Shame

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 Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Because these interlocking relationships are so crucial to social cohesion, opting out can cause problems. Writing of the Matis people, anthropologist Philippe Erikson confirms, “Plural paternity…is more than a theoretical possibility…. Extramarital sex is not only widely practiced and usually tolerated, in many respects, it also appears mandatory. Married or not, one has a moral duty to respond to the sexual advances of opposite-sex cross-cousins (real or classificatory), under pains of being labeled ‘stingy of one’s genitals,’ a breach of Matis ethics far more serious than plain infidelity [emphasis added].”8 Being labeled a sexual cheapskate is no laughing matter, apparently. Erikson writes of one young man who cowered in the anthropologist’s hut for hours, hiding from his horny cousin, whose advances he couldn’t legitimately reject if she tracked him down. Even more serious, during Matis tattooing festivals, having sex with one’s customary partner(s) is expressly forbidden—under threat of extreme punishment, even death.9 But if it’s true that S.E.Ex. played a central role in maintaining prehistoric social cohesion, we should find remnants of such shamelessly libidinous behavior throughout the world, past and present. We do. Among the Mohave, women were famous for their licentious habits and disinclination to stick with one man.10 Caesar (yes, that Caesar) was scandalized to note that in Iron Age Britain, “Ten and even twelve have wives common to them, and particularly brothers among brothers….”11 During his three months in Tahiti in 1769, Captain James Cook and his crew found that Tahitians “gratified every appetite and passion before witnesses.” In an account of Cook’s voyage first published in 1773, John Hawkesworth wrote of “[a] young man, nearly six feet high, perform[ing] the rites of Venus with a little girl about 11 or 12 years of age, before several of our people and a great number of natives, without the least sense of its being indecent or improper, but, as appeared, in perfect conformity to the custom of the place.” Some of the older islander women who were observing this amorous display apparently called out instructions to the girl, although Cook tells us, “Young as she was, she did not seem much to stand in need of [them].”12 Samuel Wallis, another ship captain who spent time in Tahiti, reported, “The women in General are very handsome, some really great Beauties, yet their Virtue was not proof against a Nail.” The Tahitians’ fascination with iron resulted in a de-facto exchange of a single nail for a sexual tryst with a local woman. By the time Wallis set sail, most of his men were sleeping on deck, as there were no nails left from which to hang their hammocks.13

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “But how, Alexey, tell me how?” she said in melancholy mockery at the hopelessness of her own position. “Is there any way out of such a position? Am I not the wife of my husband?” “There is a way out of every position. We must take our line,” he said. “Anything’s better than the position in which you’re living. Of course, I see how you torture yourself over everything—the world and your son and your husband.” “Oh, not over my husband,” she said, with a quiet smile. “I don’t know him, I don’t think of him. He doesn’t exist.” “You’re not speaking sincerely. I know you. You worry about him too.” “Oh, he doesn’t even know,” she said, and suddenly a hot flush came over her face; her cheeks, her brow, her neck crimsoned, and tears of shame came into her eyes. “But we won’t talk of him.” Chapter 23 Vronsky had several times already, though not so resolutely as now, tried to bring her to consider their position, and every time he had been confronted by the same superficiality and triviality with which she met his appeal now. It was as though there were something in this which she could not or would not face, as though directly she began to speak of this, she, the real Anna, retreated somehow into herself, and another strange and unaccountable woman came out, whom he did not love, and whom he feared, and who was in opposition to him. But today he was resolved to have it out. “Whether he knows or not,” said Vronsky, in his usual quiet and resolute tone, “that’s nothing to do with us. We cannot ... you cannot stay like this, especially now.” “What’s to be done, according to you?” she asked with the same frivolous irony. She who had so feared he would take her condition too lightly was now vexed with him for deducing from it the necessity of taking some step. “Tell him everything, and leave him.”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She was sitting in the drawing-room near a lamp, with a new volume of Taine, and as she read, listening to the sound of the wind outside, and every minute expecting the carriage to arrive. Several times she had fancied she heard the sound of wheels, but she had been mistaken. At last she heard not the sound of wheels, but the coachman’s shout and the dull rumble in the covered entry. Even Princess Varvara, playing patience, confirmed this, and Anna, flushing hotly, got up; but instead of going down, as she had done twice before, she stood still. She suddenly felt ashamed of her duplicity, but even more she dreaded how he might meet her. All feeling of wounded pride had passed now; she was only afraid of the expression of his displeasure. She remembered that her child had been perfectly well again for the last two days. She felt positively vexed with her for getting better from the very moment her letter was sent off. Then she thought of him, that he was here, all of him, with his hands, his eyes. She heard his voice. And forgetting everything, she ran joyfully to meet him. “Well, how is Annie?” he said timidly from below, looking up to Anna as she ran down to him. He was sitting on a chair, and a footman was pulling off his warm over-boot. “Oh, she is better.” “And you?” he said, shaking himself. She took his hand in both of hers, and drew it to her waist, never taking her eyes off him. “Well, I’m glad,” he said, coldly scanning her, her hair, her dress, which he knew she had put on for him. All was charming, but how many times it had charmed him! And the stern, stony expression that she so dreaded settled upon his face. “Well, I’m glad. And are you well?” he said, wiping his damp beard with his handkerchief and kissing her hand. “Never mind,” she thought, “only let him be here, and so long as he’s here he cannot, he dare not, cease to love me.” The evening was spent happily and gaily in the presence of Princess Varvara, who complained to him that Anna had been taking morphine in his absence. “What am I to do? I couldn’t sleep.... My thoughts prevented me. When he’s here I never take it—hardly ever.” He told her about the election, and Anna knew how by adroit questions to bring him to what gave him most pleasure—his own success. She told him of everything that interested him at home; and all that she told him was of the most cheerful description. But late in the evening, when they were alone, Anna, seeing that she had regained complete possession of him, wanted to erase the painful impression of the glance he had given her for her letter. She said: “Tell me frankly, you were vexed at getting my letter, and you didn’t believe me?”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Yes,” she said, looking timidly towards the doorway, where Nikolay Levin had reappeared. “What were you talking about?” he said, knitting his brows, and turning his scared eyes from one to the other. “What was it?” “Oh, nothing,” Konstantin answered in confusion. “Oh, if you don’t want to say, don’t. Only it’s no good your talking to her. She’s a wench, and you’re a gentleman,” he said with a jerk of the neck. “You understand everything, I see, and have taken stock of everything, and look with commiseration on my shortcomings,” he began again, raising his voice. “Nikolay Dmitrievitch, Nikolay Dmitrievitch,” whispered Marya Nikolaevna, again going up to him. “Oh, very well, very well!... But where’s the supper? Ah, here it is,” he said, seeing a waiter with a tray. “Here, set it here,” he added angrily, and promptly seizing the vodka, he poured out a glassful and drank it greedily. “Like a drink?” he turned to his brother, and at once became better humored. “Well, enough of Sergey Ivanovitch. I’m glad to see you, anyway. After all’s said and done, we’re not strangers. Come, have a drink. Tell me what you’re doing,” he went on, greedily munching a piece of bread, and pouring out another glassful. “How are you living?” “I live alone in the country, as I used to. I’m busy looking after the land,” answered Konstantin, watching with horror the greediness with which his brother ate and drank, and trying to conceal that he noticed it. “Why don’t you get married?” “It hasn’t happened so,” Konstantin answered, reddening a little. “Why not? For me now ... everything’s at an end! I’ve made a mess of my life. But this I’ve said, and I say still, that if my share had been given me when I needed it, my whole life would have been different.” Konstantin made haste to change the conversation. “Do you know your little Vanya’s with me, a clerk in the countinghouse at Pokrovskoe.” Nikolay jerked his neck, and sank into thought. “Yes, tell me what’s going on at Pokrovskoe. Is the house standing still, and the birch trees, and our schoolroom? And Philip the gardener, is he living? How I remember the arbor and the seat! Now mind and don’t alter anything in the house, but make haste and get married, and make everything as it used to be again. Then I’ll come and see you, if your wife is nice.” “But come to me now,” said Levin. “How nicely we would arrange it!” “I’d come and see you if I were sure I should not find Sergey Ivanovitch.” “You wouldn’t find him there. I live quite independently of him.” “Yes, but say what you like, you will have to choose between me and him,” he said, looking timidly into his brother’s face. This timidity touched Konstantin.

• From Querelle (1953)

  ness they had taken on the odor emanating from his midriff) became clearer now. The feelings of shame they caused became like a vast magnet, bringing his life back to him from its farthest borders and beaches, and once that had happened, he was again able to think of the sailor without any inhibitions. He walked into a light gust of wind. He thought, or rather, a deep voice said from somewhere inside him : "I stink! I corrupt the world!" From this particular spot in Brest, in the middle of the fog, on the road overlooking the sea and the docks, a light breeze, gentler and lovelier than the petals of Saadi's roses, spread the humility of Lieutenant Seblon over the whole . world. Querelle had become Madame Lysiane's lover. The turmoil she found herself in when contemplating the identity of the two brothers-which began to appear ever more indistinguish· able and unified-reached such a dimension that she finally gave in to it. Here are the facts. Gil, worried because he had not seen Querelle for some time, told Roger to go and investigate. The boy hesitated for a long time, walking back and forth in front of the spiky door, then finally walked into La Feria. Querelle was in the parlor. Intimidated by all the lights, the women in states of undress, Roger approached him looking anytliing but as· sured. Still imperial in her bearing, but already corroded by her disease, Madame Lysiane observed the encounter. She was not very conscious of registering and interpreting Roger's embar· rassed smile and Querelle's surprise and worried look, but her soul recorded all the signs. A second later Robert walked into the parlor and went over to his brother and the boy, and that was enough for her to recognize, within . herself, what was not • 267 I QUERELLE yet a thought, but then became one and acquired this formulation : "There he is, their boy." Never-nor at this moment-had the Madam imagined that the brothers in their. love for each other had accomplished the miracle of true offspring, but their physical resemblance that - created such an enormous obstacle for her feelings could not be anything less than love. Besides, this love-she saw only its earthly manifestation-had troubled her for such a long time that the least incident could give it substance. She was not far from expecting it to emanate from herself, from her body, her entrails, where it had been deposited like radioactive matter.

• From Querelle (1953)

  and frosty voice; in short, in everything which led people to refer to him as a "berserker''-aii of that smouldering rancor was now wounded to the quick, and it almost brought tears to his -eyes. The others had attacked it so fiercely that it melted, became soft and tepid, pitiful, ready to expire. From his toes to the rims of his dry eyes, Gil's body was shaken by deep sobs, and these destroyed ail remaining traces of cruelty. His need to urinate became more and more imperative. It turned ail of Gil's attention to his bladder. But in order to reach the latrine he would have to get up and cross the room, the room he imagined was bristling with sneers and jeers. He remained stretched out, thinking only. of his violent physical need. Finaiiy he decided to '1ive with shame." Pushing back the bedsheets he already felt · the inadequacy of his gestures. His wrist moved over the folds without his hand clutching them-as it was not permitted to make a fist-looking like some humble Christian brow, a miserable sinner showing only his ashen gray neck, unworthy of any brightness. Humbly Gil raised his head, without looking around, hesitantly gathered up his socks and put them on, taking care not to expose his legs. The door across from him suddenly opened. Gil did not raise his eyes. " 'Tain't too warm out there, boys." It was the voice of Theo who had just come in. He went over to the stove where a saucepan fuii of water was heating. "Is this going to be soup? Not much in it!" "That's not for soup. 'That's for shaving," someone told him. "Oh. I'm sorry, my mistake." And, with a faint note of resentment in his voice, he went on : "But it's true, you can't really spoil soup by putting too much in. But I guess we'll have to tighten our belts-dunno why, but there just don't seem to be any vegetables these days." Gil blushed as he heard the sound of four or five snickers. One of the younger masons took him up: "That's because you haven't really been lqokin'." 101 I QUERELLE "Is that right?" said Theo. uNo kidding, you know where to get ahold of some? So it ain't you who takes and hides them up his ass, sometimes?" Great gusts of laughter, all around. Smiling, the same young mason replied : "Your mistake, Thea. Not one of my habits." This dialogue, it seemed, could go on for quite a while. Gil had got his socks on. He raised his head and waited a moment without moving, hunched up in the bed, his eyes fixed straight ahead of him. He saw that life would be unbearable, but it was too late to fight Theo. Now he would have to take on the whole.

• From Querelle (1953)

  The workmen went and sat down at a bare wooden table in the middle of the dormitory, between the two rows of beds. On it stood two large, steaming bowls of soup. Slowly Gil took his hand off the fur of the cat lying stretched on his knee; then put it back there. Some small part of his shame was flowing out into the animal and being absorbed by her. Thus, she was a comfort to Gil, like a dressing staunching a wound. Gil had not wanted to get into a fight when, on coming back, Theo had started poking fun at him. And that had been obvious from his tone of voice, so surprisingly humble when answering: "There's some words better left unsaid." As his retorts were usually dry and laconic, almost to the point of cruelty, Gil had been all the more conscious of his humiliation when he heard his own voice ingratiate itself, stretch out like a shadow round Theo's feet. To himself, to console his self-regard, Gil had remarked that one does not fight with such assholes, but the spontaneous sweetness of his voice reminded him too strongly that he had, in fact, given in. And his buddies? \Vhat the hell did they matter, fuck'em. Theo, that was well known, Theo was a queer. He was tough and nervy all right, but he was a queer. No sooner had 42 I JEAN GENET

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Why, hasn’t he gone into the country yet—to see about selling that forest?” “No, he’s still getting ready for the journey.” “Oh, that’s it!” said the prince. “And so am I to be getting ready for a journey too? At your service,” he said to his wife, sitting down. “And I tell you what, Katia,” he went on to his younger daughter, “you must wake up one fine day and say to yourself: Why, I’m quite well, and merry, and going out again with father for an early morning walk in the frost. Hey?” What her father said seemed simple enough, yet at these words Kitty became confused and overcome like a detected criminal. “Yes, he sees it all, he understands it all, and in these words he’s telling me that though I’m ashamed, I must get over my shame.” She could not pluck up spirit to make any answer. She tried to begin, and all at once burst into tears, and rushed out of the room. “See what comes of your jokes!” the princess pounced down on her husband. “You’re always....” she began a string of reproaches. The prince listened to the princess’s scolding rather a long while without speaking, but his face was more and more frowning. “She’s so much to be pitied, poor child, so much to be pitied, and you don’t feel how it hurts her to hear the slightest reference to the cause of it. Ah! to be so mistaken in people!” said the princess, and by the change in her tone both Dolly and the prince knew she was speaking of Vronsky. “I don’t know why there aren’t laws against such base, dishonorable people.” “Ah, I can’t bear to hear you!” said the prince gloomily, getting up from his low chair, and seeming anxious to get away, yet stopping in the doorway. “There are laws, madam, and since you’ve challenged me to it, I’ll tell you who’s to blame for it all: you and you, you and nobody else. Laws against such young gallants there have always been, and there still are! Yes, if there has been nothing that ought not to have been, old as I am, I’d have called him out to the barrier, the young dandy. Yes, and now you physic her and call in these quacks.” The prince apparently had plenty more to say, but as soon as the princess heard his tone she subsided at once, and became penitent, as she always did on serious occasions. “Alexander, Alexander,” she whispered, moving to him and beginning to weep. As soon as she began to cry the prince too calmed down. He went up to her.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  But three months had passed and he had not left off minding about it; and it was as painful for him to think of it as it had been those first days. He could not be at peace because after dreaming so long of family life, and feeling himself so ripe for it, he was still not married, and was further than ever from marriage. He was painfully conscious himself, as were all about him, that at his years it is not well for man to be alone. He remembered how before starting for Moscow he had once said to his cowman Nikolay, a simple-hearted peasant, whom he liked talking to: “Well, Nikolay! I mean to get married,” and how Nikolay had promptly answered, as of a matter on which there could be no possible doubt: “And high time too, Konstantin Dmitrievitch.” But marriage had now become further off than ever. The place was taken, and whenever he tried to imagine any of the girls he knew in that place, he felt that it was utterly impossible. Moreover, the recollection of the rejection and the part he had played in the affair tortured him with shame. However often he told himself that he was in no wise to blame in it, that recollection, like other humiliating reminiscences of a similar kind, made him twinge and blush. There had been in his past, as in every man’s, actions, recognized by him as bad, for which his conscience ought to have tormented him; but the memory of these evil actions was far from causing him so much suffering as those trivial but humiliating reminiscences. These wounds never healed. And with these memories was now ranged his rejection and the pitiful position in which he must have appeared to others that evening. But time and work did their part. Bitter memories were more and more covered up by the incidents—paltry in his eyes, but really important—of his country life. Every week he thought less often of Kitty. He was impatiently looking forward to the news that she was married, or just going to be married, hoping that such news would, like having a tooth out, completely cure him.

• From Querelle (1953)

  With his pants round his ankles, bending down, he saw his thighs : they were thick and solid, well developed by bicycling and playing soccer, smooth as marble and just as hard. In his thoughts Gil let his eyes travel up from his thighs to. his belly, to his muscular back, to his arms. He felt ashamed of his strength. Had he taken up the challenge to fight, "on the level" perhaps (no punching, just wrestling) or "no holds barred" (boot and fist ) , he could certainly have beaten Thea; but that one had a reputation for extreme vindictiveness. Out of sheer rage Thea would have been capable of getting up at night to pad over to Gil's bed and cut his throat. It was thanks to this reputation that he was able to go on insulting others as blithely as he did. Gil refused to run the risk of having his throat cut. He stepped out of his pants. Standing for a moment in front of his bed in his red shorts and white undershirt, he· gently scratched his thighs. He hoped that his buddies would observe his muscles and understand that he had only refused to fight out of generosity, so as not to make an older man look like a fool. He got into bed. His cheek on the bolster, Gil thought of Thea with disgust, that feeling growing more intense as he realized that in days past, as a young man, Thea surely had been a very handsome man. He was still pretty vigorous. Sometimes, at work, he would make awkward, punning references to what he thought was the proverbial virility of the men of the building trade. His face, with its hard, manly, still unspoilt features, was covered as with a net of minuscule wrinkles. His dark eyes, sn1all but brilliant, mostly expressed sarcasm, but on certain days Gil had caught them looking at him, overflowing with an 45 I QUERELLE

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Yes, that’s an understood thing,” responded the celebrated physician, again glancing at his watch. “Beg pardon, is the Yausky bridge done yet, or shall I have to drive around?” he asked. “Ah! it is. Oh, well, then I can do it in twenty minutes. So we were saying the problem may be put thus: to maintain nutrition and to give tone to the nerves. The one is in close connection with the other, one must attack both sides at once.” “And how about a tour abroad?” asked the family doctor. “I’ve no liking for foreign tours. And take note: if there is an early stage of tuberculous process, of which we cannot be certain, a foreign tour will be of no use. What is wanted is means of improving nutrition, and not for lowering it.” And the celebrated doctor expounded his plan of treatment with Soden waters, a remedy obviously prescribed primarily on the ground that they could do no harm. The family doctor listened attentively and respectfully. “But in favor of foreign travel I would urge the change of habits, the removal from conditions calling up reminiscences. And then the mother wishes it,” he added. “Ah! Well, in that case, to be sure, let them go. Only, those German quacks are mischievous.... They ought to be persuaded.... Well, let them go then.” He glanced once more at his watch. “Oh! time’s up already,” And he went to the door. The celebrated doctor announced to the princess (a feeling of what was due from him dictated his doing so) that he ought to see the patient once more. “What! another examination!” cried the mother, with horror. “Oh, no, only a few details, princess.” “Come this way.” And the mother, accompanied by the doctor, went into the drawing-room to Kitty. Wasted and flushed, with a peculiar glitter in her eyes, left there by the agony of shame she had been put through, Kitty stood in the middle of the room. When the doctor came in she flushed crimson, and her eyes filled with tears. All her illness and treatment struck her as a thing so stupid, ludicrous even! Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders? But she could not grieve her mother, especially as her mother considered herself to blame. “May I trouble you to sit down, princess?” the celebrated doctor said to her. He sat down with a smile, facing her, felt her pulse, and again began asking her tiresome questions. She answered him, and all at once got up, furious. “Excuse me, doctor, but there is really no object in this. This is the third time you’ve asked me the same thing.” The celebrated doctor did not take offense. “Nervous irritability,” he said to the princess, when Kitty had left the room. “However, I had finished....”

• From Querelle (1953)

  104 I JEAN GENET was walking in a universe where the forms were still larval. To rise to that other, luminous world, where one dared to assume the function of thinking, one would, or so it seemed, have to wield a dagger. Parenthetically, and by your leave: if murder with an implement that is· sharp, pointed, or simply heavy enough, seems to give the murderer a measure of solace by bursting a kind of murky wineskin in which he had felt himself imprisoned, poison, on the other hand, cannot provide the same deliver ance. Gil was choking. The fog, in conferring invisibility on him, gave him some comfort, but it was not capable of isolating him from the day before nor, certainly not, from the day to come. Given some powers of imagination Gil would have been able to rid himself of what had happened, but as the nature of his resenbnent was arid, . it deprived him of that possibility. The next day, and the days after the next_ day, he was doomed to live on in shame . .,Why the hell didn't I bust his head back then." Furiously he repeated this phrase that wasn't a question in any sense. He saw Thea's mean and sarcastic face. In his pockets, his fists clenched, his fingernails biting into the palms. As he was unable to question himself, let alone giye answers, he could only pursue his desolate line of thought so thoroughly th at when he reached the balustrade in the emptiest comer of the square his spirit had reached down to rock-bottom humilia tion. He turned his head toward the sea; in a loud voice, but choking. it back, he uttered a raucous cry: (4Aarrghh !" It was a relief, for a few seconds. After two strides, his dark pain was upon him again. HWhy oh why didn't I sock him in the teeth, that dirty sonofabitch? The others, the hell with them . . Let 'em think what they please, fuck'em. But him, I should of ... " When Gil had first arrived in the yards, Thea had demon strated a kind of paternal comradeship. Little by little, accept ing a drink now and then, the young man came to accept the

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  But the louder he spoke, the lower she dropped her once proud and gay, now shame-stricken head, and she bowed down and sank from the sofa where she was sitting, down on the floor, at his feet; she would have fallen on the carpet if he had not held her. “My God! Forgive me!” she said, sobbing, pressing his hands to her bosom. She felt so sinful, so guilty, that nothing was left her but to humiliate herself and beg forgiveness; and as now there was no one in her life but him, to him she addressed her prayer for forgiveness. Looking at him, she had a physical sense of her humiliation, and she could say nothing more. He felt what a murderer must feel, when he sees the body he has robbed of life. That body, robbed by him of life, was their love, the first stage of their love. There was something awful and revolting in the memory of what had been bought at this fearful price of shame. Shame at their spiritual nakedness crushed her and infected him. But in spite of all the murderer’s horror before the body of his victim, he must hack it to pieces, hide the body, must use what he has gained by his murder. And with fury, as it were with passion, the murderer falls on the body, and drags it and hacks at it; so he covered her face and shoulders with kisses. She held his hand, and did not stir. “Yes, these kisses—that is what has been bought by this shame. Yes, and one hand, which will always be mine—the hand of my accomplice.” She lifted up that hand and kissed it. He sank on his knees and tried to see her face; but she hid it, and said nothing. At last, as though making an effort over herself, she got up and pushed him away. Her face was still as beautiful, but it was only the more pitiful for that. “All is over,” she said; “I have nothing but you. Remember that.” “I can never forget what is my whole life. For one instant of this happiness....” “Happiness!” she said with horror and loathing and her horror unconsciously infected him. “For pity’s sake, not a word, not a word more.” She rose quickly and moved away from him. “Not a word more,” she repeated, and with a look of chill despair, incomprehensible to him, she parted from him. She felt that at that moment she could not put into words the sense of shame, of rapture, and of horror at this stepping into a new life, and she did not want to speak of it, to vulgarize this feeling by inappropriate words. But later too, and the next day and the third day, she still found no words in which she could express the complexity of her feelings; indeed, she could not even find thoughts in which she could clearly think out all that was in her soul.

• From Querelle (1953)

  Now she was sure the brothers loved each other so greatly that they had deemed it necessary to find a third person to disengage them and to provide a diversion. She was overcome by shame at seeing herself as this person, although she did not believe it for a second. At the end of her little speech, her voice turned both accusing and plaintive. She was really praying. "You only have eyes for one another. I don't exist any more. I just don't exist! \Vhat does that make me, tell me? And how could I ever get between you two? Tell me, now, tell me! \Vell?'' She was weeping. It pained her to be shouting so loudly, yet not loudly enough . Her voice had risen to an ever sharper pitch, without turning shrill. Robert lay smiling at her . .. You think that's funny? You, dear sir, you live only in the eyes of that brother of yours. Your Jo. That's his name, isn't it? Jo? That's where your heart is, sir: in your brother." "Come on, Lysiane, take it easy. That ain't the kind of stuff you want to see in print." She flung the covers aside and disembarked. Robert became aware of the room, its sweetness and its snarl. All its treasures converged to come to her aid, but then they retreated again, very quickly, as if washed away by a wave of distress. Pale and upright i\1adame Lysiane stood in the midst of her dwindling meubles. Fury lit a glimmer of true intelligence in Robert's head. He searched for and found its causes : his mistress was hateful and ridiculous. "You finished bitching?" 186 I JEAN GENET "Your brother. You live in one another." Robert's abrup� tone and his suddenly quite inhumanly hard eyes hurt her most cruelly. She hoped he would soon reach a high point in his anger that would aiiow him to spew out, all over those sheets, ali his love for his brother and for their alikeness. "And of course there's no room for me. You know there's no way I could pass between you two. You just leave me standing there. I can't squeeze through, I'm too fat for that . . . That's right, that's right-I'm too fat!"

• From Querelle (1953)

  120 I JEAN GENET being identical, the fight had started out with a series of ridicu lously hesitant attacks. Rather than wanting to fight they seemed to be backing away and avoiding each other with considerable success. Then things changed. Querelle stumbled, slipped and managed to grab hold of Robert's ankle. From that moment on it was an all-out brawl. Dede jumped to one side, wanting to prove to the full-fledged man within him, still • slumbering and germinating there, that nothing can be gained from interfering in a showdown between two men. The street was transformed into a passage from the B�ble in which two brothers, guided by two fingers of a single God, insult each other and fight to the death for two reasons which are really but one. For Dede, the city of Brest did not exist now, only this street. He was waiting for one soul to rise heavenwards from it. The tw o men fought in silence, their rage increasing in propor tion to that very silence: it excited them, being punctuated only by the noise of their punches and counterpunches, their own huffing and puffing; increasing, too, as they felt themselves slowing down, which held the threat they might both go under, both resort to the one final dirty blow, delivered slowly, almost tenderly, that would wipe out the exhausted winner as well. Three dockers stood watching them, smoking. Silently they were placing bets with themselves, first on one, then on the other. It was hard to predict the outcome, the combatants were so equally matched; this impression was enhanc�d by their close resemblance to each other which made the fight look as balanced and harmonious as a dance. Dede stood and watched. Though he knew his friend's muscles in repose, he did not dare guess at their efficiency in a brawl-especially not one with Querelle whom he had never seen fight before. Suddenly Querelle bent over and rammed Robert in the stomach with his head, but was instantly knocked flat on his back. When he had decided to stri ke his brother, Robert had experienced an instant of sheer freedom, a very brief instant, hardly enough for any kind of decision. The sailor's cap fell to one side of the flailing pair,

• From The Art of the Graphic Memoir: Tell Your Story, Change Your Life (2018)

  Meanwhile Eisner’s publishing colleagues are full of racism and ethnic/religous tribalism, and finally Eisner, upon receiving a draft notice, rather than get “deferred on some angle,” chooses to go to war. Eisner the author pushes the book into the modern era on the train to camp, where we see more bigotry as enlistees comment on the African-American troops. The book stunningly ends with Eisner meeting an American Turk on the train who converted to Christianity when arriving in the States. “I felt ashamed of bowing to bigotry.” he says, but then, “Who I think I am is held together by optimism and bits of recall from my past.” The characters line up for duty and the Turk claims Eisner reminds him of “mythical Hoja … a wise man who always rides his donkey while sitting backward, to see where he’s been… . After all, where he’s going is in Allah’s hands… .” FUN HOME by Alison Bechdel Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (2007, Mariner Books) is all reflection and commentary. It tells the story of her growing up with her father, an obsessive, closeted gay man who is also the town funeral director and who—when Alison is in college—perhaps or perhaps not commits suicide. EVENTS REPEATED AND REEXAMINED The book is a thematic exploration of her relationship with her father, and and she examines this relationship through various intellectual and psychological contexts: through the myth of Daedalus and Icarus, the myth of Odysseus en route to Ithaca, and stories of and by Proust, Wilde, Joyce, and Fitzgerald. She also re-examines events within their larger historical context as well. The book’s events are in no way presented chronologically. Events repeat consistently, sometimes as a re-examination, other times with great expertise in revealing key information for the reader. The moment of her father’s death is drawn at least four times, each with different illumination on the passages of thought she’s patrolling. Sometimes, through mere repetition she compounds the importance of depth of certain moments. The image of Alison on the phone (left) with her mom as Alison learns about her dad’s indiscretions is repeated. In the first time we see it, she says though she’s escaped her parents and is in college, she’s being “pulled back into their orbit.” By the third time we see it, when we realize we’re learning specifically about her dad’s relationship with their babysitter, it’s like she’s space junk, floating and incapable of any of her own propulsion. The book is essentially a series of essays. Events move through the book as if thought is more powerful than time. It’s a feat of storytelling, using the intellect to negotiate history, repressed emotions, and misunderstood events. Alison by Alison We’ve seen this image before, but with new information, we see Alison is now adrift, like space junk. CAN’T WE TALK ABOUT SOMETHING MORE PLEASANT? by Roz Chast SMALL SEGMENTS AND QUICK WIT Roz Chast’s Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

• From Querelle (1953)

  Mario swallowed a curse. If he chose to go out alone, unaccompanied by his habitual companion (that young policeman who had once said to the admiring Dede : "What a handsome pair· you two are"-and had thus managed to make the boy see both of them together a-s a mightY sexual entity) , he did so to erase the shame of his first fright and to exorcise it by audacity. Mario decided to hit the streets at night, in the fog, the best time and place for a quick murder. He strode along purposefully, hands in pockets of his gaberdine coat, or else smoothing and puiling tight the fingers of his brown leather gloves-a gesture connecting him straight back to the invincible machinery of the police. The first time out he didn't even pack his revolver, hoping, by such extreme candor and innocence, to disarm the hypothetical dockers who were after his ass, but the following day he did take it along; it was, after all, a necessary adjunct to what he himself thought of as his courage-his belief in a system of order symbolized by the gun. When he wanted to arrange a meeting with Dede, he traced a street name on the steamy windowpane of his office in the police station, and when 157 I QUERELLE the street kid ( who naively persisted in his efforts to ferret out the place where the bad guys were sitting in judgment of the detective) walked past, he could simply read the letters backwards and thus be informed. As for Gil, he was busy rerunning the movie of his life, starting out from the murder and cranking it backwards, in order to justify his deed and make it appear inevitable. By reasoning in this fashion : "If I had never run into Roger . . . if I hadn't come to Brest . . . if . . . ," etc., he arrived at the conclusion that although the crime had taken its course through his arm, his body, his life, its true source lay outside of himself. This method of understanding his deed forced Gil into fatalism, which was a further obstacle to his desire to transcend the crime by sheer, deliberate force of will. At last, one night, he left the penitentiary. He managed to reach Roger's house. The darkness was total, further intensified by the fog. Brest lay sleeping. Without making any mistakes, using a couple of cunning detours, Gil arrived in Recouvrance without having encountered a soul. Standing in &ont of the house he realized, with some apprehension, that he had not yet thought of a way to make his presence known to Roger. Then, suddenly, eager to know if this trick would work, he smiled for the first time in three days, a quiet smile, and then started whistling, quietly: I-I e was a happy bandit, Nothing did he fear, His voice in the maquis Made the gendarmes weep . . .

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Despite how it’s been spun by economists and others arguing against local resource management, the real tragedy of the commons doesn’t pose a threat to resources controlled by small groups of interdependent individuals. Forget the commons. We need to confront the tragedies of the open seas, skies, rivers, and forests. Fisheries around the world are collapsing because no one has the authority, power, and motivation to stop international fleets from strip-mining waters everybody (and thus, nobody) owns. Toxins from Chinese smokestacks burning illegally mined Russian coal lodge in Korean lungs, while American cars burning Venezuelan petroleum melt glaciers in Greenland. What allows these chain-linked tragedies is the absence of local, personal shame. The false certainty that comes from applying Malthusian economics, the prisoner’s dilemma, and the tragedy of the commons to pre-agricultural societies requires that we ignore the fine-grain contours of life in small-scale communities where nobody “could have escaped public scrutiny and judgment,” in Rousseau’s words. These tragedies become inevitable only when the group size exceeds our species’ capacity for keeping track of one another, a point that’s come to be known as Dunbar’s number. In primate communities, size definitely matters. Noticing the importance of grooming behavior in social primates, British anthropologist Robin Dunbar plotted overall group size against the neocortical development of the brain. Using this correlation, he predicted that humans start losing track of who’s doing what to whom when group size hits about 150 individuals. In Dunbar’s words, “The limit imposed by neocortical processing capacity is simply on the number of individuals with whom a stable inter-personal relationship can be maintained.”7 Other anthropologists had arrived at the same number by observing that when group sizes grew much beyond that, they tend to split into two smaller groups. Writing several years before Dunbar’s paper was published in 1992, Marvin Harris noted, “With 50 people per band or 150 per village, everybody knew everybody else intimately, so that the bonding of reciprocal exchange could hold people together. People gave with the expectation of taking and took with the expectation of giving.”8 Recent authors, including Malcolm Gladwell in his best-selling The Tipping Point, have popularized the idea of 150 being a limit to organically functioning groups. Having evolved in small, intimate bands where everybody knows our name, human beings aren’t very good at dealing with the dubious freedoms conferred by anonymity. When communities grow beyond the point where every individual has at least a passing acquaintance with everyone else, our behavior changes, our choices shift, and our sense of the possible and of the acceptable grows ever more abstract.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Author Andrew Sullivan described his experience growing up both gay and Catholic as “difficult to the point of agony. I saw in my own life and those of countless others,” Sullivan recalled, “that the suppression of these core emotions and the denial of their resolution in love always always leads to personal distortion and compulsion and loss of perspective. Forcing…people into molds they do not fit helps no one,” Sullivan wrote. “It robs them of dignity and self-worth and the capacity for healthy relationships. It wrecks family, twists Christianity, violates humanity. It must end.”11 Sullivan’s comments were provoked by the twisted collapse of the publicly homophobic but privately homosexual televangelist Ted Haggard, but he could have been speaking for anyone who doesn’t fit the socially sanctioned mold of his or her day. And who does fit this mold? Yes, self-hating gay televangelists and politicians need to come out of the closet, but so does everyone else. It won’t be easy. It’s never easy to stand up to shame-fueled anger. Historian Robert S. McElvaine previews some of the shrill denunciation awaiting those who may dare to wander from the monogamous fold, declaring, “Free love is likely to degenerate into ‘free hate.’ Since loving everybody is a biological impossibility, the attempt to do so [becomes] ‘otherization,’ and the hatred that goes with it.”12 Like McElvaine, many relationship counselors seem both terrified by and ignorant of nonstandard marital relationships of any kind. Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity, quotes a family therapist she knows (and respects) stating unequivocally, “Open marriage doesn’t work. Thinking you can do it is totally naïve. We tried it in the seventies and it was a disaster.”13 Maybe, but such therapists might want to delve a little deeper before reflexively dismissing alternatives to conventional marriage. Asked to imagine the first swingers in modern American history, most people probably picture hairy hippies in headbands lolling about on waterbeds in free-love communes under posters of Che Guevara and Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane on the hi-fi. But be cool, Daddy-O, ’cause the truth is gonna blow your mind. It seems that the original modern American swingers were crew-cut World War II air force pilots and their wives. Like elite warriors everywhere, these “top guns” often developed strong bonds with one another, perhaps because they suffered the highest casualty rate of any branch of the military. According to journalist Terry Gould, “key parties,” like those later dramatized in the 1997 film The Ice Storm, originated on these military bases in the 1940s, where elite pilots and their wives intermingled sexually with one another before the men flew off toward Japanese antiaircraft fire.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “That is he. I knew him! Now, forgive me, everyone, forgive me!... They’ve come again; why don’t they go away?... Oh, take these cloaks off me!” The doctor unloosed her hands, carefully laying her on the pillow, and covered her up to the shoulders. She lay back submissively, and looked before her with beaming eyes. “Remember one thing, that I needed nothing but forgiveness, and I want nothing more.... Why doesn’t _he_ come?” she said, turning to the door towards Vronsky. “Do come, do come! Give him your hand.” Vronsky came to the side of the bed, and seeing Anna, again hid his face in his hands. “Uncover your face—look at him! He’s a saint,” she said. “Oh! uncover your face, do uncover it!” she said angrily. “Alexey Alexandrovitch, do uncover his face! I want to see him.” Alexey Alexandrovitch took Vronsky’s hands and drew them away from his face, which was awful with the expression of agony and shame upon it. “Give him your hand. Forgive him.” Alexey Alexandrovitch gave him his hand, not attempting to restrain the tears that streamed from his eyes. “Thank God, thank God!” she said, “now everything is ready. Only to stretch my legs a little. There, that’s capital. How badly these flowers are done—not a bit like a violet,” she said, pointing to the hangings. “My God, my God! when will it end? Give me some morphine. Doctor, give me some morphine! Oh, my God, my God!” And she tossed about on the bed. The doctors said that it was puerperal fever, and that it was ninety-nine chances in a hundred it would end in death. The whole day long there was fever, delirium, and unconsciousness. At midnight the patient lay without consciousness, and almost without pulse. The end was expected every minute. Vronsky had gone home, but in the morning he came to inquire, and Alexey Alexandrovitch meeting him in the hall, said: “Better stay, she might ask for you,” and himself led him to his wife’s boudoir. Towards morning, there was a return again of excitement, rapid thought and talk, and again it ended in unconsciousness. On the third day it was the same thing, and the doctors said there was hope. That day Alexey Alexandrovitch went into the boudoir where Vronsky was sitting, and closing the door sat down opposite him. “Alexey Alexandrovitch,” said Vronsky, feeling that a statement of the position was coming, “I can’t speak, I can’t understand. Spare me! However hard it is for you, believe me, it is more terrible for me.” He would have risen; but Alexey Alexandrovitch took him by the hand and said: