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 Anna Karenina (1877)

  Left alone, after putting his manuscripts together in the new portfolio bought by her, he washed his hands at the new washstand with the elegant fittings, that had all made their appearance with her. Levin smiled at his own thoughts, and shook his head disapprovingly at those thoughts; a feeling akin to remorse fretted him. There was something shameful, effeminate, Capuan, as he called it to himself, in his present mode of life. “It’s not right to go on like this,” he thought. “It’ll soon be three months, and I’m doing next to nothing. Today, almost for the first time, I set to work seriously, and what happened? I did nothing but begin and throw it aside. Even my ordinary pursuits I have almost given up. On the land I scarcely walk or drive about at all to look after things. Either I am loath to leave her, or I see she’s dull alone. And I used to think that, before marriage, life was nothing much, somehow didn’t count, but that after marriage, life began in earnest. And here almost three months have passed, and I have spent my time so idly and unprofitably. No, this won’t do; I must begin. Of course, it’s not her fault. She’s not to blame in any way. I ought myself to be firmer, to maintain my masculine independence of action; or else I shall get into such ways, and she’ll get used to them too.... Of course she’s not to blame,” he told himself. But it is hard for anyone who is dissatisfied not to blame someone else, and especially the person nearest of all to him, for the ground of his dissatisfaction. And it vaguely came into Levin’s mind that she herself was not to blame (she could not be to blame for anything), but what was to blame was her education, too superficial and frivolous. (“That fool Tcharsky: she wanted, I know, to stop him, but didn’t know how to.”) “Yes, apart from her interest in the house (that she has), apart from dress and _broderie anglaise_, she has no serious interests. No interest in her work, in the estate, in the peasants, nor in music, though she’s rather good at it, nor in reading. She does nothing, and is perfectly satisfied.” Levin, in his heart, censured this, and did not as yet understand that she was preparing for that period of activity which was to come for her when she would at once be the wife of her husband and mistress of the house, and would bear, and nurse, and bring up children. He knew not that she was instinctively aware of this, and preparing herself for this time of terrible toil, did not reproach herself for the moments of carelessness and happiness in her love that she enjoyed now while gaily building her nest for the future. Chapter 16

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  (I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze, I cannot get out, said the starling) . Where are you riding, Dolores Haze? What make is the magic carpet? Is a Cream Cougar the present craze? And where are you parked, my car pet? Who is your hero, Dolores Haze? Still one of those blue-caped star-men? Oh the balmy days and the palmy bays, And the cars, and the bars, my Carmen! Oh Dolores, that juke-box hurts! Are you still dancin’, darlin’? (Both in worn levis, both in torn T-shirts, And I, in my corner, snarlin’). Happy, happy is gnarled McFate Touring the States with a child wife, Plowing his Molly in every State Among the protected wild life. My Dolly, my folly! Her eyes were vair , And never closed when I kissed her. Know an old perfume called Soleil Vert? Are you from Paris, mister? L’autre soir un air froid d’opéra m’alita: Son félé—bien fol est qui s’y fie! Il neige, le décor s’écroule, Lolita! Lolita, qu’ai-je fait de ta vie ? Dying, dying, Lolita Haze, Of hate and remorse, I’m dying. And again my hairy fist I raise, And again I hear you crying. Officer, officer, there they go— In the rain, where that lighted store is! And her socks are white, and I love her so, And her name is Haze, Dolores . Officer, officer, there they are— Dolores Haze and her lover! Whip out your gun and follow that car. Now tumble out, and take cover. Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze. Her dream-gray gaze never flinches. Ninety pounds is all she weighs With a height of sixty inches. My car is limping, Dolores Haze, And the last long lap is the hardest, And I shall be dumped where the weed decays, And the rest is rust and stardust. By psychoanalyzing this poem, I notice it is really a maniac’s masterpiece. The stark, stiff, lurid rhymes correspond very exactly to certain perspectiveless and terrible landscapes and figures, and magnified parts of landscapes and figures, as drawn by psychopaths in tests devised by their astute trainers. I wrote many more poems. I immersed myself in the poetry of others. But not for a second did I forget the load of revenge. I would be a knave to say, and the reader a fool to believe, that the shock of losing Lolita cured me of pederosis. My accursed nature could not change, no matter how my love for her did. On playgrounds and beaches, my sullen and stealthy eye, against my will, still sought out the flash of a nymphet’s limbs, the sly tokens of Lolita’s handmaids and rosegirls. But one essential vision in me had withered: never did I dwell now on possibilities of bliss with a little maiden, specific or synthetic, in some out-of-the-way place; never did my fancy sink its fangs into Lolita’s sisters, far far away, in the coves of evoked islands. That was all over, for the time being at least.

• From Querelle (1953)

  He was hungry. He had been in hiding for three days, and he lived in fear of the crime he had committed. Sleeping - and waking, horrors filled his mind. He was afraid of rats, but he seriously considered catching one and eating it raw. Having sobered up almost instantly, the uselessness of the murder had become clear to him. He even felt some tenderness toward Theo, thinking of him. He remembered how kind Thea had been at first, remembered the carafes of white wine they had enjoyed together. He asked for his forgiveness. Remorse gnawed at him, made him feel hungrier still. Then he thought of his parents. Surely the newspapers and the police had informed them about his deed. What would they do? They, too, were working folk. The father was a mason. What would he think of his son killing another mason in a fit of amorous rage? And the kids he had gone to school with? Gil slept on the stone floor. He didn't pay any attention to his clothes-shirt, undershirt, pants-and they seemed to slip off him of their own accord, as if they wanted to leave Gil who crouched in the dark, passing a 153 I QUERELLE light finger-mechanically, voluptuously, but with no feelings of an erotic nature-almost caressing that sensitive excrescence of flesh he thought of as a light pink in color, and which once before had given him the sense of being a man, making it impossible for Thea to mount him. Having remained there so faithfully, his hemorrhoids reminded him of the scene, anp their presence strengthened his sense of being. HI guess they've buried Thea by now. I'm sure the guys took the day off. They all chipped in for a wreath." He curled up again, staying in a comer, clutching his knees in his arms. Now and again he got up and walked, but always slowly, fearfully, as if mysteriously anchored to the wall like Baron Franck, by a complicated network of chains fastened to his neck, his wrists, his waist, his ankles, and to the stones of the wall. Carefully he dragged along this load of invisible metal, being surprised in spite of himself that it was so easy to get out of his clothes, neither shirt nor trousers being held up by the shackles. Another reason for moving slowly was his fear of the ghost he might so easily raise by too heavy a footfall : it would rise and spread like a sail, given the slightest breath of wind.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  I still dream about that veteran and his daughter. I so wish I had said yes. I have no idea whether we in the room could have made a difference. In truth, we don’t know which of our acts in the present will shape the future. But we have to behave as if everything we do matters. Because it might. As my mother would say, “Democracy is a seed that can only be planted where you are.” A CodaPart of traveling over years means coming back to the same place and knowing it for the first time. I had learned my best political lesson in college—I just didn’t know it yet. I took a course in geology because I thought it was the easiest way of fulfilling a science requirement. One day the professor took us out into the Connecticut River Valley to show us the “meander curves” of an old-age river. I was paying no attention because I had walked up a dirt path and found a big turtle, a giant mud turtle about two feet across, on the muddy embankment of an asphalt road. I was sure it was going to crawl onto the road and be crushed by a car. So with a lot of difficulty, I picked up this huge snapping turtle and slowly carried it down the road to the river. Just as I had slipped it into the water and was watching it swim away, my geology professor came up behind me. “You know,” he said quietly, “that turtle has probably spent a month crawling up the dirt path to lay its eggs in the mud on the side of the road—you have just put it back in the river.” I felt terrible. I couldn’t believe what I had done, but it was too late. It took me many more years to realize this parable had taught me the first rule of organizing. Always ask the turtle. [image "With Loretta Swit, racing to raise money, Freestate Raceway, Laurel, Maryland, 1982. From Gloria Steinem’s personal collection" file=Image00017.jpg] WITH LORETTA SWIT, RACING TO RAISE MONEY, FREESTATE RACEWAY, LAUREL, MARYLAND, 1982. FROM GLORIA STEINEM’S PERSONAL COLLECTION [image "VI." file=Image00018.jpg] Surrealism in Everyday LifeA journey—whether it’s to the corner grocery or through life—is supposed to have a beginning, middle, and end, right? Well, the road is not like that at all. It’s the very illogic and the juxtaposed differences of the road—combined with our search for meaning—that make travel so addictive. Fortunately, I already had a phrase for this road craziness. As Susanne Langer, the philosopher of mind and art, explained, “The notion of giving something a name is the vastest generative idea that was ever conceived.” It was the good luck and bad luck of writing for That Was the Week That Was (TW3 ), a pioneer of political satire on television, that caused me to create a category called Surrealism in Everyday Life.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Then smiling said: “I am Manfred, 7 grandson of Empress Constance; wherefore I pray thee, that when thou returnest, thou go to my fair daughter, parent of the glory of Sicily and of Aragon, and tell her sooth, if other tale be told. After I had my body pierced by two mortal stabs, I gave me up weeping to him who willingly doth pardon. Horrible were my transgressions; but infinite goodness hath such wide arms that it accepteth all that turn to it. If Cosenza’s Pastor, who to chase of me was set by Clement, then had well read that page in God, the bones of my body would yet be at the bridgehead near Benevento, under the guard of the heavy cairn. Now the rain washes them, and the wind stirs them, beyond the Realm, hard by the Verde, whither he translated them with tapers quenched. By curse of theirs man is not so lost, that eternal love may not return, so long as hope retaineth aught of green. True is it, that he who dies in contumacy of Holy Church, even though at the last he repent, needs must stay outside this bank thirty fold for all the time that he hath lived in his presumption, if such decree be not shortened by holy prayers. Look now, if thou canst make me glad, by revealing to my good Constance how thou hast seen me, and also this ban: for here, through those yonder, much advancement comes.” 1. evening is the last of the four divisions of the day, from 3 to 6 P.M. (cf. Conv. iii. 6; iv. 23). When it is 3 P.M. in Italy, it is 6 P.M. at Jerusalem and 6 A.M. in Purgatory. 2. This tradition is recorded by Virgil’s biographers, Donatus and Suetonius. The body was transferred by order of Augustus (cf. Canto vii). 3. Be satisfied that it is, without asking the reason why. “Demonstration is two-fold: the one demonstrates by means of the cause, and is called propter quid ... the other by means of the effect, and is called the demonstration quia” (Thomas Aquinas). 4. Had human reason been capable of penetrating these mysteries, there would have been no need for the revelation of the Word of God. 5. Lerici and Turbia are at the eastern and western extremities of Liguria, respectively. 6. The mountain was on their right, and the sun on their left. 7. This is Manfred (ca. 1231-1266), grandson of the Emperor Henry VI and of his wife Constance (for whom see Par. iii), and natural son of the Emperor Frederick II. Manfred’s wife, Beatrice of Savoy, bore him a daughter who (in 1262) married Peter III of Aragon (for whom and for whose sons see Canto vii; cf. also Par. xix). Manfred became King of Sicily in 1258, usurping the rights of his nephew Conradin. The Popes naturally opposed him, as a Ghibelline, and excommunicated him; and in 1265, Charles of Anjou came to Italy with a large army, on the invitation of Clement IV, and was crowned as counter King of Sicily. On February 26, 1266, Manfred was defeated by Charles at Benevento (some thirty miles north-east of Naples), and slain. He was buried near the battlefield, beneath a huge cairn (each soldier of the army contributing a stone); but his body was disinterred by order of the Pope, and deposited on the banks of the Verde (now the Garigliano, cf. Par. viii), outside the boundaries of the Kingdom of Naples and of the Church States, and with the rites usual at the burial of those who died excommunicated.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  20. Beatrice was twenty-five years old when she died—a period that covers the first of Dante’s four ages. “The first is called Adolescence, that is the growth of life.… Of the first no one doubts, but each wise man agrees that it lasts even to the twenty-fifth year; and up to that time our soul waits for the increase and the embellishment of the body” (Conv. iv. 24). 21. These lines refer to the period of Dante’s life (1290-1300) which has already been touched on in connection with Forese Donati (see Canto xxiii). The first words (as in the following canto) have a very personal ring, and would seem to refer not so much to the donna gentile of the Vita Nuova, § xxxvi (whether allegorically or literally, and whether, in the latter capacity, she be Gemma Donati or another), as to those other, less creditable, infidelities to Beatrice’s memory, of which our poet was undoubtedly guilty at this time, and to which several of his minor poems and Purg. xxiii bear witness. On the other hand they possibly allude to Dante’s temporary indifference to religion, due to his philosophical studies during this period; and may therefore be connected with the donna gentile of the Vita Nuova, who is, in the Conv. ii. 13, identified with Philosophy.22. in dream. A vision of this kind, and apparently the last, is described in the Vita Nuova, § xl, where Dante tells how his “heart began painfully to repent of the desire by which it had so basely let itself be possessed during so many days, contrary to the constancy of reason. And then, this evil desire being quite gone from me, all my thoughts turned again unto their excellent Beatrice. And I say most truly that from that hour I thought constantly of her with the whole humbled and ashamed heart; the which became often manifest in sighs, that had among them the name of that most gracious creature, and how she departed from us.”23. See Inf. ii.C A N T O X X X ITurning direct to Dante, Beatrice receives his broken confession of how he fell away so soon as her countenance was hidden from him. Whereon she shows him how that very loss of her bodily presence, which he urges as the cause of his defection, should have taught him the empriness of all earthly and mortal beauty, weaned his heart from earth and given it to her in heaven. Like a chidden child, dumb with shame, confessing and repenting, Dante stands; but Beatrice will not suffer him to take refuge in childish pleas or excuses, and in the very terms whereby she summons him to look on her, reminds him that he has reached man’s estate, and should long have put away childish things. Whereon, in yet deeper shame, he wrenches up his downcast face to look on her, and sees her surpassing her former self more now that erst she surpassed all others. The passion of his penitence and his hatred of all those things which had enticed him away from her so vanquish him that he falls senseless to the ground. Dante comes to himself neck-deep in the stream, into which he plunges his head, of which he drinks, and which he crosses, by Matilda’s ministration. After which he is drawn into the dance of the four star-nymphs who promise to lead him to the light of Beatrice’s eyes; into which their three sisters, Faith, Hope and Charity will strengthen him to gaze. They keep their word; but Dante’s passionate reminiscences and longings are awed by the august impersonation of Revelation, whom he has found where he looked only for the Florentine maiden he had lost on earth. The divine and human nature of Christ are flashed alternately from the reflection in her eyes though ever combined in the mysterious Being himself, while the three nymphs implore Beatrice to turn their light upon her faithful pilgrim and unveil to him the beauty of her smile. Never was poet who could utter in words that spendour that now bursts upon him.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I had wondered if Duffy and I would still recognize each other. Of course we did. He spotted me the moment he walked into the restaurant. I stood up as he approached the booth. “Jess.” He shook my hand. His eyes immediately filled with tears. “Jess, Pve waited years to tell you how sorry I am.” “Tt’s alright, Duffy. I know you didn’t do it on purpose. It was just a mistake.” Duffy dipped his head. “Can I have another chance?” I laughed. “You haven’t used up your chances Duffy dropped his eyes. “TI think in all the years I’ve organized it might have been the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. And all I could think about was what I'd cost you. I would have done anything to make yet yout life easier, Jess. And I screwed up so bad. ?m sorry.” I smiled. “You know, Duffy, there’s this person I love named Ruth. She’s different like I am. One time I got beat up and she called me in sick to work and she did the same damn thing. I know I was real mad at you at the time. But even then I knew you were always on my side. There weren’t that many people I could count on to stand with me, but I always knew you were one of them. Hey, how about the mistakes I made that you let slide?” Duffy smiled and chewed his lip. “Thanks, Jess. You let me off real easy.” I laughed. “Well, you’ve always been a good friend.” He blushed. “Sit down, Duffy.” We caught up quick by painting our lives in broad strokes. “Got red-baited out of the bindery where we used to work,” Duffy explained. “I got kind of burned out, drank too much. Then I quit drinking and got that job organizing, and I’m still working for the same union.” I told him I’d stopped taking hormones and moved to New York City and now I was a typesetter. “Nonunion?” he asked. I nodded. “Yeah. When the computers came on the scene, the owners could see first how it was going to transform the old hot-lead industry. So they hired all the people the old craft union didn’t realize were important to organize. That’s how they broke the back of Local 6.” He looked right at me in a way that made me uncomfortable. “It’s been real hard for you, Jess, hasn’t it?” I shrugged and nodded. “It shows in your face,” he said. “You look less scared but more hurt.” Strange, him knowing me like that. I changed the subject. “Something incredible happened to me today, Duffy. I got up in front of a rally and talked over a microphone. I wanted to tell them how it was in the plants, how when a contract’s almost up management works overtime trying to divide everybody. I didn’t know if they’d get what I meant if I said it took the whole membership to win the strike.”

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Enid sits a little straighter. Surprise and hurt are visible in her eyes, shame. The nape of Grace’s neck crackles with electricity. It’s the sort of remark that would have prompted, in another life now, a shouting match between her parents. But here, in this house, in this kitchen, on this day, Grace sees Enid work it through. Think it over. She has worked her steps. She has taken responsibility. Enid is fond of affirmations. Own Your Shit, Save Your Life and My Shame Is My Badge of Honor and My Feelings Are My Responsibility. All that pretty talk, those encompassing generalities. Toothless to Grace, but powerful to those looking for something to believe in. “That was a long time ago, Big Davis. And this is hard enough. Now, I’ve tried to make good and make right.” “You don’t know hard,” he says. “You don’t know the beginning of hard.” Grace wishes she had kept her mouth shut, that she had resisted the mean, biting part of herself. Enid and Big Davis avert their gazes, look down into their plates. Grace bites into the roast, chews it through, swallows. She’s let something ugly into the room, she knows. All that stuff about her parents, before her mother got clean and before her father died, all of it suddenly back in the room like departed ancestors of a common line. The spectral outlines of who they had once been. Grace has been trying to be better about letting that sort of thing go. Letting people be who they are now. Not holding them to account so hard, so much. Letting them change. Grow. Mutate. “It’s good,” she says of the roast. “I like the pepper sauce.” “It was kind of you to offer us dinner,” Enid says, quick to change the subject, to make good. “Y’all my kin,” he says. “Davis, too?” Grace asks, because she cannot let this chance slip by her. “Nothing stopping your brother from coming here, being here. That’s his choice,” Big Davis says coolly. Grace feels like a sulky, surly teenager. She wishes that she could simply accept things as they are, not dig around. Meddle. She wishes, too, that Davis had never asked her to. Wishes that she had more time. Then it all wouldn’t seem like such a waste. “It’s not a choice,” she says. “He was made that way.” “What made him made you,” he says. “And you ain’t that way. You’re decent. Some folks is still decent in this world.”

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  The cities of Lamone and Santerno guide the Lioncel of the white lair, who changes faction from the summer to the winter; 7 and that city whose flank the Savio bathes, as it lies between the plain and mount, so lives it between tyranny and freedom. 8 Now I pray thee, tell us who thou art; be not more hard than one has been to thee, so may thy name on earth maintain its front.” After the flame had roared awhile as usual, it moved the sharp point to and fro, and then gave forth this breath: “If I thought my answer were to one who ever could return to the world, this flame should shake no more; but since none ever did return alive from this depth, if what I hear be true, without fear of infamy I answer thee. I was a man of arms; and then became a Cordelier, 9 hoping, thus girt, to make amends; and certainly my hope Were come in full, but for the Great Priest, may ill befall him! who brought me back to my first sins; and how and why, I wish thee to hear from me. Whilst I was the form of bones and pulp, which my mother gave me, my deeds were not those of the lion, but of the fox. All wiles and covert ways I knew; and used the art of them so well, that to the ends of the earth the sound went forth. When I saw myself come to that period of my age at which everyone should lower sails and gather in his ropes, that which before had pleased me, grieved me then; and with repentance and confession I became a monk; ah woe alas! and it would have availed me. The Prince of the new Pharisees 10 —waging war near to the Lateran, and not with Saracens or Jews; for every enemy of his was Christian, and none had been to conquer Acre, nor been a merchant in the Soldan’s land— regarded not the Highest Office nor Holy Orders in himself, nor in me that Cord which used to make those whom it girded leaner. But as Constantine sought Silvestro within Soracte to cure his leprosy, so this man called me as an adept to cure the fever of his pride; he demanded counsel of me; and I kept silent, for his words seemed drunken. And then he said to me: ‘Let not thy heart misdoubt; even now I do absolve thee, and do thou teach me so to act, that I may cast Penestrino to the ground. Heaven I can shut and open, as thou knowest; for two are the keys that my predecessor held not dear.’ Then the weighty arguments impelled me to think silence worst; and I said: ‘Father!

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  This then is my story. I have reread it. It has bits of marrow sticking to it, and blood, and beautiful bright-green flies. At this or that twist of it I feel my slippery self eluding me, gliding into deeper and darker waters than I care to probe. I have camouflaged what I could so as not to hurt people. And I have toyed with many pseudonyms for myself before I hit on a particularly apt one. There are in my notes “Otto Otto” and “Mesmer Mesmer” and “Lambert Lambert,” but for some reason I think my choice expresses the nastiness best. When I started, fifty-six days ago, to write Lolita, first in the psychopathic ward for observation, and then in this well-heated, albeit tombal, seclusion, I thought I would use these notes in toto at my trial, to save not my head, of course, but my soul. In mid-composition, however, I realized that I could not parade living Lolita. I still may use parts of this memoir in hermetic sessions, but publication is to be deferred. For reasons that may appear more obvious than they really are, I am opposed to capital punishment; this attitude will be, I trust, shared by the sentencing judge. Had I come before myself, I would have given Humbert at least thirty-five years for rape, and dismissed the rest of the charges. But even so, Dolly Schiller will probably survive me by many years. The following decision I make with all the legal impact and support of a signed testament: I wish this memoir to be published only when Lolita is no longer alive. Thus, neither of us is alive when the reader opens this book. But while the blood still throbs through my writing hand, you are still as much part of blessed matter as I am, and I can still talk to you from here to Alaska. Be true to your Dick. Do not let other fellows touch you. Do not talk to strangers. I hope you will love your baby. I hope it will be a boy. That husband of yours, I hope, will always treat you well, because otherwise my specter shall come at him, like black smoke, like a demented giant, and pull him apart nerve by nerve. And do not pity C. Q. One had to choose between him and H. H., and one wanted H. H. to exist at least a couple of months longer, so as to have him make you live in the minds of later generations. I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.

• From Escape (2007)

  I took a detour on the way home and stopped in the park. I sat in the grass, cradling Harrison in my arms. I remembered going to my mother shortly after I married Merril thirteen years before and telling her how unhappy I was. My marriage was so terrible, I couldn’t stand it. She told me to be a loyal wife and that I could learn to love my husband. I believed her. For thirteen years I suppressed every emotion I had ever felt. I tried to be at peace even when I knew everything around me was spinning apart. We had been taught in the FLDS that sometimes marriage between a man and a woman didn’t work out on earth. But it did in heaven because in the next life, the couple could see each other for the truly great people they were. Sometimes in this world a man would fail to appreciate the sacrifices his wife was making. But in the next, he’d recognize all she had done and love her. The woman would also appreciate her husband as a god. Once she saw his greatness, all the hard feelings she’d had about him would be forgiven. She’d fall down before him in worship and marvel in his glory. When I thought that I had actually believed in this, I felt sick to my stomach. For thirteen years I’d tried everything I could think of to make my marriage work, even though my husband was a monster. I’d believed that if I worked harder and did my part, the marriage would improve and Merril and I might be able to love each other. I’d believed that I was doomed if Merril didn’t want me to be his wife in the afterlife. If I failed to please him in this life, he could condemn me to be a servant to him and his other spirit wives for eternity. This would lead me to what we really feared in the FLDS: the second death. The second death happens in the afterlife when a spirit is killed off for the rest of eternity. Such a spirit is cast out with all the other vile spirits to await the second death. A spirit might be forced to endure a thousand years of tortured suffering before the second death actually occurs. Sitting in the park with my sleeping son, I thought of James—crazy, spooky, rattlesnake-loving James, who patrolled the grounds of the motel all night to make sure Jason would not harm me. I knew I would rather live ten eternities with a man like him that one eternity with Merril. I had given Merril seven children in thirteen years. My last three pregnancies had been life-threatening. But he still stood up and humiliated me in front of guests in his home and laughed when Tammy told the story of how he wanted to get rid of me.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  He glances down and sees smudges on his palm, white mucosal remnants, like he’s squeezed snails or slugs. There was a time when he and Nolan were boys and playing out by the creek, when they’d catch frogs and other small animals and bash them with rocks until they resembled nothing like themselves or anything else. And when they got older, they shot deer and pulled fish from the river and held them up, grinning into cameras, smiling like Look what I’ve done. Milton turns and sees along the back wall of the basement his father’s work stand. Hard, flat wood with metal rivets to keep it in place. A string of knives hang along the wall. Milton puts his hand against one medium-size knife, touches its cold, silver surface. He takes it down and holds it against the fat of his palm. Nolan, he thinks. He slides the knife up, though not breaking skin. He presses it to the crease below his fingers. Nolan, he thinks again, and he puts the back of his hand against the table in the corner. He couldn’t cut his fingers off even if he wanted to. Not with this knife, its edge too dull, his bones too thick. Bones. Milton smirks to himself. There’s a thought. What he wants is not to maim himself but rather to pry open the world, bone it, remove the ugly hardness of it all, the way one might take the spine from a deer or a fish or some other animal snared. Milton lifts the knife from his hand and stabs it into the table. When he was younger, he killed senselessly because the thrill of the act was like dipping his face into a clear, rushing stream. He didn’t have to consider the lives he ended. It was as if they were merely parts of a game, tokens to trade with his friends. If there was any merciful part of his childhood, it was that, the cleanness of it, how the act didn’t taint them, how the violence seemed to leave no trace at all. But he’s older now, and the meat of the world is full of bones. Everybody’s walking around all the time full of bones, full of jagged shards, flecks of hardness that need taking out and would, upon swallowing, prompt a person to choke. There’s no mercy in the basement tonight. Nolan, Milton thinks, and he squats by the table and thumbs the numb place left by the knife. He digs his nail into the thin, translucent space left by the knife until he sees the blood pooling beneath the skin. The pain abates quickly and leaves behind a memory so friable, so delicate, that it’s like blowing an eyelash and making a wish. Idaho. Milton lies down on the floor. The oblong shapes of boxed-up boyhood toys throw curious shadows that shift along the walls and the raw, unfinished struts of the basement.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  They’d gone back and forth like that all the way to Sophie’s apartment building, and when she asked if he wanted to come up, he said he’d go home and sleep, that he was feeling tired and a little drunk, and she said he shouldn’t drive in the snow that way, and he’d just sat there behind the wheel, the car idling, issuing exhaust into the night, until she got out and shut the door not hard, but firm, which to him had seemed sadder than anything else in the whole world, that she wasn’t even mad, that she was just concerned for him, and he was about to go do something shitty. But then she was gone, and he was in the car, and he texted Lionel at the number he’d watched him type into Sophie’s phone and had committed to memory, as if he knew even then what he was going to do. Charles looked up from the album, and Sophie was sitting on the table with her legs crossed, looking back at him. The light, a sea of white in the window, lay over her like a shroud, a veil. “I’m sorry.” “It’s fine—are you going to see him again?” Charles thought of Lionel, his body not full of lines but yielding edges, curves. He seemed as if he’d bleed into the air around him. Last night he’d put his hands all over Lionel, gripped and tugged and pulled and sunk ever deeper. This morning, when Charles left, he had kissed Lionel and said he would be back, which at the time seemed like something to say. It was what you said after you slept with someone: See you around, see you next time, I’ll be back. It didn’t mean anything. But now, with the question put to him this way, he felt unsure what he’d meant by that—I’ll be back. “Maybe,” Charles said. “Maybe not. It doesn’t matter.” He snapped the book closed and got up to hand it back to her. She took it from him, but he didn’t let go right away, so they were connected through the book. He stood between her open knees, holding the book, feeling its weight and the tension of her hand on the other side of it. He leaned down, kissed her softly. “You stink,” she said. “I know—do you care if I see him again?” “No, Charlie. I don’t. But if you do, don’t lie to me.” “Okay,” he said. “I do like him,” Sophie said after a moment, and it startled Charles. “How? You don’t know him. I don’t know him.” “There’s something good and wounded about him. Like you.” Sophie rolled her shoulders and smiled. “I like him.”

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  The headmaster, as it turned out, botched everything. He did bring in the narcs, who did give me a brochure about heroin; I was basalt with indignation. Mr. Beattie was fired, but he was allowed to hang around until well into the next semester. Since Beattie couldn’t say we’d had sex, at a faculty meeting he accused me and DeQuincey of being lovers. Good old Quince stood by me, though he was badly shaken; the accusation had been just accurate enough to scare him. At last Beattie left us; I didn’t see him again until three years later, when I was in college and he was playing drums in a two-bit band at a fraternity dance. His eyes locked with mine. I felt I should tell him how much I repented what I’d done to him. I’d used and discarded him—just as my dad had mistreated Alice, the Addressograph operator. Oh, there are lots of stories I could tell. Dr. O’Reilly, who of course turned out to be a speed freak, had a breakdown one day and had to be hauled off to a clinic for several years. My friend Howie, true to his prediction, died before he was twenty. I saw him when he was very ill in the hospital. He was yellow and bloated from nephritis. I had to hold a mirror for him while he trimmed his own hair: “Don’t want to leave my last haircut to these hacks,” he said gallantly, a trace of the old Nazi dandy having reemerged in extremity. At the funeral Howie’s father turned out to be a young middle-level executive for a big corporation. The funeral was held at the McCabe Funeral Home (I pronounced it “macabre”). I was a pallbearer. There was a Hammond organ toothlessly mouthing hymns as though the music were bread soaked in milk. Our handsome, oafish chaplain gave the sermon. He’d never spoken for two seconds to Howie, who in any event had been a militant atheist. Oh, and the chaplain was found soon afterward in another master’s wife’s bed and he was not only dismissed from Eton but also defrocked. His brother found him a job leading ski tours of eager coeds to Switzerland, where he was last heard yodeling on his way to his death as he missed a turn and sailed off into a crevasse.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Under her veil and beyond the stream, to me she seemed to surpass more her ancient self, than she surpassed the others here when she was with us. The nettle of repentance here so did sting me, that of all other things, that which turned me most to love of it became most hateful to me so much remorse gnawed at my heart that I fell vanquished, and what I then became, she knoweth who gave me the cause. Then when my heart restored to me the sense of outward things, the lady whom I had found alone I saw above me; and she said: “Hold me! Hold me!” She had drawn me into the river up to my neck, and, pulling me after her, went along over the water light as a shuttle. When I was nigh unto the blessed bank “Asperges me” 8 so sweetly I heard that I cannot remember it much less describe it. The fair lady opened her arms, clasped my head, and dipped me where I must needs swallow of the water; then drew me forth, and led me bathed within the dance of the four fair ones, and each did cover me with her arm.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  And he 8 to me: “Wherefore heaven turneth our backs to itself shalt thou know; but first, scias quod ego fui successor Petri. Between Sestri and Chiaveri flows down a fair river, and from its name the title of my race takes origin. One month, and little more, I learned how the great mantle weighs on him who keeps it from the mire, so that all other burdens seem feathers. My conversion, ah me! was late; but when I was made Pastor of Rome, so I discovered the life which is false. I saw that there the heart was not at rest, nor could one mount higher in that life; wherefore love of this was kindled within me. Up to that moment, I was a soul wretched and parted from God, wholly avaricious; now, as thou seest, here am I punished for it. What avarice works, here is declared in the purgation of the down-turned souls, and no more bitter penalty hath the mount. Even as our eye, fixed on earthly things, did not lift itself on high, so here justice hath sunk it to earth. As avarice quenched our love for every good, wherefore our works were lost, so justice here doth hold us fast, bound and seized by feet and hands; and so long as it shall be the pleasure of the just Lord, so long shall we lie here motionless and outstretched.” I had kneeled down, and was about to speak; but as I began, and he perceived my reverence merely by listening, “What reason,” he said, “thus bent thee down?” And I to him: “Because of your dignity my conscience smote me for standing.” “Make straight thy legs, uplift thee, brother,” he answered; “err not, a fellow-servant am I with thee and with the others unto one Power. If ever thou didst understand that hallowed gospel sound which saith, ‘Neque nubent,’ well canst thou see why thus I speak. 9 Now get thee hence; I desire not that thou stay longer, for thy tarrying disturbs my weeping, whereby I mature that which thou didst say. 10 A niece have I yonder, by name Alagia, good in herself, if but our house make her not evil by ensample; and she alone is left me yonder.” 1. An hour before dawn when the last stars of Aquarius and the first of Pisces would have risen. The portions of the constellations indicated may be conceived in the form : : : ·· this being the figure termed Fortuna Major in geomancy (an occult science by which events are predicted according to points placed in certain positions). Reference is to the coldness of the earth before dawn, and of the frigid Saturn (Virgil’s Frigida Saturni ... Stella, Georg. i; cf. Par. xviii, note 4, and xxii, note 13); at times, i.e., when this planet is on the horizon. 2.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  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.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Oh, she was very genteel: she said “excuse me” whenever a slight burp interrupted her flowing speech, called an envelope an ahnvelope, and when talking to her lady-friends referred to me as Mr. Humbert. I thought it would please her if I entered the community trailing some glamor after me. On the day of our wedding a little interview with me appeared in the Society Column of the Ramsdale Journal, with a photograph of Charlotte, one eyebrow up and a misprint in her name (“Hazer”). Despite this contretemps, the publicity warmed the porcelain cockles of her heart—and made my rattles shake with awful glee. By engaging in church work as well as by getting to know the better mothers of Lo’s schoolmates, Charlotte in the course of twenty months or so had managed to become if not a prominent, at least an acceptable citizen, but never before had she come under that thrilling rubrique, and it was I who put her there, Mr. Edgar H. Humbert (I threw in the “Edgar” just for the heck of it), “writer and explorer.” McCoo’s brother, when taking it down, asked me what I had written. Whatever I told him came out as “several books on Peacock, Rainbow and other poets.” It was also noted that Charlotte and I had known each other for several years and that I was a distant relation of her first husband. I hinted I had had an affair with her thirteen years ago but this was not mentioned in print. To Charlotte I said that society columns should contain a shimmer of errors. Let us go on with this curious tale. When called upon to enjoy my promotion from lodger to lover, did I experience only bitterness and distaste? No. Mr. Humbert confesses to a certain titillation of his vanity, to some faint tenderness, even to a pattern of remorse daintily running along the steel of his conspiratorial dagger. Never had I thought that the rather ridiculous, though rather handsome Mrs. Haze, with her blind faith in the wisdom of her church and book club, her mannerisms of elocution, her harsh, cold, contemptuous attitude toward an adorable, downy-armed child of twelve, could turn into such a touching, helpless creature as soon as I laid my hands upon her which happened on the threshold of Lolita’s room whither she tremulously backed repeating “no, no, please no.”

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

  “Ultimately, I was not strong enough or brave enough to defy the editor I trusted and respected,” she wrote. But did she believe it was the right decision? All she had wanted was to write honest books for kids and there she was, dropped into the deep end of the culture wars. She went on: “I’ve never forgiven myself for caving in to editorial pressure based on fear, for playing into the hands of the censors.” Chapter Twenty-One Morals “They call her a Pied Piper leading kids down the wrong path.” Jackson was right that the censors had it out for Judy. They were mobbish and rough, demonstratively flashing their pitchforks. Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum circulated a pamphlet called “How to Rid Your Schools and Libraries of Judy Blume Books.” Another Texas-based conservative group, called the Pro-Family Forum, created a flyer with the frightening title “X-Rated Children’s Books,” about mature themes—sex, drugs, and divorce—snaking their way into fiction for young adults. The handout mentions The Outsiders and V.C. Andrews’s haunting 1979 novel Flowers in the Attic , but it really goes in on Blume, denouncing Forever for the explicit scenes between Michael and “Kathy” (a repeated mistake that suggests whoever drafted the primer didn’t actually spend a lot of quality time with Blume’s characters). “X-Rated Children’s Books” walks readers through the process of challenging these books, with the intention of getting them removed from public libraries as well as privately owned bookstores. It encourages concerned citizens to investigate their local libraries and shopping malls, and bring any inappropriate titles to the attention of public school teachers and principals, whose salaries rely on tax dollars, as the leaflet points out. It also suggests that aspiring book vigilantes buy copies of the flyer, at a price of three for a dollar, and distribute them within their communities. Other mounting threats, according to the Pro-Family Forum, include the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons and the creep of Atheism. The moral center dropping out of everyday life was an important idea among book banners. In February 1980, a complaint from an upset parent prompted an elementary school library in Montgomery County, Maryland, to remove Blubber , Blume’s 1974 YA novel about fifth-grade bullying, from the shelves. Blubber is narrated by Jill Brenner, an average student who is suddenly swept up in some nasty social dynamics after her classmate Linda Fischer gives an oral report on whales. Linda is nervous and chubby, and when she mentions that the giant sea creatures are encased in a thick layer of fat called, yes, blubber , the popular girls in class seize on it. “Blubber is a good name for her,” Wendy, the queen bee, writes in a note to Jill. Wendy, her sidekick Caroline, and Jill start relentlessly taunting Linda.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  His brother found him a job leading ski tours of eager coeds to Switzerland, where he was last heard yodeling on his way to his death as he missed a turn and sailed off into a crevasse. The college I went to was near Eton and I often visited the Scotts. One day I discovered Rachel laughing and sobbing. Finally overcome by curiosity, she’d broken open the casket where DeQuincey kept his pastoral letters from Father Burke. They were all love letters, hysterical avowals of pornographic desire, some of it clearly referring to actual nights of passion they’d spent together. “To think Burke kept urging me to stay with Quince,” she said. “I was their cover.” She kept sifting through the letters, and her horrible silent chuckle resumed. Tim, older now and in first grade, looked in, but when he saw his mother talking to herself he frowned and clattered up the stairs to his room. As I left the headmaster’s office that day I noticed the wind was now sharp with snow needles. Evening was coming on rapidly. It had been implicit in the dim day all along, just as the snow had been. In the gray light the snow could be felt but not seen; suddenly lamps along the walkway snapped on and their halos were grained by a million, million lights. The return to the music building wasn’t lustful or fearful but ceremonial. I felt as though I were a dancer not up to his role but inspired by the expectation everywhere in the darkness around me. Or I felt like someone in history, a queen on her way to the scaffold determined to suppress her usual quips, to give the spectators the high deeds they wanted to see. Mr. Beattie was stoned. His smile was unfocused and perpetual. He started telling me a long story I couldn’t follow, something about something someone had once said to him somewhere, but then he noticed we’d drifted into the listening booth. He didn’t turn on the light. The darkness was illumined by light reflected up through the windows off the snowdrifts outside. He put on a record. He sat in an armchair, lit another marijuana cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling. When he offered me a drag I smiled with what I hoped passed for affection and shook my head. A moment later I was kneeling on the floor beside him. I opened his fly and pulled out his large and already erect penis. “Here,” he said, “let me make it better for you,” and he undid his belt and dropped his trousers to his knees. I’d been right; his thighs were very powerful. He took my right hand and guided it to his testicles in the loose, floppy bag. I gathered I was supposed to roll them around.