding bands. They claim a network of renegade feminists, lesbians, practitioners of Wicca and performance artists up and down the West Coast, a sort of Underground Goddess Train. They’re ready to help me any way that they can; they are willing to forgive me anything. Why aren’t you? Your loving mother, Masturbating Rot Crow P.S. I have a surprise for you. I’ve just met with my new attorney, Susan D. Valeris. Recognize the name? Attorney for the feminine damned?

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Several months later she tells me, “Your urging me to get a sense of myself from other men besides Philip has been very good for me.” She started doing things with her male friends, going to concerts and galleries, and she has generally been more flirtatious. “Nothing big, you know, but it’s been fun to be out there again, talking to men who are not my husband, knowing they enjoy my company. And now, Philip’s every word or look isn’t the most important thing in my life.” Jackie’s new confidence has left Philip slightly unmoored, and that turns out to be a good thing. He is intrigued by the way she writes to him, and is surprised to find that in the graphic lexicon of sex, she can certainly hold her own. All this sexualizes her in his eyes. Freed from the predictability of a script, he takes a second look. The pseudo anonymity of their E-mails has allowed him to see her as a subject with her own desires, turning her into the object of his desire. “I’m saying things to her that I never thought I could. I expected she’d be turned off, but she’s not. She needs a lot less taking care of than I projected onto her,” Philip admits. “I realized I put a lot of stuff on her that doesn’t belong to her. It belongs to me, or at least to my family.” “I don’t get how your flings were supposed to be taking care of me, though I know in your mind it makes sense,” Jackie tells him. “It’s not OK, but I understand it. Still, I was always surprised at how easily you let yourself be caught. Like you were asking for it, so you could come to Mommy and get punished. I’m not interested in replaying your family drama. I’ll leave you first, and you know it.” To me she says, “Realizing I had the strength to leave helped me make the choice to stay. I have a lot more freedom. When I initiate sex now, I can feel almost brazen, and I like that. ‘You want this, Philip? Take it!’ It doesn’t have to be romantic or even particularly personal. I like a lot of different things. I prefer tender love, but sometimes greedy is good, too.” I’ve worked with Jackie and Philip on and off for years. Philip has stopped acting out, and over time he has searched for ways to undo the deeply ingrained belief that hot sex can’t happen at home.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  I even became almost popular when I succeeded in obtaining an extra day of rest through a new system of rotation in our duties. A Jewish doctor had been specially appointed to the camps and came around once a week. We also had a permanent nurse, a former pharmacist who had no medical training. Only the more clever had managed so far to be reported sick. I persuaded the doctor, who pretended he was happy to speak at last to an intellectual, that it was necessary to grant a rest to those men who threatened to break down. Many had given up all hope and withdrawn into a mute stupor, and the unexpected rest certainly helped to save some of them. I remember with emotion the extraordinary scene when poor Basmouth, who had become a sort of hairy animal clothed in rags, spent his day off feverishly washing himself, as though he were afraid the day would end before he had managed to get clean. I triumphed the day two men came and asked me timidly if I could organize a Sabbath service. In other circumstances, I would have refused vehemently. For years I had not even been inside a synagogue. But they were asking for what seemed most important to them, so I joyfully accepted. I soon saw what use I could make of such meetings. Through the group chiefs I requested permission of the military authorities to hold a strictly religious service. My excuse was that the men’s morale must be improved, which was true, and that, in consequence, they would work better, which was doubtful. My reasoning seemed valid, and permission was granted. As I could not undertake the religious part, rather because of my ignorance than of any scruple, I found an assistant capable of saying the prayers — they were all capable of this — and kept for myself the sermon, which mattered more to me. It worried me to have to trick my own people like the enemy. But if religion could help me save these men and give them a collective consciousness which would keep them sane, I would use their religion. They did not, however, all have confidence in me, and the more suspicious were among the most faithful. Some welcomed the idea of keeping up religious education, others demanded a rabbi. On Wednesdays and Thursdays the coming ceremony was the center of discussion, and often silence fell as I approached. To add to the solemnity of the occasion, I induced the kitchens, which were supplied by the community, to make a special effort. I prepared my program with great care. The rest was a question of propaganda, and in this I was greatly helped by the scouts and a few men who had understood my ultimate aim.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  serious student of the ranks and honors available to the ambitious, and made up calenders of deadlines by which I planned my rise from Tenderfoot to Eagle. I developed a headwaiter’s eye; when we met with other troops to compete at Scout skills I could read their uniforms at a glance and know exactly who was who. The main purpose of scouting as I understood it was to accumulate symbols that would compel respect, or at least civility, from those who shared them and envy from those who did not. Conspicuous deeds of patriotism and piety, rope craft, water wisdom, fire wizardry, first-aid, all the arts of forest and mountain and stream, seemed to me just different ways of getting badges. Dwight gave me Skipper’s old Scout manual, Handbook for Boys, outdated even when Skipper had it, a 1942 edition full of pictures of “Fighting Scouts” keeping a lookout for Nazi subs and Jap bombers. I read the Handbook almost every night, cruising for easy merit badges like Indian Lore, Bookbinding, Reptile Study, and Personal Health (“Show proper method of brushing teeth and discuss the importance of dental care. . . .”). The merit-badge index was followed by advertisements for official Scout gear, and then a list of The Firms That Make the Things You Want, among them Coca-Cola, Eastman Kodak, Evinrude and Nestle’s (“The Boy Scout Emergency Ration”), and finally by a section called Where to Go to School. The schools were mostly military academies with sonorous double-barreled names. Carson Long. Morgan Park. Cochran-Bryan. Valley Forge. Castle Heights. I liked reading all these advertisements. They were a natural part of the Handbook, in whose pages the Scout Spirit and the spirit of commerce mingled freely, and often indistinguishably. “What the Scout Is determines his progress in whatever line of business he may seek success—and Scout Ideals mean progress in business.” Suggested good turns were enumerated on a ledger, so the Scout could check them off as he performed them: Assisted a foreign boy with some English grammar. Helped put out a burning field. Gave water to crippled dog. Here, even the murky enterprise of self-examination could be expressed as a problem in accounting. “On a scale of 100, what all-around rating would I be justified in giving myself?” I liked all these numbers and lists, because they offered the clear possibility of mastery. But what I liked best about the Handbook was its voice, the bluff hail- fellow language by which it tried to make being a good boy seem adventurous, even romantic. The Scout Spirit was traced to King Arthur’s Round Table, and from there to the explorers and pioneers and warriors whose conquests had been achieved through fair play and clean living. “No man given over to dissipation

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  It would be a tough struggle, though I felt that no struggle could really be too tough for me. I exaggerated the difficulties that lay ahead of me, but this was only to enhance my own heroic attitude. I organized my life accordingly, working out several basic plans, then developing the individual details, as do all great builders. In this manner, my first efforts were soon crowned with success. I filed an application for a job as supervisor of studies in a high-school dormitory for resident students. Our principal remembered his promise and, within a week, I received my appointment. I then wrote a letter to the Head of the Philosophy Department in Algiers, which was the nearest university, asking him in all simplicity for some assistance. Though a professor on a university faculty was, in my eyes, a very important person indeed, he wrote me a reply that was full of encouragement; he even promised to look over my essays. My life as a poor student was divided between my work as a supervisor, monotonous and bothersome, and my own studies that were difficult enough, for lack of any advice other than this irregular checking of my philosophical compositions. My time was broken up, even my thoughts interrupted, by my constantly having to watch what was going on in passages and staircases, by my having to be present whenever the students moved from one class to the next, and by my having to attend to endless administrative details. Every hour on the hour, as soon as the bell rang, I had to put on my jacket and rush out of my room. Once the rhythm of my studies had thus been interrupted, it was difficult for me to return to the concentration and the flow of thought that are necessary for any productive work. I made up for all this, however, by making increasingly heavy demands on myself and by becoming even more austere. I no longer allowed myself any outings, stopped going to the movies, and added several more hours to my schedule of studies so as to make up in quantity what I had lost in quality of concentration. The study plan that I worked out for myself was calculated on the basis of periods of fifteen minutes, not only from day to day but for several months ahead, and I then forced my body and my mind to comply with this schedule that fitted me like a tight corset. I got up at dawn, my eyes still smarting from sleeplessness, and I went to bed again in the evening only when I began to fall asleep over a difficult textbook. But all this made me somehow aware of my own superiority.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  Far from it. What I am saying, based on the revolutionary meaning of Jesus’s crucifixion, is that “life after death” is a quite different thing from what most Western Christians have imagined, since the ultimate future is a life after “life after death,” in other words, the life of the resurrection and the ultimate new creation; that “human behavior” from a biblical point of view is quite a different thing from the normal view of codes of either morality or self-discovery, because what matters is not “works” (whether ours or Jesus’s), but vocation, the human calling to worship God and reflect him into his world. And I am therefore saying, in the present chapter, that through the cross Jesus won the Passover victory over the “powers,” that he did this precisely by dying under the weight of the world’s sin, and that Christian mission consists of putting this victory into practice using the same means. All this brings us back once more to the heart and center of all Christian discipleship. The new Passover is the large, overarching reality. Jesus has defeated all the anti-God, anticreation powers. He has stripped them of their borrowed robes and robbed them of their hollow crowns. And he has done this by dealing with the sins, the human idolatries and injustices, that handed to the “powers” the authority and responsibility given to humans in the first place.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  She spoke as if she were merely yielding to some fancy of mine. I would have preferred it if she had shown some emotion about accepting my proposal, as if she were trying to conceal her pleasure. Still, she did grant me an awareness of complicity; she assured me she would tell nobody that we were going out together, all by ourselves. I was too glad to be at long last able to enjoy the business of being in love, and too proud to be going out with her, elegant and lovely and popular as she was, so I wasted no time quarreling about shades of meaning. I knew that all the other boys surely envied me my luck, now that I had caught up with them and was even well ahead. Yes, I of all people, the boy whom they all found too serious and a bit of a prig, as they said. I was stupid enough to believe that I had been deprived of these pleasures which, I thought, were exclusively reserved for the rich, I mean the business of pretending to be in love. Still, I’m not unattractive, I found, and, as a matter of fact, better looking than most of them. I began to look at my own reflection in mirrors and rather enjoyed being able to rediscover myself in this manner. My nose, it’s true, might be a bit long, but only a trifle. I found I had a good profile, firm features, good strong teeth set in even rows, the high forehead of an intellectual and curly black hair. Be that as it may, I had been chosen among many, and by Ginou of all people!

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Once I was clean, the women took me by the hand and began, with songs and trills of joy and excitement, to dress me, each one handing me a different garment, as this brought luck to each in turn. This was the most pleasant moment in my bar mitzvah celebrations, the only one when I was the actual center of attraction. All the women were crowding around me, squabbling for the honor of helping me put on my undershirt, my shirt, or a sock. Though they handled me and turned me about without much tenderness, I was still the only object of their thoughts, so I was proud to let them do as they wished, except when it came to putting on my drawers. Dressed in a dark blue suit, with patent-leather shoes on my feet, I then went to pay a call, accompanied by my ushers, on each one of my uncles in turn. Tradition required that they give me presents to thank me for coming. But I derived no great pleasure from all this. Each one of them, after kissing me, Uncle Gastoune, Uncle Mirou, Monsieur Maarek who was Uncle Mirou’s partner, and Uncle Aroun, gave me some money. But money, though it might well be an indirect way of helping my father, was not of much importance to me, since I knew that I had to turn all of it over to him. I had hoped very much to get a wrist watch or, in its stead, a fine fountain pen. Only my Uncle Abbou gave me, with trembling hands, a small case of worn leather that I opened as soon as I was out of his house. It contained a tiny silver cup with a spoon to match. It was an eggcup. I had never seen one used, and I assumed it was a cup for drinking, but too small.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  He accepted my letter, adding that he approved of my gesture and would have done the same himself. I was proud and moved that I had had the courage to do what my school principal himself would have done, and I left his office feeling quits with the persecutors of Vichy. I had hit back, blow for blow. Of course, I had lost my job. But my reputation, both as a serious pupil and as a student, assured me many requests for private lessons. When they had encroached on my rigid schedule, I had refused them; now I would accept them. Even when the universities were closed to Jews I was not alarmed. Having no money, I could not attend them anyway. But we did have the right to continue to the end of the school year. The war was not real enough for me to imagine how long it might last. On the contrary, my own near future seemed so promising that in my own mind I just ignored this obstacle. Immediately, with the arrival of the Germans, came disaster. No longer did I have the leisure to meditate; we were hurled into such a whirlwind that we only started breathing again after they left. Disaster certainly makes one less lucid. The first morning after that sinister evening when the German authorities settled in the dark city, the Kommandantur took its first anti-Jewish steps. Armed with well-prepared lists and accompanied, as was fitting, by their French colleagues, the German police went out to collect several hundred hostages. It was announced that, at the slightest opposition, they would all be shot. Then came requisitions and exactions and murders. Now that we have news from the rest of the world, I know that we did not reach the bottom of the abyss. We had no gas chambers or crematoria. Those of us who were deported to Germany probably went through all that, but we did not know about it at the time. We were saved from despair by our ignorance and our lack of understanding concerning all that was upsetting our daily routine. I found out all about it later, and I know now what risks we ran and might still have run. That is why I want to deal quickly with this part of my story. We certainly had our share of misery, however meager compared to that of others.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  In the end, my supporters won the day and, one afternoon, as we sat in class listening to a lecture on astronomy, our little supervisor, Dubois, came in, his red nose stuck out ahead of him and his eyes glistening with tears of timidity. He then handed our instructor my summons to the commencement ceremony where the prizes would be announced, and ran off. Our mathematics instructor, a heavy Alsatian who constantly reminded us of his Germanic background, as opposed to the softness of Africa, and who therefore affected a Prussian crew-cut and a brutal manner, now read the message aloud, carefully pronouncing each word. In the silence that had come over the expectant class, my glory was becoming a reality under the very eyes of my classmates as they all stared at me. I lowered my own gaze, overcome by pride, in spite of my desire to appear detached. I could no longer feel the existence of my own body. I seemed to be only the hard beating of my own heart as it struck like a bell in the air. Again, I began to feel the burning heat in my cheeks, and I was called back to reality when Sitboun, who sat next to me, remarked: “Say, you swine...” This consecration of my glory made all my desires crystallize. I would make a career of philosophy, a daily business of it. My present prominence and the envious admiration of my classmates would then be permanent. Before the results of our written examinations and especially of the one in philosophy had been announced, my classmates had stared at me; when my name was announced again and again, they shrugged their shoulders and returned to their own business of scrambling for the next best places after me.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  I asked. Rosa turned to Martin. “I like you. I don’t know why.” She turned back to face me: “He’s been here for a week, but today, in this group, is the first time I’ve spoken to him. It’s like we have a lot in common, but I know we don’t.” “Do you feel understood?” “Understood? I don’t know. Well, yeah, in a funny sort of way I do. Maybe that’s it.” “That’s what I saw. I saw Martin trying his best to understand you. And he wasn’t trying to do anything else—I didn’t hear him try to manage you or tell you what to do, or even tell you that you ought to eat.” “It’s a good thing he didn’t try. It wouldn’t have done any good.” Here Rosa turned to Carol, and they exchanged bony grins of complicity. I hated their grisly conspiracy. I wanted to shake them so hard their bones rattled. I wanted to shout, “Stop drinking those Diet Cokes! Stay off those goddamn stationary bikes! This is no joke; you two are five or six pounds away from death, and when each of you is finished dying, your entire life will be described in a three-word epitaph: ‘ I died thin .’” But of course I kept these sentiments to myself. It would have done nothing but rupture whatever slender strands of a relationship I had established with them. Instead I said to Rosa, “Are you aware that through your discussion with Martin, you’ve already filled part of your agenda today? You said you wanted to have the experience of being understood by someone, and Martin seems to have done exactly that.” I then turned to Martin. “How do you feel about that? ” Martin just stared at me. This, I thought, may be the liveliest interaction he has had for years. “Remember,” I reminded him, “you started this meeting by saying you could no longer be of use to anyone. I heard Rosa say you were of use to her. Did you hear that too?” Martin nodded. I saw that his eyes were glistening and that he was too moved to speak further. Still, it was enough. With only the tiniest of openings, I had done good work with Martin and Rosa. At least we wouldn’t walk away empty-handed (and I confess I was thinking of the residents as much as of the patients). I turned back to Rosa. “How do you feel about what Magnolia is saying to you today? I’m not sure it’s possible to leave California to eat, but what I did see was Magnolia stretching out to help you.” “Stretch? I’m surprised to hear you say that,” said Rosa. “I don’t think of Magnolia stretching. Giving is natural to her, like breathing. She is a pure soul. I wish I could take her home with me or go home with her.” “Honey,” Magnolia gave Rosa an enormous, toothy smile, “you don’t wanna go to mah house. Jes’ can’t fumigate it.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Monsieur Bismuth’s pharmacists always treated me with a condescending manner. They identified themselves with the store, and I was somehow sure that they said to themselves: “There’s the kid whose studies we pay for...” Whenever I went to the store, I simply put in an appearance and waited until someone decided to attend to me. Generally, they served several customers before announcing me. But I was in a hurry, that day, and swollen too with legitimate pride as I had to be on time for the announcements of the prizes. So I refrained from waiting for one of the pharmacists to be kind enough to attend to me; instead, I interrupted one at his work, told him my business was urgent and asked him to announce me without further delay. Miraculous though it might seem, he smiled and complied, and Monsieur Bismuth immediately sent back a reply to the effect that he would see me at once. So I sat down beside some waiting customers. I pitied these anxious, resigned, and suffering people from the bottom of my heart, for it was brimful with the noble and generous feelings that characterize men who are happy. There was much coming and going, there was a screeching sound whenever the glass panel of a display case was slid open, and the reflections of the neon lights varied constantly as the mirrors and glass panes and shining metal fixtures moved. Customers whispered and the cash register noisily made us aware of its presence; it was indeed an essential fixture, enthroned there regally and constantly working beneath the self-satisfied fingers of the owner’s niece. One touch, two touches, three, then a bell rang and the cash drawer opened. A veritable shower of money seemed to pour. The drugstore owner was really making a lot of money, and that was why the general consensus considered him a success. I smiled as I thought of my own secret ambition: no, I was too noble in my own eyes, too disinterested for a profession like this. I was made to live and to promote ideas (which was a slogan I had learned in my philosophy class), to experience the true and the beautiful. Official recognition of this had only just been granted to me. No, I would never allow myself to become a mere cash register. How vulgar! Monsieur Bismuth, former President of the Chamber of Commerce. How odd that some people take pride in having devoted their whole life to money-making! But time was going by, the appointed hour for the ceremony was approaching, and I had still not been summoned to the office of my benefactor. I asked the pharmacist whether Monsieur Bismuth might not have forgotten that I was waiting. And I suggested that he might make the trip along the corridor to the office again, but he pretended not to understand me and made a vague effort to reassure me.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  In the first century, Tarsus was the capital city of the Roman province of Cilicia and the dominant city of the fertile plain that surrounded it. Thirty miles to its north were the cold peaks of the Taurus Mountains, and ten miles to its south were the warm waters of the Mediterranean coast. Today, Adana on the Seyhan River has far outstripped Tarsus on the Cydnus River as the dominant city of the agriculturally fertile Çukurova Plain, but at the time of Paul’s birth Tarsus, not Adana, was queen of Cilicia. And Tarsus on the Cydnus was a birthplace both fortunate and unfortunate for Paul as an itinerant apostle of Jesus. Paul was born around 8 CE, and his birth at Tarsus gave him three very good gifts and one rather bad one—although he himself would have disagreed with that last designation. And all of those gifts, good or bad, helpful or unhelpful, came from the same urban feature: location, location, location. The first positive gift was vista and involved the advantages of a frontier city between the Greek and the Semitic worlds. We think today of the Mediterranean fault line between West and East as extending along the Dardanelles to the Bosphorus and splitting the modern city of Istanbul into European and Asian sections. At the turn of the era, you could more easily imagine it as extending along the Cydnus River and splitting into two parts, as it were, the ancient city of Tarsus. Tarsus looked toward both the West and the East. Those born there could easily imagine going north through the Cilician Gates in the Taurus Mountains and then west toward Asia Minor and Greece. They could just as easily imagine going east through the Syrian Gates in the Amanus Mountains and then south toward Israel and Egypt. Tarsus gave Paul an early vision of sea and mountain, gorge and river, gave him an early vista of difficult actualities, but open possibilities. The second positive gift was labor and involved an appreciation for what could be accomplished by hard work. The Tarsians made their city even as their city made them. To the south and the Mediterranean Sea, they had engineered a secure harbor from their river’s gift of a large lagoon. To the north and the Anatolian plateau, they had engineered a wagon road through their mountain’s gift of a deep defile. Tarsians connected together the open vista of the Mediterranean Sea, the steamy marsh of the Cilician plain, the icy cold of the Taurus range, and the baked heat of the Anatolian plateau. Geography was destiny, to be sure, but hard work could change geography and thus change history as well.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  The ceremony was to take place the next day, a Thursday, at five o’clock. I still had to announce my triumph to Monsieur Bismuth before going to the assembly hall. I went all the way to the drugstore with my shoulders proudly thrown back and, as on the day of my bar mitzvah, all the way back home from the synagogue, people in the street turned around to stare at me as they had on that previous occasion too, when I went by in my new blue suit, followed by my ushers. Now I could hear their voices and I was anxious to see the people stare at me as before. I felt light-footed as an angel and my head seemed to be up among the little white clouds in the sky that is always blue when I have triumphed. For the first time, I would see Monsieur Bismuth without feeling ill at ease. Now that I had managed to obtain recognition as the best pupil in the school system of my whole country, I had certainly proved myself worthy of the opportunity that had been granted me. I had justified all the hopes that had been vested in me by the Alliance Israélite Universelle, by the community and by Monsieur Bismuth. I had never admitted to anyone the nature of my relationship with Monsieur Bismuth, not even to Bissor, who was also the beneficiary of a grant. It had all remained a secret, reassuring to me but also humiliating. When I told Ginou that I would one day be a physician, my hopes were always firmly founded on this financial security. But all my dearest hopes were also intermingled with a secret shame. My great success now left me the same delicious taste as suddenly finding myself free of a bothersome debt.