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 The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  These words and his tearing of his white and aged hair made us all to pity him: and the youngest and stoutest of heart in our company, and strongest of body, who alone escaped unhurt from the late skirmish of dogs and stones, rose up quickly, de- manding in what ditch the boy was fallen. “ Marry,” said he, * Yonder,’ and pointing with his finger, brought him to a great thicket of bushes and thorn, where they both entered in. In the mean season, after that we had well refreshed ourselves with our grazing and they had cured their wounds, each took up his packs, purposing to departaway. And because we would not go away without the young man our fellow, the shepherds whistled and called for him by his name; but when he gave no answer they feared because of his long absence and sent one of their company to seek him out, and to tell him that it was _ now time to set forth on the journey with us. But he after a while returned again with an ashen-pale face, trembling, with strange and sorrowful news of his fellow, saying that he saw him lying upon his back and a terrible dragon eating and devouring him: and as for the miserable old man, he could see him in no place. When they heard this (remembering likewise the words of the first old man that had warned them of this and no other habitant of the place) they ran away, beating us before them, to fly from this desert and pestilent country. Then after we had very 379 LUCIUS. APULEIUS itinere confecto pagum quendam accedimus, ibique totam perquiescimus noctem; ubi coeptum facinus oppido memorabile narrare cupio. Servus quidam, cui cunctam familiae tutelam domi- nus permiserat suus, quique possessionem maximam illam, in quam. deverteramus, villicabat, habens ex eodem famulitio conservam coniugam, liberae cuius- dam extrariaeque mulieris flagrabat cupidine. Quo dolore paelicatus uxor eius instricta cunctas mariti rationes et quiequid horreo reconditum continebatur admoto combussit igne. Nec tali damno.tori sui con- tumeliam vindicasse contenta, iam.contra sua saeviens viscera laqueum sibi nectit infantulumque, quem de eodem marito iamdudum susceperat, eodem. funiculo nectit seque per altissimum puteum, appendicem par- vulum trahens praecipitat. Quam) mortem dominus eorum aegerrime sustinens arreptum servulum, qui causam tanti sceleris uxori suae praestiterat, nudum ac totum melle perlitum firmiter alligavit arbori ficul- neae, cuius in ipso carioso stipite inhabitantium formi- carum nidificia borribant et ultro citro commeabant multiiuga scaturigine. Quae simul dulcem ae mel- litum corporis nidorem persentiscunt, parvis quidem sed numerosis et continuis morsiunculis penitus in- haerentes, per longi temporis cruciatum ita, carnibus atque ipsis visceribus adesis, homine consumpto mem- bra nudarunt, ut ossa tantum viduata pulpis nitore nimio candentia funestae cohaererent arbori. 23 | Hac quoque detestabili deserta mansione, paganos 380. THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VIII

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Aurora: the dawn, as personified by the Romans (Eos for the Greeks). The image of the “warmed hands” means the sun had hardly risen high enough to warm the hillside. lavender: a mint cultivated on hillsides in Southern France, used for its fragrant oil. Clowns and Columbines ... Tennis: the first title is H.H.’s invention (the other titles exist). In the commedia dell’arte (see “Bertoldo” ... comedy and Dr. Gratiano ... Mirandola, N.Y.), the clown Pulcinella had a dual nature: witty, ironic, somewhat cruel, yet also silly, fawning, and timid. Columbine was the eternal coquette whose keen wit allows her to manipulate the most complex intrigues. She is the constant companion of Harlequin, the volatile, elusive character associated with Mercury as the patron of merchants, panderers, and thieves. The analogy with H.H., Lolita, and Quilty is clear. Helen Wills (1905– ) was the greatest woman tennis player of the twenties and thirties, and her youthful championship and 1928 book, Tennis, are obviously meant to inspire Lolita further. The dance volumes are evidently there to inspire a new program of instruction and state of grace that H.H. will never get to see. The volume of Browning must contain Pippa Passes (see frock-fold ... Browning and Pim ... Pippa). The title character, a perambulating mill girl, is so good-natured that she keeps on singing, no matter what she sees. fundament jigging: buttocks. a crumpled envelope: the letter was from Quilty. chassé-croisé: side stepping and re-side stepping each other. “Je croyais ... doux”: “I thought that it was a bill—not a love-note” (a pun on bill and billet doux). Deseret News: an actual newspaper in Utah. sister Ann: it will be clear in a moment that H.H. is alluding to Charles Perrault’s (1628–1703) fairy tale about Bluebeard, who murdered six wives. Hoping to be rescued by her two brothers, his seventh wife posts her sister Ann as sentinel; “Sister Ann, do you see anyone coming?” is her constant refrain. She finally does, and the “brutal brothers” slay Bluebeard. See also Keys, p. 48. When I was writing this note, I called to my wife in the adjacent room, asking her if she remembered all the details in Bluebeard. “I know the story,” replied Karen, my seven- year-old daughter, running into the room (this was in 1967). I showed her the passage in Lolita, and, after helpfully identifying Sister Ann, she read H.H.’s dirge for Bluebeard. “Poor Bluebeard,” she quoted. “Poor Bluebeard? He was awful! What kind of book is this?” For allusions to Bluebeard in Ada, see pp. 164 and 180, and in King, Queen, Knave, pp. 263–264. See Percy Elphinstone. Est-ce que ... Carmen: “Do you not love me any more, my Carmen?” José says this to Carmen in their penultimate confrontation (Chapter Three).

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  I never found out. He didn’t mention the poem to me. He didn’t invite me to go churching with him the next Sunday, nor did I seek him out. We both attended our fatuous chaplain’s service. “Dearly beloved,” the chaplain said, his eyebrows bouncing roguishly, “let us pray,” and then, since he had no style for seriousness, he became horribly boring. He bowed his head and spoke in a monotone so dull it repelled attention. A rich person’s smell of wet wool and perfume pressed down on us. The dismal leaking of the hushed organ trickled out around us. Sunlight came and went behind a rose window coarsely stenciled in lead, harshly colored with aniline shades, an industrial rose. After that, whenever I’d pass Mr. Pouchet in the hall, he’d smile and say hi, softening his rejection as much as possible: faintest watermark that had to be held to the light to be seen at all. I decided I had to go to a psychiatrist. In the back of my mind I had kept hoping I’d somehow outgrow this interest in men, an interest I had nonetheless continued to indulge. But now I was becoming frightened. I was being pushed out of the tribe. I had a dream in which I was a waiter in an elegant restaurant where I served happy, elegant couples. That was upstairs. Downstairs the filthy kitchen was staffed by bald, grizzled men, convicts, really, mute, bestial with grief. They wore blood-stained aprons and gleamed with sweat. I was one of them and, although I could rise to circulate among the happy diners, I always had to descend back down to the hopeless workers, each suspicious of the others. And then the police van arrived and the help, all of us, were dragged out into the night street ablaze with revolving red lights. We were hauled off to prison, where we’d remain forever. As I was being herded into the van I could feel on my back the eyes of the diners looking down from the windows upstairs. Now they knew I wasn’t one of them but one of the convicts. I woke with tears in my eyes so salty they burned the canthus. Everything I touched or did spoke to me of sadness. Each article of clothing—shirt, tie, jacket—felt cut out of different bolts of sadness, each a peculiar weave and shape and hang of sadness, as though sadness came in lots of styles. My shoes posed above their reflections on the glossy floor, and they looked to me like imperfect molds cast from the original, perfect sadness; I mean they were big, solid things, crude actually, and yet the frayed end of a lace, the rim around the opening that bulged here and there, the unevenly worn heels—they all spoke of use, my use, they were sensitive records of dailiness, nothing sadder.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Wherefore towards night being very weary, I went to the Baines to refresh my selfe, and behold, I fortuned to espy my companion Socrates sitting upon the ground, covered with a torn and course mantle; who was so meigre and of so sallow and miserable a countenance, that I scantly knew him: for fortune had brought him into such estate and calamity, that he verily seemed as a common begger that standeth in the streets to crave the benevolence of the passers by. Towards whom (howbeit he was my singular friend and familiar acquaintance, yet half in despaire) I drew nigh and said, Alas my Socrates, what meaneth this? how faireth it with thee? What crime hast thou committed? verily there is great lamentation and weeping for thee at home: Thy children are in ward by decree of the Provinciall Judge: Thy wife (having ended her mourning time in lamentable wise, with face and visage blubbered with teares, in such sort that she hath well nigh wept out both her eyes) is constrained by her parents to put out of remembrance the unfortunate losse and lacke of thee at home, and against her will to take a new husband. And dost thou live here as a ghost or hogge, to our great shame and ignominy? Then he answered he to me and said, O my friend Aristomenus, now perceive I well that you are ignorant of the whirling changes, the unstable forces, and slippery inconstancy of Fortune: and therewithall he covered his face (even then blushing for very shame) with his rugged mantle insomuch that from his navel downwards he appeared all naked. But I not willing to see him any longer in such great miserie and calamitie, took him by the hand and lifted him up from the ground: who having his face covered in such sort, Let Fortune (quoth he) triumph yet more, let her have her sway, and finish that which shee hath begun. And therewithall I put off one of my garments and covered him, and immediately I brought him to the Baine, and caused him to be anointed, wiped, and the filthy scurfe of his body to be rubbed away; which done, though I were very weary my selfe, yet I led the poore miser to my Inne, where he reposed his body upon a bed, and then I brought him meat and drinke, and so wee talked together: for there we might be merry and laugh at our pleasure, and so we were, untill such time as he (fetching a pittifull sigh from the bottom of his heart, and beating his face in miserable sort), began to say. THE THIRD CHAPTER How Socrates in his returne from Macedony to Larissa was spoyled and robbed, and how he fell acquainted with one Meroe a Witch.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Denouement You have planned a chat with Val between an end-of-semester barbecue and a house party. You leave the former later than you intend, so when Val calls, you pull over on a shady street. It is so strange to hear her voice, soft and sweet over the phone. You chatter nervously at each other for a few minutes before arriving at a mush of apologies and tears. “I can’t believe you agreed to be in an open relationship,” you say to her. “She cared about you,” she says. “I didn’t think I had a choice.” “Before that.” “What do you mean?” “When I met her, she was in an open relationship.” The silence on the end of the line is long and slow. “What are you talking about?” she asks. When you arrive at the house party, your friends all stare at you and ask if you’re okay. “I need a drink,” you say. “And then I need to tell you a story.” Dream House as Schrödinger’s Cat Was it the arc of the universe? The natural result of centuries, millennia of wrongheaded politics? Was she trained to find you, or were you trained to be found? Was it the fact that you’d already been tenderized like a pork chop by: never having been properly in love, being told you should be grateful for anything you get as a fat woman, getting weird messages that relationships are about fighting and being at odds with each other? The fact that your heart had been broken that one time and you desperately wanted to feel it unbreak? That you felt complete with someone loving you? That you just straight-up loved being desired, desiring someone, coming all the time? That you got addicted to her smell, her voice, her body? That you figured this was what you deserved? The superpredictable result of a religion that pathologized sex but never talked about relationships? Terrible sex ed? Bad timing? You feel as if there is a box you can open to find the answer, but with the lid closed the answer is all of these things, all at once.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Vaccine When I was a kid, I learned that you develop immunity when an illness rages through your body. Your body is brilliant, even when you are not. It doesn’t just heal—it learns. It remembers. (All of this, of course, if the virus doesn’t kill you first.) After the Dream House, I developed a sixth sense. It goes off at random times—meeting a new classmate or coworker, a friend’s new girlfriend, a stranger at a party. A physical revulsion that comes on the heels of nothing at all, something akin to the sour liquid rush of saliva that precedes vomiting. Inconvenient, irritating, but important: my brilliant body’s brilliant warning. Dream House as Ending That there’s a real ending to anything is, I’m pretty sure, the lie of all autobiographical writing. You have to choose to stop somewhere. You have to let the reader go. Where to stop this story? Val’s and my wedding, on a hot day in June? Some narratively satisfying confrontation between the woman from the Dream House and me? If you grasp the story by the base and pull, will the ripping sound indicate the looseness of the roots? What is left behind in the soil? Should I loop back to a memory from the Dream House? A lovely one? Will that work, a contrast between what could have been and what was? A memory of the two of us freshly returned from a local winery, sipping on a spicy Zinfandel and eating some kind of feta dip and telling a story? One day the woman from the Dream House will die, and I will die, and Val will die, and John and Laura will die, and my brother will die, and my parents will die, and her parents will die, and everyone who ever knew any of us will die. Is that the end of the story? Time’s mindless, chattering advancement? There is a Panamanian folktale that ends with: “My tale goes only to here; it ends, and the wind carries it off.” It’s the only true kind of ending. Sometimes you have to tell a story, and somewhere, you have to stop.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I wondered if the last statement was true. All? Did they have for instance sidewalk grenadine? I also wondered if a hunter, enchanted or otherwise, would not need a pointer more than a pew, and with a spasm of pain I recalled a scene worthy of a great artist: petite nymphe accroupie; but that silky cocker spaniel had perhaps been a baptized one. No—I felt I could not endure the throes of revisiting that lobby. There was a much better possibility of retrievable time elsewhere in soft, richcolored, autumnal Briceland. Leaving Rita in a bar, I made for the town library. A twittering spinster was only too glad to help me disinter mid-August 1947 from the bound Briceland Gazette, and presently, in a secluded nook under a naked light, I was turning the enormous and fragile pages of a coffin-black volume almost as big as Lolita.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  [image file=image_rsrcA5N.jpg] OF NEW punishment behoves me to make verses, and give matter for the twentieth canto of the first canzone, which concerns the sunken. I now was all prepared to look into the depth discovered to me, which was bathed with tears of anguish; and through the circular valley I saw a people coming silent and weeping, at the pace which the Litanies1 make in this world. When my sight descended lower on them, each seemed wondrously distorted, between the chin and the commencement of the chest: for the face was turned towards the loins; and they had to come backward, for to look before them was denied. Perhaps by force of palsy some have been thus quite distorted; but I have not seen, nor do believe it to be so. Reader, so God grant thee to take profit of thy reading, now think for thyself how I could keep my visage dry, when near at hand I saw our image so contorted, that the weeping of the eyes bathed the hinder parts at their division? Certainly I wept, leaning on one of the rocks of the hard cliff, so that my Escort said to me: “Art thou, too, like the other fools? Here pity lives when it is altogether dead. Who more impious than he that sorrows at God’s judgment? Raise up thy head, raise up, and see him for whom the earth opened herself before the eyes of the Thebans, whereat they all cried, ‘Whither rushest thou, Amphiaräus?2 Why leavest thou the war?’ And he ceased not rushing headlong down to Minos, who lays hold on every sinner. Mark how he has made a breast of his shoulders: because he wished to see too far before him, he now looks behind and goes backward. Behold Tiresias3 who changed his aspect, when of male he was made woman, all his limbs transforming; and afterwards he had again to strike the two involved serpents with his rod, before he could resume his manly plumes. That is Aruns, who to the belly of him (Tiresias) has his back, he who in the mountains of Luni,4 where hoes the Cararese that dwells beneath, amongst the white marbles had the cave for his abode; from which he could observe the stars and the sea with unobstructed view. And she that covers her bosom, which thou seest not, with her flowing tresses, and has all her hairy skin on the other side, was Manto,5 who searched through many lands, then settled there where I was born: whence it pleases me a little to have thee listen to me. After her father went out of life, and the city of Bacchus came to be enslaved,6 she for a long time roamed the world. Up in beautiful Italy there lies a lake, at the foot of the Alps which shut in Germany above the Tyrol, which is called Benacus.7

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  The body will be taken to Washington tomorrow for burial at Arlington Cemetery, with full military honors. President Truman and other high government officials will attend funeral services at the National Cathedral there. Mrs. Patterson Writes a NoteIn her Park Avenue apartment, Margaret Patterson, wife of the former Secretary of War, sat at the small French desk in her bedroom and started a note to Laura Barnes, widow of the pilot of the plane, inviting her and her children to spend a day in the country with her family. But she wasn’t able to finish. Instead, she put the note in her desk drawer, closed her pen, took off her reading glasses and sipped the brandy she’d poured for herself. She didn’t blame Captain Timothy Barnes for the loss of her husband. She believed he’d done everything he could to get that plane to Newark Airport. She blamed the weather. Her thoughts went to Captain Barnes’s young widow and those two little girls who probably wouldn’t even remember their father. At least her children were older. They’d have their memories. And so would she. Not that memories were enough—they didn’t keep you warm on a cold winter’s night. They couldn’t hold you when you were frightened or sad. But they were better than nothing. She was a professional wife. She would go on because that’s what he would want. Maybe in the spring she’d send the note, inviting Laura and the girls to spend a day at their farm upstate. [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00022.jpg] [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00022.jpg] THE LAST THREE MINUTESBy Henry AmmermanJAN. 24 — At 3:41 p.m. the American Airlines Convair had been circling for 10 minutes, waiting for another transport to land at Newark Airport. With the runway now clear, the tower told the pilot he was free to descend to 1,500 feet, instructing him to listen to radar advisories to aid his instrument approach in the rainy, foggy weather. “Roger,” replied the Convair. Five and a half miles out, the pilot was informed, “Coming up on glide path but you’re 900 feet to the left of course.” At four and a half miles out he was “Nearing the course now, you’re 400 feet left.” By four miles out, “You’re on course now. The Elizabeth Court House is one mile ahead of you.” He was coming over the center of town. At three and a half miles out, the radar controller issued a warning. “You’re drifting 900 feet to the right of course and you’re a half mile from the Court House.” Four or 5 seconds later, the reassuring orange blip disap peared from the radar scope. “American 6780, this is Newark radar. We’ve lost your tar get, sir.” There was no reply. “American 6780, this is Newark radio. Do you hear?” Again there was no reply. As the tower anxiously tried to make contact on other fre quencies, calls came in from both the Newark Evening News and the Daily Post.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  “Say something.” “All the furniture is gone.” Miri knew that wasn’t what Natalie wanted to hear but she couldn’t hide her disappointment. “That’s it?” Natalie asked, annoyed. “No…I mean, it’s great. But…” “But what?” “I’ll miss the parties.” This is where she and Mason met and danced for the first time. She’d been hoping Natalie would host another get-together soon. Maybe for Valentine’s Day. “We can still have parties,” Natalie said. “The furniture is in the garage. Daddy and Steve can bring it back in anytime. Not that I have time for parties these days.” Natalie pulled off one sweater, then another, and tossed them across the room. She stepped out of her dungarees and kicked them to the corner. Then she stood in front of the mirrored wall, in her long-sleeved black leotard, black tights, white little-girl socks trimmed in lace and black tap shoes with small heels and a Mary Jane strap. It had been ages since Miri had seen her without layers of clothing. The size of her took Miri’s breath away. “Why are you staring that way?” Natalie asked. “What way?” “Like you’re in shock.” “Well, I am, sort of. You’re so thin.” “I know. Isn’t it great? Ruby’s been coaching me. I eat green grapes and drink a ton of water. Dancers have to stay hydrated.” Natalie posed. First position, second position, fifth position. “You know what I see when I look in the mirror?” Miri was almost afraid to hear her say it. “I see Ruby.” She didn’t wait for Miri’s reaction. “I’m never alone now. She’s given me the greatest gift a person can give. She’s given me her life.” Miri felt something roiling inside her. She looked away, angry at Natalie for not eating, angry for acting crazy, angry for throwing away their friendship. But she was scared, too. Scared there was something really wrong with her. Scared that she and Natalie would never be friends again. That they’d never know what the other was thinking, that Natalie would never rest her head in Miri’s lap while they watched television. Inseparable. That’s what everyone said about them back in seventh grade. Come back! she wanted to shout. Come back and be my friend. Natalie misunderstood Miri’s expression. “You’re jealous of Ruby?” “Why would I be jealous of Ruby? She’s dead.” “She’s not dead,” Natalie said. “Why can’t you understand? Why won’t you even try?” “I don’t like the way she’s changed you.” “You’ve changed, too, since Mason. And just so you know, you’re not the only one in love. I’m in love with this, with dance. Dance is my life. There is nothing else.” “Yes, there is. There’s school and friends and your family. Some people would give anything for your family.” Natalie shook her head. “You don’t know anything.” Miri didn’t like the way Natalie said that, as if maybe there was something Natalie knew that she didn’t. It hurt to think she had a secret she couldn’t share with Miri.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  After that, whenever I’d pass Mr. Pouchet in the hall, he’d smile and say hi, softening his rejection as much as possible: faintest watermark that had to be held to the light to be seen at all. I decided I had to go to a psychiatrist. In the back of my mind I had kept hoping I’d somehow outgrow this interest in men, an interest I had nonetheless continued to indulge. But now I was becoming frightened. I was being pushed out of the tribe. I had a dream in which I was a waiter in an elegant restaurant where I served happy, elegant couples. That was upstairs. Downstairs the filthy kitchen was staffed by bald, grizzled men, convicts, really, mute, bestial with grief. They wore blood-stained aprons and gleamed with sweat. I was one of them and, although I could rise to circulate among the happy diners, I always had to descend back down to the hopeless workers, each suspicious of the others. And then the police van arrived and the help, all of us, were dragged out into the night street ablaze with revolving red lights. We were hauled off to prison, where we’d remain forever. As I was being herded into the van I could feel on my back the eyes of the diners looking down from the windows upstairs. Now they knew I wasn’t one of them but one of the convicts. I woke with tears in my eyes so salty they burned the canthus. Everything I touched or did spoke to me of sadness. Each article of clothing—shirt, tie, jacket—felt cut out of different bolts of sadness, each a peculiar weave and shape and hang of sadness, as though sadness came in lots of styles. My shoes posed above their reflections on the glossy floor, and they looked to me like imperfect molds cast from the original, perfect sadness; I mean they were big, solid things, crude actually, and yet the frayed end of a lace, the rim around the opening that bulged here and there, the unevenly worn heels—they all spoke of use, my use, they were sensitive records of dailiness, nothing sadder. The father of a classmate was a local psychiatrist and he arranged for me to see a famous analyst John Thomas O’Reilly. O’Reilly’s office was next door to his home, the two buildings unassuming suburban clapboard houses separated by a concrete drive. Once I was inside the office, however, I found the decor to be luxurious and exotic, not at all what I had expected. The waiting room was carpeted in delicate tatami mats bruised by horrid Western shoes. A large birdcage, woven out of bent reeds to resemble a baroque Brazilian church, confined a dozen bright choristers all cheeping at once.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  “Longy’s, am I right?” “Corinne…” Daisy took a deep breath. “He needs to get away. He’s exhausted. It’s beginning to affect him at the office.” “He could go away with me.” “That would be wonderful and I’d be glad to stay with the children.” “The children,” Corinne said, as if she’d just remembered. “We can’t both be gone at the same time, not now.” “It’s just for a long weekend,” Daisy reminded her. “Yes, a long weekend, but with Longy. ” Daisy laughed. “No denying that.” Corinne sighed. “All right.” Daisy said, “If you need anything, I’ll be around.” “Thank you, Daisy.” On Wednesday, after office hours, Longy picked up Dr. O in a limo heading for LaGuardia. “We’ll catch some winter sun if we’re lucky,” Longy called to Daisy. “Catch some for me, too.” Daisy waved goodbye. Dr. O waved back. MiriHenry and Leah were planning their June wedding. They’d once talked about renting a big house down the shore, and everyone would come and stay for the weekend, but they’d changed their minds. The wedding would be smaller now, in a garden at the Hotel La Reine in Bradley Beach. How could they be planning a wedding? Miri wondered. Because life goes on ? Maybe this was true and maybe it wasn’t. Life might go on but it didn’t go on in the same way. It would never be the same for the Fosters. It would never be the same for the Steins. It might never be the same for Natalie. She didn’t know who Natalie was anymore. She wasn’t even sure about herself. Who was this girl who looked back at her from the mirror? If she’d once thought being in love could fix anything, she didn’t anymore. It couldn’t bring back Penny or make Betsy better. —SHE BEGGED RUSTY to let her go to the Paper Mill Playhouse with Frekki. “What’s the worst that could happen?” Rusty didn’t give her an answer. When she turned and walked out of the room without another word, Miri knew she’d won. —AT 8:30 SATURDAY MORNING, Mr. Roman of Mr. Roman’s House of Beauty, on Elmora Avenue, circled Miri, who sat in his chair. She was about to splurge on an Elizabeth Taylor cut, shampoo and set. Rusty, a big believer in long hair, would kill her if she knew. When Rusty caught her leaving the house so early, Miri had her excuse ready. “I’m going to the library,” she’d said. “Be careful,” Rusty told her. Did that mean don’t let any planes crash into you? Did it mean don’t let the aliens turn you into a zombie? Or did it mean look both ways before you cross the street and don’t talk to strangers? Mr. Roman’s House of Beauty was already busy, with two women under the dryers, two more getting shampooed, and a second haircutter at work. The manicurist was polishing the nails of a lady Miri thought she recognized from the junior department at Levy Brothers. Mr.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  And then my mother would turn her hardworking, always shifting, tumbling scrutiny on me. She and I enjoyed a perfect communication, or so she said. I was a man far more mature than the riffraff she was dating. I was beautifully sensitive to the slightest shift in her moods. If I weren’t her son, I’d be her best friend—or she’d marry me. And yet (the wheels whirred faster and faster) without a man to emulate I was in danger of developing abnormally. I mustn’t be a mama’s boy, I mustn’t become effeminate. I mustn’t lean on her too much. That was the real reason she was so eager to remarry, to provide me with a suitable male role model. Children of broken homes were known to grow up wounded, their sexuality damaged. “Are you developing normally?” she asked when I was ten. I told her something that astounded her, though I thought it would please her: “I don’t want to go through puberty.” I cited my sister. “She’s already acting like a nut. I see myself standing on a hill above a lonesome valley I’ll never be able to cross. I’ll probably never be this calm again.” My sister, my mother and I—three unhappy people, and yet my mother’s ceaseless optimism didn’t even grant us the dignity of suffering. “Kids,” she said, driving us away from school on a weekday, “we’re going on vacation. Isn’t that wonderful! We’re off to Florida! Isn’t that exciting?” In every way we had more fun than other people and were superior to them. At Christmastime Mother would count up her cards as though they were a precise numerical rendering of her worth; if someone neglected to send her a card, she’d worry about it, question herself, seem wounded—and then she’d dismiss the offender from her thoughts, even her life (“He wasn’t much of a friend. I don’t know why I hang around such crummy people”). My sister and I have been left alone in the hotel room all day. Mother is off on a date after work. We’ve been instructed to take our meals in the dining room downstairs (“I’ll be home when I’m home—don’t worry about me”). I’m ten, my sister is fourteen. She’s interested in being a nurse. She has “sterilized” Mom’s scissors and tweezers under hot tap water. Out of her allowance she’s bought some gauze in a long roll. She convinces me to lie down and play sick. “You poor guy,” she says in a sweet, unfamiliar voice, “just look at this burn!” She is the consoling, sympathetic nurse. “Yeah, it really hurts. You see, I was boiling some water—” “Sh-h-h!” she urges me. In real life she’s always shutting me up; in the fiction of the hospital she’s silencing me in the interest of my recovery. “You’ll feel much better once I change your dressing.

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

  5 (May 1977).“Being Black, I always assumed that Deenie was white” : Telephone interview with Julia Loving, November 8, 2022.“There was a copy of Forever that was passed around in fifth grade” : LH to RB, October 25, 2022.Maynard went to the “pretty, mostly white, upper-middle-class community” : Joyce Maynard, “Coming of Age with Judy Blume,” New York Times , December 3, 1978.“I read that book so many times,” Silverberg said : CS to RB, October 26, 2022.“I was fourteen and I remember reading [ Forever]” : JZ to RB, May 31, 2022.Chapter Thirteen Rebellion“He had married this little girl, and he was happy that way” : Peter Gorner, “Tempo: The Giddy/Sad, Flighty/Solid Life of Judy Blume,” Chicago Tribune , March 15, 1985, p. D1. She was holding his hand when he lost consciousness : Lee, Judy Blume’s Story , pp. 58–59.Before Judy and John told them, Judy had consulted a family counselor : Judy Blume, Letters to Judy , pp. 90–91.“It was a nice marriage,” Blume later said : Lee, Judy Blume’s Story , p. 73.“I wasn’t terrible. I was responsible” : Weidt, Presenting Judy Blume , p. 16.John blamed Fear of Flying : V.C. Chickering, “A Judy Blume Interview from the Bust Archives,” Bust , February 12, 2015, originally published in the 1997 Spring/Summer issue. Accessed online: https://bust.com/tbt-a-very-special-judy-blume-exclusive-from-our-bust-vault/ .“What was marriage anyway?” : Erica Jong, Fear of Flying (Fort Worth, TX: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1973). I worked from the 2003 reprint from New American Library, p. 14.“Was I going to be just a housewife who wrote in her spare time?” : Ibid., p. 193.“Leaving Bennett was my first really independent action” : Ibid., p. 390.“I was afraid of being a woman,” she says : Ibid., p. 407.“Why should I be disturbed by the sado-masochistic aspects of that relationship” : Sue Kaufman, Diary of a Mad Housewife (New York: Bantam Books, 1967), p. 191.“Without a cent of my own, without a checking account” : Ibid., p. 272.in which she has to be the “submissive woman” : Ibid., p. 207.“Did Lisbeth think she was a mad housewife too?” : Judy Blume, Wifey , (New York: Berkley Books, 1978), p. 79.“Have you been reading that book again?” : Ibid., p. 188.“Just getting through the day was a real struggle for me” : Judy Blume, Letters to Judy , p. 92.“That’s what divorced women on TV always turn out to be—cocktail waitresses” : Judy Blume, It’s Not the End of the World (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Bradbury Press, 1972), p. 101.“If I divorced him, I’d have to give up the house” : Judy Blume, Wifey , p. 201.“He entertained them lavishly” : Judy Blume, Letters to Judy , p. 94.Chapter Fourteen Mistakes“From the beginning, we fought” : Judy Blume, Letters to Judy , p. 99.“My son and daughter thought he was a kid” : John Neary, “The ‘Jacqueline Susann of Kids’ Books,’ Judy Blume, Grows Up with an Adult Novel,” People , October 16, 1978.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  He never discussed music beyond saying that the German Requiem was “damn nice” or that the violin and cello concerto was “one hell of a piece,” and even these judgments he made with a trace of embarrassment; for him, music was emotion, and he did not believe in discussing feelings. His real love was the late Brahms, the piano Intermezzi and especially the two clarinet sonatas. These pieces, as unpredictable as thought and as human as conversation, filled the house night after night. Here, while marveling at a blocked father’s grunted assessment of his favorite masterpiece as “nice,” the author himself pushes on, calling that same composer’s work, “unpredictable as thought and as human as conversation.” What could better describe the ravishments, the surprise turns of late Brahms? Damn nice phrase, that. And yet, for the speaking child, the withheld human conversation can only be deduced via the music seeking to simulate it. Art stands in here as a lonely substitute for some familial, personal eloquence that really should have preceded it, right? Left alone to itself, Art becomes an onanistic moral agent. Its lessons must be misapplied by however bright a child. He inevitably concocts a world self-serving and amoral, since it is a realm cut off from any deep emotive consequence to others. And so, the father—who explains how men should use only the verb “like,” never “love”—is assassinated by the author’s phrase. It is a figure so apt, sad, opulent, Brahmsian. And yet this very summation seeks to show his “straight” emotionally retarded father how it might be done. This very book is a strange invitation to Dad for A Dad’s Own Story . Which produces only silence. And this attempt to tell it all anyway—as an artful ventriloquist might—by the “thrown” voice of a boy soprano. II White has written fond dimensional biographies of those fellow gay rule-breakers: Proust and Genet. He shows us a Proust impervious to expected store-bought pleasures, susceptible only to surprises, shocks of joy and unforeseen betrayal that overtake him with the force of martyrdom. White also identifies with Genet, the congenital thief whose criminality begat a fictional formalism of such surpassing symmetry, such tuberose-scented beauty, it can elevate any jail cell to an altar. Edmund White’s own prose benefits from the examples of these willingly incarcerated French uncles: sealed in a cork-lined study or a cold stone cellblock, they must each make a great deal of seemingly little. How to find the heroic solace in one’s own self-admitted self-administered condemnation? White, born stolidly upper middle class, forever empathizes with the truant, the nervy, the dismissed, the oversexed and underrated. His life’s work offers hundreds of love poems to such fellow recidivists.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  I mention the constant music because, to my mind at least, it served as an invisible link between my father and me. He never discussed music beyond saying that the German Requiem was “damn nice” or that the violin and cello concerto was “one hell of a piece,” and even these judgments he made with a trace of embarrassment; for him, music was emotion, and he did not believe in discussing feelings. His real love was the late Brahms, the piano Intermezzi and especially the two clarinet sonatas. These pieces, as unpredictable as thought and as human as conversation, filled the house night after night. He could not have liked them as background music to work to, since their abrupt changes of volume and dynamics must have made them too arresting to dismiss. I never showered with my dad, I never saw him naked, not once, but we did immerse ourselves, side by side, in those passionate streams every night. As he worked at his desk and I sat on his couch, reading or daydreaming, we bathed in music. Did he feel the same things I felt? Perhaps I ask this only because now that he’s dead I fear we shared nothing and my long captivity in his house represented to him only a slight inconvenience, a major expense, a fair to middling disappointment, but I like to think that music spoke to us in similar ways and acted as the source and transcript of a shared rapture. I feel sorry for a man who never wanted to go to bed with his father; when the father dies, how can his ghost get warm except in a posthumous embrace? For that matter, how does the survivor get warm? Kevin hated music. When he was horsing around with his little brother, he’d fall back into the silliness of boyhood. Like all boys, they loved cracking stupid jokes that became funnier and funnier to them the more they were repeated. The opera singers especially tickled them (strangely enough, considering their mother was a singer) and they’d jounce along with warbling falsettos, holding their right hands on their stomachs and rolling their eyes. I was chagrined by this clowning because I’d already imagined Kevin as a sort of husband. No matter that he was younger; his cockiness had turned him into the Older One. But this poignantly young groom I couldn’t reconcile with the brat he had become today. Perhaps he wanted to push me away. In the afternoon everyone except Kevin and me left on a boat ride. We went swimming off the dock. Clouds had covered the sun, gray clouds with black bellies and veins of fiery silver. After a while they blew away and released the late sun’s warmth. We were standing side by side.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Mid-twentieth century ideas concerning child-parent relationship have been considerably tainted by the scholastic rigmarole and standardized symbols of the psychoanalytic racket, but I hope I am addressing myself to unbiased readers. Once when Avis’s father had honked outside to signal papa had come to take his pet home, I felt obliged to invite him into the parlor, and he sat down for a minute, and while we conversed, Avis, a heavy, unattractive, affectionate child, drew up to him and eventually perched plumply on his knee. Now, I do not remember if I have mentioned that Lolita always had an absolutely enchanting smile for strangers, a tender furry slitting of the eyes, a dreamy sweet radiance of all her features which did not mean a thing of course, but was so beautiful, so endearing that one found it hard to reduce such sweetness to but a magic gene automatically lighting up her face in atavistic token of some ancient rite of welcome—hospitable prostitution, the coarse reader may say. Well, there she stood while Mr. Byrd twirled his hat and talked, and—yes, look how stupid of me, I have left out the main characteristic of the famous Lolita smile, namely: while the tender, nectared, dimpled brightness played, it was never directed at the stranger in the room but hung in its own remote flowered void, so to speak, or wandered with myopic softness over chance objects—and this is what was happening now: while fat Avis sidled up to her papa, Lolita gently beamed at a fruit knife that she fingered on the edge of the table, whereon she leaned, many miles away from me. Suddenly, as Avis clung to her father’s neck and ear while, with a casual arm, the man enveloped his lumpy and large offspring, I saw Lolita’s smile lose all its light and become a frozen little shadow of itself, and the fruit knife slipped off the table and struck her with its silver handle a freak blow on the ankle which made her gasp, and crouch head forward, and then, jumping on one leg, her face awful with the preparatory grimace which children hold till the tears gush, she was gone—to be followed at once and consoled in the kitchen by Avis who had such a wonderful fat pink dad and a small chubby brother, and a brand-new baby sister, and a home, and two grinning dogs, and Lolita had nothing. And I have a neat pendant to that little scene—also in a Beardsley setting. Lolita, who had been reading near the fire, stretched herself, and then inquired, her elbow up, with a grunt: “Where is she buried anyway?” “Who?” “Oh, you know, my murdered mummy.” “And you know where her grave is,” I said controlling myself, whereupon I named the cemetery—just outside Ramsdale, between the railway tracks and Lakeview Hill. “Moreover,” I added, “the tragedy of such an accident is somewhat cheapened by the epithet you saw fit to apply to it.

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

  She started carrying around a green-gray three-ring binder, which she used to take notes in class and scribble down any new ideas that came to her. On the inside cover Judy wrote down her address, as well as a phrase indicating the item’s growing significance: Reward if found. Between her lectures on everything from craft to writing strong cover letters to go with manuscript submissions, Wyndham consistently gave Judy warm, positive feedback. She was frank with the aspiring author, telling her that realistic writing, as opposed to fantasy, was her strength. Wyndham likely empathized with Judy; she also didn’t start her professional career until after she had a family. When the class ended, Judy signed up to take it again. She had already started working on a full-length manuscript, about a young white girl whose sense of injustice is inflamed by her community’s racist response to a Black family moving into town. As Judy wrote, she was also sending out her stories. The first rejection stung. “I went in the closet—I didn’t want the kids to see me,” Blume told CBS Sunday Morning in 2015. “I went in the closet and I cried.” Over time, however, her skin grew thicker. Eventually, by the late 1960s, she’d been rejected by every major publisher, from Harper & Row to Houghton Mifflin to Random House and Pantheon. But she had made progress, too. She sold a short story, called “The Flying Munchgins,” to a children’s magazine, about a little boy named Leonard who discovers a society of mysterious creatures—the Munchgins—living in the dirt. He traps them in a box and shows them off to his older brother and sister who, unimpressed, inform him that they’re nothing special: just plain old ladybugs. For another story, called “The Ooh Ooh Ahh Ahh Bird,” Judy received $20—and a celebratory red rose from Wyndham. “She was wonderfully supportive,” Blume said of Wyndham at a 2015 book event hosted by the Arlington Public Library in Virginia. “She was wonderful to me, always,” Blume recalled of her teacher, who died in 1978, even though she admitted Wyndham did not always approve of her tendency to leave the task of untangling moral complexities up to the reader. Wyndham’s support meant everything to her, especially because she felt she had so few others in her corner when it came to her writing. John wasn’t bothered by her new passion, but he had trouble seeing it as anything more than a hobby. “He thought it was better than shopping,” Blume said. He’d joke to their friends, “All I have to do is buy Judy some paper and pencils and she’s happy!” At one point, John sent a few of her drafts to his friend who had worked in book publishing. That guy was discouraging to the point of rudeness. In so many words: pack it up sweetheart and go back to baking. Judy didn’t want to bake. She wanted to invent things—to dream. Then one day her dreams took root.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Rusty and Miri stepped out of the way. The bouquet landed in Irene’s hands, who treated it like a hot potato, quickly tossing it toward Leah’s friends, where Harriet Makenna caught it and promptly passed out. She was rescued by the photographer, who had met her when he’d covered the holiday party at the Elks Club. Once upon a time Miri had planned to wear her bridesmaid dress with its detachable organza overskirt to the ninth-grade prom, but she’d decided against going. When her friends saw the depth of her sadness they accepted her decision. In the same once-upon-a-time she’d thought she’d wear the dress to Mason’s junior prom, at Jefferson. She wondered if he’d go without her, if he’d go with someone else? She doubted it. Or maybe that was just what she was hoping. She couldn’t imagine ever wearing the dress again. MasonPolina kept her job working in the kitchen at Janet, but Mason avoided her like bad food. The kid, too. He was done with all that. No more girlfriends. They wanted too much from you. They expected you to make them happy. Even when they said they wanted to make you happy. Maybe someday he’d feel ready to see Miri again but he couldn’t think when that might be. He’d fucked up big-time. He didn’t expect her to forgive him. The question was, could he forgive himself? Jack wouldn’t let it go. Begged him to come with him and Christina to Las Vegas. Mason finally said, “Don’t ask me again, Jack. I’m staying here, at Janet. I’ll be fine.” “At least come with us for the summer.” “I can’t. I’ve got a job. You know that. You’re the one who set me up with your old boss. He’s going to train me to be an electrician. Just like he trained you.” “He’d understand.” “No.” “Mason—you can’t live your life avoiding Miri.” “Don’t say that name around me. And yes I can. And I will.” “There’ll be other girls, believe me.” “Cut it out, Jack, because you don’t know.” “I know you’re seventeen.” “That doesn’t mean shit.” He hoped Jack wouldn’t cry. He looked like he might. So Mason gave him a bear hug. That way they didn’t have to look at each other. Jack patted his back for too long. “Hey, brother,” Mason said, to get Jack to let go. “I’ll write.” “Every week,” Jack said, sniffling. “I need you to promise.” “I promise.” “And I’ll call every two weeks,” Jack told him. “On Sunday nights.” Mason nodded. Then he asked what he’d been thinking all along. “What about 1-A, Jack?” “No word yet. I’ll see you for Christmas, okay?” “Yeah, sure, Christmas.” SteveThe morning after graduating from Jefferson High, Steve went downtown to the army recruitment center on Elizabeth Avenue and enlisted. He filled out all the paperwork, set up an appointment for a physical that afternoon, and he was in. It was that easy. Phil was apoplectic. “Are you crazy?

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Otherwise they’d never have been at home that day.” “Natalie called Rusty a whore.” “Poor Natalie, if she feels that to defend her mother she has to bad-mouth Rusty. Someday she’ll grow up and figure it out for herself.” “Figure what out?” “There are two sides to every story.” “Always?” “Almost always.” Henry took her hand. “Rusty deserves to be happy,” he said, “and so does Arthur. He’s a good man, Miri.” As if she didn’t know. As if she hadn’t dreamed of having a father just like him. “How can a good man leave his wife and children?” “We don’t know about his marriage, Miri. We don’t even know that he is leaving his children.” “Do you mean the children might go with him?” That would change everything, and not for the better, now that Natalie hated her. She was glad Steve would be going away to college. She didn’t want to live in the same house with him. He barely acknowledged her existence. And Fern? Fern was a noodge but Miri wouldn’t mind her that much. They could get a babysitter for her, maybe another Mrs. Barnes. “You’re asking questions only Rusty and Arthur can answer,” Henry said. “I’m sure they’re going to sit down with you and explain everything.” “Oh, no!” “What?” “Tonight. Six-thirty. Pizza from Spirito’s. I forgot.” He checked his watch. “You’re already late. You should call.” “Would you do it for me?” “It would be better if you did it yourself.” She called from a phone booth along the boardwalk, feeding coins into the box as fast as Henry handed them to her. When Rusty answered, Miri said, “It’s me. I forgot.” “We’ll do it tomorrow,” Rusty said. “No excuses.” “Okay. Tomorrow.” She didn’t tell Henry until after they’d stopped at the hotel where the wedding would be, until after he’d shown her the garden where the chuppah would be draped with Grandpa Max’s tallis and a white lace tablecloth brought from the old country by Leah’s grandmother. Everything else would be decorated with peonies, Leah’s favorite flower, in shades ranging from pale blush to deep pink. She didn’t tell him until he asked, “Would you like to bring Mason to the wedding? I know we didn’t send him a proper invitation but—” “We broke up,” she managed to say, holding back tears. If only she could have a do-over she’d take a different route home from school, or she’d have gone to Pamel’s with her girlfriends, or maybe to the library. Then she wouldn’t have run into him or seen Polina and Stash. “You broke up?” Henry said. “I’m so sorry.” She leaned against him and nestled her head against his chest. “He has another girlfriend. All this time he’s had another girlfriend.” Henry shook his head. “I can’t believe this. Are you sure?” “She cooks at Janet. She has a little boy. He says he tried to end it with her…” “But you don’t believe him?” She shrugged.