Sadness

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 Henry and June (1986)

  your own brain? Is it fear of an illusion you fight with crude words? Tell me she is not just a beautiful image. Sometimes when we talk I feel that we are trying to grasp her reality. She is unreal even to us, even to you who have possessed her, and to me, whom she has kissed.” Hugo reads one of my old journals, the John Erskine period, Boulevard Suchet, and almost sobs with pity for me, realizing that I was living in The House of the Dead. I did not succeed in resuscitating him until he almost lost me to John and to suicide. More letters from Henry, parts of his book as he writes it, quotations, notes while listening to Debussy and Ravel, on the back of menus of small restaurants in shabby quarters. A torrent of realism. Too much of it in proportion to imagination, which is growing smaller. He will not sacrifice a moment of life to his work. He is always rushing and writing about work and in the end never really tackling it, writing more letters than books, doing more investigating than actual creation. Yet the form of his last book, discursive, a chain of associations, reminiscences is very good. He has assimilated his Proust, minus the poetry and the music. I have dipped into obscenity, dirt, and his world of “shit, cunt, prick, bastard, crotch, bitch” and am on the way up again. The symphonic concert today confirmed my mood of detachment. Again and again I have traversed the regions of realism and found them arid. And again I return to poetry. I write to June. It is almost impossible. I can’t find words. I make such a violent effort of the imagination to reach out to her, to my image of her. And when I come home, Emilia says, “There is a letter for the Señorita.” I run upstairs, hoping it is a letter from Henry. I want to be a strong poet, as strong as Henry and John are in their realism. I want to combat them, to invade and annihilate them. What baffles me about Henry and what attracts me are the flashes of imagination, the flashes of insight, and the flashes of dreams. Fugitive. And the depths. Rub off the German realist, the man who “stands for shit,” as Wambly Bald says to him, and you get a lusty imagist. At moments he can say the most delicate or profound things. But his softness is dangerous, because when he writes he does not write with love, he writes to caricature, to attack, to ridicule, to destroy, to rebel. He is always against something. Anger incites him. I am always for something. Anger poisons me. I love, I love, I love.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  Now, when I am living the richest period of my life, again my health fails me. All the doctors say the same thing: no illness, nothing wrong but general weakness, low stamina. The heart barely beats, I am cold, I am easily tired out. Today I was tired out for Henry. How precious the moment in the Clichy kitchen, with Fred, too. They were eating breakfast at two o’clock. Books piled up, the ones they want me to read and the one I brought them. Then in Henry’s room, alone. He closes the door, and our talk melts into caresses, into deft, acute core-reaching fucking. The talk is about Proust, and it brings this confession from Henry. “To be entirely honest with myself I like to be away from June. It is then I enjoy her best. When she is here I am morbid, oppressed, desperate. With you—well, you are light. I am satiated with experiences and pain. Perhaps I torment you. I don’t know. Do I?” I can’t answer that very well, though it is clear to me that he is darkness to me. And why? Because of the instincts he has aroused in me? The word “satiation” terrified me. It seemed like the first drop of poison poured into me. Against his satiation, I match my fearful freshness, the newness in me, which gives intensity to what for him may be of less value. That first drop of poison, poured so accidentally, was like a foretelling of death. I don’t know through what crevice our love will suddenly seep out and spend itself. Henry, today I am sad for the moments I am missing, those moments when you talk with Fred until dawn, when you are eloquent or brilliant or violent or exultant. And I was sad that you missed a wonderful moment in me. Last night I was sitting by the fire and talking as I rarely talk, dazzling Hugo, feeling immensely and astonishingly rich, pouring out stories and ideas which would have amused you. It was about lies, the different kinds of lies, the special lies I tell for specific reasons, to improve on living. One time when Eduardo was being overanalytical I poured out the story of my imaginary Russian lover. He was in rapture. And by it I conveyed to him the necessity of folly, the richness in emotion which he lacks, because he is emotionally impuissant. When I am sorely in trouble, perplexed, lost, I invent the acquaintance of a wise old man with whom I converse. I tell everybody about him, how he looks, what he said, his effect on me (someone to lean on for a moment), and by the end of the day I feel strengthened by my experience with the wise old man, and as satisfied as if it were all true. I have also invented friends when the ones I had were not satisfying. And how I enjoy my experiences! How they fill me, add to me. Embroidery.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  “He didn’t beat me up. He was just a fat slob who got a thrill out of putting a twelve-year-old in a half nelson and then asking how it felt.” “He beat you up.” They were in a small, dark bar. It had floors and tables made of old creaking wood, and a half-moon window of heavy stained glass in one wall. The tables were clawed with knifemarks, the french fries were large and damp. The waitresses carried themselves like dinosaurs with ungainly little hands and had purple veins on their legs, even though they were young. They were friendly though, and they looked right at you. Daisy and Joey came here for lunch and sat in the deep, high-backed booths. Joey didn’t eat, and by now Daisy knew why. He drank and watched her eat her hamburger with measured bites. “I still can’t understand why she married that repulsive pig. I ask her and she says ‘because he makes me feel stable and secure.’ ” “He doesn’t sound stable to me.” “I guess he was, compared to my father. But then Dad was usually too drunk to make it down the stairs without falling, let alone hold a job. I mean, you’re talking about a guy who died in the nut ward singing ‘Joey, Foey, Bo-Poey, Bananarama Oh-Boey.’ Any asshole is stable compared to that. But Tom? At least my father had style. He wouldn’t have been caught dead in those ugly Dacron things Tom wears.” Daisy leaned into the corner of the booth and looked at him solemnly. “When she first told me over the phone that she was getting married to Uncle Tom, I was happy. At least I’d get to come home instead of staying with my Christian Scientist relatives who made me wear those retarded plaid pants to school.” “She never should have sent you away like that,” said Daisy. She sat up and pulled her drink closer, latching on to the straw with a jerking motion of her lip. “She thought it was the right thing to do after my father died. Only she never knew how much my relatives hated me.” “I don’t know how she could’ve thought it was the right thing to let him throw you out of the house when you were sixteen.” “He didn’t throw me out. I just knew the constant fighting over whether or not I was a faggot was hurting my mother. I realized that I was more of an adult than they were and that it was up to me to change the situation.”

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Most of us live the greater part of our lives submerged. Certainly in my own case I can say that not until I left America did I emerge above the surface. Perhaps America had nothing to do with it, but the fact remains that I did not open my eyes wide and full and clear until I struck Paris. And perhaps that was only because I had renounced America, renounced my past. My friend Kronski used to twit me about my “euphorias.” It was a sly way he had of reminding me, when I was extraordinarily gay, that the morrow would find me depressed. It was true. I had nothing but ups and downs. Long stretches of gloom and melancholy followed by extravagant bursts of gaiety, of trancelike inspiration. Never a level in which I was myself. It sounds strange to say so, yet I was never myself. I was either anonymous or the person called Henry Miller raised to the nth degree. In the latter mood, for instance, I could spill out a whole book to Hymie while riding a trolley car. Hymie, who never suspected me of being anything but a good employment manager. I can see his eyes now as he looked at me one night when I was in one of my states of “euphoria.” We had boarded the trolley at the Brooklyn Bridge to go to some flat in Greenpoint where a couple of trollops were waiting to receive us. Hymie had started to talk to me in his usual way about his wife’s ovaries. In the first place he didn’t know precisely what ovaries meant and so I was explaining it to him in crude and simple fashion. In the midst of my explanation it suddenly seemed so profoundly tragic and ridiculous that Hymie shouldn’t know what ovaries were that I became drunk, as drunk I mean as if I had had a quart of whisky under my belt. From the idea of diseased ovaries there germinated in one lightning-like flash a sort of tropical growth made up of the most heterogeneous assortment of odds and ends in the midst of which, securely lodged, tenaciously lodged, I might say, were Dante and Shakespeare. At the same instant I also suddenly recalled my whole private train of thought which had begun about the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge and which suddenly the word “ovaries” had broken. I realized that everything Hymie had said up till the word “ovaries” had sieved through me like sand. What I had begun, in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge, was what I had begun time and time again in the past, usually when walking to my father’s shop, a performance which was repeated day in and day out as if in a trance. What I had begun, in brief, was a book of the hours, of the tedium and monotony of my life in the midst of a ferocious activity.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  “The same garbage. If I’d known I was going to work for a clone of my mother, I never would’ve taken the job.” Deana rinsed her three shaved carrots meticulously, then went into the bathroom to tear off a large piece of toilet paper, folded it on the counter and put the carrots on it to drain. (One of her idiosyncrasies, which still caused Connie a pang of tender amusement, was her aversion to eating wet vegetables or fruit; she routinely dried pieces of cut fruit before putting them in her cereal.) “So what’s your problem?” Connie shrugged and sank into the mattress again. “I ran into somebody…not somebody I dislike really, just somebody I associate with anxiety.” “Who?” “Somebody I haven’t seen in years. Do you remember me mentioning Franklin Weston?” Deana snapped off the end of a carrot. “Was he the guy you used to proofread with, who became some sort of quasi-famous art critic or something?” “Yeah.” Rat Fink, the male cat, came into grabbing range, and Constance scooped him into her lap like a large plush bunny, his eyes agog, paws helpless and limp in the air. “He’s connected with some people I used to know before I met you. One person who—who hurt me, who rejected me in fact. Did I ever tell you about Alice?” “A bit,” said Deana, quietly crunching. “Well, she came up in conversation and it depressed me. That’s all.” Rat Fink squeaked and flailed in her arms, wildly swatted his helpless tail, then jumped from her lap and hit the female cat on the nose. “The last time Alice and I talked was three years ago. It was when I was doing horribly, everything was going wrong, my writing was a disaster, I couldn’t breathe, and I got so depressed that I couldn’t eat. I was afraid to say anything about it to anyone and finally I decided to trust Alice enough to talk to her. Franklin kept saying ‘Connie, Alice loves you,’ in that stupid way he has, and I thought, Well, we’ve been friends for two years, so I told her. And she said, ‘Connie, nobody wants to be around somebody who’s unhappy.’ She told me I should see a therapist, and never called me again. She didn’t return my calls either.” “Why didn’t you call her and yell at her?” “I don’t know. I didn’t have the spirit, I guess. I felt pretty ravaged.” “It sounds like she was afraid of being unhappy herself,” said Deana. “Except that she didn’t have anything to be unhappy about. She had—still has—a rich husband, a beautiful apartment, a prefabricated social life—” “Oh, come on. Everybody has their sadness. And most people are scared of it. She sounds like one of those.” “All those clothes, those trips to Europe—sheer terror, I’m sure.” “Well, in any case, it doesn’t sound like she was much of a friend. I’d say you were well rid of her.”

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  They talked a little more; Steve said the quality of a text depended largely on the frame of reference you imposed on it. Connie disagreed. They made a few jokes and Connie went back to her cubicle. She sat quietly as her jaw woke up, and watched the coarsely sweatered back of an assistant move from side to side at her desk. Another assistant, a young, pretty woman who believed in what she was doing, distracted her by walking from one spot in the office to another, and Connie reflected that in a better state of mind she would be comforted by the slow, predictable sight of people engaged in meaningful activity. Now it induced ragged reverberations of her nitrous oxide experience, and she had an exhausting flashback of her haggard self carrying large chunks of her life, compressed into brightly colored packages that were marked “Constance the writer,” “Constance the social being,” “Constance as part of a couple”—all layering plain Constance alone in her apartment, waiting for Deana in the dark, under a blanket, arms wrapped around herself. She saw each marked package as a weight she carried back and forth, setting one down in a random spot so she could pick up another and stagger off in a new direction. She put her head down on her desk. On her way home from work she decided that she would go to Franklin’s party. “Why?” asked Deana. “After all this talk?” “Because I feel like I need to end a cycle or something. Maybe I can get drunk and sock Alice.” “You’re not serious, I hope.” “No. But I might stare her down.” “Well, I’m afraid I can’t go with you if it’s tomorrow. I have to have dinner with my mother at nine and after that I won’t be fit for human society.” — The party had apparently reached its peak an hour or two before she came. People looked as though they were bunched according to who grabbed whose arm on their way to the bathroom, and were leaning against walls, the women nodding their heads a lot. Some of them turned toward her and smiled with vague goodwill as she walked to the center of the room. She thought she recognized the lone couple dancing in a corner, eyes lowered in benign concentration as they shifted their weight from hip to hip and jogged their hands around their waists. She did recognize the man with hysterically bright blue eyes who was aggressively pacing around with a handful of greasy peanuts, and looked the other way. “Connie, yo!” Franklin appeared with his hair in his eyes and his pores flowering magnanimously. “You came!” They groped for each other’s hands and darted at each other’s cheeks with a lot of “mm!” sounds. “Where’s your girlfriend?”

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  The man coughed, quite unnecessarily. “Excuse me,” said the woman. “We only live here.” “You have plenty of room,” said Daisy sharply. “You have no business being here,” said the man. The couple stood on the sidewalk and frowned, their shoulders indignant. “Why do you care?” said Daisy. “We aren’t in your way.” Her voice quivered oddly. “Ssssh,” said Joey. “Let them live their lives.” “You are very rude,” said the woman. “If you’re here when we get back, we’re going to call the police.” She swept away, sweeping her husband with her. They were probably in a hurry. Joey watched the woman’s dress fluttering along the pavement. “That was strange,” he said. “I’ve sat on lots of steps before and that’s never happened.” Daisy didn’t answer. “I guess it’s different in the East Village.” Daisy sniffed wetly. He reached into his pocket and got out his bag of jelly beans. He offered some to Daisy, but she ignored him. Her head was down, and slow, quiet tears ran singly down her nose. He put his arms around her. “Hey, come on,” he said. He felt no response from her. She didn’t move or look at him. He dropped his arm and looked away, confused. He ate his jelly beans and looked at the pool of lamplight in the black street. Trying to Be Stephanie wasn’t a “professional lady” exactly; tricking was just something she slipped into, once a year or so, when she was feeling particularly revolted by clerical work, or when she couldn’t pay her bills. She even liked a few of her customers, but she had never considered dating one; she kept her secret forays into prostitution neatly boxed and stored away from her real life. She was thus a little dismayed to find herself standing in high heels and underwear in front of the smeared mirror in the “Shadow Room,” handing her phone number to Bernard the lawyer. She felt she was being drawn deeper into something she had no business doing in the first place, but she had no boyfriend, she liked the lawyer and, since he was married, it seemed likely he would leave only a faint impression on her life. She had been working at her current “house” for three nights when she met him. It wasn’t as posh or expensive as the other two places she’d worked, but it was comfortable and safe. She hadn’t wanted to go back to the first place because of the peculiarity of the manager, who’d read the girls’ auras daily and made them chant over anointed candles in the kitchen to “purify the space”; and she couldn’t go back to the second because it had been closed by the Mafia. She wasn’t well connected or knowledgeable enough to systematically search for the best establishment, so she had settled for this—a run-down townhouse apartment with poor ventilation and sad old smells coiling through the rooms.

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

  I stopped before I walked into the room and looked at him; he hadn’t seen me yet. He looked sleepy and unhappy slumped in a reclining chair, his head rested on his hand. He was staring in the general direction of the television, but it didn’t seem like he was watching the program. He wasn’t shaved, and something he’d eaten had crusted on his chin. There was a sadness in his eyes I had never seen before. Looking at him, I felt my heart sink; a part of me wanted to leave. A nurse saw me standing outside the room and asked if I was there to see someone. I told her I was, and she smiled sympathetically. When the nurse escorted me into the room, I walked up to Walter and put my hand on his shoulder. He stirred and looked up, then gave me a broad smile. “Hey, there he is!” He sounded cheerful, and suddenly he looked like himself. He started laughing and stood up. I gave him a hug. I was relieved; he hadn’t recognized some family members recently. “How you doing?” I asked him while he leaned on me slightly. “Well, you know, I’m doing okay.” We started walking to his room where we could talk privately. “Are you feeling better?” It was not a sensible question, but I was a little unnerved seeing Walter like this. He’d lost weight, and his gown wasn’t tied in the back, which he didn’t seem to notice. I stopped him. “Wait, let me help you out.” I tied the strings on his gown and we continued to his room. He moved slowly and cautiously, sliding his feet in his slippers across the floor as if he’d forgotten how to pick them up. He grabbed my arm a few feet down the hall and leaned on me as we slowly made our way. “Well, I told them people I got plenty of cars, plenty of cars.” He spoke emphatically, with much more excitement than I’d heard from him in a while. “All different colors, shapes, and sizes. The man say, ‘Your cars don’t work.’ I told him my cars do work, too.” He looked at me. “You may have to talk to that man about my cars, okay?” I nodded and thought of his field of metal. “You do have lots of cars—” “I know!” He cut me off and started laughing. “See, I told them people, but they didn’t believe me. I told them.” He was smiling and chuckling now, but he looked confused and not himself. “Them people think I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I know exactly what I’m talking about.” He spoke defiantly. We reached his room, and he sat down on his bed while I pulled up a chair.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  To be is music, which is a profanation of silence in the interest of silence, and therefore beyond good and evil. Music is the manifestation of action without activity. It is the pure act of creation swimming on its own bosom. Music neither goads nor defends, neither seeks nor explains. Music is the noiseless sound made by the swimmer in the ocean of consciousness. It is a reward which can only be given by oneself. It is the gift of the god which one is because he has ceased thinking about God. It is an augur of the god which every one will become in due time, when all that is will be beyond imagination. CODA Not long ago I was walking the streets of New York. Dear old Broadway. It was night and the sky was an Oriental blue, as blue as the gold in the ceiling of the Pagode , rue de Babylone, when the machine starts clicking. I was passing exactly below the place where we first met. I stood there a moment looking up at the red lights in the windows. The music sounded as it always sounded—light, peppery, enchanting. I was alone and there were millions of people around me. It came over me, as I stood there, that I wasn’t thinking of her any more; I was thinking of this book which I am writing, and the book had become more important to me than her, than all that had happened to us. Will this book be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God? Plunging into the crowd again I wrestled with this question of “truth.” For years I have been trying to tell this story and always the question of truth has weighed upon me like a nightmare. Time and again I have related to others the circumstances of our life, and I have always told the truth. But the truth can also be a lie. The truth is not enough. Truth is only the core of a totality which is inexhaustible. I remember that the first time we were ever separated this idea of totality seized me by the hair. She pretended, when she left me, or maybe she believed it herself, that it was necessary for our welfare. I knew in my heart that she was trying to be free of me, but I was too cowardly to admit it to myself. But when I realized that she could do without me, even for a limited time, the truth which I had tried to shut out began to grow with alarming rapidity. It was more painful than anything I had ever experienced before, but it was also healing. When I was completely emptied, when the loneliness had reached such a point that it could not be sharpened any further, I suddenly felt that, to go on living, this intolerable truth had to be incorporated into something greater than the frame of personal misfortune.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I think of what subsequently ensued as a kind of tragedy in sponges, for though he promised light and space, no sooner had he passed out of my father’s life than the whole airy edifice came tumbling down. It all came about in the most ordinary lifelike way. One evening, after the customary men’s meeting, the old man came home with a sorrowful countenance. They had been informed that evening that the minister was taking leave of them. He had been offered a more advantageous position in the township of New Rochelle and, despite his great reluctance to desert his flock, he had decided to accept the offer. He had of course accepted it only after much meditation—as a duty, in other words. It would mean a better income, to be sure, but that was nothing compared to the grave responsibilities which he was about to assume. They had need of him in New Rochelle and he was obeying the voice of his conscience. All this the old man related with the same unctuousness that the minister had given to his words. But it was immediately apparent that the old man was hurt. He couldn’t see why New Rochelle could not find another minister. He said it wasn’t fair to tempt the minister with a bigger salary. We need him here , he said ruefully, with such sadness that I almost felt like weeping. He added that he was going to have a heart-to-heart talk with the minister, that if anybody could persuade him to remain it was he. In the days that followed he certainly did his best, no doubt much to the minister’s discomfiture. It was distressing to see the blank look on his face when he returned from these conferences. He had the expression of a man who was trying to grasp at a straw to keep from drowning. Naturally the minister remained adamant. Even when the old man broke down and wept before him he could not be moved to change his mind. That was the turning point. From that moment on the old man underwent a radical change. He seemed to grow bitter and querulous. He not only forgot to say grace at the table but he abstained from going to church. He resumed his old habit of going to the cemetery and basking on a bench. He became morose, then melancholy, and finally there grew into his face an expression of permanent sadness, a sadness encrusted with disillusionment, with despair, with futility. He never again mentioned the man’s name, nor the church, nor any of the elders with whom he had once associated. If he happened to pass them in the street he bade them the time of day without stopping to shake hands. He read the newspapers diligently, from back to front, without comment. Even the ads he read, every one, as though trying to block up a huge hole which was constantly before his eyes. I never heard him laugh again.

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

  Objection 3: Further, will is consequent upon nature, as was said [4074](A[1]). But in Christ there was only one nature besides the Divine. Hence in Christ there was only one human will. On the contrary, Ambrose says (De Fide ii, 7): “Mine is the will which He calls His own; because as Man He assumed my sorrow.” From this we are given to understand that sorrow pertains to the human will of Christ. Now sorrow pertains to the sensuality, as was said in the [4075]FS, Q[23], A[1]; [4076]FS, Q[25], A[1]. Therefore, seemingly, in Christ there is a will of sensuality besides the will of reason. I answer that, As was said ([4077]Q[9], A[1]), the Son of God assumed human nature together with everything pertaining to the perfection of human nature. Now in human nature is included animal nature, as the genus in its species. Hence the Son of God must have assumed together with the human nature whatever belongs to animal nature; one of which things is the sensitive appetite, which is called the sensuality. Consequently it must be allowed that in Christ there was a sensual appetite, or sensuality. But it must be borne in mind that sensuality or the sensual appetite, inasmuch as it naturally obeys reason, is said to be “rational by participation,” as is clear from the Philosopher (Ethic. i, 13). And because “the will is in the reason,” as stated above, it may equally be said that the sensuality is “a will by participation.” Reply to Objection 1: This argument is based on the will, essentially so called, which is only in the intellectual part; but the will by participation can be in the sensitive part, inasmuch as it obeys reason. Reply to Objection 2: The sensuality is signified by the serpent—not as regards the nature of the sensuality, which Christ assumed, but as regards the corruption of the “fomes,” which was not in Christ. Reply to Objection 3: “Where there is one thing on account of another, there seems to be only one” (Aristotle, Topic. iii); thus a surface which is visible by color is one visible thing with the color. So, too, because the sensuality is called the will, only because it partakes of the rational will, there is said to be but one human will in Christ, even as there is but one human nature. Whether in Christ there were two wills as regards the reason?Objection 1: It would seem that in Christ there were two wills as regards the reason. For Damascene says (De Fide Orth. ii, 22) that there is a double will in man, viz. the natural will which is called {thelesis}, and the rational will which is called {boulesis}. Now Christ in His human nature had whatever belongs to the perfection of human nature. Hence both the foregoing wills were in Christ.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  We’d go out to the movies, and then go for coffee and talk about the movie for hours, analyzing every character and gesture and the use of music and so on. I can remember when she ordered an anchovy sandwich and one of those sweet almond drinks and said, ‘Whenever I’m with you I feel like eating stuff that’s really fun and really bad for me.’ ” “Hmpf,” said Deana. “And then there was the time that she and Roger paid for my airfare so I could visit them at their summer cottage in Pennsylvania.” “So why don’t you go to Weston’s party and see her?” “Because there were other times when I felt she wasn’t my friend at all. I remember her telling me about some big party she had that she didn’t invite me to. She was complaining because she had wanted to have an equal number of highly successful males and females and she couldn’t find enough successful females. It suddenly occurred to her that it was sort of rude to be talking about this in front of me when she hadn’t even asked me to come, so she said, ‘I didn’t think of you because you’re not in the field and you would’ve been bored anyway. I know you can hold your own on your own terms, but you couldn’t deal with these people on their level.’ Can you imagine?” “Connie, were you in love with this woman?” “What?” “Did you have a thing for Alice?” “No. Not at all. Why do you ask?” “Because of the way you talk about it.” Connie paused and admired the graceful interaction of three long cold sesame noodles lying on her plate. “Well, it wasn’t love, at least not romantic love. I’m just particularly sensitive to being betrayed by women. It’s always been easy for me to be vulnerable around men because you’re allowed to be. And I can make myself vulnerable to women sexually, but it’s really hard to do with a woman friend. I did it with Alice and she rejected me.” Deana meditatively sucked a sparerib bone and limpidly blinked her large eyes. Connie curled one leg up on the chair and sat on her ankle. “Once we went to see a movie about a dumb, trusting girl who gets involved with a whiny, sleazy psycho guy who tortures and kills her in the end.” “Great movie.” “Well, we wanted to see it because the actress had silicone implants and we wanted to see what they looked like.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Though I was of the city too, still, when I visited my cousin Gene, I became aware of an even greater city, a city of New York proper in which my sophistication was negligible. Stanley knew no excursions from his own neighborhood, but Stanley had come from a strange land over the sea, Poland, and there was always between us the mark of the voyage. The fact that he spoke another tongue also increased our admiration for him. Each one was surrounded by a distinguishing aura, by a well-defined identity which was preserved inviolate. With the entrance into life these traits of difference fell away and we all became more or less alike and, of course, most unlike our own selves. And it is this loss of the peculiar self, of the perhaps unimportant individuality, which saddens me and makes the rye bread stand out glowingly. The wonderful sour rye went into the making of our individual selves; it was like the communion loaf in which all participate but from which each one receives only according to his peculiar state of grace. Now we are eating of the same bread, but without benefit of communion, without grace. We are eating to fill our bellies and our hearts are cold and empty. We are separate but not individual. There was another thing about the sour rye and that was that we often ate a raw onion with it. I remember standing with Stanley in the late afternoons, a sandwich in hand, in front of the veterinary’s which was just opposite my home. It always seemed to be late afternoon when Dr. McKinney elected to castrate a stallion, an operation which was done in public and which always gathered a small crowd. I remember the smell of the hot iron and the quivering of the horse’s legs, Dr. McKinney’s goatee, the taste of the raw onion and the smell of the sewer gas just behind us where they were laying in a new gas main. It was an olfactory performance through and through and, as Abélard so well describes it, practically painless. Not knowing the reason for the operation we used to hold long discussions afterwards which usually ended in a brawl. Nobody liked Dr. McKinney either; there was a smell of iodoform about him and of stale horse piss. Sometimes the gutter in front of his office was filled with blood and in the wintertime the blood froze into the ice and gave a strange look to his sidewalk. Now and then the big two-wheeled cart came, an open cart which smelled like the devil, and they whisked a dead horse into it. Rather it was hoisted in, the carcass, by a long chain which made a creaking noise like the dropping of an anchor. The smell of a bloated dead horse is a foul smell and our street was full of foul smells.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She knew Anne was being supportive. Anne had been told that Virginia had not recovered well from Charles’s death, and had come to bring lightness to the darkened house. She was determined to cheer Virginia, just as she’d been determined to mop the floor or make them eat their breakfast. She had approached Lily with the same unshakable desire to rectify. Lily’s presence in Virginia’s life began as a series of late-night phone calls and wild letters from Anne. The letters were full of triple exclamation points, crazy dashes or dots instead of periods, violently underlined words and huge swirling capital letters with tails fanning across several lines. “Lily is so withdrawn and depressed.” “Lily is making some very strange friends.” “Lily is hostile.” “I think she may be taking drugs….” “Think she needs help—George is resisting—may need recommendation of a counselor.” Virginia imagined the brat confronting her gentle sister. Another spoiled, pretty daughter who fancied herself a gypsy princess, barefooted, spangled with bright beads, breasts arrogantly unbound, cavalier in love. Like Magdalen. “I want to marry Brian in a gypsy wedding,” said Magdalen. “I want to have it on the ridge behind the house. Our friends will make a circle around us and chant. I’ll be wearing a gown of raw silk with a light veil. And we’ll have a feast.” “Does Brian want to marry you?” asked Virginia dryly. Magdalen was seventeen. She had just returned home after a year’s absence. She carried a fat green knapsack on her back. Her feet were filthy. “I’m coming home to clear my head out,” she said. She ate huge breakfasts with eggs and bacon, baked a lot of banana bread and lay around the den playing with tarot cards. Family life went on around her brooding, cross-legged frame. Her long blond hair hung in her face. She flitted around with annoying grace, her jeans swishing the floor, humming songs about ladies on islands. After six months she “decided” to marry Brian, and went to Vancouver to tell him about it. Virginia was glad to see her go. But, even when she was gone, insistent ghosts of Magdalen were everywhere: Magdalen at thirteen, sharp elbows on the breakfast table, slouching in an over-long cashmere sweater, her sulky lips ghoulish with thick white lipstick—“Mom, don’t be stupid, everybody wears it”; twelve-year-old Magdalen, radiant and triumphant, clutching an English paper graded triple A; Magdalen in the principal’s office, her bony white legs locked at the ankle, her head primly cocked—“You’ve got a bright little girl, Mrs. Heathrow.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  On the one hand a staggering fleeing world, affianced to the jinglebells of the infernal gamut, on the other hand: new beings . . . .” Thirty-two years later and I am still saying Yes! Yes, Monsieur Antipyrine! Yes, Monsieur Tristan Bustanoby Tzara! Yes, Monsieur Max Ernst Geburt! Yes! Monsieur René Crevel, now that you are dead by suicide, yes, the world is crazy, you were right. Yes, Monsiuer Blaise Cendrars, you were right to kill. Was it the day of the Armistice that you brought out your little book—J’ai tué? Yes, “keep on my lads, humanity. . . .” Yes, Jacques Vaché, quite right—“Art ought to be something funny and a trifle boring.” Yes, my dear dead Vaché, how right you were and how funny and how boring and touching and tender and true: “It is of the essence of symbols to be symbolic.” Say it again, from the other world! Have you a megaphone up there? Have you found all the arms and legs that were blown off during the mêlée? Can you put them together again? Do you remember the meeting at Nantes in 1916 with André Breton? Did you celebrate the birth of hysteria together? Had he told you, Breton, that there was only the marvelous and nothing but the marvelous and that the marvelous is always marvelous—and isn’t it marvelous to hear it again, even though your ears are stopped? I want to include here, before passing on, a little portrait of you by Emile Bouvier for the benefit of my Brooklyn friends who may not have recognized me then but who will now, I am sure. . . . “. . . he was not all crazy, and could explain his conduct when occasion required. His actions, none the less, were as disconcerting as Jarry’s worst eccentricities. For example, he was barely out of hospital when he hired himself out as a stevedore, and he thereafter passed his afternoons in unloading coal on the quays along the Loire. In the evening, on the other hand, he would make the rounds of the cafés and cinemas, dressed in the height of fashion and with many variations of costume. What was more, in time of war, he would strut forth sometimes in the uniform of a lieutenant of hussars, sometimes in that of an English officer, of an aviator or of a surgeon. In civil life, he was quite as free and easy, thinking nothing of introducing Breton under the name of André Salmon, while he took unto himself, but quite without vanity, the most wonderful titles and adventures. He never said good morning nor good evening nor good-by, and never took any notice of letters, except those from his mother, when he had to ask for money. He did not recognize his best friends from one day to another. . . .” Do you recognize me, lads? Just a Brooklyn boy communicating with the red-haired albinos of the Zuni region.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  He arranged the slices and oily slabs on two different plates and carried the stuff into the living room to put on the coffee table. He clicked on the TV with his remote-control device, flicked the channels around a few times and then ignored it. He ate with his fingers and a plastic fork, mentally feeling over the events of the day, like a blind person groping through a drawer of personal effects. There had been the usual parade of cats and dogs, and one exotic bird with a mysterious illness. He had no idea what to do with the crested, vividly plumed thing, which was apparently worth a lot of money. He had pretended that he did, though, and the bird was sitting in his kennel now, gaping fiercely at the cats with its hooked beak. Then there was the dog that he had had to put to sleep, a toothless, blind, smelly old monster with toenails like a dinosaur’s. He thought the dog was probably grateful for the injection, and he said so, but that didn’t console the homely adolescent girl who insisted on holding it right up until the end, tears running from under her glasses and down her pink, porous face. Poor lonely girl, he thought. He had wanted to say, “Don’t worry, dear, you’re going to grow up to be a beauty. You’re going to get married and have lots of wonderful children.” Except it probably wasn’t true. He picked up his remote-control device and switched channels thoughtfully. What would Jane think when he didn’t show up? Would she think he’d gotten bored with her, that he was never coming back? Would she go home wondering what had happened? He tried to picture her in her apartment. She had told him it was very small, only one room with a tiny bathroom. She said the bathroom had big windows and a skylight, and that she had so many plants in there that you couldn’t use the toilet without arranging yourself around the plants. She said she didn’t have a chair or a couch, that she sat on the floor to eat. When she came home from work she often ordered Chinese food and ate it straight from the cardboard boxes set out on the floor between her spread legs. “What do you have for breakfast?” he asked. “Ice cream, sometimes. If it’s warm.” “What do you find to do in that little room?” “I read a lot.” “What do you like to read?” She named a few writers, one that he’d been forced to read in college and others he’d never heard of. He picked up a tiny bit of herring and mashed it with the edges of his front teeth. Maybe he could start seeing Jane in her apartment. It would be more money for her certainly. He would like to spend time in that funny little place. He could buy her a chair. Maybe even a table.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Besides, it had been three weeks since she’d quit Christine’s, and she still hadn’t found a job, so the money was useful to her. Sometimes it was a hundred, sometimes two or even three hundred, depending on nothing but his mood. Her days began to slide together in a passive slur of afternoon movies, galleries and nightclubs. Babette would ask her if she’d started writing and she’d say that she was taking notes, which was true. She was content to drift, confident that her unconscious was unconsciously gathering information. She was having coffee in Soho one afternoon when Jackson walked into the café. He had the same mincing, narrow walk, the same rigid pelvis, the same uptilted chin. He looked at her and she at him. She held her breath. He quickly examined her, from foot to eye, and sat down on the other side of the room without answering her nod. She thought of something Babette had said when Stephanie had told her about her first hooking experience. “Oh, Stephie, don’t you know this is exactly what Jackson said you’d do? How can you fall into that horrible idea he had of you?” She had stiffly explained to Babette that this had nothing to do with Jackson, and she was sure that it didn’t. But it made her feel bad to think of Jackson’s reaction if he ever heard about it. The last time she’d seen him in New York, she had called him. He said they should meet for lunch, but lunch turned out to be a plastic glass of orange juice in a coffee shop while Jackson waited for his laundry to come out of a machine. He didn’t have much time, he said. He was meeting his fiancée’s parents at five. Their forty minutes of conversation were filled with pauses and downward looks. “People in New York are very busy,” he said. “I divide my time sparingly between my work and my social life. I find myself associating primarily with other young professionals.” She told Bernard about seeing Jackson that night, as they sat in a loud bar having BLTs and drinks. “It sounds romantic in a way,” he said. “Silently passing each other in a crowded room.” “It was awful.” “What was so terrible about what happened between the two of you?” She shrugged. “It’s hard to describe. I guess it’s basically that corny thing I talked about. I loved him, I trusted him too much and he turned out to be a dreadful person.” She realized that Bernard was being distracted by a plump blonde with loopy earrings and white go-go boots. She paused until he turned toward her again. “But it was more complicated. He had a lot of power over me. He was bisexual—don’t worry, I test negative—and he was seeing this guy André at the same time that he was seeing me.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  He sat next to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t you see how special you are? No other girl I’ve seen like this would ever have thought to say something like that. All they can think of is how to get more money out of me and here you are worrying about how much I’m spending. I’m not trying to flatter you, you are different.” “Aren’t you worried about getting AIDS?” “From a girl like you? C’mon, don’t put yourself down.” She smiled, sad and strained, but sort of affectionate, and put her hands on his shoulders. She felt to him like one of his puppy patients embracing him as he carried it across the room for a shot. “I’m sorry I’m being so shitty,” she said. “I just hate this job and this place.” “Here,” he said. “I’m going to buy two hours, so we can just relax and unwind. You just lie down and get snuggled up in the sheet.” He got up and turned off the light. He found a romantic jazz station on the radio. He undressed and got under the sheet with her, wrapping them both in a ball. He held her neck and felt her forehead against his shoulder. Her limbs were nestled and docile, as if all her stiff, pony-trot energy had vanished. The dim light of the gurgling fish tank cast an orangy glow over the room. “This is so nice and glamorous,” he said. “When is your wife coming back?” asked a voice from the nuzzling bundle on his arm. “In three days.” He sighed and stared at the stupid, lovely slivers of fish darting around their ugly castle. — Of course he knew that concern for his financial situation wasn’t the only reason she’d suggested that he shouldn’t see her so often. She was probably sick of him. He remembered dating well enough to know that women didn’t like to be pursued too closely. It could seem sappy, he supposed, to come grinning in there after her every single night. The next night he would stay home, and read or watch television. He enjoyed making dinner for himself. There were still a lot of good things left in the refrigerator—herring, a chunk of potato salad that was only slightly rancid, cream cheese, a jar of artichoke hearts, egg bread. It was too messy to eat in the kitchen—the counter was covered with encrusted plates and pans filled with silverware and water.

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

  Police had quick success in investigating the Pittman murder, rapidly concluding that Ralph Myers had been involved. When the police interrogated Ralph, they encountered a man as psychologically complicated as he was physically scarred. He was emotional and frail, and he craved attention—his only effective defense was his skill in manipulation and misdirection. Ralph believed that everything he said had to be epic, shocking, and elaborate. As a child living in foster care, he had been horribly burned in a fire. The burns so scarred and disfigured his face and neck that he needed multiple surgeries to regain basic functioning. He became quite used to strangers staring at his scars with pained expressions on their faces. He was a tragic outcast who lived on the margins, but he tried to compensate by pretending to have inside knowledge about all sorts of mysteries. After initially denying any direct involvement in the Pittman murder, Myers conceded that he may have played some accidental role but quickly put the blame for the murder itself on more interesting local figures. He first accused a black man with a bad reputation named Isaac Dailey, but the police quickly discovered that Dailey had been in a jail cell on the night of the murder. Myers then confessed that he had made up the story because the true killer was none other than the elected sheriff of a nearby county. As outrageous as the claim was, ABI agents appeared to take it seriously. They asked him more questions, but the more Myers talked, the less credible his story sounded. Officials began to suspect that Myers was the sole killer and was desperately trying to implicate others to minimize his culpability. While the death of Vickie Pittman was news, it failed to compare with the continuing mystery surrounding the death of Ronda Morrison. Vickie came from a poor white family, several of whose members were incarcerated; she enjoyed none of the status of Ronda Morrison. The Morrison murder remained the focus of everyone’s attention for months. Ralph Myers was illiterate, but he knew that it was the Morrison crime that was preoccupying law enforcement investigators. When his allegations against the sheriff didn’t seem to be going anywhere, he changed his story again and told investigators that he had been involved in the murder of Vickie Pittman along with Karen Kelly and her black boyfriend, Walter McMillian. But that wasn’t all. He also told police that McMillian was responsible for the murder of Ronda Morrison. That assertion attracted the full attention of law enforcement officials. It soon became apparent that Walter McMillian had never met Ralph Myers, let alone committed two murders with him. To prove that the two of them were in cahoots, an ABI agent asked Myers to meet Walter McMillian at a store while agents monitored the interaction. It had been several months since Ronda Morrison’s murder.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  He went to a screening of the South American film after work. It was a beautifully photographed political allegory, the kind he nearly always liked. But the frame that stayed with him had nothing to do with politics. The dark child, raped by her brutal first customer, turns her head to avoid his kiss, and a flat, brilliant fish swimming in imaginary water is superimposed, with rippling subtlety, over her face, a memory, perhaps, of the pretty fish tank in her grandmother’s demolished mansion. When he got home he called one of the women he dated. “Nothing special,” he said. “Just checking up on you. Seeing how you are.” She was pleased by his call, and told him she’d been depressed all week because of an agent’s reaction to her writing. He lost interest in the conversation sooner than he’d expected. He told her he had to go, but that he’d call her soon. Then he called the woman who hated telephones. She was depressed too. Her father had been calling to talk to her about how awful his life was, sometimes before she made it out of the apartment in the morning. That was a little more entertaining, but he cut that short too. He made himself a quick dinner of packaged vegetable-flavored Indian noodles with butter. Then he opened a can of sardines and took them into his bedroom to eat in front of the TV. The best thing that he found to watch was a talk show featuring a beautiful teenaged movie star who had recently performed an erotic nude scene in a box office hit. He liked to watch her. Her precise, careful manner would have seemed stiff in a grown woman, but was charming in a child sex star. Half-formed illusions about meeting and seducing her absorbed him as he ate his noodles. He went to bed early. When he woke up, he realized that he’d been dreaming. A fourteen-year-old girl had been given to him to take care of by some vague authority. She was a lovely tall child with wide solemn eyes and long dark hair. She hated clothes and walked around the apartment naked. He was not just excited by this, he was exhilarated and moved by her innocence. He remembered an image of her bicycling down the block in unconcerned leggy nakedness, her hair catching the sunlight. The dream then took an unfortunate turn. She was chased by a host of anxious neighbors, all trying to drape her with garments. They caught her and wrested her from his care with accusations of indecency and child molestation. The dream left him with a sense of irrational discouragement and a mosquito-bite feeling of loss. He moped as he brushed his teeth. He wished his roommate would come back from Italy. He had never been to Europe or anywhere else, and was sick of people going.