Remorse

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 How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  At the other end of the spectrum, a show of remorse can mean absolutely nothing. Take the case of Dominic Cinelli, a violent criminal with a thirty-year history of armed robberies, assaults, and prison escapes. Cinelli was serving three consecutive life sentences when he appeared before the Massachusetts Parole Board in 2008. A parole board is made up of psychologists, corrections officers, and other knowledgeable professionals who decide whether an inmate will serve beyond his minimum sentence or be released. They witness a virtual parade of remorse, some genuinely experienced and some faked, and their profound responsibility to the public rests on their ability to tell the difference. In November 2008, Cinelli convinced the parole board that he was no longer a criminal with darkness in his soul. The board unanimously voted to free him. It didn’t take long for Cinelli to embark on a new series of robberies and fatally shoot a police officer. Cinelli was later killed during a shootout with the police. The governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, saw five of the seven members of the parole board resign. He seemed to think that they lacked the ability to detect authentic remorse.40 It’s possible that Cinelli was putting on an act. It’s also possible that Cinelli authentically felt remorse in the moment while he was testifying, but once he was out of prison, his old model of the world resurfaced, with his old predictions, creating his old self, and his remorse evaporated. Since there is no objective criterion for feelings of remorse, we will never know for sure. There is likewise no objective criterion for anger, sadness, fear, or any other emotion relevant to a trial. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy once said that juries must “know the heart and mind of the offender” in order for a defendant to have a fair trial. Emotions, however, have no consistent fingerprints in facial movements, body posture and gestures, or voice. Jurors and other perceivers make educated guesses about what those movements and sounds mean in emotional terms, but there is no objective accuracy. At best, we can measure whether jurors agree with one another in the emotions they perceive, but when the defendant and the jurors have different backgrounds, beliefs, or expectations, agreement is a poor substitute for accuracy. If a defendant’s demeanor cannot reveal emotion, then the legal system is left to grapple with a difficult question: under what circumstances can a trial be completely fair?41 … When jurors or judges see smugness in a defendant’s smile, or when they hear a witness’s quavering voice as fear, they are making a mental inference, employing their emotion concepts to guess that the action (smiling or quavering) was caused by a particular state of mind. Mental inference, you’ll remember, is how your brain gives meaning to other people’s actions through a cascade of predictions (chapter 6).42

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  That’s damned good.” ... when I stood Adam-naked before a federal law and all its stinging stars “Oh, grand stuff!” ... Because you took advantage of a sin when I was helpless moulting moist and tender hoping for the best dreaming of marriage in a mountain state aye of a litter of Lolitas... “Didn’t get that.” Because you took advantage of my inner essential innocence because you cheated me— “A little repetitious, what? Where was I?” Because you cheated me of my redemption because you took her at the age when lads play with erector sets “Getting smutty, eh?” a little downy girl still wearing poppies still eating popcorn in the colored gloam where tawny Indians took paid croppers because you stole her from her wax-browed and dignified protector spitting into his heavy-lidded eye ripping his flavid toga and at dawn leaving the hog to roll upon his new discomfort the awfulness of love and violets remorse despair while you took a dull doll to pieces and threw its head away because of all you did because of all I did not you have to die “Well, sir, this is certainly a fine poem. Your best as far as I am concerned.” He folded and handed it back to me. I asked him if he had anything serious to say before dying. The automatic was again ready for use on the person. He looked at it and heaved a big sigh. “Now look here, Mac,” he said. “You are drunk and I am a sick man. Let us postpone the matter. I need quiet. I have to nurse my impotence. Friends are coming in the afternoon to take me to a game. This pistol-packing farce is becoming a frightful nuisance. We are men of the world, in everything—sex, free verse, marksmanship. If you bear me a grudge, I am ready to make unusual amends. Even an old- fashioned rencontre, sword or pistol, in Rio or elsewhere—is not excluded. My memory and my eloquence are not at their best today but really, my dear Mr. Humbert, you were not an ideal stepfather, and I did not force your little protégée to join me. It was she made me remove her to a happier home. This house is not as modern as that ranch we shared with dear friends. But it is roomy, cool in summer and winter, and in a word comfortable, so, since I intend retiring to England or Florence forever, I suggest you move in. It is yours, gratis.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  One must ask oneself , if one decides that black or white or Jewish people are, by definition, to be despised, is one willing to murder a black or white or Jewish baby: for that is where the position leads. And if one blames the Jew for having become a white American, one may perfectly well, if one is black, be speaking out of nothing more than envy. If one blames the Jew for not having been ennobled by OTH ER ESS AYS oppression, one is not indicting the single figure of the Jew but the entire human race, and one is also making a quite breathtaking claim for oneself . I know that my own oppres sion did not ennoble me, not even when I thought of myself as a practicing Christian. I also know that if today I refuse to hate Jews, or anybody else, it is because I know how it feels to be hated . I learned this from Christians, and I ceased to practice what the Christians practiced. The crisis taking place in the world, and in the minds and hearts of black men everywhere, is not produced by the star of David, but by the old, rugged Roman cross on which Christendom's most celebrated Jew was murdered. And not by Jews. T7Je New York Times Magazine, April 9, 1967 White Racism or World Comm un ity? S INCE I am not a theologian in any way whatever, I probably ought to tell you what my credentials arc. I never expected to be standing in such a place, because I left the pulpit nvcnty-scvcn years ago. That says a good deal, I sup pose, about my relationship to the Christian Church. And in a curious way that is part of my credentials. I also address you in the name of my father, who was a Baptist minister, who gave his lif e to the Christian faith, with some very curious and stunning and painful results. I address you as one of those people who have always been outside it, even though one tried to work in it. I address you as one of the creatures, one of God's creatures, whom the Christian Church has most be trayed.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  His question threw me off guard, and frightened me. With the indescribable auth ority of twenty-two, I snarled: Love! You'd better forget about that, my friend. That train has gone. The moment I said this, I regretted it, for I remembered that he was in love: with a young white girl, also a Socialist, whose family was threatening to have him put in prison. And the week before, a handful of sailors had come across them in the subway and beaten him very badly. He looked at me and I wanted to unsay what I had said, to say something else. But I could not think of anything which would not sound, simply, like unmanly consolation, which would not sound as though I were humoring him. You're a poet, he said, and you don't believe in love. And he put his head down on the table and began to cry. We had come through some grueling things together, and I had never seen him cry. In fact, he went into and came out of battles laughing. We were in a hostile, public place. New York was fearfully hostile in those days, as it still is. He was my best friend, and for the first time in our lives I could do nothing for him; and it had been my ill-c onsidered rage which had hurt him. I wanted to take it back, but I did not know how. I would have known how if I had been being insincere. But, though I know now that I was wrong, I did not know it then. I had meant what I had said, and my unexamined lif e would not allow me to speak otherwise. I really did not, then, as far as I knew, believe that love existed, except as useless pain; and the time was f.1 r from me when I would begin to sec the contradiction implicit in the fact that I was bending all my forces, or imagined I was, to protect myself against it. He wept; I sat there; no one, for a wonder, bothered us. By and by we paid, and walked out into the streets. This was the last time, but one, that I ever saw him; it was the very last time that we really spoke. A very short time after this, his body was fimnd in the Hudson River. He had jumped from the George Washington Bridge. Why do I begin my sketch of Americans abroad with this memory? I suppose that there must be many reasons. I cer- THE NE W LOS T GENER ATION 661 tainly cannot hope to tell or, for that matter, to face them all .

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Richard thought that I had attacked it, whereas, as fa r as I was concerned, I had scarcely even criticized it. And Richard thought that I was trying to destroy his novel and his reputation; but it had not entered my mind that either of these could be destroyed, and certainly not by me. And yet, what made the interview so ghastly was not merely the fo regoing or the fa ct that I could find no words with which to defend myself. What made it most pain fu l was that Richard was right to be hurt, I was wrong to have hurt him. He saw clearly enough, fa r more clearly than I had dared to allow myself to sec, what I had done: I had used his work as a kind of springboard into my own. His work was a road-block in my road, the sphinx, really, whose riddles I had to answer before I could become myself. I thought confusedly then, and fe el very definitely now, that this was the greatest tribute I could have paid him. But it is not an easy tribute to bear and I do not know how I will take it when my time ALAS, POOR RICHARD 2 57 comes. For, finally, Richard was hurt because I had not given him credit fo r any human fe elings or fa ilings. And indeed I had not, he had never really been a human being fo r me, he had been an idol. And idols are created in order to be de stroyed. This quarrel was never really patched up, though it must be said that, over a period of years, we tried. "What do you mean, protest!" Richard cried. "All literature is protest. You can't name a single novel that isn't protest." To this I could only weakly counter that all literature might be protest but all protest was not literature. "Oh," he would say then, looking, as he so often did, bewilderingly juvenile, "here you come again with all that art fo r art's sake crap." This never fa iled to make me fu rious, and my anger, fo r some reason, always seemed to amuse him. Our rare, best times came when we managed to exasperate each other to the point of helpless hi larity. "Roots," Richard would snort, when I had finally worked my way around to this dreary subject, "what - roots! Next thing you'll be telling me is that all colored fo lks have rhythm." Once, one evening, we managed to throw the whole terrifYing subject to the winds, and Richard, Chester Himes, and myself went out and got drunk. It was a good night, perhaps the best I remember in all the time I knew Richard.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Alas poore miser that I am, that for the onely desire to see a game of triall of weapons, am fallen into these miseries and wretched snares of misfortune. For in my returne from Macedonie, wheras I sould all my wares, and played the Merchant by the space of ten months, a little before that I came to Larissa, I turned out of the way, to view the scituation of the countrey there, and behold in the bottom of a deep valley I was suddenly environed with a company of theeves, who robbed and spoiled me of such things as I had, and yet would hardly suffer me to escape. But I beeing in such extremity, in the end was happily delivered from their hands, and so I fortuned to come to the house of an old woman that sold wine, called Meroe, who had her tongue sufficiently instructed to flattery: unto whom I opened the causes of my long peregrination and careful travell, and of myne unlucky adventure: and after that I had declared to her such things as then presently came to my remembrance, shee gently entertained mee and made mee good cheere; and by and by being pricked with carnall desire, shee brought me to her own bed chamber; whereas I poore miser the very first night of our lying together did purchase to my selfe this miserable face, and for her lodging I gave to her such apparel as the theeves left to cover me withall.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Myers claimed to have committed the Vickie Pittman murder under the direction of another local sheriff; he laid out to us a widespread conspiracy involving police, drug dealing, and money laundering. It was quite a tale. We spent weeks following up on the leads that Myers had provided. He admitted to us that he had never met Walter and only knew of him through Karen Kelly. He also confirmed that he had been spending time with Karen Kelly and that she was involved in the Pittman murder. So we decided to confirm the story with Kelly herself, now a prisoner at the Tutwiler Prison for Women, where she was serving a ten- year sentence for the Pittman murder. Tutwiler is one of the state’s oldest prisons and the only prison in the state for women. It has fewer security restrictions than the men’s prisons. When Michael and I drove up to the gate, we could see incarcerated women hovering outside the prison entrance with no officers in view. The women eyed Michael and me carefully before greeting us with curious smiles. We were subjected to a very cursory pat-down in the prison lobby by a male officer before being admitted through the barred gate to the main prison area. We were told to wait for Karen Kelly in a very small room that was empty except for a square table. Kelly was a slender white woman in her mid-thirties who walked into the room wearing no restraints or handcuffs. She seemed surprisingly comfortable, shaking my hand confidently before nodding at Michael. She was wearing makeup, including a garish shade of green eye shadow. She sat down and announced that Walter had been framed and that she was grateful finally to be able to tell someone. When we began with our questions, she quickly confirmed that Myers had not known Walter before the Morrison murder. “Ralph is a fool. He thought he could trust those crooked cops, and he let them talk him into saying he was involved with a crime he didn’t know anything about. He’s done enough bad that he didn’t need to go around making stuff up.” Though she was calm at the outset of our interview, she became increasingly emotional as she started detailing the events surrounding the case. She wept more than once. She spoke with remorse about how her life had spiraled out of control when she started abusing drugs. “I’m not a bad person, but I’ve made some really foolish, bad decisions.” She was especially upset that Walter was on death row. “I feel like I’m the reason that he’s in prison. He’s just not the kind of person that would kill somebody, I know that.” Then her tone turned bitter. “I made a lot of mistakes, but those people should be ashamed. They’ve done just as much bad as I’ve done. Sheriff Tate only had one thing on his mind. He just kept saying, ‘Why you want to sleep with niggers?

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

  GREGORY. (in Hom. 33. in Evang.) For her eyes which once coveted after earthly things, she was now wearing out with penitential weeping. She once displayed her hair for the setting off of her face, she now wiped her tears with her hair. As it follows, And she wiped them with the hairs of her head. She once uttered proud things with her mouth, but kissing the feet of the Lord, she impressed her lips on the footsteps of her Redeemer. She once used ointment for the perfume of her body; what she had unworthily applied to herself, she now laudably offered to God. As it follows, And she anointed with ointment. As many enjoyments as she had in herself, so many offerings did she devise out of herself. She converts the number of her faults into the same number of virtues, that as much of her might wholly serve God in her penitence, as had despised God in her sin. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. 6. in Matt.) Thus the harlot became then more honourable than the virgins. For no sooner was she inflamed with penitence, than she burst forth in love for Christ. And these things indeed which have been spoken of were done outwardly, but those which her mind pondered within itself, were much more fervent. God alone beheld them.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  “Were any of the allegations you made against Walter McMillian as being involved in the Ronda Morrison murder true?” Ralph paused and looked around the courtroom before he answered. For the first time there was emotion in his voice, regret or remorse. “No.” It seemed that everyone in the courtroom had been holding their breath but now there was an audible buzz from many of Walter’s supporters. I had a copy of the trial transcript and took Ralph through every sentence of his testimony against Walter. Statement by statement he acknowledged that his previous testimony was entirely false. Myers was direct and persuasive. He would frequently turn his head to look Judge Norton directly in the eye as he spoke. When I made him repeat the parts of his testimony about being coerced to testify falsely, Ralph remained calm and conveyed absolute sincerity. Even during the lengthy cross-examination by Chapman, Myers was unwavering. After relentless questioning about why he was changing his testimony and Chapman’s suggestion that someone was putting him up to this, Ralph became indignant. He looked at the prosecutor and said: Me, I can simply look in your face and anybody else’s face dead eye to eyeball and tell you that that’s all I—anything that was told about McMillian was a lie….As far as I know, McMillian didn’t have anything to do with this because on the day, on the day they say this happened, I didn’t even see McMillian. And that’s exactly what I told lots of people. On re-direct examination, I asked Ralph to acknowledge once again that his trial testimony was false and that he had knowingly put an innocent man on death row. Then I took a moment and walked over to the defense table to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. I reviewed my notes and then glanced at Michael. “Are we okay?” Michael looked astonished. “Ralph was great. He was really, really great.” I looked at Walter and only then realized that his eyes were moist. He was shaking his head from side to side in disbelief. I put my hand on his shoulder before announcing to the court that Myers could be excused. We had no further questions. Myers stood up to leave the courtroom. As the deputies led him to a side door, he looked apologetically at Walter before being escorted out. I’m not sure Walter saw him. People in the courtroom started whispering again. I heard one of Walter’s relatives, in a muted tone, say, “Thank you, Jesus!” The next challenge was to rebut the testimony of Bill Hooks and Joe Hightower, who had claimed to see Walter’s modified “low-rider” truck pulling out from the cleaners about the time Ronda Morrison was murdered.

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

  349 Despite his father’s wishes that he become a Nonconformist minister, Defoe turned to trade, but his risky business ventures forced him into bankruptcy in 1692. He eventually turned to his pen to support his family. Defoe produced more than 500 separate works, as well as several periodical series, for which he wrote two or three essays a week. It was not until 1719, when he was 59 years old, that Defoe found a way of making money that released him from writing and working for both political parties: publishing the novel Robinson Crusoe. Robinson Crusoe is based on Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk’s account of his fi ve years on the island of Juan Fernandez. Like Faust, Don Quixote, or Don Juan, Robinson Crusoe, the man, represents much more than his own story of shipwreck and survival. The novel was enormously popular: Between April and August 1719, 80,000 copies were sold and four editions were published; the book was immediately translated into French and German; and by the end of the 19 th century, more than 700 editions and translations had appeared. According to French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), Robinson Crusoe was the only book that afforded “a complete treatise on natural education.” Even today, the mere image of a solitary foot in the sand or the name Friday will conjure up Crusoe’s narrative, most recently represented in the movie Cast Away (2000). Despite its mythic quality, the story is emphatically English: The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe marks a moment in the history of English literature when a “true-born Englishman” represents something essential about the nation of his birth. According to 20 th-century Irish myth-maker James Joyce, Robinson Crusoe is the English Ulysses. Crusoe’s insatiable desire for the sea and for making a fortune is a mark of his inappropriate longing for a condition other than that “middle State” into which he was born. Overwhelmed with remorse, Crusoe recalls his father’s warning that if he rejected his place in God’s order, he would suffer God’s reproach.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  We spent weeks following up on the leads that Myers had provided. He admitted to us that he had never met Walter and only knew of him through Karen Kelly. He also confirmed that he had been spending time with Karen Kelly and that she was involved in the Pittman murder. So we decided to confirm the story with Kelly herself, now a prisoner at the Tutwiler Prison for Women, where she was serving a ten-year sentence for the Pittman murder. Tutwiler is one of the state’s oldest prisons and the only prison in the state for women. It has fewer security restrictions than the men’s prisons. When Michael and I drove up to the gate, we could see incarcerated women hovering outside the prison entrance with no officers in view. The women eyed Michael and me carefully before greeting us with curious smiles. We were subjected to a very cursory pat-down in the prison lobby by a male officer before being admitted through the barred gate to the main prison area. We were told to wait for Karen Kelly in a very small room that was empty except for a square table. Kelly was a slender white woman in her mid-thirties who walked into the room wearing no restraints or handcuffs. She seemed surprisingly comfortable, shaking my hand confidently before nodding at Michael. She was wearing makeup, including a garish shade of green eye shadow. She sat down and announced that Walter had been framed and that she was grateful finally to be able to tell someone. When we began with our questions, she quickly confirmed that Myers had not known Walter before the Morrison murder. “Ralph is a fool. He thought he could trust those crooked cops, and he let them talk him into saying he was involved with a crime he didn’t know anything about. He’s done enough bad that he didn’t need to go around making stuff up.” Though she was calm at the outset of our interview, she became increasingly emotional as she started detailing the events surrounding the case. She wept more than once. She spoke with remorse about how her life had spiraled out of control when she started abusing drugs. “I’m not a bad person, but I’ve made some really foolish, bad decisions.” She was especially upset that Walter was on death row. “I feel like I’m the reason that he’s in prison. He’s just not the kind of person that would kill somebody, I know that.” Then her tone turned bitter. “I made a lot of mistakes, but those people should be ashamed. They’ve done just as much bad as I’ve done. Sheriff Tate only had one thing on his mind. He just kept saying, ‘Why you want to sleep with niggers? Why you want to sleep with niggers?’ It was awful, and he’s awful.” She paused and looked down at her hands. “But I’m awful, too. Look at what I’ve done,” she said sadly. —

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Why you want to sleep with niggers?’ It was awful, and he’s awful.” She paused and looked down at her hands. “But I’m awful, too. Look at what I’ve done,” she said sadly. — I began getting letters from Karen Kelly after our visit. She wanted me to tell Walter how sorry she was about what had happened to him. She said she still cared about him a great deal. It wasn’t clear what we could expect from Karen if we got a new hearing in court, other than to confirm that Ralph had never met Walter. It was clear that she saw Walter as the kind of person who would never kill someone violently, which was consistent with the opinion of everyone who knew him. She hadn’t dealt with the police much around the Morrison murder and didn’t have useful information pointing to their misconduct, aside from being able to show how they were provoked by her relationship with Walter. Michael and I decided to spend more time looking into the Pittman murder; we thought it might give us some perspective on the coercion that was leveled against Myers. We now knew that because Myers had recanted his accusations against Walter before the trial, the State might not be entirely surprised to hear that he was denying McMillian’s involvement in the crime. We needed as much objective evidence as we could find to confirm the truth of what Myers was now saying. Understanding the Pittman case and documenting the other demonstrably false things Myers had asserted would strengthen our evidence. Vickie Pittman’s murder had been all but forgotten. Monroe County officials had reduced Myers’s and Kelly’s sentences in exchange for Myers’s testimony against Walter. How they managed to reduce sentences in the Pittman case, which was outside their jurisdiction in another county, was another anomaly. Myers insisted that there were other people besides him and Kelly involved in the Pittman murder, including a corrupt local sheriff. There were still questions about why Vickie Pittman had been killed. Myers told us that her murder had everything to do with drug debts and threats she had made to expose corruption. We had learned from some of the early police reports that the father of Vickie Pittman, Vic Pittman, had been implicated as a suspect in her death. Vickie Pittman had had two aunts, Mozelle and Onzelle, who had been collecting information and desperately seeking answers to the questions surrounding their niece’s death. We reached out to them on the off chance that they’d be willing to speak with us, and we were astounded when they eagerly agreed to talk. Mozelle and Onzelle were twin sisters—they were also colorful, opinionated talkers who could be bracingly direct. The two middle-aged, rural white women spent so much time together that they could finish each other’s sentences without even seeming to notice.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  "My people owned slaves," says Faulkner, "and the very obligation we have to take care of these people is morally bad." "This problem is . . . far beyond the moral one it is and still was a hundred years ago, in 1860, when many South erners, including Ro bert Lee, recognized it as a moral one at the very instant they in turn elected to champion the under dog because that underdog was blood and kin and home." But the North escaped scot-free. For one thing, in freeing the slave, it established a moral superiority over the South which the South has not learned to live with until today; and this despite-or possibly because of-the fact that this moral su periority was bought, after all, rather cheaply. The North was no better prepared than the South, as it turned out, to make citizens of former slaves, but it was able, as the South was not, to wash its hands of the matter. Men who knew that slavery was wrong were forced, nevertheless, to fight to perpetuate it because they were unable to turn against "blood and kin and home." And when blood and kin and home were defeated, they found themselves, more than ever, committed: commit ted, in effect, to a way of life which was as unjust and crippling as it was inescapable. In sum, the North, by freeing the slaves of their masters, robbed the masters of any possibility of free ing themselves of the slaves. When Faulkner speaks, then, of the "middle of the road," he is simply speaking of the hope-which was always unreal istic and is now all but smashed-that the white Southerner, with no coercion from the rest of the nation, will lift himself above his ancient, crippling bitterness and refuse to add to his 214 NOBOD Y KNOWS MY NA ME already intolerable burden of blood-guiltiness. But this hope would seem to be absolutely dependent on a social and psy chological stasis which simply docs not exist. "Things have been getting better," Faulkner tells us, "for a long time. Only six Negroes were killed by whites in Mississippi last year, ac cording to police figures." Faulkner surely knows how little consolation this offers a Negro and he also knows something about "police figures" in the Deep South. And he knows, too, that mur der is not the worst thing that can happen to a man , black or white. But mur der may be the worst thing a man can do. Faulkner is not trying to save Negroes, who arc, in his view, already saved; who, having refused to be destroyed by terror, arc far stronger than the terrified white populace; and who have, moreover, fatally, from his point of view, the weight of the federal government behind them.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  I thought, why am I telling Luc this? But I'd never seen him pay such attention. Forget Wordsworth and the stolen boat. He swallowed more brandy. I went on to how Harold used to work in security on the building; he used to see Andy in the underground car-park vacking the sick out of the Merc. He took a shine to him. After a while Andy confided in him, and somehow they started to have an affair—they used the flat, it was all very easy. Harold was by all accounts a monstrous bore even then, but his kindness was a new thing for little Andy. Then one day the businessman found them together. It turned out he'd known about it for a long time. According to Harold he'd been videoing them at it for months. But he'd started to get jealous. He immediately arranged for Harold to be moved elsewhere, but that very night Harold and Andy eloped. "My god!" laughed Luc, with the rough cold-end catch in his voice. "The awful thing is that the whole situation has kind of reproduced itself. Andy stays at home while Harold goes out and smokes his pipe and eyes up young men. He says it's because Andy's still afraid to be caught, that the businessman is still after him. But that was years ago. I gather the truth is that Andy's kept home by force, he has to do the housework in the nude, he's actually tied up naked while Harold's out and about. But he's still devoted to Harold because he rescued him, and looks after him." I was inventing rather freely in the latter part of this. "Maybe it's time someone rescued him again," said Luc carelessly. "I don't think it's very likely." I remembered the one time I'd seen him—sallow and queeny, with a wandering rear-end. "Harold's at that time of life when he's terrified of not being young—he hasn't noticed young people don't have cravats or tuck their shirts into their underpants, he's always very pushy about not being pushed out." Luc was quite amused by this, he liked to show himself un-shocked, and not being young was a lifetime away. He smiled self-confidently, sexily from under Cherif's tweedy peak. I blinked away the hint of parody. I thought I'd give him a minute or two and then firmly throw him out, with a quick cheek-kiss at the top of the stairs. Then I'd go into the bedroom and in some way break down. Already I felt an agony of regret rising inside me. "I'm afraid it's gentlemen's again," he said, groping for the floor with his drink and surging out of the chair. I showed him where and he went in and slammed the door as if I might want to help. I came back into the room so as not to torture myself with hearing.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Frankie gestured with her thumb toward the Duchess. “You don’t know if they'll let you in there? Well, in our day I was afraid if I showed who turned me on my own people would shut the door in my face. That’s a terrible way to feel. ’m sorry that’s happening to you now. Shit, Jess, what hurt the most is I respected you. I wanted you to respect me.” I rubbed the sadness out of my eyes. “Well, you deserved it. C’mon,” I took her by the shoulder. “Let’s go to the piers.” We walked slowly down Christopher Street toward the Hudson River. “You know, Frankie, when we wete younger, I thought I had it figured out: I’m a butch because I love femmes. That was something beautiful. Nobody ever honored our love. You scared me. I felt like you were taking that away from me.” Frankie shook her head. “I wasn’t taking anything from you. But how do you think I felt when you told me I wasn’t a real butch because I sleep with other butches? You were taking away who I am. Jesus, Jess, when I walk down the street guys fuck with me. I don’t have to prove I’m butch to them. How come I got to prove it to you?” I shook my head. “You don’t.” I put my arm around her shoulder. We crossed the West Side Highway and walked to the end of the pier. The full moon illuminated the clouds. Light shimmered on the dark water. Frankie’s voice dropped low. “Jess, which old bull really brought you out?” I smiled at her memory. “Butch Al, from Niagara Falls.” “For me it was Grant,” Frankie said. “Grant?” I remembered Grant as a mean drunk who could offend everyone. Frankie watched my face. “Grant meant the world to me. She taught me that Iam what I am, that I got nothing to prove. It was a very liberating concept for a baby butch.” I smiled gently. “I never thought of Grant as very liberated—not that any of us were.” Frankie nodded. “Grant never took her own wisdom to heart. She’s a prisoner of her shame, but she didn’t want us young ones to end up like her. She only seduced baby butches when she got real drunk. But I never felt like we made her happy. I think she has some secret passion that scares the shit out of her” I frowned. “Like what?” Frankie shrugged. “I think she’s horrified by something inside of her she thinks is twisted, like maybe she fantasizes about being with strong old bulls, or men or something. Poor Grant. I wish she’d let me in. I love that old bulldagger so much.” We sat in silence, listening to the waves lapping against the pilings beneath us. Frankie sighed. “You know, Jess, I never learned to love myself until I gave in to loving other butches.”

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  Papaw quit drinking in 1983, a decision accompanied by no medical intervention and not much fanfare. He simply stopped and said little about it. He and Mamaw separated and then reconciled, and although they continued to live in separate houses, they spent nearly every waking hour together. And they tried to repair the damage they had wrought: They helped Lori break out of her abusive marriage. They lent money to Bev and helped her with child care. They offered her places to stay, supported her through rehab, and paid for her nursing school. Most important, they filled the gap when my mom was unwilling or unable to be the type of parent that they wished they’d been to her. Mamaw and Papaw may have failed Bev in her youth. But they spent the rest of their lives making up for it. Chapter 4I was born in late summer 1984, just a few months before Papaw cast his first and only vote for a Republican—Ronald Reagan. Winning large blocks of Rust Belt Democrats like Papaw, Reagan went on to the biggest electoral landslide in modern American history. “I never liked Reagan much,” Papaw later told me. “But I hated that son of a bitch Mondale.” Reagan’s Democratic opponent, a well-educated Northern liberal, stood in stark cultural contrast to my hillbilly Papaw. Mondale never had a chance, and after he departed from the political scene, Papaw never again voted against his beloved “party of the workingman.” Jackson, Kentucky, would always have my heart, but Middletown, Ohio, had most of my time. In many ways, the town where I was born was largely the same as the one my grandparents had migrated to four decades earlier. Its population had changed little since the 1950s, when the flood of migrants on the hillbilly highway slowed to a dribble. My elementary school was built in the 1930s, before my grandparents left Jackson, and my middle school first welcomed a class shortly after World War I, well before my grandparents were born. Armco remained the town’s biggest employer, and though troubling signs were on the horizon, Middletown had avoided significant economic problems. “We saw ourselves as a really fine community, on par with Shaker Heights or Upper Arlington,” explained a decades-long veteran of the public schools, comparing the Middletown of yore to some of the most successful of Ohio’s suburbs. “Of course, none of us knew what would happen.” Middletown is one of the older incorporated towns in Ohio, built during the 1800s thanks to its proximity to the Miami River, which empties directly into the Ohio. As kids, we joked that our hometown was so generic that they didn’t even bother to give it a real name: It’s in the middle of Cincinnati and Dayton, and it’s a town, so here we are. (It’s not alone: A few miles from Middletown is Centerville.) Middletown is generic in other ways. It exemplified the economic expansion of the manufacturing-based Rust Belt town. Socioeconomically, it is largely working-class.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  Lincoln was melancholy to begin with, and if any place invoked a smile, surely it wouldn’t be a stone’s throw away from the place where someone shot him in the head. I turned the corner, and after a few steps I saw Usha sitting on the steps of Ford’s Theatre. She had run after me, worried about me being alone. I realized then that I had a problem—that I must confront whatever it was that had, for generations, caused those in my family to hurt those whom they loved. I apologized profusely to Usha. I expected her to tell me to go fuck myself, that it would take days to make up for what I’d done, that I was a terrible person. A sincere apology is a surrender, and when someone surrenders, you go in for the kill. But Usha wasn’t interested in that. She calmly told me through her tears that it was never acceptable to run away, that she was worried, and that I had to learn how to talk to her. And then she gave me a hug and told me that she accepted my apology and was glad I was okay. That was the end of it. Usha hadn’t learned how to fight in the hillbilly school of hard knocks. The first time I visited her family for Thanksgiving, I was amazed at the lack of drama. Usha’s mother didn’t complain about her father behind his back. There were no suggestions that good family friends were liars or backstabbers, no angry exchanges between a man’s wife and the same man’s sister. Usha’s parents seemed to genuinely like her grandmother and spoke of their siblings with love. When I asked her father about a relatively estranged family member, I expected to hear a rant about character flaws. What I heard instead was sympathy and a little sadness but primarily a life lesson: “I still call him regularly and check up on him. You can’t just cast aside family members because they seem uninterested in you. You’ve got to make the effort, because they’re family.” I tried to go to a counselor, but it was just too weird. Talking to some stranger about my feelings made me want to vomit. I did go to the library, and I learned that behavior I considered commonplace was the subject of pretty intense academic study. Psychologists call the everyday occurrences of my and Lindsay’s life “adverse childhood experiences,” or ACEs. ACEs are traumatic childhood events, and their consequences reach far into adulthood. The trauma need not be physical. The following events or feelings are some of the most common ACEs: being sworn at, insulted, or humiliated by parentsbeing pushed, grabbed, or having something thrown at youfeeling that your family didn’t support each otherhaving parents who were separated or divorcedliving with an alcoholic or a drug userliving with someone who was depressed or attempted suicidewatching a loved one be physically abused.ACEs happen everywhere, in every community.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  Lincoln was melancholy to begin with, and if any place invoked a smile, surely it wouldn’t be a stone’s throw away from the place where someone shot him in the head. I turned the corner, and after a few steps I saw Usha sitting on the steps of Ford’s Theatre. She had run after me, worried about me being alone. I realized then that I had a problem—that I must confront whatever it was that had, for generations, caused those in my family to hurt those whom they loved. I apologized profusely to Usha. I expected her to tell me to go fuck myself, that it would take days to make up for what I’d done, that I was a terrible person. A sincere apology is a surrender, and when someone surrenders, you go in for the kill. But Usha wasn’t interested in that. She calmly told me through her tears that it was never acceptable to run away, that she was worried, and that I had to learn how to talk to her. And then she gave me a hug and told me that she accepted my apology and was glad I was okay. That was the end of it. Usha hadn’t learned how to fight in the hillbilly school of hard knocks. The first time I visited her family for Thanksgiving, I was amazed at the lack of drama. Usha’s mother didn’t complain about her father behind his back. There were no suggestions that good family friends were liars or backstabbers, no angry exchanges between a man’s wife and the same man’s sister. Usha’s parents seemed to genuinely like her grandmother and spoke of their siblings with love. When I asked her father about a relatively estranged family member, I expected to hear a rant about character flaws. What I heard instead was sympathy and a little sadness but primarily a life lesson: “I still call him regularly and check up on him. You can’t just cast aside family members because they seem uninterested in you. You’ve got to make the effort, because they’re family.” I tried to go to a counselor, but it was just too weird. Talking to some stranger about my feelings made me want to vomit. I did go to the library, and I learned that behavior I considered commonplace was the subject of pretty intense academic study. Psychologists call the everyday occurrences of my and Lindsay’s life “adverse childhood experiences,” or ACEs. ACEs are traumatic childhood events, and their consequences reach far into adulthood. The trauma need not be physical. The following events or feelings are some of the most common ACEs: being sworn at, insulted, or humiliated by parentsbeing pushed, grabbed, or having something thrown at youfeeling that your family didn’t support each otherhaving parents who were separated or divorcedliving with an alcoholic or a drug userliving with someone who was depressed or attempted suicidewatching a loved one be physically abused.ACEs happen everywhere, in every community.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  When Michael and I drove up to the gate, we could see incarcerated women hovering outside the prison entrance with no officers in view. The women eyed Michael and me carefully before greeting us with curious smiles. We were subjected to a very cursory pat-down in the prison lobby by a male officer before being admitted through the barred gate to the main prison area. We were told to wait for Karen Kelly in a very small room that was empty except for a square table. Kelly was a slender white woman in her mid-thirties who walked into the room wearing no restraints or handcuffs. She seemed surprisingly comfortable, shaking my hand confidently before nodding at Michael. She was wearing makeup, including a garish shade of green eye shadow. She sat down and announced that Walter had been framed and that she was grateful finally to be able to tell someone. When we began with our questions, she quickly confirmed that Myers had not known Walter before the Morrison murder. “Ralph is a fool. He thought he could trust those crooked cops, and he let them talk him into saying he was involved with a crime he didn’t know anything about. He’s done enough bad that he didn’t need to go around making stuff up.” Though she was calm at the outset of our interview, she became increasingly emotional as she started detailing the events surrounding the case. She wept more than once. She spoke with remorse about how her life had spiraled out of control when she started abusing drugs. “I’m not a bad person, but I’ve made some really foolish, bad decisions.” She was especially upset that Walter was on death row. “I feel like I’m the reason that he’s in prison. He’s just not the kind of person that would kill somebody, I know that.” Then her tone turned bitter. “I made a lot of mistakes, but those people should be ashamed. They’ve done just as much bad as I’ve done. Sheriff Tate only had one thing on his mind. He just kept saying, ‘Why you want to sleep with niggers? Why you want to sleep with niggers?’ It was awful, and he’s awful.” She paused and looked down at her hands. “But I’m awful, too. Look at what I’ve done,” she said sadly. — I began getting letters from Karen Kelly after our visit. She wanted me to tell Walter how sorry she was about what had happened to him. She said she still cared about him a great deal. It wasn’t clear what we could expect from Karen if we got a new hearing in court, other than to confirm that Ralph had never met Walter. It was clear that she saw Walter as the kind of person who would never kill someone violently, which was consistent with the opinion of everyone who knew him.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  Red Sea and fi nding pearls.” She readied herself on the bed, and he sat next to her. Staring into her face, he reproached her, “Why do you have such contempt for Jesus, that you come to this? . . . I see Satan toying on your face.” Stirred, she asked him, “Is there repentance?” She repented and left, immediately, without even arranging her aff airs. Th e monk and the penitent trekked into the desert. When night fell, John made her a pillow of sand, marked with a cross. He camped some distance apart. In the middle of the night, under the clear desert sky, he awoke to see a luminous path, stretching from heaven down to Taïsia. He went to her lifeless body and pricked her foot, knowing she was dead. But he heard a voice affi rm, “After one hour of repentance, she will be received before those who repent for great lengths of time without showing such fervor as did she.” Th e salvation of Taïsia is the kernel of a literary type that was to triumph with irresistible force in the fi fth century. Along with Chrysostom’s actress, Taïsia belongs to the earliest stratum of a new legend, and there is no reason to doubt the reality of her existence. Here is the chance to watch the birth of an archetype. Th e story of Taïsia, as we have it, already bears traces of artistic touch. Taïsia’s internal refl ections about the monks and the pearls of the Red Sea are, surely, a contrivance. We sense but cannot grasp some distant connection with the famous actress of Antioch, whose legend was fer-menting in the same hot house of spiritual imagination, and whose stage name was none other than Margarito, pearl. But the story of Taïsia hits with the thud of simple reality. Her material desperation and loss of respectability had no literary parallel. Her story is very early and little stylized, and if we cannot disentangle the authentic core from the light embellishments of time and imagination, the story of Taïsia contains a stronger dose of authenticity than will soon be found in the highly artifi cial morality tales of penitent women. Th e tale of Taïsia’s repentance is handed down among the chain of traditions about the earliest generations of monks, principally from the site of Scetis. Th e Sayings of the Desert Fathers preserve a number of memories about the colorful ascetic John the Dwarf, who fl ourished in the last de-cades of the fourth century and the fi rst de cade of the fi fth. Most of the stories and sayings focus on monastic pioneers from the mid- fourth to the early fi fth century. In the earliest days these memories were transmitted orally, and characteristic traces of oral transmission remain in the collections. Th e story of Taïsia passed through only a few generations of oral transmission before 